By approaching from the south-west rather than more directly from the north-east, going quickly down the steps into the basement area of 60 New Square, sidling past the dustbins with one’s back to the wall as far as the rear entrance of 61 and then running fast, but very quietly, up six flights of stairs, it is generally possible, if Henry has not set a typist on special sentry duty, to reach the second floor of 62 without observation from the Clerks’ Room. The time taken to read Julia’s letter was thought to make this the expedient route for our return to Chambers.
“And in a minute or two,” said Selena, settling herself in the large leather armchair bought second-hand for fifty pence by Ragwort and Cantrip to add a touch of luxury to the room which they jointly occupy, “when we have got our breath back, we shall ring through to the Clerks’ Room with some casual enquiry about our arrangements for the afternoon. And Henry, sounding reproachful, will say that he thought we were still at coffee, having not seen us return. And we will say good heavens, no, we’ve been back for ages.”
“Will he,” I asked, “believe you?”
“His state of mind,” said Selena, “may not be quite what a purist would refer to as belief. He will hardly venture, however, to suggest outright that we are lying. You’d better do it, Ragwort — you do it best.”
The choice of Ragwort was a happy one. Had it been Cantrip or Selena whose enquiry about their afternoon engagements had been interrupted by an indignant interrogation as to their whereabouts for the past half-hour, during which Henry had been looking for them everywhere, either, no doubt, would have managed to sound surprised; but they would not, I think, have been able to mingle with their surprise the delicate suggestion which Ragwort achieved of superhuman patience taxed to its limit by Henry’s folly in contriving to look for them at precisely those infrequent moments when they were absent from their rooms.
“Well, Henry,” said Ragwort at last, with a forgiving sigh, “I suppose you had some reason for looking for me?”
“Young lady to see you, Mr. Ragwort,” said Henry. “She said it was personal.” His voice, clearly audible at the other end of the internal telephone line, was lugubrious. There are, no doubt, many reasons for which a young woman might call on a young man in Chambers and say that the matter was personal: there is only one which occurs to a barristers”
Clerk. “And of course, sir, if you’d told me there might be a young lady turning up wanting to see you, I’d have known how to deal with her. But you hadn’t, sir, so I didn’t.” If Ragwort, in addition to wasting in idle dalliance time which could more profitably have been devoted to his paperwork, had compounded his error by failing to inform his Clerk of the progress, regress and termination of the liaison, he could not expect Henry to protect him, as Henry would otherwise have done, from the distressing and scandalous scene which must now ensue.
“I see,” said Ragwort. “So how did you deal with her, Henry?”
“I put her in the waiting-room, sir, and said I’d try to find you. I said I’d seen you go to coffee but you’d be bound to be back soon, sir, knowing how busy you were and with those papers promised for Tancred’s first thing tomorrow.”
“Quite so,” said Ragwort. “Did you happen to ask her name?”
“No, Mr. Ragwort. I didn’t like to do that, seeing she said it was personal. I wouldn’t want you to think that I was prying into your personal affairs, Mr. Ragwort.”
“Ah, how very discreet of you, Henry. Well, perhaps you could ask someone to show her up here.” Ragwort suggested that the rest of us might like to withdraw to Timothy’s room.
“Not likely,” said Cantrip. “If you’ve been trifling with this bird’s affections and now she’s coming home to roost, we jolly well want to know about it.”
“I’ve been doing nothing of the kind,” said Ragwort. “I haven’t the faintest idea—”
“Well, Henry thinks you have. And if she’s going to cut up rough about it, you’ll need us here to give you moral support.”
“I am obliged to you,” said Ragwort, “for your concern, but—”
“Lady to see you, Mr. Ragwort,” said the temporary typist, opening the door to admit the visitor and so preempting further argument. Ragwort rose and extended his hand.
“Mr. Ragwort?” asked the girl shyly, in accents which my memory identified as those of West Virginia. “How do you do? Of course, you won’t know who I am.”
