A Javelin for Jonah

“I must give you credit for that, then, and I will answer you. I expect Henry would like a larger share, but he cannot afford to buy more, even on the salary I pay him and, even if he had sufficient money, I am not prepared to relinquish any part of my own holding, so the question really does not arise.”

“Did he buy such shares as he has?”

“No. They were a gift from me in order to induce him to join my staff.”

“How would his salary compare with that of Mr. Jones?”

“Unfavourably, but Davy was a special case.”

“Because he was your brother-in-law?”

“Exactly.”

“Not because he was in a position to blackmail you?”

“Well, really! You are referring, no doubt, to the unpleasant experience to which I was subjected following the death of my poor wife!”

“Yes, I was.” She fixed her sharp black eyes on his angry countenance. Gascoigne capitulated.

“I preferred to keep Davy friendly towards me,” he said. “I knew that he was desperately disappointed at having been left nothing under my wife’s will. I will admit that I felt sorry for him. However, to answer a question of which, of course, crudely though you have put it, I can see the relevance, Davy was not in a position to blackmail me. Not only had I done nothing wrong, but also Davy, I suppose, was miles away at the time of my wife’s unfortunate death and could have known nothing about it until he read the report in the newspapers. He had been with a travelling circus for some time, but they dismissed him for drunkenness. He had begun to insist upon having a safety-net for his act—he was a top-class gymnast, of course—and they knew the unfortunate reason.”

“And did not wish to provide a net?”

“It removed interest from the act. The circus-loving public are there to be thrilled. That is why they like to see a man or woman performing with lions and tigers, a morbid and decadent taste which I do not share. I look upon it as a throw-back to the Roman arena, a…”

“Yes, quite,” said Dame Beatrice. “So did Mr. Henry receive his partnership as an expression of thanks for the way he gave evidence under cross-examination?”

“Really!” exclaimed Gascoigne. “That is a most improper question, Dame Beatrice!”

“I imagine that is the way it must have looked to Mr. Jones.”

“Davy certainly made some unpleasant insinuations,” admitted Gascoigne. “He went so far as to demand a partnership for himself as the price of holding his tongue, but, of course, I could not possibly agree to that. He did quite enough mischief here without the added power of being in a position to interfere in the way the College was run.”

“You must forgive me for pressing the point, Mr. Medlar, but you say that his employers had dismissed him from the circus. Does that mean that he actually was in your neighbourhood at the time of your wife’s death?”

“He claimed to be,” said Gascoigne sullenly. “I don’t know whether he could have proved it and, as it happened, he was so drunk in the witness box that the magistrates refused to listen to what he had to say.”

“But you distrusted him sufficiently to offer him a lucrative post in order to stop his tongue.”

“I know it sounds suspicious, but he could have caused me a great deal of trouble with his lies. All the same, I do assure you that nothing would have induced me to kill him, and I did not do so.”

“Rattled, you think, but more in anger than from a guilty conscience,” said Laura, on the following morning.

“That was my impression, but anger and fear, of course, are very closely allied.”

“Do you think Jones was blackmailing him?”

“It is possible, but only mildly, I think.”

Laura grunted and, in return to a look of enquiry from Dame Beatrice, she said, “I’m not so sure about this mildness you mention. A job with no work attached to it—Hamish says Jones was hardly ever in the gym—a fat salary, an assured position, carte blanche to behave as badly as he liked without fear of being dismissed—these things add up to the good life with no strings attached, I should have thought.”

“I see your point, but there was one string attached to this ‘good life’. He has lost it.”

“Well what’s the next step?”

“I must have a word with Mr. Henry, and then we are bound for the blacksmith’s forge in the village.”

“Oh, you are thinking about the steel point on that javelin. You don’t think it was done in the College workshops, then? Yet Hamish says they are very well-equipped, and are not supervised by the staff.”

“I know; but there might be students who would be interested. The murderer could not risk having any questions asked as to what he was doing with the javelin. Incidentally, I was interested to note that a statement I made during my last conversation with Mr. Medlar went unchallenged.”

“What was that?—and why should he have challenged it?”

“I said that the students who buried the body also returned the lethal javelin to that steel-fronted cupboard, whereas, on Mr. Henry’s evidence, no student has access to it until a member of staff unlocks it.”

“Yes, and what about the forge? Students don’t go into the village, do they? And, even if they did, they’ve no money to pay for a blacksmith’s work or for any other job.”