The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes Page A

ignorant policemen. He got quite worked up as he went along, I admit. But it began as a deliberate determination to put a false interpretation on the whole business. Why?’
    ‘He doesn’t want a scandal.’ Hobhouse shook his head sagely. ‘It’s to be hushed up as an accident. Rather the sort of thing you thought the Duke was after.’
    ‘But he wasn’t.’
    ‘Well, Evans is.’
    ‘I wonder.’
    Hobhouse’s reply was again merely an indeterminate noise. They plodded down the long corridor in a dingy twilight which thickened as they moved. A symbol, Appleby thought, of the Pluckrose affair so far. The case was growing more confused without growing more substantial. The elements of it were evasive. As the Vice-Chancellor had justly said, it was mysterious – and yet the mystery was bodiless still, scarcely quick in the mind. It required a little contemplation and less talk. But the university was like a House of Fame or Temple of Rumour in some medieval poem. A Parliament of Prattlers, with the benevolently powerful Sir David Evans as Speaker… Appleby pulled up. ‘The body – will it have gone?’
    ‘They’re waiting for dark.’
    ‘Then I think we’ll go back.’
    Students were hurrying past in mackintoshes and mufflers; electric lights, sparse, shadeless, and inimical, flicked on with an effect of impatient dismissal. The place was shutting down; sweetness and light were over for the day; the quest of knowledge was off until nine o’clock next morning. Outside the porter’s office women with pails and brooms were gathering; among them and through a faint aroma of dust and soap the porter, unbuttoned but magisterial, was moving with a time-sheet in his hand. Doors banged and the stream of students grew: spotty faces, eager faces, faces already dulled and defeated by the machine, faces full of temper and intelligence. Susan and Harry, Dick and Josephine going home to tea, to swotting over text-books, to a night at the pictures in families or together holding hands; Josephine, Dick, Harry, and Susan unaware of the awareness of the Duke of Nesfield, of the curious behaviour of their Vice-Chancellor, of Galileo’s work on the Law of Falling Bodies. Appleby and Hobhouse threaded their way through, seeking the fallen body of Pluckrose fue . So young and fair a congregation. What should they know of death? Beyond this door is the chill April evening air that fills the Wool Court. Open it.
    The evening had suddenly clouded so that now it was almost dark. The fountain trickled, invisible – a melancholy sound, a tiny pointless dissipation, a futile ebbing away. Zealous police-craft had rigged up an affair of waterproof canvas over the body, and Pluckrose was a desert traveller defeated within crawling distance of water, an arctic explorer perishing to a drip of icicles. Bringing imagination to the detection of crime. Appleby stumbled, stooped, softly exclaimed, walked on. Hobhouse followed, dubious. From the corridor behind them came a final scamper of feet, a name shouted twice, an answering faint hail. The tower soared and impended; it was impressive at dusk.
    ‘I don’t know that we can do–’ Hobhouse stopped as Appleby flashed a torch. There was the striped duck and splintered wood of the deck-chair. There was the meteorite, with effort heaved aside. And here was the body. Pluckrose crushed. Like a little old shabby rebel angel, disparted from his brightness, when the faithful host had finished hurling heaven’s hills in battle and gone home to bed.
    These persistent mythological associations… Appleby spoke soberly: ‘Could he and the meteorite really have come down together? It’s an idea, after all.’
    ‘The man was murdered.’ Hobhouse’s voice, harsh suddenly and not to be cheated, came out of the dark. ‘No one would deliberately make such a crazy end.’
    ‘But perhaps it is true that he was mad? We want a better means of eliminating Evans’ theory.’ Appleby paused and looked down at