An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman

Prendergast and Mitton. Pine, I gathered, had been to their rooms and told them. He felt, apparently, that if a murder had been committed it was the business of our Chaplain and our lawyer to be present, though what they could do was not very obvious to me. Kershaw went straight into the inner room and began to examine the body. The Inspector was obviously appalled by a situation outside his official experience; he glanced at the notes which he had made, and began to question Maurice again about the finding of the body. Meanwhile Brendel in a few briefphrases told me what little had been learned in my absence. Poor Shirley had been shot through the head, probably from a distance of not more than two or three paces; he had apparently been sitting in the arm-chair with his back turned almost, but not quite, towards the murderer. He must, of course, have died instantaneously. Three chambers of the revolver on the table were still loaded; one had just been fired. The bullet had passed through his head, and had lodged in the wall behind the writing-table. The police, assisted by Hargreaves and Brendel himself, had made a searching examination of the rooms, but they had found no trace whatever of the murderer. At first sight, at any rate, it seemed impossible that he could have escaped, for example, by climbing out of one of the back windows. Apart from the fact that there was a sheer drop of some eighteen feet below, he could hardly have got out without leaving some marks. By daylight, no doubt, the police would go over every foot of the ground to confirm or amend this view, but for the time being it seemed almost certain that the murderer must have walked in and out by the ordinary door.
    Kershaw’s examination did not take long, for the case was only too clear. He could only confirm what we already knew. Suicide, of course, was out of the question. ‘If a man shoots himself,’ Brendel explained in my ear, ‘there is always some charring, because he has to hold the revolver so near to himself. Besides, of course, he couldn’t have put the revolver back on the table. He seems to have been shot from a distance of two or three yards; the tiny little hole is where the bullet went in – the other much larger is where it came out. It’s just a trifle ragged because of the resistance to its passage inside the head – bone and so forth.’
    â€˜How long has he been dead?’ asked the Inspector.
    â€˜About an hour, perhaps more, perhaps less,’ said Kershaw. ‘I can’t tell more nearly than that.’
    I saw Brendel make a rapid entry in a little note-book which he had drawn from his pocket.
    â€˜That would make it about ten o’clock?’ he said.
    Kershaw nodded. ‘But don’t tie me down to any pronouncement of that sort,’ he said. ‘I think he’s been dead about an hour, but that’s only a guess, after all.’
    Again my mind refused to live up to the situation. I was thinking now only of absurd little details. Ought I to offer a drink to the policemen before they went? Would it be indecent to smoke in that outer room next door to the murdered body? Wherever was Maurice to sleep? The scouts all went out of college to their homes about nine o’clock, and there would be no one to make up a bed for him. But he couldn’t sleep, surely, in his bedroom with the corpse lying next door. Should I offer him a shake-down in my own spare room? Ought I to explain to the Inspector who Brendel was and his reputation as an investigator of crime? Or would that be a tactless exposure of something which ought to be kept secret? Round and round in my head went all those stupid questions; more and more I felt certain that whatever I did would certainly be wrong. I felt an almost insane desire to say or do something which would stamp me as a practical man, able to deal with any crisis.
    But while I hesitated how to begin, decisions were already being