A Question of Proof Read online

  If he went to bed that night vaguely uneasy, a paper which was put in his hand the next morning as he strolled towards the common room sent him into a real panic. This is a bit too much, he thought, rereading his instructions. I shall be landed in prison by this evening. It was a ragged piece of exercise-paper, with enough thumbmarks on it to make it a fingerprint expert’s paradise. There was a round splodge of ink at the top, the Black Spot, no doubt; underneath, in laborious capitals, ran the following legend:–

  ‘IF YOU WOULD BECOME A MEMBER OF YE ANCIENT AND HONORABLE SOCIETY OF YE BLACK SPOT, YE MUST PERFORM AND COMITT BEFORE 2 P.M. TODAY THE FOLLOWING EXPLOITS. TO WIT:

  1. Chalk a white mustashe on the nimph of ye drynking fountain in Sudeley.

  2. Ask Higgins, resident in ye hamlet aforsaid, to show you his famous scales, and bring back a description thereof.

  3. Remove one rabitt trap from ye phesant cover of Lord Edgworth and keep ye same till the society demands it. N.B. – Exploits to be purpetrated in ye above order.

  P.S. – If thou shirkest or failest in any you shall cease to be elligible for this society.

  P.P.S. – Burn this paper. And if you divulge its contents, or any part of its contents, or anything whatsoever pertaining to ye Black Spot, to any living soul, the Black Spot will be put upon you and you may expect no mercy.

  ‘R.I.P.

  ‘(SINGED) THE OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY.’

  This rigmarole, attesting alike to its author’s wide reading and inventiveness, caused the sweat to stand out on its recipient’s forehead. It appears to be either the jail or the nearest lunatic asylum for yours truly if he attempts to ‘perform and comitt’ these fantastic feats, thought Nigel. But the adventurousness which had led him into many strange places made up his mind for him. He put a match to the sinister document, and went in quest of a bicycle, some information about Lord Edgworth’s ‘phesant cover,’ and a piece of chalk. He chose a bicycle – the oldest one he could borrow – because some means of escape was clearly desirable, and a car would be far too conspicuous. Lord Edgworth’s coverts were a couple of miles from the school, he learned, in the opposite direction from the village and separated by a fence from the wood in which Urquhart had kept his fruitless vigil. The coverts, he was also told, were the haunt of all the local poachers and possibly not unfrequented by some of the Rev. Vale’s young gentlemen. They were jealously patrolled by keepers. You may well say ‘R.I.P.’ thought Nigel.

  It was after ten o’clock when he started. A morning heat haze, which was just giving way before the brassy stare of the sun, promised that his ordeal would be a physical as well as a mental one. His bicycle, too, creaked rheumatically, and he was conscious of a marked discrepancy between its plebeian frame and his own well-worn but still gentlemanly suit. As the village came in sight, Nigel found himself pedalling even slower. Practical jokes and crazy exhibitions were all very well in the heat of the moment, but this cold-blooded lunacy was a far different cup of tea. Apprehension became sheer horror when he arrived on the green in the middle of the village. The ‘nimph’ was a substantial woman of uncertain age, her charms partially concealed by verdigris, standing in a eurythmic attitude in a large and unsavoury-looking basin of water. Moreover, she was attended by a group of village swains, wearing their Sunday best, who sat on the parapet of the basin. Nigel’s nerve all but failed him. He was on the point of turning back, when the face of Stevens II rose up mutely reproaching before his mind’s eye; what would that intrepid youth say if the great detective returned, a failure? He braced himself, leaned his bicycle against a wall, and approached the group.

  ‘Good-morning! A fine day!’

  ‘Ar.’

  ‘Does Mr. Higgins live near here?’

  ‘Ar. Keeps shop down street.’

  ‘I hear you’ve had a murder in the neighborhood. A nasty business.’

  ‘Cor, Bert, that’s a good ’un, that is. Detective gennulman from Lunnon ’e says, “I hear you’ve had a murder in the neighbourhood.” That’s a bloody good ‘un, that is.’ Hoarse guffaws. A swain expectorated rudely at the eurythmic nymph. Nigel stuck to it. His brain was working furiously.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d heard about me.’

