“And this applies until five-thirty, and to the staff as well?”
“Yes, it applies until the beginning of the last coaching-session, and even then lots of the students don’t attend a last coaching, but disport themselves in the pool or carry on in the workshops or follow other hobbies instead of taking a session or attending a blackboard or film-strip lecture on their particular event.”
“Do the swimming baths remain open during the tea interval?”
“You’re thinking of the covered bath where the javelin was found, are you not? The baths are not closed at all until the dressing-gongs are sounded at seven-thirty. We expect students to change for dinner in Hall, although there is no compulsion, of course. At this time of year it is the open-air pool which is popular. In fact, from tea-time onwards, except for the keen types who go for after-tea coaching or practice, the pool is the centre of the social life of the College, although the women’s gym is sometimes the scene of impromptu dancing.”
“But after dinner both baths are closed? I see. What about the staff at tea-time? Where do they have their tea?”
“The same applies to us as to the women students. We take tea in our own rooms and often invite a youngster or two, or some of the other lecturers.”
“And Mr. Medlar?”
“He’s not much of a mixer, but quite often he will invite Miss Yale or myself to take tea with him. It’s usually to discuss some College matter. He never invites students to tea, and I don’t think he has ever asked any other lecturer to join him, except, of course, Jones.”
“I wonder whether you will have time tomorrow to show me over the buildings?”
“Certainly I shall. The most important one, though, the covered bath in which the javelin was found, has been sealed off by the police.”
“The most important building is not that in which a javelin was found, but that in which one was used, surely?”
“You don’t think it was used out of doors, then?”
“As I am looking upon Mr. Jones’s death as a case of murder, I think an indoor setting is more likely as offering less chance of the deed being witnessed by some passer-by.”
“You are thinking of one of the gyms, perhaps. We have two, both spacious. One needs space in which to throw a javelin.”
“If it was thrown, and if the weapon was a javelin—of which, now I have seen the one to which Miss Yale drew our attention, I feel reasonably sure—one would certainly need space. My own view (and I have a feeling that you share it) is that, with the new steel head on it, the javelin would make a very efficient stabbing-spear.”
“You say ‘if it was thrown’, but whether it was thrown or whether it was used as a bayonet, it seems to me that the covered bath itself could be the place. There are mops about, used to swab down the tiles, and there is certainly plenty of water for washing out bloodstains.”
“And a javelin was smeared with red paint and left in one of the cubicles to tell the tale.”
“Sounds as though the killer is more than usually wrong in the head,” said Henry. He turned his own head and added, “Oh, bother! Here’s somebody wanting me, I think. A student named Kirk. Bit of a creep, I’m afraid.”
“He curries favour with the lecturers?”
“No. Sneaks to Gassie about us, we think. If he peached on other students he’d have been beaten up long ago. Unfortunately Gassie is always open to complaints about the staff. Helps him to keep the tabs on us, I suppose. Wonder what Kirk is after with me? Acting merely as Gassie’s messenger, I expect. I’m probably keeping you out here too long. Shall we say eleven tomorrow morning for our tour of the buildings?”
Kirk came up to them. Hamish would have recognized him as the student he had kicked across the lecture-room on the day after his arrival at Joynings. He had had nothing to do with the youth since then. Kirk was a gymnast, one of the late Jones’s neglected squad. He had never attended another French lecture.
“Hullo, Kirk,” said Henry, as the spotty, ill-favoured stripling came up to him. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s more like what I can do for you,” said the lad, smirking.
“In what way?”
“Something I’d like to tell you.”
“My ears are open and receptive.”
“Could we go…” he glanced at Dame Beatrice—“could we—could it be in private?”
“Then why have you come out here?”
“Just to tell you I’d like a word. Oh, at your convenience, of course.”
“I’d like to have some idea of what it’s to be about. You must know how tied up and worried we all are at present. In other words, won’t it keep?”
“But, Henry, it’s about Jonah.”
“In that case, you may speak freely in front of Dame Beatrice. She is here to help us to find out exactly what happened.”
“What I’ve got to say she won’t like.”
“In that case,” said Dame Beatrice, “I assume that you are about to disclose some unsavoury matter relating to my godson. I assure you that I have not the slightest objection to hearing it. Besides, if your information has to do with Mr. Jones’s death…”
“James knew about Miss Yale’s key.”
“What key?” demanded Henry. “What are you talking about?”
“The key that hangs just inside her office door. You only have to slide your hand round to get it. It hangs on a board with her other keys. I saw James take it.”
“You’ll need a witness who will substantiate that statement, my boy,” said Henry coldly, “but you haven’t answered my question. What key do you mean, and why is it important?”
“It opens the stoke-hole, that’s why.”
“In that case,” said Henry, “your statement that you saw James take the key is an absolute lie, and I can prove that it is.”
“Oh, yes?”
“When did you see James take it?”
“Why, on the afternoon of the night that you and he snooped round. And we know you did snoop round, so it’s no good denying it.”
“I had forgotten at that time about Miss Yale’s key,” said Henry, frowning thoughtfully, “but your ridiculous and mean little story falls to the ground, anyway. If anybody took that key, it was the kidnappers.”
“It wasn’t them. They had Jackson’s key.”
“So they told me. Well, I think you had better come with me to Gassie and then we’ll send for James and you can accuse him to his face.”
“Not me. And I’ll tell you something else. It was the javelin from Gassie’s collection that killed Jonah, wasn’t it?”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s all over College. That girl who found it spotted the inscription.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose she did. What about it?”
“It’s also known that James was allowed in Gassie’s room to make a new catalogue,” said Kirk significantly.
“I see what you mean. It’s also all over College that James once treated you as I should like to treat you now, you scandal-mongering, revengeful little clot,” said Henry. “Come along. We’re going to get this cleared up.”
“All what cleared up? Here, I’m only warning you about James. I wanted him to be prepared. I thought you’d like to prepare him.”
“For what?”
“Well, questions.”
“Very well. We’ll all go along and see what questions Gassie would like to ask him.”
“Not me!” Before they realized what he was about to do, the youth was off across the field like a hare.
“Oh, well, time for him later,” said Henry. “I think, though, that it might be as well to have a word with Gassie about the little snake. Then, perhaps, we’d better tell Hamish what has been said.”