Ritual Murder (11 page)

But the Professor had rung off.

When Rosie Ellers opened her front door to Jurnet, her plump, pretty face lost its habitual aspect of sunny unconcern. She rounded on her husband, shrugging on his raincoat in the little hall.

“Where were you, then, when the stones were flying?”

The little Welshman, rosy and unmarked, gave his wife a resounding kiss and edged round her to the door.

“Small is beautiful. Little fellow like me, he slips into the spaces between one bash and the next.” Regarding the Inspector with a pitying eye, “Stand out like a blooming lighthouse, what d'you expect?”

Rosie said, “The Inspector ought to be in bed. Running a temperature, I shouldn't be surprised.
And
out without a coat and all!” She tut-tutted, and finished, “Couldn't Jack run you home, Mr Jurnet, and then do whatever it is needs doing on his ownsome?”

“Looks worse than it is,” said Jurnet, who indeed felt terrible. But not as terrible as he would feel at home, on his ownsome.

“At least come in for a hot drink when you bring His Nibs back.”

Jurnet was glad to let his subordinate drive. He himself sat slumped in the passenger's seat, watching the familiar streets stream past.

“What are we asking this bloke, exactly?” asked Ellers, troubled by the other's silence.

With an effort, Jurnet pulled-himself together.

“We know he let the cat out of the bag after the Superintendent had particularly asked him not to. We've agreed that whoever killed the kid will want the peculiar nature of the inquiries made public, whether to give the old lies a fresh airing, or simply to deflect us from his real motive for murder. So—the Professor deliberately spilled the beans. Sinister, or just fucking irresponsible?”

“Can't see a chap like that hobnobbing with those English Ape-Men.”

“Mosley in the '30s was a bart, and look who he knocked bout with.”

“Oh, the '30s—”

“What makes you think the '80s are any different? You've read the English Men's manifesto. They've had to wrap it up in gobbledegook to get it past Race Relations, but it's all there—England for the English, and, in their book, that means white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” He looked at the little Welshman with amused affection. “Can't think where that leaves you, boyo.”

They were in the outer suburbs now, a well-heeled district that had once been a village.

Sergeant Ellers turned the car out of the main road into a lane where house lights glimmered an expansive distance back from the road.

“Take to the hills, I reckon,” he answered, smiling. “You and me both.”

“Ever been in Brum?” Professor Pargeter greeted them, glass in hand. He had opened the front door himself and ushered the two detectives into a spacious hall full of bits of broken pottery Jurnet's old mum would long ago have put out for the dustman. “Don't, if you value your life.”

Leading the way into a pleasant, book-lined room, he observed over his shoulder, “God alone knows how many bones lie bleaching beneath the Bull Ring, brave youths and beautiful maidens who never made it out of the labyrinth.”

It was not an auspicious beginning, and it did not get any better Jurnet, who was not frivolous by nature, and had never learnt to cope with frivolity, especially the academic variety, full of insensitive assumptions of a shared background, began to feel unwell again.

“Drink?” asked the Professor, replenishing his own glass at a side table loaded with decanters. He turned round and regarded his visitors, still standing, the tall and lean, the short and tubby, and burst out laughing. “Sit down, for Christ's sake! You look like Laurel and Hardy!”

He waved the two towards a deep leather sofa, on whose edge they perched embarrassedly. He did not appear to expect a reply to his offer of drinks, and made no move to provide any. Positioning himself in front of the marble mantelpiece, and waving his glass in a gesture that sent the liquid swirling dangerously, he demanded, without further preamble, “If I told you, Inspector, that the only reason I put in that bit about Arthur Cossey was because my producer asked for a little something to separate the two main items, and I couldn't for the life of me think of anything else on the spur of the moment, would you believe me?”

“Was it the reason, sir?” Jurnet began to feel better as he sensed a certain lack of assurance on the part of his questioner.

“You haven't answered my question, so I'm hanged if I'll answer yours! I'll try again. What would you say if I said I did it as a gesture—call it a blow for freedom—after that self-important dunderhead of a Superintendent of yours—” a blush of shock suffused Sergeant Ellers's face—“had the nerve to try and clap some kind of D Notice on me?”

