5. The Episode of the Immaterial Witness

Considering the matter afterwards, tediously rehearsing it to bored or frankly incredulous audiences, Cadogan became eventually convinced that this was by far the most extraordinary and improbable episode of the entire business. It is true that his sense of the fitness of things was somewhat impaired by beer; it is also true that the improbable has less weight in the City of Oxford than in any other habitable quarter of the globe. But still, even at the time, he felt that a poet and a professor who insisted on combing the shops of the town for a blue-eyed, beautiful girl with a small spotted dog, in the hope that her discovery might throw some light on the disappearance of a toyshop from the Iffley Road, were hardly likely to remain long at large in a sane and self-respecting society. However, it was evident that Gervase Fen felt no such qualms; he was confident that Mr. Hoskins would cling on to Mr. Sharman for as long as he was left to his vigil; he was confident that Mr. Rosseter’s advertisement had something to do with the death of Miss Tardy, and that he had interpreted it rightly; he was confident that a beautiful, blue-eyed shop-girl with a small spotted dog could not long elude them in a town the size of Oxford (Cadogan, on the contrary, was of opinion that she could elude them indefinitely); and he appeared, in any case, to have nothing else in the world to do but look for her.

His plan was that each of them should walk down one side of George Street, entering every shop on the way, investigating for beautiful, blue-eyed girls, and, where these proved to exist, making such inquiries about their pets as seemed possible in the circumstances; this procedure to be continued throughout the shopping centre. Standing on the crowded pavement, and listening to the clocks strike fifteen minutes after midday, Cadogan assented to this gloomily enough; in any case, he reflected, he would almost certainly be arrested before he got far.

“Ryde is the only Young Lady in those five limericks,” Fen remarked, gazing a trifle despondently down the length of George Street, “so it must mean the girl Sharman was talking about. We’ll meet and compare notes at the end of the street.”

They set forth. The first shop on Cadogan’s beat was a tobacconist’s, presided over by a plump, peroxided woman of uncertain age. It occurred to Cadogan that the difficulties of the undertaking were greatly increased by the consideration that (a) there could be no certainty regarding Mr. Sharman’s standards of female pulchritude, and (b) one can seldom make out the colour of a person’s eyes without peering very closely at them. Affecting short-sightedness, he thrust his face close to that of the peroxided woman. She recoiled hastily and simpered at him. Her eyes, he decided, must be either blue or green.

“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked.

“Have you a small, spotted dog?”

To his surprise and annoyance, she gave a little shriek and called out: “Mr. Riggs! Mr. Riggs!” An agitated, pimply young man in brilliantine and a creased morning suit appeared from the back of the shop.

“What is it, Miss Blount?” he said. “What is it?”

Miss Blount pointed a wavering finger at Cadogan and said faintly: “He asked me if I had a small, spotted dog.”

“Really, sir…”

“Well, and what’s the matter with that?”

“Well, sir, don’t you think… perhaps a little… that is to say somewhat—ah—”

“Unless the vocabulary of bawdry has undergone accretions since my young days,” said Cadogan, “no.” He stalked out.

In the shops which he subsequently visited he had no more success. Either there were no beautiful girls with blue eyes or else they did not possess small, spotted dogs. He was received alternately with fury, amusement, mystification, and frigid politeness. Periodically he saw Fen emerge on the opposite side of the road, wave a negative across the surge of traffic, and disappear again. He became disheartened and began to buy things at the shops he entered—a tube of toothpaste, some bootlaces, a dog-collar. When he finally met Fen at the traffic lights where George Street joins the Cornmarket, he was burdened about like a Christmas tree.

“What in God’s name are you doing with all those things?” said Fen, and then, without waiting for an answer: “This really is rather a job, you know. Nothing on my side of the road. One woman seemed to think I was proposing marriage.”

Cadogan miserably shifted a wicker basket, the most substantial of his purchases, from one arm to the other. He grunted. In fact, his mind was occupied with the virtual conviction that they were being watched. Two heavily-built men in dark suits had been following their progress and were now standing near them on the opposite corner, mutually engaged in a prolonged effort to light a cigarette. They could not conceivably be the police; consequently, they must have something to do with the death of Emilia Tardy. But as he was about to point them out to Fen, he was gripped suddenly by the arm.

“Look!” Fen exclaimed.

