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

“Of course. Yet it marked his increasing oddity. It would be easy to say that he became a recluse, but that would not suffice as a description. Since the beginning of this year I have seen him often, late at night, rambling alone around the quadrangles. Once I saw him pirouetting like a dervish on the Third Court lawn. As a graduate of this college he had, of course, a right to walk or dance on the grass if he so chose. Nonetheless, it is this kind of behavior that makes me — and not only me — suspect that Elias Barton’s death was in no way accidental. I believe, despite anything that the Master might desire and proclaim to the contrary, that a man whose reason was unhinged by overwork or unnatural practices deliberately took his own life. A brilliant mind can become deranged more easily than a simple one, without recourse to the Devil.”

“And the smell of smoke and brimstone, which so alarmed the bedmaker?”

“That I credit to imagination. The servants are a superstitious lot. In fact, there is more to the story than Joe Walker gave you. The bedmaker, Simon Thorpe, indeed complained of the aftertaste of deviltry in Barton’s rooms, and he left the college the night before last. Except that a gardener, Lambert Gray, who was working on the Third Court lawns, swore that he saw Simon Thorpe yesterday morning. Gray avers that Thorpe went into the doorway to E Staircase — and never came out.”

“That was not investigated?”

“Investigate what? Every room on the E Staircase of Third Court was thoroughly looked into this morning, even though most are unoccupied. As for Lambert Gray’s own reputation, he is an inveterate gossip and an idler, who sneaks off into Kitchen Lane to smoke a quiet pipe whenever he can. If he did not see Thorpe leave, it is because he was not in Third Court to see him leave. In any case, he came up with his story only this morning, after Elias Barton’s body had been discovered. I assign no significance to it, except to confirm the overheated imagination of college servants.”

“True. As Shakespeare says, at night most imagined bears are no more than bushes. However, occasionally one of them will prove to be a real bear.”

The clock on the mantelpiece sounded the hour, and Darwin glanced across at it. “Still too early, I judge, for Dr. Arbuthnot. May I then pay a visit to your sizar, Thomas Selfridge?”

“Certainly.”

“Alone, if you have no objection. If he is as shy as you say, numbers will work adversely on his willingness to talk.”

“My own feeling is that regardless of shyness he will offer you minimal cooperation. You should not be surprised if he is less than fully honest with you. However, you should do as you wish. Colonel Pole and I are situated comfortably.” Wentworth already held a bottle in his hand. “Tucked away in my little corner of England, I am always happy to hear of travels around the world. For treasure, Colonel, was it not? And you are hoping that James Cook’s discoveries in the southern continent will offer you scope for more success.”

“Better to say, scope for more failure. For I am forced to admit that all my travels, from Patagonia to Samarkand, have brought me five cases of fever and a thousand bug bites for every grain of gold.” Pole pulled his chair closer to Wentworth. “You have perhaps heard talk of Trapalanda, the lost city of the Caesars, in the High Andes of South America. Once I was given — no, let me be honest — sold, a map bearing on it the city’s supposed location. I set out with eight mules, and a year’s supply of provisions...”

Darwin left the room, light-footed and silent for such a big man. He knew how the story ended. Yet Jacob’s lust for treasure remained unquenched. As it should. An eager traveler derived more from life than one whose every goal had already been attained.

In twenty years of general medical practice around Lichfield, Darwin had been forced to deal with every type of patient. No fears could exceed those of a first-time mother, suffering the delivery of a breech baby in a farmer’s cottage in the dead of a Derbyshire winter, without adequate warmth or hot water.

Kindness, confidence, competence, and Darwin’s natural benevolence usually won the day. Yet even he had to admit that he was making little headway with Thomas Selfridge.

Darwin had read one major reason for Selfridge’s nervousness within the first thirty seconds of meeting, but he was convinced that there was more. The youth was pale and slim, with an uncombed shock of raven hair. He avoided Darwin’s eye, even when Darwin first introduced himself. He stood no more than five feet four inches — and he stood all the time, in spite of attempts to persuade him to sit down. Darwin himself perforce remained on his feet, asking about the logic and rhetoric courses that Selfridge had to take, and in which he was showing remarkably little interest. Finally, Darwin’s wandering brought him close enough to the desk under the window to examine the pages strewn across it.