Death at the Alma Mater sm-3

by G. M. Malliet

  He sat and thought. Sergeant Fear, long accustomed to waiting out these silences, waited as patiently as he could. He began to unwrap a boiled sweet but the crinkling sound of the cellophane seemed to fill the room. At last St. Just said, "The question we have to ask ourselves, Sergeant, is whether an element of chance was in the pattern of the evening, or of the entire weekend-chance of which the murderer took advantage-or if some design was at work. Was this an impulsive act, or a carefully planned one?"

  Sergeant Fear, suspecting another of St. Just's rhetorical questions, simply looked at the older detective with what he hoped was a look of intent alertness.

  St. Just, noticing the expression, wondered if his sergeant weren't still suffering the aftereffects of their canteen lunch. Picking up his hard-won pencil, St. Just scribbled for a few moments and leaned back in his chair. He had drawn a rough sketch of the SCR and a rougher sketch of the college grounds. Along one side of the page he had written a list of names.

  "Now, Sergeant, by some point in time that night, they were all gathered together in the SCR, according to their corroborated statements. If our killer was among them, and I feel certain he or she was, then Lexy was killed between the time witnesses last saw her-nine-sixteen, as Malenfant would have it-and the time they all generally agree they'd gathered together-nine thirty-five at the outside, say. Not a large window of opportunity, but more than large enough for someone acting quickly. Her body was found at nine-fifty or as near to as makes no difference. Agreed?"

  Sergeant Fear nodded. "That all sounds right."

  "Sounds all wrong to me, but I can't put my finger on why. Leave it for now… Get Malenfant on the phone for me, will you? Oh, and I'll need to ask Portia if she remembers yet who besides the Bursar was left in Hall when she herself left. That can help give us a starting point for our timeline."

  Sergeant Fear's call having gone through, he handed over the receiver. Accordion music could be heard playing in the background.

  Malenfant said, in answer to St. Just's question, "It depends on how heavy a meal she had. But the stomach starts to empty in ten minutes."

  "Hang on." St. Just rifled quickly through the reports, then said into the phone, "Our suspects claim not to have noticed how much she ate. They were busy talking."

  "Can't help you then, Arthur."

  St. Just heard a woman's voice, soft and sultry, a Brigitte Bardot va-va-voom of a voice. She might have been saying, "Don't forget to get bread at the store," but in French everything sounded so much more exciting. The woman's voice became muffled as Malenfant apparently held the phone against his chest. Then he came back on the line.

  "If there's nothing else? I would help you if I could, but time of death can't be determined as exactly as we'd like. Not unless someone witnesses the crime, or the murderer tells us he happened to check his watch just before he strangled her."

  "They are never that thoughtful, our murderers," said St. Just.

  With a final wheeze of the accordion, Malenfant was gone. St. Just sat back in his chair, the better to study the ceiling. At last he said, "The manner of death is highly suggestive, don't you think?"

  "Ye-s-s-s…" said Sergeant Fear, cautiously.

  "She was stunned first, before she was killed. Supposedly a 'humane' death, like one might use to slaughter livestock. But was it humane-did someone, regretting their crime in advance, deliberately choose what seemed a 'kind' method? Or was the method chosen to ensure there would be no cock-ups-no way for Lexy to fight for her life? To scratch her attacker, perhaps, giving us skin samples from under her nails? Was it simply to prevent blood splatter, that she was hit just hard enough to do no more than stun? I think the answers to these questions would tell us a lot about our killer, if only we could ask."

  "The psychology of the crime, like?"

  "Exactly like. From what we know, she was a harmless enough soul, for all her failings-no threat to anyone but herself, perhaps. If she was killed cold-bloodedly, as the case may have been, we have an extremely dangerous killer on our hands. One who, having gotten away with it, would have no compunction about killing again, the next time someone got in her or his way, for any reason.

  "Let us take, for example, India. A horsewoman, and, like her son, physically fit, given over to outdoor pursuits. A woman comfortable holding the reins of a horse, and holding a horse's reins so many years would make one strong-more to the point, make one's hands strong. We can't discount her. The only question is, to what degree did she see Lexy as a threat to her, to her marriage?"