Cadogan looked. A girl had just emerged from an alleyway which ran behind one of the shops in the Cornmarket. She was about twenty-three, tall, with a finely-proportioned, loose-limbed body, naturally golden hair, big candid blue eyes, high cheek bones, and a firmly moulded chin. Her scarlet mouth broke into an impish smile as she called back to someone in the alley-way. She wore a shirt and tie, a dark brown coat and skirt, and brogue shoes, and walked with the insouciant swinging grace of perfect health.

And beside her trotted a Dalmatian dog.

“It isn’t very small,” Fen said, as she walked towards them.

“Well, it may have grown,” said Cadogan. Relief at not having to enter any more shops made him unwisely raise his voice. “That must be the girl.”

She heard, saw them, and stopped. The lingering smile faded from her red lips. With something like panic in her eyes, she changed direction and cut across the road, walking so fast down Broad Street that she almost ran, and glancing back over her shoulder.

After a moment’s initial stupefaction Fen grabbed Cadogan’s sleeve and urged him across the road after her, regardless of changing lights and an ominous grinding of gears among the cars waiting to proceed. They reached the opposite pavement much as Orestes, hounded by the Furies, must have staggered into Iphigenia’s grove in Tauris. Out of the corner of his eyes Cadogan saw that the two men in dark suits were moving after them. For a moment the girl was lost from view behind the windows of a large china-shop, but they soon caught sight of her again, pushing hastily through the ambling crowds on the pavement. By mutual consent, they began to run after her.

Broad Street lives up to its name; it is also quite short and straight. In the centre of it there is a taxi-rank, and at the end you can see Hertford College, Mr. Blackwell’s Bookshop, the Sheldonian Concert Hall (fronted by a row of the stone heads of Roman emperors, severe and admonitory as the totems of some primitive tribe), and the Bodleian Library. The midday sun, pleasant and warm, struck splinters of blue and gold from the ashen stone walls. Indefatigably the women under­graduates pedalled to their last assignments of the morning. And Fen and Cadogan ran, Cadogan shouting “Hi!” in a penetrating voice.

The girl, too, began to run as they drew nearer to her, the dog cantering beside her. But both Fen and Cadogan were vigorous, active men, and they would have caught up with her in a minute or less had their way not been suddenly blocked by a substantial form in the uniform of the Oxford Constabulary.

“Now then,” said the form conventionally. “What’s all this?”

Cadogan panicked, but he realized after a second that the constable had not recognized him, and was merely taking exception to their satyr-like pursuit.

“That girl,” Fen fumed, pointing his finger after her. That girl.”

The constable scratched his nose. “Well, now,” he said. “we’re all for love in the Force, but fair’s fair, you know. One of you at a time, and no stampeding. You’d better go and get some lunch,” he added kindly. Evidently he suspected that this would constitute some sort of anaphrodisiac.

“Oh, God,” Fen exclaimed disgustedly. “Come on, Richard. It’s no use trying to follow her now.” Watched by the benevolent eye of the law, he led the way across the road to Balliol College and entered its Gothic portals with some dignity. Once inside, however, they hastened through the grounds and into the precincts of Trinity, which stands next door. A hasty reconnoitring at the wrought-iron gates showed the constable, his mind at ease after their display of resignation, strolling away towards the Cornmarket with his back to them; and the girl hesitating outside the Sheldonian Theatre. It also showed the two men in dark suits prowling about the window of a tailor’s opposite. Cadogan pointed them out to Fen and explained his suspicions.

“H’m,” said Fen thoughtfully. “I rather think it might be as well to lose them if we can. On the other hand, we can’t risk losing the girl at the same time. we’d better go after her as fast as possible, and hope for the best. Obviously whoever knocked you on the head last night wants to keep an eye on you, but they don’t seem keen on doing more than just follow.” He was plainly exhilarated by the entire proceedings. “All right, let’s go.”

As they came out again into Broad Street, the girl saw them, and after a moment’s indecision turned and went into the Sheldonian, leaving the dog outside. It sat down patiently to wait. Fen and Cadogan hastened their steps. The two men in dark suits, whose acquaintance with the topography of Oxford was plainly uncertain, did not observe and begin to follow them until they were practically at the gates of the Sheldonian.

