The Seven of Calvary Read online

  The Seven of Calvary

  Anthony Boucher

  Dedicated

  to

  DR. ASHWIN

  The characters, institutions, and action of this novel are completely fictional, and have no reference to actual people or events—with one exception. That one is Dr. Ashwin, who is accurately reproduced from reality, and whose name in this book is a Sanskrit translation of his own.

  ANTHONY BOUCHER

  Contents

  Prelude

  CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARIES TO A MURDER

  CHAPTER II: THE OBSERVATIONS OF DR. ASHWIN

  CHAPTER III: THE SEVEN OF CALVARY

  CHAPTER IV: MARTIN ACCUSES

  CHAPTER V: WATSON AS LOTHARIO

  CHAPTER VI: THE SUPERFLUOUS ALIBI

  Interlude

  CHAPTER VII: STRANGULATION SCENE

  CHAPTER VIII: TEMPEST IN A WINEGLASS

  CHAPTER IX: THE LAST SEVEN

  Interlude

  CHAPTER X: TRUTH DOES A STRIP-TEASE

  CHAPTER XI: THE NAKED TRUTH

  Postlude

  About the Author

  The People Involved

  I. Students at the University of California

  A. Residents of International House

  * MARTIN LAMB, research fellow in German

  * ALEX BRUCE, research fellow in chemistry

  * KURT ROSS, a Swiss

  PAUL BORITSIN, a White Russian

  RICHARD WORTHING, a Canadian

  REMIGIO MORALES, a Bolivian

  * MONA, his sister

  * GUADALUPE SANCHEZ (LUPE), a Mexican

  B. Other students

  * CYNTHIA WOOD, Bruce’s fiancée

  MARY ROBERTS

  CHUCK WITHERS

  II. Faculty members of the University of California

  * JOHN ASHWIN, PH.D., professor of Sanskrit

  * PAUL LENNOX, M.A., instructor in history

  * IVAN LESHIN, PH.D., exchange professor of Slavic history

  * TATYANA (TANYA), his wife

  * JOSEPH GRISWOLD, PH.D., professor of Spanish

  LAWRENCE DREXEL, director of the Little Theatre

  III. Others

  * SERGEANT CUTTING, of the Berkeley police

  DAVIS, a policeman

  WARREN BLAKELY, head of International House

  MORRIS, a hospitable philologist

  DR. EVANS, of the Memorial Hospital A young interne

  An elderly clerk at Zolotoy’s (“Theatrical Accessories”)

  * HUGO SCHAEDEL, PH.D., Kurt Ross’s uncle and unofficial ambassador of the Swiss Republic

  * The reader who approaches a mystery novel as a puzzle and a challenge is cautioned that he need keep his eye only on those characters marked by an asterisk; the rest are merely necessary extras.—A. B.

  Prelude

  An admirable crab cocktail and two bottles of beer had, I confess, made me more than usually argumentative. I had reached the point of maintaining, for the sheer pleasure of argument, an untenable position quite contrary to my own belief.

  “The Watson,” I expounded, “is an outworn device. In the early days of detective fiction he was essential. The unaccustomed reader would never have seen what the detective was driving at without him; hence the need of Dupin’s unnamed friend and of Watson himself. But now the reader of mystery stories is so inoculated, like Better-edge, with detective fever that he needs—as you might say, Martin—no ‘stooge’ to act as interpreter to the master mind.”

  Martin Lamb summoned his attention from the fishing-boats outside the window and from the Japanese children who seemed in imminent danger of plunging from the pier. “Logical,” he commented. “But writers still use them.”

  “Do they?” I asked. “Roger Sheringham, Reggie Fortune, Lord Peter Wimsey—these almost too bright young men don’t seem to find a Watson necessary. Philo Vance’s Van Dine is a figurehead who never utters a word, a phantom first person, as every producer has realized in omitting him on the screen. Can you conceive of any Holmes novel filmed with Watson omitted? Dr. Thorndyke has so many Watsons that he may be said to have none. Dr. Fell, that magnificently bawdy toper—”

  “You see, Tony,” Martin interrupted, “I’m a trifle prejudiced on this question of Watsons. I was one myself once, and I flatter myself that I was damned indispensable.”

