Murder in the Museum, A British Library Crime Classic (2 page)

Chapter II

Cross-Examination

“Now, Mr. Fairhurst.” Inspector Shelley looked sternly at the little man, as if he did not quite understand what such a mild specimen of humanity could possibly be doing in such a mysterious affair.

“Yes, Inspector.” Henry looked at the Scotland Yard man, deeply impressed that at last he was meeting one of the great men of whose work he had so often read in the papers. He peered over his pince-nez and positively purred with satisfaction. This, indeed, was something to tell Sarah about!

“I want you,” the Inspector went on, “to tell me precisely what happened, to explain how the man came to die, what attracted your attention, and why you walked over to him just at the moment of his death.”

Henry shuddered. “To tell you the truth, Inspector,” he said, “I hardly know.”

“But you must have some sort of idea, surely.”

“A vague idea, anyhow,” contributed Sergeant Cunningham, who had accompanied his chief on this errand of investigation, but who had hitherto remained silent.

Henry giggled. It is regrettable to admit the fact, but he was the type of man who would giggle on occasion.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said. “I am one of those strange people—the students of humanity. The dead man attracted my attention because he was, if I may say so, of such a striking and unusual appearance. I found myself watching him almost unconsciously, in the way that one sometimes does watch a stranger who strikes one, if you understand me.”

“I understand you, Mr. Fairhurst,” said Shelley in sympathetic tones, “but I still want answers to a few other questions, you know.”

“Fire away, Inspector,” Henry answered, and then, conscious that this piece of slang was somewhat undignified for a man of his position in the social world of Streatham, he added: “Or, if I might borrow a word from the gangster films, I would say, ‘Shoot!'”

“First of all,” remarked Shelley briskly, “did you see anyone else approach the man in the last few minutes before he died?”

Henry reflected. “I have a sort of vague notion that someone was walking away from the man as I approached,” he admitted. “It's only the vaguest of impressions, though, and I couldn't possibly swear to it for a moment.”

“Was it a man or a woman?” asked Cunningham, with a glance of apology at his chief. “Will your memory give you any information on that point, Mr. Fairhurst?”

Again Henry reflected deeply for a moment before replying.

“It's difficult,” he murmured. “You see, I may be getting some quite innocent person into trouble if I…”

“Don't worry about that,” Shelley interrupted. “If any innocent person is involved in this case we shall clear him without the slightest difficulty. Don't worry about that for a moment, Mr. Fairhurst.”

“Well,” Henry admitted somewhat unwillingly, “I must say that I have an idea that a woman had been talking to the man before he died. But I couldn't swear to it. You see, there are so many people in that Reading Room that it might easily be a mistake on my part. Some perfect stranger might trip over the man's chair, and pause to apologise. That might easily account for the fact that I thought a woman was talking to the man. Or,” he concluded somewhat lamely, “there may not have been any one there at all.”

“Got that, Cunningham?” asked Shelley. His assistant nodded.

“Only one thing, sir,” he added.

“Yes?” Shelley was always prepared to take a hint of a useful line of investigation.

“Do you think Mr. Fairhurst could be induced to remember the sort of clothes the lady was dressed in?”

Henry looked from one detective to the other with some surprise. What on earth would these men ask next? How did they expect him to remember the attire of a lady of whose very existence he was not certain?

Yet he found himself answering. “I have a definite impression of a youngish lady, rather pretty, and dressed in some sort of dark jumper and skirt,” he said. “Further than that I'm afraid I cannot go.”

“Very useful, Mr. Fairhurst,” was Shelley's comment. “Very useful indeed. I expect we'll lay our hands on that young lady before many hours are past; then maybe we shall be wiser than we are now on the subject of Arnell's death.”

“Arnell?” Henry's tone was interrogative.

“Oh, yes.” Shelley smiled, and his smile transformed that somewhat grim face, with its eyes of steel grey, into a new countenance, friendly and inviting confidences—a deceptive change that had, in its time, been the undoing of many a criminal.

“Professor Julius Arnell,” he went on. “That's the fellow's name. Does it mean anything to you?”

“I know his work, of course,” said Henry.

“What sort of work?” Shelley could be crisp enough in his utterance when he felt himself to be on the track of some useful information.

“He was probably the world's greatest authority on the minor Elizabethans,” said Henry. “He had written many books on the lesser dramatists of that time, and he was, I believe, Professor of English Literature at one of the provincial universities. I never remember seeing him in the Reading Room before, however. Possibly he was able to come up only now and then. I expect he had to do a good deal of lecturing in connection with his post at Portavon—yes, that's where he was—as they usually work their staff pretty hard in those places.”

