Death at St. Asprey’s School (24 page)

“So,” interrupted Mr. Gorringer, “we are to take it that the author of the attempt in the tower was also the murderer of Sime?”

“Even on the staff of a preparatory school,” said Carolus, “you would scarcely be likely to find two deliberate and plotting murderers at the same time, surely. Of course it was the same person, and a very determined person at that.”

“What did I say?” burst out Mrs. Skippett. “I told you, didn't I? It was that Duckmore. I said he had a funny look about him and those eyes seemed to look right through you till they gave you the creeps.”

Osborne emitted a short but audible sigh.

“Please finish your statement, Deene,” he said.

Carolus decided to ruffle that smug impassivity.

“I first suspected that Jumbo Parker was the murderer…” he began quietly.

But he produced his effect. Osborne sat bolt upright and shouted
“Whart”

“Didn't you hear? I'm sorry. I said I first suspected Parker was the murderer when I learned how he was supposed to have found Sime's body after the fall in the
tower. For as Sime told me, he left his car at the gate of the church. Now either he had arrived there and gone up to the top of the tower
before
Parker came to play the organ, or he entered the church
while
Parker was there. In either case Parker was aware of him in the tower. Why should he invent that story of a strange noise behind the tower door and his alarm and horror when Sime, unconscious, rolled out of the tower? Someone could have entered the church before either of them, hidden behind the curtains where the bell-ringers hung their coats and while Sime was on the tower set his obstruction and waited, again behind the curtains, to push him down. He would also have had to get back to the school unseen before Sime was brought back. But who? It would have been necessary for him to go there early in the afternoon and remain there till after Sime had been taken away, risking a possible search of the tower when Sime was found. And who, among those who any sort of a motive for killing Sime, could it have been? Mayring was with the Away team, Duckmore, Stanley, Kneller, the Ferrises and Mollie all on the archery lawn at different times that afternoon and Sconer interviewing parents at the school.

“But I only say I suspected Parker. Horlick and Skippett, if one could conceive of either as a murderer, were unaccounted for and there was always the possibility of an enemy of Sime of whom we know nothing…”

“Did you say Skippett?” asked Mrs. Skippett. “My husband…”

“Yes, I know,” said Carolus quickly and soothingly. “Nobody ever suspected him. There was however the question of motive and this for a time defeated me until I saw more of Parker and realized his extraordinary obsession with the school and his pathetic loyalty to Sconer. I liked Parker and realized the pathos of his wasted life—
twenty years given to building up that school from eight boys, as he told me, to its recent success. He could not conceive of any future except at St. Asprey's and he knew Sime was blackmailing Sconer. He saw his life falling apart unless Sime could be eliminated by an ‘accident'. He had the simplicity in some things of a child, and a child's cunning, too. Sconer extolled his loyalty and devotion and Parker made no secret of it.

“So having failed in his first attempt he made plans for a second. This time there was to be no doubt. It was again to look like an accident and it shows some of Parker's simplicity that he really believed Sime's death would be taken as an archery mishap.

“What he intended to do was to drug Sime after lunch and during the afternoon
stab him with the head of abroad-head arrow
afterwards screwing in the shaft to make it appear that Sime had been shot by accident from the lawn.

“He had everything planned. He had stolen a small supply of Mollie Westerly's very small quick-acting sleeping pills and after lunch went to Matron's room and was seen by her at the medicine cupboard. Matron thought he was helping himself to an aspirin as he often did for a hang-over but in fact he was taking one of Fitzsmith's capsules which could be opened to allow him to insert five or six of Mollie's sleeping pills. Matron afterwards discovered that one was missing.

With this prepared he went down to Sime's room and Mrs. Skippett noticed him passing through the hall. He had Sime's confidence—as Mayring said, he and Parker were the only two who spoke to Sime. As a matter of fact Parker inspired everyone's confidence—Sally O'Maverick used to call him ‘Uncle Jumbo'—and he would have no difficulty in persuading Sime to swallow the capsule on some pretext or other. He then left Sime, propped up on his pillows, to fall
into a heavy drugged sleep, and returned to his room, again passing Mrs. Skippett in the hall.”

