Gaudy Night

22

Thursday. A heavy, gloomy and depressing Thursday, pouring down uninteresting rain from a sky like a grey box-lid. The Warden had called a meeting of the Senior Common Room for half-past two-an unconsoling hour. All three invalids were up and about again. Harriet had exchanged her bandages for some very unbecoming and unromantic strappings, and had not exactly a headache, but the sensation that a headache might begin at any moment. Miss de Vine looked like a ghost. Annie, though she had suffered less than the others physically, seemed to be still haunted by nervous terrors, and crept unhappily about her duties with the other Common Room maid always closely in attendance.

It was understood that Lord Peter Wimsey would attend the S.C.R. meeting in order to lay certain information before the staff. Harriet had received from him a brief and characteristic note, which said:

“Congratulations on not being dead yet. I have taken your collar away to have my name put on.”

She had already missed the collar. And she had had, from Miss Hillyard, a strangely vivid little picture of Peter, standing at her bedside between night and dawn, quite silent, and twisting the thick strap over and over in his hands. All morning she had expected to see him; but he arrived only at the last moment so that their meeting took place in the Common Room, under the eyes of all the dons. He had driven straight from Town without changing his suit, and above the dark cloth his head had the bleached look of a faint water-colour. He paid his respects politely to the Warden and the Senior dons before coming over and taking her hand.

“Well, and how are you?”

“Not too bad, considering.”

“That’s good.”

He smiled and went to sit by the Warden. Harriet, at the opposite side of the table, slipped into a place beside the Dean. Everything that was alive in him lay in the palm of her hand, like a ripe apple. Dr. Baring was asking him to begin and he was doing so, in the flat voice of a secretary reading the minutes of a company meeting. He had a sheaf of papers before him, including (Harriet noticed) her dossier, which he must have taken away on the Monday morning. But he went on without referring to so much as a note, addressing himself to a bowl filled with marigolds that stood on the table before him.

“I need not take up your time by going over all the details of this rather confusing case. I will first set out the salient points as they presented themselves to me when I came to Oxford last Sunday week, so as to show you the basis upon which I founded my working theory. I will then formulate that theory, and adduce the supporting evidence which I hope and think you will consider conclusive. I may say that practically all the data necessary to the formation of the theory are contained in the very valuable digest of the events prepared for me by Miss Vane and handed to me on my arrival. The rest of the proof was merely what the police call routine work.”

(This, thought Harriet, is suiting your style to your company with a vengeance. She looked round. The Common Room had the hushed air of a congregation settling down to a sermon, but she could feel the nervous tension everywhere. They did not know what they might be going to hear.) “The first point to strike an outsider,” went on Peter, “is the fact that these demonstrations began at the Gaudy. I may say that that was the first bad mistake the perpetrator made. By the way, it will save time and trouble if I refer to the perpetrator in the time-honoured way as X. If X had waited till term began, we should have had a much wider field for suspicion. I therefore asked myself what it was that so greatly excited X at the Gaudy that she could not wait for a more suitable time to begin.

“It seemed unlikely that any of the Old Students present could have roused X’s animosity, because the demonstrations continued in the following term. But they did not continue during the Long Vacation. So my attention was immediately directed to any person who entered the College for the first time at Gaudy and was in residence the following term. Only one person answered these requirements, and that was Miss de Vine.”

The first stir went round the table, like the wind running over a cornfield. “The first two communications came into the hands of Miss Vane. One of them, which amounted to an accusation of murder, was slipped into the sleeve of her gown and might, by a misleading coincidence, have been held to apply to her. But Miss Martin may remember that she placed Miss Vane’s gown in the Senior Common Room side by side with that of Miss de Vine. I Believe that X, misreading ‘H. D. Vane’ as ‘H. de Vine’ put the note in the wrong gown. This belief is, of course, not susceptible of proof; but the possibility is suggestive. The error, if it was one, distracted attention at the start from the central object of the campaign.”

Nothing altered in the level voice as he lifted the old infamy into view only to cast it in the next breath into oblivion, but the hand that had held hers tightened for a moment and relaxed. She found herself watching the hand as it moved now among the sheaf of papers.

“The second communication, picked up accidentally by Miss Vane in the quad, was destroyed like the other; but from the description I gather that it was a drawing similar to this.” He slipped out a paper from under the clip and passed it to the Warden. “It represents a punishment inflicted by a naked female figure upon another, which is clothed in academical dress and epicene. This appears to be the symbolic key to the situation. In the Michaelmas Term, other drawings of a similar kind appear, together with the motif of the hanging of some academical character-a motif which is repeated in the incident of the dummy found later on suspended in the Chapel. There were also communications of a vaguely obscene and threatening sort which need not be particularly considered. The most interesting and important one, perhaps, is the message addressed to (I think) Miss Hillyard. ‘No man is safe from women like you’; and the other, sent to Miss Flaxman, demanding that she should leave another student’s fiancé alone. These suggested that the basis of X’s grievance was sexual jealousy of the ordinary kind-a suggestion which, again, I believe to be entirely erroneous and to have obscured the issue in a quite fantastic manner.

