‘We have a note of that too.’
‘Well, Pluckrose, I fear, did something to exacerbate it. Principally, no doubt, because he dislikes Evans. Indeed, I may say that between Pluckrose and Evans there was some rather serious trouble.’
‘Can you tell me what it was about?’
Murn looked quite uncomfortable. ‘It is really a most delicate matter. Or perhaps I ought to say a most indelicate matter. Among young men – yes. But when it comes to elderly men of no undistinguished position–’
Appleby stared. ‘Good Lord! You don’t mean to say it was a woman?’
‘I fear it was just that.’ Mr Athelstan Murn glanced out of the window. ‘In fact, one might say it was a
girl
. I am myself strongly of the opinion that one ought not to get mixed up with them. Have a good look at them – yes. But when it comes positively to–’
‘I see. Certainly a great deal of trouble would be avoided if you could persuade people to your point of view.’ Appleby paused. There had recurred to his memory the masterly insinuations of Miss Dearlove. ‘You really mean to tell me that Sir David Evans and Professor Pluckrose were at loggerheads over a girl?’
‘Well, yes. Since you more or less asked me, you know.’ Murn looked quite reproachful. ‘Of course, it isn’t very generally known. It just so happens – In fact, Miss Godkin could tell you more about it than I can. If you cared to approach her on such a topic. Though I suppose that sort of thing is just in your line.’
‘Miss Godkin!’ Appleby was startled. ‘You don’t mean to say that this girl was a
student
– student in that lady’s hostel, St What’s-its-name?’
‘St Cecilia’s. But it is not, seemingly, quite as bad as that, I am glad to say. The young person has been living at St Cecilia’s, but she is not a student at the university. She is a German girl, temporarily under Miss Godkin’s care.’ Murn paused. ‘And an absolute stunner.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Appleby was, if anything, more startled still.
‘You should see her legs.’ Murn settled comfortably back in his chair. ‘And her – her bust.’
‘Dear me. An alluring girl, plainly.’ Suddenly Appleby chuckled.
‘Zuleika
Dobson
!’ he exclaimed.
Murn shook his head. ‘I think not. I believe her name is Else Schmauch.’
‘No doubt. But Zuleika Dobson was a girl about whom a whole university went crazy. Would you say that something of the sort was the position here?’
‘Fräulein Schmauch has certainly caused something of a sensation. Though I must say that her conversation–’
‘So you know her?’ Appleby looked sharply at Murn.
‘As an acquaintance, my dear sir. Occasionally I dine with Miss Godkin in the hall at St Cecilia’s. There are – um – some interesting frescoes at which I am always glad to have a look. And I have met the young person in that way.’
‘May I ask if
you
have been at loggerheads with anybody over her?’
Mr Murn, thus suddenly attacked, made an agitated grab at his beard – and promptly let it go, much as if it were a bunch of nettles. ‘My dear sir–’
‘You have given me a number of facts, any or all of which may be valuable, which in effect suggest a number of possible motives for the crime which has occurred here.’ Appleby looked at Mr Murn in the friendliest way. ‘I wonder if any of your colleagues, equally obliging, could volunteer information on any little frictions in which you yourself have been involved?’
Appleby, thus rounding upon Murn, was doing no more than follow in a routine manner the unpleasant necessities of his calling. He had no reason to suppose that this elderly spectator of the human scene had any further secret to unfold. It was surprising, therefore, as well as gratifying that Murn should now throw his hands above his head in a gesture of despair. ‘I called him a viper!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dear, delightful fellow that he was, I called him a horrible viper.’
Very gravely, Appleby shook his head. ‘This is bad, Mr Murn; this is bad, indeed.’
‘There had been a little misunderstanding over a piece of biochemical research in our department. I had been given to suppose that we were regarded as at work upon it jointly. And then Pluckrose – dear, impetuous fellow that he was – communicated the results to a scientific journal without making any mention of my name. Most unhappily, I was aggrieved. And I called him a viper.’
Appleby produced a notebook. ‘And what is a viper? Something that one crushes, I should say.’
Murn groaned. ‘And that was what I said. You have no doubt heard all about it. Several of my colleagues were present at the time. I told him that he was a viper whom it would give me great pleasure to crush beneath my heel.’ Murn groaned again. ‘How unfortunate it has all been! How it has spoilt the whole affair!’
