The Shortest Way to Hades

Fiske House, Belgrave Place, Tuesday.

Dear Miss Larwood,

I have found out something interesting and I want you to tell me what to do about it. Can you meet me at seven on Saturday at that place we had dinner at? Ring me at home if you can’t make it, but don’t leave any messages with anyone.

Yours sincerely, Deirdre Robinson

Not the most graceful of letters, from a young woman asking a favor of a comparative stranger; but that might perhaps be shyness. I was not surprised by the letter’s effect on Julia. In the circumstances it had something of the quality of a deathbed request, and Julia would feel a sense of guilt that she had not complied with it — though, had she done so, she would have waited in vain for Deirdre, who by seven o’clock on the Saturday of the Boat Race had already the best of all excuses for failing to keep her engagements. She had wanted to tell Julia of something she had discovered; some childish and trivial secret, very probably, of no interest to anyone; but she had died without telling it. I could understand that Julia would feel troubled.

The letter lay mute and unhelpful in the candlelight, like the embodiment of some small, resentful ghost.

“I suppose,” I said, “that you could take it to the police.”

“Yes,” said Timothy, frowning slightly at his wineglass. “Yes, we did consider that. But it’s not really evidence of anything, is it? If the police did nothing, Julia would remain uneasy. On the other hand, if they did reopen the case, several perfectly innocent people might be quite unnecessarily upset.”

“So she got this idea,” said Cantrip, “that we ought to do it ourselves. Rootle about and look for clues, you know, but being all tactful and unobtrusive, so as not to upset anyone. Well, what I said was, if you get half the Chancery Bar crawling along the towpath with magnifying glasses looking for bloodstains, it might be a lot of things, but unobtrusive isn’t one of them. Apart from which, I said, I couldn’t see it was any of our business — after all, if the bird’s family aren’t fussed about her getting pushed off the roof, why should Julia worry about it?”

“That proved,” said Ragwort, “to be an ill-advised remark.”

“Too right,” said Cantrip. “It was when I said that that she got all miffed and started talking about Sir Thomas More and the traditions of the English Bar. This Thomas More chap was something in history — you ought to have heard of him, Hilary.” His tone implied, however, that he did not suppose I had. “Julia thinks he’s hot stuff, and she reckons that if someone had bumped off one of his clients he’d have done something about it. She went on about him for ages.”

“Sir Thomas More, saint and martyr,” said Ragwort, “as of course you know, Hilary, was the only member of Lincoln’s Inn ever to be canonized: a very proper object of admiration for Julia, and indeed all of us. Were it possible, however, to dwell excessively upon so improving a topic, one might be tempted to say that Julia had done so.”

“You bet one might,” said Cantrip. “Anyway, if he was allowed to waste time playing detectives instead of getting on with his paperwork, he can’t have had a Clerk like Henry. The thing is, you see, we’re all frantically busy at the moment, and we just can’t spare the time. So what we thought we’d better do,” said Cantrip happily, “was get you to do it, Hilary. It’s just your sort of thing — digging up odds and ends of gossip and finding out things that aren’t your business.”

I remarked with some coldness that my own time was not so entirely undisposed of as my companions appeared to believe, and I doubted whether my academic responsibilities would allow me to undertake the task they envisaged for me. If they wished merely to prevent Julia from talking about Sir Thomas More, I supposed some simple but humane form of gag would sufficiently serve the purpose.

“What Cantrip means is,” said Ragwort, “that your flair for research and your training in the methods of Scholarship seemed to us to make you uniquely qualified to conduct the investigation. That is what you meant, isn’t it, Cantrip?”

“Oh rather,” said Cantrip.

“And we ventured to hope,” continued Ragwort, “that by this stage of the summer term the burden of your academic duties might be less onerous than at other times of the year.”

“I’m afraid,” said Timothy, “that Julia will be quite upset if you won’t do it. She has great faith in your detective powers, you know, since that trouble she had in Venice. She often says that if it weren’t for you she might still be languishing in a dungeon under the Doge’s Palace.”

In this, as it happens, she spoke no more than the truth. When she had been suspected by the Venetian police of responsibility for a crime of passion, it had been my own investigation which had established her innocence and secured her freedom: I have written elsewhere of these events.¹ A recognition of my achievement was not, however, so widespread in Lincoln’s Inn that I could be unmoved by it. Besides, for all her failings, I am fond of poor Julia, and would not wish to think of her distressed. Upon the understanding that I might look towards New Square for such assistance as their professional engagements would allow, I consented to give my mind to the question of Deirdre’s death.

Cantrip was obliged to leave us. He attends on Friday evenings at the offices of the Daily Scuttle, where it is his function to peruse the items intended for the Saturday issue of that journal and to damn to deletion those likely, in his professional opinion, to expose its proprietors to civil or criminal proceedings. Some of my readers may think that his educational disadvantages — for which, I have always said, he is rather to be pitied than blamed — would render him unsuited to such a task; but the Scuttle is fortunately one of those periodicals which eschew, so far as possible, all words of more than two syllables, so that very little of it is incomprehensible to him.

“Cantrip,” I said, “while you’re there, could you see if you can discover from your Fleet Street colleagues any further details of the evidence given at the inquest?”

“I’ll have a bash,” said Cantrip. “With lots of subtlety and discretion, of course. Toodle-pip, all of you — I’ll see you later in Guido’s.”

His departure from the Corkscrew coincided with the arrival there of Julia and Selena, both looking rather at their best. Selena wore a round-necked dress of sky-blue cotton, most becoming to herself and to the season: I remembered, seeing her, that the Courts had risen for Whitsun, and a member of the Bar could be seen in bright colors without inviting the inference of a declining practice. Julia also wore something in holiday style, of a design sufficiently degage to suffer little from the loss of a button or two.

It occurred to me that Julia herself was the only one of us who had had any personal acquaintance with the dead girl. Deirdre Robinson had seemed to me, from the little I had seen of her, to be peculiarly lacking in any attractive qualities; but I supposed that Julia, on the evening they had spent together, might have perceived in her client some hidden charm or talent.

“No,” said Julia sadly. “No, not really. She was, as you say, very plain, and rather dull, and she didn’t seem to like anyone very much. But I still think it matters if someone pushed her off the roof.” Julia spoke as if expecting contradiction. “One’s protection from acts of violence doesn’t depend, in a civilized society, on being talented or attractive or making people like one. It depends on the law. That, as I understand it, is the distinguishing characteristic of civilization: to protect those one likes or loves is no more than the merest barbarian might do.”

“No doubt,” said Timothy. “But why should the whole burden of defending civilization and the rule of law fall on the members of New Square?”

“I would suggest,” said Julia, absent-mindedly flicking her cigarette ash into her wineglass, “that those of us who have made the law our study and our profession have a more than ordinary responsibility to uphold the principles upon which it rests. It is a responsibility acknowledged in the traditions of the English Bar and the rules which govern our conduct. One can’t refuse to act for someone, for example, because one dislikes or disapproves of them.”

“No,” said Timothy. “One can’t pick and choose one’s clients.”

“Because otherwise there would be people who could find no one to represent them, and would be prevented from defending or enforcing their rights: the law would be applied for the benefit of some and not of others, and this would be inconsistent with the principles on which it is based. If the law is personal and partial in its application; if it defends only strength and restrains only weakness; if it varies and veers and wavers to meet the demands of power or the expediency of the moment — then it no longer has the quality of law: our civilization is built on sand, and we slide back before we realize it into that state of Nature in which, as we are told, the life of man is solitary,