EDMUND CRISPIN

The Moving Toyshop

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Victor Gollancz 1946

Copyright © Rights Limited,

1946. All rights reserved

Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008124120

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008124137

Version: 2017-10-27

For Philip Larkin in friendship and esteem

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Note

Map

Chapter 1: The Episode of the Prowling Poet

Chapter 2: The Episode of the Dubious Don

Chapter 3: The Episode of the Candid Solicitor

Chapter 4: The Episode of the Indignant Janeite

Chapter 5: The Episode of the Immaterial Witness

Chapter 6: The Episode of the Worthy Carman

Chapter 7: The Episode of the Nice Young Lady

Chapter 8: The Episode of the Eccentric Millionairess

Chapter 9: The Episode of the Malevolent Medium

Chapter 10: The Episode of the Interrupted Seminar

Chapter 11: The Episode of the Neurotic Physician

Chapter 12: The Episode of the Missing Link

Chapter 13: The Episode of the Rotating Professor

Chapter 14: The Episode of the Prescient Satirist

About the Author

Also in This Series

About the Publisher

Footnotes

Note

None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits

E.C.

Key

 A. Toyshop (second position)

 B. St Christopher’s

 C. St John’s

 D. Balliol

 E. Trinity

 F. Lennox’s

 G. The Mace and Sceptre

 H. Sheldonian

 I. Rosseter’s office

 J. Market

 K. Police Station

 L. Toyshop (first position)

1
The Episode of the Prowling Poet

Richard Cadogan raised his revolver, took careful aim and pulled the trigger. The explosion rent the small garden and, like the widening circles which surrounded a pebble dropped into the water, created alarms and disturbances of diminishing intensity throughout the suburb of St John’s Wood. From the sooty trees, their leaves brown and gold in the autumn sunlight, rose flights of startled birds. In the distance a dog began to howl. Richard Cadogan went up to the target and inspected it in a dispirited sort of way. It bore no mark of any kind.

‘I missed it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Extraordinary.’

Mr Spode, of Spode, Nutling, and Orlick, publishers of high-class literature, jingled the money in his trousers pocket – presumably to gain attention. ‘Five per cent on the first thousand,’ he remarked. ‘Seven and a half on the second thousand. We shan’t sell more than that. No advance.’ He coughed uncertainly.

Cadogan returned to his former position, inspecting the revolver with a slight frown. ‘One shouldn’t aim them, of course,’ he said. ‘One should fire them from the hip.’ He was lean, with sharp features, supercilious eyebrows, and hard dark eyes. This Calvinistic appearance belied him, for he was a matter of fact a friendly, unexacting, romantic person.

‘That will suit you, I suppose?’ Mr Spode continued. ‘It’s the usual thing.’ Again he gave his nervous little cough. Mr Spode hated talking about money.

Bent double, Cadogan was reading from a book which lay on the dry, scrubby grass at his feet. ‘“In all pistol shooting,”’ he enunciated, ‘“the shooter looks at the object aimed at and not at the pistol.” No. I want an advance. Fifty pounds at least.’

‘Why have you developed this mania for pistols?’

Cadogan straightened up with a faint sigh. He felt every month of his thirty-seven years. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It will be better if we both talk about the same subject at the same time. This isn’t a Chekhov play. Besides, you’re being evasive. I asked for an advance on the book – fifty pounds.’

‘Nutling…Orlick…’ Mr Spode gestured uncomfortably.

‘Both Nutling and Orlick are quite legendary and fabulous.’ Richard Cadogan was firm. ‘They’re scapegoats you’ve invented to take the blame for your own meanness and philistinism. Here am I, by common consent one of the three most eminent of living poets, with three books written about me (all terrible, but never mind that), lengthily eulogized in all accounts of twentieth-century literature…’

‘Yes, yes.’ Mr Spode held up his hand, like one trying to stop a bus. ‘Of course, you’re very well known indeed. Yes.’ He coughed nervously. ‘But unhappily that doesn’t mean that many people buy your books. The public is quite uncultured, and the firm isn’t so rich that we can afford—’

‘I’m going on a holiday, and I need money.’ Cadogan waved away a mosquito which was circling round his head.

‘Yes, of course. But surely…some more dance lyrics?’

‘Let me inform you, my dear Erwin’ – here Cadogan tapped his publisher monitorily on the chest – ‘that I’ve been held up for two months over a dance lyric because I can’t think of a rhyme for “British”…’

‘“Skittish,”’ suggested Mr Spode feebly.

Cadogan gazed at him contemptuously. ‘Besides which,’ he pursued. ‘I am sick and tired of earning my living from dance lyrics. I may have an aged publisher to support’ – he tapped Mr Spode again on the chest – ‘but there are limits.’

Mr Spode wiped his face with a handkerchief. His profile was almost a pure semicircle – the brow high, and receding towards his bald head, the nose curving inward in a hook, and the chin nestling back, weak and pitiful, into his neck.

‘Perhaps,’ he ventured, ‘twenty-five pounds…?’

‘Twenty-five pounds! Twenty-five pounds!’ Cadogan waggled his revolver menacingly. ‘How can I have a holiday on twenty-five pounds? I’m getting stale, my good Erwin. I’m sick to death of St John’s Wood. I have no fresh ideas. I need a change of scene – new people, excitement adventures. Like the later Wordsworth. I’m living on my spiritual capital.’

‘The later Wordsworth.’ Mr Spode giggled, and then, suspecting he had committed an impropriety, fell abruptly silent.

But Cadogan pursued his homiletic regardless. ‘I crave, in fact, for romance. That is why I’m learning to shoot with a revolver. That is also why I shall probably shoot you with it, if you don’t give me fifty pounds.’ Mr Spode stepped back alarmedly. ‘I’m becoming a vegetable. I’m growing old before my time. The gods themselves grew old, when Freia was snatched from tending the golden apples. You, my dear Erwin, should be financing a luxurious holiday for me, instead of quibbling in this paltry fashion over fifty pounds.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to stay with me for a few days at Caxton’s Folly?’

‘Can you give me adventure, excitement, lovely women?’

‘These picaresque fancies,’ said Mr Spode. ‘Of course, there’s my wife…’ He would not have been wholly unwilling to sacrifice his wife to the regeneration of an eminent poet, or, for the matter of that, to anyone for any reason. Elsie could be very trying at times. ‘Then,’ he proceeded hopefully, ‘there’s this American lecture tour…’

‘I’ve told you, Erwin, that that must not be mentioned again. I can’t lecture, in any case.’ Cadogan began to stride up and down the lawn. Mr Spode noticed sadly that a small bald patch was beginning to show in his close-cropped, dark hair. ‘I have no wish to lecture. I decline to lecture. It’s not America I want; it’s Poictesme or Logres. I repeat – I am getting old and stale. I act with calculation. I take heed for the morrow. This morning I caught myself paying a bill as soon as it came in. This must all be stopped. In another age I should have devoured the living hearts of children to bring back my lost youth. As it is’ – he stopped by Mr Spode and slapped him on the back with such enthusiasm that the unfortunate man nearly fell over – ‘I shall go to Oxford.’

‘Oxford. Ah.’ Mr Spode recovered himself. He was glad of this temporary reprieve from the embarrassing claims of business. ‘A very good idea. I sometimes regret moving my business into Town, even after a year. One can’t have lived there as long as I did without feeling occasionally homesick.’ Complacently he patted the rather doggy petunia waistcoat which corseted his plump little form, as though this sentiment somehow redounded to his own credit.

‘And well you may be.’ Cadogan wrinkled his patrician features into a grimace of great severity. ‘Oxford, flower of cities all. Or was that London? It doesn’t matter, anyway.’

Mr Spode scratched the tip of his nose dubiously.

‘Oxford,’ Cadogan went on rhapsodically, ‘city of dream-spires, cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed (to the point of distraction), charmed with larks, racked with rooks, and rounded with rivers. Have you ever thought how much of Hopkins’s genius consisted of putting things in the wrong order? Oxford – nursery of blooming youth. No, that was Cambridge, but it makes no odds. Of course’ – Cadogan waved his revolver didactically beneath Mr Spode’s horrified eyes – ‘I hated it when I was up there as an undergraduate: I found it mean, childish, petty, and immature. But I shall forget all that. I shall return with an eyeful of retrospective dampness and a mouth sentimentally agape. For all of which’ – his tone became accusing – ‘I shall need money.’ Mr Spode’s heart sank. ‘Fifty pounds.’

Mr Spode coughed. ‘I really don’t think…’

‘Nag Nutling. Oust Orlick,’ said Cadogan with enthusiasm. He seized Mr Spode by the arm. ‘We’ll go inside and talk it over with a drink to steady our nerves. God, I will pack, and take a train, and get me to Oxford once again…’

They talked it over. Mr Spode was rather susceptible to alcohol, and he loathed arguing about money. When at last he went away, the counterfoil of his cheque-book showed the sum of fifty pounds, payee Richard Cadogan Esquire. So the poet got the better of that affair, as anyone not wholly blinded by prejudice would have expected.

When his publisher had departed, Cadogan piled some things into a case, issued peremptory instructions to his servant, and set out for Oxford without delay, despite the fact that it was already half past eight in the evening. Since he could not afford to keep a car, he travelled on the Tube to Paddington, and there, after consuming several pints of beer in the bar, boarded an Oxford-bound train.