“We next come (passing over the episode of the bonfire of gowns in the quad) to the more serious matter of Miss Lydgate’s manuscript. I do not think it is a coincidence that the portions most heavily disfigured and obliterated were those in which Miss Lydgate attacked the conclusions of other scholars, and those scholars, men. If I am right, we see that X is a person capable of reading, and to some extent understanding, a work of scholarship. Together with this outrage we may take the mutilation of the novel called The Search at the exact point where the author upholds, or appears for the moment to uphold, the doctrine that loyalty to the abstract truth must over-ride all personal considerations; and also the burning of Miss Barton’s book in which she attacks the Nazi doctrine that woman’s place in the State should be confined to the ‘womanly’ occupations of Kinder, Kirche, Kuche.

“In addition to these personal attacks upon individuals, we get the affair of the bonfire and the sporadic outbursts of obscenity upon the walls. When we come to the disfigurement of the Library, we get the generalized attack in a more spectacular form. The object of the campaign begins to show itself more clearly. The grievance felt by X, starting from a single person, has extended itself to the entire College, and the intention is to provoke a public scandal, which may bring the whole body into disrepute.”

Here for the first time the speaker lifted his gaze from the bowl of marigolds, let it travel slowly round the table, and brought it to rest upon the Warden’s intent face.

“Will you let me say, here and now, that the one thing which frustrated the whole attack from first to last was the remarkable solidarity and public spirit displayed by your college as a body. I think that was the last obstacle that X expected to encounter in a community of women. Nothing but the very great loyalty of the Senior Common Room to the College and the respect of the students for the Senior Common Room stood between you and a most unpleasant publicity. It is the merest presumption in me to tell you what you already know far better than I do; but I say it, not only for my own satisfaction, but because this particular kind of loyalty forms at once the psychological excuse for the attack and the only possible defence against it.”

“Thank you,” said the Warden. “I feel sure that everybody here will know how to appreciate that.”

“We come next,” resumed Wimsey, his eyes once more on the marigolds, “to the incident of the dummy in the Chapel. This merely repeats the theme of the early drawings, but with a greater eye to dramatic effect. Its evidential importance lies in the ‘Harpy’ quotation pinned to the dummy; the mysterious appearance of a black figured frock which nobody could identify; the subsequent conviction of the ex-porter Jukes for theft; and the finding of the mutilated newspaper in Miss de Vine’s room, which closed that sequence of events. I will take up those points later.

“It was about this time that Miss Vane made the acquaintance of my nephew Saint-George, and he mentioned to her that, under circumstances into which we need not, perhaps, inquire, he had met a mysterious woman one night in your Fellows’ Garden, and that she had told him two things. One: that Shrewsbury College was a place where they murdered beautiful boys like him and ate their hearts out; secondly: that ‘the other had fair hair, too.’”

This piece of information was new to most of the Senior Common Room, and caused a mild sensation.

“Here we have the ‘murder-motif’ emphasized, with a little detail about the victim. He is a man, fair, handsome and comparatively young. My nephew then said he would not undertake to recognize the woman again; but on a subsequent occasion he saw and did recognize her.”

Once again the tremor passed round the table.

“The next important disturbance was the affair of the missing fuses.”

Here the Dean could contain herself no longer and burst out:

“What a lovely title for a thriller!”

The veiled eyes lifted instantly, and the laughter-lines gathered at the corners.

“Perfect. And that was all it was. X retired, having accomplished nothing but a thriller with good publicity value.”

“And it was after that,” said Miss de Vine, “that the newspaper was found in my room.”

“Yes,” said Wimsey; “mine was a rational, not a chronological, grouping… That brings us to the end of the Hilary Term. The Vacation passed without incident. In the Summer Term, we are faced with the cumulative effect of long and insidious persecution upon a scholar of sensitive temperament. That was the most dangerous phase of X’s activities. We know that other students besides Miss Newland had received letters wishing them bad luck in their Schools; happily, Miss Layton and the rest were of tougher fibre. But I should like particularly to draw your attention to the fact that, with a few unimportant exceptions, the animus was all directed against dons and scholars.”

Here the Bursar, who had been manifesting irritation for some time, broke in:

“I cannot imagine why they are making all that noise underneath this building. Do you mind, Warden, if I send out and stop it?”

“I am sorry,” said Wimsey. “I am afraid I am responsible for that. I suggested to Padgett that a search in the coal-cellar might be profitable.”

“Then,” pronounced the Warden, “I fear we must put up with it, Bursar.” She inclined her head towards Wimsey, who went on:

“That is a brief summary of the events as presented to me by Miss Vane, when, with your consent, Warden, she laid the case before me. I rather gathered”-here the right hand became restless and began to beat out a silent tattoo upon the tabletop-“that she and some others among you were inclined to look upon the outrages as the outcome of repressions sometimes accompanying the celibate life and issuing in an obscene and unreasoning malice directed partly against the conditions of that life and partly against persons who enjoyed or had enjoyed or might be supposed to enjoy a wider experience. There is no doubt that malice of that kind exists. But the history of the case seemed to me to offer a psychological picture of an entirely different kind. One member of this Common Room has been married, and another is engaged to be married; and neither of these, who ought to have been the first victims, were (so far as I know) persecuted at all. The dominance of the naked female figure in the early drawing is also highly significant. So is the destruction of Miss Barton’s book. Also, the bias displayed by X seemed to be strongly anti-scholastic, and to have a more or less rational motive, based on some injury amounting in X’s mind to murder, inflicted upon a male person by a female scholar. The grievance seemed, to my mind, to be felt principally against Miss de Vine, and to be extended, from her, to the whole College and possibly to educated women in general. I therefore felt we should look for a woman either married or with sexual experience, of limited education but some acquaintance with scholars and scholarship, whose past was in some way linked with that of Miss de Vine, and (though this was an assumption) who had probably come into residence later than last December.”

