A Javelin for Jonah

chapter

8

Recalling the Runners

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I wonder whether you’d mind if we talked on the field?” said Henry. “I promised a couple of shot-putters an extra go after tea.”

He and Dame Beatrice strolled out into the grounds, but found none of Henry’s athletes.

“Am I to gather that you did not want to talk to me in front of Mr. Medlar?” she asked, glancing round the empty field.

“Well,” said Henry, “Jones, as you know, was Gassie’s brother-in-law and that makes things awkward. One can hardly call Jones a sweep and a reptile in front of a relative, especially as they always seemed to be on excellent terms with one another.”

“Does your opinion of Mr. Jones coincide with that of the rest of the lecturers, then?”

“So far as I know, it does. I don’t think anybody liked him, and one or two detested him.”

“What about the students?”

“He was anything but popular.”

“And from the outset you have never thought that his death was an accident?”

“No, I’m sure it wasn’t, but, for the sake of the College, I hope the coroner’s jury will say that it was. Of course, if the murderer—I don’t flinch from using that word to you, although I shall avoid it most carefully when I’m talking to anyone else, Dame Beatrice—if the chap, as I say, had had the sense to leave Jones’s body lying just where it fell, with the javelin still in place or beside it, I might have other ideas. It’s this stupid business of burying him and the even more stupid business of choosing somewhere as obvious as the long-jump pit, which gives the game away. And then to plant the wrong javelin where it was bound to be discovered by anybody using the indoor baths seems to me to be folly not much short of insanity.”

“Let us look at it another way.”

“Is there another way of looking at it?”

“Suppose somebody else moved the body and buried it and put a javelin in the swimming-bath? Had not that occurred to you? It seems to me quite possible that a death which could have been attributed to a fatal accident, and clearly was meant to appear so, was deliberately and mischievously made to look like murder by somebody who knew what had happened, intended the body to be found very easily, and also intended to indicate that murder had been committed, whether this was really the case or not.”

“It would take a warped mind to conceive of a thing like that, but I’m afraid we’re not short of warped minds in this place. So you think Jones’s death really was an accident, do you?”

“I did not say that, but suppose the person who killed Mr. Jones had left the body where it fell and had not removed the javelin afterwards, would you then have been satisfied that the death was the result of accident?”

Henry thought this over for a moment. Then he replied, “No, I would not.”

“Your reason?”

“I have more than one reason. In the first place, had it been any other member of the College staff, I might have thought that the death was accidental, but Jones, as I’ve said, was very generally disliked by everybody except Gassie. Secondly, there’s the business of this special metal point which somebody must have substituted for the one the manufacturers provided when we bought the javelin in the first place. I don’t like that. Thirdly, I don’t see how any student could have been out on the field at practice all on his own. As I thought I’d made clear, he couldn’t have got hold of a javelin.”

“Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that, so far, we have no proof of how Mr. Jones was killed, have we? Some other weapon..”

“Even so, my point about the javelin still holds good.”

‘It does not hold good if a member of the staff is implicated.”

“Oh, no, hang it all!” protested Henry. “You don’t really think it was one of us, do you?”

“Well, as you claim, you seem to have shown very clearly that no student could be in unlawful possession of a javelin. Did every member of the staff have a key to that steel-fronted cupboard?”

“I didn’t give James a key to it. There isn’t a spare, and there is no occasion for him to use the cupboard, you see.”

“Miss Celia?”

“Yes, she has a key. There are two or three wrapped-up bricks in there which she uses occasionally for life-saving practice. As Gassie conceives of them as objects of some menace, we keep them locked up.”

“Miss Lesley?”

“Her jumping-ropes, which have weighted ends, are kept in the cupboard. She once threatened to swing one at Jonah’s head, but that’s beside the point now.”

“Mr. Martin?”

“Helps me with the discus, hammer, javelin, and shot, so, of course, he needs a key to get access to the apparatus.”

“Mr. Jerry?”

“Starting guns. An ingenious student could turn them into lethal weapons. In fact, for Jerry’s Webley .38 you need a fire-arms certificate.”

“Miss Yale, of course, is in the same category as you and Mr. Martin, I believe. What about Mr. Barry?”

“The long-jump rakes are kept in the cupboard. Gassie takes simply no chances at all, and I think that is very sensible of him.”

“He himself has a key to the cupboard, I presume?”

“I suppose he’s got a full set of keys to every lock in the College. But I’m sure that, in going into details like this, you are barking up the wrong tree, Dame Beatrice. Whether Jonah’s death was an accident or not, it must have been caused by a student. After all, it was students, by their own confession, who carried him off and locked him away. They kidnapped Jones last Wednesday afternoon somewhere between the hours of two and four. By Thursday midnight Jones had been released or removed. The students say they had planned to set him at liberty, but when they went for him he was no longer there. Hamish and I both know that he was no longer there as early as Thursday night, as a matter of fact, because we went to look for him in the very place where the students say he was hidden away.”

“Has the doctor given his opinion of the approximate time of death?”

