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

  “Whilst you were on the boathouse roof, before you saw the canoe, did you hear any scream or splash or anything unusual?” Inspector Wythe asked her at the end.

  “I don’t remember anything; there didn’t seem to be a soul about.”

  “And there’s nothing more that you can tell me, Miss Watson? Nothing that might in any way be connected with the accident?” The superintendent put on his most fatherly manner, which he thought ought to draw confidences from any woman.

  “I can’t think of anything that has anything to do with it,” said Sally unsympathetically, rising from her chair.

  Wythe rose too and not only opened the door for her but followed her out—quite politely, but with horrible watchfulness—to the door of the principal’s room, where he asked Miss Gwyneth Pane to join him. Sally had no chance for the whisper of “Nothing about the Lode League” with which she had intended to put the next victim on her guard, but she did manage to catch Gwyneth’s eye with what she hoped was a “warning look”—commoner in stories of intrigue than in life. Gwyneth merely took it to be an expression of hatred of the unfortunate superintendent.

  “Blast him!” said Sally as she sank into a chair. “Gwyneth’s so—so ebullient! She’ll blurt out something! Why couldn’t he take one of you next?”

  “Sharp lad, that policeman!” said Daphne composedly. “But we’re not guilty of anything. It doesn’t really matter what she says.”

  Meanwhile Inspector Wythe was summing up Gwyneth in his mind as “one of the excitable kind; easily startled into giving something away.” She was small, with an impertinent nose and not much chin; she had a pop-eyed look, as if she found life permanently amazing.

  “How did you come to witness this accident?” he began magisterially.

  “We didn’t,” Gwyneth assured him, her voice rising into a squeak. “We saw Miss Denning—well, I mean her body, in the canoe.”

  “And you were not expecting anything of the kind?”

  “Well, really, would you expect it?— But of course, being a policeman, I suppose you might.”

  Wythe made a good recovery. “Did you expect to see her alone in the canoe?”

  “We didn’t expect to see her at all.” Really this man was incredibly stupid.

  “But your presence there on the boathouse was not entirely unconnected with Miss Denning?” If the question had been less ponderously worded, Gwyneth might have been caught, but it gave her time to think.

  “It had nothing to do with her being on the river. We didn’t know she was on the river.”

  He detected an evasion, but was still baffled. He asked Gwyneth a few more questions about what had happened, and then released her. Accompanying her back to the principal’s room he found that Draga Czernak had arrived and decided to deal with her next.

  Draga, installed in the small common-room, spelt her name for him and explained that she was a native of Yugo-Slavia—“of the Czernaks of Stara Gora” she added proudly. The superintendent looked blank. He was pardonably vague about Yugo-Slavia, but connected it dimly with Russia and thought its inhabitants ought to be immensely tall, with black hair, burning eyes, a wild manner and a bomb under the arm. So with some surprise he surveyed Draga’s short, rather thickset form, her wide face with big greenish-grey eyes and her flat, fair hair.

  “Probably you have heard, Miss Czernak, of the accident in which Miss Denning has been involved? You are the only person, so far as I know, who saw her go out this afternoon. Can you tell me the time when, as I understand, you noticed her setting off in her canoe?” Wythe’s distrust of foreigners made him anxious to be fair to Draga, so he spoke very slowly and distinctly, since it did not occur to him that as Draga was an undergraduate at Oxford she probably understood English quite well.

  Draga’s reply poured forth torrentially. “I have seen her—yes, because she passed before my eyes and I must see her, but I was not looking for her and I did not wish to see her. I have seen her because I was sitting to read in the library and she went across the terrace from the drawing-room door, with her paddles, and across the lawn and through the little gate to the steps on the water.”

  “To the boathouse in fact?” suggested the superintendent.

  “Yes, to where she keeps her little boat, her canoe. That is all I know.” Draga stopped abruptly.

  “Can you remember the time?”

  “How can I know the time?” Draga was indignant. “Is it so important to me when I see Miss Denning that immediately I must look at my little clock?”

  “It would seem to you quite ordinary, then, that Miss Denning should go out in a canoe on a cold January afternoon?”

  “To me,” Draga declared earnestly, “it seems finally extraordinary to go forth in a canoe on the water on a day so cold and without sun. But here—you do it. I learn to consider it a thing quite ordinary.”

  Wythe was a little disconcerted to find himself classed amongst people who went canoeing on the Cherwell in January. He returned to the time question.

  “You may remember when you went to the library?”

  “I know quite clearly that I went to the library just after lunch.”

  “Which would be at what time?”

  “Perhaps two; perhaps sooner; perhaps later.”

  “Was anyone else in the library with you when you saw Miss Denning?”

  “I saw no one; I do not know. The library is full of—what do you call them—such—such little—alcoves! It is possible.”

  “And you cannot think of anything else which would help to fix the time? Had you been in the library long when you saw Miss Denning?”

  “Not long; not hours; minutes. I had found my book and I had found the chapter I wished to read.”

  “Can you tell me anything else that may help? How was Miss Denning dressed and was she carrying anything?”

