Thy Arm Alone: A Classic Crime Novel. John Russell Fearn
her viewpoint.
Mason, the college porter, came out of his lodge at her ring and contemplated her between the wrought iron bars of the gates. Betty knew him well enough from her schooldays, but he was obviously having difficulty in placing her.
“I’m Betty Shapley, Mason—don’t you remember me?” Betty managed to force one of her most attractive smiles to her lips. “I want to see Miss Black if I can. It’s very urgent.”
“Bit of an early hour for ’er, young lady—but I’ll see what I can do. Ain’t as though it’s normal school, you know. The summer vacation has just started. I’ll see, leastways.”
He shambled back into his lodge, was away about three minutes, then came back and opened the gates. “All right, she’ll see you,” he said. “You can leave your bike ’ere with me. You know Miss Black’s study?”
“Only too well,” Betty assured him, and she set off across the quadrangle briskly. In fact, it gave her an oddly nostalgic feeling as she crossed the concrete expanse towards the towering pile of the college, its wide, arched front doorway with the four broad steps lying straight ahead of her. How often she had made this trip during her schooldays, surrounded then by the happy friends now scattered far and wide. And now she was back again.
The front door, just as she had always known it, was open. The hall beyond it was wide and smelt of that elusive odour of furniture polish. Quiet calmness and an air of ponderous dignity was propagated by the panelled walls of dark oak. The parquet floor was brilliantly polished; the great central staircase loomed into noiseless upper regions; the innumerable brass plaques and cases of trophies against the hall panels still retained their air of chaste cleanness.
Betty half smiled to herself as memories walked with her across the hall and down the corridor which led to the Principal’s study. She had made this walk many a time before—and there had been trouble on her mind at those times, too. She reached the third door down the corridor and knocked.
“Come in,” bade a familiar contralto voice
Betty entered, closed the door quietly, then looked quickly round the well-remembered study. There was the same well-filled bookcase, the high-backed Jacobean chair, the broad desk, the Japanese screen in one corner, which had always excited her curiosity, the pile carpet, the skin rug. Everything was just the same. Even “Black Maria” was the same.
“Well, well, Betty, I am glad to see you again! How are you? That is—considering.” The contralto voice paused reflectively.
“I mean,” Maria Black explained, shaking hands with Betty, “the dreadful news in the morning paper concerning young Herbert Pollitt. You are mentioned as a close friend of his.… But take a seat, my dear.”
Maria motioned to a chair beside the desk and Betty sat down slowly looking up at her former Principal in something of the awe she always inspired. Maria Black was massive in build and becoming more so with advancing time, though she did her utmost to conceal this by gowning herself in receding dead black.
Viewed impartially, she had claims to being handsome—a long acquisitive nose, a wide, strong mouth, and determined chin. Her hair was needlessly severe—black and showing no signs yet of her fifty-eighth year. Swept back flat and straight from her high forehead, it terminated in a bun at the nape of her neck. And those eyes.… No, they had not altered, Betty decided. Cold, arctic blue—and possessed, if the girls of the college were to be credited, of the power to quell man or beast.
But Maria could smile at times—and she was smiling now as she stood against the desk, resorting to her unconscious habit of pulling at the slender gold watch-chain that depended down her ample bosom.
“Somehow, Betty,” she said presently, her scrutiny of the girl complete, “I half expected I would be seeing you before very long. And I am glad of it! I do not like to think of myself as some kind of ogress whom many of my former pupils are scared to approach.… So, what is troubling you? Or shall I save time and tell you that it is the late Herbert Pollitt?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly that, Miss Black.… It’s Vince I’m worried about. Vincent Grey.”
Maria returned to the high-back Jacobean chair at the opposite side of the desk and sat down. Her cold eyes aimed enquiry.
“You see,” Betty went on, “I’m in love with Vince Grey and the police are pretty sure that he—he murdered Herby. I’m—I’m going half crazy trying to decide what I ought to do, Miss Black! I’ve the horrible feeling that I caused all this to happen and—and.… Well, I just had to find somebody who might be able to help me. So I thought of you.”
“I’m flattered,” Maria murmured.
“Chiefly because you helped to solve that cinema murder round about last Christmas, Miss Black. You remember?”
Maria Black sat back and smiled to herself. She had found it quite enjoyable exercising her textbook-derived knowledge of criminology for the common good of society.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that the facts in this case are too obvious for me to be of much assistance, Betty. However, suppose you tell me your side of the story? And remember—no evasions and every fact. Now!”
Eyes half-closed, Maria listened while Betty went over the details. Quite truthfully she told everything from the moment she and Herbert Pollitt had sat watching shooting stars to when she had seen Vincent Grey making his dash down the High Street on his bicycle.
“Hmm…,” Maria said at last, contemplating her desk absently. “So you sat and watched shooting stars and wished—as two young people will. Then death came—uninvited. Looked at your way—or through the eyes of the newspaper—the answer still seems to be the same. Namely, that Vincent Grey murdered Herbert Pollitt.”
“But, Miss Black, I know Vince didn’t!” Betty insisted.
“Have you some proof of that?”
“No, I haven’t any proof. If I had, I’d have given it to Inspector Morgan right away. It’s just that I know Vince, and I’m sure there is some other explanation for him dashing off as he did.”
“Perhaps,” Maria admitted, pursing her lips. “Of course, I can understand your own inner worries: you feel that if you had not made Vincent and Herbert turn into rivals, this might never have happened?”
Betty sighed miserably. “I didn’t see that I was doing anything wrong. I just wanted to try out each one of them and make up my mind. In fact, I have made up my mind. I love Vince, and if he were to ask me to marry him, I’d do it. Herby was a bit too shy for my liking. As for Tommy Clayton, he’s a bit of a bore. He’s always reading scientific books in his spare time—astronomy and physics and things like that. Nothing wrong in that, of course, but they don’t seem to appeal to me very much.”
“I see,” Maria said. “I need hardly suggest that you refrain from diffusing your affections in future. So, you think in your heart that Vincent is innocent, though you cannot see why. Well, I have known similar instances of faith in an innocent victim of circumstances.”
“You see,” Betty said, “Inspector Morgan only looks at facts, and I want to try and get at the truth before this dragnet Scotland Yard has put out finds Vince and nails him down. I want to find him first. I think he would tell me what really happened, whereas he’d be too scared to tell the police.”
“Is he a nervous type of man?”
“Well, not on the surface,” Betty answered, frowning. “To talk to him you’d think he’s one of the most courageous men on earth. But that’s just a pose, you see. He does it to hide an inner self-consciousness.”
“I think I know the type. Such a man then might be frightened quite easily by something unexpectedly diabolical happening without warning.…” Maria motioned vaguely with her hand. “I am endeavouring, Betty, to try and find some other reason for Vincent dashing off as he did. Now I know his temperament I agree that he may have done it for some reason other