It was not a fast train, but he did not mind. He was happy in the fact that for a while he was escaping the worrying and loathsome incursion of middle-age, the dullness of his life in St John’s Wood, the boredom of literary parties, the inane chatter of acquaintances. Despite his literary fame, he had led a lonely and, it sometimes seemed to him, inhuman existence. Of course, he was not sanguine enough to believe, in his heart of hearts, that this holiday, its pleasures and vexations, would be unlike any other he had ever had. But he was pleased to find that he was not so far gone in wisdom and disillusion as to be wholly immune to the sweet lures of change and novelty. Fand still beckoned to him from the white combs of the ocean; beyond the distant mountains there still lay the rose-beds of the Hesperides, and the flower-maidens singing in Klingor’s enchanted garden. So he laughed cheerfully to himself, at which his travelling companions regarded him warily, and, when the compartment emptied, sang and conducted imaginary orchestras.

At Didcot a porter walked down beside the train, shouting, ‘All change!’ So he got out. It was now nearly midnight, but there was a pale moon with a few ragged clouds drifting over it. After some inquiry he learned that there would be a connection for Oxford shortly. A few other passengers were held up in the same way as himself. They tramped up and down the platform, talking in low voices, as though they were in a church, or huddled in the wooden seats. Cadogan sat on a pile of mail-bags until a porter came and turned him off. The night was warm and very quiet.

After rather a long time a train drew in at the platform and they all got into it, but the porters called out ‘All change!’ again, so they climbed out and watched the lights being extinguished, carriage by carriage. Cadogan asked a porter what time the Oxford train was expected, and the porter referred him to another porter. This authority, discovered drinking tea in the buffet, said without any apparent sense of outrage that there were no more trains to Oxford that night. The statement provoked some opposition from a third porter, who maintained that the 11.53 had not come in yet, but the porter drinking tea pointed out that as from yesterday the 11.53 was not going to come in any more, ever again. He banged his fist on the table with frequency and force to emphasize this point. The third porter remained unconvinced. A small, sleepy-eyed boy was, however, dispatched to consult with the driver of the train that had just arrived, and he confirmed that there were no more trains to Oxford that night. Moreover, the boy added unhelpfully, all the buses had stopped running two hours ago.

Faced with these unpalatable facts, something of Cadogan’s enthusiasm for his holiday began to wane; but he quickly shook off this feeling as being shamefully indicative of a middle-aged desire for comfort and convenience. The other passengers, grumbling bitterly, had departed in search of hotel accommodation, but he decided to leave his bag and make for the Oxford road in the hope of getting a lift from a belated car or lorry. As he walked he admired the effect of the weak, colourless moonlight on the ugly brick houses, with their diminutive asphalt paths, their iron railings, and their lace curtains, and on the staring windows of Methodist chapels. He felt, too, something of that oddly dispassionate lifting of the heart which he knew meant poetry, but he was aware that such emotions are shy beasts, and for the moment he turned a blind eye to them for fear of frightening them away.

Cars and lorries, it seemed, were reluctant to stop – this was 1938, and British motorists were having one of their periodical scares about car thieves – but eventually a big eight-wheeler pulled up at his hail, and he climbed in. The driver was a large, taciturn man, his eyes red and strained with much night driving.

‘The Ancient Mariner did this better than me,’ said Cadogan cheerfully as they started off. ‘He at least managed to stop one of three.’

‘I read abaht ’im at school,’ the driver replied after a considerable pause for thought. ‘“A thahsand, thahsand slimy things lived on and so did I.” And they call that poetry.’ He spat deprecatingly out of the window.

Somewhat taken aback, Cadogan made no reply. They sat in silence while the lorry bucketed through the outskirts of Didcot and into open country. After about ten minutes:

‘Books,’ the driver resumed. ‘I’m a great reader. I am. Not poetry. Love stories and murder books. I joined one o’ them’ – he heaved a long sigh; with vast effort his mind laboured and brought forth – ‘circulatin’ libraries.’ He brooded darkly. ‘But I’m sick of it now. I’ve read all that’s any good in it.’

‘Getting too big for your Boots?’

‘I ’ad a good un the other day, though. Lady Somebody’s Lover. That was the old firm, if you like.’ He slapped his thigh and snorted lecherously.

Being mildly astonished by these evidences of culture, Cadogan again failed to answer. They drove on, the headlights picking out mathematical segments of the flying hedges on either side. Once a rabbit, dazed by the glare, sat up and stared at them for so long that it only just escaped the wheels.

At the end of a further interval – perhaps a quarter of an hour – Cadogan said with something of an effort:

‘I had a pretty bloody journey from London. Very slow train. Stopped at every telegraph pole – like a dog.’

At this the driver, after a pause of earnest concentration, began to laugh. He laughed so immoderately and long that Cadogan feared he was going to lose control of the vehicle. Before this could happen, however, they fortunately arrived at Headington roundabout, and pulled up with a violent screeching of brakes.

‘I’ll ’ave to drop yer ’ere,’ said the driver, still shaking with silent mirth. ‘I don’t go into the tahn. You walk down that there ’ill, and you’ll be in Oxford quickern’ no time.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cadogan. He clambered down into the road. ‘Thanks very much. And good night to you.’

‘Good night,’ said the driver. ‘Like a dawg, eh? That’s rich, that is.’ He put the engine into gear with a noise like an elephant treading down a tree and drove off, laughing loudly.

The roundabout, with its scattered lights, seemed very lonely after the sound of the lorry had passed out of earshot. It occurred to Cadogan for the first time that he did not know where he was going to sleep that night. The hotels would be tenanted only by night porters and the colleges would be shut. Then suddenly he smiled. Such things didn’t matter in Oxford. He had only to climb over the wall of his college (he’d done it often enough in the old days, God knows) and sleep on a couch in somebody’s sitting-room. Nobody would care; the owner of the sitting-room would be neither surprised nor annoyed. Oxford is the one place in Europe where a man may do anything, however eccentric, and arouse no interest or emotion at all. In what other city, Cadogan asked himself, remembering his undergraduate days, could one address to a policeman a discourse on epistemology in the witching hours of the night, and be received with neither indignation nor suspicion?

He set out to walk, past the shops, past the cinema by the traffic lights, and so down the long, winding hill. Through a rift in the trees he caught his first real glimpse of Oxford – in that ineffectual moonlight an underwater city, its towers and spires standing ghostly, like the memorials of lost Atlantis, fathoms deep. A tiny pinpoint of yellow light glowed for a few seconds, flickered, and went out. On the quiet air he heard faintly a single bell beating one o’clock, the precursor of others which joined in brief phantom chime, like the bells of the sunken cathedral in Breton myth, rocked momentarily by the green deep-water currents, and then silent.

Obscurely pleased, he walked on at a quicker pace, singing softly to himself – his mind drained of thought: only looking about him and liking what he saw. On the outskirts of Oxford he became a little lost, and wasted some minutes in finding the right road again. Which was it – the Iffley road or the Cowley road? He had never been able to get them clear in his mind, even as an undergraduate. No matter; at the end of it was Magdalen Bridge, and the High, and beyond that again the College of St Christopher, patron saint of travellers. He felt a little disappointed that his journey should end thus uneventfully.

There had been neither pedestrian nor vehicle to be seen during his walk from Headington; and in this respectable, rather tawdry quarter of Oxford the inhabitants were long since in bed. Shop-lined on either side, the road stretched long and deserted before him. A small wind had risen, creeping in little gusts round the corners of buildings, and it caught and gently stirred a white awning which some negligent tradesman had left down in front of his shop. Cadogan fixed his eye idly on it as he walked, since it was the only one showing, and when he came up to it looked for the name of the owner; but it was hidden under the shadow of the awning. Then he glanced at the shop itself. There were blinds drawn against the windows, so he could not see what kind of shop it was. Moved by an idle curiosity, he strolled to the door and tried it. It opened.

And now he stopped and considered. It was not usual, certainly, for tradesmen to leave their shops unlocked at night. On the other hand, it was very late, and if burglars had got in it was unfortunate, but certainly none of his business. Probably the owner lived over the shop. In that case, he might be pleased at being woken and informed, or he might not. Cadogan had a horror of meddling in other people’s business; but at the same time he was curious.

Stepping back into the street, he regarded the blank, unpleasing windows above the awning for a moment; and then, coming suddenly to a decision, returned to the door. After all, he had embarked on his holiday with a desire for excitement, and the door of the shop, if not exactly the portal of romance, presented a problem sufficiently unusual to be worth investigating. He pushed it wide, and felt a windy vacuum in the pit of his stomach when it creaked noisily. It was possible that he might catch a burglar, but more likely, on the whole, that he would be arrested as one himself. He closed the door again, as softly as he could, and then stood quite still, listening.

Nothing.

The beam of his torch showed the small, conventional interior of a toyshop, with a counter, a cash-register, and toys ranged about it – Meccano sets, engines, dolls and dolls’ houses, painted bricks, and lead soldiers. He moved farther in, cursing his own lunacy, and succeeded in knocking over a box of large balloons (deflated), with a considerable clatter. It sounded in his ears like some vast detonation.

Again he stood stock-still, hardly daring to breathe.

Again, nothing.

Beyond the counter were three wooden steps leading up to a door. He crept through this door and found himself at the bottom of a short flight of bare, steep stairs leading up to the floor above. These he climbed with further inward malediction, kicking the treads, creaking, banging, and stumbling. He arrived, exhausted, and with his nerve practically gone, in a short passage, linoleum-covered, with two doors on either side of it, and one at the end. He now was quite resigned to the appearance of an infuriated householder with a shot-gun, and was engaged in inventing explanations which might pacify him. After all, it was reasonable that anyone finding a shop door open should come in to make sure nothing was amiss…though not, perhaps, with such elaborate and futile attempts at silence.

