Chapter Five
Conjectures

“Here’s a wild fellow.”

SHAKESPEARE

Geoffrey ordered another pint and began to see matters in a more rosy light. He even withdrew himself momentarily from morbid questioning and looked about him. The bar of the ‘Whale and Coffin’ was crowded—crowded with people who knew nothing, he reflected, of what he and the others had heard in the clergy-house drawing-room hardly more than half an hour ago. They chattered with stoic resignation about the state of the war, the quality of the beer, and the minor inconveniences of being alive. They drank, if not with gusto, at least with the appearance of enjoyment—most of them men, though in one corner sat a plump, well-dressed, painted, woman of middle-age sipping in a tolerant, lady-like manner at a glass of oily-looking stout, while in another a pale, anaemic, characterless shop-girl drank silently in the company of an equally pale, anaemic, characterless young man. There was not riotous enjoyment, but there was at least peace.

The appearance of peace, thought Geoffrey. What is peace? An ice-cream cornet in the sun? Certainly there was no peace in Tolnbridge, no serenity. Beneath the placid, quotidian ritual of the cathedral town lurked unknown forces which were moving ponderously, devastatingly to the surface. Beneath the familiar mask of any of these people hatred and murder might lie. The landlord Geoffrey had not seen after his first visit—a fact which caused him both annoyance and relief: annoyance because he had returned here determined to confront the man and demand an explanation of his behaviour earlier on, and relief because he had not looked forward to the encounter with any special confidence. The blessings of enforced procrastination! On his left, a soldier was engaged in an interminable narrative about some minor mishap of Army life.

“…So there ’e was in the front o’ the lorry, see, and the ’ill full of ruddy ’oles like a sieve, and ’im bumpin’ up an’ down like a ruddy marionette, see…”

The voice faded to trite memory. A tall, heavily-built man came in and elbowed his way to the bar. Evidently he was a person of some consequence, for conversation wavered on his arrival, and the thinkers regarded him with curiosity and interest. They appeared to be anticipating from him some oracular pronouncement. But he only ordered a bitter and a packet of Players, and the talk became general again.

“…There ’e was, see, the ruddy ’ill pitted with ’oles, an’ the grenades dencin’ about in the back like peas in a saucepan…”

Civilised people, thought Geoffrey, react oddly to the news of violent death. No one had screamed, or drawn in his breath with an alarming hiss; very little had been said, even, the party having broken up almost immediately, to allow the Chapter to get on with their meeting. Frances, refusing an invitation to drink, had gone to her room with a book; Fielding, whose reactions to the proximity of the sea were conventional, had announced his intention of going down to the rocks to potter; Dutton had gone to bed; and Peace had vanished, no one knew whither. An obscure irritation haunted Geoffrey that none of these people had felt the need of alcohol as he had; he felt morally weak. It was true that he had resisted the temptation for ten minutes when he had made a cursory and uninspiring examination of the garden, but still, it had mastered him in the end—that and a pressing desire, he added to himself in hasty and unconvincing extenuation, to see the landlord of the ‘Whale and Coffin’ again. He, however, was plainly not here, or else was lurking in some other corner of his establishment.

The evening was warm, and not conducive to thought; the drinkers lunged out ineffectually at the flies which sailed past their noses. There were not, in any case, sufficient data to make an examination of events. Geoffrey thought first of his fugue and then, becoming bored with this, as is the way of artists with their own works, mentally pigeon-holed it, and thought of Frances instead. The beer slowly toppled him to the edge of a swamp of maudlin sentiment. Intellect stood aside and informed him of this fact. He ignored it, abandoning himself to the luxury, and helping it on its way by more beer. He categorised, by comparison, the charms of his liking, his true love, his sweeting—“Sweeting,” charming word, said Intellect, vainly endeavouring to divert him into a discussion of the degeneration of language: pity its gone out of use. Lips like—like what? Coral? Cherries? No, no; trite, conventional. That sort of thing, said Intellect, still trying to stem the tide, went out with Jacobean literature. My mistress’ eyes, it quoted, are nothing like the sun. Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head… Emotion replied indignantly with Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? but being uncertain as to how the poem went on, was forced to fall back on peevish mumblings.

