Death on the Cherwell (British Library Crime Classics) Read online

  This edition published in 2014 by

  The British Library

  96 Euston Road

  London NW1 2DB

  Originally published in London in 1935 by Skeffington & Son

  Reprinted with thanks to the Estate of Mavis Doriel Hay

  Introduction © Stephen Booth

  Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library

  ISBN 978 0 7123 5726 5

  Typeset by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

  Printed and bound in England by TJ International

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  I THE BURSAR COMES DOWN THE RIVER

  II MISS CORDELL FACES PUBLICITY

  III THE LIE OF THE LAND

  IV THE BLOOD FEUD

  V TRESPASS BY NIGHT

  VI LUNCH AT THE MITRE

  VII AUTHOR OF “DUST”

  VIII “NIPPY”

  IX THE MAN WHO SAW BURSE

  X THE MYSTERY OF FERRY HOUSE

  XI SCOTLAND YARD CONFERS WITH THE LEAGUE

  XII JIM LIDGETT

  XIII BRAYDON VISITS SIM’S

  XIV PAMELA, NIECE OF BURSE

  XV UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES

  XVI GWYNETH CALLS ON AUNT SOPHIA

  XVII PAMELA AT THE BACK END

  XVIII SCOTLAND YARD GOES UP THE RIVER

  XIX A MAN GETS FREE

  XX DENIS MORT GIVES A VERDICT

  INTRODUCTION

  The tradition of Oxford-based crime fiction stretches back more than eighty years. It began several decades before the arrival of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, and is still flourishing today.

  Credit for establishing the tradition usually goes to John Cecil Masterman for his 1933 murder mystery An Oxford Tragedy, and Adam Broome for The Oxford Murders (1929). But one of the pioneers of this popular sub-genre was certainly the long-forgotten Mavis Doriel Hay, whose second novel Death on the Cherwell appeared in 1935 and is set in the fictional Persephone College.

  It is probably a coincidence that the same year saw publication of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novel Gaudy Night, perhaps the most famous account of life in an Oxford women’s college. Sayers’ Shrewsbury College (the alma mater of her character Harriet Vane) was based largely on Somerville, which Sayers attended. But Hay’s all-female establishment in Death on the Cherwell is recognisably similar to another Oxford institution, St Hilda’s. There were, after all, only two women’s colleges on the River Cherwell – the other being Lady Margaret Hall, which is referred to as ‘LMH’ in the story.

  So it is no surprise to discover that Mavis Doriel Hay herself attended St Hilda’s College, which also boasts among its alumnae the crime novelists P. D. James and Val McDermid. Hay was a student there from 1913 to 1916, and she may be looking back with wry recollection in the opening pages of Death on the Cherwell when she writes: “Undergraduates, especially those in their first year, are not, of course, quite sane or quite adult.”

  Unlike her husband Archibald, Mavis would not have come away from Oxford with a degree. It was only in 1910 that Oxford University even acknowledged the existence of female students, despite the fact that four women’s colleges had been established in the nineteenth century. And women were not permitted to be members of the university and become eligible for degrees until 1920 – four years after Mavis had left St Hilda’s.

  In the circumstances, it is understandable that one of the themes of Death on the Cherwell is a prejudice against women. Hay’s views on women’s education are not as explicit as those of Sayers in Gaudy Night, but they seem to have been thinking along the same lines.

  As with Hay’s first novel, Murder Underground, violent death is inflicted on a victim who was universally disliked – in this case, the college bursar, Miss Denning. The need to avoid bad publicity for the college leads to the solving of the mystery by a group of students and their friends. In this story, we find a classic tale of the disruption of order in a setting where it’s least expected. As the principal Miss Cordell says: “Bursars of Persephone College don’t get murdered.” But, of course, they do in the world of mystery fiction.

  We are reminded of some of the tropes of Golden Age fiction with the description of a local landowner Mr Lund as a man who could not possibly have committed a murder because he comes from “a good, old family.” However, Lund is also a misogynist, who won’t let a female set foot in his home and has a curse against women inscribed on the chimney piece of his Elizabethan house. For the author, he may represent the University of Oxford itself.

