21 Stories

  "And do you see the man here in court?"

  She looked straight across at the big man in the dock, who stared hard at her with his Pekingese eyes without emotion.

  "Yes," she said, "there he is."

  "You are quite certain?"

  She said simply, "I couldn't be mistaken, sir."

  It was all as easy as that.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Salmon."

  Counsel for the defence rose to cross-examine. If you had reported as many murder trials as I have, you would have known beforehand what line he would take. And I was right, up to a point.

  "Now, Mrs. Salmon, you must remember that a man's life may depend on your evidence."

  "I do remember it, sir."

  "Is your eyesight good?"

  "I have never had to wear spectacles, sir."

  "You are a woman of fifty-five?"

  "Fifty-six, sir."

  "And the man you saw was on the other side of the road?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And it was two o'clock in the morning. You must have remarkable eyes, Mrs. Salmon?"

  "No, sir. There was moonlight, and when the man looked up, he had the lamplight on his face."

  "And you have no doubt whatever that the man you saw is the prisoner?"

  I couldn't make out what he was at. He couldn't have expected any other answer than the one he got.

  "None whatever, sir. It isn't a face one forgets."

  Counsel took a look round the court for a moment. Then he said, "Do you mind, Mrs. Salmon, examining again the people in court? No, not the prisoner. Stand up, please, Mr. Adams," and there at the back of the court, with thick stout body and muscular legs and a pair of bulging eyes, was the exact image of the man in the dock. He was even dressed the same—tight blue suit and striped tie.

  "Now think very carefully, Mrs. Salmon. Can you still swear that the man you saw drop the hammer in Mrs. Parker's garden was the prisoner—and not this man, who is his twin brother?"

  Of course she couldn't. She looked from one to the other and didn't say a word.

  There the big brute sat in the dock with his legs crossed and there he stood too at the back of the court and they both stared at Mrs. Salmon. She shook her head.

  What we saw then was the end of the case. There wasn't a witness prepared to swear that it was the prisoner he'd seen. And the brother? He had his alibi too; he was with his wife.

  And so the man was acquitted for lack of evidence. But whether—if he did the murder and not his brother -he was punished or not, I don't know. That extraordinary day had an extraordinary end. I followed Mrs. Salmon out of court and we got wedged in the crowd who were waiting, of course, for the twins. The police tried to drive the crowd away, but all they could do was keep the roadway clear for traffic. I learned later that they tried to get the twins to leave by a back way, but they wouldn't. One of them—no one knew which—said, "I've been acquitted, haven't I?" and they walked bang out of the front entrance. Then it happened. I don't know how, though I was only six feet away. The crowd moved and somehow one of the twins got pushed on to the road right in front of a bus.

  He gave a squeal like a rabbit and that was all; he was dead, his skull smashed just as Mrs. Parker's had been. Divine vengeance? I wish I knew. There was the other Adams getting on his feet from beside the body and looking straight over at Mrs. Salmon. He was crying, but whether he was the murderer or the innocent man, nobody will ever be able to tell. But if you were Mrs. Salmon, could you sleep at night?

  When Greek Meets Greek

  1

  When the chemist had shut his shop for the night he went through a door at the back of the hall that served both him and the flats above, and then up two flights and a half of stairs, carrying an offering of a little box of pills. The box was stamped with his name and address: Priskett, 14, New End Street, Oxford. He was a middle-aged man with a thin moustache and scared, evasive eyes: he wore his long white coat even when he was off duty as if it had the power of protecting him like a king's uniform from his enemies. So long as he wore it he was free, as it were, from summary trial and execution.

  On the top landing was a window: outside Oxford spread through the spring evening: the peevish noise of innumerable bicycles, the gas works, the prison, and the grey spires, beyond the bakers and confectioners, like paper frills. A door was marked with a visiting card, Mr. Nicholas Fennick, B. A.: the chemist rang three short times.

