‘The thing?’ Hissey was at his cards again; for a moment he looked up to glance over the teatable. ‘Ah, yes. Now what day would that be?’
‘Monday.’
‘And this is – ?’
‘Thursday.’
‘To be sure.’ Hissey smiled apologetically. ‘One rather loses count of the days, you know, when one doesn’t go to bed.’
‘Doesn’t go to bed!’ Hobhouse was astonished. ‘Don’t you go to bed, sir?’
‘Dear me, yes. I fear I am really becoming quite careless in my speech. I meant during the last few nights merely. It is my habit when real pressure of work comes along. I ought to add that your visit is really a most pleasant relief. May I offer you another cup of tea? I think you were saying something about the dark-room?’
‘I was saying that there were several people there with you at eleven o’clock on Monday, when Pluckrose was killed.’
‘Eleven o’clock? Do you know, I have the impression that it was a good deal later than that? By the time I got to Evans–’
‘Quite so, sir. But some time had elapsed before anybody found the body. Or rather I should say, before anybody admitted finding the body. But that Pluckrose was killed just on eleven o’clock is now certain. We have the evidence of Mr Lasscock, who actually saw it happen.’
Hissey, who was again at his table searching for papers, turned round abruptly. ‘Lasscock!
Lasscock saw it happen!
My dear sir, however can that be? Surely we should have heard–’
‘Mr Lasscock had reasons of his own – somewhat peculiar reasons of his own – for – well, for withholding this information for a time.’
‘God bless my soul!’ Hissey walked slowly to the tea table and mechanically poured himself out another cup of tea. ‘I think I may fairly say that you astound me. And you say that he can actually fix the hour?’
‘More or less to the minute.’
Hissey picked up a piece of plum cake. ‘I should imagine that such a discovery must constitute a decidedly favourable turn in the investigation… Ah, there is Dab-Dab at last.’ And Hissey, his mind clearly half on his cards again, made a dive back to the piles of documents. ‘Though I should suppose that a course so extraordinary as that of withholding information on so grave a matter would rather shake Lasscock’s credit in your regard.’
‘Well, sir, in a way it might.’ Hobhouse smiled tolerantly; his feelings for the somnolent historian had become much more kindly since his spirited denunciation of Sir David Evans. ‘But we find in our work that people can act in very odd ways and yet be straight enough witnesses when it comes to the point.’ And Hobhouse nodded sagely; replete with muffin and chocolate biscuit, he was inclined to philosophic generalization. ‘Yes, sir. Queer things happen in our profession.’
Professor Hissey smiled. ‘That’, he said, ‘is just what Bob Sawyer’s friend says in
Pickwick
.’
‘
Pickwick?
’ Hobhouse was brought momentarily to a stand. ‘Do you know, that reminds me of an odd thing Mr Appleby said? He said that
Pickwick Papers
was mixed up with this case. That it had to do with one of Mr Pickwick’s immortal discoveries – something like that.’
‘How very odd.’ Hissey, who had been moving his slice of plum cake approximately in the direction of his mouth, was so struck by this circumstance that he paused, looked at the cake in one hand and a pink card in the other, as if in some uncertainty as to which it would be reasonable to file. ‘How very odd, indeed. But then so is what you tell me of Lasscock. And I still cannot help feeling that he is not altogether to be relied upon. In so
minor
a matter of chronology, that is to say.’ And Hissey chuckled his innocent chuckle. ‘I believe it might be demonstrated that the surer you are of your reigns and dynasties and centuries and so on, the more inaccurate are you likely to be on what falls out between breakfast and luncheon. So I hope’ – and now Hissey looked quite serious – ‘that you won’t hang anyone just on Lasscock’s word.’
‘It’s the judge and jury who will do that, sir.’ Hobhouse was serious too. ‘But at least I don’t think there will be any mistake in the particular you mention. And I’m not saying that Mr Lasscock can point to the guilty person; all he can do is to point, in a manner of speaking, to the innocent ones. Anyone we can fix round about eleven o’clock–’
‘I see.’ Hissey had produced another file of cards and was still working tirelessly at his index. ‘To one unaccustomed to that sort of thing it is all very – well, queer, in your own phrase.’
‘There’s plenty that’s queer enough for a police museum in this case.’ Hobhouse took the last chocolate biscuit. ‘The beards, for instance.’
For the second time in this curious interview Hissey was plainly startled. He looked at Hobhouse with what was, for him, an unusual expression – an expression of sudden and decided caution. ‘Did I understand you to say beards?’
