The Moving Toyshop (20 page)

Here a word of explanation is required. Since Oxford is one of the few civilized cities in the world, it gives facilities to its inhabitants for bathing in the only way proper to that activity: which is to say, naked; though as even civilized persons are prone to the original errors of the flesh, some segregation is involved. Parson’s Pleasure is set aside for men. It consists of a broad strip of green turf, fenced in and with some stable-like bathing-huts, which runs down to a loop in the river where it by-passes an island. Young women in punts must go round the other way or else, blushing and ashamed, run the gauntlet of much bawdy comment. There is another part of the river, called Dame’s Delight, which is available for them, though it is not known that they take advantage of it to any great extent; and with that, at all events, we are not here concerned. The chief point to be observed is that there is no way out of Parson’s Pleasure except by the gate or by the river itself, which sufficiently explains the delight of Dr. Havering’s pursuers.

Mr. Barnaby was actually the first to arrive. Dismounting his bicycle, he pressed a pound-note confidentially into the gate-keeper’s hand, with the remark: “These are
all
 my friends. Admit
everyone,
please.” In this request, however, he was over-sanguine. Worlds would not have induced the gate-keeper to admit Sally, and she was forced to remain outside, looking rather lorn and dejected. Cadogan, pressing in after the rest, promised to return and give her news as soon as possible.

The evening was warm, and a few people were splashing about or standing on the bank when Dr. Havering broke on their tranquillity, one old man, indeed, was so alarmed by the crescent uproar that he fled incontinently back into his bathing-hut. The doctor, after standing irresolute for a moment, looking desperately about him, ran to the opposite side of the enclosure and began trying to climb the fence. He was in the midst of this endeavour when Mr. Barnaby appeared. Looking helplessly round, he dropped again on to the springy green turf and made for a punt which was moored just by the springboard. A brief struggle with the punter, and he was in it and pushing away from the shore. But by this time the vanguard had reached him, and it was too late. Shouting incoherently and struggling like a damned soul in conveyance to hell, he was dragged ashore again before the amazed eyes of the bathers.

And here they suddenly heard Sally shouting for help in the lane outside. Scylla and Charybdis, hapless and forgotten in the rear, had caught up with her. Leaving Dr. Havering well guarded, Cadogan headed a troop to the rescue. The fight which followed was brief, violent, and decisive, the only casualties being Scylla and Charybdis and Cadogan himself, who received a blow on the jaw from one of his own side which nearly laid him out. Finally, the two men were half-hoisted, half dragged back into Parson’s Pleasure (the gate-keeper receiving another pound and a conspiratorial leer from Mr. Barnaby) and there triumphantly thrown into the river, while they bawled and cursed dreadfully. Once immersed, their attitude became conciliatory, largely owing to the fact that they were unable to swim. A science don, who was standing slapping his belly on the bank, regarded them helpfully. “Now is the time to learn,” he said “Bring your body up to a horizontal position and relax the muscles. The surface tension will support you.” But they only cried “Help!” more violently, their hats floating desolately in the water beside them. Eventually the river bore them downstream to a shallower place where they were able to struggle to land. It is probable that after this fiasco they left Oxford, for they were never seen or heard of again.

In the interim, more important matters were afoot. They consisted, in the first place, of Fen’s borrowing the punt, by cajolery, from its reluctant possessor; and in the second, in getting Dr. Havering into it. In case it should be thought that the doctor acquiesced at all in these proceedings, it must here be stated that he did not—that he pleaded piteously with the astonished sprinkling of nude bathers to rescue him. But even had they not been in their unprotected condition they would have known better than to try to stem an undergraduate rag in mid-career, and this one appeared to be supported—no, engineered—by a celebrated poet and the Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature. Some of them, weakening, even lent their support to the business, which is another testimony to the well-known power of majority opinion. Dr. Havering entered the punt with Fen, Cadogan, Wilkes, and Mr. Hoskins. Sally promised to go back to Fen’s room and wait there. And Mr. Barnaby stood with his army on the bank to wave than good-bye.

“Too Watteau, my dear Charles,” he remarked.
“Embarquement pour Cythère.
Or is it
Arthur’s soul,
do you suppose, being conveyed to
Avalon?”