  Before St. Just's eyes now arose the specter of Hermione springing from the shadows, wielding a deadly scull. Not impossible, of course, despite Lexy's advantage of youth.

  "Might India," he said aloud, following his earlier thought, "along with even the older Hermione, have had the advantage over the younger but more ethereal Lexy in a struggle to the death? Because if the blow to the head had failed to connect, if Lexy had not been hit forcefully enough to be rendered helpless, the killer had to be prepared and able to deal with an awake, enraged, and frightened victim, pumped full of adrenaline. One would have to be sure of one's physical superiority in case of such an eventuality."

  He drummed his fingers on the battered desk in frustration. Some memory flitted at the edge of his mind, a memory connected somehow with the little gargoyle overlooking the Fellows' Garden, the evil little fellow who was all claws and pointed ears, the fellow who had a water spout where his mouth should be. He'd been clutching a club or mace, perhaps even an oar or some kind of boat paddle. It was difficult to say, time having eroded the stone, blurring the edges. Much like my thinking. St. Just shook his head. It would come to him.

  "What I don't see," he went on slowly, "is how the break-in to her room plays into this. A break-in where nothing was taken, she claimed, although a prescription container does seem to be missing. Sergeant," and here Fear, who had let his mind wander as he pondered the theftless break-in, sat up straighter, "if you were trying to hide something, would you use a frequently used room-hide it in plain sight, a la Edgar Allen Poe-or would you use a room you thought would be empty? Yes, the timing of the break-in is very suggestive. A break-in where nothing was taken," he repeated. "What does that say to you?"

  Fear shrugged. "They didn't find what they wanted?"

  "That's one explanation, yes. The other is that she didn't want to admit what was taken. Find out who normally would have occupied her room. We'll need to eliminate their fingerprints."

  "Fingerprints?" asked Sergeant Fear. St. Just explained what he wanted.

  As the sergeant repeated the orders into his mobile, the gargoyle came creeping back into St. Just's mind, watching him and Portia as they watched the pigeon consecrate the statue of Titus Barron.

  "Oh, and one other thing," he said to Fear when he'd rung off. "We'll probably need someone standing by to dredge up that river. Don't forget to call your wife."

  As St. Just was reaching for his own phone to call Portia, the instrument began to ring. An ordinary ring, no instruments blaring, no mosquito buzz (which he wouldn't have been able to hear in any event), but not an ordinary call. As it turned out, an immediate full-scale dredging of the river was unnecessary. Divers already dispatched to St. Mike's had been able to recover an object of interest amongst the usual jetsam found in a busy river, news of which object they dispatched with all haste to St. Just.

  DESPERATE MEASURES

  St. Just and Sergeant Fear pulled up to the college, the sergeant, as if celebrating his liberation from enforced stillness, exuberantly spraying gravel as he spun the car to a full stop. Constable Brummond ran out to greet them. Expecting no more than an update on the river discovery, St. Just was puzzled by the look of alarm on the constable's face.

  "Come quickly, Sir. The ambulance is on its way."

  "Ambulance?" said St. Just and Sergeant Fear together.

  Brummond didn't stop to explain, but led the way up the main staircase. With a sickening certainty, St. Ju
st began to realize where he was leading them.

  A bedder stood outside the oak door, a button-faced woman of perhaps fifty years, gray-haired, red-eyed, and weeping into her dustcloth. Automatically, St. Just pulled a pristine handkerchief from his suit jacket and pressed it into the woman's hand.

  "She was a good girl!" she loudly informed St. Just. "There was no harm in her."

  "Saffron. Yes, she was," said St. Just.

  "Folk just had to look past all the makeup and earrings and such," she went on. "That was just her playing at being grown up. She was no more than a child!" St. Just noticed the woman was gripping an exercise book. Someone had decorated it in metallic swirls and flowers.

  "What is that you have there?"

  She looked down at her hands as if the object had leapt into them. Quickly, she handed it to St. Just.

  "She always kept this under her pillow. It was her diary, I reckon. When I was… trying to help her just now… I don't know how I come to be holding it." She added quickly, "I never read it. I respect their privacy, I do that."