Harriet twisted her glance away from Peter’s hand, which had ceased its soft drumming and now lay flat on the table, to estimate the effect of this on his hearers. Miss de Vine was frowning as though her mind, running back over the years, were dispassionately considering her claim to have done murder; Miss Chilperic’s face wore a troubled blush, and Mrs. Goodwin’s an air of protest; in Miss Hillyard’s eyes was an extraordinary mixture of triumph and embarrassment; Miss Barton was nodding quiet assent, Miss Allison smiling, Miss Shaw faintly affronted; Miss Edwards was looking at Peter with eyes that said frankly, “You are the sort of person I can deal with.” The Warden’s grave countenance was expressionless. The Dean’s profile gave no clue to her feelings, but she uttered a little, quick sigh that sounded like relief.

“I will now come,” said Peter, “to the material clues. First, the printed messages. It seemed to me extremely unlikely that these could have been produced, in such quantity, within the College walls, without leaving some trace of their origin. I was inclined to look for an outside source. Similarly with the figured dress found on the dummy; it seemed very strange that nobody should ever have set eyes on it before, though it was several seasons old. Thirdly, there was the odd circumstance that the letters which came by post were always received either on a Monday or a Thursday, as though Sunday and Wednesday were the only days on which letters could conveniently be posted from a distant post-office or box. These three considerations might have suggested someone living at a distance, who visited Oxford only twice a week. But the nightly disturbances made it plain that the person actually lived within the walls, with fixed days for going outside them and a place somewhere outside, where clothes could be kept and letters prepared. The person who would fulfill these conditions best would be one of the scouts.”

Miss Stevens and Miss Barton both stirred.

“The majority of the scouts, however, seemed to be ruled out. Those who were not confined within the Scouts’ Wing at night were trusted women of long service here-most unlikely to fulfill any of the other conditions. Most of those in Scouts’ Wing slept two in a room, and therefore (unless two of them were in collusion) could not possibly escape into the College night after night without being suspected. This left only those who had separate bedrooms: Carrie, the head Scout; Annie, the scout attached first to Miss Lydgate’s staircase and subsequently to the Senior Common Room, and a third scout, Ethel, an elderly and highly reputable woman. Of these three, Annie corresponded most closely to the psychological picture of X; for she had been married and had the afternoon of Sunday and the afternoon and evening of Wednesday free; she also had her children domiciled in the town and therefore a place where she could keep clothes and prepare letters.”

“But-” began the Bursar, indignantly.

“This is only the case as I saw it last Sunday week,” said Wimsey. “Certain powerful objections at once presented themselves. The Scouts’ Wing was shut off by locked doors and gates. But it was made clear at the time of the Library episode that the buttery hatch was occasionally left open for the convenience of students wishing to obtain supplies late at night. Miss Hudson had, in fact, expected to find it open that very night. When Miss Vane tried it, it was, in fact, locked. But that was after X had left the Library, and you will remember that X was shown to have been trapped in the Hall Building by Miss Vane and Miss Hudson at one end and Miss Barton at the other. The assumption made at the time was that she had been hiding in the Hall.

“After that episode, greater care was taken to see that the buttery hatch was kept locked, and I learn that the key, which was previously left on the inner side of the hatch, was removed and placed on Carrie’s key-ring. But a key can very readily be cut in a single day. Actually, it was a week before the next nocturnal episode occurred, which carries us over the following Wednesday, when a key abstracted from Carrie’s bunch might readily have been copied and returned. (I know for a fact that such a key was cut on that Wednesday by an ironmonger in the lower part of the town, though I have not been able to identify the purchaser. But that is merely a routine detail.) There was one consideration which inclined Miss Vane to exonerate all the scouts, and that was, that no woman in that position would be likely to express her resentment in the Latin quotation from the Aeneid found attached to the dummy.

“This objection had some weight with me, but not a great deal. It was the only message that was not in English, and it was one to which any school child might easily have access. On the other hand, the fact that it was unique among the other scripts made me sure that it had some particular significance. I mean, it wasn’t that X’s feelings habitually expressed themselves in Latin hexameters. There must be something special about that passage besides its general applicability to unnatural females who snatch the meat from men’s mouths. Nec saevior ulla pestis.”

“When I first heard of that,” broke in Miss Hillyard, “I felt sure that a man was behind all this.”

