Parting Breath (8 page)

‘Establishment man,' said the other without heat.

‘You wanted to sit in,' retorted the Head Porter, ‘and you did. Now we want you to sit in and you shall.'

‘The Committee won't like it.'

‘The gander never did like the goose's sauce,' said Palfreyman, resorting, like many another before him, to a proverb for argument. ‘Besides,' he added, ‘you aren't going to come out, no matter what, until they let your friend come back, are you?'

‘Then why lock us in?' demanded the Arts man not unreasonably.

‘So that no one comes along and pretends he was here all the time,' said Palfreyman, locking the door and taking the key out.

‘All what time?' shouted Che Guevara moustache through the door – but the Head Porter had gone.

Oddly enough, it was also a girl who had made the second discovery of the evening: but earlier. The police, however, did not hear about it until later.

Polly Mantle, round, cheerful and utterly self-possessed, hadn't bothered to attend the sit-in. She was feminine enough to need to belong to no faction but her own. Instead she had spent the Thursday on her next piece of work for the formidable Mr Mautby. This had involved some study in the University Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology. She was making her way back from there to her room in Tarsus College when she overtook the Professor of English Literature, who was also starting to cross the quadrangle.

‘Good evening, Miss Linaker,' said Polly politely.

‘Good evening' – the don peered at her in the dimness – ‘Polly.… It is Polly Mantle, isn't it?'

‘It is,' said the girl, falling in beside the older woman, who was stepping out with her usual vigour.

Miss Linaker hitched her gown over her shoulder. ‘Aren't the evenings drawing in?'

‘It's quite chilly now,' Polly agreed.

Their way led straight across the middle of the quadrangle, a fountain with a weeping Niobe as centrepiece being the only obstruction in their path. They had almost reached the fountain before Polly became aware of something white on its low balustrade.

‘Someone's forgotten their work,' she said, moving over towards it. ‘They've left it out here.'

‘We'd better take it in,' said Miss Linaker. ‘It might rain.'

‘And some books,' called out Polly.

‘You should all be much too young to start forgetting your things like this,' said the don crisply. ‘What will you all be like by the time you get to my age?'

‘There's a box over here, too,' said Polly, sounding puzzled. ‘No one would forget that.…'

‘A boy?'

But Polly Mantle had gone on. ‘I say, Miss Linaker, come round this way.…'

‘Maps,' murmured Miss Linaker, ‘and … well, well … are those … yes, they are …'

‘Microscope slides,' said Polly flatly. ‘All our set have got slides like these.'

‘But what are they doing out here like this …?'

‘Colin's!' cried Polly suddenly, peering down at the strange assortment in the poor light. ‘They're all Colin's, I'll bet. They must be.'

‘Colin's?' enquired the woman mildly.

‘You know, Miss Linaker. Colin Ellison's. I'm sure they're his. He had all his things stolen from his room yesterday. Someone broke in and took them, they think.'

‘Yes, I'd heard about that,' said the Professor of English Literature thoughtfully. ‘How very odd.'

‘We must tell someone,' urged Polly.

‘Him?' suggested Miss Linaker astringently – but the girl had gone running ahead.

Afterwards they were neither of them able to put the exact time of their discovery any more accurately than between twenty minutes past seven and the half hour.

6 Riposte

‘Well?' barked Superintendent Leeyes down the telephone line from the Police Station to Tarsus College.

‘No, not well,' said Detective Inspector Sloan uneasily.

‘He is dead, isn't he?'

‘Oh, yes, sir.' Sloan confirmed that Moleyns was dead readily enough. This was not where the doubt lay.

‘Not of his own hand, I hope,' said Leeyes a trifle petulantly. ‘Too much of that sort of thing about already. Especially among the young. They take to thinking they're lemmings or something.'

‘No, sir, but –'

‘And girls with Ophelia complexes.…'

One celebrated winter the Superintendent and English Literature had met head-on at an evening class. The work studied had been
Hamlet
and the lecturer had taken great pains with his subject.

So had Superintendent Leeyes.