“Did he have any enemies?” Shelley whipped the question out, like a rifle bullet.

Henry smiled. “I didn't know him at all, Inspector,” he said. “He may have had hundreds of enemies in his private life, for all I know. All that I can tell you is that he was pretty cordially hated in the world of literary research.”

“Why?”

“Isn't it obvious enough?”

“I don't think it is. Explain yourself, my dear fellow.” Shelley's temper was even enough, but he was beginning to find the little man's finicky correctness more than a little trying.

“When a man reaches the position of being a leading authority on any subject,” Henry explained patiently, “he cannot say much on the subject of his speciality without treading on someone's corns. You see?”

Shelley nodded. “I see,” he said. “And you think that Arnell may have been murdered by someone who loathed him because he had a bit of a nasty temper in matters of literary research and so on.”

“Oh, no!” Henry pushed the idea away from him, horror expressed in every line of his meek little face. “I did not suggest anything of the sort, Inspector. I did not mean you to infer anything at all like that. Please don't read into my words more than I say.”

“Right ho, Mr. Fairhurst,” Shelley agreed with heavy joviality. “And who were the other experts in this business of the lesser Elizabethan dramatists—which, I think you said, was Arnell's speciality?”

“That's not easy to say,” answered Henry, seeing only too clearly whither this cross-examination was leading, and mentally viewing himself as the principal witness for the crown in a case against one University Professor for the murder of another one. “You might ask,” he went on, unhappily, “Professor Wilkinson of Northfield University, and Dr. Crocker, who is, I think, in some sort of official position, of Oxford—as far as I know, they were the only two who knew much about the work which Arnell had done—I've heard them discussing things together at meetings of learned societies, and so on, which I have occasionally attended.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fairhurst,” said Shelley appreciatively. “You have been very useful to us. If you will hold yourself in readiness for the inquest, I think that we have finished with you for the moment.”

“But don't you…don't you…” Henry stuttered and dithered in his eagerness to get the question out.

“Don't we what?” asked Shelley ungrammatically.

“Don't you want to hear how he died?”

“We know that,” answered the detective with a smile. “He apparently went off to sleep, breathed stertorously for a few minutes—possibly so loudly as to seem to be snoring—and then collapsed.”

“But how do you know?” asked Henry.

Shelley smiled again. “We have our methods, Mr. Fairhurst,” he said. There was no doubt that Inspector Shelley could on occasion be a very trying man.

When Henry had departed with his exciting news with which to enliven the somewhat sleepy dovecots of Streatham, Cunningham looked at his chief. They were comfortably ensconced in a small room at the Museum, nominally the abode, during hours, of a library assistant.

“Sure you're right, chief?” he murmured.

“Absolutely.” Shelley could be very resolute when he chose. “The man died of cyanide poisoning. His lips smelled of almonds when we examined him. And he must have had a pretty hefty dose of cyanide to pop off as quickly as that, without regaining consciousness.”

“Accident or suicide?”

“Accident can, I think, be ruled out. Suicide is just possible, of course,” Shelley admitted. “It's not at all likely, though.”

“Why not?”

“Two reasons,” said Shelley succinctly. “One: because it is not really likely that such a man as Arnell, a respected figure in the academic world, would commit suicide in the full view of the public. After all, I do know a little about these university people. I've been among them before. And they are in many ways different from us merely ordinary folk. Anyhow, I think, if Arnell wanted to commit suicide, he would do so in the decent privacy of his own home, so that there was at any rate a possibility that he would be thought to have died in his bed—of heart failure, say. It all comes down to a matter of psychology, really.”

Shelley's liking for the somewhat high-falutin jargon of the psychologists was well-known at Scotland Yard, and Cunningham, having no desire to listen to a lecture on the comparative merits of Freud, Jung, and Adler, hastened to turn his chief off this track of surmise on to something more likely to be immediately profitable.

“And reason number two?” he asked.

“These,” said Shelley, producing a packet of sweets.

“Sugared almonds,” murmured Cunningham. “Interesting.”

“Very interesting indeed, and very suggestive,” said Shelley.

“Why suggestive?” Cunningham knew that Shelley found this sort of talk valuable. To argue out any case to a sympathetic listener was always helpful.

Shelley smiled at the naive question. “You understand my funny ways, oh my Cunningham,” he said. “I've no doubt that you really know about all these things as much as I know myself. But I won't apologise for pursuing the obvious, as it does make things easier to work them out in words. These almonds are suggestive, because I feel pretty sure that they are the way in which the poison was given.”