She was, as it happened, quite wrong about that. Her pale blonde hair, her graceful figure, the elegance of her mode of dress, so muted as to suggest at first impression a curiously seductive dowdiness — all these were easily remembered; and it was only forty-eight hours since we had seen her at the airport. Not thinking it tactful to allude to that occasion, we allowed Marylou to introduce herself.
Ragwort no longer wished us to withdraw. He was inclined to think, as my readers may recall, that Marylou was a murderess; and her canvas-coloured leather shoulder-bag looked large enough to contain a quite workmanlike pair of dressmaking scissors. Much as he might admire her elegance, he did not wish to be left alone with her — he made haste to effect introductions.
Marylou, on the other hand, though she acknowledged these very prettily, showing a charming deference to my professorship, had clearly envisaged a private interview. Taking the chair offered her, she looked round at us diffidently, as if uncertain how to explain her presence.
“I’m sorry to intrude on you like this,” she said. “I know you must all be very busy. But I was rather hoping, Mr. Ragwort—”
“It may perhaps be of assistance,” said Ragwort, plainly anxious to forestall any express request for privacy, “if I mention that we are all very old friends of Julia Larwood. With whom, I believe, you are also acquainted.”
“Why yes,” she said, “how did you know?”
“Julia has written to us from Venice,” said Ragwort. “She mentioned meeting you.”
“Oh, I see,” said Marylou. “Well, if Julia’s told you about me, that makes it a whole lot easier. Because that’s why I came to see you, Mr. Ragwort — because of Julia. Something rather terrible has happened to her and I didn’t know who to come to. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything?” She looked round at us again, her eyes wide with anxious but discreet enquiry.
“We understand,” said Selena, “that a guest in the same hotel has been the victim of an act of violence, unfortunately fatal, and that the police have asked Julia to remain in Venice while the matter is resolved.” She spoke with a certain coldness, due, I fancy, to a feeling that Marylou had somehow accepted responsibility for Julia’s welfare while they were in Venice: there was in her manner towards the American girl something of the fond mother to the negligent nursemaid.
Having evidently imagined Julia friendless and forgotten, left indefinitely to languish without trial in a Venetian dungeon, Marylou seemed relieved to discover that anyone in England was aware of her difficulties. Lacking particulars of Julia’s next-of-kin, she had been uncertain who should be informed of them.
“But then I remembered her talking about you, Mr. Ragwort, and I somehow felt that you and Julia really had a very sincere and valid relationship, even if — well, that’s just what I felt.”
“We are all,” said Ragwort, “in our various ways, and for more or less comprehensible reasons, quite fond of Julia, really.”
“And I already had your address, because it was in the guide book to Verona. Julia lent me that on our last day in Venice. I hope you don’t mind about that, Mr. Ragwort — she told me it was yours and to take great care of it.”
She opened her canvas-coloured shoulder-bag. Ragwort watched this with some anxiety; but she took from it nothing more dangerous than a slim volume nearly covered in brown paper. She laid it on Ragwort’s desk. “I guess Julia’d want me to give it back to you, anyway,” she said.
The tone to adopt, I felt, was one of sympathetic encouragement, as to undergraduates when they are explaining how the complications of their private lives have prevented them from writing an essay. It is my custom, on such occasions, to offer a small glass of sherry; but the only sherry in the Nursery is that kept by Timothy for the refreshment of his more eminent clients. Quite apart from any ethical objection to taking it without his permission, I feared that he might thoughtlessly have locked it away before leaving for Venice.
“My dear Marylou,” I said — the reverence she had shown for my professorship seemed to sanction the use of her Christian name—“we know little or nothing of the circumstances leading to Julia’s detention. It would be most helpful if you could give us any details. Have you any idea, for example, who discovered the murder?”
