I awoke on Thursday morning with an unshakable conviction, not sufficiently accounted for by any knowledge of my conscious mind, that matters were moving towards a crisis — a conviction so powerful that I felt compelled yet again to disregard the call of Scholarship: delaying my departure from Islington to make one necessary telephone call, I made my way directly to 62 New Square.
Knocking on the door of the largest room of the Nursery and being invited to come in, I found Ragwort and Cantrip reading a letter, which I perceived to be in that clear, careful hand in which Timothy, when my pupil, had written his always conscientious essays. It was the letter which I have already set out in Chapter 12 of this volume. Ragwort handed it to me, saying, however, as he did so, that it added nothing to what we already knew. I settled down in the large leather armchair and began to read.
“Hilary,” asked Ragwort, “are you thinking of staying long?”
“Am I,” I asked, “unwelcome?”
“My dear Hilary, of course not,” said Ragwort. “But we’re having a certain amount of difficulty with Henry. He’s just a little put out that none of us returned to Chambers after lunch yesterday.”
“Miffed as a mongoose,” said Cantrip.
“If I am right in assuming,” said Ragwort, “that a mongoose is even more miffed than the maggots which are the usual standard of comparison, that is certainly the case. Your presence, Hilary, has been noted and is regarded as contributing to our delinquency. If Henry finds you here again this morning—”
I assured them that my entry to 62 New Square had been unobtrusive and that if Henry’s footstep should be heard outside I would conceal myself, with all swiftness, behind a curtain.
Hoping to appease Henry’s indignation, they had undertaken not to go out for coffee. Selena, however, foreseeing the need for such a gesture, had brought with her to Chambers ajar of instant coffee and her electric kettle.
She seemed downcast, a thing unusual with her. She felt that our enquiries had been ineffectual: they had established, she said, that I disliked Eleanor and that Cantrip was bored by the Major — neither of these facts, she felt, would be sufficient to persuade the Vice-Quaestor to transfer his suspicions from Julia.
“More than that, surely,” said Ragwort. “We know there’s a definite connection between Eleanor and Kenneth Dunfermline, and therefore between Eleanor and the dead man.”
“Yes,” said Cantrip. “And we know the Major deals in stolen goods. I mean, if the Italian fuzz think that’s respectable—”
“He hasn’t got a criminal conviction,” said Selena. “The Vice-Quaestor is going to say it’s mere gossip.”
“Well,” said Cantrip, “there’s always the holdall. We know he pinched that.”
I pointed out that if Cantrip had been listening to me on Monday evening he would have heard me mention that the Major had not stolen the dead man’s holdall.
“I was listening, Hilary,” said Cantrip. “But I thought you were just having a loopy spell, due to spending too much time in the Public Record Office or something, so I thought I'd do the tactful thing and not draw attention to it.”
“The Major,” I repeated, “did not steal the dead man’s holdall.”
“He jolly well did,” said Cantrip. “I saw him do it. You’ve got first-hand evidence from a member of the English Bar and if you’re going to start casting aspidistras on its reliability—”
“My dear Cantrip,” I said soothingly — for one knows that he is inclined, when heated, to start throwing books at one—“my dear Cantrip, I am not for a moment doubting your word. I am saying merely that in interpreting the evidence you have considered it in part, rather than as a whole. It is a pitfall not easily avoided save by the trained scholar.”
“Hilary,” said Selena, handing me a cup of coffee, “we are supposed, as you are very well aware, to be working. You have now, however, aroused in us a curiosity which will prevent our doing so until you have explained your theory, whatever it may be, about the holdall. Please be kind enough to do so with all expedition.”
“Do you remember,” I asked, not resenting her asperity, for I knew her to be under strain, “Julia’s first letter?” They nodded. “You will recall, then, that Julia identified the Art Lovers among her fellow passengers by looking at the labels on their hand luggage. Including — indeed, beginning with — the Major. From which we may conclude that on the journey out the Major had something with him which the airline was prepared to regard as hand luggage. It was not a day, as we know, on which a broad view was being taken — they had disallowed Julia’s suitcase. Now, when we saw them returning to Heathrow, the Major had two pieces of luggage: one was a large suitcase, which even the most permissive airline would not have permitted him to have in the passenger compartment; the other was the holdall believed by Cantrip to be the property of the murdered man.”
“Well,” said Cantrip, “if the Major had another case with him, he must have left it behind in Venice and taken the holdall instead.”
“Why in the world should he do that?” I asked.
“Whatever you say, Hilary,” said Cantrip, “it had the dead chap’s name on the label.”
“From which we may conclude,” I answered, “either that the Major had stolen the holdall; or that he had stolen the label.”
They sipped their coffee and looked thoughtful. “Why,” asked Ragwort, “should he do that?”
“Let us suppose, my dear Ragwort, that you have an object which you wish to take through Customs and the discovery of which will occasion a certain embarrassment. Would it not be prudent, in those circumstances, to ensure that if the case containing it happens to be opened by a Customs official the name on the label is that of someone other than yourself? Someone, naturally, traveling in the same group, so that it will remain with your own luggage and can easily be reclaimed at the end of the journey if nothing untoward has taken place.”