“Yes. He gave it to the police. The inspector, when he questioned Gassie and myself, told us that the medical opinion given by our own doctor and the police surgeon, was that Jones had been dead for round about thirty-six hours, give or take two to three hours each way.”

“Thirty-six hours?” said Dame Beatrice. “And at what time this morning did the doctor see the body?‘

“Let me think. Yes, James came to fetch me at just before eight. Breakfast is at eight and I was just about to leave my room and go down to it. The doctor came almost at once.”

“So thirty-six hours before that brings us to eight p.m. on Thursday. Could it possibly be rather later? After dark, perhaps?”

“That sounds very likely to me. It was after midnight on Thursday when James and I went along to the stoke-hole and got no reply from Jones. I see now why we did not. He was already dead.”

“Yes, he must have been. In your opinion—and bearing in mind that the doctors think he might have been dead either longer or less than thirty-six hours, when is the likeliest time…”

“For somebody to murder him? Well, it wasn’t done during Hall, because I always make a spot check at dinner. The best time to commit any unlawful act in this establishment would be at tea-time.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Tea is a hit-or-miss kind of meal here, and is laid on from four in the afternoon until five-thirty. Any student could miss it and nobody would wonder where he was. Some would stay on the field until perhaps five o’clock, others would go into tea at four and be out again by a quarter past, and so on. Tea is served buffet style in the halls of residence. Chaps just help themselves. The staff and the girls often brew up in their own quarters. All the women students are given their own crockery, so they go down to the kitchen and collect a pot of tea and some cakes and jam and take their tea in their own rooms, with or without their friends. The point I’m making, I hope, is that you couldn’t guarantee where any student would be, or what he would be doing, once the gong goes for tea.”

“And this applies until five-thirty, and to the staff as well?”

“Yes, it applies until the beginning of the last coaching-session, and even then lots of the students don’t attend a last coaching, but disport themselves in the pool or carry on in the workshops or follow other hobbies instead of taking a session or attending a blackboard or film-strip lecture on their particular event.”

“Do the swimming baths remain open during the tea interval?”

“You’re thinking of the covered bath where the javelin was found, are you not? The baths are not closed at all until the dressing-gongs are sounded at seven-thirty. We expect students to change for dinner in Hall, although there is no compulsion, of course. At this time of year it is the open-air pool which is popular. In fact, from tea-time onwards, except for the keen types who go for after-tea coaching or practice, the pool is the centre of the social life of the College, although the women’s gym is sometimes the scene of impromptu dancing.”

“But after dinner both baths are closed? I see. What about the staff at tea-time? Where do they have their tea?”

“The same applies to us as to the women students. We take tea in our own rooms and often invite a youngster or two, or some of the other lecturers.”

“And Mr. Medlar?”

“He’s not much of a mixer, but quite often he will invite Miss Yale or myself to take tea with him. It’s usually to discuss some College matter. He never invites students to tea, and I don’t think he has ever asked any other lecturer to join him, except, of course, Jones.”

“I wonder whether you will have time tomorrow to show me over the buildings?”

“Certainly I shall. The most important one, though, the covered bath in which the javelin was found, has been sealed off by the police.”

“The most important building is not that in which a javelin was found, but that in which one was used, surely?”

“You don’t think it was used out of doors, then?”

“As I am looking upon Mr. Jones’s death as a case of murder, I think an indoor setting is more likely as offering less chance of the deed being witnessed by some passer-by.”

“You are thinking of one of the gyms, perhaps. We have two, both spacious. One needs space in which to throw a javelin.”

“If it was thrown, and if the weapon was a javelin—of which, now I have seen the one to which Miss Yale drew our attention, I feel reasonably sure—one would certainly need space. My own view (and I have a feeling that you share it) is that, with the new steel head on it, the javelin would make a very efficient stabbing-spear.”

“You say ‘if it was thrown’, but whether it was thrown or whether it was used as a bayonet, it seems to me that the covered bath itself could be the place. There are mops about, used to swab down the tiles, and there is certainly plenty of water for washing out bloodstains.”

“And a javelin was smeared with red paint and left in one of the cubicles to tell the tale.”

“Sounds as though the killer is more than usually wrong in the head,” said Henry. He turned his own head and added, “Oh, bother! Here’s somebody wanting me, I think. A student named Kirk. Bit of a creep, I’m afraid.”

“He curries favour with the lecturers?”

“No. Sneaks to Gassie about us, we think. If he peached on other students he’d have been beaten up long ago. Unfortunately Gassie is always open to complaints about the staff. Helps him to keep the tabs on us, I suppose. Wonder what Kirk is after with me? Acting merely as Gassie’s messenger, I expect. I’m probably keeping you out here too long. Shall we say eleven tomorrow morning for our tour of the buildings?”

Kirk came up to them. Hamish would have recognized him as the student he had kicked across the lecture-room on the day after his arrival at Joynings. He had had nothing to do with the youth since then. Kirk was a gymnast, one of the late Jones’s neglected squad. He had never attended another French lecture.