  "What is your name, please?"

  "Marigold. Marigold Arkwright."

  "Marigold, this is important. Was she able to say anything to you?"

  She shook her head. "Not really. She was delirious, calling for Sebastian, and for her father."

  Brummond signaled him over and whispered. Turning to Sergeant Fear, St. Just said, "Call someone to stay with Ms. Arkwright. Don't leave her. She's in shock. Now, Brummond, what's all this about?" St. Just followed him into Saffron's room. -- St. Just and Sergeant Fear waited in their temporary office off the main library, giving the team space to work in Saffron's small room. St. Just read her latest entries in the exercise book. Closing it, he smacked the pages against the desk and said:

  "The silly child. The bedder had that right. No more than a child. Of all the numbty-headed things to do…"

  "Suicide, Sir?"

  St. Just shook his head. "Murder. There were chocolates by her bed, and an opened bottle of cola, and I'd lay odds we'll find one or both have been tampered with. She's been snooping. 'Detecting.' It's all in here," he pointed to the garish little book. "It's partly a diary or journal, all right, but she's taken real events and tried to turn them into one of her favorite detective stories. She writes about what she saw the night of the murder, which was three different people in the vicinity of the boathouse. Three people who said they were somewhere else. We're narrowing it down, Sergeant. Narrowing it down."

  "Where did the stuff come from, Sir? The poison, or the drugs?"

  "Any drug taken in great quantity is a poison, Sergeant. We may know more when they're through going over Lexy's room. But let me clear up one mystery for you now. Sebastian admitted to Brummond he was on occasion using some of the empty college rooms for overflow storage for his illegal trade. They're comparing prints from his room with the unexplained prints they found in Lexy's room to be sure. I think we'll find some of the prints belong to Sebastian, some to the room's usual occupant. The prints he could easily explain away, of course. But now, according to Brummond, Sebastian hasn't been seen since he saw a team going over Lexy's room yet again. Apparently, he's gone missing… and just as we find the girl like that, surrounded by a regular pharmacopeia. It is not looking good for our Sebastian, although he swears he had nothing to do with Lexy's missing drugs."

  "I don't get it, Sir. Why would Sebastian be mixed up in something like this anyway?"

  "Why would the golden-haired boy lower himself to this kind of scheme? At a guess, it's Seb's way of being independent of the parents. That's normally done by taking a paying job, of course, but Seb is one who would hold himself above the dull nine-to-five routine. That's for losers like you and me, Sergeant."

  Just then, Constable Brummond stuck his head through the open door.

  "They're leaving now, Sir."

  "Good. Dispatch someone to bring me the package they found in the river." To Fear he added, "At least now we know who did it."

  We do?

  "Give me"-St. Just looked at his watch and back at Brummond-"exactly three minutes. Go down right now and tell the members of the media to gather downstairs in the entrance hall-now. I'll meet them there."

  "How much are you going to tell them?" asked Sergeant Fear.

  "Whatever I can think up in three minutes."

  Fear didn't have time to puzzle over this statement.

  "Tell them," St. Just went on, "that I'll be briefing them on important developments-make sure they understand anyone who is late is not being allowed in. While I'm talking to the media, tell the alumni guests and the Master, the Bursar, and the Reverend Otis: five sharp for sherry in the SCR. No excuses, no exceptions."

  As Brummond left, St. Just turned to Sergeant Fear.

  "Now, Sergeant, I have a special assignment for you."

  He told him. Fear looked at his chief as if he'd gone mad, but slowly nodded his assent, thinking he'd get Brummond to go do the dirty work. Wasn't that what delegation was for?

  St. Just, as if he could read his mind (one of his most annoying talents, in his sergeant's reckoning), said, "Oh, no you don't, Sergeant. Brummond already has his hands full."

