Was It Murder? Read Free

suddenly jerked into attention.
    “Some of the London papers had a paragraph about it,” Roseveare went on.  “I don’t know if you noticed it?”
    “No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
    “Then I certainly think it will be best if, before saying any more, I allow you to read the account of the inquest, reported fairly fully in our local paper.”
    He took out a pocket-wallet and produced therefrom a folded newspaper-cutting.  “Take your time,” he remarked, handing it over.  “And remember—all this happened three months ago.”
    It was a column and a half in length, and Revell, at a first quick reading, seized its main points as follows.  The accident had taken place on the first Sunday-night-Monday-morning of the Autumn Term.  It had not been discovered till daylight, when a boy named March, who had chanced to wake early, saw that something had happened, and raised the alarm.  The gas-fitting was a heavy, old-fashioned, inverted-T-shaped affair, one of a series that were suspended in a double row along the whole length of the dormitory.  Underneath the junction of the horizontal and vertical sections of piping a brass tip had been fitted, apparently for ornamental effect.  Marshall, it seemed, had been sleeping with his head exactly under this tip, so that when the whole thing collapsed the effect must have been like a heavy spear falling on him.
    Of several witnesses called, none could give much real information.  The school doctor, a fellow named Murchiston, described how he had been sent for at seven in the morning to examine the body.  Death, he thought, had been instantaneous, the skull and brain having been pierced.  The accident might have taken place from five to eight hours before—he would not care to commit himself more than that.
    The housemaster, Mr. T. B. Ellington, described the position of his private house, next to the School House block containing the dormitory, but quite separate from it.  He was not only Marshall’s housemaster, he explained, but the boy’s cousin as well.  It was his habit to walk through the dormitory and turn off the gas-jets at ten o’clock every night.  He had done so as usual on that particular Sunday night.  He had not noticed anything at all peculiar about any of the gas-fittings.  After bidding the boys good night he had worked for a time in his own private room adjoining the dormitory and had then returned to his house and gone to bed.  That might have been, perhaps, as late as one o’clock, for he had been busy marking terminal examination papers.  He had certainly heard nothing unusual during that time.  He knew nothing at all about the accident till a boy came to him soon after six o’clock with news of what had happened.  He had immediately hastened to the dormitory and had found Marshall dead.  The whole gas-fitting, wrenched or broken off at the ceiling, lay across the bed in the position in which, apparently, it had fallen.  He had been too much distressed to examine it minutely.  There was a strong smell of gas in the dormitory, so he had sent a boy to turn off the supply at the main.  Then he had sent another boy to fetch the Headmaster.
    Evidence was then given by several boys, including the two who slept in the beds on either side of Marshall’s.  None of them had heard anything during the night.  They agreed that they usually slept well and did not waken easily.
    A “certain liveliness” seemed to have been introduced into the proceedings by the evidence of a Mr. John Tunstall, chief engineer to the local gas company.  On being informed of the accident by telephone, he said, he had immediately visited the School, and made an examination.  The gas-fitting was very old, and of a type that no company would supply or recommend nowadays.  He had found a large fracture in the pipe near the ceiling-rose.  This had evidently been the cause of the fitting’s suddenly dropping loose.  Such fractures did sometimes occur in