Intellect’s victory, however, was only temporary. What, thought Geoffrey, if I were to ask her to marry me? Bachelorhood, complacent in a hitherto indefeasible citadel, was startled into attention and began to peer anxiously from behind its fortifications. Discomfort, it whispered persuasively: inconvenience. All your small luxuries, your careful arrangements for peace of mind, would go by the board if you got married. Women are contemptuous of such things, or if she should turn out not to be, why marry her at all? Why have a mirror to reflect your own fads, to flatter your face? Pointless and silly. You’d much better remain as you are. Your work, too—a wife would insist on being taken out just when you were struggling with a particularly good idea. And what would become of your Violin Concerto with a baby howling about the house? You’re an artist. Artists shouldn’t get married. A little mild flirtation, perhaps, but nothing more.

Before the undoubted common sense of these remarks, all that Emotion could do was to mutter gloomily but doggedly: I love her. And at this a real panic broke out in the citadel. Windows were banged, the portcullis closed, the drawbridge lowered…

“I wonder if you can give me a light?”

Geoffrey started back to consciousness of his surroundings. The tall man who had just come in was flourishing an unlighted cigarette questioningly before him.

“Ever since Norway,” said the man, “matches have been getting scarcer and scarcer.”

The fact was unquestionable, and seemed to provide little opportunity for comment. Geoffrey produced a lighter and jabbed viciously at it with his thumb. At the twelfth attempt the man smiled, a little sadly. “Tricky things,” he said.

“I filled it this morning, and I think I overdid it.” Geoffrey shook the lighter; quantities of fluid splashed on to the floor. “I’ll give it one more try.”

The resultant sheet of flame nearly took their faces off. And it was as the tall man was dubiously approaching it with his cigarette that the other thing happened.

There were leading off from the bar three doors which gave access to small private rooms where it was possible for a few people to think in relative privacy. From behind one of these, unnerving sounds were suddenly heard—tremendous crashes, overturning of furniture, curses, grunts, and the noise of rapid movement and heavy breathing; then renewed crashes. The bar listened and gaped in stupefaction. Then the man who had asked Geoffrey for a light strode with an air of authority to the door and flung it open. Geoffrey followed him. The others crowded behind.

At first nothing could be seen but a small room with the furniture somewhat disarranged. From an angle, however, sounds of intense activity could be heard, and someone swearing in several languages. Geoffrey and the tall man went in. The crowd behind them stood goggle-eyed with hushed expectancy.

The bagarre, when discovered, was not precisely what had been expected. On his knees in a corner was a tall, lanky man. In one hand he held a large glass of whisky, in the other a walking-stick, with which he prodded at some small, mobile object hovering above the floor. This was shortly revealed to be a common house-fly, avoiding the attacks with ease and evident enjoyment. How long this scene might have continued it is impossible to say. But the fly, tiring of the amusement, presently took wing and prepared to depart. Its assailant, plainly maddened by this unexpected manoeuvre, aimed the contents of his glass at it, and missed. The fly flew at top speed towards his nose, made impact, went into reverse, and then with what even to the unimaginative was manifestly a shriek of delight, made off through the window.

The man climbed tranquilly to his feet, dusting his knees in a conventional manner. Dark hair, ineffectually plastered down with water, stuck out in spikes from the back of his head. His cheeks glowed like apples, giving evidence of an almost intolerable health and high spirits. Despite the warmth of the evening, he was muffled in an enormous raincoat, and had on an extraordinary hat.

“Good God!” said Geoffrey with deep feeling. Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, gazed placidly about him. “The trouble about flies,” he said without preliminary, “is that they never learn. You’d think that if you were as small as that, and landed on an animate object of immense size which heaved and banged and shouted at you, you’d go away and shut yourself up in a cupboard for ever. But not flies. They just circle round and come back again. It’s the same with windows. Generations of flies have batted themselves silly against windows without ever discovering that you can’t get through them.”

The inhabitants of the bar had returned with indifference to their former stations. The tall man who had asked Geoffrey for a light said to Fen:

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere, sir. No one seemed to know what had become of you.”

Fen nodded vaguely. “Inspector Garratt, isn’t it? More about Brooks?”

Geoffrey, suppressing his annoyance with difficulty, said: “And I’m Geoffrey Vintner.”

“I know that,” said Fen.

“Well, aren’t you going to welcome me?”

“Oh? Oh?” said Fen. “And what can I do for you?”

“You asked me down here to play the services.”

“Oh, did I? Did I?” said Fen. “I thought I’d asked old Raikes, from St. Christopher’s. Not that he’d have been any good,” be added thoughtfully. “He’s been bedridden for years.”

Geoffrey sat down, speechless with fury. “To think I came all the way down here, getting myself attacked three times on the way—”

“What’s that, sir?” asked the Inspector, turning to him sharply.

