Thy Arm Alone: A Classic Crime Novel. John Russell Fearn

hesitated for a moment, wondering if she dared express the question in the forefront of her mind.

      “Miss Black, look how much you have seen already!” A little flattery between women is never lost. “About Vince, I mean. Wouldn’t you help me, please? Not only to find him but also to prove that he didn’t murder Herbert? There is a vacation in force, and that means that you are perhaps not so tied to college duty as usual.”

      Maria smiled wistfully. “Do you imagine, young lady, that I can walk into Inspector Morgan’s headquarters and tell him that I have decided to look into the matter? That I can interfere with the plans of the police and go to work in my own way? I’m afraid not. I might even finish up in custody myself for butting in where I am not wanted.”

      “But you did it when that man was murdered m the Langthorn cinema! You did it when that pupil of yours was found hanged in Bollin Wood. Frances Hasleigh, wasn’t it? So why not now? Don’t you see, Miss Black? An innocent man may be condemned if this goes on.”

      A serious expression crept gradually to Maria’s face. Her restless fingers returned to the fondling of her watch-chain.

      “You really do believe in him, don’t you?” she sympathized. “It satisfies me that my own analysis of your character is correct. And such faith as that outweighs the inhuman logic of the law.… Hmm.” She pressed finger and thumb to her eyes. “You spent the day from noon with Herbert Pollitt. In the twilight his car broke down. You sat talking, watching shooting stars, and making wishes. Herbert asked you to get Clayton. While you were gone, Vincent presumably came along on his pedal cycle and saw Herbert. We don’t know what happened between them. Later Clayton says he saw Vincent cycling away from the spot, which is borne out by you seeing him cycling through Langhorn High Street.… You say he went into Riverside Avenue? Why didn’t you have a look in that avenue?”

      “I did think of it, Miss Black—but my pride was hurt that he’d ignored me.”

      “Yes, I suppose that is logical. Tell me—the paper says Vincent is five foot ten and very broad. Would you call him an immensely powerful man?”

      “Well no—not really powerful. He’s on the flabby side. You know how blond men develop that way sometimes.”

      It struck Maria as passing odd that Betty tactfully ignored her own sex and colouring. “He is not, shall we say, a strong and muscular man?”

      “No—he’s not muscular.”

      “Then I wonder whence came his power to batter a man’s skull to pulp, as the paper so unfeelingly puts it? A very debatable point. I do question too why Morgan has taken the word of Clayton as if he were an unimpeachable authority.… You see, Betty, it is not easy to batter a man’s skull so completely. Smith and Glaister have commented in their excellent Recent Advances in Forensic Medicine that ‘the skullbone is so hard that it can—and often does—deflect a fast flying bullet.’ In fact, any anatomist will tell you that the skull is normally very hard indeed.… Yet here we have a man who is flabby, which suggests he is also out of condition, battering another man ruthlessly to death! After that he cycles with the speed of a racetrack competitor, whereas his efforts at murder ought at least to have left him somewhat exhausted.… Hmm, decidedly interesting.”

      Maria’s icy eyes sharpened as she looked across the desk again.

      “Flaws, my dear, flaws,” she said, raising a finger. “The good Inspector Morgan, painstaking and plodding though I know him to be, is, I am afraid, a man without much imagination.… I am just wondering if I might not call upon him in a friendly way and point out these little discrepancies. I hardly see that he can take exception.”

      Betty got to her feet hurriedly, fear and joy struggling together on her face.

      “You—you mean you will really see what you can do?”

      “Before I can approach the Inspector, I have to find a legitimate cause,” Maria explained. “I imagine I have found it.… Yes, I will do what I can for you—not only because I believe in your faith in Vincent, but because it is essential that a man who may be innocent of all blame be proved to be so.…” Maria rose from her chair and clasped Betty’s two hands firmly and studied her as a mother might an erring daughter. “Betty, what you have to do is go back home and try to forget this horrible business for a while. Just allow things to go as they are, and I’ll let you know the moment I discover anything.”

      The girl had momentary tears in her blue eyes. “I—I sort of felt you’d see it my way, Miss Black. I’ll do just as you say and try not to worry.”

      “Good!” Maria patted the hands gently. “Now be off with you, and if anything important happens, you know my telephone number. Being in the post office, you will be well placed to get at me, day or night.”

      Betty nodded and hurried out. Maria strolled over to the window and watched her young, graceful figure go hurrying across the quadrangle, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze.

      “Faith can move mountains, so maybe it can move Inspector Morgan as well.”

      She turned and pressed a button on her desk. The call was answered by Eunice Tanby, the Housemistress. Years in the tentacled grip of algebra, arithmetic, and Euclid had left her as dry and very nearly as acid as a squeezed lemon.

      “I am going out, Miss Tanby,” Maria stated, reaching behind the Japanese screen and bringing forth a beret and light dustcoat.

      Tanby knew what that beret meant and gave a little sigh. “Am I to understand, Miss Black, that some—er—‘business’ has come up?” she asked.

      Maria settled her beret comfortably on her dark hair before the mirror. “Exactly so, Miss Tanby, if by ‘business’ you mean a little matter of crime. The—er—‘Langhorn Bludgeoning,’ as the paper so delicately puts it.”

      “Why, yes…! I have read about it in this morning’s paper. Young Langhorn man, was it not—Herbert Pollitt?”

      “Exactly. One of three—hmm—boy friends of that blonde girl in our local post office.” Maria cleared her throat. “Betty Shapley, once one of our day pupils. Quite a clever girl; won a scholarship, if you remember. Now she is possessed of—er—hmmm—more than her share of good looks and figure.”

      “Betty Shapley? I noticed her name in the paper, but I had quite forgotten that she used to be here. Yes, she was a very bright and bouncing girl.”

      “She has just left me,” Maria reached for her sunshade on the hook behind the screen. “I have noticed one or two points in this business which strike me as being at variance with fact, so I intend to place them before the worthy Inspector Morgan. I am sure you will not mind handling matters until I return. There is little to be done during the holiday, fortunately.”

      “Certainly,” Miss Tanby agreed. “I—I can’t help in any way, can I? You said that if you could ever find use for me—“

      “At the moment I am afraid I cannot see any useful role you can fill, beyond deputizing for me here.… Now, if you will pardon me.…”

      With a final nod Maria turned and left her study with dignified tread, the sunshade hanging by its strap on her arm. She swept down the corridor to the quadrangle and then went as majestically as an empress to the garages at the rear of the college.

      In a few minutes she reappeared inside an Austin saloon. She was immensely proud of her little car, and of her driving. It helped her rheumatism by cutting out those long tramps that had been forced upon her from time to time when criminology had taken her far afield.

      Sitting bolt upright before the steering wheel, she drove to the college gates. Mason saluted her as he opened them, then he stood watching and scratching his head as she sailed off down the lane with a faint haze of blue exhaust fumes.