The Weight of the Evidence (5 page)

‘Think of it?’ Church took a hand out of a pocket and looked at it – a steady hand. ‘I hardly know. It seems to depend on whether the meteorite was just lying about.’

‘Exactly.’ Appleby decided there was something to be said for helping Church along. ‘And we don’t know that it was. Where it came from is still a mystery.’

Church looked relieved. ‘Then why a meteorite? It’s not an easy thing to come by. And not really very close in idea to bombs and shells. An old cannon-ball would be just as easy to secure, and would have much more – more appositeness in the situation Crunkhorn imagines.’

Crunkhorn nodded, seemingly with approval. ‘I think, gentlemen, you will acknowledge that to be true. And yet there may have been such a joke as I described – and more of it than I have been able to describe.’

‘Ah,’ said Appleby.

‘Suppose that Pluckrose had had it hinted to him that it would be nice if Providence dropped a nice heavy bomb on
him
. And suppose he had replied with some piece of rationalism: Providence does not, in fact, drop bombs; Providence has no bombs to drop – something like that. Would not a meteorite then become, in Church’s word, apposite? A thing which comes whizzing like a projectile out of outer space might well be regarded as a sort of celestial ammunition.’

‘We become hypothetical,’ said Church. ‘Not only a hypothetical dispute about ballistics scientifically or morally conceived, but a hypothetical course to that dispute involving certain specific and rather far-fetched forms of words. An unfriendly person – say a barrister in court – might even insinuate that Crunkhorn is coming hurriedly forward with a laborious and slightly eccentric theory of his own devising – and one of which a principal consequence is to fix the attention upon likely frictions between Pluckrose and persons of markedly disparate age.’

This was counter-attack with a vengeance. And the young man, like his senior, had the trick of turning his phrases in a bookish but effective way. There was no mistaking the implication of this studied piece of syntax. People who come forward with cock-and-bull tales of Galileo may be suspected of having something to hide… And now Crunkhorn had stood up. Perhaps he felt that he had indeed been injudiciously ingenious; perhaps he was simply angry. ‘I am afraid’, he said, ‘that another appointment must put an end to this interview. I do not say somewhat irregular interview, because I am willing to give any help I can, and I would not stand upon forms. Good afternoon.’

And with a whisk of gown the professor of mathematics departed. What is called a dignified exit, thought Appleby. The sort of thing most people imagine afterwards rather than manage to achieve on the spot. And now perhaps it would be a good thing really to see that Vice-Chancellor. Or view the body. Or go poking about the topography of the thing: the Wool Court, the tower, the store-rooms, the hoist. But here still was the young man called Church – and he was now sitting back in his chair, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Gripes!’ said Mr Church. ‘This is a lousy go. The old bastard!’

‘Hobhouse,’ said Appleby gravely, ‘make a note. Mr Church can talk like a human being when he wants to.’ He looked sharply at the young man. ‘And so, as it happens, can we; Pluckrose – did you quarrel with him?’

‘No.’

‘Did he annoy you on the subject of bombs and shells?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you, if not exactly quarrel, at least dispute with him?’

‘I bickered. A hole like this is largely bicker, bicker, bicker.’

‘I see. Did you ever–’

‘I didn’t pitch the meteorite at him; it never occurred to me that it would be a funny thing to do; I never play practical jokes.’ Church paused for breath. ‘I don’t believe you have seen the Vice-Chancellor or that he directed you to Crunkhorn. You picked on us quite arbitrarily and out came all that rubbish about Galileo. It’s your own mess, and you can jolly well clear it up yourselves. I’m off.’ And Church scrambled to his feet, suddenly a very belligerent young man.

Appleby rose too. ‘Very well. But I’m sorry you should go off just when we’ve begun talking sense.’ His eye caught a flicker of uncertainty in the other man. ‘I expected you to tell us why Crunkhorn took that line.’

Church gave a sort of impatient snort, but paused at the door. ‘He took
that
line because you blarneyed him into taking
some
line. Your smart yatter about mathematics and dispassionate views nobbled him and he thought up Galileo as something ingenious and learned and then he just went on elaborating. Everybody about the place will have some dam’ fool theory to air if you take them that way.’