“That was probably a sound instinct,” said Wimsey. “I feel sure that a man did write that… Well, I need not take up time with pointing out how easy it was for anybody to wander about the College at night and play tricks on people. In a community of two hundred people, some of whom scarcely know one another by sight, it is harder to find a person than to lose her. But the intrusion of Jukes upon the situation at that moment was rather awkward for X. Miss Vane showed and announced, a disposition to inquire rather too closely into Jukes’s home-life. As a result somebody who knew a good deal about Jukes’s little habits laid an information and Jukes was removed to gaol. Mrs. Jukes took refuge with her relations and Annie’s children were sent away to Headington. And in order that we should feel quite sure that the Jukes household had nothing to do with the matter, a mutilated newspaper appeared shortly afterwards in Miss de Vine’s room.”

Harriet looked up.

“I did work that out-eventually. But what happened last week seemed to make it quite impossible.”

“I don’t think,” said Peter, “you approached the problem-forgive me for saying so-with an unprejudiced mind and undivided attention. Something got between you and the facts.”

“Miss Vane has been helping me so generously with my books,” murmured Miss Lydgate, contritely; “and she has had her own work to do as well. We really ought not to have asked her to spare any time for our problems.”

“I had plenty of time,” said Harriet. “I was only stupid.”

“At any rate,” said Wimsey, “Miss Vane did enough to make X feel she was dangerous. At the beginning of this term, we find X becoming more desperate and more deadly in intention. With the lighter evenings, it becomes more difficult to play tricks at night. There is the psychological attempt on Miss Newland’s life and reason and, when that fails, an effort is made to create a stink in the University by sending letters to the Vice-Chancellor. However, the University proved to be as sound as the College; having let the women in, it was not prepared to let them down. This was no doubt exasperating to the feelings of X. Dr. Threep acted as intermediary between the Vice-Chancellor and yourselves, and the matter was presumably dealt with.”

“I informed the Vice-chancellor,” said the Warden, “that steps were being taken.”

“Quite so; and you complimented me by asking me to take those steps. I had very little doubt from the start as to the identity of X; but suspicion is not proof, and I was anxious not to cast any suspicion that could not be justified. My first task was obviously to find out whether Miss de Vine had actually ever murdered or injured anybody. In the course of a very interesting after-dinner conversation in this room, she informed me that, six years ago, she had been instrumental in depriving a man of his reputation and livelihood-and we decided, if you remember, that this was an action which any manly man or womanly woman might be disposed to resent.”

“Do you mean to say,” cried the Dean, “that all that discussion was intended merely to bring out that story?”

“I offered an opportunity for the story’s appearance, certainly; but if it hadn’t come out then, I should have asked for it. Incidentally, I established for a certainty, what I was sure of in my own mind from the start, that there was not a woman in this Common Room, married or single, who would be ready to place personal loyalties above professional honour. That was a point which it seemed necessary to make clear-not so much to me, as to yourselves.”

The Warden looked from Miss Hillyard to Mrs. Goodwin and back at Peter.

“Yes,” she said, “I think it was wise to establish that.”

“The next day,” said Peter, “I asked Miss de Vine for the name of the man in question, whom we already knew to be handsome and married. The name was Arthur Robinson; and with this information I set out to find what had become of him. My working theory was that X was either the wife or some relation of Robinson: that she had come here when Miss de Vine’s appointment was announced, with the intention of revenging his misfortunes upon Miss de Vine, the College and academic women in general; and that in all probability X was a person who stood in some close relation to the Jukes family. This theory was strengthened by the discovery that information was laid against Jukes by an anonymous letter similar to those circulated here.

“Now, the first thing that happened after my arrival was the appearance of X in the Science Lecture Room. The idea that X was courting discovery by preparing letters in that public and dangerous manner was patently absurd. The whole thing was a clear fake, intended to mislead, and probably to establish an alibi. The communications had been prepared elsewhere and deliberately planted-in fact, there were not enough letters left in the box to finish the message that had been begun to Miss Vane. The room chosen was in full view of the Scouts’ Wing, and the big ceiling light was conspicuously turned on, though there was a reading-lamp in the room, in good working order; it was Annie who drew Carrie’s attention to the light in the window; Annie was the only person who claimed to have actually seen X; and while the alibi was established for both scouts, Annie was the one who most closely corresponded to the conditions required to X.”

“But Carrie heard X in the room,” said the Dean.

“Oh, yes,” said Wimsey, smiling. “And Carrie was sent to fetch you while Annie removed the strings that had switched out the light and overturned the blackboard from the other side of the door. I pointed out to you, you know, that the top of the door had been thoroughly dusted, so that the mark of the string shouldn’t show.”

“But the marks on the dark-room window-sill-” said the Dean.

“Quite genuine. She got out there the first time, leaving the doors locked on the inside and strewing a few of Miss de Vine’s hairpins about to produce conviction. Then she let herself into the Scouts’ Wing through the Buttery, called up Carrie and brought her along to see the fun… I think, by the way, that some one of the scouts must have had her suspicions. Perhaps she had found Annie’s bedroom door mysteriously locked on various occasions, or had met her in the passage at inconvenient times. Anyhow, the time had obviously arrived for establishing an alibi. I hazarded the suggestion that nocturnal ramblings would cease from that time on; and so they did. And I don’t suppose we shall ever find that extra key to the Buttery.”

