Death at the Alma Mater sm-3

by G. M. Malliet

  "Yes, I do realize-"

  "First, we endure the most endless flight from New York, during which we are served five small, broken pretzels as an appetizer-five-only to arrive at Heathrow, which is an absolute madhouse-a madhouse, I tell you. Talk about your melting pots! Where are they all going? Where can they be traveling to? And the whole time we're being gouged left and right, nickled and dimed to death, the exchange rate being what it is. I bought a T-shirt yesterday-a T-shirt, mind, and not of a very good quality cotton-that must have set us back thirty-five dollars. Highway robbery, I told the clerk. I lay the blame at the door of the European Union-such a bad idea that was. And then to come here and suffer the outrage of a police investigation, well, I never-"

  Sergeant Fear wondered when St. Just was going to make Constance Dunning put a sock in it. He looked over to his superior, who seemed to be listening with every sign of attention and sympathy. Fear had to hand it to him. They'd interviewed witnesses together that Fear would cheerfully have shot, given a gun, while St. Just managed, for the most part, to maintain an interested and encouraging air about him. Most suspects loved him, and if the feeling weren't reciprocated, they seldom came to know of it.

  "-and her so young. What is the country coming to?"

  She was giving little signs of slowing down, of exhausting her little store of cliches if not her enormous backlog of grievances. St. Just skillfully made his move.

  "I ask myself that twice a day, Mrs. Dunning. The police, well, we have our work cut out for us, what? Now, you can be of the most enormous assistance to us, a woman of your caliber-"

  And what would that be? A twenty-two? wondered Sergeant Fear.

  "-and obvious gift of insight into the human condition. We need to know exactly where everyone was this evening, and what you observed. Your observations could be absolutely crucial to the success of our investigation."

  Mrs. Dunning visibly expanded under this treatment. She wore a purple dress of a shiny fabric stretched taut as shrinkwrap across a massive chest. The serried strands of a pearl necklace nearly disappeared into her thick, fleshy neck; ankles bulged from the tops of black court shoes.

  It didn't hurt that St. Just was handsome as the devil, but the sergeant had met many good-looking policeman who seemed to spend all day running about poking sticks in people's eyes. Now he watched as Constance Dunning, tittering slightly, patted her dark hair against her round head and said, "Of course, I'd do anything to help the British bobbies." And then, miraculously, she shut it and waited for St. Just's first question. Sergeant Fear drew a little smiley face in his policeman's notebook and then took down her particulars as they were offered.

  "Now, Mrs. Dunning," said St. Just. "Let us start with why you came on this trip. As you say, it is frightfully expensive, and air travel is not the pleasure it once was."

  "Well, my husband was keen to see the old place after so many years. We keep getting these things in the mail from the college, these brochures, and this year was our year, you know. Twenty-two years since Karl matriculated here. I said to him, 'It won't come around twice, this anniversary, and we may not be here for the thirty-year mark.' You never know, do you? So I said, 'Let's go.' And we did. Went."

  She seemed to want to expand on the theme of the shortness of life and the fleetingness of time but, making a super-human effort, she subsided, again waiting expectantly to see how next she could help her British Bobby.

  "And how did things, well, strike you once you were here? Any nuances or frictions, open quarrels? Especially any surrounding the person of Lexy Laurant?"

  Sergeant Fear felt his superior was making a huge mistake here, asking such open-ended questions. Constance Dunning was the type of witness who could easily keep them here until doomsday talking about rubbishy nuances rather than cold hard facts. But she surprised him again by coming in at under sixty seconds.

  "She had eyes only for that ex-husband of hers. The wife didn't like it much, but was trying not to let it show. The Argentine fellow didn't give a tinker's damn what she did-Lexy, I mean. But as to open quarrels, no. They're all British, except for that Cramb fellow and the Argentine, who lives here. That kind of thing rubs off. Stiff upper lip and tally ho, you know what I mean?"