“Attacked.”

Fen groaned. “More complication. And I came down here for a peaceful holiday. Well, let’s get some drinks and have it all out.”

They had it all out. First the Inspector, who gave a bare outline of the facts about Brooks’ murder, as Geoffrey had heard them, and then Geoffrey, who gave a much less bare—in fact, a somewhat embroidered account of the attacks on himself. He felt this to be justified by the unsatisfactory, and essentially unconvincing, nature of these attacks. Even so, they didn’t seem greatly to perturb Fen and the Inspector, which annoyed Geoffrey considerably.

“I shall help,” said Fen in a determined manner when Geoffrey finally fell silent.

“Good,” said the Inspector. “The Yard warned us we shouldn’t be able to stop you.” Fen glared. “I think they still remember that business at Caxton’s Folly, before the war.”

“Ah,” put in Fen complacently. “Caxton’s Folly. That was a case, if you like.” A thought suddenly disturbed him. “The Yard?” he added abruptly. “You haven’t handed over to them?”

The Inspector sighed. “We haven’t made much progress on our own, sir. And the death of Brooks this afternoon has made things worse, not better. Oh, we’ve questioned everyone within reach, you can be sure of that—though not a second time, of course, since Brooks was killed. That remains to be done.” He nodded gloomily, as a general surveying a peculiarly unsuitable terrain before battle. “But what’s the use? We don’t even know what sort of questions to ask. Brooks hadn’t an enemy in the world—our only pointer is this improbable something he seems to have seen. So—the Chief Constable got on to the Yard. I believe they were going to send down one of their best men—fellow called Appleby—”

“Appleby! Appleby!” howled Fen indignantly. “What do they want with Appleby when I’m here?” He calmed down slightly. “I admit,” he said, “that he’s very good—very good,” he ended gloomily. “But I don’t see—”

With an effort, Geoffrey leaned forward, hoping thereby to produce an appearance of emphasis. “My dear Gervase: surely in a matter as serious as murder, anyone who can help—”

“Don’t preach at me,” said Fen peevishly.

“Well, we have a free hand for a day or so,” continued the Inspector, regardless of interruptions. “If we can’t discover something by then, it’ll have to be the Yard.”

“Of course we can discover something,” said Fen magnificently. He paused in some perplexity. “But what? The thing divides itself into three problems, doesn’t it? First, the attacks on Geoffrey here; second, the attack on Brooks in the cathedral; and third, the murder of Brooks. We might do worse than to take them separately and see what we can make of each.” He considered. “You, Geoffrey, were attacked by three different people—all pretty certainly hired thugs. I wonder what happened to the fellow in the store? Do you think there’s any chance of his having got away?” He turned to the Inspector. “You haven’t heard anything, I suppose?”

The Inspector shook his head. “No reason why the London people should think it had anything to do with us. But I can ring up and find out.” He made a note on a grubby envelope.

“So much for that,” said Fen. “Not much use trying to trace the other two men. What happened to the case that was dropped on you, Geoffrey?”

“It was left in the train, I think. Yes, I’m sure it was.”

“There might be prints,” said the Inspector. “The man who tried to do you in was probably an old lag we’ve got on record somewhere. Not that I expect it’d do much good if we did pick him up. He wouldn’t know much about it. Still, I’ll try and get hold of the case. Routine, you know. ‘The police may not have the dash and brilliance of the amateur investigator, but it is only by their patient and methodical investigation of the smallest details that the criminal, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.’” He fished out his envelope and made another note on it. “The 5:43 in here, wasn’t it?”

“Then there were the two threatening letters,” Fen went on. “Any idea as to why anyone should want to stop you coming here?’

“I think,” said Geoffrey, brazenly plagiarising, “that the whole thing was probably a blind to conceal the real reason for the attack on Brooks—to concentrate our attention on the fact that it was organists who were being attacked—”

“Nonsense,” Fen interposed rudely. “You don’t go to all that elaborate trouble just to cover up.” He was prone to slightly out-of-date Americanisms. “Why not the obvious explanation—that they didn’t want anyone playing the organ for two or three days?”