But yet again, there was no sound.

This is ridiculous, Cadogan told himself severely. The front rooms are probably the living-rooms. You will enter one of these and make certain nothing is wrong. After that, honour will be satisfied, and you can beat a retreat as quickly as may be.

Nerving himself, he crept forward and turned the knob of one of the doors. The small white circle of his torch played on tightly closed curtains, a cheap lacquered sideboard, a wireless set, a table, uncomfortable leather armchairs with big, garish, mauve and orange cushions in satin; there were no pictures on the papered walls. A living-room, certainly. But there was something more, which caused him to breathe an audible sigh of relief and relax a little. The musty smell and the dust which lay thick on everything, showed that the flat had not been occupied for some time. He stepped forward, tripped on something, and shone his torch down on it. Then he whistled softly and said ‘Well, well,’ several times.

For what lay on the floor was the body of an elderly woman, and there was no doubt that she was very dead indeed.

He was curiously unsurprised: the spectre had been laid, the mysterious attraction of the deserted toyshop exorcized and explained. Then he checked himself; the appearance of the body which lay there was no occasion for random analyses. Becoming conscious that the torch was an encumbrance, he stepped back and tried the light switch by the door, but no light resulted, for the bulb was not in place under its cheap frilly shade. Hadn’t he seen a candle on the table in the passage? Yes, it was still there, and it was the work of a moment to light it. He left his torch on the table and returned to the living-room, setting the candle down by the woman’s body.

It lay on the right side, with the left arm flung backwards beneath the table, and the legs stretched out. A woman of near sixty, he judged, for the hair was almost wholly grey and the skin of the hands wrinkled and brown. She was dressed in a tweed coat and skirt and a white blouse, which emphasized her plumpness, with rough wool stockings and brown shoes. There was no ring on her left hand, and the flatness of her breasts had already suggested that she was unmarried. Near her, in the shadow of the table, lay something white. Cadogan picked it up, and found it was a scrap of paper with a number pencilled on it in a sloping feminine hand. This paper, after a brief glance, he slipped in his pocket. Then he looked back at the woman’s face.

It was not a pleasant sight, since it was discoloured a blackish purple, as were her finger-nails. There was froth at the corner of her mouth, which hung open, showing a gold stopping which winked in the candlelight. In her neck was embedded a thin cord, tied fast behind. It had sunk so deep that the flesh which closed over it made it almost invisible. There was a pool of dried blood on the floor by the head, and Cadogan found the reason for it in a sharp contusion just below the crown. He felt the bone of the skull, but as far as he could tell it was not fractured.

Up to now he had experienced only the passionless curiosity of a child, but the action of touching her brought a sudden revulsion of feeling. He wiped the blood quickly from his fingers and stood up. He must get to the police as quickly as possible. Anything else to be observed? Ah, yes, a gold pince-nez, broken, on the floor nearby…And then, abruptly he stiffened, his nerves tingling like charged electric wires.

There had been a sound in the passage outside.

It was a small sound, an indefinite sound, but it made his heart beat violently and his hand tremble. Oddly enough, it had not previously occurred to him that the person who had killed this woman might be still in the house. Turning his head, he looked steadily out of the half-open door into the darkness beyond, and waited, absolutely motionless. The sound did not recur. In that dead stillness the watch on his wrist sounded as loud as a kitchen alarm-clock. He realized that if anyone were there it was going to be a matter of endurance and nerves: whichever moved first would give the other the advantage. The minutes passed – three, five, seven, nine – like aeons of cosmic time. And reason began officiously to interfere. A sound? Well, what of it? The house, like Prospero’s isle, was full of noises. And in any case, what purpose was being served by standing in an unnatural attitude like a waxwork? The aching muscles added their cry, and at last he moved, taking the candle from the table and peering, with infinite precautions, into the passage.

It was empty. The other doors were still shut. His torch stood on the table where he had left it. In any case, the thing to do was to get out of this detestable house as quickly as possible, and so on to the police station. He picked up his torch, blew out the candle, and put it down. A flick of the button, and…

No light came.

Savagely, uselessly, Cadogan wrestled for perhaps half a minute with the switch, until at last he realized what was the matter: the thing weighed too light in his hand. With a sick premonition he unscrewed the end and felt for the battery. It had gone.

Trapped in the pitch blackness of that musty-smelling passage, his self-control suddenly failed. He knew there was a soft, padding step coming towards him. He knew that he threw the empty torch blindly, and heard it strike the wall. And he sensed, rather than saw, the blazing beam of light which shone out from behind. Then there was a dull, enormous concussion, his head seemed to explode in a flare of blinding scarlet, and there was nothing but a high screaming like the wind in wires and a bright green globe that fell twisting and diminishing, to annihilation in inky darkness.

He awoke with his head aching and a dry, foul mouth, and after a moment staggered to his feet. There was a rush of nausea and he clung to the wall, muttering stupidly to himself. In a little while his head cleared and he was able to look about him. The room was small, scarcely more than a closet, and contained a miscellaneous collection of cleaning things – a pail, a rag mop, brushes, and a tin of polish. A faint light glowing through the small window made him look at his watch. Half past five: unconscious four hours, and now it was nearly dawn. Feeling a little better, he cautiously tried the door. It was locked. But the window – he stared – the window was not only unlocked, but open. With difficulty he climbed on to a packing-case and looked out. He was on the ground floor, and beyond him was a deserted and neglected strip of garden, with creosoted wooden fences running down on either side and a gate, standing ajar, at the bottom. Even in his weakened condition it was easy to climb out. Once outside the gate the nausea seized him again, the saliva flowed into his mouth, and he was violently sick. But he felt better for it.

A turn to the left, and he was at an alleyway which brought him back into the road down which he had walked four hours before – yes, unmistakably it was the same road, and he was three shops away from the toyshop – he had counted – on the side nearest Magdalen Bridge. Pausing only to notice landmarks and fix the position in his mind, he hurried off towards the town and the police station. The growing light showed him a plate which bore the words IFFLEY ROAD, as he came out at a road-junction where there was a stone horse-trough. So that was it. Then Magdalen Bridge, grey and broad, and safety. He looked back and saw that he was not being followed.

Oxford rises late, except on May morning, and the only person at large was a milkman. He stared very blankly indeed at the bloodied and dishevelled figure of Richard Cadogan, staggering up the long curve of the High Street; and then, presumably, dismissed him as a belated reveller. The grey freshness of the new day washed the walls of the Queen’s and University College. Last night’s moon was a lustreless coin pasted on the morning sky. The air was cool and grateful to the skin.

Cadogan’s head, if still aching abominably, now at least permitted him to think. The police station, he seemed to remember, was in St Aldate’s, somewhere near the post office and the town hall, and it was in that direction that he was heading now. One thing puzzled him. He had found in his pocket his torch, complete with battery, and what was more, his wallet, with Mr Spode’s cheque, still perfectly safe. A considerate assailant, evidently…Then he remembered the old woman with the cord tight round her neck, and was not so pleased.

The police were courteous and kind. They listened to his rather incoherent story without interruption, and asked a few supplementary questions about himself. Then the sergeant in charge of the night shift, a substantial red-faced man with a wide black moustache, said:

‘Well, sir, the best thing we can do now is to get that crack on the head dressed and give you a cup of hot tea and some aspirin. You must be pretty much under the weather.’

Cadogan was slightly annoyed at his failure to grasp the urgency of the situation. ‘Oughtn’t I to take you back there at once?’

‘Well, now. If you were out four hours, as you say, I don’t expect they’ll have left the body lying there conveniently for us, as you might say. The rooms above aren’t occupied, then?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘No. Well, that means we can easily get there before they open the shop, and have a look round. Curtis, clean up the gentleman’s head and put a bandage on it. Here’s your tea, sir, and your aspirin. You’ll feel better for the rest.’

He was right. Cadogan felt better not only for the rest and the tea and the ointment on his bruised skull, but also for the cheerful solidity of his companions. He thought a little wryly of the craving for excitement upon which, the evening before, he had discoursed to Mr Spode in the garden at St John’s Wood. There had been quite enough of it, he decided: quite enough. It is perhaps fortunate that he did not know what was still in store.

It was full daylight, and the multitudinous clocks of Oxford were chiming 6.30, when they got into the police car and drove back down the High Street. The milkman, still on his rounds, shook his head with mournful resignation on seeing Richard Cadogan, turbaned like an oriental potentate with his bandages, sitting in the middle of a police escort. But Cadogan did not observe him. He was taking a moment off from consideration of the lethal toyshop to enjoy being in Oxford. He had scarcely had time to look around him previously, but now rushing smoothly amid noble prospects down to the high tower of Magdalen, he drew a deep breath of sheer pleasure at the place. Why – why in heaven’s name did he not live here? And it was going to be another fine day.

They crossed the bridge, reached the road-junction where the horse-trough stood, and plunged into the Iffley Road. Staring along it:

‘Hello,’ said Cadogan, ‘they’ve put the awning up.’

‘You’re sure of the place, sir?’

‘Yes, of course. It’s opposite a red-brick church of some kind – Nonconformist, I think.’

‘Ah yes, sir. That’ll be the Baptist Church.’

‘All right, driver. You can pull up now,’ said Cadogan excitedly. ‘There’s the church on our right, there’s the alley-way I came out of and there—’

The police car drew into the kerb. Half rising in his seat, Cadogan stopped and stared. In front of him, its window loaded with tins, flour, bowls of rice and lentils, bacon, and other groceries in noble array, was a shop bearing the legend:

WINKWORTH

FAMILY GROCER AND PROVISION MERCHANT

He gazed wildly to right and left. A chemist’s and a draper’s. Farther on to the right, a butcher, a baker, a stationery shop; and to the left, a corn merchant, a hat shop, and another chemist…

The toyshop had gone.

