An Oxford Tragedy (22 page)

It was long past midnight when at last we returned to my rooms, but sleep was impossible, and I implored Brendel to stay with me for a time.

‘At least,' I said, ‘tell me how you discovered all this.'

‘All right,' he replied, ‘but first oblige me by locking up that letter in a place where no one save yourself can find it. That at least we owe to Mottram.'

I obeyed, and we settled down once more into the armchairs from which we had so often before discussed the problem of the murder.

‘When did you first know that Mottram had done it?' I asked.

‘This morning, to be exact, just before noon, when he told me so. But that's starting at the end. If you had asked me when I first
guessed
who it was the answer could have been equally precise. I should have said at about twenty-five minutes past ten on the night of the murder, when you and I and Hargreaves stood looking at Shirley's body. Yes, I guessed then … but let me explain.

‘The moment that Hargreaves came back and told us what he had found in his rooms one thought flashed through my mind; it was exactly that thought which Prendergast put before us the next evening. Who knew that Shirley was
in the Dean's rooms, and who knew too that a loaded revolver was lying on the table? The answer was instantaneous. Of course there was no certainty, but I knew that it was overwhelmingly probable that murder had been committed by one of those who had dined with us that night. Immediately, therefore, I bent all my energies to fixing in my mind the picture of those diners, of their expressions, their behaviour, and their words. I tried to photograph them in my mind before the impression had time to fade. Of course I was a stranger and, with a party of thirteen, some of the impressions were inevitably dim, but I am an observant man, and of most, indeed of nearly all, of those thirteen, I had a clear mental picture. In the minute or so that elapsed while we ran to Hargreaves' room (and you ran faster than I did!) I had already passed them under review, and I was sorting them out even while I was looking at the body.

‘It's a way of mine to think of men in terms of natural objects. Sometimes I see them as trees or shrubs or flowers, sometimes as hills and mountains, but most often of all as streams and rivers. Often in the course of my work at home I have to travel from Vienna to Prague, and from Prague to Dresden and Berlin. Have you ever travelled that way? You should, for it's grand country.
Ein selten gesegnetes Land
. At Prague I've watched the Moldau a hundred times; it's a fine stream, broad and beautiful, and spanned by one bridge at least that'll bear comparison with any. Yes, a fine and worthy stream, and impressive, too, in its way. And then further on in my journey, half-way to Dresden, perhaps, I've looked out from the carriage window and seen the Elbe. At first sight, in some places, it isn't much to look at; as it runs down the gorge between the hills it seems narrow and smooth and not very big – but wait! I notice a great powerful steamer, tugging and straining against the stream, with the waters, elsewhere seemingly quiet, surging at its
bows. Then I know that beneath the Elbe is a mighty river, full of hidden power and energy, and I recollect that it carries in it its own waters and all those of my poor Moldau as well. A mighty river, strong and secret! And perhaps next day I am in Berlin, looking at the poor little Spree, all banked and controlled and conventionalized. Don't think me an imaginative idiot; men's minds, you know, all work in different ways.

‘Well, I thought of those thirteen diners just like that. How many had left on my mind the impression of power beneath the surface! Shirley, certainly, but he was dead; Prendergast, for that clear intellectualism often masks a drama of feelings and desires; Mottram, for I had marked the play of emotion on his face whilst he sat so strangely silent at dinner; Hargreaves without doubt and perhaps one or other of the scientists, but I couldn't tell. But the rest? Doyne, for example. He may be a great man some day, for he has character, but it's not fully developed. For me he's “the stripling Thames at Bablockhythe” – a great river later on but not yet. And Mitton – he was just a pleasant babbling brook. And Trower? – well I can't quite describe him; he was like a river on the films, great waterfalls and acres of water, but really all an elaborate pretence – not a real river at all. Of them all, Mottram and Hargreaves were the most incalculable, full of rapids and whirlpools and hidden sunken rocks. So it was on these two chiefly that my thoughts centred as we climbed the stairs. Remember that repressions and inhibition are the forerunners of excesses.

‘When we entered the room and looked at the body, I said to myself, “Mottram,” and I said it for one reason and one alone. Shirley's shirt was open at the front. If
you
killed a man in cold blood your first instinct would be to get away from the body. A kind of repulsion, a sort of fear, perhaps, would come over you. I don't think you would touch the body if you could possibly avoid it. But Mottram had had a
medical training, and with him habit would be too strong. His first and overpowering instinct would be to assure himself that the victim was dead. He would feel his heart – he could not do otherwise. Already that night then I had guessed the truth; Mottram had shot Shirley, though of his reasons I had no inkling.

