But my announcement, which was intended to be quite startling and dramatic, had very little visible effect on the imperturbable Horrocks. He raised his glass calmly to his lips and took a sip of stout before speaking:
“Well, you being the amateur, as you might say, Mr. Fenton, I think an old professional like myself should stand aside for a moment and let you have the first ball. I might mention, though, sir”—here he turned apologetically to Dr. Hyssop—’’that I have just sworn out a warrant. It’s here in my pocket and when I leave the college tonight, someone is going to leave with me.
“There’s a plainclothes constable standing at the gates now with certain orders so we needn’t be afraid that anyone will give us the slip.” Here he turned toward me with a nod. “And you can take your time, Mr. Fenton, take your time. To be quite frank, sir, I’m not too sure of my own ground and your story may be a help—a great help. Only, just at the moment, I’d rather you didn’t name no names, sir. There are reasons why … reasons which I’ll explain later, when I have my innings.”
Horrocks’ calm attitude and his inability to get excited had restored, in a measure, my own composure.
“All right,” I replied, “I won’t mention any names until you give me the high sign, Inspector. But I would like”—I turned toward my host—“have I your permission, Master, to go over this whole business from the very beginning?”
Dr. Hyssop nodded his head and closed his eyes wearily.
“I’ve been a fool,” I cried, “a blind, stupid fool. I’ve made every kind of mistake, but there is one thing I’ve been right about. From the very first I felt positive that the murderer was a member of this college. That must have been obvious to anyone who knew anything about college rules and regulations.
“But I couldn’t see what on earth his motive was. Last night, as I told you, Inspector, I studied the history of the North family and discovered that Mrs. North had had another child who would now be about the age of the average undergraduate.”
“Twenty and nine months, to be exact,” murmured Horrocks.
Camilla started. “Well, I never heard of that,” she exclaimed, “and I can hardly believe it. Are you quite sure, Hilary?”
“Quite sure,” I replied gently. “Your—Mrs. North—had a baby a few weeks after the end of the second trial. I hate to distress you by dragging in your family this way—”
“Oh, go on, please go on!” she cried with nervous impatience. “This isn’t a time to consider anyone’s feelings.”
“All right, then. Let’s begin with William North’s third child whom I’ve been calling North Junior in my mind ever since last evening. If no one objects, I’ll go on that way. Then I needn’t mention any definite names, Horrocks.”
The inspector nodded. “I think you’re on the right track, Mr. Fenton, but take your time, sir, take your time.”
I continued: “Well, as I said before, I was quite certain that North Junior was in residence here at All Saints. He must have known about his relationship to Julius Baumann and to yourself, Camilla. Also he must have known that you both had money of your own. Money which he thought, or hoped, might eventually come to his mother and thus, at her death, to himself.
“Or perhaps he just hated you both in a blind, unreasoning way. That would be motive enough in itself when one considers the—er—unfortunate circumstances of his birth. At any rate, he planned to kill Baumann, and we all know with what fiendish cunning and precision he waited for his opportunity. He chose the night of the thunderstorm for obvious reasons.
“I believe that it was the merest coincidence that this was the day on which his father, William North, escaped from the home. But we need not go into the complications caused by this coincidence. All that concerns us is that, somehow or other, North Junior got into Baumann’s room that evening—exactly how or when does not matter, but it must have been in the neighbourhood of ten o’clock.
“After this point we will simply have to draw on our imaginations. We can picture the scene when he announces his relationship; he talks with Baumann, but all the time he keeps an eye on the biscuit tin where he knows from Mrs. Bigger that the revolver is kept. He seizes his opportunity and shoots. The sound of the shot is drowned by thunder.
“Even I, and the other chaps on the staircase who were nearby at the time, could not be certain that we heard it. After his victim is dead, he plants the Brasso and the cleaning rags that he has brought with him; he arranges the revolver so that it will look like suicide or accident. Perhaps the lights are on. Perhaps he is using a flashlight, or perhaps the electricity has gone off in the middle of his gruesome operations.