2
The Episode of the Dubious Don

Out of the grey light came a gold morning. The leaves were beginning to fall from the trees in the Parks and in St Giles’, but they still made a brave show of bronze and yellow and malt-brown. The grey maze of Oxford – from the air, it resembles nothing so much as a maze – began to stir itself. The women undergraduates were the first abroad – cycling along the streets in droves, absurdly gowned and clutching complicated files, or hovering about libraries until the doors should be open and admit them once again to study the divine mysteries which hang about the Christian element in Beowulf, the date of the Urtristan (if any), the complexities of hydrodynamics, the kinetic theory of gases, the law of tort, or the situation and purposes of the parathyroid gland. The men rose more circumspectly, putting a pair of trousers, a coat, and a scarf over their pyjamas, shambling across quadrangles to sign lists, and shambling back to bed again. Art students emerged, subduing the flesh in their endeavour to find a good light, elusive and nearly as unattainable as the Grail itself. Commercial Oxford, too, awoke; shops opened and buses ran; the streets were thronged with traffic. All over the city, in colleges and belfries, the mechanism of clocks whirred, clanged, and struck nine o’clock, in a maddening, jagged syncopation of conflicting tempo and timbre.

A red object shot down the Woodstock Road.

It was an extremely small, vociferous, and battered sports car. Across its bonnet were scrawled in large white letters the words LILY CHRISTINE III. A steatopygic nude in chromium leaned forward at a dangerous angle from the radiator cap. It reached the junction of Woodstock and Banbury roads, turned sharply to the left, and entered the private road which runs up beside the college of St Christopher, patron saint of travellers (for the benefit of the uninitiated, it should here be said that St Christopher’s stands next door to St John’s). It then turned in at a wrought-iron gate and proceeded at about forty miles an hour down a short gravel drive which was bordered with lawns and rhododendron bushes and which terminated in a sort of half-hearted loop where it was just impossible conveniently to turn a car. It was evident that the driver had his vehicle under only imperfect control. He was wrestling desperately with the levers. The car made directly for the window where the President of the college, a thin, demure man of mildly epicurean tastes, was sunning himself. Perceiving his peril, he retreated in panic haste. But the car missed the wall of his lodging and fled on up to the end of the drive, where the driver, with a tremendous swerve of the wheel and some damage to the grass borders, succeeded in turning it completely round. At this point there seemed to be nothing to stop his rushing back the way he had come, but unhappily, in righting the wheel, he pulled it over too far, and the car thundered across a strip of lawn, buried its nose in a large rhododendron bush, choked, stalled, and stopped.

Its driver got out and gazed at it with some severity. While he was doing this it backfired suddenly – a tremendous report, a backfire to end all backfires. He frowned, took a hammer from the back seat, opened the bonnet and hit something inside. Then he closed the bonnet again and resumed his seat. The engine started and the car went into reverse with a colossal jolt and began racing backwards towards the President’s Lodging. The President, who had returned to the window and was gazing at this scene with a horrid fascination, retired again, with scarcely less haste than before. The driver looked over his shoulder, and saw the President’s Lodging towering above him, like a liner above a motor-boat. Without hesitation, he changed into forward gear. The car uttered a terrible shriek, shuddered like a man smitten with the ague, and stopped; after a moment it emitted its inexplicable valedictory backfire. With dignity the driver put on the brake, climbed out, and took a brief-case from the back seat.

At the cessation of noise the President had approached his window again. He now flung it open.

‘My dear Fen,’ he expostulated. ‘I’m glad you have left us a little of the college to carry on with. I feared you were about to demolish it utterly.’

‘Oh? Did you? Did you?’ said the driver. His voice was cheerful and slightly nasal. ‘You needn’t have worried, Mr President. I had it under perfect control. There’s something the matter with the engine, that’s all. I can’t think why it makes that noise after it’s stopped. I’ve tried everything for it.’

‘And I see no real necessity,’ said the President peevishly, ‘for you to bring your car into the grounds at all.’ He slammed the window shut, but without any real annoyance. The eccentricities of Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of St Christopher’s, were not on the traditional donnish pattern. But they were suffered more or less gladly by his colleagues, who knew that any treatment of Fen at his face value resulted generally in their own discomfiture.

Fen strode with great energy across the lawn, passed through a gate in a mellow brick wall against which, in their season, the peaches bloomed, and entered the main garden of the college. He was a tall, lanky man, about forty years of age, with a cheerful, lean, ruddy, clean-shaven face. His dark hair, sedulously plastered down with water, stuck up in spikes at the crown. He had on an enormous raincoat and carried an extraordinary hat.

‘Ah, Mr Hoskins,’ he said to an undergraduate who was perambulating the lawn with his arm round the waist of an attractive girl. ‘Hard at it already, I see.’

Mr Hoskins, large, raw-boned and melancholy, a little like a Thurber dog, blinked mildly. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said. Fen passed on. ‘Don’t be alarmed, Janice,’ said Mr Hoskins to his companion. ‘Look what I’ve got for you.’ He felt in the pocket of his coat and produced a big box of chocolates.

Meanwhile Fen proceeded into an open passage-way, stone-paved, which led from the gardens into the south quadrangle of the college, turned into a doorway on the right, passed the organ scholar’s room, ran up a flight of carpeted stairs to the first floor, and entered his study. It was a long, light room which looked out on the Inigo Jones quadrangle on one side and the gardens on the other. The walls were cream, the curtains and carpet dark green. There were rows of books on the low shelves, Chinese miniatures on the walls, and a few rather dilapidated plaques and busts of English writers on the mantelpiece. A large, untidy flat-topped desk, with two telephones, stood against the windows of the north wall.

And in one of the luxurious armchairs sat Richard Cadogan, his face wearing the look of a hunted man.

‘Well, Gervase,’ he said in a colourless voice, ‘it’s a long time since we were undergraduates together.’

‘Good God,’ said Fen, shocked. ‘You’re Richard Cadogan.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, of course you’re very welcome, but you’ve arrived at rather an awkward time…’

‘You’re as unmannerly as ever.’

Fen perched on the edge of the desk, his face eloquent of pained surprise. ‘What an extraordinary thing to say. Have I ever said an unkind word—’

‘It was you who wrote about the first poems I ever published: “This is a book everyone can afford to be without.”’

‘Ha!’ said Fen, pleased. ‘Very pithy I was in those days. Well, how are you, my dear fellow?’

‘Terrible. Of course you weren’t a professor when I saw you last. The University had more sense.’

‘I became a professor,’ Fen answered firmly, ‘because of my tremendous scholarly abilities and my acute and powerful mind.’

‘You wrote to me at the time that it was only a matter of pulling a few moth-eaten strings.’

‘Oh, did I?’ said Fen uneasily. ‘Well, never mind all that now. Have you had breakfast?’

‘Yes, I had it in hall.’

‘Well, have a cigarette, then.’

‘Thanks…Gervase, I’ve lost a toyshop.’

Gervase Fen stared. As he offered his lighter, his face assumed an expression of the greatest caution. ‘Would you mind explaining that curious utterance?’ he asked.

Cadogan explained. He explained at great length. He explained with a sense of righteous indignation and frustration of spirit.

‘We combed the neighbourhood,’ he said bitterly. ‘And do you know, there isn’t a toyshop anywhere there. We asked people who had lived there all their lives and they’d never heard of such a thing. And yet I’m certain I got the place right. A grocer, I ask you! We went inside, and it certainly was a grocer, and the door didn’t squeak either; but then there is such a thing as oil.’ He referred to this mineral without much confidence. ‘And on the other hand, there was that door at the back exactly as I’d seen it. Still, I found out that all the shops in that row are built on exactly the same plan.

‘But it was the police that were so awful,’ he moaned in conclusion. ‘It wasn’t that they were nasty or anything like that. They were just horribly kind, the way you are to people who haven’t long to live. When they thought I wasn’t listening they talked about concussion. The trouble was, you see, that everything looked so different in daylight, and I suppose I hesitated and expressed doubts and made mistakes and contradicted myself. Anyway, they drove me back to St Aldate’s and advised me to see a doctor, so I left them and came and had breakfast here. And here I am.’

‘I suppose,’ said Fen dubiously, ‘that you didn’t go upstairs at this grocery place?’

‘Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that. We did. There was no body, of course, and it was all quite different. That is, the stairs and passage were carpeted, and it was all clean and airy, and the furniture was covered with dust sheets, and the sitting-room was quite different from the room I’d been in. I think it was at that point that the police really became convinced I was crazy.’ Cadogan brooded over a sense of insufferable wrong.

‘Well,’ said Fen carefully, ‘assuming that this tale isn’t the product of a deranged mind—’

‘I am perfectly sane.’

‘Don’t bawl at me, my dear fellow.’ Fen was pained.

‘Of course, I don’t blame the police for thinking I was mad,’ said Cadogan in tones of the most vicious reprehension.

‘And assuming,’ Fen proceeded with aggravating calm, ‘that toyshops in the Iffley Road do not just take wing into the ether, leaving no gap behind: what could inspire anyone to substitute a grocery shop for a toyshop at dead of night?’

Cadogan snorted. ‘Perfectly obvious. They knew I’d seen the body, and they wanted people to think I was mad when I told them about it – which they’ve succeeded in doing. The crack on the head could be produced as the reason for my delusions. And the window of the closet was left open deliberately, so that I could get out.’