‘On Thursday night at dinner I watched him with absorbed interest, and the conviction grew upon me with irresistible force that though he might be, and probably was, a murderer, he was most certainly not a criminal by nature. That was why I tried to keep out of the investigation, and why I told you that I was afraid of what I should find. You compelled me to explore the mystery, and I couldn't refuse.

‘Of course I was still in the realm of guesswork, and I had to be sure that I was not making some ghastly mistake. On one pretext or another I began to interview everyone who had been present that night, in order to confirm or adjust my first impressions of them. Those interviews didn't change my mind at all, but I soon saw that, if my theory was correct, it was of primary importance to know, if possible, exactly who was in possession of all the relevant facts before the murder took place. That was the reason why I made my map of the college and staged that little game on Saturday night. It was a very useful piece of reconstruction, too, and your recollection of the course of events was invaluable. For one fact of immense significance emerged, and it was this, Mottram had gone out of Common Room
before
Shirley announced that he was going up to Hargreaves' rooms. That fact, once I had established it, gave me something new to work on, and I made certain deductions from it. Of course it was possible to take the view that it cleared Mottram of suspicion; he could not suppose that Shirley would be there, and therefore he would never have gone there to shoot him. That, I must admit, was my own first
reaction. Yet, as I considered all the other possibilities, I remained convinced that Mottram was still the most likely murderer. I couldn't get that open shirt out of my mind. And so gradually I came to the true answer – supposing that Mottram had intended to shoot Hargreaves, and had shot Shirley by mistake? That was surely very unlikely, but it was not impossible. Mottram was a myope, as I had observed, and he would probably have been in a state of nervous excitement when the tragedy occurred. As to the lights – well there I do give myself some credit for an imaginative reconstruction – it
did
occur to me, though Cotter missed the point, that though all the lights were on when Hargreaves found the body, they might have been turned on by the murderer after the crime was committed.

‘Granted the truth of my assumption the whole nature of the problem had altered. I had to find a motive for Mottram's intention to shoot Hargreaves, whereas before I had been trying to find out why he should have shot Shirley. The obvious answer seemed to be sexual jealousy. That's a powerful incentive to crime, and it seemed to be the only explanation which was at all likely to fit the facts. You see why I wanted to interview Miss Vereker, and why I had to do so on the pretext of talking to her sister.' Brendel paused and shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘And, I must confess it to you, that wasn't my only reason for wanting to interview Miss Vereker. I may as well make a clean breast of it now, though I took some care to keep you in the dark about it at the time. The truth is that I had an uneasy suspicion of
her
all the time at the back of my mind.'

‘Of Mary Vereker?' I exclaimed in amazement.

‘Yes. Don't think too hardly of me; I'd not met her then. I couldn't help feeling that my original theory
might
be all wrong, and if it was, then suspicion must turn on her. That door into the President's Lodgings fascinated me. She herself fulfilled, too, so many of the necessary conditions.
Shirley was her brother-in-law, and she must have known him very intimately; there might well have been family quarrels of long standing, or hidden tales of jealousy and hate. Besides how easily she could have done it! I could picture her slipping out from her father's house to pay a brief visit to her fiancé; finding her brother-in-law there instead of him – and the revolver on the table. And all the details presented no insuperable difficulty; ladies are more likely to carry gloves than men, and Shirley, who would naturally jump up from his chair if a stranger entered, might well have remained seated when his sister-in-law came in. Besides I know well that there are many women with nerves of steel, and determination which nothing will shake. She must often have walked across to Hargreaves' room; who was likely to suspect her? And she would have been back in her father's house long before her absence would be noticed. Well, I went to see her, and, thank God, I came away from that rather uncomfortable interview with an impression that amounted almost to certainty that Miss Vereker, even if she was the innocent cause of a deadly rivalry between two men, knew nothing about the matter whatever, and had no suspicion of the truth. Don't let us speak of that ugly thought of mine. After I had seen her and spoken to her I put it from my mind and I felt doubly certain that my original theory must be the true one.

‘As you know, then, I eliminated all the other possibilities except Hargreaves and Mottram, and more and more I became convinced that suspicion rested far more heavily on the latter. But it was still all a matter of guesswork and surmise, and beyond that I couldn't get. Cotter was perfectly right; there were no clues to follow up at all, and I began to despair of getting any confirmation of my theory.

‘It was in that state of mind that I went to the funeral. A funeral is an emotional business, and I thought it not unlikely that I should see a little further into Mottram's heart,
though I'll not pretend that I enjoyed doing detection work in circumstances like those.'

Brendel paused for a moment, as though he wished to rid himself of an unpleasant memory. Then he continued.