“Yes,” said Ragwort. “Yes, I can see that it might be. But why do you assume that the label is stolen, Hilary? Why not simply get a blank label and write someone else’s name on it?”
“You would want to use one of the labels supplied by the travel agents, who generally give only two to each passenger. Yours, it is to be assumed, already have your own name on them. Besides, you would have the difficulty of forging the handwriting. No, I am fairly sure that you would want to steal the label. And that, I suggest, explains the Major’s surreptitious visit to Ned Watson’s room on Friday morning.”
“It’s quite ingenious,” said Selena. “And I’m perfectly prepared to believe that the Major had something he wanted to smuggle out of Italy. What I don’t understand, Hilary, is why you think it’s that painting that was stolen in Verona. When an antique dealer of dubious character has been rummaging round in Venice for a week, there are surely a great many other things—”
The telephone on Ragwort’s desk emitted the bad-tempered buzz which indicates a desire to attract attention on the part of someone in the Clerks’ Room. Answering, he was told by Henry, in tones of the utmost gloom, that the young American lady was here again and on her way up to see him.
“It seems,” said Ragwort, replacing the telephone, “that Marylou is paying us another visit. I wonder why.”
“Possibly,” I said, “because I asked her to.”
“Hilary,” said Ragwort, “that really is a bit much.” But the girl’s arrival precluded further protest: he was obliged instead to express his pleasure at seeing her again; to offer her a chair; and to ask Cantrip to find another cup.
“My dear Marylou,” I said, “how kind of you to come so promptly.”
“Please don’t mention it, Professor Tamar,” she answered, with the charming deference which she had shown at our first meeting. “If there’s anything I can do to help Julia — have you any news of her?”
“Not yet,” I said, “but we are expecting further developments very shortly. Did you manage, I wonder, to find the book I spoke of?”
“Why, certainly,” said Marylou, taking from her large and expensive shoulder-bag a guide book to the city of Padua.
“Oh,” asked Ragwort, looking surprised, “did Julia lend you that as well?”
“No,” answered the girl. “It’s one we got on the visit to Padua. But Professor Tamar called and asked me—” she paused, looking at me as if seeking my permission to disclose what had been said.
“I was anxious,” I said, “to have a brief glance at the guide to Padua. It is almost impossible in London to obtain individual guide books to the smaller Italian cities, and your copy, Ragwort, so far as I know, is still with Julia. Since Marylou was the only other person I knew who had recently visited the city, I rang her to ask whether by any chance she had acquired a guide book. She told me that she had and has now very kindly brought it round.”
“Hilary,” said Cantrip, in a tone which he seemed to believe soothing, “you’re having another of your loopy spells. Nothing happened in Padua. Verona was the place where the picture got stolen.”
“Thank you, Cantrip,” I said, “I am well aware of that.” I began to look through the index to the guide book.
There was another irritable buzz from the Clerks’ Room, answered again by Ragwort. “There’s a telephone call for you, Cantrip,” he said. “I’ll say you’ll take it in Selena’s room, shall I?” The index proving less informative than I had hoped, it took me some little time to find the passage I required and to confirm my expectation of its content. I had just done so when Cantrip returned.
“That was the Major,” he said. “He says he’s got the painting.”
Or something, at any rate, which seemed to the Major, from the works of reference he had consulted, to be remarkably like it. As he had promised, he had asked around among his mates about the stolen picture; none of them knew anything about it; but one, by an extraordinary coincidence, had discovered a virtually identical painting while clearing out his attic the previous week. It was not for the Major to disbelieve his friend’s story. Still less was it for the Major to tell Cantrip that it was in fact the painting stolen in Verona — if that had been the case, and if the Major had known it to be the case, it would of course have been his duty to inform the police. On the other hand, strictly between Cantrip, himself and the gatepost, he thought, if Cantrip’s uncle were to come and have a look at it, that he might be very struck by the resemblance.
“Congratulations, Hilary,” said Selena. “You seem to have guessed right.”
“My dear Selena,” I said, “the careful process of reasoning by which the Scholar advances from established premise to ineluctable conclusion is hardly to be described as guesswork.”
“My dear Hilary,” she said, “of course it was guesswork. The painting might have been stolen by anyone — well, anyone who was in Verona on that day.”
“I do not dispute,” I said, “that there would have been a large number of people in Verona on Tuesday of last week. Among them, however, I suspect there were only three who believed that the Church of Saint Nicholas there contained a Madonna by the younger Tiepolo. And two of them were talking about Catullus.”
I picked up again the guide book brought by Marylou and turned to the passage I had been reading when Cantrip returned from his telephone call. “It is a misapprehension, you see, likely to be entertained only by someone going round Verona with the assistance of a guide book to Padua.”
