Edmund Crispin - Love Lies Bleeding

They had come to the door of Somers’ form room. A half-apprehensive murmur of conversation was audible from inside. Somers shrugged, and said:

‘Could she have had anything to do with the theft?’

‘Up to the present,’ said Mr Etherege, ‘she’s refused to say a word. But it’s sinister, Somers, undeniably sinister. It’s exactly the sort of situation which ends in murder.’

The afternoon wore away. The headmaster, having telephoned the police station, spoken to the superintendent, and received the promise of a visit immediately after tea, went on to the dictating and signing of letters and notices. At two forty-five he dismissed Galbraith, his secretary, into the next room and went to his window to watch the school disperse. On Fridays, afternoon school was bisected by the JTC parade, so that the second period began at a quarter to five instead of a quarter to three. The electric bell jangled in Hubbard’s Building, and the headmaster heard the murmur of released tension which followed. It grew quickly to an uproar, compounded of the scraping of desks and chairs, the banging of books, and the clatter of feet on wooden staircases, with overtures of talk and whistling. A throng of some five hundred boys poured out of the doorways, the khaki of their uniforms interspersed here and there with the blue of the Air Training Corps, and the diurnal grey of the medically unfit, clutching files, rubbing at their belts with the sleeves of their tunics, saluting the occasional non-militant master who, his work for the moment finished, mounted his bicycle and rode off down the drive. In the quarter-hour break the boys dispersed to their houses, their heavy Corps boots rattling on the asphalt. Presently the site was again deserted, save for an infrequent group of boys or masters waiting for the parade to begin. The sun shone fiercely, and the leaves of the oaks threw a network of dappled shadow over the drive. The sky was cloudless and vividly blue.

At such a time as this the headmaster was generally visited by one or two members of his staff in search of instruction or enlightenment, but on this particular day he was uninterrupted, and before long returned to his desk and began rather somnolently to prepare the address he was to give at the chapel service on the morrow. From time to time a bellow of command, or the tramp of marching and countermarching, drifted through the open windows from the parade ground. And the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece stood at four when a small red sports car of exceptional stridency and raffishness pulled up outside Davenant’s and Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, extracted himself laboriously from it.

He was a tall, lanky man, a little over forty years of age. His face was cheerful, ruddy and clean-shaven, with shrewd and humorous ice-blue eyes, and he had on a grey suit, a green tie embellished with mermaids, and an extraordinary hat. He gave the car a laudatory pat on the bonnet, at which it suddenly backfired, and gazed about him with vague approbation until the headmaster emerged to greet him and conduct him into the study, where he slumped down into an armchair.

‘Well, well,’ said the headmaster. ‘It’s most kind of you to help us out like this, at the last moment; particularly as we haven’t seen one another for so many years. What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Detecting,’ Fen replied with great complacency.

‘Oh, ah. Of course. I’ve read the reports in the papers. There seems to have been a great deal of crime at Oxford just recently.’

‘Do you never read Matthew Arnold?’ Fen demanded. ‘Oxford is proverbially the home of lost corpses.’

The headmaster chuckled, rang for Galbraith, and ordered tea. ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ he said when the secretary had departed. ‘We have a couple of minor mysteries of our own.’

‘Oh?’

‘And possibly of a criminal nature. I’m expecting the local superintendent of police after tea.’

Fen raised his eyebrows. ‘Do explain,’ he said.

The headmaster explained. Warming to his subject, he passed from the episode of the cupboard to the unaccountable behaviour of Brenda Boyce. Fen listened attentively, and when the headmaster had finished:

‘Yes,’ he remarked, ‘I think you were wise to tell the police.’

His host grimaced wryly. ‘I’m afraid they’ll have a good deal to say about our leaving chemicals in such an accessible place.’

‘Can you rely on them to act discreetly?’

‘Oh, yes. Stagge is a very sensible man.’ The headmaster paused expectantly. ‘Well, have you any suggestions?’

‘None, my dear Horace. There are a good many possible explanations – most of them innocuous, I may say – and nothing to show which is the right one. Not enough data, in fact. What kind of advice do you want, anyway?’

‘The girl,’ said the headmaster slowly, ‘isn’t really my affair. Whatever upset her pretty certainly happened after she’d left the rehearsal. On the other hand, there is a link with the chemistry laboratory business in the fact that she arranged to meet Williams in the science building.’

‘Could you make an announcement about this theft to the school?’

‘I scarcely think it would have any effect. And besides, I have an irrational conviction that no boy was responsible. I can’t explain it, I’m afraid; it’s simply that in the pattern of schoolboy behaviour, which I know tolerably well, this thing doesn’t fit. You occasionally get a boy who steals – yes. But what he steals is almost invariably money or food.’

For a moment they were both silent. The Corps parade was over, and through the windows they could see a mob of boys streaming into Davenant’s, noisily intent on tea. Fen frowned.

‘About this man Philpotts—’ he began, but interrupted himself to listen to some indefinite bumping and scratching sounds outside the study door. ‘What on earth’s that?’ he enquired.

‘You’ll see,’ said the headmaster a trifle grimly. He got to his feet, went to the door, and opened it. A dog came in.

‘Good God,’ said Fen in a muffled voice.

The dog was a large, forbidding bloodhound, on whose aboriginal colour and shape one or two other breeds had been more or less successfully superimposed. He stood just inside the doorway, unnervingly immobile, and fixed Fen with a malevolent and hypnotic stare.

‘This,’ said the headmaster, ‘is Mr Merrythought…He’s rather old,’ he added, hoping perhaps to distract attention from the singular inappositeness of the name. ‘In fact, I might almost say he was very old indeed.’

‘Is he’ – Fen spoke with great caution, rather as Balaam’s ass must have spoken after perceiving the surprise and alarm created by his first attempt – ‘is he yours?’

The headmaster shook his head. ‘He isn’t anybody’s, really. He belonged to a master who died, and now he just wanders about the site. He ought to be put away, really,’ said the headmaster, regarding Mr Merrythought with considerable distaste. ‘The trouble is, you see, that he’s liable to homicidal fits.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen. ‘Oh.’

‘They happen about once every three months. As a matter of fact there’s one due about now.’

‘Indeed.’

‘But don’t worry,’ the headmaster remarked cheerfully. ‘He likes you. He’s taken quite a liking to you.’

Fen did not appear much pleased by this disclosure. ‘I see no signs of it,’ he objected.

‘He would have bitten you by now,’ the headmaster explained, ‘if he hadn’t liked you.’

At this, Mr Merrythought lurched suddenly forward and began to advance slowly on Fen, who said, ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the headmaster, standing well out of Mr Merrythought’s path. ‘He wants to make friends.’