‘We've some great descriptive writers in Germany, Winn, but I dare say you've not read many of them. One day I'll lend you a story by Stefan Zweig; called
Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau
. It's a grand piece of writing. It's the story of a woman married to a wealthy husband, who used to gamble at Monte Carlo. She was bored by the gambling, but she used to watch the gamblers, and after a time she saw that it was more exciting to watch their hands than their faces. Her husband died, but she still haunted the rooms, because it filled her time and gave her interest. And always she watched the hands, and read in them every emotion of hope and triumph, of terror and despair. One day she saw a pair of hands, more expressive than any she had seen before – at one moment they were poised like an animal waiting for its spring, the next they advanced with tigerish cupidity to seize the spoil, and then a little later they would sink back into a kind of feline repose, ready to turn in an instant to action. She watched them, fascinated by their beauty and muscular power and cruelty and intensity of purpose. And then at the end, suddenly, they dropped on the table as though all life and hope had left them, and she knew, knew with a horrible certainty, that the end had come, and that the owner of those hands had decided that death was preferable to a hopeless struggle. The rest of the tale doesn't matter – you shall read it for yourself; but think now, as I often do, of the hands and all that they betray. I have been told by some lawyers that they listen for the feet – that the witness may control his features and clutch the edge of the witness-box with his hands, but that his feet shuffle and rattle on the floor as he tells a lie. It may be so – I don't know – but the hands are usually good enough for
me. You will remember that I went to the funeral, and you may even have noticed that I took pains to sit almost behind Mottram in the chapel. There I watched his hands, and they were the hands of a tortured man! There was further confirmation at the cemetery. I wonder if you observed that at one moment Miss Vereker looked like fainting? I did, and so did Mottram. His eyes had never left her as we stood near the grave, and he moved in an instant to support her, but Hargreaves, who was next to her, and who was engaged to her – Hargreaves never noticed. I don't think he gave a thought to her all through.

‘When I got back from the funeral I felt sure that I was right, but still I had no proof, and I began to wonder what I should do next. It was then that you came to see me and told me of the talk which you had interrupted between Mottram and Hargreaves, and of the extraordinary request of Mottram that you should hold your hand for three days at least. Exactly what he meant I could not tell, but I could hazard a fairly shrewd guess. There must be some sort of an arrangement between the two, and there must be some sort of a
dénouement
to be expected soon. Whatever was in store for us I could see no possible harm in waiting, and so I advised you to do as Mottram asked.

‘I did nothing more until I read that announcement in
The Times
, and then I knew that the drama had reached its climax. For a brief moment I was inclined to revise my whole theory. Did it not seem that Hargreaves had been the murderer, that Mottram knew it, and that he had used his knowledge to force Hargreaves to break his engagement? It was even possible that Mottram had surprised the other red-handed; that would explain the open shirt. Somehow my instinct made me reject that explanation, though logically I could not ignore the possibility of its being true. I still clung to my former theory, though I had to adapt it to the new fact. Clearly, if Mottram was guilty, he had some
hold over Hargreaves, some power which was sufficient to make the latter obey him. I could not know all the details, but I was, all things considered, surprisingly near the truth. The new danger I also foresaw. Even if Mottram was a murderer he had neither the temperament nor the insensibility to live on under the shadow of an undiscovered crime. If, as I now guessed, he had been waiting for this engagement to be terminated, was it not only too likely that he would cut all the knots by an act of self-destruction? I could not, of course, understand all his motives, but the danger of suicide was apparent to me. I went straight to him, and begged him to come for a long drive with me into the country. His surprise was evident but I simply wouldn't let him refuse. I had another reason too. He had come from the north, from a country of hills and moors; I wanted to get him out on to the Downs, for I knew he'd talk more freely out there. Some men are choked down in the valleys. We drove out through Wantage and Hungerford to Marlborough and on to Wootton Bassett, and then we left the car and walked on. He had the sort of simplicity of a man who has lived much to himself, even though at times he tried to dramatize himself a little (you noticed that in his letter?) but then weak men are always apt to be a little melodramatic. He talked of his early life, and of his struggles, and of his work. And then at last, when we'd walked a long way we began to speak of Shirley's death, and he asked me whom I thought to be the murderer. I think I'd always known all through that walk that he would ask some such question, and I had my answer ready. Very carefully and very quietly I gave him my reconstruction of the crime, and when I'd finished I asked him whether that was what had happened and he said “Yes.” Then he filled in a few of the missing details – about the gloves and the reading-lamp and all that, as though he were telling a story about someone we'd both known years ago. When he finished he said,
“I think we ought to get back to Oxford now; I want to write it all down to-day,” and so we went back to the car. We talked about the country and the hills, and a host of things like that, but never another word about the crime. But on the way back he asked me if I'd mind coming up in the evening about ten to fetch him from the Lab. I said that of course I would, and he asked if I'd bring you with me. Then I knew what he meant to do. I said nothing to stop him; it would have been useless, and I think it would have been wrong.'