A Javelin for Jonah

“No. It narrows the field again, does it not?”

“To the staff, you mean. You’ve thought that, all along. If so, it looks like Barry.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There was the accident to his star long-jumper, and there was the choice of the long-jump pit to bury the body. Both seem to add up to his signature tune.”

“Your first premise is sound; your second is unsound. The students, not the murderer, buried the body. The choice of the long-jump pit as a grave-yard was arbitrary. The task of burial had to be done as quickly as possible, and the long-jump pit offered the easiest digging.”

“But the body was found so soon. It was bound to be.”

“That did not matter to the students. Their only concern was that it should not be found in a place with which they had guilty associations; and that brings me to my previous point. I told Mr. Medlar that the students not only buried the body, but also cleaned the point of the javelin, and then I expected him to ask me how the javelin was replaced in the locked-up, steel-fronted sports cupboard, but he did not do so.”

“Like me, I suppose the question didn’t occur to him at the time.”

“It is interesting, nevertheless.”

“Yes, indeed, if it’s really true that the students had no access to that cupboard. Strengthens your theory that the murderer is one of the staff.”

“Unless the very useful and dangerous key belonging to Miss Yale will unlock the store cupboard as well as the heating-cellar and Mr. Medlar’s office and ante-room. It is a point which may need clearing up.”

Their conversation was interrupted by an announcement from one of the servants that the police were at hand and would be glad of a word with Dame Beatrice. They had come from attending the inquest on Jones.

“The proceedings are adjourned, ma’am,” said the inspector, “as we knew they would have to be. We’re treating it as a case of murder owing to the body having been buried. We shall be pursuing our enquiries and hope that we can count on your assistance in sorting matters out. A psychiatrist might be very helpful to us.”

“Supposing that the body had not been buried, Inspector? You have not identified the weapon, have you?”

“Not as would be to the satisfaction of a jury, no, ma’am, we haven’t. To our way of thinking, though, and with the medical evidence which was given, we think that tarted-up javelin we were shown could have done the trick all right. We reckon that some of the students who were in the know, and whose names we’ve had given us, sneaked into that furnace-room cellar where they’d put him, did for Jones, buried the body and cleaned up the bloodstains, including those on the javelin. That floor had been washed, and the janitor says he hadn’t been down there for weeks.”

“I am in agreement with you, except, of course, that it need not have been those students who killed Mr. Jones.”

“Bit of a coincidence if it wasn’t, ma’am. Some of them might have thought locking him up like that was a sort of a joke, but others, we reckon, took advantage to pay off old scores.”

“Somebody certainly did. That somebody had already, however, turned a sports javelin into a lethal weapon, so, to that extent, the murder must have been premeditated and could not have depended simply upon chance. In other words, Inspector, I think you are barking up the wrong tree when you cite these students as the murderers. I think the real murderer was not prepared to act until he saw a favourable opportunity. I think these students provided that opportunity and for that they are culpable, but that is the sum total of their responsibility.”

“Then why should they bury the body, ma’am?”

Dame Beatrice gave him her theory as to what had actually happened.

“Oh, you think they only found the body? Could be, I suppose,” the inspector said dubiously. “Still doesn’t tell us who killed him. We shall be pursuing our enquiries, of course.”

“Then perhaps you can save me a trip to the village. Find out whether the blacksmith knows anything about the new head which was put on the suspect javelin.”

“Oh, we’ve done that, ma’am. Not that we expected anything to come of it. He denies it, of course, and we believe him. That job was done in one of the workshops here. They’re far better equipped than he is. He only does what I call local jobs—horse-shoes for the riding-schools and a bit of tinkering up of this and that. He’s a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Often leaves a lad at the forge while he takes on other jobs.”

“He had a powerful grudge against Mr. Jones, though. He credited him with the seduction of his daughter, who was one of the maids here,” said Dame Beatrice.

“Can’t see him going into that cellar and stabbing Jones, ma’am.”

“Neither can I, but I can see him putting that new head on the javelin and maybe putting two and two together about it, especially if he happened to know that the person who wanted the javelin altered also had a grudge against Mr. Jones.”

“I don’t think you cut much ice,” said Laura, when the inspector had gone. “He’s convinced that those students killed Jones, so what he’ll do now, I suppose, is to ferret out motive. You can’t get a conviction on the motive alone, but he can show they had the opportunity.”

“But it may be more difficult to show that they had the means; in other words, that they knew where to lay their hands on a lethal weapon.”

“Obviously he thinks that they put a new point on an old javelin and that the whole thing was premeditated. The trouble about that theory is that the whole College seems to have known about the rag, and those six were simply the committee chosen to carry it out. You can’t wish yourself on to a committee if the election is properly supervised.”

“That will have occurred to the inspector, no doubt. From that he will argue that, while I may be right about the six and that, while they were responsible for the burial, they were not responsible for the murder, other students took advantage of Mr. Jones’s helpless situation.”