“I am glad to have the chance of talking with you,” he said. “One of the women students has been to me in great distress of mind. She appears to think that you have accused her and others of being responsible for poor Davy’s death.”
“She exaggerates, as no doubt you have decided,” said Dame Beatrice. “Please sit down, Mr. Medlar. To be plain with you, I think Kathleen and her friends do know more than they have told you, although I have accused them of nothing more than of withholding information.”
“What more do you think they know?” There was anxiety in Gascoigne’s voice.
“I think they know where Mr. Jones was killed and I think they buried the body. No, no,” she added, noticing that Gascoigne was about to speak. “I do not think for one single instant that they killed him. I think they buried the body merely out of panic, fearing that they would be blamed for the death if the body was discovered in the place where they found it.”
“Then that must have been in that cellar when they went to release him! But the police made a careful search. There was nothing to suggest that Davy died there. The inspector told me so.”
“It is rare for the police to make known all their findings in a case of this kind, is it not?”
“But what makes you think that those six students buried the body? I simply cannot believe it.”
“It is the only theory which seems to accord with the facts. Do you care for me to recapitulate them?”
“In the light of what you suspect, I should think it just as well.”
“Very well, then. I begin from what was my own point of departure. Having kidnapped Mr. Jones on the Wednesday afternoon, the six students, who were in a panic by the Friday morning, then went to Mr. Henry and confessed to what they had done.”
“Yes, I know, but that was because they had discovered that Davy was no longer where they had left him.”
“I hardly think that was the sole reason for their reaction. It is true that they had obtained possession of a key to the cellar, but it seems common knowledge that there was a second key and one which was readily available, not only to them, but to anybody who chose to filch it.”
“You mean the one which hung just inside Miss Yale’s door? I cannot think why, if they had decided upon this ridiculous and, as it has turned out, this fatal escapade, they did not take Miss Yale’s key in the first place.”
“One of two circumstances might account for that. Either the key was not there when they went to get it, or else they were afraid that Miss Yale would miss it and would institute enquiries. I incline to the first of these theories.”
“Well—granted. Pray continue.”
“Very late on the Thursday night, Mr. Henry and Hamish, concerned by some hints they had received from students who were not among the six chiefly involved, instituted a search for Mr. Jones.”
“Yes, but they found that Davy had already been removed from the cellar.”
“As I understood their account, that is uncertain. Having no key, and being unwilling, I imagine, to disturb either the janitor or Miss Yale at that time of night, they attempted to attract Mr. Jones’s attention by calling to him.”
“And received no reply.”
“For what I believe was a good and sufficient reason: Mr. Jones was already dead.”
“What!”
“And the students knew that. I think the girl Kathleen was probably the prime mover. I think she was anxious to let Mr. Jones go. Most girls (I do not say all) are notoriously more tender-hearted than boys, and I think she, having the janitor’s key still in her possession, made a journey to the door of the cellar and called out to know whether Mr. Jones was all right. Receiving no reply, she went in search of some, if not all, of the others, and reported that Mr. Jones might be in a state of collapse. As I imagine that he may not have given in to his kidnappers without a struggle, they may well have thought that they had gone too far, and that it would be well to release him forthwith. That is when they found his dead body and also the weapon with which he had been stabbed to death.”
“No, no! It couldn’t have been like that!” said Gascoigne. “They couldn’t have found him murdered!”
“I have not finished,” said Dame Beatrice. “Pull my story to pieces when you have heard the rest of it.”
chapter
11
Medley Relay
« ^ »
But if you are right,” said Gascoigne, “what on earth can have been the effect on those poor children?” He sounded genuinely distressed. “I know who and what they are. Not one of them is what Jerry calls a hard case. Kathleen was an unconvicted shoplifter, sent here by worried parents. I would put her down as a kleptomaniac except that she has pilfered nothing since she has been here. Bill and Julian were expelled from their respective schools for smoking ‘pot’, and John had a nervous breakdown after he and a younger brother had what was reported as a sportive wrestling-match and the brother tumbled over a high balcony and was killed.”
“And John was sent here to recuperate?” asked Dame Beatrice.
“That may seem strange to you,” admitted Gascoigne, “but it made a change of environment for him and, of course, he is not allowed to go back to his home, which was the scene of the accident, until he leaves the College for good. That is my invariable rule and I hoped it had been the salvation of the unfortunate lad.”
“And the other two?”
“Are equally to be accorded sympathy. Benjy was unlucky enough to fall foul at school of a ring of young Jew-baiters. He ran away after having set fire to one of the school dormitories. Nothing got into the papers, but I knew his mother and she persuaded me to take the boy into my care. Shaun, of course, was mixed up in the Belfast troubles. He may have committed, or connived at, murder over there. He was hurt in a street battle, went to hospital and then an uncle in Eire took charge of him and shipped him over here to an elderly great-aunt. She had heard of us and wrote to ask whether we would be willing to take him.”
“The fees here are heavy, of course,” suggested Dame Beatrice.
“Yes,” agreed Gascoigne briefly. He paused and then added, “The great-aunt is the widow of an American millionaire, so there was no difficulty.”
“Now that you have mentioned these students’ names, I remember their case-histories,” said Dame Beatrice. “Of course, you admit that there are three potential murderers among them.”
“Shaun, perhaps. The other two?”
“The wrestling-match between the brothers may not have been an innocent affair at all, but a deadly struggle. As for Benjy, arson is a crime not far removed from murder if there are people in a house where an incendiary gets to work.”
“And you really think these students discovered Davy’s body?” asked Gascoigne, avoiding the inferences.
“I am sure of it. They discovered it, removed it to the long-jump pit and buried it. They acted, as I have pointed out, in sheer panic. I do not think the stabbing could have produced very much blood, but, of course, I have not seen the body. However, my theory is that what blood there was the students cleaned up. In plain words, I believe they did all that they could to hide the fact that Mr. Jones was killed in the place to which they themselves had assigned him. Judging, you see, from their case-histories, three out of the six had good reason to panic when they found that they had a murdered man to account for.”
“But if they did not do it, who did?”
“I have several theories. In the course of time, one of them will fit the facts.”
“What about the weapon?”
“Ah,” said Dame Beatrice, “that is an interesting question. I think the students must have found the weapon when they found the body. They cleaned the point of it—that heavy metal point which had replaced the original head of the javelin—and replaced the weapon in the locked cupboard. Then one of them (John is the most likely) was so much troubled about the whole affair that he risked going into your trophies cupboard, using Miss Yale’s key, purloined your own javelin, daubed it with red paint and placed it where one of the swimmers or divers was bound to find it.”