“Well, if I'd of known!” exclaimed Mrs. Skippett. “Whoever was to think of such a thing? No one wouldn't have dreamed it, not in a thousand years. And you mean to say…”

“He stayed in his room for a full hour during which he deliberately poured away two inches from his bottle of whisky. He knew that Matron would observe this and report that he had been boozing all the afternoon. He had his weapon ready, for on the previous afternoon he had gone to the summer-house where Kneller kept his arrows and extracted a broadhead arrow. He had done this while the archers were walking down towards their targets for the summer-house was kept locked except during practice. He had pushed it down the leg of his trousers which caused him to walk in a peculiarly stiff-legged way and when I met him on his way in he had to explain this as ‘rheumatism'. It was noticeable that when I asked him about his rheumatism that evening he could scarcely think for a moment what I meant. He now unscrewed the arrow, put the head with its few inches of shaft in his pocket and the shaft itself (shorter by the head than when he had brought it from the summer-house) inside his jacket. I would guess that he cut a hole in the bottom of the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pushed most of the shaft through so that he could draw it out in a moment but could walk quite naturally.

“I think it was at the last minute that he thought of fingerprints and realized that he would need gloves. He had none of his own for it was the summer term but he had become, in those years, enough a member of the family to know where Sconer kept his. He went very silently—so silently that even Matron's trained ears did not hear him—to the Sconer's room and took the gloves he needed.

“Towards three o'clock he came out of his room again to go by the way through from the private part of the house on the first floor to the boy's dormitories and so down to the staff bungalow. This time Matron caught the sound of his footsteps but just at that moment her attention was held by the sight of the two boys escaping from the cricket field to go to Sime's window. This was something she could not miss and she let the footsteps go.

“Parker made his way down. He had drawn Sime's curtains before he left him and found him now in the half darkened room in deep sleep. He stabbed him with a single blow severing the jugular vein, leaving the arrowhead deep in the wound. He screwed in the shaft of the arrow and then, according to plan crossed to open the curtains—for it was to be a stray arrow from outside that had killed Sime. The two boys had meanwhile approached, seen the curtain drawn, and in their own words ‘scooted back to the cricket field'. Parker looked cautiously out, I imagine, saw no one in the vicinity, drew back the curtains and returned to his room.”

“An excellent account of things,” said Mr. Gorringer. “But I for one remain unconvinced. I daresay you are right in saying that Sime was stabbed, but I cannot see that you have more than circumstantial evidence against Parker. Why could not some other hand have done what you say he did?”

“Whoever killed him by stabbing screwed on the shaft of the arrow afterwards,” said Carolus. “This can
only
mean that he intended it to look as though Sime had been shot. He would therefore in his actions that afternoon have avoided, at all costs, being on the archery lawn or in any place from which an arrow could have been shot through Sime's window. Parker was the only person in, or connected with the school who did that. It was evident from the first
that Sime was stabbed and not shot. No marksman in the world could shoot a man
inside a room
through the adam's apple with a single shot at forty-five yards. William Tell couldn't have done it. No one among the archers could even be sure of hitting the innermost ring of the target with his first arrow and on the range the target was standing at a fixed distance in a clear light. You play darts? Try throwing from a slightly different distance, nearer to or farther from the target, and you lose all control. To suggest that any archer could turn round from the archery lawn and calmly shoot an arrow into a man's throat at
any
distance is absurd, and when the man is lying inside a room it becomes preposterous. That should have been obvious from the very first to anyone knowing the details. So the people on the archery lawn that afternoon, so far from being suspects, were the very ones who were free from all suspicion. And that left only Parker.

“But when you say the evidence—at least for a trial on a charge of murder—is circumstantial, I agree. I must point out that the police and not I have the means of supporting it with more tangible evidence. There is, for instance, the age-old matter of bloodstains. It would have been impossible to do what Parker did without getting blood on his clothes—at least on his sleeve—and I noticed that on that evening he broke all precedents by changing for dinner. Now a blood-stained coat is not an easy thing to get rid of and has provided essential evidence before now. There are several other points which will already have occurred to the Detective Superintendent here. Like the gloves. I can only say what I believe—no, what I
know
—happened. I leave it to the police to prove it to the satisfaction of a jury.”

“What about Duckmore and his confession?”

“The only thing I
know
about Duckmore is that he did not kill Sime. He is so full of the illusions of guilt, poor
chap, that it is impossible to sort out the facts from his various stories. I think it possible that he did shoot an arrow at Sime's window, and it may even have broken the glass of the picture above Sime's head. If so he recovered the arrow when he went into Sime's room (as he did) before Mayring discovered the body. But even about that I am uncertain. He could have broken the glass himself, but Horlick did find an arrow in the rose-garden on the other side of the house, and Duckmore might have thrown it away. We may know more about that when the case against Parker has been proved. As a matter of fact, in view of Sconer's suicide and the end of hope for the school as at present constituted, I should not be surprised if Parker confessed.”

Osborne, very quietly but distinctly, made his only relevant observation.

“He has,” he said and closing his notebook with a snap walked out of the room.