A Question of Proof (26 page)

‘It’s all right,’ smiled Hero. ‘I don’t at all. It’s like – well – talking about a dream, or a previous existence. Go on.’

‘That left me with X. Someone with a motive for killing Wemyss and an equally strong motive for putting you two away. It had to be that, or a most indigestible coincidence. Moreover, it had to be something more than the ordinary conventional objection to “immorality”; that would have been satisfied by exposing you to Vale. It had to be the kind of frenzied moral indignation which is rooted so often in sexual perversion or frustration. When I
heard
about Sims’ outburst in Tiverton’s room, I knew at once he was a possibility. The more so because of his timid, unassertive exterior. Of course I kept my eyes open for other candidates; Wrench and Tiverton were both in my mind for a little; Wrench especially, he seemed to have the most likely motive for both murders. I admit I was at first as badly beaten as the superintendent by the simplicity of Sims’ motive. But the diary comes in useful here.’

He began reading again.

‘
June 12th
. A queer thing happened today. In form. Wemyss had played a most vicious and unpardonable trick on me. They are all against me – boys, masters, every one. Every one always has been. But he is the worst. And now I know why. Now I know what I have got to do. I thought I was going to faint. As though my head was going to burst. Then it was like some obstacle there being swept away, like a logjam breaking up. Everything became quite clear. It was funny I didn’t see it before. The boy has a devil, of course. It contaminates all around him. I know what I have to do. Kill and spare not, saith the Lord. And I am his chosen instrument.’

There was a long silence in the room, as though a visitor from a different world had entered. Then Michael spoke, with something like awe in his voice:

‘Good God. He was – he must have been a religious maniac, I didn’t know they existed – like this, Imean.’

‘They were common enough not so long ago,’ said Nigel, ‘and no one thought of calling them maniacs. Many of the Old Testament prophets, all the inquisitors, were made like that.’ He turned to the diary. ‘I’ll pass over the next few entries. They are rather appalling reading. You can see his feeling about Wemyss and his feeling about you two converging, till they met and the explosion came. But here’s an interesting passage, showing another aspect of his psychological structure.’

‘
June 16th
. If only they knew what they had in their midst, what I really am! The drunkard Gadsby; the lecher Evans; Tiverton, with his damned patronising airs – if they only knew! And you, Percival Vale, pedant and cuckold, you’d change your tone pretty quick. But I’ll show them. Which of them would dare to contemplate what I am contemplating, or to do what I shall do? And I’ll do it before all their eyes. But I must wait for guidance, for the appointed time. I will be patient, I can afford to wait, they will not escape me. I don’t mind now that they will never know – not till I’m dead and my Doomsday Book is brought to light. I shall have given life and I shall have taken away. I shall have ruled their lives in secret. That will be my present satisfaction.’

Nigel paused. ‘That explains everything, really. You weren’t there when he delivered his own funeral oration; it was on the same lines. You see, even his religious mania was not the fundamental thing. In fact, it was not much more than a rationalisation,
the
way his murderer’s state of mind justified itself to him. No; at the bottom of the heap we find that old chestnut, the inferiority complex. Subject for newspaper symposium, “Can a worm turn? Mr. Nigel Strangeways, the celebrated vermicologist, says ‘Yes.’” But seriously. Didn’t Cleopatra call her asp a worm? Anyway, the serpent is the perfect symbol of inferiority feeling; for ever humbled in the dust, trodden under foot, despised, nursing its venom secretly, deadly when goaded into action.’

Hero spoke, rather shakily, ‘You know, I don’t think I can bear any more of that diary. Won’t you tell us your part in the business instead?’

‘Very well. Sims was my chief suspect. The opinion I began to form of his character and the conclusion I was gradually compelled to adopt as regards the time and method of Wemyss’ murder, fitted together. After a bit it became evident, by a process of elimination, that he must have been killed while the 440 was being run. Now it’s perfectly true that, at moments of great emotional stress – an exciting race, for instance – every one’s attention is likely to be wholly absorbed in the spectacle before their eyes. But no ordinary murderer would take the risk of there being no exceptions to the rule. Ergo, the murderer was extraordinary, mentally deranged. Secondly, apart from the risk, there was the fantastic nature of the setting. There must have been a hundred other ways in which a murderer could get rid of Wemyss and involve you two. But he chose the most public, the most theatrical. It was a clear case of
exhibitionism
, and the inferiority-ridden person often tends to be exhibitionist in action. Other points in favour – no use for a jury, of course – Sims’ asking to be relieved of the stopwatch, and his behaviour after the race.’

