Gaudy Night (54 page)

“I will give you a pawn,” suggested Miss de Vine.

Even with this advantage, Harriet suffered three humiliating defeats in quick succession: first, because she was but a poor player; secondly, because she found it difficult to remember which piece was which; thirdly, because the anguish of parting at one fell swoop with a fully-armed warrior, a prancing steed and a complete nest of ivory balls was such that she could scarcely bear to place so much as a pawn in jeopardy. Miss de Vine, viewing with perfect equanimity the disappearance even of a robed counsellor with long moustaches or an elephant carrying a castleful of combatants, soon had Harriet’s king penned helplessly among his own defenders. Nor was the game made any easier for the weaker party by being played under the derisive eye of Miss Hillyard, who, pronouncing chess to be the world’s most wearisome amusement, yet would not go away and get on with her work, but sat staring at the board as though fascinated and (what was worse) fiddling with the captured pieces and putting Harriet into an agony for fear she would drop one.

Moreover, when the games were finished, and Miss Edwards had announced that a glass case had been dusted and taken up to Harriet’s room by a scout. Miss Hillyard insisted on helping to carry the pieces over, grasping for the purpose the white king and queen, whose headgear bore delicate waving ornaments like antennae, extremely liable to damage. Even when the Dean had discovered that the pieces could be more safely transported standing upright in their box, Miss Hillyard attached herself to the party that escorted them across the quad, and was officious in helping to set the glass case in a convenient position opposite the bed, “so that,” as she observed, “you can see them if you wake up in the night.”

The following day happened to be the Dean’s birthday. Harriet, going shortly after breakfast to purchase a tribute of roses in the Market, and coming out into the High Street with the intention of making an appointment at the hair-dresser’s, was rewarded by the rather unexpected sight of two male backs, issuing from the Mitre and proceeding, apparently in perfect amity, in an easterly direction. The shorter and slighter of the two she could have singled out from a million backs anywhere; nor was it easy to mistake the towering bulk and breadth of Mr. Reginald Pomfret. Both parties were smoking pipes, and she concluded from this that the object of their excursion could scarcely be swords or pistols on Port Meadow. They were strolling in a leisurely after-breakfast manner, and she took care not to catch them up; she hoped that what Lord Saint-George called the famous family charm was being exerted to good purpose; she was too old to enjoy the sensation of being squabbled over—it made all three of them ridiculous. Ten years ago, she might have felt flattered; but it seemed that the lust to power was a thing one grew out of. What one wanted, she thought, standing amid the stuffy perfumes of the hair-dresser’s establishment, was peace, and freedom from the pressure of angry and agitated personalities. She booked an appointment for the afternoon and resumed her way. As she passed Queen’s, Peter came down the steps alone.

“Hullo!” said he. “Why the floral emblems?”

Harriet explained.

“Good egg!” said his lordship. “I like your Dean.” He relieved her of the roses. “Let me also be there with a gift.

Make her a goodly chapilet of azur’d Colombine,
And wreathe about her coronet with sweetest Eglantine,
With roses damask, white, and red, and fairest flower delice,
With Cowslips of Jerusalem, and cloves of Paradice.

Though what Cowslips of Jerusalem may be I do not know, and they are probably not in season.”

Harriet turned back with him marketwards.

“Your young friend came to see me,” pursued Peter.

“So I observed. Did you ‘fix a vacant stare and slay him with your noble birth’?”

“And he my own kin in the sixteenth degree on the father’s mother’s side? No; he’s a nice lad, and the way to his heart is through the playing-fields of Eton. He told me all his griefs and I sympathised very kindly, mentioning that there were better ways of killing care than drowning it in a butt of malmsey. But, O God, turn back the universe and give me yesterday! He was beautifully sozzled last night, and had one breakfast before he came out and another with me at the Mitre. I do not envy the heart of youth, but only its head and stomach.”

“Have you heard anything fresh about Arthur Robinson?”