  The man who opened the door was sixty years old at least, with snow-white hair and a pink babyish skin. He wore a mulberry velvet dinner jacket, and his glasses swung on the end of a wide black ribbon. He said with a kind of boisterousness, "Ah, Priskett, step in, Priskett. I had just sported my oak for a moment..."

  "I brought you some more of my pills."

  "Invaluable Priskett. If only you had taken a degree -the Society of Apothecaries would have been enough—I would have appointed you resident medical officer of St. Ambrose's."

  "How's the college doing?"

  "Give me your company for a moment in the commonroom, and you shall know all."

  Mr. Fennick led the way down a little dark passage cluttered with mackintoshes: Mr. Priskett, feeling his way uneasily from mackintosh to mackintosh, kicked in front of him a pair of girl's shoes. "One day," Mr. Fennick said, "we must build..." and he made a broad confident gesture with his glasses that seemed to press back the walls of the common-room: a small round table covered with a landlady's cloth, three or four shiny chairs and a glass-fronted bookcase containing a copy of Every Man His Own Lawyer. "My niece Elisabeth," Mr. Fennick said, "my medical adviser." A very young girl with a lean pretty face nodded perfunctorily from behind a typewriter. "I am going to train Elisabeth," Mr. Fennick said, "to act as bursar. The strain of being both bursar and president of the college is upsetting my stomach. The pills... thank you."

  Mr. Priskett said humbly, "And what do you think of the college, Miss Fennick?"

  "My name's Cross," the girl said. "I think it's a good idea. I'm surprised my uncle thought of it."

  "In a way it was—partly—my idea."

  "I'm more surprised still," the girl said firmly.

  Mr. Priskett, folding his hands in front of his white coat as though he were pleading before a tribunal, went on, "You see, I said to your uncle that with all these colleges being taken over by the military and the tutors having nothing to do they ought to start teaching by correspondence."

  "A glass of audit ale, Priskett?" Mr. Fennick suggested. He took a bottle of brown ale out of a cupboard and poured out two gaseous glasses.

  "Of course," Mr. Priskett pleaded, "I hadn't thought of all this—the common-room, I mean, and St. Ambrose's."

  "My niece," Mr. Fennick said, "knows very little of the set-up." He began to move restlessly around the room, touching things with his hand. He was rather like an aged bird of prey inspecting the grim components of its nest.

  The girl said briskly, "As I see it, Uncle is running a swindle called St. Ambrose's College, Oxford."

  "Not a swindle, my dear. The advertisement was very carefully worded." He knew it by heart: every phrase had been carefully checked with his copy of Every Man His Own Lawyer open on the table. He repeated it now in a voice full and husky with bottled brown ale. "War conditions prevent you going up to Oxford. St. Ambrose's—Tom Brown's old college—has made an important break with tradition. For the period of the war only it will be possible to receive tuition by post wherever you may be, whether defending the Empire on the cold rocks of Iceland or on the burning sands of Libya, in the main street of an American town or a cottage in Devonshire...' "

  "You've overdone it," the girl said. "You always do. That hasn't got a cultured ring. It won't catch anybody but saps."

  "There are plenty of saps," Mr. Fennick said.

  "Go on."

  "Well, I'll skip that bit. 'Degree-diplomas will be granted at the end of three terms instead of the usual three years.' " He explained, "That gives a quick turnover. One can't wait
for money these days. 'Gain a real Oxford education at Tom Brown's old college. For full particulars of tuition fees, battels, etc., write to the Bursar.' "

  "And do you mean to say the University can't stop that?"

  "Anybody," Mr. Fennick said with a kind of pride, "can start a college anywhere. I've never said it was part of the University."

  "But battels—battels mean board and lodging."

  "In this case," Mr. Fennick said, "it's quite a nominal fee, to keep your name in perpetuity on the books of the old firm—I mean the college."

  "And the tuition—"

  " Priskett here is the science tutor. I take history and classics. I thought that you, my dear, might tackle -economics?"

  "I don't know anything about them."

  "The examinations, of course, have to be rather simple—within the capacity of the tutors. (There is an excellent public library here.) And another thing—the fees are returnable if the diploma-degree is not granted."

