An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman Read Free Book Online

Brendel’s glasses. Never had I felt more wholly at peace with all mankind. And so we sat for, I suppose, about ten minutes. Then suddenly the door was flung open, and Maurice Hargreaves lurched into the room.
    â€˜My God,’ he cried. ‘Come up quickly. Someone’s shot Shirley – in my rooms.’
    As I got to my feet my eyes turned towards Brendel. He had taken off his glasses, and was wiping them very carefully with a silk pocket-handkerchief.

Chapter Four
    Hargreaves’ rooms were on the first floor of a staircase only some forty or fifty yards from the door of the Common Room, yet I have no clear recollection of how the three of us found our way from one place to the other. I think that I must have run faster than I have run for twenty years, and I have a vague idea that Brendel followed more slowly behind me, but I cannot be sure. I am only certain of the one fact – that at one moment I had been sitting smoking and sipping my whisky and soda in complete contentment, at peace with all the world, and at the next I stood helpless and utterly horrified in the Dean’s inner room.
    Every detail of that set of rooms was familiar to me. Traditionally they were always occupied by the Dean of the college and I had myself lived in them for two short years, when, as a young man, I had been induced against my better judgement to accept the office of Dean. Two short years only, for the enforcement of discipline had irked and worried me, and I had gladly resigned the charge into stronger hands than my own. The set consisted in all of four rooms together with a bathroom and lobby; in front, looking out upon the main quadrangle, were two sitting-rooms. The outer one was inconvenient, in that the oak, or outer door of the set, opened directly into it, and because it was a passage room through to the inner room. Maurice Hargreaves, following the example of his predecessors, used to use the outer room as a dining-room, and the inner as a place in which to live and work. Behind these two rooms, and facing on to a small courtyard, were the bedrooms – Maurice’s which was behind his inner room, and a guest-room which came next to it, and which was rather smaller. There was also a bathroom, a long passagelike lobby, and a servant’s pantry, behind the outerroom. Like many sets of rooms in Oxford, the arrangement was in many ways extremely inconvenient. When I had lived there myself I had been constantly annoyed by the number of doors, and by the fact that almost all the rooms led into one another. In addition the lobby was almost pitch-dark, for, except when the electric light was turned on, it was lighted only by means of a skylight at its east end which opened on to the stairs. It was also, as I had found, in the highest degree inconvenient that the only entry to the rest of the rooms, including of course the bedrooms, was through the dining-room, which was consequently itself of very little practical use. A rough sketch will make my meaning plain. In it the doors are clearly shown.

    Yet in spite of its drawbacks I could not deny that the set of rooms as a whole was redeemed from mediocrity by what I have called the inner room, which, as Maurice Hargreaves had arranged it, I must now describe. Entering by the door from the outer room a visitor would at once notice that the fire-place was situated diagonally opposite to him, and in the corner of the room. This rather curiousarchitectural feature dictated the arrangement of the furniture, for round it were grouped four large leather armchairs, whilst the main part of the floor-space was clear of furniture. The windows, which opened into the main quadrangle, faced almost due south, so that on fine days the room was flooded with sunlight; there were two large and very lofty windows, and between them a beautiful tallboy of which Hargreaves was inordinately proud. Against the west wall, in the corner nearest the quadrangle, stood a handsome