The Weight of the Evidence (21 page)

Hobhouse peered too. ‘Trusting chap. How is he to know it wasn’t a maniac, who might just slip up and do it again? I say – you don’t think it may have been Lasscock himself? He might get quite a kick out of sitting there afterwards.’

‘For what it’s worth, I don’t think it was Lasscock. When the thing happened he was sitting within a couple of yards of where he’s sitting now.’ Appleby turned back into the store-room. ‘Measured, photographed, fingerprinted, and all?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about that sink? It’s been moved recently; there’s a fresh scrape on the floor.’

‘That’s right. We photographed it just in case it should he important. And the moving certainly wasn’t done by our men. By the way, there were patches of damp here and there on the stairs and quite a pool in one place. I wonder if that might fit in with the theory of a joke gone wrong? Drop the meteorite near someone and then empty a bucket of water on his head.’

‘Humph. Dangerous and silly, but not necessarily impossible on that account. But why the meteorite? That’s the crucial question.’

Hobhouse sat down on the safe and raised the index finger of his right hand; he seemed primed for some considerable logical effort. ‘Pluckrose stole the meteorite. What does one do with stolen goods? Hides them. He hid it here, and a pretty job he must have had getting it to the hoist. Somebody took the meteorite and pitched it down on Pluckrose – another pretty job.’

‘Getting it from a car to the hoist wouldn’t be too bad, because the outer door down below is right on a side street. But getting it up even to this low window-sill’ – Appleby glanced round – ‘well, there are boards and iron bars and things, so I suppose it could just be done.’

‘But the question is, as you say, why use the meteorite? The safe looks a bit handier. I think the answer is this – and it pretty well excludes the theory of a joke. There was a murderer and he thought he was killing somebody else – Prisk, say. And he used something Pluckrose could be proved to have stolen and hidden here because he thought that would serve to incriminate Pluckrose.’

Appleby was again standing on the hoist, staring upwards through the hole in the floor of the final storey. ‘Anything at all up there?’ he asked irrelevantly.

‘Absolutely nothing. And windows through which you couldn’t drop a football. It happened here, all right. Look at the scratches on the window-sill.’

‘Quite so. And your theory might be called colourable. You say that at ground-floor level one can get at the hoist from the dark-room?’

‘Yes – as well as from the lowest store-room we began in.’

‘Then the dark-room must be the key to the whole thing.’

‘Well, well!’

‘Set about killing a man and the first thing you think of is speed, and an alibi. And here, apparently, is a dark-room with a maze on one side and a hoist on another. A hoist on which I’ve just made a quick and comfortable trip from one level of this tower to another.’

Hobhouse looked very solemn. ‘Do you know, I think I can just see what you’re driving at. Go on.’

‘The thing is to get up here quickly, drop the meteorite, and get down again – all with something like an alibi if it can be managed. Well, you go into the dark-room with someone else. Then you send that someone else off on an errand which will take, say, just three minutes. Then you slip into the hoist–’

‘It’s masterly.’ Hobhouse was more solemn still. ‘But there’s just one snag. All you could slip into the hoist from the dark-room is a cat. Or say a spaniel. You see, the hoist was designed simply for the store-rooms. Making it communicate with the dark-room was an afterthought. And they simply knocked out a hole big enough for their bottles and what-not. To get
yourself
from the dark-room and on to the hoist you’d have to go down a long corridor, into the street, back to the lower store-room, and through the door by which we came in. Which shows’ – Hobhouse was now almost demure – ‘that there’s something to be said for taking a look round. Or even’ – now he was simply reproachful – ‘for studying that bit of plan I drew. I think it shows the layout clearly enough.’ He paused. ‘Of course, I don’t say that going off to see Miss Dearlove and all that wasn’t necessary. But at the same time–’Again Hobhouse paused – this time abruptly, and upon a glance at Appleby’s face. ‘Dash it all!’ he said. ‘You knew all the time.’

‘My dear chap, your plan is so excellent that it is quite clear about the spaniel or cat. But it would be a nice theory, wouldn’t it, if it would work? And I apologize for pulling your leg.’

‘Umph. Well, the cat-hole’s a pity. And the dark-room’s neither here nor there.’

