“Yes, and Barry’s Colin, except that he’s still in hospital.”
“What about Mr. Barry himself?”
“Yes, he had it in for Jones all right. You realize, I suppose, that the police have not lost interest in us? Will you be working in with them?”
“That depends to some extent upon the inspector’s attitude. By the way, I have been thinking about a fact which interested me not a little.”
“Oh? What was that?”
“Bertha’s father is the village blacksmith.”
“I know he is, but I don’t see…”
“I was thinking of the new steel point on one of the javelins.”
“Nobody who had murder in mind would risk having a toss-pot like him to do a job like that. Besides, there is nothing to show that the javelin which was tampered with had anything to do with Jonah’s death. If that could be proved. (Leverage, Carlotta, leverage, dear!) Right from the soles of the feet! You’re not throwing a stick for a dog! If that could be proved, Dame Beatrice, we could get a whole lot further.”
“How many students are in the javelin group, Mr. Henry?”
“How many? Let’s see now. (Keep the shot under control, Matthew, until you actually part with it. Look, like this, old man.) Sorry, Dame Beatrice. How many javelin throwers? Can’t say exactly. It’s apt to vary, because some of them like a change from their own event and tack on to another squad for a bit. Still, on average, I should say a couple of dozen or more turn out for coaching. It’s a spectacular event, you see, and therefore popular. Showing-off is prophylactic here. That’s why we get so little trouble.”
“And you muster only a dozen javelins.”
“Expensive items, you know, and Gassie will only buy the best. Says it’s false economy, if you want results, to fob people off with inferior materials. Our javelins cost up to twenty-five pounds apiece. That’s why it’s so annoying that somebody has mucked one of them up by putting a new head on it. Hang it all, the heads are made of best Swedish steel, anyway.”
“What about ‘practice javelins,’ so-called?” asked Laura. “They wouldn’t cost more than about five pounds each, would they? And do the girls use the standard eight-hundred grammes, eight-foot-six javelin as well as the men? And what about the boys?”
“Dear me!” said Henry, amused. “Well, to answer your knowledgeable questions, Mrs Gavin, Gassie will not buy ‘practice’ javelins. Probably mere snobbery on his part, but there it is. Out of the twelve javelins we have in stock, eight are of full length and weight, and four are six hundred grammes in weight and seven-foot-six in length. These are for women and juniors. As nobody here is under sixteen, the youngest ones rate as juniors, not as boys. What happens is that I take my coachings in groups of six, so that no more than half a dozen javelins are in use at one time.”
“So that the over-weighted javelin need never have been used since it was altered,” said Dame Beatrice. “That certainly clears up one doubtful point.”
“Mind you,” said Henry thoughtfully, “it can’t have been on the rack very long, or surely somebody would have drawn my attention to it.”
“This elusive somebody!” commented Laura. “Who picks out the javelins which are to be used?”
“Each student, under my supervision—we never let anybody loose in the stock-room—chooses his or her own. They pick up a javelin, weight it by the grip, shake it a bit and then decide upon it or select another. Naturally a wrongly-balanced javelin would be returned at once to the rack.”
“So that’s the way the cat jumps,” said Dame Beatrice. “And no student is unsupervised when he selects his javelin, but you don’t dictate his choice.”
She nodded, leered kindly at him and went off to find Miss Yale. She discovered the head of the women’s side closeted with two students to whom she was giving tea. Dame Beatrice accepted a cup and very soon after her arrival the students, who seemed to find her presence alarming, took their leave.
“I take it you’ve come about something important,” said Miss Yale. “The police were here again, I saw. Don’t know what they’re bothering about. Who cares what happened to blasted Jonah? The man was an absolute menace. But I don’t suppose you came to me for a character sketch of him. Anyway, I’m glad he’s dead—and that goes for most of us here. If I’d thought of it soon enough, I’d have murdered him myself, so if you’re giving a hard look at the possible starters, you had better count me as one of them. But I’m wasting your time.”
“Not at all. I did come, however, on a particular errand. I have been talking to Mr. Henry and he confirms something which I had already gathered.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I understand that no man-student is ever allowed to go unsupervised to the cupboard where the javelins are kept. Does that apply equally to the women students?”
“Yes, of course it does. It’s Gassie’s unvarying rule. The girls haven’t the record for violence that comes with some of the men, but Gassie spends the earth on buying the very best sports apparatus obtainable and we’re sworn to cherish it.”
“Does that key of yours unlock that particular cupboard?”
“You can try it, if you like, but it certainly does not. The lock on that cupboard is a special one. There are far too many clever apes in this college for Gassie to risk them picking locks and collecting, for instance, Jerry’s starting-guns.”
“I see. So if the murder weapon was that javelin with the lethal point, only a member of the staff could have returned it to the rack.”
“Well, you didn’t think the students killed Jonah, did you?”
“Have you heard the result of the inquest?” Dame Beatrice enquired. She felt it unnecessary to reply to the last question.
“Yes. Gassie attended and so did the poor kid who first saw Celia’s dogs digging up the body. Open verdict,” stated Miss Yale.
“As a matter of fact, the inquest has been adjourned so that the police can continue their investigations.”
“That’s the story, of course. Means they know it was murder and now they’ve got to pin it on somebody.”
“What made you offer me your own name as, let us say, one of the possibles?”
“Oh, I hated the poisonous reptile. I wasn’t the only one, of course, but I had a key to that stock-cupboard, so I could have got hold of the doctored javelin…”
“But most of the staff had a similar key, had they not?”
“Yes, but they weren’t all interested in the javelins, were they? I say, though, I do wish you’d stop involving yourself in our affairs. I mean nothing personal, but I don’t want bloody Jonah’s murderer brought to book, that’s all. Whoever stuck a spear into that inebriated swine did a public service. That’s the way I look at it.”
“Yes, I see. However, with regard to murder, I cannot really approve of it. I will suggest a thought to you in order to cause our conversation to steer a slightly different course, though. You mentioned just now that the staff are not, all of them, interested in the javelins.”
“Well, they’re not, are they?”
“I rather fancy, you know, that we can eliminate Mr. Henry, yourself and Mr. Martin. It seems to me that the last weapon the murderer would have chosen is one which would be connected with him and therefore would seem to point to him as the guilty party. If I thought that the murder was unpremeditated and was done on the spur of the moment, I might think differently, but the lethal point which, to make assurance doubly sure, the murderer had put on to one of the javelins disposes of any such idea. Granted that the students played into the murderer’s hands, there remains the fact that the means of committing the murder must have been provided before the students planned their unkind prank.”