‘Good lord,’ interrupted Michael, ‘when he came up to me, all worked up and excited and breathless, it was –’

‘Yes. It was not what you supposed. He had popped back into the haystack, strangled the wretched boy, tied a cord round his throat to make certain and returned. Quick action and liable to impart an air of excitement to the agent, but by no means impossible. In fact, not so foolhardy as it sounds. He probably walked backwards, so that he would notice if anyone in the crowd turned round, and he was sheltered from all other sides. If he had seen someone turn round and observe him, he could simply go into the haystack, lug the boy out and ask him what the hell he was doing there. As in the second murder, there was nothing in his actions to rouse suspicion till the very moment of killing.’

‘Hold up a minute. We haven’t mastered the first problem yet, sir. How on earth did he know Hero and I were going to the haystack, and how did he get Wemyss there?’

‘That’s easy. You must remember he had been trailing you about for some time. He discovered Hero used the loose brick for a pillarbox; he saw her put a note there that night – the night before the sports –
took
it out and read it. That was his cue. He sent off a Black Spot summons the next morning to Wemyss.’ Nigel explained the procedure and gave a restrained account of how he had stumbled upon it; the episode of the brazen ‘nimph’ still gave him prickly heat to remember.

‘And my silver pencil?’

‘The diary doesn’t mention it. It was probably just your bad luck, not his stage-property. I asked several of them about it, by the way. Tiverton thought he had seen you using it after the hay battle – his mistake. Sims was noncommittal; I supposed that was his cunning; it would have been a little too obvious if he had sworn to seeing you using it just before the murder. But apparently it was just ignorance. Oh, and I was forgetting. I also announced my discovery of the workings of the Black Spot to several of your fellow-beaks. Sims almost immediately drew the connection between it and the method used to get Wemyss into the haystack. Wrench, who is more intelligent, was definitely slower off the mark. That was one up to Sims; it diverted some of my suspicion temporarily to Wrench. A good double bluff.’

Nigel paused, and gazed pathetically into the empty teapot. Hero, affecting not to notice this, said:

‘By the way, did you find anything out about that note to James Urquhart.’

‘Oh yes. That’s all in the diary. It was just a second line of defence supposing you two somehow wriggled out of suspicion. Sims had been to dinner with him
several
times, noticed the disparity between his apparent expenditure and his presumed income, and drew the same inference as Armstrong did. He typed the note on Michael’s typewriter, so that suspicion was neatly contrived to fall either on Michael or Urquhart. If Urquhart kept the note, Michael would be in the soup; if he destroyed it, he automatically became a suspect himself; the police would be bound to question whether it had ever existed. Of course, the whole plan had to be thought out at lightning speed. He found Hero’s note on the night of the nineteenth, read it immediately after she had put it behind the loose brick, and at once sent off the note to Urquhart, so that it reached him by the morning post. He must have stayed awake into the small hours, working out the other details.’

‘So you had Sims marked down quite early on?’

‘Yes. I hadn’t really much doubt. Not after I’d heard of his outbreak about sex, and seen the kind of reading he favoured – evangelical divines, hellfire, and so on – to back it up. But I hadn’t any proof either, not a stitch of it, to clothe my shameless skeleton of theorising. In fact, he’d probably be alive now but for his vanity –’

‘What on earth –?’

‘Don’t you see? A repressed character, all shut in on himself, no confidantes. What does a person like that do? Keep a diary, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Same character commits a brilliant, daring exhibitionist murder; asserts himself at last, but he
can
’t ask anyone to give him credit for it. What does he do again? Puts it down in the diary. The unrecognised genius. At any rate, it will be published after his death. Posterity will recognise him. Oh yes, I’d banked on that diary, but I couldn’t think where the devil he kept it. You see, the police searched all the masters’ rooms after the first murder, and they don’t miss things. Of course, it was the old protective colouring trick again. Had me beat. You remember that story of Poe’s – the important letter hidden in the letter-rack, staring every one in the face while they tore carpets up and panelling down –’

‘Will you stop this meandering,’ Michael interrupted. ‘We don’t want an informative talk on American literature. We shall expire if you don’t tell us this instant where it was.’

