Lessons in Loving thy Murderous Neighbour: A Cambridge Fellows Mystery novella (Cambridge Fellows Mysteries) Read online

  “And if we talk of clever dissembling, we must consider the chaplain.” Orlando, eyes bright now, was warming to the theme. “How easy to enter Seymour’s room, all consolation and concern, lull the chap into a false sense of security and then ‘whack’, smack the weapon down on his head. Then all Thompstone would have to do is wait a while, perhaps going so far as leaving the room and re-entering again noisily, before he raises the alarm.”

  “Ariadne reckons he hasn’t got murder in him.”

  “While I respect her judgement, think of our experience in France. I saw many a man do things one would never have credited him with. Things that might have been anathema to him were he not in a time of war.” Orlando studied his hands. “We’ve known some murderers who would come into that category of taking unexpectedly gruesome action. Ariadne hasn’t, alas, the wide range of experiences we have.”

  Jonty donned a suitably solemn expression, despite the temptation to poke some gentle fun at his lover. The Orlando he first met had been terribly naive, lacking in most of the experiences that a man in his twenties should have acquired, and with very little understanding of other people. He’d grown up a great deal over the best part of twenty years.

  Jonty laid down his cup, and then patted the arms of his chair. “Let’s to bed. To slumber, I hasten to add, because I could sleep for England tonight. Oh, and you’d better make sure the fire is banked down, or else we’ll be in trouble. You’re better at domestic duties than I am.”

  “I will, I am.” Despite their housekeeper, Mrs. Ward, having largely passed on her responsibilities to her granddaughter, she still ran the household with startling efficiency. Orlando grinned. “And hopefully by tomorrow we’ll be well rested, with our wits ready to tackle anything.”

  “Indeed. The game, as Henry the fifth so memorably said before your ‘favourite’ detective stole the phrase, is afoot.”

  Orlando, groaning at the reference to Holmes, whom he loathed, swatted his lover with a convenient newspaper, and turned his attention to the fire. Jonty, delighted at Orlando’s change of heart regarding the case, took out the cups and thermos to soak them overnight, and then headed for the stairs.

  A case, a palpable case. And if they ended up finding Owens innocent, how impressive would that look? Not least in St. Peter’s ledger, which the porter to the heavenly gates must surely keep and in which every man could do with some entries to his credit.

  Chapter Two

  The importance the university placed on this investigation couldn’t be underestimated. The vice chancellor and Dr. Sheridan had combined their powers to facilitate freeing both Orlando and Jonty from all college and university duties, until the Owens matter was either resolved or could be taken no further. Orlando didn’t mind missing a planned meeting that morning, as it was one he’d anticipated would be particularly dreary, although he surprised himself with how much he regretted cancelling a tutorial. Dunderheads must be growing on him.

  He met Sheridan at the entrance to the police station, they made themselves known, and were—with a surprising lack of resistance, which suggested the vice chancellor had been oiling wheels there, too—admitted into a small room, where Owens was brought to them. The presence just inside the door of a burly officer, built like a front row forward with muscles in his spit, showed the authorities were taking no chances as far as the accused was concerned. If Owens had considered making a dash for freedom, he was going to find it a challenge.

  “Have you come to gloat?” Owens said, skipping any introductions. They all three knew each other well.

  “Not especially,” Orlando countered. “We’re here because we’ve been asked to ascertain the truth.”

  “Truth?” Owens flung up his hands. “As Pilate so notably said, ‘What is truth?’ The police certainly think the facts are that I killed that young scoundrel.”

  “And did you?” Sheridan’s voice sounded calm and impressively incisive.

  “I did not.” Owens glanced at the muscular constable, then slumped in his chair, a picture of defeat. “I swear, I did not.”

  “If you are innocent then it’s beholden to us to help prove that innocence.” Thank goodness Jonty wasn’t present to hear how pompous Orlando sounded. He took a calming breath. “As part of that duty, we’ll need to ask you some questions, ones which might verge on impertinent. Believe me, we are only acting in your best interests.”

  “Best interests?” If Owens had felt momentarily defeated, he was back on the attack now. “When did a St. Bride’s man ever act for the good of an Assumption man?”

  Orlando, unused to hearing the college next door referred to by its rightful name, felt temporarily wrong footed. Luckily Sheridan’s wits came to their rescue.

  “A valid point. Perhaps it’s time that such a thing happened, for the sake of us all. There is nothing wrong with rivalries on the sporting field but they should end when the beer is poured afterwards. You fought in France, Professor Coppersmith. Would you say it taught you the futility of hatred?”

  “I would indeed.” And he would also rather the subject was changed. “Speaking of hatred,” he was rather pleased with that link, “we have been told there is some bad blood between your family and that of Seymour. Is that correct?”

  “It is. His great uncle deflowered my aunt.” Owens spun around at the sound of a snigger from the constable at the door. “This is no laughing matter.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Sheridan rose from his chair and within the space of five minutes had delivered the policeman a severe dressing down, made an official complaint to his superior officer, and had the lad replaced with a constable who was almost as burly but, hopefully, blessed with tact.