“All very well,” said Miss Edwards. “But you still have no proof.”

“No. I went away to get it. In the meantime, X-if you don’t like my identification-decided that Miss Vane was dangerous, and laid a trap to catch her. This didn’t come off, because Miss Vane very sensibly telephoned back to College to confirm the mysterious message she had received at Somerville. The message was sent from an outside call-box on the Wednesday night at 10:40. Just before eleven, Annie came in from her day off and heard Padgett speak to Miss Vane on the ’phone. She didn’t hear the conversation, but she probably heard the name.

“Although the attempt had not come off, I felt sure that another would be made, either on Miss Vane, Miss de Vine or the suspicious scout-or on all three. I issued a warning to that effect. The next thing that happened was that Miss Vane’s chessmen were destroyed. That was rather unexpected. It looked less like alarm than personal hatred. Up till that time. Miss Vane had been treated with almost as much tenderness as though she had been a womanly woman. Can you think of anything that can have given X that impression, Miss Vane?”

“I don’t know,” said Harriet, confused. “I asked kindly after the children and spoke to Beatie-good heavens, yes, Beatie!-when I met them. And I remember once agreeing politely with Annie that marriage might be a good thing if one could find the right person.”

“That was politic if unprincipled. And how about the attentive Mr. Jones of Jesus? If you will bring young men into the College at night and hide them in the Chapel-”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Miss Pyke.

“-you must be expected to be thought a womanly woman. However; that is of no great importance. I fear the illusion was destroyed when you publicly informed me that personal attachments must come second to public duties.”

“But,” said Miss Edwards, impatiently, “what happened to Arthur Robinson?”

“He was married to a woman called Charlotte Ann Clarke, who had been his landlady’s daughter. His first child, born eight years ago, was called Beatrice. After the trouble at York, he changed his name to Wilson and took a post as junior master in a small preparatory school, where they didn’t mind taking a man who had been deprived of his M.A., so long as he was cheap. His second daughter, born shortly afterwards, was named Carola. I’m afraid the Wilsons didn’t find life too easy. He lost his first job-drink was the reason, I’m afraid-took another-got into trouble again and three years ago blew his brains out. There were some photographs in the local paper. Here they are, you see. A fair, handsome man of about thirty-eight-irresolute, attractive, something of my nephew’s type. And here is the photograph of the widow.”

“You are right,” said the Warden. “That is Annie Wilson.”

“Yes. If you read the report of the inquest, you will see that he left a letter, saying that he had been hounded to death-rather a rambling letter, containing a Latin quotation, which the coroner obligingly translated.”

“Good gracious!” said Miss Pyke. “Tristius haud illis monstrum-?”

“Ita. A man wrote that after all, you see; so Miss Hillyard was so far right. Annie Wilson, being obliged to do something to support her children and herself, went into service.”

“I had very good references with her,” said the Bursar.

“No doubt; why not? She must somehow have kept track of Miss de Vine’s movements; and when the appointment was announced last Christmas, she applied for a job here. She probably knew that, as an unfortunate widow with two small children, she would receive kindly consideration-”

“What did I tell you?” cried Miss Hillyard. “I always said that this ridiculous sentimentality about married women would be the ruin of all discipline in this College. Their minds are not, and cannot be, on their work.”

“Oh, dear!” said Miss Lydgate. “Poor soul brooding over that grievance in this really unbalanced way! If only we had known, we could surely have done something to make her see the thing in a more rational light. Did it never occur to you, Miss de Vine, to inquire what happened to this unhappy man Robinson?”

“I am afraid it did not.”

“Why should you?” demanded Miss Hillyard.

The noise in the coal-cellar had ceased within the last few minutes. As though the silence had roused a train of association in her mind. Miss Chilperic turned to Peter and said, hesitatingly:

“If poor Annie really did all these dreadful things, how did she get shut up in the coal-hole?”

“Ah!” said Peter. “That coal-hole very nearly shook my faith in my theory; especially as I didn’t get the report from my research staff till yesterday. But when you come to think of it, what else could she do? She laid a plot to attack Miss de Vine on her return from Town-the scouts probably knew which train she was coming by.”

“Nellie knew,” said Harriet.

“Then she could have told Annie. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune, the attack was delivered-not against Miss de Vine, who would have been taken unawares and whose heart is not strong, but against a younger and stronger woman, who was, up to the certain point, prepared to meet it. Even so, it was serious enough, and might easily have proved fatal. I find it difficult to forgive myself for not having spoken earlier-with or without proof-and put the suspect under observation.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Harriet, quickly. “If you had, she might have chucked the whole thing for the rest of the term, and we should still not know anything definite. I wasn’t much hurt.”

“No. But it might not have been you. I knew you were ready to take the risk; but I had no right to expose Miss de Vine.”

“It seems to me,” said Miss de Vine, “that the risk was rightly and properly mine.”

“The worst responsibility rests on me,” said the Warden. “I should have telephoned the warning to you before you left Town.”

