Tom Brown's Body

20. A Scrum for a Line-Out

*

But, hark you, my Lad. Don't tell me a Lye; for you know I hate a Liar.

IBID. (Act 1, Scene 6)

THE inquest on Gerald Conway was resumed during the Christmas vacation, and, to their great annoyance, several of the masters were called upon to attend. Mr Loveday, Mr Semple, Mr Wyck, Mr Kay, and Mr Poundbury were all there. Also among the witnesses were Miss Loveday, Mrs Poundbury, and Mrs Kay.

So far as the police were concerned, no fact of importance emerged, and the verdict, one of wilful murder by person or persons unknown, caused no surprise and not much gossip.

'Well, there we are,' said Gavin. 'I would say that so far there's not a shred of evidence. Let's have a round-up of the possibles and see whom we can eliminate once and for all. Now first of all there's Kay. He had a motive, but it doesn't seem any more likely that he did the job than that Poundbury or even old Loveday did. Put with them the Jewish boy Issacher and you've got four suspects whose temperaments would be the deciding factor. Of course, if we could show a possibility of collusion, or even an accessory either before or after the fact, it would help a good deal, but we can't.'

'Then there is Mr Semple,' Mrs Bradley pointed out. 'He was robbed of his amorada by Mr Conway.'

Gavin looked doubtful.

'I don't see Semple committing murder,' he said. 'As a matter of fact, that goes for Loveday, too. Still, what I think isn't evidence. No, as I see it, we're back to Pearson, as you suggested before. I suspect him because of the idol's head. He's the only person who would have known about it, I should say. I know! We'll ask that rather poisonous pal of Conway – Sugg – whether he knew anything about it. If he didn't it is fairly certain that the others didn't either.'

'The boy Scrupe knew about it,' Mrs Bradley felt compelled to point out.

*

The new term commenced half-way through January. The weather was at its worst. Deep snow-drifts had piled up against the hedges, and Big Field had become a battleground not of football but of snow-fights, House against House, School House emerging victorious.

Gavin gave the new term and the seasonable weather a week; then he descended again upon Mr Wyck and the Staff with a list of people whom he wished to interview.

'Scrupe?' said Mr Wyck doubtfully, referring to the first name on the list. 'Yes, of course. But Scrupe is a peculiar boy.' Gavin promised to be careful and tactful, and this time Scrupe proved to be an ideal witness – honest, non-suggestible, non-gullible, and good-tempered. He denied absolutely and entirely that he had worn the head of the second idol at the School Concert.

'Consider,' he said, 'my schedule. I was in the first play as one of the soldiers. I was not in the second play, it's true. But I was in the third play in the character of the Odd Man. I shouldn't have had time, apart from anything else, to remove my first make-up, shove on the head and pursue Mrs Poundbury, and then get made-up for the third play. Chance is a fine thing, you know.'

'Didn't you take the head from Mr Conway's room in that cottage, then?' demanded Gavin, ignoring the impudent gambit.

'No, I didn't. I was a bit put off at finding Marion there. I didn't like it much, to tell you the truth.'

'No? Why not?' asked Gavin.

'Oh, various reasons,' said Scrupe, lightly. Gavin did not press the point; neither did he ask how Scrupe knew that Mr Conway rented a room from Mother Harries. Jealousy is not only strong as death; it has an enquiring and detective quality.

'Who, besides yourself, knew of the existence of this idol's head? Did you ever mention it to anybody?'

'No, I didn't, because I was going to pinch it if I could.'

'Coming back to the night of Mr Conway's death, what exactly were you up to then?' asked Gavin; but Scrupe was immovable upon this point.

'Innocently and ignorantly asleep,' he pronounced solemnly. 'Didn't know a thing about anything until the beastly rising bell next morning.'

'And you didn't take the head home for the holidays, either?'

'No. When I went next time it had gone. I suspected then that Marion had taken it, but, of course, I know what happened to it now. Anyway, I didn't brood much. It just seemed to me it would have been a good idea, that's all, to have it for fancy dress. I could have played up to it, too.'

'So there was no leakage there,' said Gavin to Mrs Bradley. His next victim was Mr Sugg. Here again he drew blank.

'But if the thing was made and worn two years ago, I wouldn't have known Conway then. I'm nearly new here,' pointed out Mr Sugg in a peevish voice.

'We had better tackle old Mrs Harries again,' said Gavin gloomily. 'We might as well find out whether Conway went there on the night he was murdered. Would you care to take her on? You'd get more out of her than I should.'

Mrs Bradley was not sure about this. What she did think was that she might interpret more successfully what she was told by the witch.

She came to Mother Harries's cottage at midday, fairly certain then of finding the crone at home.

'Ah,' said the old woman, as soon as she heard Mrs Bradley's step across the threshold. 'You have come for your book. Put your hand up the chimney. It is such a book as will burn the hand that grasps it.'

