Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

“Hold.” Darwin paused in mid-stride. “I must be getting old, Collie, or my brains are addled by a poor night’s sleep. This approach will not work. It cannot work. When the Master of St. John’s has himself defined the official position, no college servant will dare suggest anything else.”

“But it was you who suggested that the assistance of the college servants—”

“—is most desirable. It is. But this must be played differently. We must work outside the walls of the college, or we will learn nothing. Collie, do you know of an inn frequented by the college servants?”

“The Baron of Beef close by the Round Church and not fifty steps from the college front gate. The servants drink there, since they are forbidden to drink in college.”

“They drink, and then they talk, or they are like no serving folk I ever met. And I ask you, what will they be talking about today? Jacob, let’s be off. Not you, Collie. You are familiar to them and you will inhibit their gossip. Stay here, and when we return we will inform you of the outcome.”

“You are going to drink?”

“No.” Jacob Pole pulled a dark-brown briar pipe from his jacket. “Erasmus doesn’t drink. He claims that alcohol is an evil influence. So guess who has to do the drinking, while he sits and pretends to?”

“And the smoking. And guess who enjoys that, Collie, so long as he’s not paying? Come on, Jacob. This is going to take at least an hour or two. Get ready to open up that hollow leg.”

It required two rounds of drinks for everyone, and almost exactly one hour of time. In that period Darwin and Pole changed status from strangers to silent but interested and hospitable fellow drinkers.

The curiosity of the others helped. A third of the inn’s clientele were servants from next door Trinity College. They had heard rumors of something terrible that had happened at St. John’s the previous night, and they were all eager for details.

“Atop the college roof, he were.” The speaker was a lanky, dark-haired man with a flair for the dramatic. He stood up and raised his arms above his head. “With the wind ’owling ’round ’im, an’ the thunder crashin’ an’ the lightnin’ flashin’. An’ ’im calling down the Devil ’imself, to do ’is bidding.”

“Now where’d you get all that from, Joe Walker?” The speaker was not so much questioning as eager for lurid details. “We all ’eard ’e was out on the roof, but who gave you that Devil-worship stuff? Did yer just make it up?”

“I did not.” Walker was indignant. “I could ’ave told you that Dr. Barton was conjurin’ demons weeks ago, if you’d bothered to ask me. An’ that word didn’t come from me, neither.” He called on a short, bald-headed man for support. “Did it, ’Enry?”

“Joe’s quite right.” Henry swept the audience with a sinister squint. “Near a week back — six days, I know it were that because I recall it ’appened right at teatime on Wednesday. Simon Thorpe, ’e were bedmaker for E Staircase on Third Court and did Dr. Barton’s rooms, ’e come in the kitchen where me an’ Joe was cutting watercress, an’ ’e were white like a ghost. He swallowed a quart of beer down like it were nowt, an’ said that Dr. Barton were conjuring up demons in his room.”

“He saw it happen?” said a man sitting next to Jacob Pole.

“No, an’ lucky ’e didn’t, or that would have been the last of ’im. But ’e saw the smoke in the air, and ’e smelled fire and brimstone. Said it were like a whiff from the gates of ’ell.”

“An’ it ’appened again, two days ago.” Joe Walker felt that Henry had enjoyed long enough in the limelight. “That’s when Simon Thorpe told me, personal, that ’e were done. If the job meant workin’ Elias Barton’s rooms, with the chance of being dragged off to ’ell, ’e wasn’t ’aving no part of it. An’ ’e meant what he was saying because come yesterday morning Simon ran off. He never showed up for work, an’ I reckon as by now ’e’s t’other side of Huntingdon, an’ still goin’. An’ I say, good for ’im, otherwise ’e might have been up there on that roof when the Devil come down ’owlin’, an’ grabbed up Elias Barton, an’ dashed his brains out in Kitchen Lane.”

“I ’eard that t’Master of St. John’s says Barton slipped an’ fell. He weren’t thrown.” This was from one of the Trinity servants.

“Aye, you’ll ’ear that, an’ say it the Master did.” Joe Walker nodded. “But some time when you ’ave ten minutes to spare, Jack Piper, I’ll take you up on to that bit o’ roof of Third Court, and you can tell me if it’s a place a man could ever fall off.”

“Not take me up there you won’t. I’ll stay on ground.”

“Then you ’ave to trust my word on it, Elias Barton didn’t slip an’ fall, ’e thought ’e could call up the Devil, an’ win. But the spells ’e ’ad weren’t strong enough, and the Devil picked ’im up like ’e were a feather, right in the middle of the lightnin’ storm, an’ smashed ’im down to ’is doom.”