Appleby shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ From his pocket he produced Hobhouse’s plan. ‘We know a little about the people concerned; their temperament and their relationships. Now we’ve got to get them taped. We’ve got to get the times fixed and every one of them pinned down to this.’ He waved the paper. ‘And meantime we’ll go down to the ground floor again – for a look round.’ He stopped. ‘Talking of times, what’s the time now?’

Hobhouse looked at his watch. ‘Just on eleven.’ As he spoke a bell clanged from somewhere below.

Appleby had crossed again to the window overlooking the court. The clatter from the engineering shops had stopped; the familiar turmoil of students released from their lecture rooms came faintly up. And Lasscock was stirring, raising himself, folding up
The Times
. He got to his feet, tucked his cushion under his arm, and toddled away.

Appleby chuckled. ‘Really quite a methodical old boy. Been thinking things out, no doubt on the largest historical scale. And now he’s off to give his pupils the benefit of the results. And, like Bernardo, he comes most carefully upon his hour.’

‘Ahr,’ said Hobhouse.

Mr Athelstan Murn, who had reached the university within a comfortable couple of hours of luncheon, disentangled his purple muffler from his venerable beard and hung it, together with his hat and coat, on the door of his room. Turning away from this familiar operation his eye was caught and held by an equally familiar framed photograph which hung above an untidy bookcase. The photograph represented Mr Murn’s late chief, Professor Pluckrose, dressed in full academic costume and posed elegantly between a microscope and a row of test tubes. Mr Murn stood for some seconds looking very placidly at the photograph; then, very placidly, he took it from its nail, walked across the room, and dropped it in the waste-paper basket. And then, as if this performance in itself represented a creditable morning’s work, Mr Murn lit his pipe and sat down in a comfortable easy chair by the window. From here Mr Murn (who, after some fifty years of test tubes and microscopes, had come to find a mature satisfaction in the idle contemplation of the vagaries of human conduct) was able to study not only the environs of the university together with such persons as haunted there but also the whole panorama of smoky Nesfield which lay below. In such unpretentious observation Mr Murn in a green old age had come to feel that the sum of human wisdom must consist. He liked looking at Nesfield and feeling reflective; he liked looking at miscellaneous passers-by and feeling inquisitive; he particularly liked looking at girls who were both virgin and nubile and feeling – that they were mildly pleasant to look at.

To these harmless – and even philosophic – proclivities Mr Murn was promising himself a larger measure of indulgence in the future. The Pest – for it was thus that Mr Murn had long privately designated his principal – had been brought to judgement; and a great deal of unnecessary scientific activity could now be abandoned.

And yet Mr Murn at the moment was not altogether free of his new world. He was troubled in his mind. He was troubled, for one thing, about the dark-room. He was troubled about the curious popularity that the dark-room had enjoyed just round about the hour of Pluckrose’s death…

Hissey had, of course, used it on and off for years; he was well known as a textual scholar and an epigrapher; in the course of a copious correspondence with other learned persons he was constantly in need of photographic reproductions of this inscription and that. It was a pity that Hissey so obstinately believed in his ability to do the work himself; it meant mess, spoilt paper, and sometimes broken plates. Still, Hissey’s pottering around the photographic rooms was always explicable. Young Marlow, however, was a rarer visitor; occasionally he persuaded the laboratory assistant to make his rotographs or photostats but he seldom tried to do anything himself. There, nevertheless, he had been. And there, too, had been Marlow’s usual companion, Pinnegar. In fact, a regular cloud of witnesses – but witnesses of what? And Mr Athelstan Murn, forgetting his morning’s labour of surveying Nesfield, turned his eye cautiously in the direction of his desk. Several times he did this, and on each occasion an observer might have remarked that his gaze was more troubled than before.

Mr Murn stroked his beard – and paused as if he suddenly found the action disconcerting. Or even – the observer might have remarked – dangerous… Mr Murn rose and made his way to his desk; his hand went out to a lowermost drawer; he hesitated and returned to his chair. He looked doggedly out of the window. Two girls with short and blowy skirts were crossing the road to the university refectory, and Mr Murn ought to have been pleasantly interested in four calves, in the glimpse of a thigh. Mr Murn’s gaze, however, though dutiful was abstracted; presently it was back once more on the drawer; and in a very few seconds Mr Murn was again on his feet. But this time it was towards the waste-paper basket that he moved. He stooped, retrieved Professor Pluckrose, and restored him to his nail. He stood back to observe the effect. Very evidently it displeased him greatly. Nevertheless Mr Murn gave a resigned sigh and returned to his chair. He had scarcely had time to seat himself when there was a knock at the door. ‘Come in!’ called Mr Murn. He contrived to put a surprising amount of cheerfulness into the injunction.