Mrs Bradley laughed, and the witch, putting an iron lid on the witch-like pot she had been stirring (and which gave forth an appetizing smell of rabbit and onions), sat down on a small wooden box and motioned her visitor to a chair.

'I want to know,' said Mrs Bradley, 'whether you ever thought that your cottage was invaded by naughty boys.'

'Frequently,' the hag replied. 'Boys bring luck. Girls never. Their virginity is against them.'

'Are not boys virgin?'

'Oh, yes, but the power of the dog is there too. Boys are lucky. If ever I went to sea I would take a boy along with me.'

'Yes, that is an old superstition. What made boys come here?'

'One sought his love and another his lust.'

'Would you call the latter a boy?'

'It is no matter,' said old Mrs Harries. 'He is dead now. Drowned in the pool of his own darkness.'

'I know whom you mean. How long did he rent your room? And how many women did he bring to it?'

The witch shook her head.

'There was a golden voice and a silver voice and a voice of lead,' she answered. 'And the leaden voice was the marrying voice. Ah, but she meant to have him!'

'And the golden voice?'

'I think she was beautiful. They laughed together. He brought the mask and the stilts for her to see.'

'How do you know?'

'They were happy. They called me in and told me all about it.'

'And the silver voice?'

'She was the wife of my dark gentleman. They hid from him when he came to consult me one evening.'

'What did he do with the head of the cock?'

'How should I know? The cock crew and the spirits glided back to their graves. Called by Hecate! Galled by Hecate!'

'Who stole the cock. Do you know?'

But the witch shied away from the subject of the cock. Gavin had already interviewed the angry farmer who had attempted to chastise Scrupe, and the man had grudgingly agreed that there was no evidence against the boy but that he had been a frequent and annoying visitor to the farmyard.

'My view is that Kay stole the cock to practise this black magic he was interested in,' Gavin had said to Mrs Bradley; but Mrs Bradley suspected that the actual theft had been carried out by a hireling.

*

'You are still with us, then?' Miss Loveday remarked, when next she encountered Mrs Bradley. 'I thought you had left for good just before the Christmas holiday.'

'I have been asked to treat Mr Poundbury, who seems to be indulging in a nervous breakdown,' replied Mrs Bradley, 'and I am still partly in attendance on Mrs Poundbury, whose recovery seems to be slow. I think she has had a bad shock.'

This leading gambit was pointedly ignored. 'She suffers from self-pity,' said Miss Loveday. 'And that is a bad sort of medicine. What she needs is an airing.'

'What kind of an airing?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'Why, she needs to tell somebody how she came to be struck on the head. She knows very well who did it, and why,' said Miss Loveday positively. 'She should be made to unburden herself. Not for nothing was the Confessional invented. Leo the Isaurian knew that.'

'Did he?' said Mrs Bradley, somewhat puzzled by this last reference. 'We have tried to get from Mrs Poundbury how she came to meet with her accident, but she declares she does not know.'

'Shielding him, I suppose,' said Miss Loveday, with a virtuous, spinsterly snort. 'Thank heaven, there is only one man I'm foolish about, and that is my brother. Brothers, I find, are the only satisfactory members of their sex. They can drive the car, and climb step-ladders, and do not require one to waste time and strength in procreation.'

'The Poundburys have no children, though,' Mrs Bradley felt compelled to point out.

'Ah, but they cohabit,' proclaimed Miss Loveday. 'You can see it in their faces.'

This diverting and debatable assertion intrigued Mrs Bradley very much, but she wanted to get on with the business in hand; so she abandoned, although with great reluctance, the subject under discussion, and said that at any rate it had come to light that the mask used by the second idol had once been the property of Mr Conway, and that it had been made with the assistance of Mr Pearson.

'I don't like that man,' said Miss Loveday decidedly, referring, obviously, to Mr Pearson, as her next speech made clear. 'Widowers' Houses, you know. It would not surprise me if Mr Pearson knew a great deal more about Gerald Conway than he has told you. I suppose he mentioned that that flighty miss of his had entangled herself?'

'Flighty?' said Mrs Bradley. 'I thought that Miss Pearson was rather hard-headed and sensible.'

'Oh, well, so she is,' Miss Loveday agreed, 'but some of our boys broke bounds at the beginning of the term, and were caught by Gerald Conway, and were forgiven by him. There must have been conditions attached to that forgiveness, don't you think?'

'Which boys were those?' asked Mrs Bradley; but Miss Loveday shook her head.

'No, no. I can be a gentleman myself when the spirit moves,' she said. 'Bygones are bygones with me.'

'But how did you come to know anything about it?' Mrs Bradley persisted.

