A Javelin for Jonah

Before he could finish the sentence, Sharp had leapt from the side of the young police-constable, seized the pistol, which Henry had put down dangerously near that end of the table, and had shot himself in the chest.

“Oh, hell!” said the inspector. “You young fool, Ryder! You ought to have known it was loaded. Quickly! Get a doctor! No. Get Dame Beatrice. She’s in the waiting-room. She’s a doctor!”

They were back in the senior common room at Joynings. Lunch was over and coffee was being served.

“Oh, yes, Sharp will live to stand trial,” said Dame Beatrice. “His attempted suicide was tantamount to a confession, which is just as well, since the evidence we have is not as complete as the inspector would wish.”

“But how did you come to fix on Merve?” asked Miss Yale. “Of course, he’s the obvious choice, when one comes to think of it, but I never even thought of him.”

“The idea that an outsider was the murderer first came to me when Mr. Henry told me that the whole College was in Hall for Thursday dinner. That fitted in very well with the estimated time of death. I must admit, though, that it was a long time before I thought of Sharp,” Dame Beatrice modestly replied. “I think the first clue I received was when I was told that Sharp, having been advised that he was not to return here when he was discharged from hospital, had been given a post in his uncle’s steel works. That tied in with the lethal head which had been put on that javelin. Then there was the question of motive.”

“Several of us might be thought to have had a motive for murdering Jonah,” said Barry, grimly. “Myself, for one.”

“Yes, you were on my short list for a time,” said Dame Beatrice equably; “so was Mr. Medlar.”

“I?” cried Gascoigne, aghast. “Oh, but, really!” Dame Beatrice fixed on him a basilisk eye. “I had my reasons for suspecting you,” she said, “as you should know, Mr. Medlar. It was abundantly clear that, to some extent, you were being blackmailed by your brother-in-law.”

“I grudged poor Davy nothing!” cried Gascoigne.

“Well, you and Mr. Barry were my chief suspects, as I say.” Dame Beatrice went on, “but what with the steel works, plus Sharp’s previous reputation and the fact that he had been a student here…”

“And so knew all the ropes, even before he came on to the staff,” said Jerry, “and was a bad hat, anyway…”

“And might, I thought, have retained his key to the store-cupboard. Then he could also have found out that Miss Yale had a key which would open the heating-cellar. He had a motive for hating Jones and Mr. Medlar. One had been given the gymnastics post which he had expected would be his, the other had not only given that post away, but had subsequently dismissed him from the staff altogether. He fully intended, when opportunity offered, to kill the one and ruin the other.”

“But how did he know that the students had shut Jonah up in the stoke-hole?” asked Martin. “That’s what’s been such a mystery to me, and that’s why my private opinion had always been, until now, that one of the students must have killed Jonah.”

“I think, but cannot prove, that Sharp had kept in touch with one of the students,” Dame Beatrice replied.

“Paul-Pierre, for my money,” said Celia. “They were as thick as thieves when Merve was on the staff. Merve spent most of his time coaching P-P. That’s why his swimming has come on so well, I expect.”

“You mean that the French youth was an accessory to murder?” asked Henry.

“I do not suppose Paul-Pierre thought of murder,” said Dame Beatrice, “but he knew that Sharp hated Mr. Jones and he probably decided that it would add a little more excitement to the so-called rag if Sharp got into the cellar and attacked its unwilling inmate.”

“But the javelin,” said Miss Yale. “Merve couldn’t have got the job on the javelin done in that short space of time. Jonah was only in the cellar a couple of days before he was killed, I thought.”

“Oh, I think Sharp had stolen the javelin long before he killed Mr. Jones with it,” said Dame Beatrice. “Mr. Henry has made it clear that not more than six javelins were ever in use at any one time, and that, under his somewhat lax supervision, the javelin-throwers always chose their own implements. The fact that one was missing for a time seems to have gone unnoticed. It was a mistake on Sharp’s part to put it back on the rack.”

“So you think that was Merve,” said Martin. “I thought the students who buried the body put the javelin back.”

“So did I, at first,” Dame Beatrice admitted, “but as it became clear that they had no possible access to that particular cupboard, I was compelled to change my mind.”

“But why did he return the javelin to store,” asked Lesley, “if it was such a stupid thing to do?”

“Once he had committed murder with it, his only idea was to get rid of it in a way which did not give any lead as to his previous possession of it, I suppose,” said Henry. “How did you come to spot it so quickly, Miss Yale?”

“Because I had known for some weeks that one of your javelins was missing,” the redoubtable woman replied, “but, as it was one of your eight, and not one of my four, I did not bother about it. However, as soon as the emphasis was on javelins, I thought of the missing one, and, of course, there it was, new steel point and all, the perfect weapon for murder. A long, sharp spear, eight and a half feet between killer and victim, one good shove, and Bob’s your uncle.”

“And that little rat Kirk—sorry, didn’t think!” said Lesley.

“Yes. Kirk was on his way—or so he thought—to the women-students’ quarters after dinner that night and saw Sharp, I think,” said Dame Beatrice. “He knew him well, of course, since it was only a matter of weeks since Sharp had left the College, first to go into hospital and then to be dismissed. When Mr. Jones was found dead, Kirk, who was under no illusion about Sharp’s antagonism against the man who had usurped his gymnastics post, put two and two together and began to blackmail Sharp into providing the drinks and cigarettes.”

“And Paul-Pierre, I suppose, tipped off his former swimming-coach, so that Sharp knew where Jonah was incarcerated,” said Miss Yale, “and I expect he was also the student who terrorized Kirk into going on providing the drinks after Jonah’s death. What a nasty bit of work he is! Shall you keep him here, Gassie?”