“Whosever fault it was,” said Peter, “it was Miss Vane who was attacked. Instead of a nice, quiet throttling, there was a nasty fall and a lot of blood, some of which, no doubt, got on to the assailant’s hands and dress. She was in an awkward position. She had got the wrong person, she was bloodstained and dishevelled, and Miss de Vine or somebody else might arrive at any moment. Even if she ran quickly back to her own room, she might be seen-her uniform was stained-and when the body was found (alive or dead) she would be a marked woman. Her only possible chance was to stage an attack on herself. She went out through the back of the Loggia, threw herself into the coal-cellar, locked the door on herself and proceeded to cover up Miss Vane’s bloodstains with her own. By the way, Miss Vane, if you remembered anything of your lesson, you must have marked her wrists for her.”

“I’ll swear I did,” said Harriet.

“But any amount of bruising may be caused by trying to scramble through a ventilator. Well. The evidence, you see, is still circumstantial-even though my nephew is prepared to identify the woman he saw crossing Magdalen Bridge on Wednesday with the woman he met in the garden. One can catch a Headington bus from the other side of Magdalen Bridge. Meanwhile, you heard this fellow in the cellarage? If I am not mistaken, somebody is arriving with something like direct proof.”

A heavy step in the passage was followed by a knock on the door; and Padgett followed the knock almost before he was told to come in. His clothes bore traces of coal-dust, though some hasty washing had evidently been done to his hands and face.

“Excuse me, madam Warden, miss,” said Padgett. “Here you are, Major. Right down at the bottom of the ’eap. ’Ad to shift the whole lot, I had.” He laid a large key on the table.

“Have you tried it in the cellar-door?”

“Yes, sir. But there wasn’t no need. ’Ere’s my label on it. ‘Coal-cellar’ see?”

“Easy to lock yourself in and hide the key. Thank you, Padgett.”

“One moment, Padgett,” said the Warden. “I want to see Annie Wilson. Will you please find her and bring her here.”

“Better not,” said Wimsey, in a low tone.

“I certainly shall,” said the Warden, sharply. “You have made a public accusation against this unfortunate woman and it is only right that she should be given an opportunity to answer it. Bring her here at once, Padgett.” Peter’s hands made a last eloquent gesture of resignation as Padgett went out.

“I think it is very necessary,” said the Bursar, “that this matter should be cleared up completely and at once.”

“Do you realty think it wise, Warden?” asked the Dean.

“Nobody shall be accused in this College,” said the Warden “without a hearing. Your arguments, Lord Peter, appear to be most convincing; but the evidence may bear some other interpretation. Annie Wilson is, no doubt, Charlotte Ann Robinson; but it does not follow that she is the author of the disturbances. I admit that appearances are against her, but there may be falsification or coincidence. The key, for example, may have been put into the coal-cellar at any time within the last three days.”

“I have been down to see Jukes,” began Peter; when the entrance of Annie interrupted him. Neat and subdued as usual, she approached the Warden:

“Padgett said you wished to see me, madam.” Then her eye fell on the newspaper spread out upon the table, and she drew in her breath with a long, sharp hiss, while her eyes went round the room like the eyes of a hunted animal.

“Mrs. Robinson,” said Peter, quickly and quietly. “We can quite understand how you came to feel a grievance-perhaps a justifiable grievance-against the persons responsible for the sad death of your husband. But how could you bring yourself to let your children help you to prepare those horrible messages? Didn’t you realize that if anything had happened they might have been called upon to bear witness in court?”

“No, they wouldn’t,” she said quickly. “They knew nothing about it. They only helped to cut out the letters. Do you think I’d let them suffer?… My God! You can’t do that… I say you can’t do it… You beasts, I’d kill myself first.”

“Annie,” said Dr. Baring, “are we to understand that you admit being responsible for all these abominable disturbances? I sent for you in order that you might clear yourself of certain suspicions which-”

“Clear myself! I wouldn’t trouble to clear myself. You smug hypocrites-I’d like to see you bring me into court. I’d laugh in your faces. How would you look, sitting there while I told the judge how that woman there killed my husband?”

“I am exceedingly disturbed,” said Miss de Vine, “to hear about all this. I knew nothing of it till just now. But indeed I had no choice in the matter. I could not foresee the consequences-and even if I had-”

“You wouldn’t have cared. You killed him and you didn’t care. I say you murdered him. What had he done to you? What harm had he done to anybody? He only wanted to live and be happy. You took the bread out of his mouth and flung his children and me out to starve. What did it matter to you? You had no children. You hadn’t a man to care about. I know all about you. You had a man once and you threw him over because it was too much bother to look after him. But couldn’t you leave my man alone? He told a lie about somebody else who was dead and dust hundreds of years ago. Nobody was the worse for that. Was a dirty bit of paper more important than all our lives and happiness? You broke him and killed him-all for nothing. Do you think that’s a woman’s job?”

“Most unhappily,” said Miss de Vine, “it was my job.”

“What business had you with a job like that? A woman’s job is to look after a husband and children. I wish I had killed you. I wish I could kill you all. I wish I could burn down this place and all the places like it-where you teach women to take men’s jobs and rob them first and kill them afterwards.”

She turned to the Warden.

