Tom Brown's Body

'I like her so little,' said Gavin deliberately, 'that, if she had the physical strength, I'd suspect her of murdering Conway herself. I said she's well out of it, but I'm not sure I'd have cared to be in Conway's shoes, either. Chelsea Arts Club Ball? Wonder whether there's anything at the London end which would help us?'

This seemed to Mrs Bradley doubtful. Conway's London life, so far as Gavin had been able to make out in his previous researches, could have been summed up as Love Among the Intelligentsia. In a Bohemian and rootless society he had flourished like the green bay tree. His easy conquests and even easier retreats had left no more than a tolerant memory of themselves, for no such fluttering of the dovecots had attended his amoral and amorous adventures in London as had caused so much havoc in the monastic seclusion of Spey.

He had not been much liked by the beards and berets of the colony, but then, as they explained, waving paint and nicotine-stained fingers, they had never got to know him very well. He came and he went. For instance, said they, they had never realized that he was, among other things, a Schoolmaster; on the other hand, they had never enquired, of course. Live and let live was their motto.

'Glad you can live up to half of it, anyhow,' thought Gavin; and went on to interview the ladies of the little colony. These spoke well of Conway. He was inclined to be sadistic in his love-making; all were agreed upon that. But he was healthy, strong, vigorous, wilful, and amusing. They had been sorry to hear that he was dead. Some jealous husband, they surmised, had gone outside the canons of good taste and had done for him, once and for all. Good and proper, they added, their tones congratulating the jealous but manful husband.

'I should like to have painted Gerald dead,' said one lady, dreamily. 'He must have looked like Itylus.'

'Icarus,' said her friend.

'Yes, I meant Icarus.'

'He hadn't exactly grown wings, had he?' said Gavin, grinning. 'And he was dressed, when he was found, in flannel bags and a sports jacket. Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and, no doubt,' he added gallantly, 'at the end of her paint-brush, too. Did anyone ever paint him, by the way? Alive, I mean.'

'Oh, yes,' was the immediate response from the first of the two. 'We all painted him, of course, at different times. He was terribly paintogenic'

It was at this point that Gavin had one of those irrational hunches which are the gift of the gods to deserving, intelligent, open-minded policemen.

'Was he ever painted in fancy dress?' he enquired.

'Oh, yes, of course. He made a divine Bacchus, and most of us at one time or another did him as Hamlet, too.'

'Laertes,' said the friend who had corrected her before.

'Oh, well, Laertes, then. It comes to the same thing.'

Her friend, who had experienced a normal education before she had received the urge to paint, smiled at Gavin and did not reply. He did not reply to the smile.

'And, of course, there was that thing Camelot Eager did of him,' said the first girl, doubtfully, 'but it wasn't Gerald, if you know what I mean. What with that horrible mask, and the stilts and things, it could have been simply anybody. Still, there's no doubt that Gerald was a great success at the Chelsea Arts Ball. The rest of us just crept under his huge legs, and all that sort of thing. He was on stilts, you see.'

'Ah!' said Gavin, on a note of deep Scottish reverence. 'Was he really? And did he bring anybody with him?'

'Did he!' replied the girl in a tone which blended annoyance with unwilling and rueful self-depreciation. 'I'll say he did!'

She proceeded to give a portrait-in-words of Mrs Pound-bury. Gavin was delighted. 'And how long ago did you say this was?' he demanded. The answer dashed his hopes.

'Oh, it was the one they had in the year before last.'

'Too far back,' he thought despondently. 'It doesn't get us any further.' He had reported the information to Mrs Bradley, however, and before he returned to London to make further enquiries she suggested that he might try to get hold of the pictures of Conway which his friends had painted.

He came back to Spey with two portraits.

'Interesting, but not helpful, I fancy,' he said. 'Now what about this boy Scrupe and Marion Pearson?'

'There was nothing much in the letters,' said Marion, at this next interview.