‘Spoilt the whole affair?’
‘My dear sir, Pluckrose is dead. It is a beautiful fact.’ Murn was now looking at Appleby with a sort of open-eyed innocence that was extremely convincing. ‘I have dreamed of it for years. And now it is all spoilt by this terrible anxiety. By this fiendish plot to accomplish my ruin. You are
sure
nobody was seen at that turret window?’
‘Naturally I can be sure of nothing of the sort. But so far no evidence of the kind has turned up.’
With an agility surprising in so ancient a person, Murn sprang to his feet and moved towards his desk. ‘I will confide in you,’ he said – and opened a lowermost drawer. ‘I have here an – an object which I discovered secreted in the dark-room shortly after Pluckrose’s body had been found. Its significance I shall leave you to determine.’
And Mr Murn stooped, withdrew something from the drawer, laid it on top of the desk, and stepped back. Appleby advanced, stared – and then swung round much as if he suspected Mr Murn of having performed a theatrical trick. Mr Murn, however, was exactly as he had been before.
Again Appleby turned to the desk. What lay on it was a large, a white, a venerable beard.
Appleby picked up the beard and examined it minutely. ‘You say you found it?’ he asked.
‘In a cupboard in the dark-room. I’d hardly be likely to
buy
a beard, you know.’ And Murn managed to contrive a momentary appearance of mirth. ‘But it’s extremely upsetting in the circumstances, you must agree.’
‘I think it’s extremely interesting.’ Appleby had produced a magnifying glass and was giving an exhibition of the most orthodox criminal investigation. ‘There’s dust on it – and if it’s the same dust as is in the cupboard that will go a little way towards substantiating your story.’ He looked up. ‘And I may say that this is about our first clue – of a tangible sort such as one could thrust under the nose of a jury. This and a photograph of a scratched floor and a cast-iron sink. Would you mind coming along now and showing me just where you discovered it?’ They moved towards the door. But before Pluckrose’s photograph Appleby paused. ‘Did you see the body?’ he asked abruptly.
Murn jumped. ‘The body? No. That is to say, I wasn’t asked–’
‘It didn’t look like that any longer. Come along.’
Murn made a distressed noise and followed Appleby from the room. They turned right and went down the corridor; through the high windows on their left light seeped in from the Wool Court. ‘By the way,’ said Appleby, ‘you know the fountain out there, Mr Murn? It was full on when the body was discovered. Is that usual?’
‘Decidedly not.’ Murn seemed to welcome this request for collaboration. ‘The fountain was designed for a much larger space, and was moved to the court when we built the new library. Turning it full on would make the devil of a mess.’
‘Which is more or less what happened. Can you think of any reason why?’
Murn considered. ‘I think I can. As you know, the engineering shops are opposite, and there are people working there most of the morning. I don’t think the court can be observed from there, because of the arrangement of the windows. But it is possible–’ He paused. ‘Perhaps we might step out and see.’
They turned left down the next stretch of corridor, passed the problematical dark-room on their right, and went through the door which opened on the Wool Court.
Murn stroked his beard with something like renewed confidence. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is rather as I thought. The engineers, you see, have one door giving on the court; it is over there by the corner opposite the tower. I believe it opens on what is called the forge room, which is very little used. But it is always possible that somebody might be about there. And if you wished to screen this opposite corner from observation you might do worse than simply turn the fountain full on. The valve is no doubt somewhere close by.’
‘You don’t know just where?’
Murn started at the abruptness of the question. And then he smiled. ‘Mr Appleby,’ he said, ‘I come from Norfolk. And I will answer you in the dialect of that county. You can’t patch it on me. Beard or no beard, you can’t patch it on me.’
‘It looks rather as if someone else is trying to patch it on you. And we might try a little experiment. You might stand down here and I might put on the beard and go up to the turret window. And you might decide how much I looked like you.’
‘I think you had better get someone else to decide.’ Confession and this little matter of investigating the fountain appeared to have soothed Murn’s nerves; he glanced placidly up at the tower, placidly down at the spot where Pluckrose’s chair had stood, and then led the way back into the corridor. They turned right and stopped before the second door. ‘I suppose, Mr Appleby, that you know the lie of the land. This is called the photographic room, and the only entrance to the dark-room is off it to the right. And on the other side is Pluckrose’s private laboratory – which is not, of course, the same thing as his private room. That is further up the corridor, just beyond the telephone he shared with Prisk. I don’t expect there’s anybody here.’