“Don’t you know what you’re doing? I’ve heard you sit round snivelling about unemployment-but it’s you, it’s women like you who take the work away from the men and break their hearts and lives. No wonder you can’t get men for yourselves and hate the women who can. God keep the men out of your hands, that’s what I say. You’d destroy your own husbands, if you had any, for an old book or bit of writing… I loved my husband and you broke his heart. If he’d been a thief or a murderer, I’d have loved him and stuck to him. He didn’t mean to steal that old bit of paper-he only put it away. It made no difference to anybody. It wouldn’t have helped a single man or woman or child in the world-it wouldn’t have kept a cat alive; but you killed him for it.”

Peter had got up and stood behind Miss de Vine, with his hand over her wrist. She shook her head. Immovable, implacable, thought Harriet; this won’t make her pulse miss a single beat. The rest of the Common Room looked merely stunned.

“Oh, no!” said Annie, echoing Harriet’s thoughts. “She feels nothing. None of them feel anything. You brazen devils-you all stand together. You’re only frightened for your skins and your miserable reputations. I scared you all, didn’t I? God! how I laughed to see you all look at one another! You didn’t even trust each other. You can’t agree about anything except hating decent women and their men. I wish I’d torn the throats out of the lot of you. It would have been too good for you, though. I wanted to see you thrown out to starve, like us. I wanted to see you all dragged into the gutter. I wanted to see you-you-sneered at and trampled on and degraded and despised as we were. It would do you good to learn to scrub floors for a living as I’ve done, and use your hands for something, and say ‘madam’ to a lot of scum… But I made you shake in your shoes, anyhow. You couldn’t even find out who was doing it-that’s all your wonderful brains come to. There’s nothing in your books about life and marriage and children, is there? Nothing about desperate people-or love-or hate or anything human. You’re ignorant and stupid and helpless. You’re a lot of fools. You can’t do anything for yourselves. Even you, you silly old hags-you had to get a man to do your work for you.

“You brought him here.” She leaned over Harriet with her fierce eyes, as though she would have fallen on her and torn her to pieces. “And you’re the dirtiest hypocrite of the lot. I know who you are. You had a lover once, and he died. You chucked him out because you were too proud to marry him. You were his mistress and you sucked him dry, and you didn’t value him enough to let him make an honest woman of you. He died because you weren’t there to look after him. I suppose you’d say you loved him. You don’t know what love means. It means sticking to your man through thick and thin and putting up with everything. But you take men and use them and throw them away when you’ve finished with them. They come after you like wasps round a jam-jar, and then they fall in and die. What are you going to do with that one there? You send for him when you need him to do your dirty work, and when you’ve finished with him you’ll get rid of him. You don’t want to cook his meals and mend his clothes and bear his children like a decent woman. You’ll use him, like any other tool, to break me. You’d like to see me in prison and my children in a home, because you haven’t the guts to do your proper job in the world. The whole bunch of you together haven’t flesh and blood enough to make you fit for a man. As for you-”

Peter had come back to his place and was sitting with his head in his hands. She went over and shook him furiously by the shoulder, and as he looked up, spat in his face. “You! you dirty traitor! You rotten little white-faced rat! It’s men like you that make women like this. You don’t know how to do anything but talk. What do you know about life, with your title and your money and your clothes and motor-cars? You’ve never done a hand’s turn of honest work. You can buy all the women you want. Wives and mothers may rot and die for all you care, while you chatter about duty and honour. Nobody would sacrifice anything for you-why should they? That woman’s making a fool of you and you can’t see it. If she marries you for your money she’ll make a worse fool of you, and you’ll deserve it. You’re fit for nothing but to keep your hands white and father other men’s children… What are you going to do now, all of you? Run away and squeal to the magistrate because I made fools of you all? You daren’t. You’re afraid to come out into the light. You’re afraid for your precious college and your precious selves. I’m not afraid. I did nothing but stand up for my own flesh and blood. Damn you! I can laugh at you all! You daren’t touch me. You’re afraid of me. I had a husband and I loved him-and you were jealous of me and you killed him. Oh, God! You killed him among you, and we never had a happy moment again.”

She suddenly burst out crying-half dreadful and half grotesque, with her cap crooked and her hands twisting her apron into a knot.

“For Heaven’s sake,” muttered the Dean, desperately, “can’t this be stopped?”

Here Miss Barton got up.

“Come, Annie,” she said, briskly. “We are all very sorry for you, but you mustn’t behave in this foolish and hysterical way. What would the children think if they saw you now? You had better come and lie down quietly and take some aspirin. Bursar! will you please help me out with her?”

Miss Stevens, galvanized, got up and took Annie’s other arm, and all three went out together. The Warden turned to Peter, who stood mechanically wiping his face with his handkerchief and looking at nobody.

“I apologize for allowing this scene to take place, I ought to have known better. You were perfectly right.”

“Of course he was right!” cried Harriet. Her head was throbbing like an engine. “He’s always right. He said it was dangerous to care for anybody. He said love was a brute and a devil. You’re honest, Peter, aren’t you? Damned honest-Oh, God! let me get out of here. I’m going to be sick.”

She stumbled blindly against him as he held the door open for her, and he had to steer her with a firm hand to the cloak-room door. When he came back, the Warden had risen, and the dons with her. They looked stupefied with the shock of seeing so many feelings stripped naked in public.