  “Thank you,” Owens said, as Sheridan resumed his place, although whether that was simply for the business with the policeman, or included gratitude for the pat on the shoulder the master of St. Bride’s had given him as he passed, wasn’t clear. “To continue, my aunt was put into an invidious position, as you can imagine. I think the elder Seymour thought he might coerce her into wedlock—didn’t they call it marriage by rape in benighted days? —but she had more sense than to agree to such a thing. She had her pride. All the Owens family do.”

  Orlando repressed a sneer at the sentiments being spouted. Wasn’t this man, so concerned for his aunt’s honour, the same one who had tried to molest Ariadne Sheridan? Perhaps, the small voice of reason—which spoke in his brain in accents remarkably like those of Jonty Stewart—reminded him, that had been the folly of youth. Owens could be a changed man, as Orlando himself was much changed from younger days.

  “Was there any further consequence to the man’s actions?” he asked.

  “The estrangement of the families, naturally. My grandfather and Seymour’s great grand-father had been friends since schooldays but it all ended then. No loss of reputation on Seymour’s part though,” Owens added, with a snort. “Everything was kept quiet, to spare my aunt’s blushes. My grandparents were very protective, not that she really needed protecting. I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that had she been allowed the privilege, she’d have beaten her seducer to a pulp. Oh.” He blanched at the unfortunate choice of words.

  “Alas, we’re all too used to using words without thinking.” Sheridan steepled his long, elegant hands under his chin. “This may be advice you don’t wish to hear, but I’ll give it all the same. Be careful in what you say. It is exactly the sort of thing people will pass on and which may end up being used in court. If it gets that far.”

  “Thank you,” Owens said, effectively doubling the number of times an Assumption man had ever thanked one from its rival college.

  Orlando, who agreed with the advice but who had also noted the suggestion of violence in the Owens family, returned to the issue of the aunt. “What happened to her? I fear this is not a happy tale.”

  “You are correct. She died, the next year, of consumption. My father said he didn’t believe the affair with Seymour had any connection to her death—it was a
common enough disease, alas—but my grandmother always swore the two events were related.” Owens flicked the thumb of his left hand with his middle finger. What was technically called a fillip, Orlando dragged up from the depths of memory. “Both my aunt’s death and my grandmother’s belief added fuel to an already blazing fire. Any rapprochement would have been highly unlikely.”

  “Did Seymour ever mention the bad blood?”

  Owens snorted at Orlando’s question. “Only every time he was in trouble. Said that he was a marked man, that I was determined to ruin him. The reverse is true; he’d have been sent down long ago had he been anybody else but I’ve been scrupulous in ensuring he was given every chance to reform his ways.”

  “Which he didn’t?” Sheridan asked, with a sympathetic nod.

  “Which he didn’t.” Owens gazed at both his questioners in turn, before recommencing. “I know that the reputation of Assumption will count for very little in your eyes, but we do believe that our students should be hardworking, and some of them are exceedingly bright. Seymour was neither, despite the glowing reputation he came with. And that’s not all. He was an unpleasant young man, the details surrounding which I won’t discuss in this setting. If you care to consult the bursar, he has kept a record of everything which has happened and no doubt you will find enlightenment there.”

  Orlando accepted the wisdom—the constable had ears even if the walls didn’t—but he wouldn’t be deflected. “When you went to see Seymour on Thursday morning, did you argue?”

  “We did. I’d sent a message via a porter summoning him to the lodge, where I was intending to tell him that the point of no return had been reached and that he was to be out of college by the next morning. Seymour told the porter that he wouldn’t come and that if I wished to speak to him I should go to his room. You can imagine my feelings at such impudence.”

  For the first time, Orlando felt some sympathy for the man. If a student had sent him such a message he’d have been livid. “And what transpired between you?”

  “I told Seymour to pack his bags.” Owens’s fillip gesture—distracting in the extreme when Orlando was trying to concentrate—happened again. “He told me to try and make him. I said I’d send a porter to stand over him until every sign of him was removed, and to escort the wretch to the station if need be. After which I left.”

  “Was the argument heated?”

  “If you mean were voices raised, then yes. If you mean were blows exchanged, then no.” Owens swivelled in his chair, to address the constable. “I left him as I found him. Insolent but alive.”

  “But you didn’t go directly to the porters’ lodge, did you?” Sheridan pointed out. “When the police arrived less than an hour later you were still in the master’s house.”

  “I was. I had intended calming down before I went to give them the order, but when I got to my lodging, the college steward was waiting to see me about some flooding in the cellars. That matter needed urgent attention. Seymour could keep.” Owens shuddered, the first sign of real emotion from him concerning the dead man. “Except he didn’t.”

  “Indeed.”

  They could check those details with the steward, and also establish exactly what physical state Owens had been in when he arrived. If he’d committed the assault, surely there’d have been blood on his hands or clothes. The former he might have had time to clean, but not the latter.

  “It strikes me,” Orlando said, with a meaningful glance at the constable, “that if the evidence against you is nothing other than we’ve discussed, then it’s circumstantial in the extreme.”

