Harriet’s first glance by torch-light was for the switch. It stood in the ‘Off’ position, and she struck it down with the handle of the torch. The room stood revealed.
It was a rather bare, uncomfortable place, furnished with a couple of long tables, a quantity of hard chairs and a blackboard. It was called the Science lecture-room partly because Miss Edwards occasionally used it for coachings that needed little in the way of apparatus, but chiefly because some dead-and-damned benefactor had left to the College a sum of money, together with a quantity of scientific books, anatomical casts, portraits of deceased scientists and glass cases filled with geological specimens; saddling this already sufficiently embarrassing bequest with the condition that all the bric-à-brac should be housed in one room together. Otherwise there was nothing that particularly fitted the room for scientific study, except that it communicated on one side with a closet containing a sink. The closet was occasionally used by photographic enthusiasts as a dark-room, and was so called.
The cause of the crash and bumping heard by the two scouts was plain enough as soon as the light was turned on. The blackboard had been flung to the ground and a few chairs displaced, as though somebody, hurriedly making her way from the room in the dark, had become entangled among the furniture. The most interesting thing about the room was the collection of things that lay on one of the tables. There was a spread sheet of newspaper, on which stood a paste-pot with a brush in it, part of a cheap scribbling block and the lid of a cardboard box, filled with cut-out letters. Also, laid out upon the table were several messages, couched in the Poison-Pen’s now familiar style, and pasted together in the usual way; while a half-finished work in the same style of art had fluttered to the floor, showing that the Pen had been interrupted in the middle of her work.
‘So here’s where she does it!’ cried the Dean.
‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘I wonder why. It seems unnecessarily public. Why not her own room? . . . I say, Dean – don’t pick that up, if you don’t mind. Better leave everything as it is.’
The door in the dark-room was open. Harriet went in and examined the sink, and the open window above it. Marks in the dust showed clearly where something had scrambled over the sill.
‘What’s underneath this window outside?’
‘It’s a flagged path. I’m afraid you won’t find much there.’
‘No; and it happens to be a spot that’s overlooked by absolutely nothing except those bathroom windows in the corridor. It’s very unlikely that the person should have been seen getting out. If the letters had to be concocted in a lecture-room, this is as good a place as any. Well! I don’t see that we can do much here at the moment.’ Harriet turned sharply on the two scouts. ‘You say you saw the person, Annie.’
‘Not exactly saw her, madam, not to recognise. She had on something black and was sitting at the far table with her back to the door. I thought she was writing.’
‘Didn’t you see her face when she got up and came across to turn off the light?’
‘No, madam. I told Carrie what I saw and Carrie asked to look and bumped the door, and while I was telling her not to make a noise the light went out.’
‘Didn’t you see anything, Carrie?’
‘Well, I don’t hardly know, miss, I was in such a fluster. I saw the light, and then I didn’t see nothing.’
‘Perhaps she crept round the wall to get to the light,’ said the Dean.
‘Must have, Dean. Will you go in and sit at the table on the chair that’s pulled out a bit, while I see what I can see from the door. Then, when I knock on the glass, will you get up and out of sight as quickly as you can and work round to the switch and turn it off? Is the curtain much as it was, Annie, or did I disarrange it when I broke the glass?’
‘I think it’s much the same, madam.’
The Dean went in and sat down. Harriet shut the door and put her eye to the chink in the curtain. This was at the hinge-side of the door, and gave her a sight of the window, the ends of the two tables and the place where the blackboard had stood beneath the window.
‘Have a look, Annie; was it like that?’
‘Yes, madam. Only the blackboard was standing up then, of course.’
‘Now – do as you did then. Say to Carrie whatever it was you said, and Carrie, you knock on the door and then look in as you did the first time.’
‘Yes, madam. I said “There she is! we’ve got her.” And I jumped back like this.’
‘Yes, and I said, “Oh, dear! Let’s have a look!” – and then I sort of caught against Annie and knocked – like that.’
‘And I said, “Look out – now you’ve done it.” ’
‘And I says, “Coo!” or something like that, and I looked in and I didn’t see nobody—’
‘Can you see anybody now?’
‘No, miss. And I was trying to see when the light went out all of a sudden.’
The light went out.
‘How did that go off?’ asked the Dean, cautiously, with her mouth at the hole in the panel.
‘First-rate performance,’ said Harriet. ‘Dead on time.’
‘The second I heard the knock. I just nipped away to the right and crept round the wall. Did you hear me?’
‘Not a sound. You’ve got soft slippers on, haven’t you?’
‘We didn’t hear the other one either, miss.’
‘She’d be wearing soft slippers, too. Well, I suppose that settles that. We’d better have a look round College to see that all’s well and get back to bed. You two can be off now, Carrie – Miss Martin and I can see to things.’
‘Very good, miss. Come along, Annie. Though I’m sure I don’t know how anybody’s to get to sleep—’
‘Will you stop making that filthy row!’
An exasperated voice heralded the appearance of an exceedingly angry student in pyjamas.
‘Do remember some people want to get a bit of rest at night. This corridor’s a— Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Martin. Is anything wrong?’
