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

“Duplicating and confirming, as near as Barton could, Newton’s own alchemic work.” Wentworth was lying flat on the floor, his head poking over the trapdoor edge so that he could see what was going on. “And the source of the smells that frightened away Barton’s bedmaker. Erasmus, I’m coming down. I’m as interested in this as anyone.”

“A few moments more — I thought, but perhaps I was wrong.” Darwin had scanned the rough-walled chamber, and now he was peering under tables and workbenches. “No. It is, alas, just as I feared. Dr. Arbuthnot, would you?”

He was down on hands and knees by a long, low table in the corner. Together, he and Arbuthnot dragged out an object wrapped in coarse sacking. Darwin peeled back a part of it.

“Dead.” Arbuthnot had automatically reached forward to touch the cheek and feel the neck. “And for some time — rigor mortis been and gone. But who is he?”

“I could speculate. But others know beyond all doubt.” Darwin held the lamp so that it shone on the face of the corpse. “Collie?”

“That’s Simon Thorpe, Barton’s bedmaker.”

“Who did not run off to Huntingdon and beyond, as Joe Walker asserted. Sometimes even an unreliable witness may be right. Lambert Gray, the gardener whose testimony you were inclined to reject, did not err. Simon Thorpe indeed went into E Staircase yesterday morning — and never again emerged from it.”

“But why did Barton kill him?” Wentworth was at last descending the ladder, slowly and uneasily. “And when and how did he kill him?”

“How is easy.” Rufus Arbuthnot turned the head to reveal that the back of the skull was smashed in. “As for why and when...”

“We are obliged to conjecture.” Darwin squatted back on his heels. “Young Selfridge and you yourself, Collie, remarked that in recent months Elias Barton seemed to lose all sense of time, even seeming unaware of day or night. At first he would have been careful to safeguard his secret, working his experiments late and with his oak securely sported. But as his mania grew, so did his carelessness. No one is alive to confirm it, but suppose that Simon Thorpe entered these rooms during the daytime and found the trapdoor open. Would not any man have advanced to the edge, curious to see what lay below in a room previously unknown to him?”

“While Barton was working down there?” Wentworth had reached the foot of the ladder.

“No.” Arbuthnot had stripped back the sacking and was further examining the corpse. “See here? Smashed skull. Barton above, likely in his bedroom. Thorpe enters, finds trapdoor open. Then — bang, hard blow on the head from behind, forward he goes. Fall might have killed if head wound didn’t.”

“We have to lift Thorpe’s body aloft and prepare him for decent burial.” Wentworth had taken only one quick glance at the body on reaching the floor of the hidden laboratory. “What on earth could Barton have hoped to do, had he not himself died? Thorpe has relatives; his absence would have been remarked on within a few days. Might this murder have urged Barton toward suicide?”

“Never.” Darwin was assisting Arbuthnot, winding sacking tight about the body. “Elias Barton suffered the common delusion of all who believe they have infinite power. What would the death of a mere servant matter in his universal view of things? I doubt he thought of or cared about secular consequences. He had already passed well beyond the bounds of sanity.”

The melancholy business of hoisting the bedmaker aloft called for the combined effort of all three men. It seemed wrong to leave Simon Thorpe in the bedroom next to the body of his murderer, and Wentworth headed for the office of the College Steward to arrange for a more suitable resting place. Arbuthnot, after a look at his watch, went with him.

“Two hours late! Hell to pay in my office. But wouldn’t have missed a minute of this — corpse and all!”

Darwin was left alone to his vigil, pondering how a day begun with prospects of antipodean discovery could have turned to a puzzle of multiple deaths. He performed a systematic search of Barton’s rooms, including the alchemical laboratory, but did not find what he sought. His efforts were interrupted by a hollow clomp-clomp-clomp of approaching footsteps. He did not think of ghosts or the restless spirits of the dead, but he did grip one of the fire irons until Jacob Pole’s face appeared at the doorway. The colonel was soaking wet. Raindrops glistened in his eyebrows and thinning hair, and he was shivering.

“When the man I found in the dining hall didn’t come back, ’Rasmus, I went to look for him on the way. He swears he gave the message exactly as you told me and I told him. Doesn’t sound promising, though. He saw half a dozen passengers waiting for the London coach, but no one showed any reaction to the message.”

“I did not expect an immediate result. But many thanks for running my errand. Go to Collie now and demand food and a hot drink — another malarial bout is the last thing you need.”

“Won’t you come with me? Aren’t you all done?”