‘No, sir,' said Sloan more firmly. ‘Not self-inflicted.' That, too, was something he himself was sure about.

‘Some of those students,' continued Leeyes as if he hadn't spoken, ‘will do anything to draw attention to themselves.'

‘Yes, sir.' As a general proposition that was something Sloan would agree with. There had been an outbreak of streaking at the University in the summer. Much-publicised. And if streaking wasn't pure exhibitionism, Detective Inspector Sloan would like to know what was.

‘But not this time?' said Leeyes.

‘If', responded Sloan succinctly, ‘Henry Moleyns stuck something sharp into his own chest he not only took whatever it was out again, but before dying also managed to hide it so carefully that we haven't been able to find it yet.'

Leeyes grunted. ‘Like that, is it? And if he didn't do it, someone else did, I suppose.'

‘So, sir,' said Sloan slowly, ‘do I.'

‘You'll want all the works out there, then, Sloan,' said Leeyes briskly, ‘won't you? Photographers, the doctor …'

‘Yes, please.' The full treatment was indicated here, if anything was.

‘Who have you got with you now?… oh, yes … quite …'

‘Just Constable Crosby,' said Sloan, ‘and he's dividing himself between the body and some books that have turned up.'

‘Books?'

‘Books,' repeated Sloan firmly. It was, after all, a university that he was speaking from, where they had such things to excess. ‘Found by one of the women dons and a student called Polly Mantle just about the time the other girl found Moleyns, and not far away either.'

‘And pray tell me,' said Leeyes at his most Churchillian, ‘what they were doing there at the time?'

‘They are to be asked,' said Sloan smoothly. ‘What they found were textbooks, notebooks and so forth. Believed to be the property of one Colin Ellison, another student. We're checking on that now, too.'

Leeyes grunted.

‘We think they were the subject of a theft from Ellison's room last night. They look very like it.'

‘Someone having fun?' asked Leeyes suspiciously. ‘They've got some pretty queer ideas of humour round there.'

‘I don't know,' said Sloan, equally puzzled. ‘They were all spread out along the parapet of the fountain. Not hidden or anything. Waiting to be found, you might say.'

‘Anything to do with this Moleyns business?'

‘Impossible to say, sir,' said Sloan, ‘yet.'

‘“Twenty-six minutes,” Inspector,' declared Bridget Hellewell positively. ‘That's what he said to me just before he died.'

Tea and sympathy in equal proportions, administered by the Matron, a sensible woman, had had their usual calming effect and the student was very nearly coherent by the time Detective Inspector Sloan got to Matron's room. The Bursar had sensibly ensconced her in the sanatorium, bidding her to speak to no one but the police.

‘And “twenty-six minutes” was all that he said?' Sloan asked her now.

‘All he had time to say,' she said seriously, tears beginning to well up in her eyes again. ‘Then he … just died. Just like that,' she whispered.

Sloan nodded. Death could be just like that but it was still a shock.

‘I didn't realise how bad he was at first,' said Miss Hellewell, still gulping a little. ‘Or even who he was.'

‘You knew him, then?'

‘Oh, yes, but' – she paused in confusion – ‘but I didn't realise that I knew him, if you know what I mean.'

‘You didn't recognise him?' said Sloan, who had passed no university entrance examination in comprehension and wasn't expected to be particularly articulate.

‘Exactly.' She latched on to the phrase eagerly. ‘I just didn't recognise him, he looked so dreadful – not like himself at all – and the light isn't very good round the quad, is it?'

‘No, miss, it isn't.' In fact, one of the very first things the police were doing was to improve it but Sloan did not say so. Instead he went on, 'Tell me what you were doing there.'

‘Me? I was going back to my room for some more blankets and pillows.'

‘Going back from where?'

‘Almstone, of course. The sit-in.' She peered at him, her other troubles temporarily forgotten. ‘Don't you know about that?'

‘Oh, yes, miss. All about it.'

‘Well, we were beginning to get ready for the night.' She waved a hand. ‘I'd got my own stuff there, of course. I hadn't forgotten it or anything.'

Sloan nodded and got the message that she wouldn't like to be thought inefficient.'