“That’s silly.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Fen irritably. “Look here. It’s pretty obvious that Brooks saw something in that cathedral which incriminated somebody. Suppose it was somehow connected with the organ. Brooks sees it, they know he’s seen it, and they try to bump him off.” (Here Geoffrey gave a feeble moan of protest.) “Well, and good. They imagine they’ve succeeded, and that they’re safe. Then next morning they get a nasty shock when they find that Brooks is still alive, and quite capable of blowing the words.” (Geoffrey moaned again.) “So they make a second attempt, and this time they succeed. But they realise everyone will know by now that there’s something of importance hidden in the cathedral (if Brooks had been found dead, no one need have guessed), and they want to get it away. Difficulty the first: the cathedral is well guarded”—Fen glanced at the Inspector, who nodded—“and no unauthorised person can get in except when it’s open for services. Difficulty the second: they want to get at the organ-loft, or thereabouts, and that, despite the demise of Brooks, will during services be occupied—by one Geoffrey Vintner, quite publicly summoned for the purpose. Moral: put Mr. Vintner out of action, and keep the organ-loft clear.”

“It sounds plausible,” said the Inspector. “In fact, its the only explanation I can think of.” (“You didn’t think of it,” muttered Fen. “I did.”) “But”—he shrugged helplessly—“what is this mysterious something?”

“Presumably you’ve had the place searched?”

“It’s been searched all right,” said the Inspector grimly, “No results, of course—but then, we’d no idea what we were looking for. We did look in the works of the organ”—(“Works,” said Geoffrey faintly)—“but… well, there was nothing that we could see.”

“Tombs?” suggested Fen.

“We didn’t open them, of course. But then neither, one imagines, did Brooks.”

Geoffrey intervened. “You say no unauthorised person has been able to get in, except at service times, since Brooks was found. Presumably that wouldn’t include the clergy?”

“The gentlemen in Holy Orders? No, sir. But you can be sure that whenever they had occasion to go in, we kept an unobtrusive eye on them.”

“Since the cathedral is under suspicion,” said Fen, “presumably its sutlers are under suspicion as well.”

“Exactly, sir. And that makes it more difficult. It’s very awkward, having to try and pry into a canon.” The bizarre effect of his phraseology startled the Inspector, and he was silent for a moment. “Well, what now?”

“The second problem,” said Fen, “is the attack on Brooks in the cathedral. Any leads?”

“Pretty well nothing. He was knocked out and given an injection of atropine—intravenally, in the left forearm.”

Fen interrupted: “I thought atropine was a soporific.”

“No, its an irritant—aphrodisiac—no, not that; what’s the word I want?”

“Was it a fatal dose?” Fen asked.

“A fifth of a grain. It should have been fatal, but the action of these thugs still isn’t properly understood. A sixteenth of a grain’s generally given as the maximum safe dose. They diagnosed it pretty soon—lack of perspiration and saliva, and so on—and treated him with tannic acid, morphine, ether, caffein—everything they had. He would have recovered.” The Inspector’s voice was for a moment oddly shaken; Geoffrey suddenly realised the heavy responsibility of the man, and saw that it had told on him.

“You didn’t find the hypodermic, of course?”

“No.”

“It could be quite small?”

“That would depend on the solution. Atropine sulphate’s soluble in the proportions one to three in ninety per cent alcohol; one to five hundred in water. But even so, it could have been tiny.”

Fen mused, fidgeting slightly and shuffling his feet; he finished his whisky and pressed a plainly inoperative bell to summon more. “An odd method of murder. Gunshot, of course, would be too noisy—but a knife… or strangulation, or—? Messy, all of them. A woman’s crime, perhaps. Or a man with a womanish mind.” He pressed the bell again; it fell off the wall with a clatter. He regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, and then turned to the Inspector. “Would atropine be difficult to get?”

“I suppose so. Don’t really know.”

“If you’re an inspector,” said Fen, “what do you inspect? Tickets?” He laughed uproariously. The others regarded him coldly. When he had finished, the Inspector said: “If you got it at a chemist’s, it would have to go on the poison register, of course. As far as the local chemists are concerned, we’ve been into all that already, and there’s nothing in the least suspicious. We can’t investigate every poison-book in the country, and besides, I’m pretty sure we’re not dealing with a complete lunatic—not in that sense, anyway,” he added reflectively. “No, there’s nothing to be got from that angle, I’m certain. The knock Brooks got on the head was the usual blunt instrument, one supposes—scientifically placed, to require the minimum of strength: the whole thing suggests medical knowledge. Incidentally, it suggests premeditation as well. People don’t go about carrying loaded hypodermics the way they do guns.”

Geoffrey proffered an idea at this point, without much confidence. “Perhaps Brooks already knew that something was going on, and they knew he knew, and decided to silence him once and for all after the choir-practice.”

Fen nodded approval. “Very good,” he said. “Means? Motive? Opportunity?”

