“Why should I? I don’t see any reason why I should, do you?” said Crawford.
Martin replied: “Why should you indeed?”
He said it dismissively, as though his original question had been silly. He was sitting back in his chair, solid and relaxed, with Clark between himself and Crawford. Though he looked relaxed, his eyes were on guard, watching not only Crawford, but Nightingale and Clark. He said: “As a matter of fact, I thought I heard that it was just possible some fresh evidence might still turn up.”
“I don’t remember hearing the suggestion,” said Crawford. He spoke without worry. “I must say, Martin, it sounds remarkably hypothetical.”
“I suppose,” said Martin, “that if more evidence really did turn up, we might conceivably have to consider reopening the case, mightn’t we?”
“Ah well,” said Crawford, “we don’t have to cross that bridge till we come to it. Speaking as a member of our small society, I’ve never been fond of hypothetical situations involving ourselves.”
It was a reproof, good-humoured, but still a reproof. Martin paused. Before he had replied, Nightingale gave him a friendly smile and said: “There’s a bit more to it than that, Master.”
“I’m getting slightly muddled,” said Crawford, not sounding so in the least. “If there is any more to it, why haven’t I been informed?”
“Because, though there is a bit more to it on paper,” Nightingale went on, “it doesn’t amount to anything. It certainly doesn’t amount to enough to disturb you with at Christmas. I mean, Martin is perfectly right to say that a certain amount of fresh evidence has come in. It’s not fair to accuse him of inventing hypothetical situations.”
Crawford laughed. “Never mind about that. If he’s not used to being misjudged at his age, he never will be.”
“No,” Nightingale persisted. “I for one am grateful that he mentioned the matter.”
“Yes, Bursar?” said Crawford.
“It gives us the chance to settle it without any more commotion.”
Martin leaned forward and spoke to Nightingale: “When did you hear about this?”
“Last night.”
“Who from?”
“Skeffington.”
Just for an instant, Martin’s eyes flashed.
“It’s all perfectly in order, Master,” Nightingale said to Crawford. “You’ll remember, Skeffington and I were the committee deputed to make a technical report to the Seniors in the first instance. Naturally we’ve assumed it was our duty to keep our eyes open for any development since. It happens that the last instalments of Professor Palairet’s scientific papers have arrived at the Bursary since the Seniors made their decision. Both Skeffington and I have gone through them. I think it’s only fair for me to say that he’s made a more thorough job of it than I’ve been able to do. The only excuse I’ve got is that the Bursary manages to keep me pretty busy.”
“We all know that,” said Crawford.
“So these very last notebooks I hadn’t been able to do more than skim through. It was those that Skeffington brought to my attention last night.”
“When did you hear?” Suddenly Clark spoke in a quiet voice to Martin, but Nightingale had gone on: “I’m glad to say that I saw nothing which makes the faintest difference to my original opinion. If I were writing my report to the Seniors again today, I should do it in the same terms.”
“That’s exactly what I should have expected.” Crawford said it with dignity and authority.
“I don’t think I ought to conceal from you, in fact I’m sure I oughtn’t,” said Nightingale, “that in the heat of the moment Skeffington didn’t take entirely the same view. He gave to one piece of evidence an importance that I couldn’t begin to, and I think, if I have to take the words out of his mouth, that he would have felt obliged to include it, if he were re-writing his own report. Well, that’s as may be. But even if that happened, I am quite sure that in the final result it wouldn’t have had the remotest effect on the Seniors’ findings.”
“Which means,” said Crawford, “that we should have been bound to take the same action.”
“Inevitably it does,” said Nightingale.
“Of course,” said Clark.
Crawford had settled himself, his hands folded on his paunch, his eyes focused on the wainscot.
“Well, this is a complication we could reasonably have been spared,” he said. “I am inclined to think the Bursar is right, Martin has done us a service by bringing up the subject. Speaking as Master for a moment, there is one thing I should like to impress upon you all. I should also like to impress it on Skeffington and our other colleagues. In my judgment, this college was remarkably lucky to avoid a serious scandal over this business. I never took the violent personal objection to Howard that some of you did, but a piece of scientific fraud is of course unforgivable. And any unnecessary publicity about it, even now, is as near unforgivable as makes no matter. We’ve come out of it internally with no friction that I know of. And externally, better than any of us could have hoped. I do impress on you, this is a time to count our blessings and not disturb the situation. In my view, anyone who resurrects the trouble is taking a grave responsibility upon himself. We did justice so far as we could, and as the Bursar says, we have every reason within the human limits to believe that our findings were the right ones. Anyone who tries to open it all over again is going to achieve nothing except a certain amount of harm for the college, and a risk of a good deal more.”
“I’d just like to ask again, as I’ve asked you all in private often enough,” said Nightingale, “if this man felt he had been hard done by, why in Heaven’s name didn’t he bring an action for wrongful dismissal?”
“I agree with every word you’ve both said,” Clark broke in. He was hunched round to ease the weight on his leg. His smile was sweet, a little helpless, a little petulant. All of a sudden I realised that, just as Martin had said, he was a man of formidable moral force. “Except, if I may say so, personally I think worse of the man responsible for it all. I always thought it was a mistake to elect him, and I was sorry that our scientific friends got their way. I know we all kept off the question of his politics. Politics is becoming a taboo word. I’m going to be quite frank. I should have to be convinced that, in present conditions, a man of Howard’s politics can be a man of good character, as I understand the term. And I am not prepared to welcome such men in the name of tolerance, the tolerance that they themselves despise.”
“I wish I’d had the courage to say that earlier,” Nightingale broke out.
Martin had not spoken for a long time. In the same tone, neither edgy nor over-concerned, in which he had made his first approach, he said: “But that isn’t really the point, is it? The real point is what the Bursar said about the evidence.”
Clark replied: “What the Bursar said settled that, didn’t it?”
The curious thing was, I thought, that Nightingale, Clark, and Martin liked one another. When we went into the drawing-room there was no sign of argument on any of them. In fact, there had not been a word of disagreement spoken.
As the college clock struck the half-hour, it must have been half past eleven, Martin and Irene, Margaret and I, were walking up Petty Cury on the way home. In the empty street, Martin said softly: “I got even less change than I reckoned on.”
He had spoken in a matter-of-fact tone, but when Margaret said: “The Nightingales know all about it, don’t they?” he turned on her: “How did you hear that?”
“I wanted to see what she and Hanna were thinking—”
“You talked about the Howard business, did you?”