  "You mean—"

  "Nobody will ever fail," Mr. Priskett brought breathlessly out with scared excitement.

  "And you are really getting results?"

  "I waited, my dear, until I could see the distinct possibility of at least six hundred a year for the three of us before I wired you. And today—beyond all my expectations—I have received a letter from Lord Driver. He is entering his son at St. Ambrose's."

  "But how can he come here?"

  "In his absence, my dear, on his country's service. The Drivers have always been a military family. I looked them up in Debrett."

  "What do you think of it?" Mr. Priskett asked with anxiety and triumph.

  "I think it's rich. Have you arranged a boat race?"

  "There, Priskett," Mr. Fennick said proudly, raising his glass of audit ale, "I told you she was a girl of ideas."

  2

  Directly he heard his landlady's feet upon the stairs the elderly man with the grey shaven head began to lay his wet tea-leaves round the base of the aspidistra. When she opened the door he was dabbing the tea-leaves in tenderly with his fingers. "A lovely plant, my dear."

  But she wasn't going to be softened at once: he could tell that: she waved a letter at him. "Listen," she said, "what's this Lord Driver business?"

  "My name, my dear: a good Christian name like Lord George Sanger had."

  "Then why don't they put Mr. Lord Driver on the letter?"

  "Ignorance, just ignorance."

  "I don't want any hanky-panky from my house. It's always been honest."

  "Perhaps they didn't know if I was an esquire or just a plain mister, so they left it blank."

  "It's sent from St. Ambrose's College, Oxford: people like that ought to know."

  "It comes, my dear, of your having such a good address. W .1. And all the gentry live in mewses." He made a half-hearted snatch at the letter, but the landlady held it out of reach.

  "What are the likes of you writing to Oxford College about?"

  "My dear," he said with strained dignity, "I may have been a little unfortunate: it may even be that I have spent a few years in chokey, but I have the rights of a free man."

  "And a son in quod."

  "Not in quod, my dear. Borstal is quite another institution. It is—a kind of college."

  "Like St. Ambrose's."

  "Perhaps not quite of the same rank."

  He was too much for her: he was usually in the end too much for her. Before his first stay at the Scrubs he had held a number of positions as man-servant and even butler: the way he raised his eyebrows he had learned from Lord Charles Manville: he wore his clothes like an eccentric peer, and you might say that he had even learned the best way to pilfer from old Lord Bellew who had a penchant for silver spoons.

  "And now, my dear, if you'd just let me have my letter?" He put his hand tentatively forward: he was as daunted by her as she was by him: they sparred endlessly and lost to each other: interminably the battle was never won—they were always afraid. This time it was his victory. She slammed the door. Suddenly, ferociously, when the door had closed, he made a little vulgar noise at the aspidistra. Then he put on his glasses and began to read.

  His son had been accepted for St. Ambrose's, Oxford. The great fact stared up at him above the sprawling decorative signature of the President. Never had he been more thankful for the coincidence of his name. "It will be my great pleasure," the President wrote, "to pay personal attention to your son's career at St. Ambrose's. In these days it is an honour to welcome a member of a great military family like yours." Driver felt an odd mixture of amusement and of genuine pride. He'd put one over on them, but his breast swelled within his waistcoat at the idea that now he had a son at Oxford.

  But there were two snags—minor snags when he considered how far he'd got already. It was apparently an old Oxford custom that fees should be paid in advance, and then there were the examinations. His son couldn't do them himself: Borstal would not allow it, and he wouldn't be out for another six months. Besides the whole beauty of the idea was that he should receive the gift of an Oxford degree as a kind of welcome home. Like a chess player who is always several moves ahead, he was already seeing his way around these difficulties.