They went in. The photographic room was long, narrow, and lined with benches, sinks, shelves, and cupboards. At the far end of the left-hand wall was a door leading to the private laboratory, and opposite this was a doorless aperture which was presumably the entrance to the maze. Murn was mistaken as to the room’s being untenanted; at a small table sat Hobhouse taking down a statement from a white-coated laboratory assistant. This piece of business had apparently just concluded, for the man now rose and went out by the laboratory door. Hobhouse looked from Appleby to Murn – and from Murn to the false beard which Appleby still carried in his hand. ‘What you might call emergency equipment?’ he asked.
Appleby nodded. ‘Emergency equipment for somebody, undoubtedly. This is Mr Murn, and he is going to show us where he found the beard in the dark-room. How are things going?’
‘Not badly, not badly at all. The information is coming together.’ Perhaps for the benefit of Murn, Hobhouse spoke in a peculiarly weighty and knowing manner. ‘I think I’ve got down the movements of most of the people concerned, and no doubt Mr Murn will give an account of himself presently.’
‘Delighted,’ said Murn. ‘Anything that will assist in tracing Pluckrose’s assailant. Poor, dear fellow that he was.’ And Murn looked solemnly from Hobhouse to Appleby and stroked his beard.
‘Pinnegar is another gap so far.’ Hobhouse was consulting his notes. ‘He’s made off to London. Not, though, in anything that can be called an irregular way. He was due to do some work there, and he has leave, and he’s left his address – a hotel near the British Museum. And, talking of the Museum, we put a call through to that Hammond, who made the Duke buy the meteorite. The thing fell in a farmyard in Lancashire a couple of months ago and just missed a yokel. So you might say that Pluckrose was its second shot. And then this Hammond made the Duke pay the farmer something for it – though whether it was legally the man’s property I don’t know – and it was examined in various ways and found not to be of much interest to anybody. So it went back to Nesfield Court and lay about there until Pluckrose pinched it.’
‘Pluckrose pinched it? How extremely odd.’ Murn was clearly delighted with this piece of intelligence. ‘You know, that is what is so disappointing about science: everything follows in the dullest way from something else. Whereas when you get among folk you find a universe full of surprises. Not that I approve of becoming at all involved; the thing should be treated as a spectacle merely.’
‘We’ll hope you’re not involved in
this
.’ Hobhouse emphasized the repartee by pointing his pencil sternly at Murn. ‘Perhaps you will tell us what you were doing between ten-fifteen and eleven-thirty on Monday morning?’
Appleby interrupted. ‘Those are definitely the times?’
‘Yes; I’m pretty sure of them now. Pluckrose lectured from nine to ten, and then saw a couple of students in his room. One of them had to run to get to another appointment at ten-fifteen. Nobody admits to having seen Pluckrose after that. And the other time is pretty well fixed too. A porter was going along the corridor here and thought he heard rather a loud swish of water. So he stuck his head through the door and there was the fountain full on. He went into the court and there was the body. He looked at his watch and it was just eleven thirty.’
Appleby nodded. ‘I’ve a note of all that.’
‘He went straight to the head porter, who rang for a doctor and the police. And as soon as he’d done that he looked at his clock and booked the thing. I’ve seen the entry:
Eleven thirty-four – accident in Wool Court
.’
‘Businesslike. But seventy-five minutes is quite a long period to cover.’
‘That’s so. But we shall probably narrow it down when we’ve made a certain gentleman talk.’
Hobhouse said this with such a dark look at Murn that Appleby felt obliged to explain. ‘I may say that Hobhouse means Mr Lasscock. Theme is some reason to suppose that Lasscock was there in the court, and was just waking up, perhaps, from his morning nap when the meteorite came down.’
‘God bless my soul!’ Murn was really astonished. ‘But what has Lasscock to say about it?’
‘Merely that he didn’t come to the university at all on Monday. But we suspect that he is merely avoiding what he regards as involvement in something tiresome.’ Appleby looked ironically at Murn. ‘I mention all this – despite Inspector Hobhouse’s obvious disapproval – because of what you say about involvement yourself. You seem to be somewhat of Lasscock’s mind.’