‘This was extra,' said Bridget Hellewell. ‘We, er, hadn't remembered that Malcolm Humbert wouldn't have anything like that with him for the night on account of his having come from … from … frommm …'

‘From a distance,' supplied Sloan kindly. He probably knew a good deal more about where Malcolm Humbert had come from than Bridget Hellewell did. What the police would like to know was where he proposed going when he left Berebury. Special Branch had expressed a passing interest, too.

‘That's right,' said the girl, ‘so I said I'd get some blankets and another pillow for him from my room.'

‘Quite,' said Sloan, noting that – female emancipation notwithstanding – a woman's lot continued to be a domestic one even at a demonstration.

‘It was colder in Almstone than we'd thought it would be, you see, because they'd taken the windows out and turned off the heating.' This was said without rancour: sitters-in can't be choosers. ‘Last time, if you remember, it was summer.'

‘I remember,' said Sloan truthfully. There was at least one man on the Berebury Force who wasn't likely to forget the last sit-in at the University of Calleshire either: the officer who was still limping.

‘So I slipped out.…'

‘When?'

‘About twenty minutes past seven.'

‘Did you see anyone around?'

She lowered her eyes. ‘Only Henry Moleyns.'

‘Nobody else?'

She frowned. ‘I'm sure there were people about near the Porter's Lodge – there always are, but no one I – oh, yes, Colin Ellison.… I saw him and someone from the Fencing Club.…' Her brow cleared. ‘And Mr Mautby, I knew I'd seen him today somewhere.'

‘Not at the sit-in?'

Her lips twitched. ‘That, Inspector, would be the day.'

‘Just one more question, miss.'

‘Yes?'

‘Why didn't you go straight across the middle of the quadrangle? It wasn't raining or anything but you took the longer way round.'

The militant public speaker, aggressive cheer-leader of a hundred rousing meetings, cast her eyes down again and said in a very small voice, ‘It's a bit dark round by the fountain, and there are lights in the cloister.'

There was someone else who didn't think a lot of the lighting in the quadrangle. That someone was called Dyson and he was the official police photographer. He and his assistant, Williams, were so used to having bad lighting where they did their work that they habitually travelled with their own. Even as Sloan arrived back at the scene Williams was rigging up a powerful arc light.

‘Not natural causes, then?' asked Dyson, indicating the body.

‘I'm afraid not,' said Sloan.

‘Nasty,' observed Dyson, attending to a flash bulb in his camera.

‘Yes,' said Sloan.

‘Dangerous places, universities,' drawled the cameraman.

‘You can't believe everything you read in the newspapers,' said Sloan.

‘I can believe this,' said Dyson vigorously, indicating the body, ‘and I certainly wouldn't let any son of mine go to one. What about you, Inspector?'

‘What? Oh … oh, I hadn't thought.' This was not strictly true. In his own mind Sloan had already decided that his as-yet-unborn son was going to have the best of everything. What he just didn't know any longer was if a university education came into the category of the best of everything: and with every passing minute spent at Tarsus College he was becoming progressively less sure.

‘They've captured the Dean of Almstone,' said Dyson conversationally. ‘Got him prisoner at their precious sit-in. Had you heard that?'

‘Yes,' said Sloan neatly, ‘but not officially.'

Dyson nodded. ‘Like that, is it?'

‘So far,' said Sloan.

‘They haven't told you,' concluded Dyson elliptically, ‘and you don't want to know.'

Sloan agreed. Only one thing exceeded the University's determination not to involve the police in the sit-in. That was Superintendent Leeyes's determination not to let his men go anywhere near the University unless they had to.

‘This,' said the Detective Inspector, indicating the recumbent body, ‘will make a difference.'

‘It always does,' said the experienced photographer laconically. ‘Move over, Williams, I don't want your toe-caps in as well.'

Williams took a hasty step back.

‘Mind that spot!' adjured Sloan quickly in his turn. ‘There, where the chalk mark is. There's blood there.'

Williams executed a delicate
petit jeté
round the patch of stone between the blood and the body while Dyson swung his camera round to the ready.