Tom Brown's Body

the murder. But then, of course, so have my brother and myself. The police have made that quite clear. So kind of them, really, because one knows exactly where one is, and can spend time on deceit and take pleasure in subterfuge.' She broke off to address the boy, who was politely awaiting her attention outside the window.

'Where's your House-badge?' she demanded, mouthing the words so that the youth could lip-read them. The boy pulled at the neck of his sweater and showed the badge attached to his shirt. Miss Loveday nodded, and the lad ran jogging away. 'They dislike their badges,' said Miss Loveday, turning again to Mrs Bradley. 'They make the boys conspicuous. But I like our lads to be conspicuous. It helps them to make their mark in the world later on. But to this affair of Gerald Conway. Thanks to the proceedings at the inquest, we now all know how the deed was done. Your policeman thinks my brother and I did it at the Roman Bath. You think Bennett Kay and Gilbert Poundbury did it. There is also nothing at present to exclude the thought that Brenda Kay and Carola Poundbury did it. It would not be beyond the scope, I take it, of two young and healthy women to have fallen upon the man and drowned him? Brenda Kay was presumed to have been from home at the time, and' – said Miss Loveday, with an expression of great cunning – 'I do happen to know that Carola Poundbury had her hair permanently waved on the following morning, because I could not get at her to tell her the news of the murder until four o'clock in the afternoon.'

'Interesting,' said Mrs Bradley. 'There is also one other combination of persons who might have had an interest in Conway's death.'

'You mean Marion Pearson and her father, but that's absurd,' declared Miss Loveday. 'Marion is well- balanced.'

'You said just now that she was flighty,' Mrs Bradley pointed out. Miss Loveday opened her mouth to speak, but shut it again without saying anything.

*

'And now, Mr Loveday,' said Mrs Bradley, waylaying the head of that House on his way to his Roman Bath, 'perhaps you will be good enough to confide to me the reason why Inspector Gavin should not arrest you for the murder of Mr Conway.'

'I can think of no reason,' replied Mr Loveday, 'except that I did not murder Mr Conway.'

'Are you sure?' Mrs Bradley enquired, falling into step beside him. 'Which fortunate boys bathe to-day?' she added, with less inconsequence than was apparent.

'Micklethwaite for services rendered, Merrys for excellent conduct. Skene to give him an airing, Parsons because he wishes to learn to swim, and Findlay to save us the trouble of supervising the others,' said Miss Loveday, joining her brother and Mrs Bradley, whom she had followed out on to the gravel.

'Mrs Bradley has just suggested that I ought to be arrested for the murder,' said Mr Loveday. 'What do you say to that, Annette?'

'I have heard of the gambit before,' proclaimed Miss Loveday. 'It is on the principle of the Kipling euphorism: the bleating of the lamb excites the tiger.'

'Would you say euphorism?' Mr Loveday demanded. His sister did not reply.

Mr Loveday admitted his boys to the Bath, and, very shortly, what with Micklethwaite tearing through the water like a shark, little Parsons shivering in the shallow end until the noble Findlay, arriving late, seized him and terrified him into swimming four short, panic-stricken strokes before he grabbed wildly at his mentor and was steered kindly to the side of the Bath, and Merrys and Skene outdoing one another in swimming under water, all were lost to the outside, terrestrial world.

'Surely Micklethwaite is an unusually accomplished swimmer'?' said Mrs Bradley. Miss Loveday glanced at her sharply.

'I have often thought I would like to make a film out of the death of Gerald Conway,' she said. 'Imagine the setting: first one would get a general view of Spey, and then an enlarged picture of Loveday's House. From a dormitory window, like prowling cats, creep a couple of sinuous boys. They are nameless up to the present, but, as their originator and author, I shall decide to call them Merrys and Skene.'

'On the night of Mr Conway's death?' enquired Mrs Bradley.

'Certainly.'

Mrs Bradley, recollecting a piece of evidence which she had tabulated some time previously, suddenly cackled. Miss Loveday, not put out by this, went on:

'They creep round to their Housemaster's private garden and impound his bicycle. They go off on it, and the roving eye of the film camera follows them over hill and dale, and picks them out a little more clearly at last at the gate of a lighted cottage. The lads are lost, and have called at the cottage for guidance.'

'Mr Conway's cottage, of course? Or, rather, the cottage in which he lived his secret life.'

'Yes, and Mr Conway is in residence.'

'But. . .'

'Allow me to continue. He is in residence, but he is no longer alive. Two persons are in the cottage with his dead body. The film does not indicate yet which persons they are. Their figures are thrown in silhouette on the blind. They are, however, John Semple and Bennett Kay.'

'You are basing this theory on the unassailable fact that Mr Semple and Mr Kay were the two who discovered the body,' said Mrs Bradley.

'Exactly so.'

'But on nothing else?'

'John Semple is fanatically devoted to the School. He would do anything to preserve its good name.'

'But surely it does not preserve that good name to have a master murdered!'

'A clever point,' Miss Loveday admitted, 'but it shows me that, with all your vaunted knowledge of the human mind, you do not understand young Semple. He is a fanatic, and my definition of a fanatic is that he must be a seemingly intelligent person with but one dominating thought, which thought, by feeding upon itself, eventually crowds out all other thoughts, so that the person becomes, in effect, mad.'

'Mr Semple certainly does not seem to me mad,' Mrs Bradley protested.

'That is because you see him with a narrow, medical eye. To me he is completely insane.'

'I will bear your opinion in mind. Do, please, go on with your film.'

'It attracts you?'

'It fascinates me. The body of Conway is in the lonely cottage. The two boys are knocking at the door.'

'Quite so. They flee at the sound of a well-known voice – the voice of Bennett Kay. That disposes of the boys. We see no more of them.'

'What a pity! I should have liked to follow them home.'

'The original script did, but the cutter removed the sequence to save time. Meanwhile, we are admitted to the cottage kitchen. The sink is full of water. The drowned man lies on the floor. We are left to draw our conclusions, while the shadows of his murderers, in the light of the kitchen candle, pass slowly, one after the other, over the recumbent victim.'

'A powerful sequence.'

'I think so. The shadows stoop and then straighten, and a bizarre procession walks into the pouring rain. We follow it to the School and to Bennett Kay's garden.'

'Rather a curious place to choose if he was one of the murderers?' Mrs Bradley felt bound to suggest. Miss Love-day waved the point aside.

'I can see how your mind is working,' she observed. 'You think my brother and I drowned that unspeakable puppy here in the Roman Bath. But you know very little of my brother if you think for a single instant that he would sully the apple of his eye with that gross and pampered mote, the body, alive or dead, of Gerald Conway.'

21. The Hunt is Up

*

Where was your Post last Night, my Boy?

IBID. (Act 1, Scene 6)

'AND that is the obstacle, of course, to the Roman Bath theory of the drowning,' said Mrs Bradley. 'Her striking metaphor carries extraordinary weight. Mr Loveday would never have polluted his