Cunningham's face expressed such a feeling of complete incredulity that Shelley laughed aloud.

“Consider, Cunningham,” he said. “Cyanide has a distinct almond flavour. If some of it were placed inside a sweet of this kind, would the recipient of it know that fact?”

“Well,” said Cunningham thoughtfully. “I wouldn't say that it wouldn't be tasted.”

“If he chewed it up,” said Shelley, “it would be obvious enough that there was something queer about the sweet. But he would attribute it to something wrong with the making of the thing, and would probably want to spit it out and throw it away. But before he had time to do that the cyanide would be in his system. He would be sleeping his last sleep before the thought of poison really had time to penetrate his mind.”

“Think so?” Cunningham was still mildly incredulous.

“Certain.” Shelley was emphatic. “I'm perfectly sure that Professor Arnell was fond of almonds, that some person at present unknown was aware of his little weakness, and that he was given a good hefty dose of cyanide in an almond. There's the crime in a nutshell. Whether that person unknown is Mr. Fairhurst's mysterious young lady is the thing that we have first to find out. But meanwhile let's see what we can find about the late Professor Arnell from the reference books.”

He touched a bell on the table, and an assistant came silently in. “Can you get me a copy of
Who's Who
, and the Royal Literary Society's
Handbook
?” asked Shelley. In a minute or less the books were before them.

Shelley rapidly scanned the correct pages of the reference books, and made rapid notes.

“Well, sir?” asked Cunningham.

“Professor Arnell lived at Pinner,” said Shelley. “He was Professor Emeritus at Portavon—in other words, he had retired from active life—and he apparently lived with his daughter. Query, Cunningham: is Miss Arnell the mysterious lady seen by our Mr. Fairhurst?”

“Any other pointers?”

“There may be more in this case than meets the eye, Cunningham,” said Shelley.

“Why?”

“Do you remember Arnell, the oil millionaire? Owned half of the State of Texas, then sold out, and came to England to live twenty or thirty years ago?”

“The name seems familiar to me in some way,” Cunningham admitted.

“He died two years ago,” said Shelley. “I remember the report in the papers quite clearly.”

“But what's that to do with this case, sir?” asked Cunningham.

“A lot,” said Shelley crisply. “He was Professor Arnell's father.”

“Yes?” The question was implied in Cunningham's intonation.

“When a millionaire dies in mysterious circumstances,” said Shelley, “look for the money motives, Cunningham.”

“And what are the money motives here?”

“That's what we have to find out,” said Shelley.

But it was to be a long time before they disentangled the web of mystery. And in the meantime Henry Fairhurst was doing his bit.

Chapter III

Henry at Home

“Really, Henry, I do think this is most unreasonable of you.”

Miss Sarah Fairhurst was as aggressive as her younger brother was the reverse. Tall, with penetrating blue eyes, and with greying hair tightly brushed back from a high, narrow forehead, she was the type of born spinster who nevertheless succeeds in lording it over the rest of mankind by sheer persistent unpleasantness.

“Why unreasonable?” asked Henry uneasily. He saw yet another squabble on the emotional horizon, and he had the mild man's habitual dislike of squabbles.

“You distinctly promised me,” she said, “that you would be home to tea today. Quite distinctly, Henry. But there—when you get up in the West End with those disreputable literary friends of yours, what does your poor, lonely sister matter? Heaven knows what you do with yourself.” Miss Fairhurst's tone hinted at unspeakable orgies.

“Still,” she continued, “if you do manage to get some work done which keeps us supplied in food, I suppose I must not grumble too much. Although I do think that, if there is any likelihood of your meeting some of your dreadful friends, you might do your best to let me know beforehand, so that the tea does not spoil in the pot while I wait endless hours for you.”

Rapidly Henry seized the olive-branch that was held out to him.

“As a matter of fact, my dear,” he said mildly, “I couldn't help being late today.”

“No? What was it this time? A blonde or a brunette?” It was an accepted fiction with Miss Fairhurst that her brother spent all his leisure hours in the arms of attractive ladies with all the charms that she lacked.

“Neither. It was an inspector from Scotland Yard,” Henry explained.

“Scotland Yard. Rubbish!” exclaimed his sister emphatically. “What would Scotland Yard want with you? They only look after criminals, and with all your faults I have never suspected you of crime, my dear Henry, and neither, I am sure, has anyone else.”

“I am not a criminal, Sarah,” explained Henry with what he privately considered an air of quiet dignity, “but I was a witness to a crime—I was, as far as I can see, the sole witness to a murder.”