Charles having opined that it was more like the Flying Dutchman, and the punt being by now in mid-stream, they returned to Mr. Barnaby’s rooms to drink. And none too soon; as they passed out of Parson’s Pleasure, they could distinctly hear the gate-keeper phoning the proctor’s office in the Clarendon Building. His tale of woe, floating through an open window, pursued them for a little while, like a wraith, and then receded beyond earshot.

For some while the five men in the punt were silent. Havering’s anger had subsided into fear, and Cadogan studied him curiously as, aided by Mr. Hoskins, he paddled in a direction vaguely indicated by Fen. Of his thinness there was certainly no question. The skull-bones seemed bursting through the taut, shiny skin of the face, and the body was lean as a rake. Thin cobwebs of white hair straggled over the dome of the head. The nose was sharp and slightly hooked at the end, the eyes large and green, with long lashes, beneath a convex brow; indefinably glassy in appearance. A network of veins was prominently etched on the forehead, the movements were curiously jerky, and the hands trembled persistently, as though with the beginnings of some neural disease. Cadogan was reminded of a starved, vicious, half-wild cur he had once seen crouching in an East End gutter. Like Rosseter, Havering conveyed obscurely an impression of seediness and of professional ill-success.

“Where are you taking me?” Havering’s voice, soft and lacking in inflection, broke the silence. “You’ll pay for this—all of you.”

“A nice backwater,” said Fen dreamily. “Quite close to here. When we arrive you’re going to tell us everything that happened last night”

“You’re quite mistaken, sir. I am going to do nothing of the kind.”

Fen made no answer; his pale blue eyes were reflective and far away, scanning the banks, the willows with their branches panoplied over the water, the clumps of rushes with dead branches caught in them, the dull, evening reflection of light in the river. Clouds were coming up in the west to cover the declining sun—rain-clouds. The air was growing colder. A kingfisher, shining with green and blue, rose from an overhanging branch as they passed underneath. Wilkes, in the bow, looked very near to sleep. Mr. Hoskins, large and melancholy, paddled with steady persistence; Cadogan, still a trifle groggy from his blow on the jaw, with less certainty. If the truth be told, he was becoming a little tired of the adventurous life; in his discourse to Mr. Spode the previous night he had not quite contemplated anything like this, or if he had, it had been veiled in the curtains of romance, suitably disguised, bowdlerized, and expurgated. He only hoped that the end was in sight; that Havering was the murderer; and that he was not going to be knocked about any more. He fell to wondering how Mr. Scott and Mr. Beavis were faring, and then, finding this occupation a trifle barren, said to Mr. Hoskins:

“How did you get on to this man?”

Mr. Hoskins gave his account in slow and cheerless tones, watched in angry silence by Havering. “A Welshman from Jesus,” he said, “put us on to him in the first place. He seemed to think from the description that there could be no mistake, and in fact”—a faint expression of gratification lit up Mr. Hoskins’ face—“there was not. I made my way into his consulting-room,” he pursued obliquely, “by a strategy connected with the perils of parturition, and the necessity in such circumstances of immediate gynaecological aid. Some individuals were fortunately assembled in various positions round the house lest he should attempt to escape. On my first seeing him, I came directly to the point by asking him how he had succeeded in disposing of the body. He was very much alarmed, though now I imagine he will deny it.”

“You young blackguard,” the doctor interposed. “Certainly I deny it.”

“I pressed my inquiries further,” Mr. Hoskins went on, unperturbed, “with questions concerning his movements during last night, his inheritance, Mr. Rosseter, and some other matters. At every moment I could see his alarm growing, though he tried to conceal it. Eventually, I said that in view of the unsatisfactory nature of his replies I must take him with me to the police-station. He said that this was absurd, that I had mistaken his identity, that he had not the least idea what I was talking about, and so forth; adding, however, that he was prepared to accompany me to the police-station in order to prove his own innocence and make me pay for what he mysteriously called a ‘libellous intrusion’. He took leave of me to get, his hat and coat and, as I expected, did not return. In a very few minutes, as a matter of fact, he was leading his bicycle, with a small case strapped to the carrier, surreptitiously out of the back gate.”

