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

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    â€˜It would be better,’ he said, ‘to telephone from the Lodge. My line is only an extension, and anyone in the Lodge can hear what is said here.’
    â€˜I’ll go,’ I said hastily. I wanted to get out of that room, and I wanted insistently to do something practical.
    â€˜All right. Send Pine up here too,’ Maurice replied.
    I hurried across to the Lodge. As I did so I heard a few shouts and a belated firework exploding in the back Quad,a grisly reminder of revels which suddenly seemed to me queerly indecent and misplaced. It is odd how, in moments of crisis, the mind works. I ought, I suppose, to have been filled with thoughts of the tragedy of this life so suddenly and horribly ended, or of the briefness and uncertainty of all human affairs. But I was not. Miserably I was conscious that I could think only of myself. Should I do the right thing? Should I behave in these strange circumstances as befitted a man of character and intelligence, or should I appear, when the inquiries were made, to have lost my head like any other second-rate man? A wretched confession, yet, if this is to be a true story, I cannot conceal it. As I entered the Lodge my doubts and uncertainties took a practical form. Ought I to telephone first to the doctor or to the police? Which was the more important? Why could not I think out clearly even a matter so simple as that? I decided for the police; after all Shirley was indubitably dead, and no doctor could help him now, but the sooner the police were on the scene the better. I got through to the station, and hurriedly and incoherently I told some unknown police officer what had occurred, and implored him to hurry. I shouted to Pine, who was outside, to wait by the gate till the police arrived, and then to take them to the Dean’s room. In answer to his unspoken question I said, ‘Murder, I think,’ in a voice which sounded oddly unlike my own. Then I opened the telephone directory to look up the number of one of the Oxford doctors.
    At once I felt that I had been wrong. Of course it should have been the doctor first. Could not a skilful doctor tell, if he arrived in time, how long a man had been dead? Was it not of paramount importance that the time of the murder should be settled beyond possibility of mistake so that the criminal might be discovered? How many times had I not read that in works of fiction? Desperately I tried to think which of the doctors lived nearest to St Thomas’s. All ofthem of whom I could think lived in Holywell or St Giles’s or even farther away. Almost at random I chose one, looked up his number and dialled him on the automatic exchange. After a long interval a female voice answered me. No, the doctor was out. He had dined with friends to play bridge, he might be back fairly soon. Would I … Savagely I cut off and looked up another number. This time the wait seemed an eternity. At last a reply came. ‘Do you want Mr Fleming? … No, I’m sorry, he’s in London till to-morrow.’ Would this never end? Miserably it crossed my mind that Maurice, had he come down, would have made no such mistake. He would have called the doctor before the police, and whatever doctor he had called would by a law of nature have been at home. But now at last my third call was answered. ‘Yes, it is Mr Kershaw speaking. Yes – yes, good Lord … Right. Yes. I’ll come at once.’ I put down the receiver, and stood waiting anxiously at the gate to meet Dr Kershaw and to take him to the scene of the tragedy.
    It must have been about half past ten when I had run down to the Lodge; it was nearly eleven when Kershaw, a young but well-known surgeon who lived at the far end of Holywell, and I joined the little party which had gathered in the Dean’s rooms. They stood talking in the outer room when we arrived; an inspector and two policemen, Brendel and Maurice Hargreaves, Pine and, to my surprise,