  ‘Found any clues like, mister?’

  ‘One or two. We’re getting along slowly.’

  ‘Detective gennulman asks we does Mr. Higgins live here. Gennulman be going to arrest Mr. Higgins, see?’ remarked one logician. ‘Gennulman better mind out. Mr. Higgins always drunk Saturday nights. Mr. Higgins powerful raging Sunday morning.’

  ‘No, I’m not going to arrest Mr. Higgins,’ Nigel assured them, to their visible disappointment. ‘Talking about clues, though, there’s something I’m looking for. I want it badly. In fact, I’d give five shillings to anyone who found it for me.’ At this point he clearly began to hold his audience. ‘Do you fellows know of anyone who’d like to earn five shillings?’ he added.

  ‘See here, mister, what be looking for? Us might oblige ‘ee.’

  ‘That would be very decent of you. I’ve got a theory that the young gentleman was murdered on the road between here and the school. His handkerchief is missing, and if my theory is correct, it should be somewhere in the ditches, or along the road, or perhaps it was thrown over the hedge,’ Nigel lied luxuriantly. ‘It’d take me a long time to do the whole search myself, and I don’t want to ask the police, they’re so busy. That handkerchief is worth five shillings to me. I’m always to be found at the school, if anyone discovers it.’ His last remark was made to the vacant air, for the group had melted away like dew and were already halfway out of the village.

  The green now seemed uninhabited; Nigel swung his leg over the parapet and waded through scum-covered water up to the nymph. He cast a glance over his shoulder, feeling rather like one about to commit an offence in Hyde Park. Luckily, he was too shortsighted to observe the windows on the edge of the green, at each of which one or more faces peered out from behind the curtains, deeply interested to see a ‘detective gennulman from Lunnon’ at work. Many and heated were the arguments conducted throughout the next two days on doorstep and in public bar as to the exact meaning of the gentleman’s activities. One school held that he was looking for more bodies in the basin, another that the brazen nymph had yielded up some vital clue to the mystery. The thick white moustache which, after the detective’s humid departure, was found on her upper lip – and which, Nigel thought, rather improved her appearance – was zealously preserved and pointed out to visitors with pride as one of the local curiosities. The boys of Sudeley Hall, walking to church half an hour later, beheld it with uncontrolled glee. And there it remained, a mystery to all but three persons, till many days after a greater mystery was cleared up; till rain came and shaved it slowly away and restored to the nymph her proper femininity.

  Nigel pocketed his chalk again and turned round. Twenty faces whisked behind curtains, as he climbed out and pushed his bicycle towards the next adventure, ‘Mr. Higgins, resident in ye hamlet aforsaid.’ He was so relieved to have got away from the nymph unarrested, that he failed to make the obvious connection between the nature of Mr. Higgins’ residence and the object of his second quest. ‘Scales,’ he thought to himself, ‘a description thereof.’ This is just to test the candidate’s powers of observation, it’ll be as easy as drinking tea. He knocked at the door. After a long interval it was opened, disclosing a huge, bald man, with bloodshot eyes, in a state of bad temper and deshabille.

  ‘My shop ain’t open on Sundays,’ this individual barked; ‘you ’ikers are a disgrace to the country, profaning the Sabbath, and tearing about the country in the nood.’

  ‘You’ve got me wrong, Mr. Higgins,’ remarked Nigel affably. ‘I am not a hiker, and if you look a little more closely you will observe that I am the reverse of noo-nude. And I’m sure no one could tear anywhere on this ghastly bicycle they’ve lent me.’

  ‘Well, what the ’ell do you want, then?’

  ‘I’m staying in the
se parts, and I was told that I shouldn’t go before I’d had a look at your famous scales. I’d be obliged if –’

  Nigel broke off in considerable alarm. Mr. Higgins’ whole head was rapidly going through a series of colour gradations, from tomato, through beetroot, to dark plum. He wheezed apoplectically in his throat, then lunged at Nigel, roaring out, ‘Corbooger, another of these blasted inspectors, are yer? I’ll inspect yer.’ Nigel left two buttons and some shreds of cloth in Mr. Higgins’ clutching hands, leapt on to his bicycle, and pedalled fast back along the way he had come, vowing vengeance on Stevens for leading him up the garden to that dishonest tradesman. When he had slowed down out of earshot, he began to realise that it was not a leg-pull on the boy’s part. The keen, but closely limited imagination of a boy of that age had made Stevens assume that Strangeways knew all the local scandals, and the second test called for at least as much audacity to a boy’s mind as the first.