  “And when was this?” I asked the question reluctantly, fully expecting a more or less elaborate bit of leg-pulling.

  Martin had taken out his pencil and was drawing something on the back of the menu. “When? Were you in Berkeley when Dr. Schaedel was killed?”

  Schaedel … The name was familiar. I seemed to remember fragments of some complicated and unsolved mystery. “Something about Switzerland, wasn’t it?” I finally answered. “And an ice pick?”

  “Switzerland and an ice pick …” Martin smiled. “That combination makes about as much sense as the whole problem seemed to at first. And as it still seems to the Berkeley police … Have you ever heard of the Seven of Calvary?” he aked abruptly, handing me the menu.

  I looked at the curious figure for several moments. A sort of Italic F over three rectangles. I shook my head. “Now I see,” I said. “In order to disprove my own argument I am now to play Watson to you. Well, tell the story.”

  “First,” said Martin, “we will have some more beer and some more crab. We’d be idiots to eat only a single crab cocktail apiece in one of the few places in the world which serve whole crab instead of shredded. Then I’ll begin the story and continue it over dinner at—shall we say La Favorite?”

  I agreed gladly. The mixed smell of fish, fishing-boats, and salt water had roused an appetite not easily satisfied. But an equally strong appetite had been stirred by Martin’s casual reference to his playing Watson. More details of the Schaedel case returned to my mind. There had been another murder—or was it two?—in Berkeley around the same time. As best I could remember, the cases had seemed linked, but no solution had ever been found.

  The crab and the beer arrived. Martin took a large swig, lifted one perfect crab-leg out of its sauce, and sat regarding the end of his fork. “I scarcely know what is the logical beginning of the story,” he said. “We should start, I suppose, with the fons et origo mali, as Ashwin might say. You know Ashwin, of course?”

  “I met him once.” And who does not know the translations from the Sanskrit of John Ashwin? The Panchatantra, the dramas of Kalidasa, the racy Ten Princes, the sublime Bhagavad Gita—a library would be poor indeed which contained no Ashwin.

  “Good,” Martin went on. “But where should I begin? With the day that Ashwin first read a mystery novel? That would be logical enough. Or the day that Dr. Schaedel discovered the delights of an evening walk? Or the day that I began my translation of José Maria Fonseca? Or—most logical of all perhaps—the day that the noted Eastbay business man, Robert R. Wood, decided to change his religion?”

  “Please, Martin,” I begged, “stop being mystifying and tell the story. Remember you’re the Watson, not the Master Mind.”

  Martin finished his cocktail deliberately. “All right,” he said. “I’ll begin with myself on the day of the murder. That should allow me to bring in everything. And this I promise you—nothing irrelevant and everything relevant. This shall be a model of fair play.” He took another draught of beer and offered me his cigarette case. And as we began to add tobacco smoke to the fish-laden air, he commenced the story of the murder of Dr. Hugo Schaedel, which is also the story of Dr. John Ashwin, scholar, poet, translator, and detective.

  CHAPTER I

  Preliminaries to a Murder

  “atha nalopākhyānam. brhadaçva uvāca.”

  “‘Here begins the episode of Nala. Brihadashva spea
ks,’” Martin translated almost automatically. The warm spring air entering through the open windows of the classroom was quite enough to distract his attention from the Mahabharata.

  Dr. Ashwin rose somewhat heavily from behind the desk and began to pace the room as he recited the opening shloka. His voice took on a booming richness which fitted equally well his imposing figure and the magnificent Sanskrit verse.

  Martin was sincerely eager to keep his attention fixed upon his translation. As the sole student of first year Sanskrit in the entire university, he had a reputation to maintain. But his thoughts insisted on wandering. Rehearsal that afternoon. Could he possibly persuade Drexel to make Paul change his reading of the death speech? Just what were the rights of a translator against those of a director? And that evening the reception for Dr. Schaedel. Why the devil had he let himself be roped in on a reception committee? As if he didn’t have enough … “‘Thus speaking, the king released the swan,’” he translated.

