Tom Brown's Body

wholly or partially drowned, but that's neither here nor there with respect to the matter under discussion.'

'So you have no objection to admitting that you and your brother were up and about that night?'

'No objection at all. Why should I have? My conscience is clear,' said Miss Loveday, closing the argument. Mrs Bradley sought the first opportunity of reopening it, but this time she attacked the weaker partner.

'What were you doing at your Roman Bath on the night of Mr Conway's death?' she enquired of Mr Loveday with considerable abruptness, going out to where he was embarrassing Cartaris by personally conducting and supervising a House football practice.

'Put your head down, boy!' yelled Mr Loveday; and then he replied vaguely, 'Doing? Oh, stoking the furnace, you know; the hypocaust. A tricky business. Just stoking, but it requires an expert hand, and is a disagreeable business because the roof is low. Slaves did the stoking for the Romans, as you are aware, but I cannot ask my servants to undertake it at night, although my knife-and-boot boy can see to it during the daytime, and usually does so.'

'How often do you go out at nights for the purpose?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'Feet I Feet!' yelled Mr Loveday. 'Every now and then,' he added maddeningly.

'So that when the Superintendent of Police asked you what reason you had for setting your House in order,' said Mrs Bradley, paraphrasing a conversation which the Superintendent had rehearsed to her and of which she had been quick to see the point, 'your reason was really a very good one indeed?'

'How do you mean?' Mr Loveday enquired; but his body had stiffened, Mrs Bradley noticed.

'You yourself, not to mention your sister, had actually been out of the House and at the Roman Bath that night,' she gravely explained, 'and therefore you wanted to be sure that the police should not suspect you of having murdered Mr Conway.'

'Oh, nonsense!' said Mr Loveday, with unusual vigour. 'We could scarcely have known that somebody would attack and drown poor Conway on a night when we were out of the House! By putting my House in order, as I believe I termed it, I merely wished to be certain that none of my boys could be held blameworthy. It was a very great shock to me when I was told that Merrys and Skene had been absent from the House one night not long before the event.'

'By the event, you refer to –'

'Well kicked, boy!' cried Mr Loveday. 'Coincidences are bound to occur,' he added, turning again to Mrs Bradley, 'and it is coincidence, pure and simple, that our expedition that evening should anticipate Conway's death, but there is nothing very strange about it, surely? – particularly as Miss Loveday and I were in the habit of stoking the furnace.'

'I suppose not, if you put it that way,' Mrs Bradley agreed. 'Who composes the menus for the House suppers?' she demanded suddenly.

'My sister, of course, as my housekeeper. Or, rather, she keeps or delegates that privilege, as she chooses.'

'Does she often give the boys fish-pie?'

'They have it sometimes, except for Takhobali. He never eats it.'

'He did, on the night of the murder.'

'That was foolish of him, then,' said Mr Loveday. 'The boy knows perfectly well that it makes him bilious. Although why it should – pass, boy, pass! – I find it impossible to imagine. A simple, light, nourishing dish like – that's better, Forrester! Hand him off, man! – like fish-pie would not, one would fancy, upset anybody.'

'Some people are allergic to fish,' said Mrs Bradley. 'No doubt that is the case with Prince Takhobali. And I wonder who talked of eels to Mr Micklethwaite?'

'I suppose Takhobali saw the lights at the Roman Bath that night and thought the spot was haunted,' said Mr Loveday, turning thoughtfully away from his House practice and accompanying Mrs Bradley along the edge of Big Field towards the School House. 'And how do you react to our culinary miracles?' he enquired, almost in his sister's feminine idiom, but with an ironic note in his voice which rather surprised Mrs Bradley. She praised the cook's resourcefulness, remarked upon what a problem meals now provided for hapless housekeepers, and instanced her own French cook's difficulties and exasperations.

'Tell me', she said to Mrs Wyck, as they sat at dinner in the Headmaster's private dining-room – for Mrs Wyck dined only once a term with the School House boys – 'what you think of Mr and Miss Loveday.'

'What do I think of them? – as possible murderers, do you mean?' asked Mrs Wyck, who combined, as a Headmaster's wife had need to do, great simplicity and great perspicacity in unpredictable proportions. 'Well, I think they've been rather clever, so far, haven't they? – if they did it, I mean. Of course, I don't really think they did, for a minute. But do let's talk about them as though they did do it. I'm so sick of policemen's questions that it will be a change to have a straightforward discussion without any questions at all.'

'But there will be heaps of questions,' said Mrs Bradley promptly. 'Heaps and heaps. And I shall ask most of them,' she added. 'First, tell me why you don't suspect the Love-days.'

'I thought we'd agreed to suspect them. Oh, well, never mind. I don't think they're the sort of people to do anything wrong. Not anything as wrong as murder, anyway. I can't explain what I mean, but – well, just that.'

'I know exactly what you mean. And yet, you know, somebody killed Mr Conway.'

'Oh, good! We're going to suspect them, after all! But, you know, Gerald Conway had some very queer acquaintances, hadn't he? Some rather odd things have come out about him since his death. Don't you think it's much more likely – ?'

'Have some odd things come out? – Still, the police would look closely into all that sort of thing.'

'Yes, they have. They told Christopher so. Their own opinion is clear. They think somebody here did it. But, speaking seriously, I can't believe that. I keep going over everybody in my mind, and I can't fix upon a single person capable of such an act except –'

'Except?'

'I ought not to say it, even to you, but the only people I can think of are Brenda and Louis Kay.'

'Is his name really Louis? I was given to understand –'

'His name is Bennett Arturo Kay, and his wife calls him Benny, when she calls him anything. Anyway, I think they are the likeliest, because they've got the biggest motive, except for the Poundburys. Motive always counts most with the police, doesn't it? Of course, in real life, as I say, I don't believe anybody here did it, but if I were writing a detective story, or reading an account in the paper, I should plump for the Kays. Louis was an enemy of Gerald Conway, and with good reason, I believe.'

'And the Poundburys?'

'Oh, well, I like the Poundburys, and, between ourselves, I don't really like the Kays at all. Besides, I think the balance would have to be on the side of the Kays because, if what I suspect is true, they both had a motive, whereas, in the case of the Poundburys, only he would have had one. That's old scandal, of course, and I ought not to repeat it, but I expect everybody knows all about it by now. Even the police know, which is rather dreadful, but I believe they are very discreet.'

'I know something about it myself, as the result of the Governors' meeting,' said Mrs Bradley. 'But would you say that Mrs Poundbury had no motive? She might have had her own reasons for jealousy, particularly as his engagement had been announced. But we're losing sight of the Lovedays. Now what do you make of this?'

She recounted to Mrs Wyck the story of Takhobali and the fish-pie.

'But why on earth did the silly boy eat the stuff if it always makes him ill?' demanded Mrs Wyck. Mrs Bradley shrugged.

'That is one of the things I want to find out,' she said. 'But I don't want the boys to think it has any importance beyond the importance they already know it has.' And she told Mrs Wyck the story of the river lights on the night of Conway's death. 'Then, you see,' she added, 'there is the fact that the Lovedays were both out of the House on the night of the murder.'

'That looks so bad that it must be a proof of their innocence, though,' said Mrs Wyck. 'What else is there against them?'

'I was hoping that you could tell me that,' said Mrs