Fault in the Structure

‘Within limits, and those limits are confidently covered by his landlady’s statement.’

‘I see. And what about the accused men, Oates and Wagstaffe?’

‘Apart from Lawrence himself, they not only fulfil all the requirements, but are even more vulnerable than, after we had questioned him, we thought Lawrence was. They – or one of them – had a motive which, in Lawrence’s case, did not exist. Apparently Mrs Lawrence had been making herself very unpleasant to the porters over a missing parcel. She seems to have been a very plain-spoken young woman.’

‘If we might return to the subject of Oates and Wagstaffe, do you suppose them to have been in collusion over the murder?’

‘One could have been accessory to the other, but that will sort itself out sooner or later. We believe the murder was committed by one man only, but at the moment we cannot eliminate either Oates or Wagstaffe because, after the lapse of time between the murder and the discovery of the body, the medical evidence of time of death can only be approximate. As you probably know, the porters’ hours of duty alternate. They work a shift system in the porters’ lodge from eight in the morning until midnight, four hours on and four hours off duty. They sleep in their own homes, which are less than a stone’s throw from the College and are, in fact, two semi-detached cottages, both of them College property so that the porters live rent free. The College is well endowed, thanks to the generosity of a former student, and the porters’jobs are exceptionally well paid.’

‘So that the men who had charge of the lodge would stand to lose excellent wages and rent-free accommodation if a charge of theft was proved against them,’ said Laura.

‘Exactly. It makes a powerful motive for getting rid of their accuser.’

‘But I thought the High Mistress had refused to entertain the theory that the missing parcel had been stolen by the porters,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What was in it, I wonder?’

‘According to Mrs Lawrence, when she called in the police, a gold repeater watch with a repousse case very elegantly moulded with a scene of Greek nymphs. It had a champleve dial and the hall-mark of 1724. A very valuable piece indeed.’

‘You appear to have memorised its perfections,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘I’m interested in clocks and watches and have a small collection of my own, so I was particularly interested.’

‘What is a repousse case?’ asked Laura.

‘Like anything else repousse.’

‘Oh, embossed. That accounts for the Greek nymphs, I suppose. And what is a champleve dial? I’m sorry to be so ignorant.’

‘Not at all. Champleve is a technical term. It means that the dial of the watch has been cut away so that the numerals and other marks remain raised up.’

‘Thank you. So what would such a watch be worth?’

‘I could not say. Much would depend upon its condition.’

‘Had Mrs Lawrence seen it before it disappeared?’

‘No. She told us she had the description of it in a letter from the friend who sent it to her. She simply referred to him as ‘Old Sir Anthony’. He wrote the letter to tell her that he was despatching the watch by registered post – or so she said.’

‘So it was signed for,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Apparently not. The old gentleman must have omitted or forgotten to register the parcel. The porters contended that it had never turned up at all and the post office could not trace it.’

‘And Mrs Lawrence affirmed that she had informed the porters that a parcel was to arrive for her?’

‘Yes, but she described it as a registered parcel which, of course, owing to an oversight on the part, we think, of Sir Anthony himself, it was not. The servant would have registered it if he had been instructed to do so.’

‘And there is no means of knowing which of the two porters was most likely to have taken it in if, indeed, it was ever delivered at the College?’

‘No means at all. The man, Oates, clocks in at eight in the morning and goes off at twelve, so that if the parcel came by letter post which, as presumably it was small in bulk and not particularly heavy, it may well have done, Oates would have taken it in; but if it came by parcel post, it would not have arrived at the porters’ lodge until between half-past two and half-past three in the afternoon, when Wagstaffe would have been on duty.’

‘The porters were questioned at the time, I suppose?’

‘Yes, but with a score or more parcels arriving every day for students and staff, they couldn’t possibly be expected to remember any particular one, especially as nobody could tell them exactly which day or by which post it would have come, or give an exact description of it.’

‘So nothing could be proved, yet the porters remained under suspicion.’

‘Lambasted good and proper by Mrs Lawrence, one gathers,’ said Laura.

‘Until one or both of them got sick of it and did for her. Yes, I suppose that’s about the size of it,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘It’s not a clear-cut case by any means, though.’

Dame Beatrice and Laura left the Chief Constable’s house at soon after nine and returned to the College and the High Mistress’s Lodging to recount the details of the interview.

‘How many people knew of the gatehouse cellar?’ Dame Beatrice asked her.

‘I suppose any number of people could have known of it, but only the porters and Mrs Lawrence had keys to it.’