Free Was It Murder? by James Hilton

body?”
    Roseveare smiled rather sadly.  “You think it necessary for your— investigations, eh?  Well, I won’t refuse you, or perhaps you WOULD think I was trying to hamper your efforts.  But of course you quite understand that nothing must be disturbed in any way.  Subject to that condition, I can certainly comply.  In fact, I’ll take you now— it is almost dark and we shall attract less attention than in the daytime.”
    At about half-past ten, therefore, on the eve of Oakington Jubilee Speech Day, Revell and Dr. Roseveare made their rather gruesome pilgrimage to the School gymnasium that had been temporarily turned into a mortuary; the doctor unlocked the door and, in the dim illumination of a rather distant electric light, Revell pulled back the linen sheet and looked upon what was left of Wilbraham Marshall, sometime head prefect of Oakington School.  A glance was sufficient—or rather, perhaps, many additional glances would have been no more helpful.  The doctor did not look at all.
    “And now,” said Revell, as they left the gymnasium and relocked it, “I needn’t trouble you any further if you will just lend me the swimming-bath key.”
    Roseveare detached it from his bundle and pressed it into Revell’s hand with an almost fatherly gesture.  “Yes, I think I’ll leave you to it—I have a number of urgent matters to attend to to-night.  You’ll help yourself to my whisky if you’re back after I’ve gone to bed, won’t you? . . .  That’s right.  Good night.”
    Revell unlocked the door of the swimming-bath and walked up the entire length of the building as far as the diving-board and platforms.  Then he walked back again.  That was all.  He had seen what he wanted to see, and was rather proud, indeed, of having expected to see it.  And also, too, he had heard what he wanted to hear.
     
     
    CHAPTER IV
    A SPEECH DAY AND AN INQUEST
     
    It was surely the most remarkable Speech Day Oakington could ever have experienced.  Had the tragedy happened a little earlier, it might have been possible to postpone the Jubilee celebrations, but with less than forty-eight hours’ notice, the major proceedings had to remain as planned.  Details, of course, were judiciously altered— and yet perhaps not too judiciously, for a little of even manufactured gaiety would have helped to mitigate the sombre melancholy of the affair.
    Revell, as a slightly quizzical spectator, watched the curious scene from hour to hour.  He saw the reception at the main entrance in the morning—saw Dr. Roseveare, with a mechanical smile and a few mechanical words of welcome, shaking hands mechanically with each one of several hundred guests; he attended the chapel service and listened to an appallingly dull sermon by an Old Oakingtonian whom years and ambitious mediocrity had combined to make a colonial bishop; he sat in one of the rearmost rows in the Hall during the afternoon and heard the lugubrious chanting of the School Song.  The guest of honour was Sir Giles Mandrake, a millionaire shipowner; his wife presented the prizes.  Roseveare sat conveniently at Lady Mandrake’s elbow, ready to give her tactful assistance in any little difficulty that might arise.  His massive head (“leonine” was the obvious word), with its crown of silver hair, seemed in a strange way to dominate everything and everybody.  A truly remarkable man, as Revell had realised, though never so completely as now.  For after the tedious, halting, nerve-racking speech by Sir Giles, Roseveare’s cool, exquisitely-chosen words were like healing ointment on a raw wound.  He spoke gently of the School’s past, wisely of its present, and hopefully of its future.  In a single guarded sentence he referred to “events during the past year which we must all deplore and which I, personally, regret more than I can ever say”—but that was all.  He made a few half-wistful, half-jesting comments on the School’s sporting achievements.  He