  “Her dress—” Draga was scornful; “—she was dressed in a long grey coat that I think you call a raincoat—a thing so English and here so necessary. It has no shape—just long and straight.”

  “And a hat?”

  “Yes, a hat—grey—such a mannish hat.”

  “A felt hat, perhaps? And was she carrying anything—paddles, I think you said? More than one?”

  “Perhaps two paddles. Perhaps also a book—how do I know?”

  “Can you remember for certain that she had a book?”

  “No. Perhaps no book. How do I know? I tell you I did not take notice so particularly. I was not told that she was going then to die.”

  This remark was made in the most matter-of-fact voice, and Draga’s expression indicated nothing more than boredom.

  “What do you mean?” demanded the superintendent sharply. “Who could have told you?”

  “The one who killed her, I suppose. I mean only that I did not know this was a special occasion, and I must look diligently at our bursar.”

  “So you are sure someone killed her?”

  “Surely she would not kill herself in the river and then get into her canoe?” inquired Draga, unperturbed.

  “Accidents happen,” said Wythe.

  “Ah! An English accident! I learn another strange thing.”

  “Are you sure she was wearing a hat?” the superintendent asked coldly.

  “I saw a hat on her head,” Draga replied deliberately. “She always went in her canoe in that hat.”

  “And she was alone?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then that seems to be all you can tell me?” Wythe congratulated himself that he had been so tactful with a difficult witness. “If you think of anything else that may help you to fix the time, will you let me know?”

  As he opened the door for her one of the constables came forward from the hall.

  “Nothing much, sir, but we found these on the rug which one of the young ladies said belonged to her.” He held out a yellow cord and four rings of silver wire.

  The superintendent took them. “Hm! Hm!” He opened the door of the principal’s study a
nd held them out in the palm of his hand. “These have been found on the boathouse roof—perhaps they belong to one of you?”

  “Yes—they’re mine,” said Sally after a moment’s pause. She looked at the rings carefully. “Is that all?”

  The superintendent’s hand closed over them. “Have you lost anything else?” he asked sharply, and beckoned to the man in the hall. “This all you found on the young ladies’ rug, Barnett?”

  “That’s all, sir.”

  Sally had recovered her composure. “There were four.”

  The superintendent opened his hand again. “Oh, yes; that’s all,” she told him. “One each, you see.”

  “Something to do with your little talk on the boathouse roof?”

  “Well, yes, in a way. I made them for my friends you see. We thought it would be nice to have one each, all the same.”

  “I think you can have them back. By the way, do any of you remember finding anything else in the canoe—besides Miss Denning’s body?”

  They looked at one another. “Paddles?” queried Gwyneth uncertainly.

  “Were there paddles?” the superintendent asked.

  “We didn’t take any out,” said Sally firmly. “I don’t remember anything else—but if there were, it would still be there. I’m sure we didn’t take anything out.”

  The constable came forward again in response to a sign and a question.

  “There was a plain felt hat, sir, but no paddles; not in the canoe. There were two in a punt.”

  “You’re sure none of you took a paddle out? Snatched it, perhaps, to pull the canoe in?”

  “If we could have reached a paddle out of the canoe, we could have reached the canoe,” Daphne pointed out.

  “We fetched paddles from the shed,” added Gwyneth. “Those would be the ones in the punt.”

  “You’re sure about that? How many did you fetch from the shed?”

  “I took two,” said Nina, “and I gave one of them to Gwyneth.”

  “And I had a punt pole from the shed,” added Daphne.

  “Miss Denning’s own paddles had her initials on them—M.D.,” Sally pointed out; “and she was very particular about them. She kept them in the house.”

  The superintendent made a note. “Check all the poles and paddles carefully,” he told the constable; “and have a search made on the river for two paddles with initials M.D. Now, Miss Loveridge, will you come along?”

  Wythe noticed how Daphne settled herself comfortably into the arm-chair, looking down at her very pretty hands folded in her lap, and waited for him to open the conversation. It did not occur to him that her plump figure, her oval face with longish nose, and her black curls, might have belonged to a seventeenth century beauty.

  Her story tallied with the others. When she mentioned the boathouse roof, the superintendent asked: “By the way, is that against the rules?”

  Daphne looked up at him quickly. “I believe not,” she told him solemnly, with a gleam of amusement in her eyes at this naive idea of the rules to which such responsible people as undergraduates must submit.

  “But it was a curious place to choose to sit, especially when you were missing tea, which is at four, I understand?”

  “Not missing it. We were going to have crumpets in my room—they’re sitting there now,” said Daphne sadly.

  “Then why not have your talk over tea and crumpets in your room—unless you were waiting there for some particular person—or event?”

  “The one thing that might have prevented us from meeting on the boathouse roof,” declared Daphne, exasperated by his implications, “would have been if we’d have known that the bursar would appear.”

  “I still fail to understand why you should meet there,” said the superintendent coldly.

  “We met for a private conversation,” Daphne replied with dignity.

  “Which was going to be lengthy—you took a rug.”

  “Corrugated iron is cold to sit on.”

  “Exactly. And a hearthrug in front of the fire in your own room is warm—and private.”