“Why yes,” said Marylou. “I guess I did.” Selena looked at her in deep reproach. “I mean, I was with my husband and a guy called Kenneth Dunfermline — it was a friend of his who was murdered — we found him in their room. I’m sorry, Professor Tamar, I’m not telling this too well.”
“Why don’t you,” I said kindly, “begin at the beginning?”
“Well,” said Marylou, “I guess that means Friday afternoon. Stanford — that’s my husband — Stanford and I went on a visit to Verona. In a group with quite a lot of people, but we really didn’t know anyone except Graziella — that was our courier — and this guy Kenneth Dunfermline. He’s a sculptor — quite well known, I think. We’d been in the same hotel all week, but we hadn’t had a lot of interpersonal contact — Kenneth never seemed to be around much except at dinner-time. I’d got to know Ned better — that was his friend — Ned and
Julia and I all went to the Lido one day. Well, Kenneth sat next to us on the coach out to Verona and he was really fascinating — he told us all about Venetian art and the Roman and Byzantine influence and everything. It was a wonderful experience, Professor Tamar, having someone like that to explain it all — we really appreciated it. Well, I really appreciated it — Stanford isn’t too much into visual creativity.”
“But so far as you were concerned,” I said, “the visit to Verona was one of unqualified pleasure?”
“Oh yes,” said Marylou. “It’s a really enchanting city, Professor Tamar.”
“And then, I suppose, you all came back together on the motor-coach?”
“Yes — we must have left Verona around half-six and got back to Venice about a quarter of eight. Then we took the launch back to our hotel and it was just about dark by the time we got there. We stood around for a minute or two after we arrived, talking to Graziella and thanking her for everything she’d done for us, because she’d really been an excellent courier.”
“Yes,” I said, hoping that no one else would appear in her narrative whose merits required tribute, “and then?”
“Well, it had been pretty hot all day, so we all wanted to shower and change before dinner. We stopped at reception to collect our keys and Kenneth’s wasn’t there, so he said that Ned must still be in their room. So we all walked back together — our rooms were right opposite each other, not in the main part of the hotel, we had to go across a little bridge to get to them — and Kenneth and I were still talking about things we’d seen in Verona. When we got there, Kenneth went to open the door to his room and it was locked. Then he knocked and called out to Ned to let him in, but there wasn’t any answer.”
“Was it the kind of door,” asked Selena, “which could have been locked from the outside by someone who didn’t have a key?”
“Oh yes — all the bedroom doors lock automatically — I guess they figure it’s better security-wise.”
“I’m sorry,” said Selena. “I shouldn’t have interrupted you — do go on.”
“Well, Kenneth seemed a bit concerned, because Ned hadn’t been feeling too good at lunch-time — he was nervous about the plane flight and Kenneth was afraid he might have passed out or something. I thought Kenneth was over-reacting, because I figured Ned had just gone out and forgotten to leave the key at reception. Well, either way, I didn’t think it made too much sense just standing round in the corridor looking at the door and saying ‘Open Sesame.’ So I looked round and there was a chambermaid just coming out of our room — I guess she’d been turning the sheets down — and I asked her if she could let the Signor Dunfermline into his room, because his friend seemed to have gone out and taken the key with him. And she said perhaps his friend was still there but sleeping, because he was very tired perhaps. And she kind of giggled — I don’t know why.”
“The Italians,” said Selena, “have a very odd sense of humour.”
“I said maybe he was, but he’d have to stop sleeping now, because the Signor Dunfermline wanted to shower before dinner. So she kind of giggled again and shrugged her shoulders and unlocked the door. Kenneth started to go in and he turned the light on and he was still talking to us, you know, looking over his shoulder, saying he wouldn’t be long and he’d see us at dinner. Then he stopped and said ‘Oh, my God,’ and I said ‘What’s the matter, Kenneth?’ and he just said ‘Oh, my God’ again. So I went in to see what was wrong. There wasn’t too much light in the room and at first I thought Ned was just sleeping. I kind of remember thinking, ‘He doesn’t look too comfortable lying that way, I don’t know how he can breathe with his face in the pillow like that.’ And then I saw the blood.”