  “‘Thus having spoken,’” Ashwin amended.

  When half an hour of this had passed, Ashwin laid the text on the table and sat down. “You did very well, Mr. Lamb,” he commented. “How do you like your first contact with Sanskrit narrative verse?”

  “Very much indeed,” Martin admitted honestly. “It has a splendid roll.”

  “In all literature,” said Ashwin, “I have found only three verse meters which I can read indefinitely without tiring: English blank verse, the Latin and Greek hexameter, and the Sanskrit shloka.” Like all of Ashwin’s frequent ex cathedra statements, this came forth with an impression of superpontifical infallibility. And in the same manner, without a pause, he asked, “Have you found any interesting mystery novels of late?”

  Dr. Ashwin’s perturbingly catholic tastes rarely failed to startle Martin slightly. He was quite apt to turn from a stringent critique of Virgil to extravagant praise of Ogden Nash, who, in his estimation, held first place among American poet’s. The unpredictable jump from metrical technique to mystery novels took Martin a little aback. “Interesting, possibly,” he answered, “but not good. An atrocious modern solution to Edwin Drood, in which the Princess Puffer turns out to be Jasper’s mother.”

  “The Princess Puffer,” Ashwin began, “is to me the only mystery in the unfinished novel. The main points of the plot are entirely too obvious, which is, of course, exactly why there is so much discussion about them.”

  “But if it is so obvious why has it been a literary crux for years?”

  “As I said, because it is obvious. It is the blatantly obvious that defies this muddle-headed world, which chooses what is quite possibly so in preference to what is obviously truth. This ‘quite possibly so’ is rarely entirely wrong; it is simply confused. And truth can issue far more readily from error than from confusion. Moha rules the world.” A bell rang at this pronouncement, and Ashwin rose. “Should you care to lunch with me, Mr. Lamb?” he asked.

  Gratefully free now from academic responsibilities, they lit cigarettes as they walked out onto the vernal campus. Martin nodded to several friends as they passed, noting on the face of each the expression of slight surprise always caused by his companionship with Dr. Ashwin. They did make a curious pair. A difference of thirty years in age, an utter contrariety in upbringing and attitude, and certain striking divergences in taste were more than balanced by an essential similarity in the way their minds worked and a common devotion to beer and whiskey.

  It was beer that was on Martin’s mind now as they passed through Sather Gate onto Telegraph Avenue. Ashwin paused a moment and looked at the entrance to the campus. “When I first came to this University,” he observed, “there was a frieze of naked athletes on that gate. Since they were not only naked but somewhat ithyphallic, the pure people of Berkeley demanded the removal of the frieze. But what most rejoiced me was this: Underneath this group of males, apparently rearing for action, was the inscription: ERECTED BY JANE K. SATHER.”

  Happily sated with a good lunch and good talk, Martin entered the history classroom. Fortunately there was a vacant seat next to Cynthia Wood, and he took it. Seats near Cynthia were usually at something of a premium.

  “Hello, Martin,” she smiled.

  “Hello,” he answered. “How’s Alex?”

  “How should I know?” Her tone was sharp.

  “Sorry. I just thought you might have seen him at lunch.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  Despite Cynthia’s abruptness, Martin relaxed in the stiff wooden chair and looked at her with pleasure. She was enough to relieve the tedium of any class. In earliest adolescence Cynthia had decided to become exotic, and she had succeeded almost without trying. The natural development of her body had produced a more exotic result than any effort could have managed. She used no make-up, and as a consequence her black lashes, her white cheeks, and her full red lips were far more striking than the best Max Factor effects. Her breasts were the only living ones which had ever reminded Martin of the half-pomegranates which grace the chests of every maiden (in the widest sense) in the Arabian Nights; he fully expected that her navel, by analogy, would hold an ounce of ointment. He had, in fact, once expressed that idea in an imitation of Arabic verse, which had fortunately been lost long since in his infinite mess of papers.

  “Tell me, Cyn,” he asked abstractedly, “how on earth did you come to be taking this course? Slavic History’s an odd bit of knowledge for a rich girl who is going to justify her existence by teaching English.”