Fen gazed at him kindly. ‘Very nice, as far as it goes,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t explain the fundamental mystery of the business – why the grocery shop was turned into a toyshop in the first place.’

Cadogan had not thought of this.

‘You see,’ Fen continued, ‘they couldn’t have known you were going to blunder in. You’re the fly in the ointment. The groceries were removed, and the toys substituted, for some entirely different purpose. Then they had to be switched back again, in any case.’

Something like relief was coming back to Cadogan’s mind. For a while he almost wondered if he were, in fact, suffering from delusions. Belying all outward appearance, there was something extremely reliable about Fen. Cadogan assembled his sharp-cut, supercilious features into a frown.

‘But why?’ he asked.

‘I can think of several good reasons,’ said Fen gloomily. ‘But they’re probably all wrong.’

Cadogan stubbed out his cigarette and groped for a fresh one. As he did so his fingers came in contact with the scrap of paper he had picked up near the body. He was astonished to realize that he had forgotten all about it until this moment.

‘Here!’ he cried excitedly, pulling it out of his pocket. ‘Look! Tangible proof. I picked this up by the body. I didn’t remember I had it. I’d better go back to the police.’ He half rose, in some agitation, from his chair.

‘My dear fellow, calm yourself,’ said Fen, taking the scrap of paper from him. ‘Anyway, what is this thing tangible proof of?’ He read out the pencilled figures. ‘07691. A telephone number, apparently.’

‘Probably the number of the woman who was killed.’

‘Dear good Richard, what an extraordinary lack of perceptivity…One doesn’t carry one’s own telephone number about with one.’

‘She may have written it down for someone. Or it may not have been hers.’

‘No.’ Fen ruminated over the scrap of paper. ‘Since you seem to be forgetting rather a lot of things, I suppose you didn’t come across her handbag and look inside it?’

‘I’m certain it wasn’t there. Obviously, it’s the first thing I should have done.’

‘One never knows with poets.’ Fen sighed deeply and returned to the desk. ‘Well, there’s only one thing to be done with this number, and that is to ring it.’ He took off the receiver, dialled 07691, and waited. After a while there was an answer.

‘Hello.’ A rather tremulous woman’s voice.

‘Hello, Miss Scott,’ said Fen cheerfully. ‘How are you? Have you been long back from Baluchistan?’

Cadogan gazed at him blankly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice. ‘But I’m not Miss Scott.’

‘Oh.’ Fen gazed at the instrument in great dismay, as though he were expecting it to fall apart at any instant. ‘Who is that speaking, please?’

‘This is Mrs Wheatley. I’m afraid you have the wrong number.’

‘Why, so I have. Very stupid of me. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Good-bye.’ Fen seized the telephone directory and flipped over the pages.

‘Wheatley,’ he murmured. ‘Wheatley…Ah, here it is. Wheatley, Mrs J. H., 229 New Inn Hall Street, Oxford 07691. The lady seemed to be in very good health. And I suppose you realize, my dear Cadogan, that it might be any one of a thousand exchanges besides this?’

Cadogan nodded wearily. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘It’s hopeless, really.’

‘Look here, did you go round to the back of the shop with the police? The way you got out?’

‘Actually, no.’

‘Well, we’ll do that now. I want to have a look at the place, anyway.’ Fen considered. ‘I’ve got a tutorial at ten, but that can be put off.’ He scribbled a message on the back of an envelope and propped it up on the mantelpiece. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll drive.’

They drove. Driving with Fen was no pleasure to a man in Cadogan’s condition. It was all right in St Giles’ because St Giles’ is an immensely broad street where it is quite difficult to hit anything, except for the pedestrians who constantly scuttle across its expanses like startled hens, in a frantic and perilous gauntlet race. But they nearly smashed into a tradesman’s van in Broad Street, despite its width, they tore across the traffic lights by the King’s Arms just as they were changing, and they traversed Holywell Street and Long Wall Street in rather under a minute. Their eventual emergence into the thronged High Street Richard Cadogan describes as being by far the most horrifying episode of his entire adventure, for Fen was not the man to wait for anyone or anything. Cadogan stopped his eyes and ears and tried to meditate on the eternal verities. Yet somehow they did it, and were across Magdalen Bridge, and for the third time that morning he found himself in the Iffley Road.

Fen brought Lily Christine III to a shuddering standstill some way away from the location of the phantom toyshop.

‘You’ve been here before,’ he pointed out. ‘Someone might recognize you.’ The car backfired. ‘I wish it wouldn’t do that…I’m going to spy out the land. Wait till I come back.’ He climbed out.

‘All right,’ said Cadogan. ‘You’ll find it quite easily. Just opposite that church.’

‘When I get back, we’ll go round behind the shop.’ Fen strode off with his customary vigour.

The morning shopping rush had not yet begun, and the establishment of Winkworth, Family Grocer and Provisioner, was empty except for the grocer himself, a fat man swathed in priestly white, with a rotund and jolly face. Fen entered with a good deal of noise, observing, however, that the door did not squeak.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said the grocer amiably, ‘and what can I do for you?’

‘Oh,’ said Fen, who was looking curiously about him, ‘I want a pound of’ – he cast about in his mind for something suitable – ‘of sardines.’

Manifestly the grocer was somewhat taken aback. ‘I’m afraid we don’t sell them by weight, sir.’

‘A tin of rice, then.’ Fen frowned accusingly.

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Are you Mr Winkworth?’ Fen hastily dismissed the subject of purchases.

‘Why, no, sir. I’m only the manager here. It’s Miss Winkworth as owns the shop – Miss Alice Winkworth.’

‘Oh. May I see her?’

‘I’m afraid she’s away from Oxford at the moment.’

‘Oh. Does she live above here, then?’

‘No, sir.’ The man looked at him oddly. ‘No one lives above here. And now, about your purchases—’

‘I think I’ll leave them till later,’ said Fen blandly. ‘Much later,’ he added.

‘I shall be at your service any time, sir,’ the grocer answered magniloquently.

‘A pity’ – Fen watched the man closely – ‘a pity you don’t sell toys.’

‘Toys!’ the grocer ejaculated, and it was obvious that his astonishment was genuine. ‘Well, sir, it’s hardly likely you’d find toys in a grocer’s shop, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t, is it?’ said Fen cheerfully. ‘Nor dead bodies either. Good morning to you.’ He went out.

‘It’s no good,’ he told Cadogan, who was sitting in Lily Christine III, trying to adjust his bandage and staring in front of him. ‘I’m convinced that man knows nothing about it. Though he did behave rather queerly when I asked about the owner of the shop. A Miss Alice Winkworth, apparently.’

Cadogan grunted ambiguously at this information. ‘Well, let’s go round to the back, if you think it will do any good.’ His tone indicated little confidence in this prospect.

‘And by the way,’ Fen added as they walked down the narrow, sloping alleyway which led to the back of the shops, ‘was there anyone about when you came with the police this morning?’

‘In the shop, you mean? No, no one. The police let themselves in with skeleton keys, or something. The door was locked by then.’

They counted the creosoted wooden fences which marked off the little garden.

‘This is it,’ said Cadogan.

‘And someone’s been sick here,’ said Fen with distaste.

‘Yes, that was me.’ Cadogan peered in at the gate. The neglected overgrown enclosure, which had seemed so sinister in the half-light, looked quite ordinary now.

‘You see that small window?’ he said. ‘To the right of the front door? That’s the sort of closet place I got out of.’

‘Is it, now?’ Fen answered thoughtfully. ‘Let’s go and have a look at it.’

The small window was still open, but it was higher from the ground than Cadogan had remembered, and even Fen, tall as he was, could not see inside. Somewhat disappointed they went on to the back door.

‘This is open, anyway,’ said Fen. Cadogan banged against a dustbin which stood beside it. ‘For goodness’ sake try to avoid making that terrible noise.’

He moved inside with some caution, and Cadogan followed him. He was not very clear what they were supposed to be doing. There was a short corridor, with a kind of kitchen, untenanted, on the left, and the door of the closet, half open, on the right. From the shop in front came the murmur of voices and the bell of the cash register.

But the closet contained cleaning things no longer. There were, instead, piles of groceries and provisions. And Cadogan was seized by a sudden doubt. Was the whole thing, after all, a delusion? Surely it was all too fantastic to be real? After all, it wasn’t impossible that he should have fallen on his way into Oxford, struck his head, and dreamed the entire business – its quality was nightmarish enough. He blinked about him. He listened. And then, in some alarm, he tugged Fen by the sleeve.

There was no doubt about it. Footsteps were approaching the closet.

Fen did not hesitate a moment. ‘Every man for himself,’ he said, leaped on to a pile of boxes and projected himself feet first out of the window. Unfortunately in so doing he knocked over the boxes with a great clatter, and thus cut off Cadogan’s line of retreat. There was no time to pile them up again, and the back door was out of the question – the handle of the closet was already turning. Cadogan seized a tin of baked beans in his right hand, and one of kidney pudding in his left, and waited, adopting a forbidding aspect.

Fatly expectant, the grocer entered his closet. His eyes bulged and his mouth gaped in stupefaction when he saw the intruder, but to Cadogan’s surprise he made no aggressive movements. Instead, he raised both hands above his head, like an Imam invoking Allah, called out ‘Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!’ in a loud theatrical voice, and fled away as fast as his bulk would allow. Evidently he was much more afraid of Cadogan than Cadogan was of him.