This building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, consists (apart from some mysterious, warren-like passages about its circumference) of a tall, circular hall, with galleries, an organ, and a painted roof. In it, concerts are given; in it, University degrees are conferred and ceremonial confabulations held; in it, the larger choirs and orchestras rehearse. Such a rehearsal—of the Handel Society—was in progress now, under the impassioned conducting of the preternaturally thin and energetic Dr. Artemus Rains. As Fen and Cadogan mounted the stone steps and crossed the paving to the door, a blast of Hölderlin’s fatalism, as interpreted by Brahms and translated by the Rev. J. Troutbeck, met their ears. “Blindly,” sang the choir, “blindly at last do we pass away.” The orchestra accompanied them with racing arpeggios, and acid, fiery chords on the brass.

Fen and Cadogan peered in. The orchestra occupied the well of the hall. Round it, ranged in tiers, stood a choir of three hundred or more, copies raised, eyes straying uneasily between the printed music and the frenetic gesticulations of Dr. Rains, mouths opening and shutting in unanimous pantomime. “But man may not linger,” they chanted, “for nowhere finds he repose.” Among the altos, hooting morosely like ships in a Channel fog—which is the way of altos the world over—Cadogan caught sight of the girl they were seeking. He nudged Fen and pointed. Fen nodded, and they entered the hall.

Or rather, they attempted to do so. Unhappily, at this crucial moment their way was barred by a plain but determined woman undergraduate, with spectacles and a slight squint.

“Your membership cards, please!” she hissed in a stage whisper.

“We’re only coming in to listen,” said Fen impatiently.

“Shhh!” The girl put a finger to her lips. The uproar beyond them increased in volume. “No one is allowed in, Professor Fen, except members of the choir and orchestra.”

“Oh. Oh, aren’t they,” said Fen. He indicated Cadogan. “But this is Dr. Paul Hindemith, the eminent German composer.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Cadogan whispered in a foreign accent. “Sehr vergnügt. Wie geht’s Ihnen?”

“Never mind all that now,” Fen put in. “I know Dr. Rains will be delighted to see us.” And without waiting for any further protest, they pushed their way inside.

The girl with the blue eyes and the golden hair was embedded in the very middle of the altos, and there was no way to get near her except through the basses, who stood nearby, behind the orchestra. Accordingly, they hacked out a path between the instrumentalists, under the envenomed gaze of Dr. Artemus Rains. The second horn, a sandy, undersized man, went quite out of tune with indignation. Brahms thundered and trumpeted about their ears. “Blindly,” the chorus roared, “blindly from one dread hour to another.” They knocked over the music-stand of the tympanist, sweating with the effort of counting bars, so that he failed to come in at his last entry.

The haven of the basses achieved at last, a number of further difficulties presented them­selves. The Sheldonian is not particularly spacious, and the members of a large choir have to be herded together in conditions not unreminiscent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. When Fen and Cadogan, pushing, perspiring, and creating a great deal of localized pother, had penetrated the basses to a certain distance (Cadogan shedding wicker basket, bootlaces, and dog-collar broadcast as he went) they could literally get no farther; they were wedged, and even the avenue by which they had come was now irrevocably closed and sealed. Everyone was staring at them. Moreover, an old man who had sung in the Handel Society choir for fifty years thrust a copy of the Brahms at them. This was unfortunate, as Fen, seeing no chance of moving for some time and being content to stop where he was and keep an eye on the girl they were pursuing, took it into his head to improve the shining hour by joining in the singing; and Fen’s voice, though penetrating, was neither tuneful nor accurate.

“We STAAAAY not,” he came in suddenly, “but WAAAANDER: Several of the basses in front turned round as if someone had struck them in the back. “We grief-laden,” Fen pursued unconcernedly, “grieee-EEEF-laden mortals!”

This was too much for Dr. Artemus Rains. He banged with his baton on the rostrum, and the choir and orchestra faded into silence. There was a general murmur of interested comment and everyone stared.

“Professor Fen,” said Dr. Rains with painful restraint. A hush fell. “You are not, I believe, a member of this choir. That being the case, would you kindly oblige me by going away?”

Fen, however, was not easily abashed, even by the presence of four hundred vaguely hostile musicians. “I think that’s a most illiberal sentiment, Rains,” he countered across the gaping tiers of choristers. “Most illiberal and discourteous. Just because I happen to make one small error in singing an extremely difficult passage—”

Dr. Rains leaned his spidery form forwards across the rostrum. “Professor Fen—” he began in a silky voice.