‘Nothing at all, Miss Perry. I’m sorry we disturbed you. Somebody left the lights on in the lecture-room and we came to see if it was all right.’
The student vanished, with a jerk of a tousled head that showed what she thought of the matter. The two servants went their way. The Dean turned to Harriet.
‘Why all that business of reconstructing the crime?’
‘I want to find out whether Annie could really have seen what she said she saw. These people sometimes let their imagination run away with them. If you don’t mind, I’m going to lock these doors and remove the keys. I’d rather like a second opinion.’
‘Aha!’ said the Dean. ‘The exquisite gentleman who kissed my feet in St. Cross Road, crying, Vera incessu patuit dean?’
‘That sounds characteristic. Well, Dean, you have got pretty feet. I’ve noticed them.’
‘They have been admired,’ said the Dean, complacently, ‘but seldom in so public a place or after five minutes’ acquaintance. I said to his lordship, “You are a foolish young man.” He said, “A man, certainly; and sometimes foolish enough to be young.” “Well,” I said, “please get up; you can’t be young here.” So then he said, very nicely, “I beg your pardon for behaving like a mountebank; I have no excuse to offer, so will you forgive me?” So I asked him to dinner.’
Harriet shook her head.
‘I’m afraid you’re susceptible to fair hair and a slim figure. That in the slender’s but a humorous word which in the stout is flat impertinence.’
‘It might have been extremely impertinent, but actually it was not. I shall be interested to know what he makes of to-night’s affair. We’d better go and see if there’s been any more funny business.’
Nothing unusual was, however, to be observed.
Harriet rang up the Mitre before breakfast.
‘Peter, could you possibly come round this morning in stead of at six o’clock?’
‘Within five minutes, when and where you will. “If she bid them, they
will go barefoot to Jerusalem, to the great Cham’s court, to the East Indies, to fetch her a bird to wear in her hat.” Has anything happened?’
‘Nothing alarming; a little evidence in situ. But you may finish the bacon and eggs.’
‘I will be at the Jowett Walk Lodge in half an hour.’
He came accompanied by Bunter and a camera. Harriet took them into the Dean’s room and told them the story, with some assistance from Miss Martin, who asked whether he would like to interview the two scouts,
‘Not for the moment. You seem to have asked all the necessary questions. We’ll go and look at the room. There’s no way to it, I take it, except along this passage. Two doors on the left – students’ rooms, I suppose. And one on the right. And the rest bathrooms and things. Which is the door of the dark-room? This? In full view of the other door – so there was no escape except by the window. I see. The key of the lecture-room was inside and the curtain left exactly like that? You’re sure? All right. May I have the key?’
He threw the door open and glanced in.
‘Get a photograph of this, Bunter. You have very nice, well-fitting doors in this building. Oak. No paint, no polish.’
He took a lens from his pocket and ran it, rather perfunctorily, over the light-switch and the door-handle.
‘Am I really going to see finger-prints discovered?’ asked the Dean.
‘Why, of course,’ said Wimsey. ‘It won’t tell us anything, but it impresses the spectator and inspires confidence. Bunter, the insufflator. You will now see,’ he pumped the white powder rapidly over the frame and handle of the door, ‘how inveterate is the habit of catching hold of doors when you open them.’ An astonishing number of superimposed prints sprang into view above the lock as he blew the superfluous powder away. ‘Hence the excellent old-fashioned institution of the finger-plate. May I borrow a chair from the bathroom? . . . Oh, thank you, Miss Vane; I didn’t mean you to fetch it.’
He extended the blowing operations right up to the top of the door and the upper edge of the frame.
‘You surely don’t expect to find finger-prints up there,’ said the Dean.
‘Nothing would surprise me more. This is merely a shop window display of thoroughness and efficiency. All a matter of routine, as the policeman says. Your college is kept very well dusted; I congratulate you. Well, that’s that. We will now direct our straining eyes to the dark-room door and do the same thing there, The key? Thank you. Fewer prints here, you see. I deduce that the room is usually approached by way of the lecture-room. That probably also accounts for the presence of dust along the top of the door. Something always gets overlooked, doesn’t it? The linoleum, however, has been honourably swept and polished. Must I go down on my knees and do the floor-walk for foot-prints? It is shockingly bad for one’s trousers and seldom useful. Let us rather examine the window. Yes – somebody certainly seems to have got out here. But we knew that already. She climbed over the sink and knocked that beaker off the draining-board.’.
‘She trod in the sink,’ said Harriet, ‘and left a damp smear on the sill. It’s dried up now, of course.’
‘Yes; but that proves she really did get out this way and at that time. Though it scarcely needed proving. There is no other way out. This isn’t the old problem of a hermetically sealed chamber and a body. Have you finished in there, Bunter?’
‘Yes, my lord; I have made three exposures.’
‘That ought to do. You might clean those doors, would you.’ He turned, smiling, on the Dean. ‘You see, even if we did identify all those finger-prints, they would all belong to people who had a perfect right to be here. And in any case, our culprit, like everybody else these days, probably knows enough to wear gloves.’
He surveyed the lecture-room critically.
‘Miss Vane!’
‘Yes?’
‘Something worried you about this room. What was it?’