“Motive,” said the Inspector heavily. “Can we define a little?” As it was evident that both Geoffrey and Fen were ready to define a great deal, and the question had been only rhetorically intended, he hastened to add: “The only clue we have is Brooks’ ravings—when he was found by the Verger opening the church in the morning—” He stopped abruptly. “By the way, you’d like to question the Verger, I suppose?”

“No,” said Fen.

“Ah,” the Inspector replied unhappily. “Well, then. He said a good deal then, and later, when we got him to the hospital, and we got most of it down. A lot of it obviously had nothing to do with the matter in hand—he had some fancies, I can tell you, about that shameless hussy Helen Dukes in the Post Office—”

“Post Office, Post Office,” said Fen. “What are we listening to a lot of stuff about the Post Office for?”

“And then naturally there were worries about the cathedral music,” the Inspector went on unperturbed, “uppermost in his mind. It seems there’d been a quarrel with the Cantoris Bass over a solo—but that hardly seems to be a motive.”

Fen heaved his long, lanky body irritably about in his chair, and fidgeted more than ever. “When are we going to get to the point?” he grumbled.

“Finally, there’s a few things he said about the Cathedral itself. They seemed to cost him a lot of pain and fright, but they don’t amount to much. You remember that passage in The Moonstone, where What’s-his-name fills in the blanks of the old doctor’s ravings to make a piece of beautifully grammatical English? Never seemed plausible to me: delirium doesn’t work like that. The one flaw, I always think, in an otherwise excellent novel, though as detective writing I consider it’s greatly over-rated, like Poe’s stories—”

“Oh, get on,” said Fen. “What did Brooks say, anyway?”

The Inspector paused; then he took another envelope from his pocket. “Why, sir, this was the burden of it.” He read aloud:

“Wires. Man hanging—rope. Slab of tomb moved.”

There was a brief silence. Geoffrey remembered the circumstances in which he had first heard those words; they affected him hardly less now. “An empty cathedral isn’t a good place to be in all night”—even for the unimaginative. He remembered some words read in a story long ago: “In his unenlightened days he had read of meetings in such places which even now would hardly bear thinking of.” And even if, as it seemed, the encounter had been material, in such surroundings it might well have shaken a man of strong nerves. This Geoffrey said.

Fen nodded. He appeared unexpectedly gloomy, but those who knew him well would have recognised this as a sign that certain things were becoming clear to him. He said nothing, but collected their glasses, and after a further glance at the offending bell-push, departed to get another round of drinks. Returning, he banged the glasses down on the table, sat down heavily, and said: “Well?”

The Inspector shrugged. “Night thoughts…” he murmured dubiously.

Fen drew in his breath sharply. “It is always my fate,” he said, “to be involved with literary policemen…” He waved his glass in a perfunctory and graceless toast, took a large mouthful of whisky, choked slightly, and went on in tones of bitter complaint: “Why does no one ever take things literally… wires. Radio, electricity”—he glared at the defunct apparatus on the floor—“bell-pushes. Hanging man—rope: men can hang from rope otherwise than by the neck; they can climb up and down it with definite and possibly criminal purposes in view. Slab of tomb moved: active or passive? Moved of its own accord, or had been moved?” He paused. “It seems fairly plain as far as it goes. And what part of the cathedral is inaccessible except by climbing a rope—no staircase?”

The Inspectors eyes shone with sudden comprehension; he half rose. Fen nodded.

“Exactly. The Bishop’s Gallery.”

Geoffrey gazed uncomprehendingly. “The what?”

Fen turned to him. “Of course. You don’t know the cathedral well. The organ-loft is high up over the Decani choir-stalls, on the south side of the chancel. From it a narrow gallery runs west, towards the nave, as far as the big column where the south transept begins; it can’t be entered from that end. There are only two ways into it: first, from the organ-loft, an entrance which has been bricked up since the eighteenth century; and second, by a spiral staircase which leads down to a small room and then to an outside door, also walled up. In the small room lies the body of John Thurston, Bishop from 1688 to 1705, and the last of the witch-hunters—hence the name of the gallery above it. So apart from hauling down a lot of brick and plaster there’s no way in except over the edge of the gallery.” He turned to the Inspector. “I suppose the brick and plaster hadn’t been tampered with?”