  “Well, I didn’t suppose you would understand,” said Daphne in an aggrieved voice. “But we’re on an island here and islands are romantic, and so we like to remind ourselves that it really is an island, by sitting beside the river.”

  Wythe remembered that islands had a romantic fascination for him in his boyhood, and began to wonder whether he was being unnecessarily suspicious about what was perhaps just the usual unreasonable behaviour of undergraduates. But—dash it all, why not have their look at the surrounding water in daylight, instead of at tea-time. “I may tell you,” he remarked in his heaviest police manner, “that I am not at all satisfied with this ‘explanation’ of your conduct. I do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong about what you were doing, but there is something which none of you have seen fit to explain, and I can only say that you are not helping our inquiries by holding back the true explanation. Even details that may seem to you quite irrelevant may be of importance to us. Is there nothing more you can tell me?”

  “Really, I can’t think of anything,” declared Daphne. “I’m just as stymied as you are about this affair, and I’d be awfully glad to throw any light on it.”

  With his air of severe disapproval unsoftened he indicated that the interview was at an end. He had an uneasy feeling that this girl saw jokes in all sorts of things that he did not find at all amusing, and that he might be making her a present of a joke at any moment. So her exit, with a slight upward curl at the corners of her mouth, did not improve his temper. Nina, who took Daphne’s place in the arm-chair, found him rather snappy, but no new facts transpired during her short interview.

  CHAPTER III

  THE LIE OF THE LAND

  MISS CORDELL, the principal of Persephone College, delighted the eyes of American visitors to Oxford, especially if they happened to see her in cap and gown, because she seemed to them the typical “Ahxford Dahn” of the female sex. Actually one will find more variety in the appearances of any collection of dons than in a collection of bankers or stockbrokers, and Miss Cordell was not in the least typical. She was tall and thin and stooped, had rather straggly, sandy hair, wore pince-nez, and clothes that appeared to have been made some ten years ago by a country dressmaker of conscientiously “good” material. Her vice-principal, Miss Steevens, was young, rather plump, rather untidy, and very good-natured. The two of them sat, not quite at ease, facing the superintendent, when he had finished questioning the five students.

  “Forgive me,” began Miss Cordell, “if I ask for information which you do not feel at liberty to impart, but you will realize our natural anxiety to know if you have any idea as to the cause of this terrible accident. So unprecedented!” In Miss Cordell’s opinion nothing should be unprecedented. Even an accident, even a murder (though she did not usually consider murders) should follow some documented precedent, so that one would know how to behave.

  “By all means, Miss Cordell,” Wythe reassured her. “I’ll tell you all that I’ve been able to gather, though I must confess that at the moment I can only make a guess at what happened. Doubtless with the information which my men are now collecting I shall be able to piece things together this evening. What seems to me the most probable explanation at present is a particular kind of accident—a practical joke which went wrong. Obviously this cannot be an ordinary accident; you cannot fall out of a canoe and drown and then get back into the canoe. But undergraduates have before now indulged in pranks which have led to tragedy——”

  Miss Cordell gripped the arms of her chair and gazed at him in horrified amazement. “But surely, not—not——”

  “No, Miss Cordell. I don’t think your own students had anything to do with the affair; anyway, nothing that you could call an active part, but I can’t get away from the suspicion that they know a little more than they have seen fit to tell me.”

  “But, Inspector, this is a grave suspicion; you really have grounds——?”

&nbs
p; “They were a little what you might call evasive in their answers to my questions, and what in—er—on earth were they doing on that boathouse?”

  “Undergraduates behave so very oddly, Inspector. Even I, who am forced to contemplate their odd behaviour every day, never cease to feel surprise at much of it.”

  “I feel sure I’ve seen them—those very four—sitting on that boathouse before,” Miss Steevens announced. “It’s just like them, you know, to choose to sit in the sort of place you would never dream of sitting in.”

  “Well, ladies, I can’t get away from the impression, at the moment, that their sitting there had something to do with Miss Denning, but I certainly don’t think they expected to see her dead body come floating down in the canoe—which is what we must assume did happen.”

  He took no notice of a little gasp of indignation from Miss Cordell, but continued: “As regards the drowning, I was thinking of the young men. They may have staged an ‘accident’ in which, contrary to their plans, Miss Denning was drowned. Having rescued her too late and realized the terrible result of their so-called rag, they put her body back in the canoe. Very foolish, I admit; but these young men are foolish. It has happened before now that persons who have committed manslaughter get into a panic, and in their clumsy attempts to cover up their tracks, land themselves in danger of being put on trial for murder. But rest assured that we shall get to the truth before long. Now can you tell me, Miss Cordell, if Miss Denning could swim?”

  “She was a strong swimmer,” Miss Steevens told him. “I know that for a fact, because I bathed with her at Deaconesses Delight last summer; she was quite unusually good. That makes it all the more difficult to understand.”

  “Hm! There was a blow on the head, which may account for a good deal. There are many ways, of course, in which a blow may be caused accidentally; but we can’t ignore the possibility that it may have been caused deliberately. That brings us to quite a different explanation of the affair—which, I may say, I do not really consider very likely, at present—murder.”