An Oxford Tragedy (18 page)

‘Have you seen this – this damnable thing?' I asked, pushing
The Times
into his hands.

‘Yes,' he replied; ‘half an hour ago, and I'm not altogether surprised. Don't be carried off your feet, Winn.
There is more in this than appears on the surface, but I hope you'll be patient for a little while, and not try to put things right in a hurry. Meantime I've a request to make.'

I was altogether surprised both by his manner and his remarks. The seeming lethargy of the day before had deserted him; he was all briskness and decision, but his face was unsmiling.

‘What do you want?'

‘I want to borrow your car for the whole day. The sun is shining almost for the first day since I came here, and I mean to spend the whole day out on the Berkshire Downs. Can I have it? I have just made Mottram promise to come with me.'

My surprise changed to astonishment, but I could only consent to what seemed to me a rather extraordinary request.

‘And the crime,' I hazarded, ‘is there nothing to be done about that? Are we to go on sitting still and doing nothing?'

He patted me sympathetically on the shoulder.

‘You must let me go my own way, please. But tell me this: Are you dining out this evening?'

‘Indeed no. I should be poor company indeed. I'd intended to dine in Hall as usual, but I'm not sure that I can face even that if Maurice Hargreaves is going to be there.'

‘Then do dine in Hall to please me, and keep yourself free after dinner. I think that I shall have something, and perhaps a great deal, to tell you then. We are very near to the end of this trail.'

Before I could question him further he was gone, and I sat down more mystified than ever to continue my ruminations.

Thursday seemed indeed interminable. Men of infirm
purpose always tend in my experience to comfort themselves with catchwords and quotations. There is a false sense of finality and decision about the
ex cathedra
statements of the great and the utterances of literary persons. I used often to feel in argument or discussion in Common Room that I had decided the question at issue when I had found some apposite citation which seemed to sum up my view. And yet, in reality, how useless and barren such things are! That day, I remember, Swinburne's words went echoing and re-echoing through my head:

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea
.

Cold comfort at the best!

And yet for all that time did seem to stand still, and I thought that the evening would never come.

When at long last I made my way towards Common Room just before seven-thirty I found Brendel waiting for me. He drew me aside, and spoke with urgency.

‘Listen. I want you to stay in Common Room until ten o'clock. After that I have promised Mottram something. Don't be surprised. You and I are to go up in your car to the laboratory to fetch him from there. Is that all right?'

‘But he's got his own car, and it's rather ridiculous to go out at that time for nothing.'

‘Never mind. I know it's unusual, but that doesn't matter. If anyone asks you, say that I am interested in Mottram's work, or anything else you like. But at ten,
o'clock we go up together to the laboratory.
Sie müssen auf alle Fälle mitkommen
.'

I knew that he was worried from the fact that he had dropped unconsciously into German, but I had no opportunity for further discussion, for the other diners were already collecting. I nodded acquiescence and we moved together up to Hall.

Conversation that evening was perfunctory and spasmodic. Everyone was ill at ease, and although Maurice Hargreaves was not with us no one, not even Doyne, seemed anxious to discuss the announcement which we had all seen in
The Times
. By half past nine nobody was left by the Common Room fire except Brendel and myself, and between us, for the first time since our acquaintance had begun, conversation halted. Brendel was palpably ill at ease. Though as a rule the most finished and appreciative of smokers he allowed an expensive cigar to go out half-smoked and then threw it almost petulantly into the fire. He interspersed lengthy periods of silence with feverish bursts of disconnected remarks; he paced the room as though some form of activity were a physical necessity to him. And yet, as ten o'clock approached, he showed no desire to leave.

‘A little longer; it will be difficult; give him a little longer,' he muttered more to himself than to me, and it was not until about five minutes past ten that, after looking at his watch for the twentieth time, he suddenly seemed to make a decision.

‘We must go now,' he said; ‘come and get the car. We put on our greatcoats and walked by way of the Fellows' door to the open space behind the college where my car was parked. I opened the door to step into the driver's seat, but Brendel laid a restraining hand on my arm.

‘I think I'll drive, if you don't mind,' he said. I was
surprised and no doubt my face showed it. I am by no means an expert driver, indeed it was a standing joke among my younger colleagues that I combined a maximum of risk with a minimum of speed, but still Brendel's suggestion piqued me, for we had, after all, only a five-minute drive before us through almost empty streets.

He guessed what was passing in my mind, and hastened to correct the false impression which his remark had made.

‘It's not that, Winn. I'm not so pusillanimous as you think me. But I've got something which must be told you as we drive up, and I want your whole attention.'

Nothing could have been more friendly than the words, but where was that smile which I had come to expect and to enjoy? Brendel's face was hard and expressionless, as though he had forced it into a rigid mask. The disquiet which had been growing on me during the evening turned to something almost like panic, and I braced myself to meet some new and as yet unknown disaster.

Brendel started the car, and we moved off in the direction of the laboratory, but it was not until we were already half-way to our destination that he suddenly spoke.