The Inspector shook his head; an indefinable sense of uneasiness was growing within him. “That was one of the likeliest places. No, it hadn’t been touched—and it’s quite impossible to disguise the traces of a thing like that if anyone’s looking for it. Not that it wouldn’t be fairly easy to burrow through that brick partition from the organ loft: it’s thin, and it looks as if it was pretty hastily put up in the first place. But as to this rope business, I admit no one could get up and down from that gallery except by a rope—there’s that padlocked wall tomb of St. Ephraim underneath, and it doesn’t project so there’s no foothold anywhere, nor on the columns at either side—they’re slippery as glass. But how are you going to get your rope attached in the first place, before you begin climbing up it?”

Fen snorted contemptuously, and gulped his whisky. “This is filthy stuff,” he said; and then: “An expert lassoist with a light hemp rope could do it easily. There’s a row of crockets or something, along the gallery rail.”

“But when you’ve got down again,” the Inspector persisted, “you have to leave the rope hanging there, where someone will notice it.”

“No, you don’t,” said Fen. “Not if your rope’s long enough to allow a double length of it to reach the ground. You make a special sort of knot,” he said vaguely, “and you climb down one strand, and then when you reach the bottom you pull the other, and it all comes undone.” He sat back in a pleased manner.

“Oh,” said the Inspector suspiciously, “and what is this knot, may I ask?”

“It’s called the Hook, Line and Sinker.”

“Why is it called that?”

“Because,” said Fen placidly, “the reader has to swallow it.”¹

“But what I want to know is,” Geoffrey burst out, unable to contain himself any longer: “What are all these people doing shinning up and down ropes? We’re no nearer to that than we were before.”

“Wires,” said Fen gnomically. He got up and began wandering about the room, apparently inspecting its decorations. “We must go over to the cathedral in a minute and visit, somehow or other, the Bishop’s Gallery.” He looked at the Inspector. “That can be arranged? It’s annoying,” he added balefully, “because I was going to make a particularly interesting experiment with moths this evening.” He interrupted himself and addressed Geoffrey. “That reminds me: did you bring me a butterfly-net?”

Geoffrey nodded, hatred spontaneously arising within him at the memory of that implement. “It’s at the clergy-house,” he said. “Seventeen and six,” he added. Fen ignored this.

“There’s one more thing,” said the Inspector, “and that’s the murder of Brooks. Atropine again—through the mouth this time, of course. Criminal carelessness.” His face darkened. “I think it’s obvious that none of the hospital people was implicated, and that it was put in the medicine when it was left in the hall.”

Fen looked up from his aimless circumambulations. “That’s funny. It sounds like the merest chance…”

“Nothing of the kind, sir. The nurse in charge of the dispensary is the scatterbrained kind, and she’d talked about Brooks—talked to every single person who came to enquire after him, I should think. Half Tolnbridge must have known he got that stuff every half-hour, regular as Fate. Just as she was wheeling it into the hall, a bell went—the bell of one of the private rooms she was in charge of—and she went off to answer it. She found the patient sound asleep and no one else in the room. By the time she got back, of course, the damage was done.”

Fen groaned. “Oh, my ears and whiskers!” he said. “Adventurous, eh? No one was seen about?”

“Plenty of people were seen about. It was during visiting hours.”

“It mightn’t have been Brooks’ medicine at all. But I suppose they didn’t mind about a little thing like that.”

(Another sentence came back to Geoffrey’s mind: “They can afford to waste lives like water.”)

Fen resumed his wanderings, the Inspector his logomachy. “All the people who might possibly be connected with it—all the cathedral people, that is—I shall have to interview again this evening: Miss Butler, Dr. Butler, Dr. Garbin, Dr. Spitshuker, Mr. Dutton, Sir John Dallow, Mr. Savernake, now that he’s back…” He reeled off the list with the melancholy relish of a Satanist enumerating the circles of inferno. “But nothing will come of it,” he said, suddenly abandoning all pretence and relapsing into a pathetic despair, “nothing at all.”

“Come, come,” said Geoffrey mechanically.

“I’d be obliged, sir,” said the Inspector, pulling himself together slightly and addressing Fen, “if you’d take a look at the cathedral, and the Bishop’s Gallery, while I’m seeing all these people. We shall have to get permission from the Precentor to get into the Gallery, but I hope there won’t be any difficulty about that. I can give you a note to the men in charge, and they’ll help you in every way you need.” Fen nodded, and finished his drink. They all rose, the Inspector sighing, and Geoffrey feeling slightly hazy and adventurous with alcohol.

“Well,” said the Inspector, “we’re not quite as much in the dark as we were, though it’s still mostly conjecture. Now we’ll see what there really is in this infernal Gallery.”

This, however, they were destined never to do.