  The fees he felt sure in his case were only a matter of bluff: a peer could always get credit, and if there was any trouble after the degree had been awarded, he could just tell them to sue and be damned. No Oxford college would like to admit that they'd been imposed on by an old lag. But the examinations. A funny little knowing smile twitched the corners of his mouth: a memory of the Scrubs five years ago and the man they called Daddy, the Reverend Simon Milan. He was a short-time prisoner—they were all short-time prisoners at the Scrubs: no sentence of over three years was ever served there. He remembered the tall lean aristocratic parson with his irongrey hair and his narrow face like a lawyer's which had gone somehow soft inside with too much love. A prison, when you came to think of it, contained as much knowledge as a university: there were doctors, financiers, clergy. He knew where he could find Mr. Milan: he was employed in a boarding-house near Euston Square, and for a few drinks he would do most things—he would certainly make out some fine examination papers. "I can just hear him now," Driver told himself ecstatically, "talking Latin to the warders."

  3

  It was autumn in Oxford: people coughed in the long queues for sweets and cakes: and the mists from the river seeped into the cinemas past the commissionaires on the look-out for people without gas-masks. A few undergraduates picked their way through the evacuated swarm: they always looked in a hurry: so much had to be got through in so little time before the army claimed them. There were lots of pickings for racketeers, Elisabeth Cross thought, but not much chance for a girl to find a husband: the oldest Oxford racket had been elbowed out by the black markets in Woodbines, toffees, tomatoes.

  There had been a few days last spring when she had treated St. Ambrose's as a joke, but when she saw the money actually coming in, the whole thing seemed less amusing. Then for some weeks she was acutely unhappy—until she realized that of all the war-time rackets this was the most harmless. They were not reducing supplies like the Ministry of Food, or destroying confidence like the Ministry of Information: her uncle paid income tax, and they even to some extent educated people. The saps, when they took their diploma-degrees would know several things they hadn't known before.

  But that didn't help a girl to find a husband.

  She came moodily out of the matinée, carrying a bunch of papers she should have been correcting. There was only one "student" who showed any intelligence at all, and that was Lord Driver's son. The papers were forwarded from "somewhere in England" via London by his father: she had nearly found herself caught out several times on points of history, and her uncle she knew was straining his rusty Latin to the limit.

  When she got home she knew that there was something in the air: Mr. Priskett was sitting in his white coat on the edge of a chair and her uncle was finishing a stale bottle of beer. When so
mething went wrong he never opened a new bottle: he believed in happy drinking. They watched her come in in silence: Mr. Priskett's silence was gloomy, her uncle's preoccupied. Something had to be got round—it couldn't be the university authorities: they had stopped bothering him long ago—a lawyer's letter, an irascible interview, and their attempt to maintain "a monopoly of local education"—as Mr. Fennick put it—had ceased.

  "Good evening," Elisabeth said. Mr. Priskett looked at Mr. Fennick and Mr. Fennick frowned.

  "Has Mr. Priskett run out of pills?"

  Mr. Priskett winced.

  "I've been thinking," Elisabeth said, "that as we are now in the third term of the academic year, I should like a rise in salary."

  Mr. Priskett drew in his breath sharply, keeping his eyes on Mr. Fennick.

  "I should like another three pounds a week."

  Mr. Fennick rose from the table; he glared ferociously into the top of his dark ale; his frown beetled. The chemist scraped his chair a little backward. And then Mr. Fennick spoke.

  " 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on,' " he said and hiccupped slightly.

  "Kidneys," Elisabeth said.

  "'Rounded by a sleep. And these our cloud-capped towers...'"

  "You are misquoting."

  "'Vanished into air, into thin air.'"

  "You've been correcting the English papers."

  "Unless you allow me to think, to think rapidly and deeply, there won't be any more examination papers," Mr. Fennick said.

  "Trouble?"

  "I've always been a republican at heart. I don't see why we want a hereditary peerage."

  "A la lanterne," Elisabeth said.

  "This man, Lord Driver: why should a mere accident of birth...?"

  "He refuses to pay?"

  "It isn't that. A man like that expects credit: it's right that he should have credit. But he's written to say that he's coming down tomorrow to see his boy's college. The old fat-headed sentimental fool," Mr. Fennick said.