'I know. We read 'em,' said Gavin. 'The signature didn't mean anything to us at the time, although we supposed we should have to contact this Marion sometime or other. But the letters, if you don't mind my saying so, were so innocent, and sort of prattle-y, that we weren't particularly interested in the writer, especially as the letters were undated and there was no hint of – forgive me! – passion and all that. We thought, as a matter of fact, that they might have come from a cousin of his, or someone.'

'Yes, I expect they were pretty ordinary,' said their author. 'Lucky for me, I suppose.'

'More about Scrupe, please,' said Gavin. 'He's one of the boys you particularly liked, I gather – apart from his embarrassing fondness, I mean. He's rather a clever boy, isn't he?'

'Yes, he's a most entertaining, attractive boy. I found he'd broken into the cottage and I caught him with a mask in his hands. He didn't seem a bit surprised to see me. 'Hullo, Marion, darling,' he said. 'What are you doing here? – and what the devil's this I've got hold of? Did Mr Pearson make it! It looks like his work. I say, I couldn't borrow it, I suppose? I'm going to a fancy dress dance at my aunt's this Christmas and my aunt's been chivvying me to write and tell her what sort of costume I want. This would be a smasher, wouldn't it? How do you think I'd look with my manly torso all painted an irresistible deep chocolate colour, and with a garland of pussy's-tails round my slim and connubial middle?''

'And what did you say to that?' enquired Gavin, fitting this portrait of Scrupe into the frame already supplied by Mrs Bradley, and reflecting, in his crude, masculine way, that six with an ashplant would do the youth very little harm.

'I pointed out that everything in the cottage belonged neither to him nor to me, and that, in any case, he had no business to be there. Then Scrupe very cheekily asked me what I was doing there, then. 'And letting yourself in with a key, too, as large as life,' he finished up.'

'But how did the young devil know that the mask was there?' demanded Gavin.

'I don't believe he did. I believe he was just snooping round. I accused him of it, in fact, and he just put his head on one side and said, 'That's all very well, you know, precious, but I adhere to my previous question. If I'm snooping so are you. Now, why?' I was idiot enough to get angry at that, and I told him pretty sharply to mind his own business. 'If you were a gentleman,' I said, 'you'd go away at once. My private affairs are nothing to do with you.' He just grinned like a monkey at that, and – well, I had to tell him. At least, I thought I had to. 'I am engaged to Mr Conway, if you want to know,' I said, 'and I'm here to take back my letters.' He sobered down at that. I've never seen such a sudden change in anybody. He is really a very nice boy. 'I say, old thing,' he said, 'you are a fool! You'd better get out of that, you know. I don't want to speak ill of my mentors and preceptors, but Conway is a tick.' I boxed his ears, hard, but he just shook his head, like a horse shaking off a fly, and said, 'Your guilty and disgraceful secret is safe with me; is mine with you if I just borrow this head?' Then he climbed through the window and ran away.'

'With or without the head?'

'Without. I suppose he must have come back for it later when I'd gone home.'

'And you think that the news of your engagement was such a shock that this boy laid for Mr Conway?' demanded Gavin. Marion shook her head.

'I've been answering your question, that's all,' she said. 'You asked me what I knew about Scrupe.'

'The devil I did!' thought Gavin.

'And another thing,' he added to Mrs Bradley. 'Now that I know the girl was away from home that night, I shall have to see whether Pearson's got any sort of alibi for the time of the murder.'

'I should tackle Scrupe first,' said Mrs Bradley, 'and leave Mr Pearson's alibi to simmer.'

Gavin took this advice on the principle that a nod was as good as a wink to a blind horse.

'Now, Scrupe,' he said, having obtained Mr Wyck's permission to talk to the boy and having disposed of Mr May-hew's objections to this course, 'I'm going to ask you some questions which it may seem well to you that you should refuse to answer.'

'Not at all, sir,' said Scrupe, squinting modestly downwards.