Respect for property cannot always be paramount. I remembered moreover that Cantrip had acquired at an early age a fair expertise in the art of lock-picking — I suppose it is one of the options in the Cambridge law syllabus.
“Cantrip,” I said, “could you get the sherry from Timothy’s room?”
“Absolutely,” said Cantrip.
It was not only Marylou who required some stimulus to fortitude. Selena, in particular, was disconcerted by the removal from suspicion of Kenneth Dunfermline — Timothy’s opinion that he was the person most likely to be accepted by the Italian police as an alternative to Julia had carried weight with her. She began to look through the guide book lying on Ragwort’s desk.
“According to this,” she said, as Cantrip returned successful and began to pour sherry, “Verona is 124 kilometres from Venice. That, I believe, is about 75 miles. It appears, moreover, that there is easy communication between the two cities by bus, train and motor-car. It sounds, therefore, as if it might be possible, if one arrived in Verona at about three o’clock, to return to Venice and get back again in time to catch the motor-coach at half past six. We know, of course, Marylou, that you remember Kenneth Dunfermline being on the motor-coach. You have told us, however, that when you reached Verona you were deeply absorbed in the artistic and architectural glories of the city—‘enchanted,’ I think, was the word you used — and in those circumstances you might perhaps hardly have noticed, indeed not noticed at all, whether he was still in your company?”
“Not all the time,” said Marylou. “But we had tea right around four o’clock at the Café Dante, and Stanford and I shared a table with him.”
“When you got back to the hotel,” I asked, “you’re sure Kenneth could not have gone up to his room ahead of you and then come back to cross the bridge with you for the second time?”
“Quite sure, Professor Tamar,” said Marylou. “It was the way I told you — we were all together the whole time. If you’ve been hypothesizing that Kenneth might have done it — well, I’m sorry, but that’s just totally nonviable in terms of the time-space factor.”
We devoted ourselves with some despondency to our sherry — its excellence was no more than a marginal consolation.
“Reverting,” I said, “if it is not too painful for you, Marylou, to the discovery of the murder — there seem, from your description, to have been no signs of a struggle? Nothing to suggest that the unfortunate young man was stabbed in the course of a quarrel or anything of that nature?”
“No,” she said, “I guess not. It didn’t look like there’d been any kind of confrontation. It just looked like Ned had been lying face down, sleeping maybe, and if someone had come up quietly — well, Ned wouldn’t have known too much about it.”
“Have you any idea,” I asked, “why the Venetian police suspect Julia?”
“That’s what I don’t understand, Professor Tamar — I thought Julia was right out of it. You see, after we found Ned the way I told you, it was a pretty confused situation. I wanted Stanford to go get the Manager but Stanford was very resistant to leaving me. And I wasn’t about to leave Kenneth alone in the state he was in — he was in a really bad way, Professor Tamar. He was just kneeling by the bed with his arm round Ned’s shoulders and — well, I guess he was crying. Stanford said afterwards he didn’t think the British behaved that way. I pointed out to Stanford that that was simply a nonempirical prejudgment and had no validity whatsoever — but Stanford swallows nonempirical prejudgments the way athletes swallow vitamin pills. So in the final event it was the chambermaid who went to get the Manager.”
It was clear, at any rate, why suspicion had so soon attached itself to Julia: the chambermaid was one of those, no doubt, who had observed Julia going into the annexe with Ned and later leaving without him. Assisting shortly afterwards at the discovery of the corpse, it would have been natural for her simply to inform the Manager that the English gentleman in Room 6 had been murdered by the English lady in Room 8. “Was there,” I asked, “so far as you know, anyone else in the annexe?”
“Mrs. Frostfield and Major Linnaker — they were in the same group we were — they came out into the corridor to see what was going on. I guess the chambermaid had screamed some — I guess I had, too.”
