contriving to arrive by Miss Lucy’s side just in time to help her distribute the pastries about the table. Whether he took any special interest in her ear, I could not observe.
I acquired a cup of tea and a slice of tea-cake and assumed my accustomed role as an observer of phenomena. This has been my natural inclination for years, and I have enhanced whatever ability I began with by a conscious effort to accurately take note of what I see. I had practiced this for long enough, even then, that it had become second nature to me. I could not sit opposite a man on a railway car without, for example, noticing by his watch-fob that he was a Rosicrucian, let us say, and by the wear-marks on his left cuff that he was a note-cashier or an order clerk. A smudge of ink on his right thumb would favor the note-cashier hypothesis, while the state of his boots might show that he had not been at work that day. The note-case that he kept clutched to his body might indicate that he was transferring notes to a branch bank, or possibly that he was absconding with the bank’s funds. And so on. I go into this only to show that my observations were not made in anticipation of tragedy, but were merely the result of my fixed habit.
I walked about the lawn for the next hour or so, stopping here and there to nod hello to this student or that professor. I lingered at the edge of this group, and listened for a while to a spirited critique of Wilkie Collin’s recent novel, “The Moonstone,” and how it represented an entirely new sort of fiction. I paused by that cluster to hear a young man earnestly explicating on the good works being done by Mr. William Booth and his Christian Revival Association in the slums of our larger cities. I have always distrusted earnest, pious, loud young men. If they are sincere, they’re insufferable. If they are not sincere, they’re dangerous.
I observed Andrea Maples, who had dried her feet and lowered her skirts, take a platter of pastries and wander around the lawn, offering a cruller here and a tea-cake there, whispering intimate comments to accompany the pastry. Mrs. Maples had a gift for instant intimacy, for creating the illusion that you and she shared wonderful, if unimportant, secrets. She sidled by Crisboy, who was now busy leading five or six of his athletic proteges in doing push-ups, and whispered something to young Faulting, the games coach, and he laughed. And then she was up on her tip-toes whispering some more. After perhaps a minute, which is a long time to be whispering, she danced a few steps back and paused, and Faulting blushed. Blushing has quite gone out of fashion now, but it was quite the thing for both men and women back in the seventies. Although how something that is believed to be an involuntary physiological reaction can be either in or out of fashion demands more study by Dr. Freud and his fellow psycho- analysts.
Crisboy gathered himself and leaped to his feet. “Stay on your own side of the street!” he yapped at Andrea Maples, which startled both her and the young gamesmen, two of whom rolled over and stared up at the scene, while the other three or four continued doing push-ups at a frantic pace, as though there was nothing remarkable happening above them. After a second Mrs. Maples laughed and thrust the plate of pastries out at him.
Professor Maples turned to stare at the little group some twenty feet away from him and his hands tightened around his walking stick. Although he strove to remain calm, he was clearly in the grip of some powerful emotion for a few seconds before he regained control. “Now, now, my dear,” he called across the lawn. “Let us not incite the athletes.”
Andrea skipped over to him and leaned over to whisper in his ear. As she was facing me this time, and I had practiced lip-reading for some years, I could make out what she said: “Perhaps I’ll do you a favor, poppa bear,” she whispered. His reply was not visible to me.
A few minutes later my wanderings took me over to where Sherlock Holmes was sitting by himself on one of the canvas chairs near the french windows looking disconsolate. “Well,” I said, looking around, “and where is Miss Lucy?”
“She suddenly discovered that she had a sick headache and needed to go lie down. Presumably she has gone to lie down,” he told me.
“I see,” I said. “Leaving you to suffer alone among the multitude.”
“I’m afraid it must have been something I said,” Holmes confided to me.
“Really? What did you say?”
“I’m not sure. I was speaking about-well…” Holmes looked embarrassed, a look I had never seen him encompass before, nor have I seen it since.
“Hopes and dreams,” I suggested.
“Something of that nature,” he agreed. “Why is it that words that sound so-important-when one is speaking to a young lady with whom one is on close terms, would sound ridiculous when spoken to the world at large? That is, you understand, Mr. Moriarty, a rhetorical question.”
“I do understand,” I told him. “Shall we return to the college?”
And so we did.
The next afternoon found me in the commons room sitting in my usual chair beneath the oil painting of Sir James Walsingham, the first chancellor of Queens College, receiving the keys to the college from Queen Elizabeth. I was dividing my attention between my cup of coffee and a letter from the reverend Charles Dodgson, a fellow mathematician who was then at Oxford, in which he put forth some of his ideas concerning what we might call the mathematical constraints of logical constructions. My solitude was interrupted by Dean McCuthers, who toddled over, cup of tea in hand, looking even older than usual, and dropped into the chair next to me. “Afternoon, Moriarty,” he breathed. “Isn’t it dreadful?”
I put the letter aside. “Isn’t what dreadful?” I asked him. “The day? The war news? Huxley’s Theory of Biogenesis? Perhaps you’re referring to the coffee-it is pretty dreadful today.”
McCuthers shook his head sadly. “Would that I could take the news so lightly,” he said. “I am always so aware, so sadly aware, of John Donne’s admonishment.”
“I thought Donne had done with admonishing for these past two hundred years or so,” I said.
But there was no stopping McCuthers. He was determined to quote Donne, and quote he did: “‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind,’” he went on, ignoring my comment. “‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’”
I forbore from mentioning that the dean, a solitary man who spent most of his waking hours pondering over literature written over two thousand years before he was born, was probably less involved in mankind than any man I had ever known. “I see,” I said. “The bell has tolled for someone?”
“And murder makes it so much worse,” McCuthers continued. “As Lucretius puts it-”
“Who was murdered?” I asked firmly, cutting through his tour of the classics.
“Eh? You mean you don’t know? Oh, dear me. This will come as something of a shock, then. It’s that Professor Maples-”
“Someone has murdered Maples?”
“No, no. My thought was unfinished. Professor Maples has been arrested. His wife-Andrea-Mrs. Maples-has been murdered.”
I was, I will admit it, bemused. You may substitute a stronger term if you like. I tried to get some more details from McCuthers, but the dean’s involvement with the facts had not gone beyond the murder and the arrest. I finished my coffee and went off in search of more information.
Murder is a sensational crime which evokes a formidable amount of interest, even among the staid and unworldly dons of Queens College. And a murder in mediis rebus, or perhaps better, in mediis universitatibus; one that actually occurs among said staid dons, will intrude on the contemplations of even the most unworldly. The story, which spread rapidly through the college, was this:
A quartet of bicyclists, underclassmen from St. Simon’s College, set out together at dawn three days a week, rain or shine, to get an hour or two’s cycling in before breakfast. This morning, undeterred by the chill drizzle that had begun during the night, they went out along Barleymore Road as usual. At about eight o’clock, or shortly after, they happened to stop at the front steps to the small cottage on Professor Maples’ property. One of the bicycles had throw a shoe, or something of the sort, and they had paused to repair the damage. The chain-operated bicycle had been in existence for only a few years back then, and was prone to a variety of malfunctions. I understand that bicyclists, even today, find it useful to carry about a complete set of tools in order to be prepared for the inevitable mishap.
One of the party, who was sitting on the cottage steps with his back up against the door, as much out of the rain as he could manage, indulging in a pipeful of Latakia while the damaged machine was being repaired, felt something sticky under his hand. He looked, and discovered a widening stain coming out from under the door. Now, according to which version of the story you find most to your liking, he either pointed to the stain and said, “I say,