  "Yes, indeed I do. Would you mind telling us about your own movements, and what you know of your husband's, from the time you came downstairs this evening for dinner?" In case she might cut up at this suspect-type questioning-generally a signal for any red-blooded American to call the nearest embassy-St. Just added smoothly, "It's essential that we know where everyone was, at exactly what times, and an impartial witness such as yourself is always used as the benchmark in a police investigation on British soil. It's SOP at Interpol, too, of course. We'll issue countrywide bulletins, should that become necessary. BOLOs and so on. You do understand how crucial your testimony might become."

  "BOLOs," she repeated breathlessly.

  "Yes."

  She lifted her large head, which sat like a bison's atop her bulky shoulders, without apparent recourse to the intervention of a neck, with keen interest. Sergeant Fear, who had never heard such a load of codswallop in all his years, did not dare meet St. Just's eyes, but desperately fixed his own eyes on his notebook, fighting back the maniacal laugh threatening to erupt.

  "Of course, Chief Inspector," she said. "I quite understand." Another pat of her hair, and she leaned in conspiratorially-in case MI5 were listening in, presumably-before launching into a more or less cogent summary of her evening. Down to drinks at seven-thirty on the dot. Dinner at eight. Dinner finished at nine-fifteen or maybe a little later, she wasn't sure. She headed straight for the SCR. Her husband used the facilities and joined her shortly thereafter.

  "And you, Mrs. Dunning," St. Just asked delicately. "You yourself had no need of, erm, the facilities?"

  "I have the constitution of an ox, and I don't see any point in layering on powder and lipstick like some I could mention here-that television woman for a start. No. I came straight in."

  "Did you see anything unusual, anything at all that might help us?"

  "No. Coming out of Hall, through that overhead passage window, I saw Lexy talking with James in the Fellows' Garden. It was the last time I saw her-alive." She allowed herself a little waver of melodrama on the last word, then sank back in her chair, her mental survey of the hollowness and futility of all life's endeavors reflected sadly on her face. Apparently satisfied with her performance, she added, "That strapping young yellow-haired fellow came dashing in at five minutes before ten o'clock. I know. I checked my watch."

  St. Just beamed at her. It was apparently all and more than she could have hoped for in the way of reward. They talked a few more minutes to no further purpose and then she left the room, meek as a lamb.

  "A police investigation on British soil, Sir?" said Sergeant Fear as soon as the door had safely shut behind her broad back. "Interpol? Benchmarking? And, BOLOs? Be on the lookout for what?" St. Just was, Fear supposed, his mentor. But St. Just's quick ability to read a person's character and play to it… Fear suspected St. Just possessed a gift that couldn't be taught. "Why didn't you mention the Flying Squad while you were about it?"

  St. Just grinned widely. "The Chief Constable would be pleased," he said. "You see, I have picked up some of her jargon, after all. I guess we'll have the husband next, God bless him." -- Mr. Dunning looked to be a pleasant man in his mid-forties. He was nearly bald, with just a small fringe of salt-and-pepper hair left to encircle his head. He sported gold-rimmed glasses and a little goatee that brought his round face to a Lenin-like point. This all contributed to his looking rather older than his true age, which he stated for the record to be forty.

  "Your wife has given us a summary of your movements this evening, but of course we have to verify-and sometimes, re-verify-every statement for accuracy. You do understand. So if you wouldn't mind, Sir… "

  And Mr. Dunning proceeded to give them a summary that matched his wife's, although his grasp
of exact times seemed to be more tenuous than hers.

  "I think everyone was back in the SCR by half past. Maybe sooner," he told them.

  "I see. That's all fairly clear. Now, I would like your impressions of the atmosphere this weekend."

  "Oh, my," said Mr. Dunning mildly. "My wife is much better at this sort of thing-atmospherics, you know-but I'll do my best." His eyes blinked thoughtfully for several seconds behind the glasses. At last he said, "Well, she wasn't happy, anyone could see that. The victim, I mean. Lexy. It was a shame, really. She was just as pretty as a peach, that girl. Woman, really, of course, but she had a girlish quality to her."