“I'd say—
did
you do it as a gesture?”

The Professor rocked delightedly on his heels.

“Would you indeed? And if I went on to admit that, actually, the only reason I did it was to put Flossie's nose out of joint—what then?”

Master of himself again, Jurnet returned, “I would say that none of those reasons, nor all three of them put together, would add up to an adequate excuse for instigating a riot.”

The Professor finished off his drink and set the glass down on the mantelpiece.

“Tell me—” he demanded. “
Was
Arthur Cossey's body mutilated in the way I described, or was it not?”

“You know it was. We discovered it together.”

“Thank you!” An inclination of the head. “So at least you are not accusing me of perverting the truth, only of uttering it.” The man's blue eyes were bright and angry. “There is, you must admit, a certain irony in being reprimanded by the police, of all people, for telling the truth.”

“Aren't you being a bit naive, sir? It's not as if a lie's the only alternative.”

“‘A time to keep silence, and a time to speak,' eh?” The anger faded, to be replaced by a rueful amusement. “Silence! From a professional blabbermouth! You don't know what you're asking!”

Jurnet said, “I reckon you know when to keep your mouth shut as well as the next man.”

“I don't, you know.” And now the amusement, too, had gone, leaving only the rue. “Know me better, Inspector, and you'll find that I wear my words as I wear my clothes—too loud, too sloppy, but what the hell? Anything to cover my God-awful nakedness.” He crossed the room to some shelves from which he took an object smaller than a tennis ball. When he came back to the fireplace Jurnet could see that it was, in fact, a small stone head, reduced by time to a pebble, almost.

“Would it surprise you—” Professor Pargeter inquired, strong brown fingers affectionately tracing a rudimentary curl on the ancient artefact—“would it surprise you to know that the main reason I took up archaeology was because it was so quiet?”

“If you say so, sir.”

“I do, Inspector! As you may have noticed, I'm a noisy person—too noisy by half. But the language of a fallen marble column, silent witness of a time of glory—” the man's face took on an earnestness that Jurnet, who had seen it thus garnished often enough on the box, observed without notable conviction—“charred beams that speak silently of ancient pillage, even the siftings of some humble midden—there you have the essence of communication, once you've learnt to read the signs. Ah, if only the present could be as silent as the past! I'd be out of a job, but what a wonderful world it would be!”

“Silent's the last word I'd use for it, at the moment. Thanks to you, sir, Little St Ulf's shouting his sainted head off.”

“Sorry about that. I really am.” Professor Pargeter did not sound particularly sorry. He turned away and set the little stone head down, next to his empty glass. Back to the detectives, he inquired, “And the young man? How is he?”

“Not so good.”

The Professor turned round. There was a silence. Then, “American, I think you said? How'd he ever get mixed up in something that couldn't possibly concern him?”

“Oh, but it did. It concerned him very much. He's a Jew.”

“Is he, by Jove!” There was another pause. When the Professor resumed, his voice held a distinct note of pleading. “I'm sure you understand, Inspector, that one simply has to assume that all men are civilized—all one's countrymen, anyway—much as one has to assume that any aeroplane we board will bring us safely to our destination. The fact that we know perfectly well there are some men who are barbarians, and some planes which will inevitably, in the way of things, fall out of the sky, must not be allowed to dislodge that working hypothesis without which ordered life would be unthinkable. I'm sure you take my point.”

“Assume all men are civilized,” Jurnet returned stolidly, “I'm the one'd be down at the Job Centre. Anyone who assumes that goons like the English Men are civilized human beings has got hold of the wrong assumption. To put it bluntly, sir, it's all but impossible to credit that an intelligent person like yourself wouldn't have foreseen the possible consequences of that broadcast.”

Professor Pargeter's lips twisted under his moustache, sending it a little askew.

“‘All but impossible'—for that pinhole of misgiving, much thanks! It can only mean, I take it, that you are not yet quite ready to arrest me for the murder of Arthur Cossey.”

Jurnet ignored the thrust.

“Are you absolutely sure you didn't know the boy?”