'Lucius Apuleius knew of more than one witch,' was Miss Loveday's smug but enlightening rejoinder. She contrived to make this statement sound like the utterance of a minor prophet. 'That's all I know and all I need to know. But in case my reply should seem to be discourteous, I will tell you, in your private ear, when wind of Gerald Conway's goings-on first came to my notice, I realized at once his necessity for a strategic base. A close study of his migratory habits led me in the right direction, and I was soon in possession of the information I sought.'

'You love knowledge for its own sake?' Mrs Bradley enquired. Miss Loveday nodded vigorously.

'Exactly,' she said. 'For its own sake, and, of course, for a sense of the power it gives me. I love power. I would like to have absolute power. I should not misuse it.'

'All power corrupts,' began Mrs Bradley.

'And absolute power corrupts absolutely,' concluded Miss Loveday. 'Yes, I know. But if one did not realize that one was corrupt? Do you think the jiggery-pokes, the place-men, the pocketers of boroughs, the financial jugglers, the tax-dodgers, the pimps, trulls, trollops, and macaronis, know that they are corrupt?'

'Were the macaronis corrupt? I should have thought they were chiefly silly and perhaps a little stupid and cruel,' said Mrs Bradley, ignoring the major issue although she realized its intrinsic importance.

'Perhaps I should have said murderers,' Miss Loveday good-temperedly responded. 'Where, in your galaxy of wrong-doing (which is, by interpretation, wrong-thinking), do you place murder, I wonder?'

'Below rape, and above grand larceny,' Mrs Bradley promptly replied. 'Where do you?'

'Real murder is the most terrible of crimes,' pronounced Miss Loveday. 'But there is such a thing as essential elimination.'

'Under which heading comes the death of Mr Conway?'

'Oh, surely, under neither. Why should anybody desire to cut off in the prime of life so comparatively innocuous a youth?' Miss Loveday demanded. 'And yet, did he not rush, as it were, upon self-elimination?'

'Well, I can think of several people who were glad to see the end of him,' said Mrs Bradley. 'Who do you think hit Mrs Poundbury over the head?'

'So we are back where we started,' said Miss Loveday, comfortably. 'Suppose you tell me the answer.'

'Mr Poundbury seems to have had but little opportunity; the murderer of Conway may have had the motive. Mrs Poundbury was carrying about with her a note her husband received the day before Conway's death. It has disappeared,' said Mrs Bradley, disobligingly.

'It contained a clue, you think, to the identity of the murderer?'

'Hardly that; but it might contain a clue to his typewriter.'

'The note was typewritten, then?'

'That much I could see, although I was not shown the contents, of course.'

'Foolish woman!' said Miss Loveday indignantly. 'I'll tell you what you ought to do. You ought to go and see Marion Pearson. She might know the kind of thing he used to write when he wished to make tryst with young women.'

'So she might,' Mrs Bradley agreed, without discussing Marion further.

'Talking of all that,' pursued Miss Loveday, suddenly tapping the window to attract the attention of a passing youth, 'it seems that because of their antics, both Kay and Semple have laid themselves open to being suspected of the murder. But then, of course, so have my brother and myself. The police have made that quite clear. So kind of them, really, because one knows exactly where one is, and can spend time on deceit and take pleasure in subterfuge.' She broke off to address the boy, who was politely awaiting her attention outside the window.

'Where's your House-badge?' she demanded, mouthing the words so that the youth could lip-read them. The boy pulled at the neck of his sweater and showed the badge attached to his shirt. Miss Loveday nodded, and the lad ran jogging away. 'They dislike their badges,' said Miss Loveday, turning again to Mrs Bradley. 'They make the boys conspicuous. But I like our lads to be conspicuous. It helps them to make their mark in the world later on. But to this affair of Gerald Conway. Thanks to the proceedings at the inquest, we now all know how the deed was done. Your policeman thinks my brother and I did it at the Roman Bath. You think Bennett Kay and Gilbert Poundbury did it. There is also nothing at present to exclude the thought that Brenda Kay and Carola Poundbury did it. It would not be beyond the scope, I take it, of two young and healthy women to have fallen upon the man and drowned him? Brenda Kay was presumed to have been from home at the time, and' – said Miss Loveday, with an expression of great cunning – 'I do happen to know that Carola Poundbury had her hair permanently waved on the following morning, because I could not get at her to tell her the news of the murder until four o'clock in the afternoon.'

'Interesting,' said Mrs Bradley. 'There is also one other combination of persons who might have had an interest in Conway's death.'

'You mean Marion Pearson and her father, but that's absurd,' declared Miss Loveday. 'Marion is well-balanced.'

'You said just now that she was flighty,' Mrs Bradley pointed out. Miss Loveday opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again without saying anything.

*

'And now, Mr Loveday,' said Mrs Bradley, waylaying the head of that House on his way to his Roman Bath, 'perhaps you will be good enough to confide to me the reason why Inspector Gavin should not arrest you for the murder of Mr Conway.'