  Owens paused before replying. “We have not touched on the fingerprints. Those on the weapon I believe was used to kill Seymour. Mine are among them.”

  “Ah yes.” Orlando hadn’t forgotten them; he’d wanted to hear the admission from Owens himself. And the man had stated their presence as a fact, with no protestations. “The knobkerrie. How did your prints come to be on it if you didn’t strike him with it?”

  “Because I wrested it off him, when he snatched it up and tried to strike me. Look.” Owens undid his cuff then bared his left arm, revealing a substantial, fairly fresh bruise. “That’s where I had to fend him off. I was lucky he didn’t break it. That’s one of the reasons I was so angry afterwards. Sore on all counts.”

  “So, what happened after you grabbed the weapon from him? Why didn’t you confiscate it?” Admittedly, in the same circumstances, Orlando would have slung the thing out of the window. Albeit after ensuring it couldn’t kill anyone en route to the ground.

  “I meant to. I was going to get the porter to pick it up when he came to help Seymour pack. In the meantime, I took it with me as I left the room, then flung it into a corner of the landing.”

  Orlando and Sheridan shared a glance; if this was true, then it shed interesting new light on the story. “Have you told this to the police?”

  “Of course I have, but they won’t believe me. It pains me to admit it, but Assumption has developed itself a bit of a reputation over the years and not only with St. Bride’s. The local police happily tar each one of us with the same scandalous brush.”

  At this response, Orlando hold his tongue, leaving it to Sheridan to make a suitably soothing and diplomatic response.

  After leaving the police station, they made their way straight to Assumption, bearding the steward in his den. The man appeared to be both pleasant and reasonable—challenging their preconceptions about all denizens of the institution—and confirmed that Owens had been in a flaming temper when he arrived at the lodge, that they had remained in conversation until the police had arrived, that Owens seemed to have been nursing his left arm and that there wasn’t a drop of blood to be seen anywhere on him, although his appearance might be described as slightly dishevelled. All this had emerged quite naturally, without leading questions from either of his interrogators; if it had been part of an agreed set of responses and a story to be adhered to at all times, then it must have been settled at great haste and with much foresight.

  Having given up hope of revelation from the steward, they set off in search of the bursar, Gould. While his office was tidier than the lodge had been, Gould himself appeared to be less friendly than their previous witness, although he did offer them both an extremely welcome glass of dry sherry.

  “Had Seymour come from any other family,” Gould said, while rooting out a file of papers, “he’d have been long gone. Owens may not be the most patient man, but he gave Seymour every opportunity to redeem himself. None of which he took.”

  “And do you know why he was treated with such undue tolerance?” Sheridan asked.

  “Do you know the story of the two families? The bad blood between the Owens’s and the Seymours?”

  “Owens himself has informed us about that. How he wished to prove he wasn’t biased.”

  “Then why do you ask me? No, you needn’t reply, because I can guess the answer. You’re checking one set of responses against the other.” Gould sneered.

  “Isn’t that what we scholars must do all the time in pursuit of our studies?” The unusually cold tone in Sheridan’s reply spoke of how incensed he must be. “Compare and contrast information to establish the greater truth?”

  Orlando admired the fact the man had stopped there. He’d have been inclined to add something like, “Isn’t that what Assumption dons do or do they simply say whatever comes into their heads, without proof?”

  “I stand corrected,” Gould responded, begrudgingly. “If you are trying to save Dr. Owens then you shall have my co-operation.”

  He spread the file of papers on the desk and left them to read it, retreating to a corner of his office where he made a show of going through some other documents.

  “Owens has more patience than I possess,” Sheridan observed, after they’d ploughed through half of the notes. “I’d have made the young lad sling his hook long before. Such a list of offences.”

  “Ah. Have you seen this?” Orlando’s eagle eye had
spotted an incongruous word—blackmail, followed by a question mark—in the light of which he fished out the relevant paper. “Dr. Gould, am I correct in saying that Seymour was in the habit of sending obnoxious letters?”

  “He was. Mainly to fellow students, but he addressed one to the master himself. I did not see the content, although I believe it was inflammatory in the extreme.”

  “And these letters, were they intimidating, or coercive? Did Seymour threaten to reveal things unless people acted as he wished?”

  “If you are talking about blackmail, they don’t appear to have fallen into that category. I have seen two directed to students and they are simply nasty.” Gould paused, chin in hand. “In the village where I came from there was once an old lady, a spinster whose sweetheart was said to have been killed when they were both barely twenty. Over the years her character must have become warped. A number of vile communications were sent to almost every household in the village, accusing people of the most outrageous things. This was eventually traced back to her. It caused much hurt and at least one person to take themselves off, never to be seen again. She perhaps, in amongst all the lies, had accidentally hit on a grain of truth.”

  “How unpleasant.” And had Seymour, Orlando wondered, inadvertently hit on just such a grain?

  Chapter Three

  As Orlando set about his tasks, Jonty too had work to do, beginning with dropping into the porters’ lodge to return—at last—an umbrella he’d borrowed two days previously, and to check his post. Among the usual items in his pigeonhole he found a note, as welcome as it was unexpected.

  Dr. Stewart