Fault in the Structure

‘From which I excused myself after dinner, as you had suggested this talk. I will return there.’

The Senior Commonroom, like the west front of the College buildings, belonged to another century. It was part of the Tudor wing and its principal features were the linenfold panelling of its walls, a magnificent fireplace and a ceiling heavily plastered with meaningless arabesques and with oval lozenges incorporating the coats of arms of the various benefactors to the College.

Surprisingly, the College bore the name of the founder of Magdalen College, Oxford. Above the fireplace were carved the mitre and the arms of Bishop William Wayneflete and on the ceiling in the largest of the ovals were ‘in lozengy ermine and sable a chief sable with three lilies therein’ the chaste ecclesiastical bearings of the late fifteenth-century prelate, one-time headmaster of Winchester College and, later, the Provost of Eton before he became exalted to the See of Winchester.

In front of the fireplace stood Lestrange’s quarry. Thaddeus Edison Lawrence, as Swinburne now called himself, was a tall, thin man of thirty-two. His untidy, dark hair was worn collar-length, and he had large hands which he was using freely to emphasise his remarks to his only companion, an elderly, totally deaf don named Bagg. Lawrence had a peevish, sensual, melancholy face which reminded himself of Lord Byron and others of a disgruntled although rather handsome camel.

As soon as he saw Lestrange enter the room he broke off what he was saying, raised his eyebrows and stared distastefully at the intruder. Lestrange, however, ignored him and joined the Dean and the Bursar, who had been arguing a point of law and who seized upon Lestrange to give a verdict.

Finding that the mountain was in no hurry to come to Mahomet, Lawrence strolled over to the group of three, listened to the argument without joining in it, and then said to Lestrange, ‘I saw you walking in the garden with my uncle.’ His voice was not cordial.

‘Yes.’ The College dignitaries moved away, so, for the moment, the two men were alone. ‘I should be glad of a word with you.’

Lawrence led the way to the rooms which had been allotted to him during his stay in College. Here he sported his oak and then produced whisky.

‘Sit down,’ he said ungraciously, ‘and if you intend to question me, please make the catechism short.’

‘Very well, I’ll be brief to the point of brutality. I suppose you’re being blackmailed,’ said Lestrange.

The other was so surprised that he almost dropped the decanter.

‘Why on earth should you suppose that?’ he demanded.

‘It seems obvious, my poor chap. Look, Lawrence, come clean and I’ll see what I can do to help you. I owe that much to your uncle.’

‘Nobody can help me. I’m supposed to have embezzled forty thousand pounds and haven’t one chance in ten million of being able to prove that I did nothing of the sort. The auditors think they know better.’

‘Forty thousand is not such a vast sum. Relax and tell me the whole story. It is blackmail, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but not for forty thousand pounds. That is ridiculous,’ said Lawrence, after a pause.

‘You didn’t think of telling the blackmailer to go to hell and to spill the beans and be damned?’

‘I couldn’t.’ He hesitated and then resumed: ‘It’s a matter of a previous marriage. It would kill my wife if she knew. You see, I thought Coralie was dead when I married Margaret, but a few months ago she bobbed up again and is bleeding me of sums I can hardly afford in return for not exposing me.’

‘But if you had reason to think she was dead, you have a good case. I call to mind R. v. Tolson, where an almost similar set of circumstances arose. In that case, a woman named Martha Ann Tolson had good reason to believe, on the evidence of his elder brother, that her husband, a sailor in the merchant navy, had been lost at sea on a voyage to America. Some years after his presumed death she re-married, supposing herself to be a widow.

‘However, her first husband turned up again and her second marriage was held to be bigamous. As she was able to plead that she genuinely believed the sailor to be dead, she was not convicted. There was no mens rea, you see.’

‘What does that mean in law?’

‘In layman’s language it means that Martha Ann Tolson had not meant to commit a criminal act; in other words, when the act was committed it was committed in good faith. She had not a guilty mind. It seems to me that, if you truly believed your wife was dead when you married Margaret, you have a good defence and can have no reason to give in to blackmail.’

‘But Margaret would know that I had been married before I met her.’

‘Did you not tell her?’

‘No. I was not even divorced, you see.’

‘What steps did you take to make certain that your first wife was dead?’

‘Well, she wasn’t dead, was she?’

‘How long were you married to her before you parted?’ asked Lestrange, without commenting upon this equivocal answer.

‘Two years. I’ve been married to Margaret for seven, but there was an interval, of course.’

‘So it was how long since you had seen or spoken to your first wife?’

‘Nearly twelve years. I went north to take up an appointment when I left College and did not take her with me. She was hardly an asset in university circles. She is a chorus girl.’

‘Nearly twelve years? I suppose you are certain it was your first wife who turned up again?’

‘Oh, yes, I insisted on a second meeting to make sure, although I hadn’t any doubt the first time. We arranged