“Murder! Sole witness! My dear Henry, you'll be getting all our throats cut in our beds.” Miss Fairhurst somehow contrived to give the impression that if her brother had become involved in such a disgraceful affair it was all his fault and would bring disgrace upon the house.

“The man died in the Reading Room at the British Museum,” Henry explained patiently, but his sister at first would have nothing of it.

“Don't talk nonsense,” she said brusquely. “Drink your tea and don't go dithering about things that you don't understand.”

“All right,” said Henry, and did as he was told—as, to tell the truth, he always did with this formidable sister who had ordered him about since childhood, and who would apparently always continue to do so.

For a few minutes tea continued in silence. Then Sarah spoke again.

“A man died in the Reading Room,” she said. “Wasn't there another case like that a few months ago?”

“Another case?”

“Yes. Some lecturer or professor of something,” answered Miss Fairhurst vaguely. “I seem to remember reading about it. In the papers, you know, though of course one realises that they tell the most dreadful lies, and one can never be at all sure of the facts of the case.”

“Are you certain?” Henry put down his cup and gazed at his sister, fairly trembling with eagerness. “Can't you remember any of the details, Sarah?”

“I'm afraid I can't. I've got something more important to do than to spend my time worrying about silly people who get themselves murdered in public places like the British Museum Reading Room.”

“Was the other man murdered?” Henry could not restrain himself from asking these questions, though, knowing his sister as well as he did, he was perfectly aware that he could not really expect any satisfactory answers.

“How should I know?” she retorted. “As far as I remember, he died of heart failure, but quite possibly that was just the story that the papers told. Quite likely he was murdered, really, only they hushed it up. Maybe he was a relative of the Prime Minister, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or something, and they wanted to save money on death duties.” Miss Fairhurst's ideas of the law and its complications were completely chaotic, and Henry, very wisely, did not attempt to argue with her on this score. He was intent on information, and thought that he should be able to get what he wanted from somewhere.

“I shall ring up Macgregor,” he announced. “Maybe he will be able to find the information for me before he comes home tonight.”

“That, I presume,” said Sarah, very much on her dignity, “means that there will be a third to dinner tonight, and I, my dear Henry, shall have the unpleasant duty of persuading cook that she can make a joint purchased for two go around for three.”

“And I'm sure,” said Henry, now desiring to smooth her down, “that you will do the duty very successfully, my dear Sarah. No one can handle difficult servants more effectively than you can.”

Angus Macgregor was a reporter on the
Post-Chronicle,
and as soon as dinner was over that night he produced a bulky bundle of press-cuttings from his pocket. He had long been a friend of Henry, and he often helped him with information culled from the organ of the Press for which he worked.

“Heaven knows what ye want this for, Henry, old man,” he said. “Seems a bit out of your usual line to me. Still, you know your own business best, and I've got the information you asked for.”

“You heard what I wanted, did you?” asked Henry. “We had a dreadful line, and I could scarcely hear what you were saying over the 'phone.”

“Oh, yes, I heard all right,” returned the other. “You wanted to know all about a man who died in the British Museum Reading Room about a year ago, or less. Reports of his death, details of the findings at the inquest, and so on. Though, as I said, why on earth ye wanted all this information is more than I can imagine.”

“You'll know in good time, Macgregor,” Henry told him. “In fact, I shouldn't be at all surprised if I could put you in the way of what I believe you call a scoop.”

“What do you want to know first?” asked Macgregor.

“Who was the man?”

“His name was Wilkinson. He was Professor of English Literature at Northfield University.”

“What?” Henry nearly jumped out of his skin. “Was he the great authority on the Elizabethan drama?”

“That's the fellow. Had some patent theory of his own that Shakespeare's plays were written by two people together—one was Shakespeare himself and the other Kit Marlowe. He worked it out very well, though 'twas all balderdash, of course.”

“When did he die?”

“Let's see.” Macgregor referred to the bundle of cuttings.

“It's now June 20. It was exactly five months ago—on January 20 of this year.”

“What was the verdict of the inquest?”

“Natural death. It was proved that he'd been suffering from some form of heart trouble—I don't understand the queer jargon of these doctor fellows. Still, everybody agreed that he was in such a condition that he might be expected to pop off at any moment, and it was just chance that he did so in the British Museum. He was handling some damned great book weighing about half a hundredweight, and he just collapsed on the floor and died. He was absolutely stone-dead before they could get him to the ambulance, let alone getting him near the hospital.”

“Was there a post-mortem examination?” Again Macgregor consulted the papers he had brought with him from the office.

“It doesn't mention it here, and I shouldn't think that there was anything of the sort, or they'd have made a special point of reporting it,” he said at length.