“In any case, things are none too easy for North Junior. We can imagine how he looks fearfully around the room. Has he overlooked anything? Yes, he has missed one small, telltale blood stain—the one that I was foolish enough to remove later that night. He prepares to leave. The unexpected darkness, which may have complicated his carefully-planned murder, will now be an asset in that it covers his retreat.
“He goes out of the room, sporting the oak behind him so as to delay discovery of the body as long as possible. He creeps down the stairs, unnoticed—so he thinks and hopes. But Hankin must have seen or suspected something, exactly what we shall probably never know.
“Perhaps the gyp does not even realize the full importance of his suspicions until after the inquest. Perhaps he has been bribed or persuaded in some way to hold his tongue. But Hankin must go too. North Junior chooses a time when the college is very quiet. He waits until he is alone with Hankin in the court. Then he stabs….”
If I had felt any embarrassment or self-consciousness at the beginning of my monologue, I had now lost it completely. I was no longer a rather immature undergradute in the presence of the Master of his college and an experienced inspector of Police—I had projected myself completely into the personality of North Junior.
“And now he may well congratulate himself that he is safe. The coroner’s verdict is on his side. Hankin is out of the way and his own identity has not yet been discovered. But there is a bitter disappointment in store for North Junior. The bulk of Baumann’s property is tied up in trust funds and must go to a South African cousin.
“Only a few—a very few—hundred pounds are available—a beggarly sum in the eyes of our ambitious and unscrupulous murderer. He must look elsewhere for money. And so he turns his attention toward his sister. She has a little income of her own—an income which, he hopes, may, by some devious bypaths, eventually come to him or to his family.
“But how can he see his sister without arousing her suspicions? His chance comes sooner, perhaps, than he anticipates. He is to be present at a tea party here in this room. He conceives the idea of sending a forged invitation to Camilla for the same party. Somehow or other he gets into the Master’s office, steals an invitation card and sends it to Newnham. He has also managed to extract some prussic acid from the science laboratory.”
I broke off in my story, for, at this moment, the maid came into the room with a tray and began to collect up the glasses.
There was a minute of uneasy silence. The only sounds in the Master’s library were the ticking of the clock, the tinkle of glasses on the tray and the frantic buzzing of a bluebottle on the window pane.
It was Camilla who finally broke the spell. Throughout my recital she had been staring unseeingly at the bluebottle’s frantic efforts to escape into the sunshine and apparently she had been listening to me with such absorption that she was not aware of the maid’s presence in the room.
“Oh, go on, Hilary,” she cried. “What does it matter how he did it? Why don’t you tell us who it was? I want to know … a member of my own family … you said … you promised he would come into the room….”
Her voice broke off with a snap. I turned questioningly toward the inspector. Very slowly and deliberately he raised a finger to the side of his nose and nodded his head in a gesture of assent. Then he rose ponderously to his feet and took up his position with his back to the door. I noticed that one large hand had found its way into his coat pocket in which there was a suspicious-looking bulge.
“Camilla,” I said, slowly, with my eyes fixed on the inspector, “I did promise you that North Junior would come into this room while we were here. Well, my promise has been kept. The murderer of Julius Baumann and Thomas Hankin is … in … the … room … at this … very … moment.”
There was a resounding crash of breaking glass. Mary Smith had dropped the tray and was standing behind the sofa with her hands hanging helplessly by her sides. Instead of looking down at the tray, however, she was staring at me with a strange expression of horror and bewilderment.
I jumped up from, my seat and, pulling a large handkerchief from my pocket, threw it over the housemaid’s glorious red hair. Then, taking her gently by the shoulders, I pushed her nearer to the couch until her head was within a few inches of Camilla’s.
“Look, Master,” I cried, as my grip on the girl’s shoulders tightened. “Don’t you see it now—the same profile? Hide the red hair and they might almost be twins. Now is there any doubt as to who it was I saw on ‘A’ staircase last Monday night? Now do you see why Hankin was unwilling to come forward and voice his suspicions?
“Now do you see how easy it was for the murderer to get hold of the cleaning materials—the invitation card—the prussic acid from the laboratory to which Hankin had the key? Who had a better opportunity to poison Camilla’s tea yesterday afternoon? Who but North Junior—the third child of William North? Only instead of being a bog she happened to be a girl. ”
I released my hold on Mary Smith’s shoulders. She stood perfectly still, staring straight in front of her as if in a daze. At length she spoke, and I immediately noticed that her accent, which was usually that of an uneducated working girl, was now perfect in pitch and intonation.
