Read Online Beware of the Trains by Edmund Crispin - Free Book Online
Authors: Edmund Crispin
Tags: Gervase Fen
Ads: Link
pocket of her outdoor coat, which was hanging in the clothes closet in the hall. Thereafter (I continue to quote her own account of the matter) she not only forgot to post it—as one does occasionally forget to post letters, important ones particularly—but also forgot, in the eventual confusion and distress, that the thing had ever existed. And presumably it was still in the pocket of her coat.
“All of this Angela communicated to her Counsel. And he, naturally, wasn’t slow to see the importance of it. If Brice’s letter had not reached Pasmore till four-fifteen, as it probably hadn’t; if he had written a reply to it; if that reply had taken him more than fifteen minutes to write, as it probably had, then Angela could not have murdered him, since the only opportunity she had had was between four-twenty and four-thirty. Someone was sent off post-haste to Amersham. The letter was found. Handwriting experts were unanimous in agreeing that Pasmore had written it—that no part of it was forged. Tests established the fact that the absolute minimum time required to write it must have been twenty minutes. As to its contents that was a seriatim answer to Brice’s queries, such as Pasmore could only have produced with the details of those queries in front of him. The arrival of Brice’s letter by the afternoon mail was sworn to, beyond the possibility of contradiction, by the postman, by Soames, by Beasley and by Sir Charles. And Brice was emphatic that by no conceivable means could Pasmore have become acquainted with the questions about Merlin prior to the arrival of the letter. You’ll see what all this evidence added up to: Pasmore couldn’t have been killed before twenty-five to five at the earliest; and therefore it was not Angela who killed him.”
Finishing his port, Fen lit a cigarette and leaned back more comfortably in his chair.
“As for myself,” he went on after a moment’s consideration, “I had no personal contact with the affair until after the trial was over. I read about it more or less attentively in the papers. and that was all. But about a week after Angela’s acquittal I was dining with the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire, and he, knowing I had a lay interest in criminology, showed me the dossier of the case. Most of it was just a repetition and expansion of what I already knew. There was also, however, a complete typewritten copy of Pasmore’s letter to Brice. And something in the last paragraph of that letter struck me as being ever so slightly odd…
“The bulk of the thing, as I’ve told you, was simply a point-by-point reply, impersonal and businesslike in tone, to Brice’s queries. The final paragraph, though, ran like this:
“‘Forgive me if I don’t write more. I’m in the middle of scoring Ariadne (with a concert on my next-door neighbour’s wireless— lacrimae rerum! — to help me along) and am anxious, as you know, to get it done as quickly as possible. Good luck to the performance—I am sorry I can’t be there. Yours—’ and so forth.
“Well, the police had checked this business of the concert at the time Pasmore’s letter was produced in Court: and Pasmore’s neighbour’s radio had, in fact, been on between three-thirty and four-forty-five. So far, so good. But ‘lacrimae rerum’ —somehow that particular tag was wrong in that particular context. One’s neighbour’s radio is often tiresome, no doubt. But one doesn’t use, as a comment on it, a phrase intended to express the profound, essential melancholy of all human activities—and more, of existence itself; the nuisance is too trivial and localised. And it occurred to me, as a consequence of this disparity; that ‘lacrimae rerum’ might carry some specialised meaning for Brice and Pasmore—might in effect be a sort of private joke. Luckily, Brice was conducting at Oxford three or four days later, and I was able to make contact with him and to ask him about it. And my notion turned out to be
“All of this Angela communicated to her Counsel. And he, naturally, wasn’t slow to see the importance of it. If Brice’s letter had not reached Pasmore till four-fifteen, as it probably hadn’t; if he had written a reply to it; if that reply had taken him more than fifteen minutes to write, as it probably had, then Angela could not have murdered him, since the only opportunity she had had was between four-twenty and four-thirty. Someone was sent off post-haste to Amersham. The letter was found. Handwriting experts were unanimous in agreeing that Pasmore had written it—that no part of it was forged. Tests established the fact that the absolute minimum time required to write it must have been twenty minutes. As to its contents that was a seriatim answer to Brice’s queries, such as Pasmore could only have produced with the details of those queries in front of him. The arrival of Brice’s letter by the afternoon mail was sworn to, beyond the possibility of contradiction, by the postman, by Soames, by Beasley and by Sir Charles. And Brice was emphatic that by no conceivable means could Pasmore have become acquainted with the questions about Merlin prior to the arrival of the letter. You’ll see what all this evidence added up to: Pasmore couldn’t have been killed before twenty-five to five at the earliest; and therefore it was not Angela who killed him.”
Finishing his port, Fen lit a cigarette and leaned back more comfortably in his chair.
“As for myself,” he went on after a moment’s consideration, “I had no personal contact with the affair until after the trial was over. I read about it more or less attentively in the papers. and that was all. But about a week after Angela’s acquittal I was dining with the Chief Constable of Buckinghamshire, and he, knowing I had a lay interest in criminology, showed me the dossier of the case. Most of it was just a repetition and expansion of what I already knew. There was also, however, a complete typewritten copy of Pasmore’s letter to Brice. And something in the last paragraph of that letter struck me as being ever so slightly odd…
“The bulk of the thing, as I’ve told you, was simply a point-by-point reply, impersonal and businesslike in tone, to Brice’s queries. The final paragraph, though, ran like this:
“‘Forgive me if I don’t write more. I’m in the middle of scoring Ariadne (with a concert on my next-door neighbour’s wireless— lacrimae rerum! — to help me along) and am anxious, as you know, to get it done as quickly as possible. Good luck to the performance—I am sorry I can’t be there. Yours—’ and so forth.
“Well, the police had checked this business of the concert at the time Pasmore’s letter was produced in Court: and Pasmore’s neighbour’s radio had, in fact, been on between three-thirty and four-forty-five. So far, so good. But ‘lacrimae rerum’ —somehow that particular tag was wrong in that particular context. One’s neighbour’s radio is often tiresome, no doubt. But one doesn’t use, as a comment on it, a phrase intended to express the profound, essential melancholy of all human activities—and more, of existence itself; the nuisance is too trivial and localised. And it occurred to me, as a consequence of this disparity; that ‘lacrimae rerum’ might carry some specialised meaning for Brice and Pasmore—might in effect be a sort of private joke. Luckily, Brice was conducting at Oxford three or four days later, and I was able to make contact with him and to ask him about it. And my notion turned out to be
Similar Books