'I can think of no reason,' replied Mr Loveday, 'except that I did not murder Mr Conway.'

'Are you sure?' Mrs Bradley enquired, falling into step beside him. 'Which fortunate boys bathe to-day?' she added, with less inconsequence than was apparent.

'Micklethwaite for services rendered, Merrys for excellent conduct. Skene to give him an airing, Parsons because he wishes to learn to swim, and Findlay to save us the trouble of supervising the others,' said Miss Loveday, joining her brother and Mrs Bradley, whom she had followed out on to the gravel.

'Mrs Bradley has just suggested that I ought to be arrested for the murder,' said Mr Loveday. 'What do you say to that, Annette?'

'I have heard of the gambit before,' proclaimed Miss Loveday. 'It is on the principle of the Kipling euphorism: the bleating of the lamb excites the tiger.'

'Would you say euphorism?' Mr Loveday demanded. His sister did not reply.

Mr Loveday admitted his boys to the Bath, and, very shortly, what with Micklethwaite tearing through the water like a shark, little Parsons shivering in the shallow end until the noble Findlay, arriving late, seized him and terrified him into swimming four short, panic-stricken strokes before he grabbed wildly at his mentor and was steered kindly to the side of the Bath, and Merrys and Skene outdoing one another in swimming under water, all were lost to the outside, terrestrial world.

'Surely Micklethwaite is an unusually accomplished swimmer'?' said Mrs Bradley. Miss Loveday glanced at her sharply.

'I have often thought I would like to make a film out of the death of Gerald Conway,' she said. 'Imagine the setting: first one would get a general view of Spey, and then an enlarged picture of Loveday's House. From a dormitory window, like prowling cats, creep a couple of sinuous boys. They are nameless up to the present, but, as their originator and author, I shall decide to call them Merrys and Skene.'

'On the night of Mr Conway's death?' enquired Mrs Bradley.

'Certainly.'

Mrs Bradley, recollecting a piece of evidence which she had tabulated some time previously, suddenly cackled. Miss Loveday, not put out by this, went on:

'They creep round to their Housemaster's private garden and impound his bicycle. They go off on it, and the roving eye of the film camera follows them over hill and dale, and picks them out a little more clearly at last at the gate of a lighted cottage. The lads are lost, and have called at the cottage for guidance.'

'Mr Conway's cottage, of course? Or, rather, the cottage in which he lived his secret life.'

'Yes, and Mr Conway is in residence.'

'But. . .'

'Allow me to continue. He is in residence, but he is no longer alive. Two persons are in the cottage with his dead body. The film does not indicate yet which persons they are. Their figures are thrown in silhouette on the blind. They are, however, John Semple and Bennett Kay.'

'You are basing this theory on the unassailable fact that Mr Semple and Mr Kay were the two who discovered the body,' said Mrs Bradley.

'Exactly so.'

'But on nothing else?'

'John Semple is fanatically devoted to the School. He would do anything to preserve its good name.'

'But surely it does not preserve that good name to have a master murdered!'

'A clever point,' Miss Loveday admitted, 'but it shows me that, with all your vaunted knowledge of the human mind, you do not understand young Semple. He is a fanatic, and my definition of a fanatic is that he must be a seemingly intelligent person with but one dominating thought, which thought, by feeding upon itself, eventually crowds out all other thoughts, so that the person becomes, in effect, mad.'

'Mr Semple certainly does not seem to me mad,' Mrs Bradley protested.

'That is because you see him with a narrow, medical eye. To me he is completely insane.'

'I will bear your opinion in mind. Do, please, go on with your film.'

'It attracts you?'

'It fascinates me. The body of Conway is in the lonely cottage. The two boys are knocking at the door.'

'Quite so. They flee at the sound of a well-known voice – the voice of Bennett Kay. That disposes of the boys. We see no more of them.'

'What a pity! I should have liked to follow them home.'

'The original script did, but the cutter removed the sequence to save time. Meanwhile, we are admitted to the cottage kitchen. The sink is full of water. The drowned man lies on the floor. We are left to draw our conclusions, while the shadows of his murderers, in the light of the kitchen candle, pass slowly, one after the other, over the recumbent victim.'

'A powerful sequence.'

'I think so. The shadows stoop and then straighten, and a bizarre procession walks into the pouring rain. We follow it to the School and to Bennett Kay's garden.'

'Rather a curious place to choose if he was one of the murderers?' Mrs Bradley felt bound to suggest. Miss Love-day waved the point aside.

'I can see how your mind is working,' she observed. 'You think my brother and I drowned that unspeakable puppy here in the Roman Bath. But you know very little of my brother if you think for a single instant that he would sully the apple of his eye with that gross and pampered mote, the body, alive or dead, of Gerald Conway.'