There was a brief silence, which ended with Selena saying, “Nonsense, Hilary. Julia did very well in Verona.”
I read to them the paragraph in the guide book to Padua in which reference was made to the Madonna by Tiepolo in the Church of Saint Nicholas. Then I picked up the guide to Verona, still lying on Ragwort’s desk, and read them the description of the Church in that city dedicated to the same Saint — it made no mention of any work by that particular Great Master. I spread out the maps folded inside the cover of each guide book, pointing out that in each case the name of the town was shown only on the upper right-hand corner, so as to be invisible if the map were folded for convenient study of the central portion. I showed them how easily the blue line which represented the canal half-encircling Padua could be taken to represent the river which embraces in similar manner the city of Verona. I demonstrated that every street, square and building identified by Julia in Verona with the aid of her guide book had its counterpart in Padua.
Selena, for some reason, was rather put out about it all. Julia, she said, had been doing her best; if the Italians were so inconsiderate as to call all the streets by the same names in different towns, that was not Julia’s fault; if people were foolish enough to treat her casual remarks as the cornerstone for a full-scale art robbery, still less was that Julia’s fault.
“Furthermore,” she went on, apparently regarding me as in some way to blame, “whatever you say, Hilary, it was still pure guesswork. Until you saw the guide book to Padua this morning, the whole idea was the merest conjecture.”
“By no means,” I said. “It was always, at the very least, highly probable. My dear Selena, let us be a little realistic. If one sends Julia off to Italy with four guide books, all wrapped in brown paper covers, what are the odds against her having the right one in the right place every time?”
“Oh really,” said Ragwort. “One knows, of course, that Julia is a complete half-wit, but even so—”
“I don’t think you should talk that way about Julia, Mr. Ragwort,” said Marylou, her customary diffidence qualified by indignation. “Julia is a very intelligent and highly educated person.”
“Quite so,” I said. “With a dim and illiterate halfwit the odds against are about 250 to 1. With a highly intelligent and educated half-wit such as Julia they are astronomical. I thought from the start that there was something unnatural about Julia’s success in Verona. And on Monday I realized that it must have been the wrong guide book. Julia, you will recall, was using in Verona a guide book written in Italian. But on Monday, when Marylou brought back the guide to Verona which Julia had lent her, you picked it up, Selena, and read from it, quite easily and without hesitation, an account of communications between that city and Venice. Remembering that your many talents do not include any fluency in Italian, I knew without even looking at it that it was not the one Julia had been using in Verona.”
“Oh,” said Selena. There was a further silence. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m a little confused,” said Marylou. “Is it your hypothesis, Professor Tamar, that Major Linnaker stole a painting because Julia had used the wrong guide book?”
“It is our view,” said Ragwort — the principle of giving credit where it is due has few adherents in Lincoln’s Inn—“that Major Linnaker was responsible for the theft of a painting reported stolen last week from the Church of Saint Nicholas in Verona. We also believe that he brought the picture back to England in a holdall labelled with the name of the murdered man.”
“Does that mean,” asked Marylou, “that the Major did the murder?”
“Well—” said Ragwort, and looked at me. I said nothing.
“ ’Course it does,” said Cantrip. “The chap from the Revenue found out what he was up to and the Major bumped him off. I always said it was the Major that did it.”
“It must mean, at any rate,” said Selena, “that the Vice-Quaestor can no longer treat the Major as a person above suspicion. And the Italians, I believe, take a rather dim view of people stealing their works of art. When Timothy tells the Vice-Quaestor that the Major goes in for that kind of thing and can be shown to have done so during his recent holiday — I really do think, you know, that on the strength of that we might have some more of Timothy’s sherry.”
Confident of the satisfaction that our news would give him, we drank his sherry with a clear conscience. We explained to Marylou that we were expecting him to telephone very shortly, to tell us the result of the forensic report; and assured her that she was welcome to stay until he did so. Nearly an hour had passed, however, and we had consumed a very fair part of a bottle, by the time Henry, still lugubrious, announced that Mr. Shepherd was calling from Venice and wished to speak to Miss Jardine. Gathering round the telephone, we were able, without excessive difficulty, to make out what Timothy was saying.
“Timothy,” said Selena, “we have some news for you.”
“I rather think you’d better hear mine first,” said Timothy. Despite the intervening distance, his anxiety was perceptible. “The Vice-Quaestor has just told me the result of the forensic report. It’s rather disturbing.”
“Yes,” said Selena, “yes, all right.”
“The doctor who examined the body says that Ned Watson was killed some time in the early afternoon. Not later than three o’clock. He’d be inclined to think it was earlier; but three o’clock is the outside limit.”
An expensive ten seconds of silence on the international telephone line was followed by Selena saying, “Dear me. Does that mean that neither Eleanor nor the Major could have done it after all?”
“Yes,” said Timothy. “Yes, it seems to. And it also means, you see, if Julia’s evidence is accepted, that she must have spent most of Friday afternoon sleeping beside a corpse. It’s all rather unsatisfactory. ”