But Cadogan did not stop to think of these things. The back door, the neglected garden, the gate, and the alleyway marked the stages of his frantic retreat. Fen was sitting in Lily Christine III, reading The Times with elaborate concentration, and a small, vaguely interested crowd had gathered round the front of the shop to listen to the grocer’s continued cries. Cadogan scuttled across the pavement and into the back of the car, where he lay down on the floor. With a jerk they started.

Once over Magdalen Bridge, he sat up and said ‘Well?’ with some bitterness.

‘Sauve qui peut,’ said Fen airily – or as airily as was possible above the outrageous din of the engine. ‘And remember, I have a reputation to keep up. Was it the grocer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you cosh him one?’

‘No, he ran away in a fright…Well, I’m damned,’ said Cadogan, staring. ‘I’ve brought a couple of tins away with me.’

‘Well, we’ll have them for lunch. That is, if you’re not arrested for petty larceny before then. Did he get a look at you?’

‘Yes…I say, Gervase.’

‘Well?’

‘I want to get to the bottom of this business. My blood’s up. Let’s go and see this Wheatley woman.’

So they drove to New Inn Hall Street.

3
The Episode of the Candid Solicitor

Two hundred and twenty-nine, New Inn Hall Street proved to be a modest and attractive lodging-house almost next door to a girls’ school; and its proprietress, Mrs Wheatley, a small, timid, bustling, elderly woman who twisted her apron nervously in her hands while she talked.

‘I’ll deal with this,’ Cadogan had said to Fen when they arrived. ‘I have a plan.’ In point of fact, he had no plan of any kind. Fen had agreed to this, rather grudgingly. He had then settled down to do the Times crossword puzzle, filling in the literary clues without difficulty. But the rest eluded him, so he sat looking crossly at the passers-by.

When Mrs Wheatley opened the door to him, Cadogan was still trying to think what to say.

‘I expect,’ she said anxiously, ‘that you’re the gentleman about the Rooms.’

‘Exactly.’ He was greatly relieved. ‘The Rooms.’

She showed him inside.

‘Very nice weather we’re having,’ she said, as though personally responsible for this phenomenon. ‘This would be the sitting-room.’

‘Mrs Wheatley, I’m afraid I’ve deceived you.’ Now he was inside the house, Cadogan decided to abandon his stratagem. ‘I’m not about the Rooms at all. The fact is’ – he cleared his throat – ‘have you a friend or relation, an elderly lady, unmarried, with grey hair and – er – given to wearing tweeds and blouses…?’

Mrs Wheatley’s pinched, anxious face lit up. ‘You don’t mean Miss Tardy, sir?’

‘Er – what was the name again?’

‘Miss Tardy, sir. Emilia Tardy. “Better Late than Never” we used to call her. On account of the name, you see. Why, Emilia’s my oldest friend.’ Her face clouded. ‘Nothing’s wrong, is it, sir? Nothing’s happened to her?’

‘No, no,’ Cadogan said hastily. ‘Only I met your – ah –friend some time ago, and she said that if ever I was in Oxford I was to be sure to look you up. Unfortunately, I never quite caught her name, though I remembered yours.’

‘Why, that’s right sir.’ Mrs Wheatley beamed. ‘And I’m very glad you’ve come – very glad indeed. Any friend of Emilia’s is welcome here. If you’d like to just come down to my sitting-room and take a cup of tea, I could show you a photograph of her to refresh your memory.’

This was luck, Cadogan reflected as he followed Mrs Wheatley to the basement; for he had little doubt that Emilia Tardy and the woman he had seen in the toyshop were one and the same. The sitting-room turned out to be cluttered up with wicker chairs, budgerigars, flower calendars, reproductions of Landseer, and unattractive plates depicting unstable Chinese bridges. There was an enormous stove along one side, with a kettle simmering on it.

The confusions attendant upon the brewing of tea over, Mrs Wheatley hastened to a drawer and reverently brought forth a rather faded brown photograph.

‘Here she is, sir. Now, was that the lady you met?’

Unquestionably it was, though the photograph must have been ten years old, and the face he had seen had been swollen and discoloured. Miss Tardy smiled kindly and vaguely at the photographer, her pince-nez balanced on her nose, her straight hair a little deranged. But it was not the face of an ineffectual spinster; there was a certain self-reliance in it, despite the vague smile.

He nodded. ‘Yes, this is she.’

‘Might I ask if it was in England you met her, sir?’ Looking over his shoulder, Mrs Wheatley timidly twisted her blue apron in her hands.

‘No, abroad.’ (From the form of the question, a safe bet.) ‘And quite a long time ago now – six months at least, I should think.’

‘Ah, yes. That would be when she was last in France. A great traveller, Emilia is, and how she has the courage to live among all those foreigners is beyond me. You’ll pardon my curiosity, sir, but it’s four weeks since I heard from her, and that’s rather strange, as she’s always been a most faithful writer. I’m afraid something may have happened to her.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to say I can’t help you there.’ As he sipped his tea and smoked his cigarette in that cheerful, ugly room, under the anxious eyes of little Mrs Wheatley, Cadogan felt a slight dislike for his presence. But no purpose would be served by brutally telling his hostess of the facts of the case, even if he had really known what they were.

‘She travelled – travels – a lot, then?’ he asked in the tautologous fashion of modern conversation.

‘Oh, yes, sir. Small places mostly, in France and Belgium and Germany. Sometimes she only stops a day or so, sometimes months on end, according to how she likes it. Why, it must be three years if it’s a day since she was last in England.’

‘A rather unsettled sort of existence, I should have thought. Has she no relatives? She did strike me as being rather a lonely sort of person, I must say.’

‘I think there was only an aunt, sir…Let me give you another drop of tea in your cup. There…And she died some time ago. A Miss Snaith she was, very rich and eccentric, and lived on Boar’s Hill, and had a liking for comic poems. But as to Emilia, she enjoys travelling, you know; it suits her. She’s got a little bit of money of her own, and what she doesn’t spend on the children, she spends on seeing new places and people.’

‘The children?’

‘Devoted to children, she is. Gives money to hospitals and homes for them. And a very nice thing to do, I say. But if I may ask, sir, how was she looking when you saw her?’

‘Not too well, I thought. I didn’t really see much of her. We were thrown together for a couple of days in a hotel – the only English people there, you know, so naturally we chatted a bit.’ (Cadogan was appalled at his fluency. But didn’t Mencken say somewhere that poetry is only accomplished lying?)

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Wheatley. ‘I expect you found her deafness a trouble.’

‘Eh? Oh yes, it was rather. I’d almost forgotten.’ Cadogan wondered about the mentality of the person who would go up behind an old, deaf woman, strike her on the head, and choke her with a thin cord. ‘But I’m sorry to hear you’ve had no word from her.’

‘Well, sir, it may mean she’s on her way home from somewhere. She’s a great one for surprising you – just turning up on your doorstep without a word of warning. And she always stays with me when she’s in England, though goodness knows she’d be quite lost in Oxford, as I only moved here two years ago, and I know for a fact she’s never been here – ’ Mrs Wheatley paused for breath. ‘But I got that worried I went and asked Mr Rosseter – ’

‘Mr Rosseter?’

‘That’s Miss Snaith’s solicitor. I thought Emilia being a near relative he might have heard something from her when the old lady died. But he didn’t know anything.’ Mrs Wheatley sighed. ‘Still, we mustn’t cross bridges before we come to them, must we, sir? I’ve no doubt everything’s all right really. Another drop of tea?’

‘No, really, thank you, Mrs Wheatley.’ Cadogan rose, to an accompaniment of loud creaking, from his wicker chair. ‘I should be going now. You’ve been most hospitable and kind.’

‘Not at all, sir. If Emilia should arrive, who should I say called?’

Fen was in an atrabilious mood.

‘You’ve been the devil of a time,’ he grumbled as Lily Christine III got under way again.

‘But it was worth it,’ Cadogan answered. He gave a résumé of what he had learned, which lasted almost until they were back at St Christopher’s.

‘Um,’ said Fen thoughtfully. ‘That is something, I agree. At the same time, I don’t quite see what we’re going to do about it. It’s very difficult trying to deal with a murder at second hand, and no corpus delicti. There must have been quite a substantial van knocking about when you were unconscious. I wonder if anyone in the neighbourhood saw or heard anything of it?’

‘Yes, I see what you mean: to cart toys and furniture and groceries about. But you’re quite right, you know: the problem is – why change the place into a toyshop at all?’

‘I’m not sure that that isn’t a bit clearer now,’ said Fen. ‘Your Mrs Wheatley told you Miss Tardy would be lost in Oxford. So if you wanted to get her to a place she’d never be able to find again –’

‘But what’s the point? If you’re going to kill her it doesn’t matter what she sees.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen blankly. ‘No, it doesn’t, does it? Oh, my dear paws.’ He brought the car to a halt at the main gate of St Christopher’s and made a feeble attempt to smooth down his hair. ‘The question is – who is her heir? You said she’d got an income of her own, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but not very much, I fancy. I think she must have been a sort of Osbert Sitwell spinster, living cheaply in pensions, drifting along the Riviera…But, anyway, not well enough off to be worth murdering for her money.’ A violent detonation came from the exhaust pipe. ‘You really ought to take this thing to a garage.’

Fen shook his head. ‘People will kill for extraordinarily small sums. But I must confess I don’t quite see the point of spiriting the body away when you’ve done it. Admittedly the murderer might be willing to wait until death was presumed, but it still seems odd. This Mrs Wheatley had no idea she was in England?’