Hobhouse made a discouraged sound and drummed on the table; clearly he judged this last statement only too true. But Appleby was unperturbed. ‘Even yourself, Mr Church?’

‘I’m not going to air anything.’

‘Except your own constitutionally bellicose spirit?’

‘To hell with you.’ Church was now almost cheerful and his hand had dropped from the doorknob.

‘Of course, it’s just as you please as to that.’ Appleby was cheerful too. ‘But Crunkhorn was doing more than just elaborate a theory. He was getting at you. And then you got a nasty one back at him. It was almost as if you were accusing each other of homicide. Quite a startling thing to happen when one has, as you say, picked on two men at random. Can you explain it?’

‘Of course I can explain it.’ Church, as well as belligerency, had plainly a liberal dash of intellectual arrogance. ‘The old boy disapproves of me in various ways. He’s convinced, I have a hand in this idiotic joking. And it really did drift into his head that I might have flattened out poor Pluckrose in the way he hinted. He was appealing to me after his fashion to own up should it really be true. Or perhaps, even, he was putting me on my guard. You see, he’s a fatherly old person in some ways. He feels he’s making a mathematician of me.’

‘And is he?’

The inconsequent question stumbled Church for an instant. Then he laughed. ‘As it happens,
I’m
the mathematician about the place. Not that Crunkhorn has too bad a brain. Caught young and suitably trained, he’d have made quite a fair confidential clerk.’ Church paused, and the pause had the effect of acknowledging that, to strangers, this was not a pleasant witticism. ‘Anyway, I like him – quite.’

‘And your suggestion that he was talking away in order to conceal something on his own account?’

Church hesitated. ‘That’, he said seriously, ‘was extremely foolish. So long.’

The door banged behind him. Hobhouse drew a long breath. ‘I didn’t think there could be anything odder than that Duke-business. But this–’

Appleby smiled. ‘We’re working among a queer lot. Not like respectable thugs and burglars. And now we’ll view the body and read the medical report and measure things and find the crucial finger-print.’ He frowned. ‘And surely there’s something else?’

‘See the Vice-Chancellor.’

‘Just that.’

Sir David Evans was a handsome old man with philosophic pretensions and a mass of white hair. Because of the philosophy he sat in front of an immense bookcase groaning under Locke, Hartley, and Hume; and because of the hair these sages were cased in a dark shiny leather sparely tooled in gold. The effect was charming – the more so in that Sir David’s features invariably registered rugged benevolence. Every few years a portrait of Sir David robed in black and scarlet and with Locke and Hume behind him would appear in the exhibitions which our greatest painters arrange at Burlington House. Of these portraits one already hung in the Great Hall of the university, a second could be seen in a dominating position as soon as one entered Sir David’s villa residence, and a third was stowed away ready for offer to the National Portrait Gallery when the time came. What happened to the others nobody knew. England is at best a semi-barbarous country, and the demand for portraits of retired professors of philosophy is astonishingly small. It was said that the portraits could be met with in every university in India, a country through which Sir David as a young lecturer had endeavoured to diffuse the light of Clear and Distinct Ideas, Exact Senses, and the outlines of that celebrated Modified Empiricism which he was then beginning to think up for himself. But this of the Indian portraits may well have been a slander, for there is no doubt that about Sir David slanders of every sort were rife. Mr Shergold, Nesfield’s present professor of philosophy, maintained that the Vice-Chancellor was among that unfortunate minority of bad men who get themselves generally reprobated and disliked. This, perhaps, was a judgment of a somewhat
a priori
sort, the presumed axiom – one widely current in such universities as Nesfield – being that a Vice-Chancellor,
ipso facto
, cannot be a good man. Sir David, in fact, was conceivably a man much traduced. And some will hold that the effect which he produced with his bookcase and his hair and his expression of benevolent power ought to be accounted towards righteousness. For one might wander the length and breadth of Nesfield University without coining upon a single other such contrived effect. The professors never framed themselves against anything at all – unless it were haphazardly and unconsciously against shelves which were a tumble of battered books and jumbled papers, with here and there a dusty picture hanging slightly askew on a nail. If there is innocent pleasure and even something of edification in a little careful dressing-up, then in one particular at least Sir David Evans deserved well of the institution over which he presided.

