THIRTEEN
FROM ADDENBROOKE'S HOSPITAL TO CHRIST'S
Lord Peter, who had accompanied Sir John in the ambulance, loitered in the corridor at Addenbrooke's hospital while the doctors attended to the patient. The attack, though severe, had not been fatal, and at last his patience was rewarded when he was approached by a Matron, whose uniform was so stiff with starch, and whose aspect so forbidding, that a lesser man might have quailed. Wimsey, confident that there was no alcohol on his breath, and that the rumples in his evening dress had been earned in the service of virtue, was unintimidated, and as the Matron drew nearer he was rewarded by a prim smile.
"Lord Peter Wimsey? Sir John is asking for you. We wouldn't normally allow visitors at this hour," – it was remarkable how a world of disapproval could be conveyed in a single sniff – "but he's working himself into a state demanding to see you, and any kind of excitement could be very dangerous in his condition. He was extremely lucky, you know. The outcome would have been very different had he not had friends on the spot to administer first aid. Please don't let him get excited, and keep your visit short."
Duffield was propped up against a heap of pillows, his face waxy and strained.
"I suppose it's all up, Flim?" he said hoarsely. "Are you really going to expose me to the world as a plagiarist? We go back a long way, old man. We were good friends at school."
"I hope you're not trying to appeal to my better nature, Duffield, because I don't have one," said Wimsey, embarrassed by this frontal assault. "What happened to you? You were always an arrogant hound, but you never stooped to cheating."
Duffield groaned. "I never needed to," he said. "I thought you understood what it's like, Wimsey, to feel your powers fading. The ideas simply wouldn't come, not like they used to. I sat up over my desk at night, cudgelling my brains to porridge, but it made no difference. All I could produce was solid, workmanlike stuff, worthy but dull, the sort of thing that gets a candidate a Lower Second. And I have never been the Lower Second type."
"So you had a look through Turing's files and found exactly what you needed."
"You needn't look at me," said Duffield, "as I were if some particularly revolting species of slug. Turing's dead; he didn't lose anything by it. Frankly, I did science a service by making his ideas widely available. These computing engines are really something, Flim. They're going to transform the way we think about intelligence."
"It played no role, of course, that you were on the verge of fulfilling all your worldly ambitions? Master of a Cambridge College, Fellow of the Royal Society…"
"Blast you, of course it did. But you're hardly in a position to sneer at the rewards of fame and fortune, with your fancy title and your ancestral pile."
"I don't have blood on my hands, though," said Wimsey, mindful of the Matron's orders, but choosing to disregard them. "You seem to have justified intellectual dishonesty to your own satisfaction, but can you justify murder?"
Sir John's face darkened. "Don't be ridiculous, Wimsey," he said. "You can't pin Black's death on me. He took his own life freely."
"Because you threatened to expose him as a homosexual."
"He tried to blackmail me," protested Duffield. "He collared me in the Fellows' Garden and told me he was going to write to the Royal Society. What was I supposed to do? Give in to him? I told him that now he had revealed his true colours, I no longer had any reason to shield him, and that I was going to inform the police about his activities with certain of our undergraduates. That took the wind out of his sails, I can tell you. He practically grovelled at my feet. You can't call it murder, it was merely a quid pro quo. He threatened to destroy my reputation and I threatened to destroy his."
"If that's the case, then why did he kill himself? Why not simply drop his accusations?"
Duffield closed his eyes. "You have to understand that I was terrified," he said at last. "One word from him and I would have lost everything. Not just the Mastership and the FRS, but my good name as a scientist. Everything. I suppose I panicked. I knew that even if he backed down this time, I'd always have him hanging over me, like a sort of Board School Sword of Damocles. One day something might have given him that burst of courage he needed to live up to his middle class morality, and I didn't fancy living off my nerves every time we disagreed about expenditure for the May Ball or the Chairmanship of the Garden Committee. And I was angry, too, I admit. It was sickening to hear that little hypocrite prate about "standards" and "honour", when I knew full well what his own habits were. So I offered him an honourable way out of his dilemma."