“Of course, Miss de Vine,” the Warden was saying, “no sane person could possibly think of blaming you.”

“Thank you. Warden,” said Miss de Vine. “Nobody, perhaps, but myself.”

“Lord Peter,” said the Warden, “a little later on, when we are all feeling more ourselves, I think we should all like to say-”

“Please don’t,” said he. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

The Warden went out, and the rest followed her like mutes at a funeral, leaving only Miss de Vine, sitting solitary beneath the window. Peter shut the door after them and came up to her. He was still passing his handkerchief across his mouth. Becoming aware of this, he tossed the linen into the wastepaper basket.

“I do blame myself,” said Miss de Vine, less to him than to herself. “Most bitterly. Not for my original action, which was unavoidable, but for the sequel. Nothing you can say to me could make me feel more responsible than I do already.”

“I can have nothing to say,” said he. “Like you and every member of this Common Room, I admit the principle and the consequences must follow.”

“That won’t do,” said the Fellow, bluntly. “One ought to take some thought for other people. Miss Lydgate would have done what I did in the first place; but she would have made it her business to see what became of that unhappy man and his wife.”

“Miss Lydgate is a very great and a very rare person. But she could not prevent other people from suffering for her principles. That seems to be what principles are for, somehow… I don’t claim, you know,” he added, with something of his familiar diffidence, “to be a Christian or anything of that kind. But there’s one thing in the Bible that seems to me to be a mere statement of brutal fact-I mean, about bringing not peace but a sword.”

Miss de Vine looked up at him curiously.

“How much are you going to suffer for this?”

“God knows,” he said. “That’s my lookout. Perhaps not at all. In any case, you know, I’m with you-every time.”

When Harriet emerged from the cloak-room, she found Miss de Vine alone.

“Thank Heaven, they’ve gone,” said Harriet. “I’m afraid I made an exhibition of myself. It was rather-shattering, wasn’t it? What’s happened to Peter?”

“He’s gone,” said Miss de Vine.

She hesitated, and then said:

“Miss Vane-I’ve no wish to pry impertinently into your affairs. Stop me if I am saying too much. But we have talked a good deal about facing the facts. Isn’t it time you faced the facts about that man?”

“I have been facing one fact for some time,” said Harriet, staring out with unseeing eyes into the quad, “and that is, that if I once gave way to Peter, I should go up like straw.”

“That,” said Miss de Vine, drily, “is moderately obvious. How often has he used that weapon against you?”

“Never,” said Harriet, remembering the moments when he might have used it. “Never.”

“Then what are you afraid of? Yourself?”

“Isn’t this afternoon warning enough?”

“Perhaps. You have had the luck to come up against a very unselfish and a very honest man. He has done what you asked him without caring what it cost him and without shirking the issue. He hasn’t tried to disguise the facts or bias your judgment. You admit that, at any rate.”

“I suppose he realized how I should feel about it?”

“Realized it?” said Miss de Vine, with a touch of irritation. “My dear girl, give him the credit for the brains he’s got. They are very good ones. He is painfully sensitive and far more intelligent than is good for him. But I really don’t think you can go on like this. You won’t break his patience or his control or his spirit; but you may break his health. He looks like a person pushed to the last verge of endurance.”

“He’s been rushing about and working very hard,” said Harriet, defensively. “I shouldn’t be at all a comfortable person for him to live with. I’ve got a devilish temper.”

“Well, that’s his risk, if he likes to take it. He doesn’t seem to lack courage.”

“I should only make his life a misery.”

“Very well. If you are determined that you’re not fit to black his boots, tell him so and send him away.”

“I’ve been trying to send Peter away for five years. It doesn’t have that effect on him.”

“If you had really tried, you could have sent him away in five minutes… Forgive me. I don’t suppose you’ve had a very easy time with yourself. But it can’t have been easy for him, either-looking on at it, and quite powerless to interfere.”

“Yes. I almost wish he had interfered, instead of being so horribly intelligent. It would be quite a relief to be ridden over rough-shod for a change.”

“He will never do that. That’s his weakness. He’ll never make up your mind for you. You’ll have to make your own decisions. You needn’t be afraid of losing your independence; he will always force it back on you. If you ever find any kind of repose with him, it can only be the repose of very delicate balance.”

“That’s what he says himself. If you were me, should you like to marry a man like that?”

“Frankly,” said Miss de Vine, “I should not. I would not do it for any consideration. A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. You can hurt one another so dreadfully.”

“I know. And I don’t think I can stand being hurt any more.”

“Then,” said Miss de Vine, “I suggest that you stop hurting other people. Face the facts and state a conclusion. Bring a scholar’s mind to the problem and have done with it.”

“I believe you’re quite right,” said Harriet. “I will. And that reminds me. Miss Lydgate’s History of Prosody was marked PRESS with her own hand this morning. I fled with it and seized on a student to take it down to the printers. I’m almost positive I heard a faint voice crying from the window about a footnote on page 97-but I pretended not to hear.”

“Well,” said Miss de Vine, laughing, “thank goodness, that piece of scholarship has achieved a result at last!”