“Only that he married a young woman called Charlotte Ann Clarke, and had by her a daughter, Beatrice Maud. That was easy, because we know where he was living eight years ago, and could consult the local registers. But they’re still hunting the registers to find either his death—supposing him to be dead, which is rather less likely than otherwise—or the birth of the second child, which—if it ever occurred—might tell us where he went to after the trouble at York. Unfortunately, Robinsons are as plentiful as blackberries, and Arthur Robinsons not uncommon. And if he really did change his name, there may not be any Robinson entries at all. Another of my searchers has gone to his old lodgings—where, you may remember, he very imprudently married the landlady’s daughter; but the Clarkes have moved, and it’s going to be a bit of a job finding them. Another line is to inquire among the scholastic agencies and the small and inferior private schools, because it seems probable—You’re not attending.”

“Yes, I am,” said Harriet, vaguely. “He had a wife called Charlotte and you re looking for him in a private school.” A rich, damp fragrance gushed out upon them as they turned into the Market, and she was overcome by a sense of extravagant well-being. “I love this smell—it’s like the cactus-house at the Botanical Gardens.”

Her companion opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, and then, as one that will not interfere with fortune, let the name of Robinson die upon his lips.

“
Mandragorae dederunt odorem.
”

“What do you say, Peter?”

“Nothing. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.” He laid his hand gently upon her arm. “Let us interview the merchant with the sops-in-wine.”

And when both roses and carnations had been despatched—this time by a messenger—to their destination, it seemed natural, since the Botanical Gardens had been mentioned, to go there. For a garden, as Bacon observes, is the purest of human pleasures and the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man; and even idle and ignorant people who cannot distinguish
Leptosiphon hybridus
from
Kaulfussia amelloides
and would rather languish away in a wilderness than break their backs with dibbling and weeding may get a good deal of pleasant conversation out of it, especially if they know the old-fashioned names of the commoner sorts of flowers and are both tolerably well acquainted with the minor Elizabethan lyrists.

It was only when they had made the round of the Gardens and were sitting idly on the bank of the river that Peter, wrenching his attention back to the sordid present, remarked suddenly:

“I think I shall have to pay a visit to a friend of yours. Do you know how Jukes came to be caught with the stuff on him?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“The police got an anonymous letter.”

“No—?”

“Yes. One of them there. By the way, did you ever try and find out what was to have been the last word of that message to you? The one we found in the Science Lecture Room?”

“No—she couldn’t have finished it, anyhow. There wasn’t a single vowel left in the box. Not even a B and a dash!”

“That was an oversight. I thought so. Well, Harriet, it’s easy to put a name to the person we want, isn’t it? But proofs a different matter. We’ve tied the thing up so tight. That lecture-room episode was meant to be the last of the nocturnal prowls, and it probably will be. And the best bit of evidence will be at the bottom of the river by this time. It’s too late to seal the doors and set a watch.”

“On whom?”

“Surely you know by this time? You must know, Harriet, if you’re giving your mind to the thing at all. Opportunity, means, motive—doesn’t it stand out-a mile? For God’s sake, put your prejudices aside and think it out. What’s happened to you that you can’t put two and two together?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” said he drily, “if you really don’t know, it’s not for me to tell you. But if you will turn your attention for one moment to the matter in hand and go through your own dossier of the case carefully—”

“Undeterred by any casual sonnets I may find by the way?”

“Undeterred by any personal consideration whatever,” he burst out, almost angrily. “No; you’re quite right. That was a stupidity. My talent for standing in my own light amounts to genius, doesn’t it? But when you have come to a conclusion about all this, will you remember that it was
I
who asked
you
to take a dispassionate view and I who told
you
that of all devils let loose in the world there was no devil like devoted love.... I don’t mean passion. Passion’s a good, stupid horse that will pull the plough six days a week if you give him the run of his heels on Sundays. But love’s a nervous, awkward, over-mastering brute; if you can’t rein him, it’s best to have no truck with him.”

“That sounds very topsy-turvy,” said Harriet, mildly. But his unwonted excitement had already flickered out.