‘Beards. No doubt you know Professor Pluckrose’s assistant, Mr Murn, and the fine white beard he has? Well, Mr Murn himself found an exactly similar beard – a false one, of course – in a cupboard in the dark-room. He found it not long after the crime.’
Hissey was silent.
‘And then – and this is the extraordinary point – Mr Murn was showing us the empty cupboard where he had found the thing. And there in the cupboard again were two more beards of just the same sort.’
There was silence in Mr Hissey’s room, but its owner was no longer absorbed in his learned labours. He was staring at the window, with a sort of mild attention suggesting that he rather expected someone to drop in that way.
‘I don’t suppose, now, that anything would occur to you about that?’ Hobhouse asked the question at random. ‘I mean, there isn’t anybody or anything with whom it might strike you that the beards could be connected?’
‘I should connect false beards with the stage. Or, better perhaps, with amateur theatricals. In fact they might well belong to the university dramatic society; it has, I believe, a very considerable collection of properties – if that be the word. Marlow is in charge of all that. He is a very considerable actor, I have been told, and has worked for the society with great enthusiasm.’
Hobhouse considered this colourless but possibly pregnant statement carefully. ‘Then, sir, you would be inclined to associate Marlow with the beards?’
‘No.’
Hissey’s reply was as decided as it was brief. And as monosyllabic utterance was contrary to his habit and probably to his code of manners Hobhouse looked at him in surprise. ‘Well, perhaps it is a tenuous connexion, sir. The beards may have nothing to do with this dramatic society.’
‘I am almost certain that they have.’ Hissey paused, and Hobhouse suspected that he was in the throes of some obscure ethical problem. ‘I may say, in fact, that I am assured that these beards come from the society’s collection.’ Hissey appeared to be gaining time. ‘I can see’, he said carefully, ‘that any testimony relating definitely and unambiguously to a crime it is one’s duty to advance; in fact to come forward with whether taxed or not. But in the case of some dubious and perhaps scarcely even collateral circumstances, when one might well be involving an innocent person in grave suspicion–’ Hissey broke off and walked over to the window. ‘May I say’, he presently continued apologetically, ‘that there is matter here on which I would like to consult Appleby? He is an old pupil of mine, as you know, and I should have a good deal of confidence in his own judgement on any point touching the moral sciences.’
‘Quite so, sir.’ Hobhouse, though faintly nettled, was a model of diplomacy. ‘And now I think I had better be getting along. I’m sure I’ve kept you from this big job of yours too long already.’
‘Not at all, not at all.’ And once more Hissey amiably beamed. ‘And I am so pleased that there were muffins. I may say that there are crumpets every second day, and I have always regarded them as a distinctly inferior dish. It is pleasant, however, to feel that soon there will be cucumber sandwiches.
Iam ver egelidos refert tepores
, as the poet says.’
‘Just so, sir. And good afternoon.’
‘One moment.’ Hissey raised a detaining hand. ‘I am afraid I have behaved very foolishly. A craven scruple, as Shakespeare has it, of thinking too precisely on the event. After all, the fellow was plainly in so merry a mood about it that it would be absurd to impute any sinister intention.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t–’ Hobhouse was completely mystified.
‘Tavender. I may as well tell you at once. The reason that I am so certain of those beards having come from the dramatic society’s store is that I saw Tavender walking away with them. With two beards. And – let me see – on Tuesday afternoon. He was chuckling heartily. And he would have been rubbing his hands together – you know the way he has – only, of course, he was clutching a beard in each.’
‘I’ve called a meeting,’ Appleby said.
‘A meeting?’ Hobhouse was perplexed. ‘Whatever is that?’
‘A meeting of all the people concerned. Don’t you always call a meeting?’
‘I never heard of such a thing!’ And Hobhouse looked at his colleague aghast.
‘This affair has gone on long enough. And it’s holding up something really rather intricate which I happen to have on in town.’ Appleby’s expression was quite solemn. ‘So I think we’d better clear it up.’
Hobhouse thumbed his notebooks with a gesture of something like desperation. ‘But the whole case is at sixes and sevens. Think of this business of Tavender and the beards. He’s practically a new element and fits in just nowhere. Think of the weird behaviour of Evans. Think of Pluckrose, killed with his own stolen meteorite. Think of Prisk’s car. Think of that bust. Think of the appalling clutter of possible motives: the Prussian Academy and the boy Gerald and little misunderstandings over biochemical research and your German girl–’
‘There is certainly plenty of material.’