‘Winn, I can't let you go quite unprepared. I think – I'm not quite sure – but I think that when we arrive we shall … not find Mottram alive.' I had expected bad news of some kind, but the words when they came were like a knock-out blow.

‘For God's sake tell me what you mean. Is there some other horrible tragedy? What is it all about?'

Brendel bent his head lower over the wheel as he replied, and his voice was very grave.

‘I can't tell you more till we get there, and after all I may be wrong, but I couldn't let you enter that room without letting you know first what you might find. I believe that we shall find that Mottram has taken his life.'

Wild thoughts raced through my mind. Why, in Heaven's
name, if this was true, had we sat for the last two hours with hands folded in the Common Room? Had Brendel for some unfathomable reason wished as well as foreseen this second tragedy? And what bearing, if any, had it on Shirley's death? Such were the questions which were on the tip of my tongue, but I could not ask them. I waited helplessly till I should know whether this new disaster was hard fact or idle fancy.

As we drew up by the door of the laboratory I noticed that the windows of the room where Mottram worked were alight, whilst the rest of the building was in darkness; apparently there were no other workers there that night. Brendel, I think, made the same observation, for he cast a rapid glance over the exterior of the building, and nodded his head as though satisfied. Then he produced a key from his pocket, and opened the main door. Like an automaton I followed him. I had a curious sensation as though I were acting in a play; my movements seemed to me to have been dictated to me, and I carried them out without conscious volition on my part. And all the while terror gripped me; a growing certainty that in the next minute I should once more be face to face with tragedy and death.

Brendel seemed to know his way well over the building. He switched on a light in the passage, and led me without hesitation to Mottram's room. Then he knocked once, firmly, on the door.

There was no answer.

Brendel knocked again, but I knew, as he must have, that no reply would come. Then, after the briefest pause, he tried the handle of the door. It did not open, but he pulled another key from his pocket, and unlocked it.

I think that the worst horror of the evening was over before I crossed the threshold, for now I saw only what in my mind's eye I had already seen – and flinched from. Mottram was in a chair, half lying, half sitting, and I
knew long before I looked at his face that he was dead. In front of him on a shelf was an empty glass and two envelopes, one very bulky and the other of ordinary size. As I looked at these I noticed with surprise that the larger was addressed to me.

Brendel, meantime, had felt Mottram's heart and satisfied himself that he was dead; then he bent over the empty glass and smelt it.

‘Prussic acid. I thought so,' he muttered. He walked back to the door and carefully locked it.

‘I don't think we shall be disturbed,' he said; ‘but it's as well to be certain. You'd better open that letter, and see what's in it. Perhaps you might read it aloud.'

Of a sudden I felt rather faint, and sat down abruptly in a chair.

‘Oughtn't we to send for the police first?' I asked.

‘I don't think so; there is nothing to be done for him now, and I believe that the letter should be read before we decide what to do.'

I opened the large envelope obediently and pulled out a dozen closely written sheets of manuscript. I had thought that Brendel had remained almost inhumanly calm, but I noticed, as he too pulled up a chair, that his hand trembled ever so little.

‘I think, Winn,' he said very gently, ‘that you are going to read the life history of a man, whom you have lived with for eight years and never known.'

The early part of Mottram's letter was full of erasures and corrections and made up of short, jerky sentences, as though he had found it difficult to express his meaning, but I saw, as I glanced at the manuscript in my hands, that, after he had once got fairly under way, he had poured out a spate of words without pausing to alter or elaborate them. Evidently he had made up his mind after an initial struggle to tell his tale without restraint or inhibition. The letter began abruptly without any kind of introduction. I have set it down just as it was written.

‘I am a murderer, though God knows that I never meant to kill Shirley. Brendel knows most of this story, but not all. I write it down for you, Winn, because I have no friend to turn to, and that perhaps is the source of all the trouble. Someone must know it all before I go. I beg of you to read to the end, and to try to understand. It means going back to the beginning, but I can't help that. For I
must
make you understand, and that is the only way.

‘You know, I think, that both my parents died when I was quite small. I lived with an uncle; he wasn't unkind to me, but he just didn't care. There was hardly any money; just enough to pay for my schooling, and that was all. Always it was dinned into my head that at the earliest opportunity I must earn my own living. I think my uncle hoped to see me a clerk in a bank, and then to wash his hands of me. I don't blame him; he was always ill and I was nothing to him but a burden and a responsibility. I went to a Grammar School in the north; it wasn't a good school, and the teaching was generally pretty bad. But there were a couple of masters who were better than the average and somehow I learned to work. How I worked! Partly, I suppose, because I had nothing else to do, and
no chance of amusing myself, but more because I loved it, and more still because I saw in work a way of escape from the life which my uncle had planned for me. I spoiled my health, and I ruined my eyesight, but what did that matter? Somehow I won scholarships and prizes, enough to take me to the University. And that is how I came to Oxford. I won enough money to bring me here – just enough and no more.