“Did you happen to notice,” asked Ragwort, “whether they had changed for dinner?”
“Mrs. Frostfield certainly had — she was wearing a long skirt and evening slippers. It’s hard to say with Major Linnaker — he dressed pretty informally most of the time. Well, when the police came they searched all the rooms in the annexe but they didn’t find anyone. I don’t figure that means too much, though, because if someone wanted to get away it wouldn’t have been too hard to slip out of the window into the canal. Maybe it wouldn’t smell too good — but I guess it’s what I’d have done if I’d just committed a murder and wanted to get away.”
“And then?” I said.
“Well, the police made us all wait in the corridor. Except Kenneth — Kenneth wouldn’t leave Ned and they just let him stay. Then they got a stretcher and brought Ned out with a sheet over him and took him down the stairs. They’d got the police motor-launch right up next to the entrance, so they didn’t need to take him across the bridge. There’s only one light there and they stumbled a bit getting into the launch, but it was all right. And Kenneth just went right along with them and they didn’t stop him.”
I thought of the heavy-shouldered sculptor following the body of his friend; and easily imagined, for I too am familiar with the city, how little the single light and the fragments of its reflection in the black surface of the canal would serve to penetrate the Venetian darkness.
“Well,” said Marylou, “that was about it. They took statements from all of us through an interpreter, but it didn’t take long and it was all pretty informal. Then we had dinner in a private room — the Hotel Manager said we wouldn’t feel like eating in the dining-room after what had happened. It was very considerate of him — additionally to which, maybe he thought having a guest murdered on the premises wasn’t the best kind of publicity and he didn’t want us talking to anyone else about it. But Julia wasn’t there and I just figured she wasn’t involved any way at all because she hadn’t been in the annexe. That was kind of simplistic maybe, because she could have been in the annexe
and come down again. But I just assumed she’d got back late and gone straight to the dining-room.”
“That seems,” said Ragwort, “a very reasonable assumption.”
“So I didn’t see Julia again that evening and I wasn’t really feeling concerned about her. I mean, I was concerned because I knew she’d be upset, but not for any other reason. Well, next morning, when we were all meant to be at the landing stage to take the launch over to the airport, Julia wasn’t there. But even then I just figured she was having problems with her packing and maybe I’d better go and help her.” Prompted, if not caused, by the pitiful image of Julia attempting unaided to pack her suitcase, two large and evenly matched tears began to roll down in perfect parallel on either side of Marylou’s charming nose.
“My dear girl,” said Ragwort, “don’t cry.”
“Cheer up, old thing,” said Cantrip.
“Have some more sherry,” said Selena.
“I’m sorry,” said Marylou, “I guess it’s just a biochemical reflex. Well, that’s when Graziella told us Julia wasn’t coming, because the police still wanted to question her about the murder.”
Her first inclination, it seemed, on receipt of this intelligence, had been to remain in Venice until Julia could be extracted from the clutches of the police. Stanford, however, characteristically opposing this course of action, she had allowed herself, with a weakness which she now felt culpable, to be prevailed upon to return to London: she appeared to be seriously considering whether she ought not to make good this default by going straight back to Venice and persuading the Italian police of the absurdity of their accusations. We comforted her with assurances of the steps being taken to protect Julia’s interests; with promises to let her know of any further developments; and with two more glasses of Timothy’s sherry.
“It’s a bit much,” said Cantrip, when she had gone. “Losing three suspects all at one go.”
“I suppose,” said Ragwort, “that she could be lying.”
“No,” said Selena. “She must be telling us the same thing she told the Italian police. And that must be the same thing that Stanford and Kenneth Dunfermline told them. If it were merely a question of her evidence corroborating her husband’s, one might not take much notice. But conspiracy between all three — no, Ragwort, I really don’t think it’ll do.”
Timothy rang soon afterwards to tell us the bad news. We told him we knew. He told us it was worse.