"Very generous of you. How exactly did you phrase this offer?" said Wimsey. Sir John reddened.
"All right, I may have been rather blunt," he conceded. "But I was thinking on my feet. I swiped one of the pistols from the SCR for him and told him that if he was still alive after Founder's Dinner, I was going to the police."
"Hence the lack of prints on the weapon."
"Yes, I was rather proud of myself for thinking of that. Though of course you immediately spotted a problem with it."
"More than one," said Wimsey. "As a matter of fact, it was the lack of prints that made me realise someone must have had a reason for concealing their own handling of the gun."
Duffield groaned. "I always was too clever by half," he said. "I misjudged you, too. I thought you'd given up detecting years ago, and anyway, I couldn't see how you could possibly forge a link between me and Black."
"You were taking an awful risk, though, even by your standards. What if Black had decided to send a letter to the Royal Society before topping himself? After all, he had nothing to lose once he was dead."
"Oh, come on, Wimsey, you can't tell me you'd be perfectly happy to have people trample your name in the street after you were dead? Black may not have been in the same league as Pascal or Fermat, but I'm sure he'd rather be remembered as a good mathematician than as a shirt lifter. Besides, he has an elderly mother living in Leamington Spa. Even if I'd misjudged his willingness to ruin his own reputation in order to destroy mine, he wouldn't have risked exposing her to scandal. The old dear is a pillar of the parish, and of course she had no idea that her only son was a sodomite. No, I didn't think there was much risk of Black taking any action that would compromise his reputation, even after death. It came as the most awful shock when I found that suicide note and realised he must have talked to someone."
"How did you get the note?"
"I found it in his rooms," admitted Duffield. "I have a master key to all the College rooms, you know. I thought I'd better check that he hadn't left any incriminating documents lying around, so I slipped in there after the body had been taken away and all the hubbub had quietened down. The first thing I saw was that damned typewriter sitting on his desk with a note sticking out of it, bold as brass, telling me that it wasn't over yet by a long shot. The little tick took a massive risk there, assuming I'd search his room, because if I hadn't, the police would have found it the next morning and then there'd have been hell to pay. I suppose the blighter couldn't resist one parting shot. But how did you know it was me who'd filched the typewriter?"
"My exceptional insight into human nature," said Wimsey, who had no intention of divulging any details. "You do realise, Duffield, that you will have to face the consequences of your actions, just as you forced Black to face the consequences of his?"
"So I'm damned, am I?" said Sir John bitterly. "Damned by your exceptional insight into human nature and your exceptional arrogance in passing judgment on your fellow man. Curse you, Wimsey. If you're going to play judge and jury, why did you balk at executioner? You might have had the decency to wait half an hour before calling the ambulance."
"Frankly," said Wimsey, his expression as wintry as his voice, "I didn't think you deserved it." Then he bent his head over the hospital bed and talked very earnestly for almost quarter of an hour.
On returning to his rooms in College, Lord Peter found Bunter awake and eager to thrust tea upon him.
"Mr Kuryakin is asleep on the couch, my lord," he said. "He wished to be here when your lordship returned in order to learn what has become of Sir John, but I fear the waiting has proved soporific."
Lord Peter grinned. "I'll go and give him a kick," he said. "In the meantime, could you rustle up a cup of coffee to go with this tea? Our young friend is not the only one to feel the soporific effects of a prolonged wait."
Suiting the action to the word, he went into the sitting room, where he found Kuryakin stretched out on the couch, oblivious to the world. The early morning sunlight, slanting through the window, fingered his ruffled hair, turning it an improbable shade of gold. In sleep, his features had lost their wariness, and his face was open and vulnerable. He looked, as Henderson had said, about twelve. Lord Peter's heart was softened.