Here Mr. Hoskins paused and frowned. “I can only explain the fact that our ambush did not there and then capture him by saying that Adrian Barnaby was in charge of that particular section of it, and that he is not a person capable of concentrating for very long on any one thing. What happened, in any case, was that the doctor was mounted and away before the alarm was raised. I stayed for a moment in the consulting-room to phone you at the ‘Mace and Sceptre’, and the rest you know.”

“Ah,” said Fen. “Why didn’t you leave in your car, Havering?”

Havering snarled: “I was going about my business in the normal way—”

“Oh, my dear paws,” Fen interrupted disgustedly. “I suppose you thought Mr. Hoskins would hear a car. Or was it just that you didn’t happen to have it there?” He glanced round. “Here we are, anyway. Hard a-port… No,
port,
Richard—
left…”

The punt swung through a clump of reeds into the backwater he had indicated. It was a stagnant, unhealthy place. A green scum lay on the shallow water, and there were too many mosquitoes for comfort. Cadogan could not think why Fen had brought them here, but by now he was beyond questioning anything that happened; he was as passive as an ox.

“Now,” 
said Fen, standing up.

The punt rocked violently and Wilkes awoke. Cadogan and Mr. Hoskins shipped their paddles and looked expectantly at Fen. Alarm was intensified in Havering’s large green eyes, but they still had something of the glassy, lifeless look about them; it was like the face of a frightened man, only obscurely seen through a grimy window-pane.

“There has been too much shilly-shallying in this case,” Fen said deliberately, “and I haven’t time to linger, Havering, while you treat us to a lot of childish evasions and outbursts of false indignation. We know quite enough about the murder of Miss Tardy to have you indicted for conspiracy, but we don’t yet know who killed her. That’s the only reason we’re bothering about you.”

“If you think that threats—”

Fen raised a hand. “No, no. Actions, my good medico—actions. I’ve no time for threats. Answer my questions.”

“I shall not. How dare you hold me here? How—?”

“I warned you against chatter of that sort,” said Fen brutally. “Mr. Hoskins, kindly help me to put his head in that filthy-looking water and hold it there.”

A punt is the safest variety of boat for a struggle; virtually nothing will capsize it. Havering never had a chance. Six times his head was plunged into the green scum, Wilkes carrying on a sort of running commentary of obscure encouragement and applause. “Duck him!” he squealed with medieval ferocity. “Duck the murderous devil!” Cadogan contented himself with looking on and advising Havering to fill his lungs well before each immersion. When they had held him under for the sixth time:

“That’s enough,” Fen said. “Pluck up drowned honour by the locks.”

Havering fell back, choking and gasping, into the punt He was certainly a dismal sight. His thin hair clung, damp and disordered, to his skull. The green stuck to him in fiecks and patches. He exuded a disagreeable smell, and it was obvious that he would not hold out much longer.

“Damn you,” he whispered “Damn you. No more! I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you whatever you like.” Cadogan suddenly felt a twinge of pity. He produced a handkerchief for Havering to dry his face and head, and the older man took it gratefully.

“Now,” Fen said briskly, “in the first place, what was it you knew about Rosseter that induced him to take part in this plan to get the money?”

“He—he was a lawyer in Philadelphia when I was in practice there as a young man. He was involved in some very shady business—manipulation of the stock market and eventually embezzlement of a trustee fund. He—give me a cigarette, will you?” Havering took one from Fen’s case, puffed nervously at it, and held it between trembling fingers. “I needn’t go into all the details, but the end of it was that Rosseter—that wasn’t his name then—had to get out of the country and come over here. I never knew him personally, you understand—only by reputation. A few months later I wrecked my career in America by performing an abortion. People weren’t so tolerant then. I’d put by some money, so I came to England and set up in practice. Ten years ago I settled here—in Oxford. I recognized Rosseter, though he didn’t know me, of course. But I didn’t want to take things up again, so I said nothing and did nothing.” He looked quickly round, to see how they were taking it. “I’d got newspaper clippings about Rosseter, you see, with photographs. He couldn’t afford to have those published.”

A bull-frog was croaking in the rushes, and the mosquitoes were becoming more insistent. Cadogan lit a cigarette and blew out thick clouds of smoke in a futile endeavour to keep than away. It was growing dark and an occasional colourless star showed between the ragged edges of the clouds. Colder, too: Cadogan shivered a little and drew his coat more closely round him.