But he was not allowed to finish. The girl with the blue eyes, profiting by this sudden focusing of attention, had pushed her way through the altos and was now heading at a brisk pace towards the door. Unnerved by this fresh interruption, Dr. Rains swung round to glare at her. Fen and Cadogan got on the move again with alacrity, clawing their way back through the basses and the orchestra without ceremony or restraint. But this process delayed them, and the girl had been out of the hall at least half a minute by the time they reached open ground. Dr. Rains watched them go with a theatrical expression of sardonic interest.

“Now that the English Faculty has left us,” Cadogan heard him say, “we will go back to letter L.” The rehearsal started afresh.

It was nearly one o’clock, so when they emerged again, somewhat hastily, into the sunlight, Broad Street was comparatively empty. For a moment Cadogan could not see the girl; then he caught sight of the Dalmatian loping up the street the way they had come, with the girl a few paces ahead. On the opposite pavement the two men in dark suits were examining the contents of Mr. Blackwell’s window.

Pointing at them: “Scylla and Charybdis are still after us, I see,” Fen remarked with some pleasure. “But we haven’t time for them now. That girl must have something pretty weighty on her mind to run away from two complete strangers in a crowded street. Of course, if you hadn’t bawled out: ‘That must be the girl’—”

“She may have recognized me,” said Cadogan. “It may have been her that knocked me on the head.”

“We must put the heat on that broad.”

“Eh?”

“Oh, nevermind.”

So the pursuit began again, though more circumspectly this time. Fen and Cadogan followed the girl, and Scylla and Charybdis followed Fen and Cadogan. They turned right into tree-lined St. Giles’, passed the car-park and the entrance fo Beaumont Street, passed the gate of St. John’s.

And then, to Cadogan’s astonishment, the girl turned into St. Christopher’s.

It is an inconvenient and longstanding tradition of the college of St. Christopher that lunch is eaten at 1:30 and that week-day Matins precedes it at one o’clock. The service had consequently just begun when Fen and Cadogan arrived. The porter, Parsons, in addition to the information that the police had once again been and departed, was able to tell them that the girl had gone into the chapel a few moments before, and pointed to the Dalmatian which lingered outside as proof; and to the chapel Fen and Cadogan followed her.

This part of the college was well restored at the end of last century. Death-watch beetles would be out of place in it, but at the same time it does not look objectionably new. The glass is pleasant if undistinguished, the organ pipes, painted gold, are arranged in a simple and attractive geometrical pattern, and the pew-ends—as in most collegiate chapels, the pews face each other like the seats in a railway compartment—are neither objectionably florid nor plain and dull. The only unusual feature is a separate enclosure for women, locally known as the Witches’ Kitchen, which possesses an entrance of its own.

On this particular morning the President of the college, isolated like a germ in his private pew, was feeling disgruntled. For one thing, Fen’s erratic manoeuvres earlier on with Lily Christine III had shaken him more than he would have liked to admit; for another, the Sunday Times had refused to print a poem he had offered them; for a third, accustomed since boyhood to lunching at one o’clock, he had never since his appointment become used to its postponement to 1:30. When the one o’clock service began, his stomach was crying out for food; by the second lesson, his gastronomic misery had reached its apex; and for the rest of the time he settled down to a dull, aching misery, extremely prejudicial to his devotions. As a consequence, he frowned when a young woman with golden hair and blue eyes entered the Witches’ Kitchen during the first hymn; he frowned still more when, a few moments later, Fen and Cadogan arrived, noisily whispering; and he openly scowled when after a brief interval they were followed by two men in dark blue suits whose knowledge of the Anglican liturgy was plainly sketchy to a degree.

In order to get as near to the girl as possible, Fen and Cadogan made their way up to a public pew by the choir. Scylla and Charybdis settled themselves nearby. The ritual went its way with an effortless grace, and until it was over no one moved. Fen, who disapproved of congregational singing, occupied himself with staring at anyone who opened his mouth. Cadogan, abandoning reflection on the tortured series of events in which he was involved, joined the President in a muted craving for lunch (by an unfortunate chance, the First Lesson was largely concerned with the comestibles in favour with ancient Jewry). The girl worshipped unobtrusively. Scylla and Charybdis rose and fell with evident unease. Only the Lord’s Prayer seemed to strike a chord, and then they were unhappily unaware that at one point in the proceedings it is curtailed, and so said “For Thine is the Kingdom” when everyone else was pronouncing the Amen.