‘None,’ said Cadogan. ‘And I gathered that if anyone on this earth knew about it, she would.’

‘Yes. A lonely woman whose disappearance wouldn’t cause very much surprise. Do you know’ – Fen’s voice was pensive – ‘I think this is rather a nasty business.’

They got out of the car and entered the college by a small door set in the big oaken gate. Inside a few undergraduates lingered, carrying gowns and staring at the cluttered noticeboards, which gave evidence of much disordered cultural activity. On the right was the porter’s lodge, with a sort of open window where the porter leaned, like a princess enchanted within some medieval fortalice. In all, that is, except appearance, for Parsons was a large formidable man with horn-rimmed glasses, a marked propensity for bullying, and the unshakable conviction that in the college hierarchy he stood above the law, the prophets, the dons, and the President himself.

‘Anything for me?’ Fen called out to him as they passed.

‘Er – no, sir,’ said Parsons, gazing at a row of pigeon-holes within. ‘But – ah – Mr Cadogan—’

‘Yes?’

The porter seemed disturbed. ‘I wonder’ – he glanced round at the loitering undergraduates – ‘I wonder if you’d just come inside a moment, sir?’

Puzzled, Cadogan went, and Fen followed him. The lodge was stifling with the heat of a large electric fire, halfheartedly designed to represent glowing coals. There were racks of keys, odd notices, a gas-ring, a university calendar, a college list, appliances for the prevention of fire, and two uncomfortable chairs.

Parsons was frankly conspiratorial. Cadogan felt as if he were about to be initiated into some satanic rite.

‘They’ve come for you, sir,’ said Parsons, breathing heavily. ‘From the police station.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Two constables and a sergeant it was. They left about five or ten minutes ago, when they found you weren’t here.’

‘It’s those bloody tins I took,’ said Cadogan. The porter gazed at him with interest. ‘Gervase, what am I going to do?’

‘Make a full confession,’ said Fen heartlessly, ‘and get in touch with your lawyer. No, wait a minute,’ he added. ‘I’ll ring up the Chief Constable. I know him.’

‘I don’t want to be arrested.’

‘You should have thought of that before. All right, Parsons, thank you. Come on, Richard. We’ll go across to my room.’

‘What shall I say, sir,’ said Parsons, ‘if they come again?’

‘Give them a drink of beer and pack them off with specious, high-sounding promises.’

‘Very good sir.’

They crossed the north and south quadrangles, meeting only a belated undergraduate trailing out in a bright orange dressing-gown to his bath, and climbed once more the staircase to Fen’s study. Here Fen applied himself to the telephone, while Cadogan smoked lugubriously and inspected his nails. In the house of Sir Richard Freeman on Boar’s Hill the bell jangled. He reached peevishly for the instrument.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘What? What! Who is it…? Oh, it’s you.’

‘Listen, Dick,’ said Fen, ‘your damned myrmidons are chasing a friend of mine.’

‘Do you mean Cadogan? Yes, I heard about that cock-and-bull story of his.’

‘It’s not cock-and-bull. There was a body. But, anyway, it’s not that. They’re after him for something he did in a grocery store.’

‘Good heavens, the fellow must be cracked. First toyshops and now grocers. Well, I can’t meddle in the affairs of the City Constabulary.’

‘Really, Dick…’

‘No, no, Gervase, it can’t be done. The processes of the law, such as they are, can’t be held up by telephone calls from you.’

‘But it’s Richard Cadogan. The poet.’

‘I couldn’t care less if it was the Pope…Anyway, if he’s innocent it’ll be all right.’

‘But he isn’t innocent.’

‘Oh, well, in that case only the Home Secretary can save him…Gervase, has it ever occurred to you that Measure for Measure is about the problem of Power?’

‘Don’t bother me with trivialities now,’ said Fen, annoyed, and rang off.

‘Well, that was a lot of use,’ said Cadogan bitterly. ‘I may as well go to the police-station and give myself up.’

‘No, wait a minute.’ Fen stared out into the quadrangle. ‘What was the name of that solicitor – the one Mrs Wheatley saw?’

‘Rosseter. What about it?’

Fen tapped his fingers impatiently on the window-sill. ‘You know, I’ve seen that name somewhere recently, but I can’t remember where. Rosseter, Rosseter…It was – Oh, my ears and whiskers!’ He strode to a pile of papers and began rummaging through them. I’ve got it. It was something in the agony column of the Oxford Mail – yesterday, was it, or the day before?’ He became inextricably involved in news-sheets. ‘Here we are. Day before yesterday. I noticed it because it was so queer. Look.’ He handed Cadogan the page, pointing to a place in the personal column.

‘Well,’ said Cadogan, ‘I don’t see how this helps.’ He read the advertisement aloud:

‘“Ryde, Leeds, West, Mold, Berlin. Aaron Rosseter, Solicitor, 193A Cornmarket.” Well, and what are we to conclude from that?’

‘I don’t exactly know,’ said Fen. ‘And yet I feel somehow I ought to. Holmes would have made mincemeat of it – he was good on agony columns. Mold, Mold. What is Mold, anyway?’ He went to the encyclopedia and took out a volume. After a moment’s search: ‘“Mold,”’ he read. ‘“Urban district and market town of Flintshire. Thirteen miles from Chester…centre of important lead and coal mines…bricks, tiles, nails, beer, etc.…” Does that convey anything to you?’

‘Nothing at all. It’s my opinion they’re all proper names.’

‘Well, they may be.’ Fen restored the book to its place. ‘But if so, it’s a remarkable collection. Mold, Mold,’ he added into tones of faint reproof.

‘And in any case,’ Cadogan went on, ‘it’ll be the wildest coincidence if it’s got anything to do with this Tardy woman.’

‘Don’t spurn coincidence in that casual way,’ said Fen severely. ‘I know your sort. You say the most innocent encounter in a detective novel is unfair, and yet you’re always screaming out about having met someone abroad who lives in the next parish, and what a small world it is. My firm conviction,’ he said grandiosely, ‘is that this advertisement has something to do with the death of Emilia Tardy. I haven’t the least idea what, as yet. But I suggest we go and see this Rosseter fellow.’

‘All right,’ Cadogan replied. ‘Provided we don’t go in that infernal red thing of yours. Where on earth did you get it, anyway?’

Fen looked pained. ‘I bought it from an undergraduate who was sent down. What’s the matter with it? It goes very fast,’ he added in a cajoling tone.

‘I know.’

‘Oh, all right then, we’ll walk. It’s not far.’

Cadogan grunted. He was engaged in tearing out Rosseter’s advertisement and putting it in his pocket-book. ‘And if nothing comes of it,’ he said, ‘I shall go straight to the police, and tell them what I know.’

‘Yes. By the way, what did you do with those tins you stole? I’m feeling rather peckish.’

‘They’re in the car, and you leave them alone.’

‘Oughtn’t you to adopt a disguise?’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid, Gervase…It’s not the being arrested I mind. They’re not likely to do more than just fine me. It’s all the bother of explaining and arranging bail and coming up before magistrates…Well, come on, let’s go, if you think it will do any good.’

The Cornmarket is one of the busiest streets in Oxford, though scarcely the most attractive. It has its compensations – the shapely, faded façade of the old Clarendon Hotel, the quiet gabled coaching yard of the Golden Cross, and a good prospect of the elongated pumpkin which is Tom Tower – but primarily it is a street of big shops. Above one of these was 193A, the office of Mr Aaron Rosseter, solicitor, as dingy, severe, and uncomfortable as most solicitor’s offices. What was it, Cadogan wondered, which made solicitors so curiously insensible to the graces of this life?

A faintly Dickensian clerk, with steel-rimmed spectacles and leather pads sewn to the elbows of his coat, showed them into the presence. The appearance of Mr Rosseter, though Asiatic, did not justify the Semitic promise of his baptismal name. He was a small, sallow man, with a tremendous prognathous jaw, a tall forehead, a bald crown, horn-rimmed spectacles, and trousers which were a little too short for him. His manner was abrupt, and he had a disconcerting trick of suddenly whipping off his glasses, polishing them very rapidly on a handkerchief which he pulled from his sleeve, and restoring them with equal suddenness to his nose. He looked a trifle seedy, and one suspected that his professional abilities were mediocre.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘and may I know your business?’ He examined the rather overwhelming presence of Gervase Fen with faint signs of trepidation.

Fen beamed at him. ‘This person,’ he said, pointing to Cadogan, ‘is a second cousin to Miss Snaith, for whom I believe you acted during her lifetime.’

Mr Rosseter was almost as startled at this dramatic revelation as Cadogan. ‘Indeed,’ he said, tapping his fingers very rapidly on the desk. ‘Indeed. I’m very pleased to know you, sir. Do me the honour of sitting down.’

Blinking reproachfully at Fen, Cadogan obeyed, though as to what honour he could be doing Mr Rosseter in lowering his behind on to a leather chair he was not entirely clear. ‘I had rather lost touch with my cousin,’ he announced, ‘during the last years of her life. Actually she was not, properly speaking, a second cousin at all.’ Here Fen glared at him malevolently. ‘My mother, one of the Shropshire Cadogans, married my father – no, I don’t mean that exactly, or rather, I do – anyway, my father was one of seven children, and his third sister Marion was divorced from a Mr Childs, who afterwards remarried and had three children – Paul, Arthur, and Letitia – one of whom (I forget which) married, late in life, a nephew (or possibly a niece), of a Miss Bosanquet. It’s all rather complex, I’m afraid, like a Galsworthy novel.’