A slender shaft of sunlight, filtering through the well-combed mane of Sir David, spotlit the polished leather spine of
Observations on Man
,
his Frame
,
his Duty
,
and his Expectations
. And gropingly Sir David was endeavouring to do a little of this observing on his own account; before him lay a letter to which he was applying himself with scholarly concentration for the second time:

MY DEAR SIR DAVID,

I am most distressed to hear of an occurrence which may cause annoyance to the dear Duke and considerable
anxiety
to yourself. The death of Mr Pluckrose is (doubtless) a loss to science; and must be, moreover, an occasion of sober reflection to us all. For he has been snatched away unprepared and, knowing him as we did, is it not a point of some nicety to determine whether our mourning may be tempered by a pious hope? As my father (the late Sir Horace Dearlove, KCMG) used to remark with the peculiar forcefulness characterizing all his utterances:
In the midst of life we are in death.

As you know, Mr Pluckrose has been a member of my household for nearly fifteen years and I may fairly claim an almost intimate knowledge of his habits and
connexions
. I wonder if I can help in any way?

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

VIRGINIA CAROLINE DEARLOVE

PS – My housekeeper – a most dependable person – tells me that there is outstanding the sum of thirty-eight pounds eleven shillings and fourpence. Who are the solicitors?

VCD

The sunbeam, creeping diagonally towards the ceiling, had reached
An Essay concerning
Human Understanding
. A mathematician – say Mr Crunkhorn or Mr Church – might have found considerable beguilement in calculating where it would arrive in ten minutes’ time. Would it be
An
Essay concerning Toleration
? Or
The Reasonableness of Christianity
? And surely it would not be so undiscriminating as to miss
A Treatise of Human Nature
? But Sir David, immobile at his desk, was without thought of his sainted and Caledonian namesake. Miss Dearlove absorbed his attention, and continued to do so until there came a knock at the door. Whereupon Sir David put the letter in a drawer, slightly shifted his chair so as to recapture the requisite aureole of sunlight, and called to come in.

Hobhouse introduced Appleby. Sir David, without budging, extruded so pungent a benevolence that the effect was rather that of coming unawares upon a skunk. Appleby said conventionally that this was an unfortunate business. Sir David, by silence, indicated that philosophers do not form these hasty conclusions; at the same time he continued to show that he held his visitors in the highest charitable regard. Appleby and Hobhouse decided that they might as well sit down. Whereupon Sir David stood up and walked to a window. Appleby and Hobhouse stood up and Hobhouse contrived to trip over his bowler hat. Sir David, not too philosophically remote to accord these blunderings a gentle compassion, tucked his hands beneath the tails of his beautiful black coat and presently spoke. ‘It iss mysterious,’ he said. ‘Whatever it iss, it iss that.’

Appleby and Hobhouse found themselves nodding gratefully. The Vice-Chancellor had said the cogent thing. One was much more aware of this than of the fact that he spoke in the accents of Wild Wales. It must be the way he holds his head, Appleby thought. And the way he closes his mouth and jerks up his chin at the end of it. All needed, no doubt, if one is to put philosophy across on the hard-headed young. ‘You knew Professor Pluckrose well?’ he asked.

It was obvious that another man would have raised his eyebrows. But the Vice-Chancellor crinkled the corners of his eyes into the kindliest smile – much as a dog-lover might do when subjected to the gambollings of an over-obstreperous puppy. To ask Sir David Evans a question must be something quite out of the way. ‘You will inquire into his death,’ he said benevolently and with authority. He took a hand from under his coat tails and raised a finger. ‘You haf a notebook?’

Hobhouse – but with less alacrity than might have been expected – indicated that he had a notebook.

‘Things to remember about professors,’ said Sir David – and paused. It is a lecture, thought Appleby. It is – thought Hobhouse, innocent of the higher education – a dictation. But Appleby listened and Hobhouse wrote. Sir David still had that overpoweringly cogent air.