The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes Page B

the body. Pluckrose, a small grey man with untidy eyebrows, looked at once very dead and very surprised. A trick of the last futile messages that had hurried, collided, jammed, run out of fuel, evaporated in a chaos of crushed nerves and glands. One’s own death is surely the most surprising thing in the world – but dead men commonly look vastly indifferent. Appleby snapped off the torch. ‘The Law of Falling Bodies,’ he said.
    ‘To hell with the Law of Falling Bodies.’ For this sort of thing Hobhouse too must have a seasoned eye. But on Hobhouse too the frozen twist of those muscles had its effect.
    ‘Not at all. What did Crunkhorn tell us about Galileo’s experiment? That the one-pound shot and the ten-pound shot arrived at the foot of the leaning tower virtually at the same time. In a vacuum they would each have touched the ground actually at the same moment. But then they were bodies each with the same high specific gravity. If he had chucked over a ten-pound shot and, say, a one-pound open book the result would have been different. So what about a meteorite and a human body falling a considerable distance through air? Wouldn’t the meteorite be bound to arrive first?’
    ‘Not if the human body was clinging to it.’
    ‘I suppose that’s so. It’s only the resistance of the air which gives different velocities to different objects falling. But could he cling? Not, certainly, through a very long drop. If one jumped out of an aeroplane clutching a bomb one would part company with it soon and arrive on the ground some seconds later. Or so I should guess.’
    Hobhouse looked up at the dark empty sky. ‘It’s not a thing very easily verified by the police. Nor Pluckrose and the meteorite either.’
    ‘But we can hunt up the university’s physicists and see what they say. And we may still find evidence that he was certainly sitting here in the chair when the thing fell. Although the court is secluded–’
    Like a trick on the stage, light flooded them. Shafts of light, bars of darkness, lay on the grass, bridged the fountain, broke into confused chequering over the body with its sheltering tent. They turned round. Across the court half a dozen tall windows had sprung to a garish brightness and through their upper halves could be seen a system of shafts and wheels and belts which now with a faint throb began to turn. So something happened of an evening after all. The throbbing grew louder, and across the lower windows, of a semi-opaque sea-green glass, indeterminate shadows moved.
    ‘Engineering,’ said Hobhouse. ‘They work only in the afternoon and again at night. I suppose a good many of the students are in jobs. Anyway, that side would be deserted in the morning. And even if there were people about they couldn’t see out of the windows at ground level.’
    ‘I suppose not.’ Appleby was staring absently at the turning wheels. ‘Isn’t it odd that the university should be so insistent that there should never be a view from its windows? The eye is turned inward.’
    ‘Umph.’ Hobhouse was unimpressed by symbolism. ‘It’s time they collected the body. P-M at ten in the morning and funeral at two.’
    ‘Relations?’
    ‘One distant cousin, so far. There’s a will at the bank and a solicitor hard at work writing letters to anyone who could possibly be concerned. Nice easy wicket, the Law.’
    ‘Home?’
    ‘He lodged with a Miss Dearlove. I haven’t seen her yet. What a mess these deaths and homicides are. Far more running about than with burglary or forgery.’
    ‘Yes.’ Appleby looked at the body and agreed with this professional view. ‘Distinctly a mess.’
    ‘But embezzlement can be very bad. And I always say carnal knowledge is worst.’
    ‘I rather agree with you.’
    Hobhouse lowered his voice. ‘Did you ever have a case of a man keeping–’
    ‘What I want to know’ – Appleby’s voice was suddenly incisive in the darkness – ‘what I want to know is this. Does anybody