“You … can’t … prove … a … thing,” she cried; and then, more shrilly, “I don’t know what you mean. Oh, how dare you put your hands on me!”
At this moment the door behind Horrocks was pushed open and a powerful, thickset man entered the room. He handed the inspector a bottle which I immediately recognized from its quaint shape as being one that had originally held that fatal perfume, Flowers of the Veld.
“We found this in her room, sir,” he said, smiling grimly. “You’ve only got to smell it to tell that it ain’t the sweet perfume it’s supposed to be.”
“All right, Brown.” Horrocks jerked his head in the direction of Mary Smith. “You can stand by.”
He then unstoppered the bottle, sniffed at it gingerly and handed it to me. For the second time in that room the odour of peaches and bitter almonds assailed my nostrils.
The inspector was now addressing the maid, whose eyes were darting envenomed glances in all directions. Her cheeks were pale as death, but in spite of the fact that she had not yet removed my ridiculous handkerchief from her head, she looked a handsome and imposing figure for tragedy.
“You say we can’t prove a thing, Miss,” he said softly. “Well, it strikes me you are going to have a job proving why you kept prussic acid in your bedroom.” He turned deferentially toward the Master. “We took the liberty, sir, of having this young woman’s belongings searched while she was down here waiting on you. That was why I didn’t want any names mentioned before I was ready.”
Here he cleared his throat and, when next he spoke, his voice had changed from that of a kindly middle-aged man to the stern, official tones of a police inspector. He drew a document from his pocket.
“Mary North, alias Mary Nordella, alias Mary Smith, I arrest you in the King’s name for the murder of Julius Baumann on Monday last, May 9th. And it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence.” There was a slight pause, then, “Take her out, Brown, and wait in the car. Don’t make any more fuss than you can help. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
“I’ll go quietly,” murmured the girl. “Just give me one moment.” She moved a step toward me and looked up into my face with an expression that was at once arch and sinister. The phrase “a born courtesan” which Dr. Warren had applied to her mother flashed immediately through my mind.
“Oh, you needn’t be afraid,” she exclaimed scornfully, as Brown moved up behind her and touched her elbow. “I wouldn’t hurt your poor little American. He’s done his best with his theories and his North Juniors and his fine long speeches, which I’m sure—” she looked impudently around her—“we’ve all listened to with great interest.
“You sounded fine from the other side of the door, Mr. Fenton, especially when it came to a question of motive!” Here she gave a hoarse, unpleasant laugh, and as she did so, I felt I could never apologize sufficiently to Camilla for having said that, even superficially, they resembled each other.
“But there are other things besides money, Hilary Fenton—things which perhaps you might understand better if you’d spent your young life traipsing around after a second-rate actress in cheap American and Canadian boarding houses—having fat, vulgar men smirk at you and pinch you and breathe garlic all over you—and often without enough to eat while your brother and sister, who are no better than you, are living a comfortable existence among ladies and gentlemen, wiith rich friends, good food and clothes, getting the benefit of education—getting the money that they had no more right to than I had. Was it my fault that my father—”
But here Inspector Horrocks stopped her. “Remember, I warned you, Miss,” he said curtly. “Now, if you are ready …”
“All right, all right, but—please, don’t touch me.” Then with one last vindictive look of hatred toward Camilla and myself, she walked out of the room closely followed by the hard-faced Brown.
After they had left, the Master stirred uneasily in his chair.
“I’d never have noticed it—never!” he remarked. “The resemblance, I mean—but when you mentioned it, Hilary, then, of course I saw at once that there is some similarity in the lines of the face.”
“Well, sir,” I rejoined, a trifle foolishly, “I’ll admit I never would have noticed it either if it hadn’t just happened that the first view I ever got of Miss Lathrop was her profile. It—er—made a great impression on me.