“Hullo, Kirk,” said Henry, as the spotty, ill-favoured stripling came up to him. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s more like what I can do for you,” said the lad, smirking.

“In what way?”

“Something I’d like to tell you.”

“My ears are open and receptive.”

“Could we go…” he glanced at Dame Beatrice—“could we—could it be in private?”

“Then why have you come out here?”

“Just to tell you I’d like a word. Oh, at your convenience, of course.”

“I’d like to have some idea of what it’s to be about. You must know how tied up and worried we all are at present. In other words, won’t it keep?”

“But, Henry, it’s about Jonah.”

“In that case, you may speak freely in front of Dame Beatrice. She is here to help us to find out exactly what happened.”

“What I’ve got to say she won’t like.”

“In that case,” said Dame Beatrice, “I assume that you are about to disclose some unsavoury matter relating to my godson. I assure you that I have not the slightest objection to hearing it. Besides, if your information has to do with Mr. Jones’s death…”

“James knew about Miss Yale’s key.”

“What key?” demanded Henry. “What are you talking about?”

“The key that hangs just inside her office door. You only have to slide your hand round to get it. It hangs on a board with her other keys. I saw James take it.”

“You’ll need a witness who will substantiate that statement, my boy,” said Henry coldly, “but you haven’t answered my question. What key do you mean, and why is it important?”

“It opens the stoke-hole, that’s why.”

“In that case,” said Henry, “your statement that you saw James take the key is an absolute lie, and I can prove that it is.”

“Oh, yes?”

“When did you see James take it?”

“Why, on the afternoon of the night that you and he snooped round. And we know you did snoop round, so it’s no good denying it.”

“I had forgotten at that time about Miss Yale’s key,” said Henry, frowning thoughtfully, “but your ridiculous and mean little story falls to the ground, anyway. If anybody took that key, it was the kidnappers.”

“It wasn’t them. They had Jackson’s key.”

“So they told me. Well, I think you had better come with me to Gassie and then we’ll send for James and you can accuse him to his face.”

“Not me. And I’ll tell you something else. It was the javelin from Gassie’s collection that killed Jonah, wasn’t it?”

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s all over College. That girl who found it spotted the inscription.”

“Oh, yes, I suppose she did. What about it?”

“It’s also known that James was allowed in Gassie’s room to make a new catalogue,” said Kirk significantly.

“I see what you mean. It’s also all over College that James once treated you as I should like to treat you now, you scandal-mongering, revengeful little clot,” said Henry. “Come along. We’re going to get this cleared up.”

“All what cleared up? Here, I’m only warning you about James. I wanted him to be prepared. I thought you’d like to prepare him.”

“For what?”

“Well, questions.”

“Very well. We’ll all go along and see what questions Gassie would like to ask him.”

“Not me!” Before they realized what he was about to do, the youth was off across the field like a hare.

“Oh, well, time for him later,” said Henry. “I think, though, that it might be as well to have a word with Gassie about the little snake. Then, perhaps, we’d better tell Hamish what has been said.”

Gascoigne was perturbed by the story.

“A dangerous, spiteful boy,” he said at its conclusion; “but why should he select James for this tale? James had nothing against poor Davy, had he?”

“No. The fact is that James, at the beginning of his time here, had occasion to reprimand Kirk in a somewhat trenchant and forceful manner.”

“Oh? Why was that?”

“Kirk uttered an obscenity in front of a mixed class taking French.”

“I see. I will speak to Kirk and order him to recant. We cannot have these slanderous accusations being bandied around the College. I need hardly say that I have every confidence in James. Nobody who knows him would place a scrap of credence in this wretched boy’s story.”

“It might be as well for the police to hear it when they visit us again,” said Henry. He turned to Dame Beatrice. “Don’t you agree?”

“I think you are right. It is better that they should hear it from us than that it should come to them in a roundabout way from a student.”

“I think it might be better to let the story die a natural death, once I have interviewed Kirk and made him retract his accusation,” said the Warden.

“In any case, nothing will be of very much importance until we know the verdict following the inquest,” said Dame Beatrice.

“The verdict can be anticipated. It must surely be that of accidental death, followed by panic on the part of the student who caused it,” said the Warden. “All I am still hoping is that Dame Beatrice’s researches will uncover the unhappy culprit before the inquest takes place. It will save a great deal of trouble if we can help the coroner in such a way.”

Dame Beatrice pursed up her little mouth and shook her head. The Warden’s expression changed. His unctuous look was replaced by one of concern and gravity.

“You do not agree?” he asked.

“I do not think it is our business to help the coroner. He would not appreciate our facing him with what he might regard as a fait accompli,” Dame Beatrice replied. “What is more, I feel certain that Master Kirk does know something important about Mr. Jones’s death, whether it concerns Hamish or not.”

“Well, he’s an accomplished little snooper,” said Henry, “so it’s quite likely he’s seen or heard something, I suppose. He certainly knows that James and I went to the stoke-hole that night.”