Hobhouse groaned. ‘And the alibis, Mr Appleby! Think of the whole complex situation round about eleven o’clock – I ask you, have we got it analysed out? And if you bring all those people together–’
‘They’ll talk.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ Miss Godkin herself could not have expressed more complete dismay. ‘But that’s just what we’ve had already – floods of it. And nothing whatever has emerged. Bless me, Mr Appleby, we don’t even know whom the meteorite was intended to kill.’
‘Never mind. Somebody does – and perhaps they’ll tell.’
‘And perhaps you’ll offer the meeting a little reading from
Pickwick Papers
?’ Hobhouse’s irony was gargantuan.
‘I certainly might. Chapter XI, it would be.’ Appleby looked at his watch. ‘And now I think we’d better get along. We can’t have Pinnegar and we can’t have Prisk, but the others will all be there.’
Hobhouse thrust his notebooks in his pocket with a gesture suggesting that he had small intention of taking them out again. ‘Very well. But you ought to have Prisk, I should say. He must be involved somehow or there wouldn’t have been that business with his car. But Pinnegar seems to have no particular place in the picture. He’s merely–’ Hobhouse broke off. ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘If you will hurry along like this things just will get overlooked. If there isn’t something about Pinnegar there is about his friend Marlow. I got the message only half an hour ago. They got what are pretty certainly Marlow’s fingerprints from his room and they correspond with impressions found inside that little telephone box.’
‘And so they ought.’ Appleby nodded equably. ‘Marlow made a bogus call, all right. And as for Pinnegar, it’s likely enough that he is in – well, say up to but just short of his neck. And wouldn’t you say that we’ve seen less of him than of any of the others?’
‘I suppose that’s so.’
Appleby smiled. ‘Well, that’s always suspicious in an affair like this.’
Large and square and high and gloomy, the tank-like boardroom sucked in the dusk. Shadows were gathering like a fine web in the corners and soon the blanket of the dark would be drawn round the cowering nymphs and goddesses, ending their day-long shamefast strivings. Wandering in their fragile prison of trellises and vines the hermaphroditic figures of Burne-Jones had taken on a greener pallor. Round the walls the departed worthies swam uncertainly in their daguerreotype and photogravure and oil; and round the table the present scholars of the university sat almost as uncertainly as they. After all, it was an occasion decidedly out of the common run of things. They looked with some anxiety at Appleby, who had sat down at the head of the table with a little sheaf of notes.
‘Sir David and gentlemen,’ Appleby said, ‘I have asked you to come together in this way in the belief that you may be able – and willing – to assist in the conclusion of the rather difficult investigation I have had to undertake. In the past few days I have made, I believe, considerable headway. Nevertheless it is necessary to say that the case’ – he paused and looked deliberately round the table – ‘that the case against Professor Prisk is by no means complete.’
There was an instant subdued hubbub in the boardroom; it was cut by Tavender’s voice – sharp, almost alarmed. ‘Prisk is not here. Will you be so good as to tell us at once whether he is under arrest?’
‘Mr Prisk is, as most people know, at present in a nursing home in the city – following what had the appearance of being an accident to his car. Like other people possibly concerned, he is under the observation of the police.’
‘Most unsatisfactory.’ Tavender appeared to have taken upon himself a spokesmanship which would more naturally have been Sir David Evans’. Sir David was merely looking apprehensive and shaken; Tavender looked – and sounded – formidable. ‘This is most unsatisfactory,’ he repeated, ‘and, I judge, extremely irregular.’
‘Pluckrose was killed at eleven o’clock on Monday morning by a heavy stone – a meteorite – cast from a window of the tower.’ Appleby had ignored the interruption. ‘The meteorite was, as it happens, his own property. Or that is a polite way of putting it. The dead man had apparently conceived himself as entitled to remove it from the grounds of Nesfield Court for some purpose of his own. Why he should have done so surreptitiously I am not prepared very satisfactorily to explain; for it seems very probable that the Duke would have given it to him for the asking. But the Vice-Chancellor has an ingenious theory, based on somewhat abstruse psychological premises, that a large stone of this kind might hold a morbid fascination for Pluckrose; and if this is so it might explain his impulse to make off with it secretly. Be that as it may, Pluckrose stored his booty in a little-used store-room; and from that store-room it was, ironically enough, pitched down on him with fatal results.’