  IDENTITY PARADE

  They were all there when he got to the SCR just after five. All the old members, along with Constance Dunning, Geraldo Valentiano, the Reverend Otis, Master Marburger, and Mr. Bowles, were crowded around the mullioned windows, murmuring worriedly amongst themselves, watching as the still, shrouded little form was removed from the college and lifted into the waiting ambulance. There were a lot of "My God"s and "This can't be happening"s. There was even some gentle sobbing and a shrill, hysterical questioning, this coming from India Bassett. It seemed to be aimed at her husband who, white and shaken, looked helplessly at his wife. Outside, pandemonium had broken out as members of the media shouted questions and brained each other with their video cameras as they struggled to get the best shot of a shrouded corpse. The scene would be replayed endlessly that night, often in slow motion, and accompanied by shocked, gasping voiceovers from Gwennap's various colleagues in the news world.

  St. Just looked about the room, taking them all in. All his suspects. There were James and India, of course, they of class and privilege, oblivious to anyone's happiness but their own, oblivious most of all to their son and his doings. There was Hermione Jax, the kind of woman for whom the words "harmless eccentric" were coined. But was she harmless? Geraldo Valentiano, bolstered by an impenetrable belief in his own charms of seduction, living only for his own pleasure. The Master, the Bursar, and the Dean, the holy-or was it the unholy-trinity? Mr. and Mrs. Dunning, Karl and Constance. A clever man, who had known Lexy well; his wife, a woman expert at getting her own way. Gwennap Pengelly, Lexy's old rival for the attentions of men. Augie Cramb of Texas, a man with violence in his past, and a past that included a monumental failure to impress Lexy. Sebastian, spoiled but neglected, was the only one connected with the case not there. And Saffron, of course.

  Predictably, Constance Dunning was first to speak.

  "Well, I don't know about you, but I've had quite enough." Turning slowly, she bestowed her lemony gaze upon them all. Today she wore a gold and purple tunic appliqued around the hem with dolphins frolicking in a stylized sea. The garment, unlike the couture creation he had seen her wear previously, looked amateurishly handmade and the dolphins cross-eyed, but that was difficult to say: He would have to verify this against his limited experience of folk art. Altogether it looked more like something Hermione would wear in a show of dolphin solidarity.

  "That's two people we've seen go out of here feet first," Constance was running on. "We've already re-booked our flight-I just knew something like this was going to happen. I told my husband last night something like this would happen, didn't I, Karl?"

  Karl seemed to understand that questions such as this when directed at him were emblematic and not requiring his full participation. Constance Dunning continued:

&n
bsp; "We had to reschedule our plane at no little expense, and who's going to pay for that, I'd like to know? Anyway," and she turned to face St. Just, "we'll be leaving tomorrow, Detective Chief Inspector. You can't hold us here further, and that's a fact. I have spoken at length with the American Embassy." The emphasis on the last words could not have been greater had she claimed to have spoken with the Almighty. She looked around triumphantly, as if to suggest that at any moment a team of storm troopers dispatched by the embassy might appear to rescue her from her hostage situation in the SCR. "So don't try to stop us," she concluded.

  "I'm sure that will be fine," said St. Just quietly. He watched with some amusement as she deflated, turning a bewildered face to her husband. "However," St. Just continued, "if you'll indulge me just awhile longer, I think we can unravel this skein for you before you leave."

  "But you have your suspect… these kids were obviously mixed up in this. And now she's paid… the ultimate price."

  "It's the murderer I want," said St. Just.

  "But Seb is-"

  "You'd be advised to keep your trap shut. Ma'am." They all turned in surprise in the direction of the harsh voice. Augie Cramb, much like James, looked pale, shaken, and at the end of his Texan rope.

  "Your fatherly show of protectiveness becomes you, Sir, but I would advise you to get a rein on your temper," warned St. Just. "Otherwise, we can continue this conversation in much less opulent surroundings."

  Augie Cramb subsided.

  "Father?" asked the unstoppable Mrs. Dunning.

  "If anyone's been a father to Sebastian, I have," cut in James gruffly. "I've fed and clothed him; I've tried to keep him in the right path. And where were you? Riding around playing cowboy on some dude ranch, without a care in the world, and without sending a penny of support."

  "She told me to leave him-and her-alone," said Augie Cramb. "I tried. But I knew he would be here and realized I wanted to see him. That's only natural, especially after all these years. I have no other children."