“When I saw that girl bending over the sofa just now with a glass of sherry, the likeness struck me at once in spite of the different colouring and expression. Then I thought of the person whom I had seen on the stairs last Monday and I suddenly realized that expression and colouring are two things that don’t show in the dark.”
There was a muffled sound from the sofa. As I turned toward Camilla, I noticed that the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Poor thing!” I heard her murmur.
The Master had heard her, too, and hurried across the room to her side. I saw that he had taken her hand in his and was whispering in her ear. Obviously it was best to leave these two alone for a while. I joined Horrocks at the far end of the room.
“Well, Mr. Fenton,” he remarked with a quiet chuckle, “you took the high road and I took what you might call the low road and we both got to Scotland about the same time, eh?”
“Scotland Yard is where you ought to get to, Horrocks,” I cried admiringly. “I can’t think how you did it—especially with everyone working against you the way they did.”
“But I don’t want you to go off with the idea that I didn’t make mistakes too, sir. I wasted two whole days on your friend, Mr. Lloyd Comstock—on account of his first name being the same as the girl who figured in the North case. I even went all the way to Leicester where his father makes those garments that you see advertised so much, and all I got out of it was—” he lowered his voice discreetly—“three pairs of them Comfy-Knicks, sir, and they’re all too small for my missus!”
I laughed immoderately.
“Then, having started on names, sir, it struck me that the name Smith was a bit suspicious. In my business, Mr. Fenton, we always mistrust anyone called Smith or Jones, unless, of course, the party can’t help it. And in this case it seemed odd that the girl’s name should be Smith and the mother’s Nordella.
“Then I didn’t altogether like that cock and bull story of hers about someone speaking to Hankin in the court and her not even listening to a word they said! If she didn’t listen, then she’s the first housemaid in my experience as didn’t—especially when she had the keyhole close to her ear, like you might say, Mr. Fenton.
“This morning I got the girl’s record from the Canadian authorities. She’s been on the stage since she was a kid, except when she was doing a two years’ term in the penitentiary.”
“Gosh!” I cried, “and I bet she was a corking good actress, too. With her nerve and brain she might have got anywhere. No wonder I thought North Junior was a man! Not that that was the only mistake I made. Take the perfume, for example.
“Why the girl in the shop told me that it was an older man who had bought Flowers of the Veld there—a man with a different kind of accent. What an ass I was to jump to the conclusion that it must have been Baumann! Of course it was Hankin who was buying his own native scent for that precious girl of his! The bottle you found in her room proves it. And what a lovely use she put it to!
“Then I might have realized when I saw Mrs. Bigger out at the cottage last night that there would be some hook-up there. Mary Smith was a great pal of hers. She was always singing her praises and I’m perfectly certain that neither the bedmaker nor her own mother suspected her true nature.
“Lord, and how Mrs. North and I talked at cross purposes last night! I suppose she thought it was Mary I was keen on. And then that photograph on the mantelpiece! What a fool I was! And yet the solution was lying right under my nose the whole time!”
“Come, come, Mr. Fenton, you mustn’t be too modest, you know. You’ve been a great help, sir—a great help. If you hadn’t told me all that in the court this morning, I don’t believe I’d have had enough grounds to take out a warrant. It was your seeing her on the stairs that settled it in my mind once and for all.”
“And there’s one point that still stumps me,” I interrupted. “Where on earth did she get to that night after she passed me? I chased down after her hell for leather but she’d vanished into thin air. She wasn’t in the court or the gyp’s pantry or—anywhere. And what’s more, she didn’t leave the college until Mrs. Fancher and Mrs. Bigger did about ten minutes later on.”
“Well, I dare say there’s a good deal more to be cleared up before we can get a conviction, Mr. Fenton. I’ll be coming round to see you tomorrow, sir, and then I’ll tell you where we stand. Now I must be getting along. Good day, everyone.”
With a solemn nod in the direction of the Master and Camilla, the inspector let himself out by the door. He returned almost immediately.
“There are three young gentlemen asking for you at the front door, Dr. Hyssop,” he said diffidently. “Mr. Somerville, Mr. Grayling and Mr. Comstock. Shall I let them in, sir?”