“I’m only walking on my head, after the manner of clowns. If we went along to Shrewsbury now, do you think the Warden would see me?”

Later in the day, Dr. Baring sent for Harriet.

“Lord Peter Wimsey has been to see me,” she said, “with a rather curious proposition which, after a little consideration, I refused. He told me that he was almost certain in his own mind of the identity of the—the offender, but that he was not in a position at the moment to offer a complete proof, He also said that the person had, he thought, taken the alarm, and would be doubly careful from now on to escape detection. The alarm might, in fact, be sufficient to prevent farther outbreaks until the end of the term at any rate; but as soon as our vigilance was relaxed, the trouble would probably break out again in a more violent form. I said that that would be very unsatisfactory, and he agreed. He asked whether he should name the person to me, in order that a careful watch might be kept upon her movements. I said I saw two objections to that: first, that the person might discover that she was being spied upon and merely increase her caution, and secondly, that if he happened to be mistaken as to the offender’s identity, the person spied upon would be subjected to the most intolerable suspicions. Supposing, I said, the persecutions merely ceased, and we were left suspecting this person—who might be quite innocent—without proof either way. He replied that those were precisely the objections that had occurred to him. Do you know the name of the person to whom he alludes. Miss Vane?”

“No,” said Harriet, who had been exercising her wits in the interval. “I am beginning to have an idea; but I can’t make it fit. In fact, I simply can’t believe it.”

“Very well. Lord Peter then made a very remarkable proposition. He asked whether I would allow him to interrogate this person privately, in the hope of surprising her into some admission. He said that if this bluff, as he called it, came off, the culprit could then make her confession to me and be suffered to depart quietly, or be dealt with medically, as we might decide was advisable. If, however, it did not come off and the person denied everything, we might be placed in a very disagreeable position. I replied that I quite saw that and could not possibly consent to have such methods used upon anybody in this College. To which he replied that that was exactly what he had expected me to say.

“I then asked him what evidence, if any, he had against this person. He said that all his evidence was circumstantial; that he hoped to have more of it in the course of the next few days, but that in default of a fresh outbreak and the capture of the culprit red-handed, he doubted whether any direct evidence could be produced at this stage. I inquired whether there was any reason why we should not at least wait for the production of the additional evidence.”

Dr. Baring paused and looked keenly at Harriet.

“He replied that there was only one reason, and that was that the culprit, instead of becoming more cautious, might throw caution to the winds and proceed to direct violence. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘we should very likely catch her, but only at the cost of somebody’s death or serious injury.’ I asked what persons were threatened with death or injury. He said the most probable victims were—yourself, Miss de Vine and another person whom he could not name, but whose existence, he said, he deduced. He also surprised me by saying that an abortive attack had already been made upon you. Is that true?”

“I shouldn’t have put it as strongly as that,” said Harriet. She briefly outlined the story of the telephone call. At the name of Miss Hillyard, the Warden looked up:

“Do I understand that you entertain a definite suspicion of Miss Hillyard?”

“If I did,” said Harriet, cautiously, “I shouldn’t be the only person to do so. But I’m bound to say that she doesn’t seem to fit in at all with the line of Lord Peter’s inquiries, so far as I am acquainted with them.”

“I am glad to hear you say that,” replied Dr. Baring. “Representations have been made to me which—in default of evidence—I have been very unwilling to listen to.”

So Dr. Baring had kept abreast of the feeling in the S.C.R. Miss Allison and Mrs. Goodwin had probably been talking. Well!

“In the end,” pursued the Warden, “I informed Lord Peter that I thought it would be better to wait for the further evidence. But that decision must, of course, be subject to the willingness of yourself and Miss de Vine to face the risks involved. The willingness of the unknown third party cannot, naturally, be ascertained.”

“I don’t in the least mind what risks
I
take,” said Harriet. “But Miss de Vine ought to be warned, I suppose.”

“That is what I said,” Lord Peter agreed.”

So, thought Harriet, something has decided him to acquit Miss de Vine. I’m glad. Unless this is a Machiavellian ruse to throw her off her guard.