‘Keep calm! News is coming. It was an ordinary school exercise book – his Black Book. He kept a tally of his impositions in it, too.’

‘But do you mean to say he carried this keg of dynamite about with him, brought it into class, and into the common room? Why, it’s crazy.’

‘Well, he was crazy. More things than perfect love can cast out all fear. And it was all of a piece with the two murders. Wildly risky, on the face of it; but actually safeguarded from every point, so to speak, except the frontal attack, the red-handed discovery. And of course the fact that it was in shorthand made it pretty safe in your ill-educated community. I got on to it first when I went into his classroom to ask about the
pencil
. He made an involuntary movement towards his pile of books, as though he wanted to cover one of them up. It gave me an impression of guiltiness. Then I remembered the tiff between Gadsby and Tiverton, about the sacrosanctity of masters’ lockers in the common room, and it occurred to me that would be a good place for him to keep the diary. A damned sight too good in fact. I couldn’t poke about in them during the day for there always seemed to be someone in the common room, and he had the sense to bring it up to bed with him at night and, anyhow, it was still only a vague notion in the back of my mind. I didn’t feel certain I was right about this till just after Vale was killed. Armstrong said they’d just searched the common room; that was a nasty jolt for Sims, he looked sick as death. Every one thought it was reaction from the murder, but it was chiefly reaction to the horrid thought that they might have found his silent friend. He needn’t have got so bothered about it, if he’d thought twice, of course. They were looking for a weapon, not a full signed confession.’

‘How did you get hold of it?’ asked Hero.

‘That will transpire in due course, ma’am,’ said Nigel, and went on to the murder of the headmaster and the final discovery of the weapon. ‘I must confess I ought to have been able to stop that. But I was looking for his next move in the wrong direction. I thought it would be against one of you, if he made it at all. Yet the motive had been right under my nose. I had heard Vale giving him the most devastating ticking
off
. Remember thinking to myself, “I’d crack his head for him if he spoke to me like that.” That’s the sort of thing all of us say, but only a Sims puts into practice. Vale had been browbeating and patronising him for years, but this was the point at which Sims boiled over. He probably was also afraid that Vale might sack him for incompetence. But he might never have gone to the lengths of murdering him, if it hadn’t suggested to him a magnificent way of incriminating you. Yes, he really struck the top of his form there,’ Nigel added enthusiastically.

‘So glad you enjoyed it,’ murmured Michael in society-hostess tones.

‘It was more brilliant even than the first murder, and absolutely safe except for the moment of impact. At the crisis of the match he bent down, as if to do up his shoelace, snatched out the tent-peg dagger with his left hand, struck through the back of the deck chair, you get no spurt of blood with a very thin weapon like that, wiped the dagger on the grass, and thrust it back through the loop of the guy-rope. The whole thing would take three seconds. If there had been no really exciting point in the match to distract every one’s attention, he simply would not have acted; just substituted a real tent-peg that night and no one any the wiser. As he says in the diary, he could afford to wait. He knew, of course, where Hero and her husband would be sitting. He could rely on Michael being somewhere near. He didn’t know, on the other hand, that Hero would faint; that was his greatest
triumph
of tactics. The original plan was for him in some unobtrusive way to call the attention of the police to the tent-peg, a few hours after the murder. Its proximity to Hero’s chair, plus the motive she had for getting rid of her husband, would have clinched the case for the police. When she fainted, he altered this plan in a twinkling, called out “Fetch some water,” a perfectly innocent remark on the face of it, knowing that knight-errant Evans would hurry off for some, and at once be suspected of carrying the weapon with him. If the police had stopped him, searched him and found no weapon, then Sims could fall back on the first plan. Oh yes, the whole performance was alpha plus. His mania had sharpened his intelligence to a very fine point indeed.’