  Cynthia shrugged her round shoulders. “I don’t know. I had a free elective, and I thought Dr. Leshin ought to be interesting.”

  “Well, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she admitted reluctantly, “but I’m funny. I’d sooner get my grades on a sheet of paper than a sheet of linen.”

  Martin nodded sympathetically. Dr. Ivan Leshin, half Russian and half Czech, was an attractive man, and resolutely determined to use that attractiveness for all it was worth. His private coaching lessons, despite his charming young Russian wife, had already become a byword during his brief sojourn in Berkeley as Exchange Professor of Slavic History.

  “But why the devil do you always ask me where Alex is?” Cynthia broke out abruptly.

  “You’re generally with him for lunch. I don’t see what there is to make a scene about, Cyn.”

  “And don’t call me Cyn.”

  “It was Paul’s gag. I think he started it so that he could say a picture was pretty as Cyn.”

  “I don’t like Paul’s gags. In fact,” Cynthia added in unconscious paraphrase of Groucho Marx, “I don’t like Paul.”

  Of course, Martin thought, as the entrance of Dr. Leshin cut off the conversation, it was easy enough not to like Paul Lennox. His superficial cynicism and methodical carelessness could put one off all too easily. And Martin had special reason for dislike at present; there was Paul’s atrocious reading of his last line, to say nothing of the absurdly unnatural way in which he crumpled into death in the big strangulation scene. But Martin knew Paul rather better than most of his acquaintances, and found in him something strangely fascinating. He really seemed more apt to appeal to Cynthia than the pleasant and undistinguished chemist Alex Bruce to whom she was engaged. Or was it an actual engagement? It is so difficult to make absolutely accurate statements concerning campus romances.

  And Martin’s mind continued to wander on subjects from romance to The Mystery of Edwin Drood while the professor from the University of Prague, Dr. Leshin, lectured on the defenestration of 1618. Tantalizing word, defenestration. It should mean something far more glamorous than throwing royal secretaries out of windows—and onto dunghills at that. Dr. Leshin’s mind was also evidently wandering. His sharp black eyes betrayed far more interest in the evening’s coaching lesson (and what does Mrs. Leshin do with her evenings Martin wondered) than in the afternoon’s lecture.

  Martin was relieved when the lecture was over. There was now an hour’s breathing space in the midst of a painfully busy day. He
selected a sunny spot of lawn and lay in idle luxury, thinking vaguely about people.

  “I should have been a Brantôme,” he murmured, “or at least a Winchell. I always manage to know more things about people’s complications, and I never have any of my own. Cyn and Alex … the Leshins … Kurt and Lupe … Paul in lonely splendor.…” It was his prophetic soul that soliloquized as he thus grouped all the principal figures of the coming tragedy—all, that is, save one, and that one already marked for death.

  He was half asleep when the Campanile struck three. With a minor mental curse, he rose and walked into the auditorium. The rehearsal was late in starting. The cast wandered about with the futile look peculiar to amateur actors wondering if they know their lines. Martin was sure that they did not.

  Paul Lennox sat alone in the middle of the hall, trying to light a particularly recalcitrant pipe. It was almost unprecedented that an instructor in history should take part in campus dramatics; but Martin, as translator of the play, had persuaded the director to hear Paul read. In the stirring blank verse into which Martin had rendered Fonseca’s tirades, there appeared a new Paul Lennox—a sixteenth-century, cloak-and-sword figure. His dramatic training was slight (hence the lapses that so annoyed Martin), but his feeling for the character of Don Juan was amazing.

  Martin strolled up to him as a glow at last appeared in the large pipe-bowl. “Hello,” said Paul, looking up. “Drexel’s late again.”

  “I’m just as glad. I wish the rehearsal were called off. I’ve got to dress for dinner tonight.”

  “What do you mean, ‘dress’? Tails and things?”

  “Not quite.” Martin was thankful. “Just tuxedo. It’s the private dinner for that Swiss deputy or whatever—you know, Kurt Ross’s uncle.”