  "But you knew her when she was a girl, isn't that correct? When you were here at St. Michael's as students together?"

  "Well. Hmm. No. No, that wouldn't be accurate to say we were together, and I certainly wouldn't want Constance-Mrs. Dunning-to get any ideas in her head like that. Lexy was, if you want to know the truth, simply not in my league. I doubt she even noticed I was alive. She pretended to recognize me this weekend but I could tell she really didn't. You have to realize, there were hundreds of kids running around back then-you're not getting a true picture of the college out of term, as you must be aware. Those of us here this weekend-well, little pretense is made that we've not been cherry-picked because we've reached a certain, shall we say, financial threshold in our lives. That's why there are so few of us here. I don't mind. I love St. Mike's and they'll get plenty of moola out of me before all's said and done."

  "What was Lexy like at that age?"

  "Oh, I don't know. An angel with a temper? But that makes her sound angry, or violent. Not that. Just very emotional. Very fragile. Prone to scenes."

  "Rather a difficult person to have around?"

  "Oh, I don't know," he said again. "It never bothered me. But as I've said, our paths didn't cross much."

  Anyone married to Constance Dunning might require or acquire the ability to let things slide off his back, reflected St. Just. The thought gave birth to his next question.

  "Did you meet your wife here at St. Mike's?"

  "No, indeed. We met on my return to the States, a few years later. Been married ever since."

  "Did you notice anything unusual about this weekend? Any unusual alliances or feuds forming, perhaps?"

  "You want to hear anything, however minor, I take it? Well, Augie Cramb is here this weekend, as I suppose you know or will learn. He comes across as buffoonish, but I wouldn't be too taken in by that if I were you. He comes from oil money and made more of his own in the tech world. We were in the same boat together, literally, back in the day. Rowing, that is. He seemed to go out of his way this weekend to befriend Sebastian, the boy who found the body. I saw them talking together on several occasions-probably about his rowing. I did tell you it was a minor thing. Just something I noticed."

  St. Just could think of no further questions to ask him. With the traditional request that he make himself available for further questioning by himself or one of his men, he told Karl Dunning he could leave. He left.

  UNQUIET AMERICAN

  Augie was their third American of the night, but he was of a much different cut from the Dunnings of New York. Slow of speech, relaxed in attitude, he sprawled in the armchair vacated by Karl Dunning, but unlike Dunning with his rather precise, buttoned-down, yet helpful manner, Augie filled the room with his large body and his booming drawl. He spoke at such a leisurely pace Sergeant Fear had no trouble keeping up with him in his notebook, although a few words gave him trouble. He'd have to look them up later, back at the station. What, for example, was a pawdnuh?

  Now Augie Cramb was saying something about calling his gopher back home.

  "I'll ask him to email y'all a few photos from that time. You'll see. Lexy could make a dead man walk, if she felt like it. Trouble was, she didn't much feel like it, mostly. Wouldn't put out for no one, excepting, I reckon, that husband of her'n."

  "I see," said St. Just. "Now, w-"

  "Cold as charity, our Lexy," Augie warmed to his theme. "Cold as a nun's-say, you boys ain't Catholic, are you?"

  St. Just shook his head. "C of E."

  Augie Cramb looked puzzled. Was this one of those wacky cults? Plenty of those where he came from, but what would these two policemen be doing as members?

  "Go on, Sir. You're saying Lexy lacked… a passionate nature?"

  "Oh, she was passionate in that arty-farty way she had. Everything was 'too, too' and 'simply mah-velous, don't you know.' But there was no beef in that taco, no siree. No huevos in that ranchero. For that, a man needed to look elsewhere. Damn waste, it was. A cry and shame, as my daddy would have said."

  "Are you trying to say she was frigid, Sir?" asked St. Just.

  "Ain't that what I been a-tellin' you?"

