Was It Murder? by James Hilton Page B

evening, Marshall turned up.”
    Certainly, Revell thought, Lambourne had the knack of making things sound devilishly significant, whether they were so or not.
    “Yes—he’d caught an earlier cross-Channel boat than he’d reckoned on, or some simple enough reason like that.  Anyhow, he went into Chapel and Hall afterwards in the usual way.  Daggat may possibly have noticed him—he was preaching that night, which was the reason, as you can guess, why most of the older masters kept away.  I did, and so did Ellington.  Ellington, as a matter of fact, didn’t know that Marshall had come back until nine o’clock, when the boy went to see him in his room next to the dormitory.”
    “Not in his private house?”
    “No.  His wife was out visiting, so he was filling in the time marking papers, I believe.  He was surprised to see the boy, naturally, though glad enough to discover he could spend the night on his own feather-bed after all.  The boy went to bed in the dormitory at the usual time, and Ellington stayed up to finish his marking—at least, that’s what he said at the inquest.  The point is, you see, that his wife wouldn’t be expecting him, and might well be asleep when he DID go to bed—whenever that may have been.”
    “Pretty quick work, though, to plan a thing like that at such short notice.”
    “Oh, I know.  I’m not suggesting he did.  It may have all been planned beforehand, and he just seized the favourable opportunity as it came.”
    “Quite.  But I’m afraid it all shows how equally well the whole business MAY have been an accident.  Assuming it was pure chance that the boy got killed and not Ellington himself.”
    “Oh yes.  Exactly what Ellington said himself the morning after.”
    “Which, of course, he WOULD say, if he WERE the murderer.”
    “Naturally.”
    “Oh Lord, what a lot of assumptions we’re making!  I wish we had more evidence.  Can you connect Ellington with this latest affair in any way?”
    “’Fraid I can’t, on the spur of the moment.  That’s your job— you’re the detective.  If I were you, I should have a look round pretty soon—if there’ve been any clues left lying about, I don’t suppose they’ll stay there for ever.”
    It was a hint, perhaps, and Revell, who felt he would like to be on his own for a while to think things over, was glad enough to take it.  “Come and chat with me again as often as you like,” was Lambourne’s farewell remark, and Revell assured him that he would.
     
     
    The grounds of Oakington School were roughly circular, and round them ran a pleasant tree-sheltered pathway popularly known as the Ring.  Four successive generations of Oakingtonians had found that to make its complete circuit, at strolling pace, was an agreeable way of spending a quarter of an hour when there was nothing else to do, and upon this Wednesday afternoon in June Revell followed almost instinctively the familiar trail.  The sunlight blazed bountifully through the washed air; the scents of moist earth and dripping vegetation rose around him in a steamy cloud.  From time to time he passed groups of strolling boys who stared at him with that slight and politely disguised curiosity that is, perhaps, the “fine fleur” of the public-school tradition.  He could well guess the chief subject of their conversations.  He could imagine the sensation that the double affair of the Marshall brothers would have caused at the Oakington of his day.  It was, undoubtedly, the most spectacular of sensations—only less so, perhaps, than Lambourne’s theory if it could be proved correct.  But WAS it?  That, naturally, was the all-engrossing problem that occupied his mind during the half-mile circuit.
    The chief trouble, of course, was that it was so fearfully difficult to verify anything that might or might not have taken place nine months before.  People so easily forgot details, or even if they didn’t, they could easily say so if they were asked