  Hay seems to have been pleased with the police inspector who made an unobtrusive entrance in her previous novel, because here we meet Inspector Wythe, a sympathetic and intelligent character, not the typical clodhopping local bobby. He is not quite quick enough to beat the amateur sleuths to the solution, but he gives them a run for their money. The sleuthing becomes a competition between rival groups of male and female students from Persephone and St Simeon’s. In the end, it seems none of the people concerned may be capable of crime, though moral guilt turns out to be a powerful thing in Mavis Doriel Hay’s world.

  It is a shame that there was to be only one more novel from Mavis Doriel Hay after Death on the Cherwell. But the approach of the Second World War changed everything for her. Mavis did not marry until she was already 35 years old – her husband, Archibald Fitzrandolph, being a member of a wealthy and influential family of loyalist Canadians. Archibald joined the RAF, but was killed in a flying accident in 1943. Not surprisingly, since she lived through both world wars, her husband’s death was not the only tragedy in Mavis’s life. One of her brothers had died aged 19 when his ship was sunk during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Her youngest sibling was killed when his Tiger Moth crashed in the Malayan jungle in 1939. A year later, a third brother lost his life working on the notorious Thailand–Burma railway after being captured by the Japanese.

  Although she set aside mystery novels, Mavis returned to her first love, rural crafts. She had taken up a role as a researcher for the Rural Industries Bureau, which was established in the 1920s to encourage craft industries in deprived areas. As Mavis Fitzrandolph, she is still remembered for her work developing the quilting industry in Wales. She was said to be so well connected that she could arrange exhibitions in the homes of the aristocracy. Her aristocratic connections probably came through her husband’s family, the Fitzrandolphs. One of Archibald’s cousins had married Sir John Dashwood and became a lady-in-waiting at the court of King George V.

  From 1950 onwards, Mavis published several more books, including 30 Crafts for the Women’s Institute, and Quilting in 1972, only seven years before her death in Gloucestershire, where she had made her home in the village of Box.

  Mavis Doriel Hay’s short career was a loss to mystery fiction. Even sadder is the fact that she was almost forgotten for so many years after her death. I am delighted these British Library editions are finally remedying that oversight.

  Stephen Booth

  DEATH ON THE CHERWELL

  CHAPTER I

  THE BURSAR COMES DOWN THE RIVER

  A SLOPING roof of cold, corrugated iron, above the sliding, brownish waters of the river Cherwell and beneath the stark boughs of a willow, might not appeal to a sane adult human being as an ideal resort at four o’clock on a gloomy January afternoon. But Sally Watson had declared that it was the perfect spot for a certain mysterious confabulation, and her fellow conspirators had accepted her judgment and were all gathered there. Only Daphne Loveridge had, with her usual air of unspoken criticism, ventured on a qua
lification of Sally’s chosen rendezvous by bringing a thick travelling rug, which slightly mitigated the chill perfection of the boathouse roof.

  Undergraduates, especially those in their first year, are not, of course, quite sane or quite adult. It is sometimes considered that they are not quite human. Emerging excitedly from the ignominious status of schoolgirl or schoolboy, and as yet unsteadied by the ballast of responsibility which, later on, a livelihood-earning career will provide, they enter the university like beings born again with the advantage of an undimmed memory of their former lives. Inspirited by their knowledge of the ways in which authority may be mocked, they are at the same time quite ridiculously uplifted by the easy possibility of achieving local fame in the limited university world during the next three years. Conscious of the brevity of their college life, they are ready to seize every opportunity to assert their individuality. The easily acquired label of “originality” is so much more distinguished than the “naughtiness” of their outpassed schooldays, and quite a lot of wildness may be mixed with a modicum of work and form a sound basis for a highly respectable later life.