  Nigel had passed the frenzied handkerchief hunters, and was now breasting the last hill before Edgworth Woods came in sight. He wheeled his bicycle into the wood, leaned it up against the high wire fence that separated neutral ground from no-man’s-land – or rather, Lord Edgworth’s land, bent down to take off his trouser-clips, straightened up with one hand on the wire – and found himself face to face with a very broad man in corduroy breeches carrying a gun.

  The broad man stared at him in that curiously sombre and incriminating way that gamekeepers, park-keepers, and policemen have. But Nigel was not in the least intimidated. His blood was up now, he felt on top of the world. Had Stevens II witnessed his subsequent conduct, there can be little doubt that the dictator would have abdicated in his favour. Nigel put a hand through the wires and exclaimed genially:

  ‘Lord Edgworth, I presume?’

  ‘Naw,’ said the broad man, his stony stare wobbling a little.

  ‘A gamekeeper, then, I daresay?’

  ‘May be.’

  ‘Well, I should have thought you would know whether you’re a game keeper or not. However, that is your affair. We will leave it aside for the moment. Do you –’

  ‘Yurr,’ interrupted the broad man, pointing to a notice behind him, ‘ “Trespassers praasecuted,” see? So doan’t you come climbing over this yurr fence.’

  ‘That’s just what I was coming to talk to you about. Do you allow the Sudeley Hall boys in there? Because I’ve just seen two of them getting through the fence about a hundred yards down.’

  ‘Drat they boys!’ exclaimed the keeper, ‘I’ll skelp ’em.’ And he hurried off in the direction Nigel pointed out, leaving him to climb through into the preserve at his leisure. That was about all the leisure Nigel got for the next quarter of an hour. He had not penetrated ten yards into the wood when a pheasant rose up at his feet, honking like a flustered motorist. His heart almost leapt out of his mouth, and he could hear the keeper come pounding back at the noise. Nigel plunged into a patch of fern on his left and lay down panting under the lofty fronds.

  The riot in front died down and stopped. The gamekeeper appeared, looked about him suspiciously, and approaching the patch of fern began to prod into it with the muzzle of his gun. Nigel was within a foot or two of being stunned by one of these prods, but then the danger receded, and after a few minutes he emerged from his lair and cautiously resumed the search for rabbit-traps. This time he walked very slowly. The birds had got used to him now or they were somewhere else, or something, and soon he was rewarded by the sight of a grassy, sandy bank, perforated with many rabbit holes. He approached, peered about him, ah! a wire noose on a stick. That must be a trap all right. He bent down and tugged it out of the ground. There was a rustling above him. For a second time that morning he straightened up to see the broad man staring at him.

  ‘Caught this time, hey?’ rasped the broad man, and bore down on him.

  ‘Not quite, but here’s one of the traps they set – little devils!’ Nigel peered into the trees, and suddenly shouted, ‘By Jove, there they are! Quick! We’ll get ’em this time,’ pocketed the trap and rushed wildly off, drawing the bemused keeper after him. He had not run long before the keeper was outdistanced, and soon he was climbing through the wire fence again. His bicycle was nowhere to be seen, but he took his bearings by the sun and began to walk along the leafy path in the direction of the road. He had not gone more than a hundred yards when he heard voices in front. Thinking that the keeper might have moved with reinforcements to intercept him, he crept slowly towards the sounds. Then he stopped dead. He had recognised one of the voices; it was Wrench; he was talking to a woman.

  ‘I tell you there’s nothing to be frightened about. You keep your mouth shut and we’re safe as houses,’ Wrench was saying. ‘I can’t help it. I’m afraid of that Mr. Armstrong. I’m sure he suspects something. He looks at me fair awful. I know he’ll make me tell him.’