The Master looked piteously toward me. “Please, Hilary, my boy, give them my compliments and tell then that I am a trifle indisposed. I think I’d like to be alone to read Rabbi Ben Ezra through before dinner. This sad business has rather made me feel the liabilities of my age, and perhaps Browning will help me to realize some of its compensations. Thank you—it’s that red book on the third shelf. Good-bye, my children. Good-bye and God bless you both.”
When Camilla and I stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine, we found Comstock, Grayling and Somerville on the front doorstep in a state of prodigious excitement. They had seen Mary Smith go off with the plain-clothes man and they naturally pressed us with questions.
As I looked at their eager ingenuous countenances, I found it almost impossible to believe that I had ever entertained such terrible suspicions of these clear-eyed English youths.
They listened with absorbed interest as I told them as much of the story as I could without implicating Camilla or disclosing her family history.
When I came to the end of my recital I noticed that Somerville’s usual expression of jaunty self-assurance had changed to one of incredulous horror and bewilderment. He was biting his fingernails nervously. As the others broke forth into a stream of chatter and comment, he beckoned me aside with an urgent gesture.
“So you thought it was a ghost you saw on ‘A’ staircase last Monday night?” he whispered.
I nodded cautiously.
“Oh, my Lord,” he groaned, “and I could have explained it so easily if I’d known—that is, if I’d known there was any suspicion of foul play about Baumann’s death. I never said anything because, well, because”—he was hanging his head and looked thoroughly ashamed of himself—“I didn’t see any possible connection—”
“What on earth are you driving at, Stuart?” I asked impatiently.
He paused a moment before replying and then drew me a few paces further away.
“Well, on Monday night,” he said in a low, mysterious voice, “after the lights went out, I ran downstairs to my room to get a flashlight. I was just coming up again to finish my ghost story—and the whisky—when I suddenly ran bang smack into a sweet-smelling female right outside my own door.
“Having almost knocked her down, I naturally had to put my arms round her to—well—to steady her. I could feel at once that she was young and tender. And she didn’t seem to object particularly. Then I heard you coming down the stairs, so I quickly pulled her into my room. I kissed her once or twice and then—all of a sudden—the lights went on again.
“I had an awful shock when I saw who it was. She was upset, too. She declared she thought I was Hank; she begged me not to tell; she said she’d lose her position and, well—I never saw any reason why I should tell, anyhow … at least, not until now. It would have been rather caddish.”
“Gosh, man, you were lucky you didn’t get a knife in your ribs,” I cried. “She must have had one with her. She probably took the Kaffir dagger from Baumann’s room that night and afterwards used it to kill Hank. You’d better be careful how you kiss strange females in the dark in the future, Stuart.”
He ran a hand through his hair, half smiling, half abashed.
“I’m not altogether sure it wouldn’t have been worth it,” he muttered. “What a perfectly ripping death! In the middle of a long ling-g-gering kiss. Um-ah!”
“Stuart, you really are rather repulsive,” I said smiling, “but you have at least cleared up what, for me, was the most baffling part of the whole business. The way she seemed to disappear that night was positively spooky. And coming on top of that creepy yarn about your Marlborough friend! Incidentally, now that you’ve solved my little mystery, I wish you would tell me the end of that one. It was a darn good story.”
Somerville grinned. “I’m afraid the actual denouement is a bit of a flop. The wretched lad ought to have died on his eighteenth birthday by rights—but he didn’t do anything so sweet and simple. What he actually did was to lose all his hair and he woke up next morning as bald as the jolly old curate’s egg.
“And incidentally, he’s up at Oxford now, poor devil—going to be a parson, too! He might just as well have pipped it at the proper time and given the story a decent ending. However, as far as I know, there’s been no return of that particular nightmare.”
I looked at my watch.
“Well, and let’s hope our little nightmare is over, too. And now I’ve got to run along. I want to—er—see a jeweller about a ring.”
“Before the hot water runs cold, eh?” There was a momentary return to the mocking, moviesque accent. “Well, I reckon that’s a cute chick you picked.”
“Quit calling my babe a chick,” I parried in what at Cambridge still passed for jive talk.
“Hit the road, Frog.”
And with this utterly British slang malapropism we turned to rejoin the others.
The End