Mr Rosseter frowned, took off his glasses, and polished them very rapidly. Evidently he did not find this funny. ‘Perhaps you would state your business, sir?’ he barked.

To Cadogan’s alarm, Fen burst at this point into a noisy peal of laughter. ‘Ha! ha!’ be shouted, apparently overcome with merriment. ‘You must forgive my friend, Mr Rosseter. Such a droll fellow, but no business sense, none at all. Ha! ha! ha! A Galsworthy novel, eh? That’s very, very funny, old man. Ha! ha!’ He mastered himself with apparent difficulty. ‘But we mustn’t waste Mr Rosseter’s valuable time like this – must we?’ he concluded savagely.

Repressing the imp of mischief within him, Cadogan nodded. ‘I do apologize, Mr Rosseter. The fact is that I sometimes write things for the BBC, and I like to try them out on people beforehand.’ Mr Rosseter made no reply; his dark eyes were wary. ‘Yes,’ said Cadogan heavily. ‘Well, now, Mr Rosseter: I heard only the bare facts of my cousin’s death. Her end was peaceful, I hope?’

‘In fact,’ said Mr Rosseter, ‘no.’ His small form, behind the old-fashioned roll-top desk, was silhouetted against a window overlooking the Cornmarket. ‘She was, unhappily, run over by a bus.’

‘Like Savonarola Brown,’ put in Fen, interested.

‘Really?’ said Mr Rosseter sharply, as though he suspected he was being trapped into some damaging admission.

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Cadogan, trying to inject something like sorrow into his voice. ‘Though, mind you,’ he added, sensing failure in this endeavour, ‘I only met her once or twice, so I wasn’t exactly bowled over by her death. “No longer, mourn for me when I am dead then you shall hear the surly sullen bell” – you understand.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Fen sighed unnecessarily.

‘No, I’ll be frank with you, Mr Rosseter,’ said Cadogan. ‘My cousin was a rich woman and had few – ah – relatives. As regards the will…’ He paused delicately.

‘I see.’ Mr Rosseter seemed a little relieved. ‘Well, I’m afraid I must disappoint you there, Mr – er – Cadogan. Miss Snaith left the whole of her fairly considerable fortune to her nearest relative – a Miss Emilia Tardy.’

Cadogan looked up sharply. ‘I know the name, of course.’

‘Quite a considerable fortune,’ Mr Rosseter enunciated with relish. ‘In the region of a million pounds.’ He looked at his visitors, pleased with the effect he had created. ‘Large sums, naturally, were swallowed up in estate and death duties, but well over half of the original amount is left. Unfortunately, Miss Emilia Tardy is no longer in a position to claim it.’

Cadogan stared. ‘No longer in a position—’

‘The terms of the will are peculiar, to say the very least of it.’ Again Mr Rosseter polished his glasses. ‘I have no objection to telling you gentlemen of them, since the will has been proved, and you may discover the details yourself from Somerset House. Miss Snaith was an eccentric old lady – I might say very eccentric. She had a strong sense of – ah –family ties, and had, moreover, promised to leave her estate to her nearest surviving relative, Miss Tardy. But at the same time she was a woman of – ah – old-fashioned views, and disapproved of the kind of life her niece was leading, travelling and living, as she did, almost wholly on the Continent. In consequence, she added a curious proviso in her will: I was to advertise for Miss Tardy in the English newspapers, with a certain specified regularity, but not in the Continental ones; and if within six months of the date of Miss Snaith’s death Miss Tardy had not appeared to lay claim to her inheritance, then automatically she forfeited all right to it. In this way Miss Snaith proposed to revenge herself for Miss Tardy’s way of life and for her neglect of her aunt, with whom, I believe, she had not communicated for many years, without on the other hand transgressing the letter of her promise.

‘Gentlemen, the period of six months came to an end at midnight last night, and I have had no communication from Miss Tardy of any kind.’

There was a long silence. Then Fen said:

‘And the estate?’

‘It goes entirely to charity.’

‘To charity!’ Cadogan exclaimed.

‘I should say to various charities.’ Mr Rosseter, who had been standing all this time, relapsed into the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘In point of fact, I was occupied with the details of the administration when you came in; Miss Snaith appointed me as her executor.’

Cadogan felt blank. Unless Rosseter was lying, a superb motive had been whisked away from under their noses. Charities did not murder elderly maiden ladies for the purpose of obtaining benefactions.

‘That, then, is the position, gentlemen,’ said Mr Rosseter briskly. ‘And now if you’ll forgive me’ – he gestured – ‘a great deal of work—’

‘One more thing, if you’ll be so kind,’ Fen interrupted. ‘Or, now I come to think of it, two. Did you ever meet Miss Tardy?’

It seemed to Cadogan that the solicitor avoided looking Fen in the eye. ‘Once. A very strong-willed and moral person.’

‘I see. And you put an advertisement in the Oxford Mail the day before yesterday—’

Mr Rosseter laughed. ‘Ah, that. Nothing to do with Miss Snaith or Miss Tardy, I assure you. I’m not so unpopular’ – he grinned with unconvincing roguishness – ‘as to have only one client, you know.’

‘A curious advertisement—’

‘It was, wasn’t it? But I’m afraid I should be violating a confidence if I were to explain. And now, gentlemen, if ever I can deal with any business for you…’

The Dickensian clerk ushered them out. As he departed, Cadogan said wryly:

‘My only second cousin. A millionairess. And she leaves me nothing – not even a book of comic verse,’ he added, remembering Mrs Wheatley’s comment on this prepossession of Miss Snaith. ‘Well, it’s a hard world.’

It was a pity he did not look round as he spoke. For Mr Rosseter was gazing after him with an odd expression on his face.

The mild sun gleamed on the thronged street outside. Cycling undergraduates pushed between the jams of cars and buses, and the housewives of Oxford shopped.

‘Well,’ said Cadogan, ‘was he telling the truth?’

‘We might know,’ said Fen aggrievedly, as they pushed along the crowded pavement, ‘if you hadn’t started off by behaving like something out of a mental home.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t suddenly foist these impostures on me. There’s one thing, the centre of interest seems to have shifted from Miss Tardy to Miss Snaith and her millions.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s shifted to Mr Rosseter.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You see’ – Fen cannoned into a woman who had suddenly stopped in front of him to look at a shop window – ‘you see, any ordinary solicitor, if two total strangers rushed into his office and demanded details of his clients’ private affairs, would quite certainly just kick them out. Why was Mr Rosseter so candid, so open and informative? Because he was telling a pack of lies? But as he quite rightly remarked, we can check what he said from Somerset House. All the same, I don’t trust Mr Rosseter.’

‘Well, I’m going to the police,’ said Cadogan. ‘If there’s anything I hate, it’s the sort of book in which characters don’t go to the police when they’ve no earthly reason for not doing so.’

‘You’ve got an earthly reason for not doing so immediately.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The pubs are open,’ said Fen, as one who after a long night sees dawn on the hills. ‘Let’s go and have a drink before we do anything rash.’

4
The Episode of the Indignant Janeite

‘Which in effect,’ said Cadogan, ‘leaves us exactly where we were before.’

They were sitting in the bar of the Mace and Sceptre, Fen drinking whisky, Cadogan beer. The Mace and Sceptre is a large and quite hideous hotel which stands in the very centre of Oxford and which embodies, without apparent shame, almost every architectural style devised since the times of primitive man. Against this initial disadvantage it struggles nobly to create an atmosphere of homeliness and comfort. The bar is a fine example of Strawberry Hill Gothic.

It was only a quarter past eleven in the morning, so few people were drinking as yet. A young man with a hooked nose and a broad mouth was talking to the barman about horses. Another young man with horn-rimmed glasses and a long neck was engrossed in Nightmare Abbey. And a pale, rather grubby undergraduate with untidy red hair was talking politics to an earnest-looking girl in a dark green jersey.

‘So you see,’ he was saying, ‘it’s by such means that the moneyed classes, gambling on the Stock Exchange, ruin millions of poor investors.’

‘But surely the poor investors were gambling on the Stock Exchange too.’

‘Oh, no, that’s quite different…’

Mr Hoskins, more like a vast, lugubrious blood-hound than ever, was sitting at a table with a dark and beautiful girl called Miriam. He was drinking a small glass of pale sherry.

‘But, darling,’ said Miriam, ‘it will be simply awful if the proctors catch me in here. You know they send women down if they catch them in bars.’

‘The proctors never come in in the mornings,’ said Mr Hoskins. ‘And in any case, you don’t look a bit like an undergraduate. Now, just don’t you worry. Look, I’ve got some chocolates for you.’ He pulled a box from his pocket.

‘Oh, you darling…’

The only other occupant of the bar was a thin, rabbit-faced man of about fifty, greatly muffled up in coats and scarves, who was sitting by himself drinking rather more than was good for him.

Fen and Cadogan had been running over the facts of the case as far as they knew them, and it was the result of this investigation which had prompted Cadogan’s remark. Those facts boiled down to dispiritingly little:

 1. A grocery shop in Iffley Road had been turned into a toyshop during the night, and then back into a grocery shop.

 2. A Miss Emilia Tardy had been found dead there, and her body had subsequently vanished.

 3. A rich aunt of Emilia Tardy, Miss Snaith, had been run over by a bus six months previously, and had left her fortune to Miss Tardy under certain conditions which made it as likely as not that Miss Tardy would never even become aware of her inheritance (if Rosseter was telling the truth).

‘And I suppose,’ said Fen, ‘that he wasn’t allowed to communicate directly with any known address of Miss Tardy. By the way, I was meaning to ask you: did you feel the body at all?’

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