“Very careless of the coroner,” said Henry.

Macgregor looked at him cautiously. “Why would ye say that, now?” he ventured to ask. “After all, the whole business, though it was a nasty business, taken all round, was not mysterious. 'Twas a clear enough case. The poor old devil had had a groggy heart for years, and 'twas just unlucky chance that it gave out in that gloomy old mausoleum, and not in some more pleasant place. Anyhow, I dare say that he would have been quite pleased at dying in such circumstances. He seems to have been a regular old bookworm, and to die among his books would please him.”

“Difficult to explain, Macgregor, until I know a little more of the facts,” said Henry.

“Well, what facts do ye want? I've got 'em all here—all that were made public, anyhow.”

Henry sighed wearily. “Now, don't you start that stuff about things being concealed from the public,” he warned his friend. “I get enough and to spare of that from Sarah, who thinks that there is a sort of conspiracy between the Press and the Government to keep all kinds of valuable information secret from her.”

Macgregor grinned. “Ask your questions,” he said. “If you think there's some fishy business going on here, and can give me the low-down on it, I can promise you that it'll be published from Land's End to John O' Groat's—and farther.”

“At the moment,” explained Henry, “that's the very thing that I don't want. After all, publication often ruins everybody's chances of catching a murderer.”

Macgregor whistled. “So you think the dear old Professor of English Literature was murdered, do ye?” he asked. “And why would that idea be entering your sweet head, I wonder? After all, ye're not a suspicious man by nature, and don't look on all your fellow-men as sunk deep in iniquity, as every born journalist like myself does.”

“Let me explain,” said Henry. “Wilkinson was a Professor of English Literature in an English university.”

Macgregor nodded. “Sceptic though I am,” he said cheerfully, “I'll grant ye that.”

“Curse that perverted sense of humour of yours,” said Henry with a giggle. “Do please stop fooling in that way, and just listen to what I have to say.”

“I'm all attention, me dear fellow,” said Macgregor.

“He died,” Henry went on, “apparently of heart-failure in the Reading Room of the British Museum some six months ago.”

“Five,” Macgregor interrupted.

“The dates are immaterial,” said Henry. “He died in that way.”

“Yes.”

“Who gave evidence at the inquest?”

Once more Macgregor looked at the pile of papers that lay before him.

“His doctor, his son, and his friend,” he announced at length.

“His friend?” Henry at once seized on what he thought was the important piece of information.

“Yes.” Macgregor peered at the cutting. “Be damned,” he said at length, “if I'm not the world's clumsiest fool. I've cut this paper so badly that a name is missing.”

“What name?”

“The name of the friend.”

“Can you get any of it? Any letters of it, I mean, so that there's some chance of seeing who the fellow is?”

“'Tis difficult,” said Macgregor, peering into the smudgy print that lay before him. “It looks as if the name ends in two L's, though even there I can't be certain. You see, it comes at the top of a column, and with my clumsy scissors I've managed to slice off a piece of the damned paper, so that I can only make out the bottoms of the letters. And it may be they're some other letters.”

Suddenly a thought came to Henry. It was a thought that almost made the meek little man's blood run cold, so amazing was it in its clarity.

“Does it say anything about what the friend did?” he asked. “After all, the friend of a Professor of English Literature might easily occupy some sort of official position in the university. It would be perfectly easy to trace him then, if he's a lecturer or anything.”

“Good idea,” said Macgregor. “Let's see. Oh, yes; Professor Emeritus in English Literature in Portavon University.”

“God!” Henry's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He removed his pince-nez and polished them in an agitated manner.

“What's the matter with ye, man?” demanded Macgregor. “You're as white as a sheet. You look as if you're going to faint. Explain yourself, quick! Shall I get a drop of brandy? What the devil's the matter with you?”

Henry smiled the faintest of smiles. Then he perched his pince-nez perilously on his nose. He looked around him with what was almost a satisfied smile, and the colour slowly flowed back into his cheeks.

“Wull ye answer my questions, me mannie?” asked Macgregor, lapsing into his native dialect more and more in his agitation. “What the de'il's the matter wi' ye, that ye got so excited at that news? What the hell does it matter if the felly what gave evidence was professor at some crack-pot university in the south of England? Tell me.”

“Only this,” said Henry, and his voice was thin and clear. “Professor Julius Arnell, Professor Emeritus in the University of Portavon, died in the British Museum Reading Room this afternoon—died under my very eyes.”

And Macgregor, old hand as he was at the tackling of mysterious crimes, felt his blood run cold within his veins.