Sarah Caudwell - Thus Was Adonis Murdered

I had not been able to enter immediately on my exposition. We had begun with an account by Julia

of her experiences as a suspect. At the stage at which Julia thought it appropriate, for reasons obscure to me, to start quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Selena reminded her that her Opinion on Schedule 7 of the Finance Act, at present being typed and promised by half past one, would require her signature.

Heeding the call of her professional responsibilities, Julia had said that it was very kind of us all to have gone to so much trouble on her behalf and we must allow her to pay for the next bottle of Nierstein. Then, pausing only to take from her handbag and give to Selena a sufficient sum for that purpose, retrieve from the floor the various articles involuntarily extracted from her handbag at the same time, and apologize to the man at the adjoining table for having spilt over him the remnants of her prawn salad, she had left us.

I was still not able to embark on my explanation. Timothy was urged by Ragwort to describe in greater detail the events of the previous Friday. He spoke with some feeling of the difficulties he had experienced in soothing the Vice-Quaestor and persuading him that neither Julia, Marylou nor himself could assist further with his enquiries.

It was at the end of this that he made his remark, tonally, as I have mentioned, though not syntactically, a question, about the Vice-Quaestor’s mental disquiet on the matter of the telegram from Kenneth.

“Because of course,” continued Timothy, “if Kenneth had not sent such a telegram, Ned would not have been talking to him on the telephone at the moment when Marylou recognized him and the Vice-Quaestor could have arranged for the police in London to arrest Kenneth before he knew anything was amiss. As it was — well, the Vice-Quaestor is not entirely pleased. He thinks it a very remarkable coincidence.”

“Timothy,” I said, “were you now to learn that this was other than a remarkable coincidence, would you feel obliged to inform the Vice-Quaestor?” Lowering his gaze to a point only six inches above my head, Timothy answered that he would not.

“In that case, my dear Timothy,” I said, “I shall be quite candid with you. It was I who sent the telegram.”

“Yes,” said Timothy, “I thought you did. It was taking a grave responsibility, wasn’t it, to leave Dunfermline with that choice?”

“It would have been a graver one, surely,” I said, “to leave him without one. Still, you will no doubt wish me to explain how I first came to suspect—”

“Well, not at the moment, actually,” said Timothy, drawing back his chair and rising from the table. “I am instructed to advise in conference, as a matter of some urgency, on the devolution of the Tiverton Trust Fund, in the event, which must now occur, of the settlor having no descendant living on 19th December of this year. My solicitor is arriving at two o’clock — I really must leave you.”

I am very fond of Timothy and would never deny that he is, in some ways, a young man of some ability; but I have often felt, and did so now, that he lacks the intellectual curiosity which is the mark of the truly first-class mind.

“What I find curious,” said Ragwort, “is the fact that they thought of this plan before Kenneth and Richard had even met. How did they know that Richard even existed? He had no friends in England.”

“The Tiverton trust,” I answered, “was managed in England. Given the magnitude of the funds, there would no doubt have been considerable correspondence over the years between the trustees and the Inland Revenue. It doesn’t seem very unlikely that Ned, being employed by that Department, should have at some time discovered that a young man of about the same age as himself, resident in Cyprus, was the heir to an estate in excess of a million pounds. So one day, I suppose, when Ned can’t afford some small luxury he fancies, ‘I wish,’ he says, ‘I wish I were Richard Tiverton.’”

“It was very wrong of him,” said Ragwort, “to have mentioned it at all. Any information given to the Inland Revenue is supposed to be in the strictest confidence.”

“Yes, Ragwort,” I said, “his behaviour, in that respect at any rate, was certainly most culpable. But you would no doubt like me to explain—”

“Could we make it some other time?” said Ragwort. “It’s most interesting, but I really must go. I have an appointment before the Master at two-thirty. And after telling him that it’s urgent enough to be heard in the Long Vacation, I’d better not be late for it. You will all excuse me, won’t you?”

It was all a little provoking. Still, looking on the bright side, it left more Nierstein for those of us who remained.

“I say, Hilary,” said Cantrip, when he had measured out equitably the contents of the bottle, “what was it you were rabbiting on about on Thursday, last time we were in here, about the significance of Ned being nervous on the Friday morning? Or were you just having one of your loopy spells?”

“Cantrip,” I said calmly, “I would be grateful if you would remember, for the first and last time, that I am not subject to what you term loopy spells, by which curious expression you mean, I suppose, intermittent bouts of insanity. It was the signs of nervousness displayed by Ned on Friday morning which would have enabled me, had I not allowed my mind to be distracted by irrelevant matters, to say immediately how the crime was done and who committed it.”

“Well,” said Selena, “we know now that he had just become an accessory to murder. Enough, I imagine, to make anyone nervous. I cannot see, however, that an attack of nervousness is uniquely referable to such a cause.”

“My dear Selena,” I said, “have you forgotten that he had cut himself shaving?”

“No,” said Selena, “but I don’t see anything very odd about that.”

“I do. Very odd indeed. Consider — what impression do you have from Julia’s letters of the young man’s appearance? Leaving out the rhetoric?”

“Well,” said Selena, “that he was thin and had a good profile. And a nice complexion. And very fair hair.”

“Precisely so. And at nine o’clock on the morning of the murder Julia had seen him on the terrace of the Cytherea looking very much at his best and having evidently completed a full toilette. Can you really imagine, Selena, that a young man of his colouring and complexion would find it necessary to resort again to his razor before lunch-time?”

“Why, Professor Tamar,” said Marylou, “that’s really brilliant.”

“It’s kind of you to say so; but to one trained in the techniques of Scholarship, it’s really very simple. But what followed from it?”

“I say,” said Cantrip, “sorry to interrupt, but what did Ragwort say he was doing this afternoon?”

“He’s got a Master’s appointment,” said Selena. “I thought he said this morning that it was something to do with that case you’ve got against each other about the washing-line. But as you’re still here, I assume—”

“Strewth,” said Cantrip, leaping from his chair. “The blighter, he might have reminded me.” By the time the door of the Corkscrew swung to behind him, he was no more than a blur of black and white on the other side of High Holborn, moving fast towards the Law Courts.

“Do please go on, Professor Tamar,” said Marylou. “I think it’s simply fascinating.” She is a delightful girl.

“Once I realized that the razor-cut must have been a fake, my mind turned immediately to the idea of an impersonation. At some stage later in the day, Ned was to impersonate someone who had sustained such an injury, or such a person was to impersonate him. But later in the day Ned had been a corpse. I was drawn irresistibly to the conclusion that the corpse was, as it were, an involuntary impostor. It was clear, Marylou, from your own account of the discovery of the crime, that Kenneth had not allowed anyone who knew Ned to look closely at the body. But he must have known, of course, that there would be a medical examination and that even such a trifling wound would probably be noticed. If none of those who had last seen Ned remembered him having suffered anything of the kind, it was possible that the police might begin to entertain some doubt, however small, about the identity of the corpse.”