  No, you sidewinder. Sergeant Fear, exasperated by trying to translate the man's accent and vocabulary, was beginning to show the strain. The page of his notebook reserved for Augie Cramb was smeared and blotted with crossings-out and corrections. Here and there he'd added a few stars by the man's statements-Sergeant Fear's own system for ranking the truthfulness of a witness. St. Just call it his Torquemada Michelin Guide. One star meant truthful; five meant the sergeant believed the witness was almost certainly lying.

  "Are you speaking from personal experience, Sir, or are these your impressions? Perhaps you're repeating a rumor you heard elsewhere?"

  "Well…" and there came over Cramb's features a worldly-wise, man-to-man smirk: James Bond letting his hair down. "Normally, I would defend a lady's honor to the death, but since this is her death we're talking about-yes, we took it for a test drive once, after a spectacularly drunken night in the college bar. It was not a success, and the experiment was never repeated."

  St. Just, wondering if the failure might not have been more on his side than hers after a night's drinking, asked mildly, "And that was the end of it?"

  "Tell you the truth, Inspector, she gave me a wide berth after that. Ashamed, I reckon, of her performance. Next thing I knew, she'd taken up with Sir Whatsis-James Bassett-and that took care of the problem nicely. Still, for all the coldness, all the men were half in love with her."

  "And you?"

  "Oh, I have to admit, if I'm honest: She was way out of my league."

  St. Just and Sergeant Fear surreptitiously exchanged glances. The phrase was becoming a little too familiar.

  "Hmm." St. Just reckoned Lexy might have a different story to tell about the drunken night, had she been there to tell it.

  "She was our cox, did you know? Yep. Me, James, and Karl were all in the college eight boat. Happiest time of my life. You wouldn't think it would be such a turn-on to have a purty little gal like that screaming bloody murder in your ear first thing on a freezing cold morning, but let me tell you-"

  He paused to lick his lips before continuing his reminiscences.

  "Moving right along, Mr. Cramb, I wonder if-"

  "A'course, that didn't work out in the long haul, the business with James. Man'd have to be blind not to see India was the one for him. Well, they say the course of true love is a rocky road and I reckon it's true. Anything else I can do for you gentlemen?"

  "I'd like your general impression of the events of the weekend, anything you may have noticed, anything at all," said St. Just.

  "I really couldn't say. I kept to myself, mostly. Had a few conversations with that young Sebastian feller. Nice kid. Needs someone payin' attention to him, is all. Don't we all need that? Or we'd all go to the bad… Anyway, as I say, I knew why I was invited here and apart from a private conversation with the Bursar I was pleased to keep myself to myself. We're a self-selecting group at this weekend hootenanny, you know. It is well understood that we'll be hit up for money at some point, and hit up hard. Or we would have been, before all this happened. Anyway, those who don't want to be held upside down until the last penny drops, so to speak, stay well away from these events. The weekend after this is for what I think you guys call
the punters-the ones who think a five-hundred dollar donation is a big deal. A'course, they ain't invited, that type, to this weekend."

  "So, I gather you've donated generously in the past, which is why your name turned up on… shall we call it the A-list?"

  "Thas right. An old barn of a place like this takes serious cash to keep it going. I've been happy to oblige. More where that came from, anyhoo. Well, gentlemen"-and here he slapped his knees preparatory to rising-"if there's nothin' else, I'll be-"

  "Actually, Sir, we were just getting to the interesting part."

  "Inerestin'?" He hesitated, then slowly settled back in his chair. "Okay. Shoot."

  Don't tempt me. Sergeant Fear, who generally liked Americans, couldn't quite pinpoint why this one kept getting up his nose. But he had a feeling something was being left out of the man's testimony, and deliberately. A shift of the eyes, nearly imperceptible, made Fear think Cramb was hiding something, or at least avoiding it. Whether it was something important or not, Fear couldn't say. His daughter Emma sometimes had that evasive look, and she was only four. Just to be on the safe side, he placed an extra star next to Augie Cramb's comments about Lexy.

  St. Just said, "You say James and India were meant for each other. What went on back in the day when James left Lexy for India?"