"Shame to wake the kid," he muttered. "He looks so peaceful. And so bloody young. It's hard to believe that when I was his age I was serving in the trenches. We were just kids ourselves, I suppose, though we took ourselves for men. Thank God this generation won't have to go through that particular horror."
For a moment he stood still, ambushed by memories. Then he gave himself a violent shake and aimed a kick in the direction of the sleeper.
"Oi, Kuryakin, wake up!" he said heartily. "Don't you want to know what happened at the hospital?"
Peter could not have asked for a more appreciative audience. Kuryakin, startled into instant wakefulness, was openly agog, and Bunter hardly less so.
"It seems we were both right, Bunter," said his lordship, who knew a gripping opening line when he saw one. "It was suicide, and it was also murder." He proceeded to relate for his enthralled listeners the gist of his conversation with Duffield.
"What I still don't understand," said Kuryakin, when he had finished, "Is why Duffield stole Turing's work in the first place. He was a respected scholar in his own right. How can public honours matter more to a man than his own integrity?"
"Just for a handful of silver he left us, just for a riband to stick in his coat," agreed Peter. "The question honours you, Kuryakin, but I fear it is becoming a minority view. As Duffield himself once told me, these are godless days."
Kuryakin scowled. "Since he's still alive, does that mean he's going to press charges?"
"Dear me, what a very gloomy imagination you do have," said Wimsey. "Quite the opposite. He will be issuing a statement to the press today informing them that, owing to his current state of ill-health, he has decided to withdraw from public life. Christ's will have to find a new Master. I hope they survive the in-fighting around the election; I understand there was a fair amount of blood on the carpet last time."
"And the Royal Society, my lord?" enquired Bunter.
"He's resigning his Fellowship. He isn't quite prepared to admit to them that he had committed an act of cold-blooded plagiarism, but he will say that he feels unable to accept the honour on the basis of what was essentially a collaborative work."
"But even if he resigns from everything, his reputation is still intact," said Kuryakin indignantly.
"You want to see him publicly humiliated, I take it? Branded with a scarlet letter and led through the streets with a chain around his neck? We could do that to him, certainly, but I rather think that he, like Black, would prefer death before dishonour, even if the dishonour is thoroughly well deserved. And if Duffield were put into Black's position, well, then I should find myself in something very like Duffield's position, shouldn't I? And I'd rather avoid that."
"But it isn't fair!" protested Kuryakin.
"The young are so confoundedly unforgiving," said Lord Peter. "Go ahead, then, do what you think is right. Fire the killing shot. I shall not stay your hand."
Kuryakin closed his fists in frustration. "He's getting away with it!" he said. "Just because we don't wish to descend to his level!"
"No," said Lord Peter thoughtfully, "I shouldn't say that he's getting off scot free, although he has certainly got off more lightly than he deserved. It's a nasty, sordid little tale all round, and Duffield very nearly pulled it off. In fact, he would have come out of the affair as pure as the driven snow, had it not been for your resemblance to the Elephant's Child."
"The Elephant's Child," put in Bunter helpfully, lest Kipling had not left his literary mark on Soviet Russia, "was known for his insatiable curiosity."
"Quite right," said Lord Peter. "And speaking of resemblances, that was a remarkable spot of acting you did last night, Kuryakin. Very quick thinking on your part. A complete caricature, of course - it wouldn't have fooled anyone in a more stable state of mind - but still remarkable."
Just for a moment, Bunter's eye met Kuryakin's.
"You're clearly a fellow of many talents," continued Wimsey, apparently oblivious to this silent exchange. "If you don't mind, I'd like to put you in touch with an old chum of mine, Alexander Waverly. A charming gent, and not at all frivolous; I think you'd get on like a house on fire. He's one of these weight-of-the-world types, quite different from Yours Truly. And now, let us venture forth and see if we can't catch the tail end of the Survivors' Breakfast. I am in a mood to outrage everyone with my callous indifference to mine host's brush with the Grim Reaper. Shall we shog?"