‘You don’t need to be told.’
‘No; I am convinced that our two hearts beat as one. But tell Miss Martin.’
‘When the Poison-Pen turned off the light, she must have been close to the door. Then she went out by way of the dark-room. Why did she knock over the blackboard, which is right out of the line between the two doors?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh!’ cried the Dean, ‘but that’s nothing. One often loses one’s way in a dark room. My reading-lamp fused one night, and I got up to try and find the wall-switch and brought up with my nose against the wardrobe.’
‘There!’ said Wimsey. ‘The chill voice of common sense falls on our conjectures like cold water on hot glass, and shatters them to bits. But I don’t believe it. She had only to feel her way along the wall. She must have had some reason for going back into the middle of the room.’
‘She’d left something on one of the tables.’
‘That’s more likely. But what? Something identifiable.’
‘A handkerchief or something that she’d been using to press down the letters as she pasted them on.’
‘We’ll say it was that. These papers are just as you found them, I imagine. Did you test them to see if the paste was still wet?’
‘I just felt this unfinished one on the floor. You see how it’s done. She drew a line of paste right across the paper and then dabbed the letters on. The unfinished line was just tacky, but not wet. But then, you see, we didn’t get in till after she’d been gone for five or ten minutes.’
‘You didn’t test any of the others?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I wondered how long she’d been working here. She’s managed to get through a good bit. But we may be able to find out another way.’ He took up the box-lid containing the odd letters.
‘Rough brown cardboard; I don’t think we’ll bother to look for finger-prints on this. Or to trace it; it might have come from anywhere. She’d nearly finished her job; there are only a couple of dozen letters left, and a lot of them are Q’s and K’s and Z’s and such-like unhandy consonants. I wonder how this last message was meant to end.’
He picked the paper from the floor and turned it over.
‘Addressed to you, Miss Vane. Is this the first time you have been honoured?’
‘The first time – since the first time.’
‘Ah! “You needn’t think you’ll get me, you make me laugh, you . . .” Well, the epithet remains to be supplied – from the letters in the box. If your vocabulary is large enough you may discover what it was going to be,’
‘But . . . Lord Peter—’
It was so long since she had addressed him by his title that she felt self-conscious about it. But she appreciated his formality.
‘What I want to know is, why she came to this room at all.’
‘That is the mystery, isn’t it?’
There was a shaded reading-lamp on the table, and he stood idly clicking the light on and off. ‘Yes. Why couldn’t she do it in her own room? Why invite discovery?’
‘Excuse me, my lord.’
‘Yes, Bunter?’
‘Would this be any contribution to the inquiry?’
Bunter dived beneath the table and came up, holding a long black hairpin.
‘Good heavens, Bunter! This is like a leaf out of a forgotten story. How many people use these things?’
‘Oh, quite a number, nowadays,’ said the Dean. ‘Little buns in the neck have come back. I use them myself, but mine are bronze ones. And some of the students. And Miss Lydgate – but I think hers are bronze, too.’
‘I know who uses black ones this shape,’ said Harriet. ‘I once had the pleasure of sticking them in for her.’
‘Miss de Vine, of course. Always the White Queen. And she would drop them all over the place. But I should think she was about the only person in College who would never, by any chance, come into this room. She gives no lectures or classes and never uses the dark-room or consults scientific works.’
‘She was working in her room when I came across last night,’ said Ha
rriet.
‘Did you see her?’ said Wimsey, quickly.
‘I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I only meant that her reading-lamp was on, close to her window.’
‘You can’t establish an alibi on the strength of a reading-lamp,’ said Wimsey. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to do the floor-walk after all.’
It was the Dean who picked up a second hairpin – in the place where one might most reasonably expect to find it – in a corner near the sink in the dark-room. She was so pleased with herself as a detective that she almost forgot the implications of the discovery, till Harriet’s distressed exclamation forced them upon her.
‘We haven’t identified the hairpins for certain,’ said Peter, comfortingly. ‘That will be a little task for Miss Vane.’ He gathered up the papers. ‘I’ll take these and add them to the dossier. I suppose there’s no message for us on the blackboard?’
He picked up the board, which contained only a few chemical formulæ, scribbled in chalk, in Miss Edwards’s handwriting, and restored the easel to an upright position, on the far side of the window.
‘Look!’ said Harriet, suddenly. ‘I know why she went round that way. She meant to get out by the lecture-room window, and had forgotten the bars. It was only when she pulled the curtain aside and saw them that she remembered the dark-room and plunged away in a hurry, knocking over the blackboard and tumbling into the chairs on the way. She must have been between the window and the easel, because the board and the easel fell forward into the room, and not backwards towards the wall.’
Peter looked at her thoughtfully. Then he went back into the dark-room and lowered and raised the window-sash. It moved easily and almost in silence.
‘If this place wasn’t so well built,’ he said, almost accusingly, to the Dean, ‘somebody would have heard this window go up and run round in time to catch the lady. As it is, I wonder that Annie didn’t notice the noise of the beaker falling into the sink . . . But if she did, she probably thought it was something in the lecture-room – one of those glass cases or what not. You didn’t hear anything after you arrived, did you?’