  ‘I’ll wring your pretty neck if you let out anything till I give the word. Don’t you see it’ll ruin me if you tell the tale? That old swine Gadsby has started dropping hints, and God knows how soon they won’t come to Vale’s ears as it is. You’ll damn well keep quiet, my girl. Time enough to come out with the story if they begin to suspect – the other thing.’

  ‘I don’t believe you care for me a bit, Cyril. I’m just a toy, that’s all. All you care about is your rotten old reputation. Oh, sir, why did you ever –?’

  ‘Shut up!’ snapped Wrench, ‘don’t talk like the films. Anyone’d think you were a poor, innocent little thing seduced by the villain, instead of –’

  ‘Damn you, I hate you.’

  Nigel had been pushing cautiously forward, wishing to identify the woman; her voice seemed somehow familiar. A flaunting red dress; a servant’s Sunday finery. ‘Curse my short sight. What the hell’s the use of a short-sighted detective?’ He edged nearer still. ‘Yes, it’s that girl Rosa.’ His foot slipped and he lurched heavily sideways in the undergrowth. The girl screamed. Wrench sprang to his feet and ran, dragging her with him. Nigel could have kicked himself. What might he not have missed? Well, at least they hadn’t seen him. He was sure of that. He allowed a decent interval to elapse, then walked on, found his bicycle, and rode slowly back to the school, deep in thought.

  Michael had told him about the fracas between Wrench and Gadsby, and the superintendent had mentioned his suspicion that Rosa knew more than she would say. Wrench, a thruster, eager to get on, one of the children of this world. Rosa the flesh, and probably the devil too. Let’s get it clear. She was not to tell the tale unless the police began to suspect ‘the other thing.’ If she told the tale Wrench would be ruined. What sort of thing would ruin Wrench? Obviously the discovery of his intrigue with Rosa. But under what circumstances would Wrench ever allow this intrigue to be made public? Surely only if some worse danger threatened – the ‘other thing,’ in fact. And what could that be but the suspicion of his having committed the murder. How could confession to an intrigue remove this suspicion? It would have to be in the form of an alibi. Nigel remembered the account of her movements Rosa had given the superintendent. She had felt unwell and gone up to her room about two o’clock, remaining there till a few minutes after two-thirty. The ‘tale’ then would be that Wrench was with her during that period. But might it not be true? Wrench was given to slangy expressions. He might have meant ‘tell the true tale,’ and again, he might not. His alibi for two to two-thirty was weak enough – reading in his room. But why two to two-thirty? How could Rosa help him by saying he was in her room then, when all the evidence seemed to show that the murder must have been committed before that period? Look at it from the other side. If Wrench did the murder, he must have done it between two and two-thirty, that being the time for which he is reserving his stronger alibi. No, not two-thirty, a few minutes after. The superintendent said that no one saw Wrench during the first race. But Wrench himself trotted out a yam about a man in a brown suit, to give the impression that he was in the field when the sports began. That is probably a part of his first
and weaker alibi. He will say he made it up in order to avoid confessing that he had been with Rosa. If he committed the murder, then, it was between two and a few minutes after two-thirty. But Griffin and Mould were on the field from two to two-fifteen, and after that more and more people were swarming on to it. Nigel’s head grew dizzy with these tail-chasing arguments, and he was glad to find himself back at the school, ready to hear whatever Stevens II had to say.

  The two boys came up immediately after lunch. Nigel was eager to begin questioning them, for the idea conceived after his second exploit had been greatly strengthened by the third. However, he had first to undergo the ceremony of initiation into the secret society. He gave an account of his adventures and handed over the rabbit-trap. He was then blindfolded, while the dictator read a kind of confirmation service over him, in the course of which he was compelled to swear a number of very solemn and magniloquent oaths. Finally, the bandage was removed, a large black spot of ink was printed on his right wrist, and he was a full member of the society. The dictator and his lieutenant now changed into Stevens II and Ponsonby. The hunt was up.

  ‘Sir, it’s about the day Wemyss was murdered. At breakfast me and Ponsonby arranged to meet in Mouldy’s hut to transact important private business of the society,’ the dictator reeled out the last phrase in character, and was immediately transfigured into Stevens II again. ‘We oiled out as soon as lunch was over – it’s quite easy, you know, sir – and hid –’