  The formation of esoteric societies is one of the favourite pastimes of undergraduates, and these societies are on a definitely higher plane than the secret alliances of the school period. Each has its great idea, of which the passwords or rituals are symbols. Daphne Loveridge, Gwyneth Pane and Nina Harson were gathered on the roof of the small boathouse of Persephone College, Oxford, to meet Sally Watson for the purpose of inaugurating the Lode League. The League owed its name to the Oxford habit of giving special titles to sections of its rivers, for the part of the Cherwell on this side of the island on which Persephone College stands is known as the Lode.

  Sally came racing across the lawn to join the others a few minutes after four o’clock had chimed from Sim’s tower higher up the river. Five rings of twisted silver wire, slung on a yellow cord, dangled from her wrist as she settled herself on Daphne’s rug.

  “Five?” cried Gwyneth in shrill dismay. “You haven’t asked Draga, surely?”

  “How could I?” Sally retorted in withering tone. Gwyneth must be made to understand that communal decisions of the League were sacred and could not be flouted even by its leader. “But I’ve got another idea. We’re the Lode League so the Lode is our patron saint and must have a ring too!”

  “What waste!” Gwyneth commented.

  “We can use the worst one,” Daphne suggested, examining the rings critically.

  “Your souls are of the earth earthy,” Nina told them. “I think it’s a stupendous idea, Sally. It will make it all much more sort of binding.”

  “It’s awfully unpractical!” Gwyneth grumbled, unconvinced.

  “Can’t you understand symbolism, my poor girl?” asked Nina sadly. “You’re reading the English school and yet you haven’t a drop of poetry in your soul!”

  “Let’s get on,” Daphne suggested. “It’s chilly.”

  “We’ll inscribe the object of the League in our secret code books in my room, after tea,” Sally decreed. “It’s getting too dark here.”

  “So much more suitable,” Daphne pointed out, “for mysteries.”

  “Anyway, who kept us waiting?” demanded Gwyneth.

  “Of course, I was pleased to find you so punctual, dears,” said Sally approvingly, “but you could hardly expect me to ask the Morter to cut his coaching short because I had a pressing engagement——”

  “Not at all the sort of thing our revered Cordial would approve of,” Daphne interrupted.

  “—but, ’s a matter of fact, he seemed in quite a hurry to get away himself——”

  “Always thought you were lacking in S.A., my poor girl,” Daphne interrupted again.

  “—and I was here half a moment after four. The Morter was definitely gloomy, I thought; didn’t appreciate my essay as much as it deserved.”

  “Probably missing his usual afternoon nap,” Gwyneth suggested.

  “Now that’s not a bit like the Morter,” Daphne declared. “He’s quite a he-man really; more likely to take a brisk swim or run round the Parks in shorts.”

  “Or perhaps have a canoe race with Burse,” said Gwyneth.

  “No,” Sally announced firmly. “The Morter is a white man—though I don’t know how Daphne is so sure about his he-ness. He wouldn’t associate with the dregs of the university. Anyway, it was decent of him to fit in this extra coaching for me because I missed the other through flu.”

  “Which reminds me that the boathouse roof isn’t the health resort which our solicitous bursar would recommend for your convalescence,” said Nina. “We’d better hurry.”

  “Remember,” Sally reminded them; “that after the League is well and truly formed none of us may mention Burse without a fitting imprecation.”

  “I believe it’s rather a pity,” Daphne mused, “that we didn’t include Draga. She’s so good at curses. They’re part of the romantic tradition of her old Slavonic family.”

  “You all agreed—” Sally pointed out.

  “No, we couldn’t have her in,” declared Gwyneth. “She’s serious about all the wrong things and flippant about what’s really serious. And you never know how far she’ll go—she’d be committing a crime on Burse and bring us all to the gallows. Besides, she can’t keep anything secret.”

  “And by the way,” Daphne inquired, “how are we going to keep the League secret if we are to be for ever flaunting these gaudy circlets on our fingers?”

  “Surely you can wear a ring without telling everyone all about it?” said Nina.

  “Couldn’t we wear them on our toes?” suggested Gwyneth.

