An Oxford Tragedy Read Online Free Page B

There’s no great murder trial of the last twenty years that I’ve not followed from start to finish – and in one or two of them – well, I had some small part to play myself.’
    â€˜By Jove, that’s interesting,’ said Doyne, who was listening from the other side of the table. ‘You must tell us more about this, Professor. We thought that you were just an ordinary man of prodigious learning, and now we find that we are entertaining an angel unawares. A new Sherlock Holmes from Vienna, with all the modern improvements. You’ll find that everyone in this Common Room has a theory of his own about the art of detection, especially Mitton, who thinks that Providence always leads the culprit to repentance and confession about three days after the crime.’
    Mitton became so alarmingly pink at this garbled account of his views that I thought it best to break off the discussion. Dinner was over, so I got up and said grace. Then we trooped together down to Common Room.

Chapter Three
    To a middle-aged don, as I might describe myself, or to an old don, as I might almost be described, there is no place more pleasant than Common Room, no hour more wholly pleasurable than that spent in it immediately after dinner. For here the Fellows of St Thomas’s, having dined, settled down to enjoy the comfort of port and dessert, of coffee and cigars. I had come, as I grew older, to look forward all day to that hour in the evening which I most enjoyed. The good wine, the flow of conversation, the ritual of the table at once dignified and almost stately and yet homely as well, exercised a soothing effect on my nerves and filled me with a sense of physical and mental well-being. Providence gave me, I think, an imperfect appreciation of the beauties of nature; I can’t enthuse over the grandeur of hills or seas, nor even over the more placid loveliness of the countryside. But as some sort of compensation I have a real aesthetic love of the lighted interior, the scene of social intercourse and good fellowship at their best. For me a Dutch interior by Maes or Terborch, or an eighteenth-century conversation piece is worth more than any landscape or seascape that was ever painted. Nor was it only the externals of the Common Room which I loved; it seemed rather that life there suited itself to my every mood. If I felt festive and sociable there were always others ready to meet me halfway. If on the other hand a black shadow of pessimism was on me, the room seemed to attune itself to me. I thought of it then as the home of a multitude of my predecessors – who had drunk their wine and lived their short lives there since the foundation of the college. A sorrowful thought, made more poignant by that deep misgiving from which few can escape.
    Ah, but the Apparition
–
the dumb sign –
The beckoning finger bidding me forgo
The fellowship, the converse and the wine,
The songs, the festal glow!
And ah, to know not, while with friends I sit
And while the purple joy is pass’d about,
Whether ’tis ampler day divinelier lit,
Or homeless night without
    How well that great but misjudged modern poet voices my blacker mood! But that mood was rare. For the most part I was supremely contented and happy in that place. The Common Room of St Thomas’s was indeed my spiritual home. In earlier days I had been accustomed to work after dinner, but now I tended more and more to sit talking and smoking until it was time for a book and bed.
    I moved to my seat at the end of the table, where the decanters and the snuff lay before me, and invited Brendel to sit at my right hand. On the other side of me I put Whitaker’s guest. The rest of the party seated themselves as they pleased. I observed with a good deal of satisfaction that the younger members moved quickly to sit near the Viennese; it was obvious that they had capitulated to his charm of manner as easily as had I.
    Hardly had we settled down, and the