This was because Mr Murn instinctively felt that his awkward moment had come.

‘A great loss,’ said Mr Murn. ‘A great loss to science. And, of course, a personal loss, as I need hardly add.’ And Mr Murn directed a glance of great pathos towards the photograph of the late Professor Pluckrose which hung above an untidy bookcase at the other end of the room.

‘Quite so.’ Appleby looked decently solemn. ‘In fact, I understand that Mr Pluckrose was a man who greatly endeared himself to all with whom he came in contact?’

‘Just that.’ Murn’s hand moved towards his beard, but suddenly checked itself. ‘The thing could not be better put; not even in an obituary notice.’ For an incautious moment the late professor’s assistant looked disconcertingly merry. ‘It has been a terrible blow.’ And Murn, going hastily to another extreme, took a handkerchief from his pocket and brushed away a venerable and manly tear.

‘We are finding it necessary to make a pretty exact check on the movements of everybody who was in this part of the building when the thing happened. My colleague, Inspector Hobhouse of the Borough Police, is at work on that now.’ Appleby paused impressively. ‘But as you, Mr Murn, were closely associated with the dead man it has occurred to me that you may be able to tell us a little more than just that sort of thing.’

‘Certainly – anything that I can do, of course. And I rather understand from what you say that the affair is still a mystery?’

‘Still very much of a mystery. We have made a little progress here and there, but the circumstances are still extremely obscure.’

‘Dear, dear! I am sorry to hear it.’ Murn settled himself a little more comfortably in his chair. ‘For instance, nobody saw it happen?’

‘Not so far as our present information goes.’

‘Nobody, say, saw the assailant’s features at the window of the tower?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ Appleby looked curiously at Murn, who was himself looking with an expression of some anxiety in the direction of his desk. ‘I believe there is one witness who might possibly have been in a position to do so, but it seems likely that his attention was engaged elsewhere. In fact, he was thinking something out.’

‘Ah. I have come myself to feel that too much analysis is a mistake. I am inclined to recommend the superior uses of contemplation. I am disposed to conclude that the contemplative life produces the better nervous tone.’

‘No doubt, sir. But I don’t know that it would altogether serve in my profession. And perhaps you could tell me something about Pluckrose’s relations with his colleagues. Could they, for instance, be described as uniformly cordial?’

‘Cordial?’ Murn’s mind appeared to be elsewhere and he answered incautiously. ‘The man was a pest.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Murn blinked. ‘I was about to say that Pluckrose was a Pestalozzian. That is to say, as a teacher his methods followed the system of the celebrated Zurich reformer. But that is perhaps scarcely relevant.’

‘I should say not relevant at all. Though interesting, no doubt.’

‘As for Pluckrose’s relations with his colleagues, it must be said that they were occasionally clouded. Dear fellow though he was, you will understand. He had a passion for the advancement of knowledge – often of other people’s knowledge. And that, of course, led to trouble from time to time. For instance, he quite upset Hissey over some temple in Tartary.’

‘A temple in Tartary?’

‘Yes – just the sort of thing that was none of Pluckrose’s business, one might say. A German archaeologist – by name of Munchausen, if I remember aright – discovered in some unlikely place a temple with Roman inscriptions. They evoked a lot of discussion – some, I believe, are at Cambridge – and Pluckrose maintained that the whole thing was a fraud. Hissey is quite a friend of this Munchausen, and he was most upset. And there have been a good many frictions of that sort – and others yet more trivial. You have no doubt heard of the affair of Prisk and the telephone.’

‘The telephone Prisk and Pluckrose had to share? Yes, we’ve heard of that one.’

‘And I fear it must be said that Pluckrose – dear fellow though he was – occasionally fomented quarrels. As well, I mean, as getting personally involved in them, For instance, there was some ill-feeling a little time ago between Prisk and our Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Evans. It was over a little matter of some distinction conferred by the Prussian Academy.’