An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman

Author:J. C. Masterman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Brendel was dining at All Souls that evening, and had told me that he would come to my rooms at about ten o’clock. I waited for him in a state of considerable exasperation, and prepared rather carefully what would be, I felt, at once a tactful yet severe reproof. I was pondering in my mind whether it would be wise to suggest to him that it might be safer, after all, to leave the investigation in official hands, when he knocked and came in. But I had no opportunity to broach the subject, for before I could open my mouth he had patted me twice on the back as though I were a child needing comfort, and was launched on a flood of words which I could not easily stem.

‘You were going to say, if I had let you, my dear friend, that the poor blundering Austrian Professor had made an intolerable gaffe; that he had been terribly rude to your quite charming ladies in the President’s Lodgings; that he did not quite understand the conventions of English society; that in short he had made a real mess of all your business; that perhaps even, yes, perhaps he ought to give up the work of detection and leave it to those who understand it better. Now, admit, you were going to say all that, very tactfully yet very firmly; were you not?’

Somehow as he spoke all my old confidence and belief in him returned to me, but I could not help admitting that his prognosis was almost literally true.

‘Yes,’ I said a little sheepishly. ‘I suppose I was going to say something of the kind. You know really in those questions to Mary Vereker you went too far; both she and her sister were terribly upset. And I was upset too. I’ve known them both so long and I like them so much. I really consider myself – well – more or less I’m in a sort of semi-paternal relation to them, poor girls. I feel for them more than I can say, and naturally they resented your questions, just as I did.’

I was working myself into a state of indignation again, but Brendel soothed me with a reassuring gesture of the hand.

‘My dear Winn,’ he said, ‘indeed, as you say, they are the most charming young ladies, I find it in my heart to envy you – what is it? – your semi-paternal status in that household. Consider now. Do you really think that I can have liked asking them those very awkward and unpleasant questions? Am I quite such a heartless Philistine, am I really so little of what you call a gentleman to enjoy a task like that? I tell you I was quite nervous, quite uncomfortable all the time. I felt like one of your youngest undergraduates facing you for the first time, and finding you in a bad temper.’ All the little crow’s-feet round his eyes puckered up as he smiled at me. I knew

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