  “Even toes aren’t secret in summer,” Daphne pointed out.

  “You can have your nose pierced if you like,” Sally conceded.

  “Burse would declare it was unhygienic and make a new rule against it—with fines for breach of same,” declared Nina.

  “But apart from the rings,” Gwyneth inquired, “how do we really keep it secret? If we are being interviewed by the Cordial and have occasion to mention Burse, do we have to say, Miss Denning, Curse her!”

  “You have to exercise some commonsense. But seriously—” Sally leant forward earnestly—“I do believe that if you are cursing a person quite sincerely all the time, she’s bound to get a sensation of something unhealthy in the atmosphere and begin to wilt, or think of trying whether it wouldn’t be pleasanter elsewhere.”

  “I simply can’t understand how a fungus like Burse was ever allowed to take root in a comparatively decent establishment for young ladies like Persephone.”

  “Pull yourself together, Gwyneth,” Daphne advised. “If you learnt any botany at school you’d know that fungus grows spontaneously in damp spots—such as Oxford, and especially Perse Island. It’s a survival of the Primeval Slime. And even if we eradicate Burse, she’ll doubtless grow again, but nevertheless we must do our best to bring about Peace in Our Time. By the way, do you know——

  “Persephone once had a Bursar,

  “There’s really no need to asperse her;

  “But her influence rife,

  “Has blighted our life,

  “So we’re forming the Lode League to curse her.”

  “Good,” commented Sally. “We’ll inscribe it in our code books. Incidentally, it’s getting very dark; let’s take the oath quickly and go and toast the crumpets. Gwyneth—I suppose you really do want to join—you’ve done nothing but criticize?”

  “Oh, rather!” declared Gwyneth. “I’m all bubbling with enthusiasm, in spite of the chill of this corrugated iron striking up to my innards.”

  “And you, Daphne?”

  “I’m all for it—though I want to know to what extent my oath will bind me to wage war to the death on Burse. F’rinstance, if I saw her struggling pathetically in the cold waters of the Char, should I fetch her out?”

  “I’m sure she can swim like an otter,” declared Nina.

  “We can settle details later,” de
clared Sally sternly. “But I think actual crime is barred. Now, we ought to stand up; it’s more ceremonious.”

  “But more dangerous,” Daphne pointed out.

  From Sim’s tower the chimes for 4.15 strayed through the twilight.

  “An auspicious moment,” said Sally. “It’s always a good thing to know when any important event takes place.”

  Gwyneth scrambled dangerously on the rug. “It’s slipping,” she squeaked. “We shall all be a watery sacrifice!”

  “Owing to Daphne’s epicurean propensities,” declared Sally sternly. She was on her feet, rather unsteadily, on the sloping furrows and the others staggered to the upright and chanted after her:

  “We hereby declare ourselves to be striving for the illumination and uplift of life in Persephone College and especially for the eradication of all evil influences and fungoid growths, genus Burse, and the improvement of morals——”

  Sally had untied the knot in the yellow cord and solemnly held out the rings in her open hand, but as the others reached to take them Gwyneth proclaimed excitedly:

  “Someone coming!”

  The prow of a canoe came swaying gently round the bushes which bulged, dark and untidy, over the water at the turn of the Cherwell just above the boathouse.

  “Probably her,” whispered Daphne. “Draga said she had gone up the Char in her canoe.”

  “Don’t let’s stand here like Serpentine bathers waiting for the photographer—if it really is Burse—” Nina suggested, and she sat down, trying to look as if she were there to study the view.

  There was a scratchy noise, of stiff twigs brushing the side of the canoe. “Rotten steering!” someone muttered. Down that dark channel between the thick brushwood on the banks, faintly lighted by a dull winter evening sky, the canoe floated uncertainly. No one was paddling it.

  “It’s empty!” exclaimed Gwyneth in a high squeak. “Must have upset!”

  “No—she’s lying down——”

  “Dreaming away the summer afternoon,” murmured Daphne.