“I am absolutely sure, just as I am absolutely sure that my sexual proclivities are not such as to make me the slightest danger to juveniles of my own sex, whether known to me or not. Mind you—” the blue eyes were mocking—“I've often felt that even a modest predisposition to pederasty would have done wonders for my understanding of the Ancient Greeks.”

Ignoring the bait, Jurnet said, “I understand you have a key to the Bishop's Postern, the little door in the north transept?”

“I do, and so do Miss Aste and Mr Epperstein. If you tell Flossie I had duplicates made he'll have,
deo volente
, conniptions. Coming into the cathedral by our separate ways, it's been simply not on for only one of us to have a key, with the likelihood of keeping the other two hanging about in the cold of early dawn. And speaking of Miss Aste—” the tone had become measurably less genial—“she telephoned me. Was it really necessary to harass her with your questions the way you did? The child was really upset.”

“Detective-Sergeant Ellers spoke to Miss Aste.” Jurnet, who had his own, not very creditable, reasons for deputing his assistant to question the Honourable Liz, nodded to the little Welshman. “I hope, Sergeant, you'll be able to reassure the Professor that, despite what he may have been told, no harassment of any kind took place.”

“Can't say that, sir!” Sergeant Ellers declared roundly. “Any amount of it! Only, not her—me! All but reduced me to tears. I threatened to complain to the Chief Constable, actually, if she didn't give over.”

“Didn't give over what?” The Professor spoke as if he could guess.

“Telling such almighty whoppers.”

“Oh, that!” The Professor smiled. “Liz always tells lies. You must never believe a word she says. She tells lies the way some people are left-handed. It's as natural to her as breathing.”

Ellers lamented, “And there was I, thinking she was doing it on purpose! I couldn't understand how she could deny she'd even been in the cathedral on Sunday, when she bumped into you and Mr Jurnet on the way out, large as life. Something about picking up some slides, Mr Jurnet said.”

“She keeps them up in the triforium,” Professor Pargeter said, “along with all the other photographic stuff. The dust down below in the dig would ruin them.”

Jurnet asked, “The triforium?”

“The gallery over the side aisles. Liz has been documenting our progress. She's a very talented photographer.” The man hesitated, then spoke with a certain urgency. “She wasn't at the tomb, though. You can take my word for it even if you can't take hers. I pressed her particularly, because it seemed to me on the cards that if she
had
gone there for some perfectly innocuous reason, and caught sight of that dreadful carcass, she might well prefer to blot the whole thing out of her consciousness—nothing sinister, a perfectly understandable reaction—and swear she'd never been near the place. But in fact she hadn't.”

“Then perhaps,” Jurnet suggested, “she also told you what she did with the slides. She wasn't carrying anything she could have put them in when she ran into us, and that dress she had on certainly wasn't hiding anything. If she's the little liar you say, what makes you so sure she was telling the truth to you?”

The Professor said, “I'm the exception that proves the rule. Liz never lies to me. We have an understanding.”

“I thought you might.”

“Did you, now?” The Professor threw out his arms in a gesture between impatience and amusement, and subsided into an armchair, from whose depths he gazed up at the detective in mischievous contemplation. “Lord, what it is to be a policeman, with a mind like a sewer! Let me tell you, your Little St Arthur could never have put the bite on me, even if he had had ideas in that direction. My life is an open book—only available for perusal in the back room, true, but known to altogether too many readers for any ill-disposed person to attempt to earn a quick buck out of keeping it off the front pages.”

Jurnet observed, “Odd that you should think to associate a mere child with blackmail.”

“Suspicious, is that what you mean? I don't see why not. I believe the little brats to be capable of anything and everything their elders and betters get up to. But to get back to putting you in the picture, Liz's mother—Viscountess Sydringham as is, Mrs Mallory Pargeter as was—was my first wife. There've been a couple of others since, but not so you'd notice. Laura was the only one who amounted to a row of pins. Only, unfortunately for me, she fancied a title. When Sydringham came along I could no more stand in her way than I'd have expected her to stand in mine if they'd offered me the Directorship of the BM. Very decent chap, Sydringham.”