But only at the end did the real problems of the position present themselves. Strict rules of precedence govern the exodus from St. Christopher’s chapel, and they are rigidly enforced by the ushers, who are chosen from the undergraduate scholars in rotation. The women, already segregated like an Asiatic seraglio, leave by their own door. The choir and chaplain process to the vestry at the East end while all stand. And the body of the congregation go out of the west door in the order of their proximity, beginning with the President and Fellows. Matters are further retarded by the habit of genuflexion. Anyone uncertain of these things will do best to cower in his seat, and pretend to be listening to the organ voluntary, until everyone else has gone.

The trouble in the present instance was this: that whereas the girl with the blue eyes could leave immediately, and without delay, neither Scylla and Charybdis, who were far enough from the door, nor Fen and Cadogan, who were even farther, could hope to be outside within about three minutes; since Fen was not sitting with the other Fellows, he could not push through and join them. Obviously, the girl was aware of this. If she had left during the service they could have feigned illness and followed her at once. But when the service ended nothing short of an apoplectic fit could get them from the building in anything but their proper order.

She went, in fact, immediately the Blessing had been spoken, just as the organist was launching into the so-called Dorian Toccata, and just as Fen and Cadogan were becoming clearly conscious of the problem which faced them. Three minutes would give the girl ample time to lose herself somewhere in the rambling college precincts, and they might for all they knew never see her again. The ushers, very grim and muscular, forbade any exhibition of disorder. There was only one thing to do, and at a whispered instruction from Fen they did it. They joined themselves on to the end of the choir, and, with an empurpled chaplain bringing up the rear, processed out with it. Out of the corner of his eye, Cadogan saw Scylla and Charybdis, starting from their seats, held back by one of the ushers. The other was taken unawares by this abnormal mode of exit, and made no movement until it was too late. His eyes fixed on the scrawny neck and surpliced back of the Cantoris bass in front of him, Cadogan pursued his way at a solemn and deliberate shuffle to the vestry.

Once inside, both he and Fen pushed their way rapidly through the giggling choirboys and out of the door which led into the north quadrangle. The chaplain glowered malevolently. “Quiet!” he said to the boys, and pronounced the final prayer. At the end of it a thought struck him.

“And send down, we pray,” he added, “upon the Professors of this ancient and noble University a due sense of the dignity of Thy house and of their own dignity. Amen.”

There was no trace of the girl in the quadrangle. Parsons had seen nothing of her, nor had one or two idling under­graduates whom Fen questioned. St. Giles’ was a blank in either direction.

“Isn’t there something,” Cadogan said, “which lawyers call a material witness? Well, this girl seems to be an—”

Fen interrupted. His lean, ruddy face was perplexed, and his hair stood up more than ever. “She must be somewhere in the college, but at the same time I don’t see how we can search every room in the place… Let’s go through to the south quadrangle.”

They were not in luck’s way. The south quadrangle, with its rococo fountain in the centre and its Jacobean colonnades, was deserted except for a lounging youth, the possessor of spots, a floppy red neck-tie, and green corduroy trousers. From his stammering adolescent embarrassment they got no information whatever.

“Well, we seem to have lost her,” said Cadogan. “What about some lunch?” He hated missing meals.

“Of course, it may be another instance of the most obvious place,” Fen answered, ignoring this summons to the flesh-pots. “That is, the chapel. Let’s go back there.”

“Some lunch would be very nice.”

“Damn it, she can’t have got far. Come on, and stop moaning like an animal about your food. It’s disgusting.”

So they returned to the chapel. In it, nothing and nobody. Nor yet in the vestry. From the vestry there runs a passage wholly cut off from the light, which leads into a sort of paved hall where one or two of the Fellows of the college have rooms. There is a switch, but no one can ever find it, and no one ever bothers to put it on. It was rather incautiously that Fen and Cadogan entered this brief black gully. Too late, when he felt an arm clamped about his waist from behind like a steel vice, when he heard a sudden muffled exclamation from Fen, did Cadogan remember Scylla and Charybdis. Those unimportant decorations of their pursuit had suddenly burst through the haze of facetious comment into a dangerous actuality. On the two branches of Cadogan’s carotid artery, running beneath the ears, a thumb and forefinger were powerfully and expertly pressed. He tried to cry out, and failed. In the few moments which elapsed before he lost consciousness, he was aware of a faint, a ridiculously faint scuffling beside him. Twisting his head from side to side, in a vain attempt to escape that angry grip, his eyes darkened.