“So, what do you know about all this?” he asked her.
“I just wish I knew more,” she said. “I wasn’t part of the group. This really has little to do with me, this weekend, so I paid little attention, and I’ve been wracking my brains since I heard what happened tonight. Actually, the Master let it be known that he preferred it if the ‘loose ends’ hanging about—the summer people—laid low until the old members had left. If we absolutely felt we had to emerge from our rooms for sustenance, we were to strive to look dignified, intelligent, and sober. What he thinks we look like on usual occasions one can scarcely imagine. In any event, it hardly mattered. The honored (read: wealthy) guests were all housed in the Brooke Wing, separate from the revolting masses. I just met people in passing, really—a chat here and there. I’ve been up to my ears in The Paper Without End.”
Even with St. Just, Portia could not bring herself to reveal how often she abandoned the dratted thesis to turn to the almost visceral pleasure—the sights, sounds, smells—of the world inhabited by her fictional detective. Of working out the puzzling dynamics of his latest case.
“It’s all right,” St. Just said. “Just tell me whatever you remember of what’s happened tonight. Start with after the dinner.”
“Well …” she began. “I went up to my room after dinner to freshen up. This was a bit after nine-fifteen. Then I came straight back downstairs and headed into the SCR for a glass of port. The Master had invited me to join the group. I gather he felt I wouldn’t let the side down too badly. Some of the Fellows—Professor Puckle, for example—might start droning on about Lacanian theory, or Freudian analysis, or something, which is pretty much everyone’s cue to run for cover. So it was quite an honor to be asked, if you knew the way the Master’s mind works. Frightful snob.”
“Did you have much to do with Lexy Laurant?”
“Hardly anything,” Portia replied, her lips curved in a little moue of disappointment. “She was lovely to look at, is nearly all I can tell you. My impression, for what it’s worth, was that she was massively insecure, the type to cling for ballast to anyone who came along. I think she was flirting with the Argentine she brought along in order to make Sir James jealous—they were married once, did you know that? He’s here this weekend, current wife in tow. That was my sense of what was going on—Lexy was playing the jealousy card. But the whole thing looked rather a game. Harmless, too, I would have said. Well, before she was killed, I’d have said that.”
“The Argentine?”
“Sorry. His name is Geraldo Valentiano.”
“Sounds like a silent film star.”
She smiled. “Not far wrong. Just wait until you meet him. You are in for a treat.”
“Where did they meet, he and Lexy? Any idea?”
“Dunno,” she said. “I doubt it was at a Mensa convention.”
“Anything else you can think of?”
A shrug. “Lexy was very wealthy. But then, I gather they all are, so as a motive, money would seem to be a wash. She did tell me on the way down to dinner that her room had been broken into, but that nothing had been taken.”
“Really?” St. Just mused on that for a moment, then said, “This Geraldo—did he seem possessive of her … jealous?”
“Not exactly,” she replied, drawing out the words as she considered the question. “But he seems the type to own people, rather. Especially women. I guess you could call it a form of jealousy.”
St. Just sighed. The investigation had just begun and he was already weary. Suspects galore and probably motives to match. But if it weren’t a complicated case, and a high-profile one, the Chief wouldn’t have landed him with it. He almost longed to be out with the Reach Out! team, being eaten alive by household pets.
Portia was looking up at him worriedly, seeing his exhaustion clearly in the unforgiving light of the overhead chandelier. His was a handsome face, candid and open, with a beaked nose that jutted from the strong planes of his face like a promontory of his native Cornish coast. His thick dark hair fell more or less in a center part, but the white hair that had begun to fringe around his ears was becoming pronounced. That and the small scar under his chin gave him a slight air of a battle-scarred tomcat.
They stood close together for a moment and a small surge of mutual reassurance seemed to pass between them. St. Just could feel the skin around his eyes soften and relax as he returned her gaze.
“I’ll want to talk with you further, of course,” he told her, and smiled. “Meanwhile, think back for me over everything that’s happened. Oh, and I don’t have to tell you, do I? No investigating on your own.”
“Who, me?”
“You. I mean it, Portia.”
She all but stuck out her tongue at him, but she subsided—willingly enough, to all appearances. Why upset him, when all she really intended was to keep her eyes wide open from now on? With a promise to see her when he could, St. Just left to find Sergeant Fear and the Master.
The Master was looking slightly improved by being returned to his natural habitat, like an otter released into a pond, but he was not improved by much. His manner as he waved the policemen to two chairs in front of his desk was distracted, his mind clearly elsewhere. Sergeant Fear, having first discreetly moved his chair to a far corner of the room, pulled out his policeman’s notebook and riffled through it to a clean page. He was restless; called out from a rare night at home with the wife and family, half his mind was still with them. Furthermore, with two small children, the sergeant had only recently come to appreciate the value of an unbroken night’s sleep. Unconsciously, he snapped the elastic band of the notebook until St. Just turned and silenced him with a “Would you mind?” gaze.
“Put us quickly in the picture, would you please?” St. Just asked the Master. “When was the last time the victim was seen alive?”
At the word “victim” the Master gave another little shudder of distaste.
“Lexy Laurant,” he replied with emphasis, “was last seen by me and I should think several others in the Fellows’ Garden, talking with Sir James. This was following the dinner. We were all on our way to the SCR for port.”
“You saw this yourself? You’re certain? Excellent. Tell me: What was her manner? Was she nervous? Upset?”
“They seemed to be having a normal enough conversation, given the circumstances.”
“Would you elaborate on the circumstances?”
The Master sighed. “As you will no doubt hear from all and sundry, they were once married. Lexy and Sir James, as he was later to become. Both the marriage and the rapid breakup of it occurred when they were both students here. There was a great deal of unpleasantness. A very great deal. Still, things of that nature have a way of sorting themselves out with the passage of years, don’t you find?”
St. Just’s experience was that the passage of years could also lead to regret, pent-up anger, and lingering recrimination, but he nodded as if to accept the Master’s halcyon view of all things marital.
“Sir James is a writer, you know. Knighted for his contributions. He has had some great success in particular with—now, I want to make sure I get this right: Cygnus and the Northern Cross. I believe that’s the title.”
St. Just said, “We’ll need you to fill us in on the security arrangements at the college. This is why I wanted to speak with you first.”
Did he imagine it, or did the Master’s shoulders relax slightly at those words? His nervousness was understandable—no one really wanted to be first up in a murder investigation. But his relief at the change of subject, towards mechanics and away from personalities, seemed a tad obvious.
“I see,” said the Master. “As to the security arrangements—well, such as they are, I will gladly tell you about them. We have a CCTV system that’s a combination of dummy and real cameras.” St. Just nodded. He had noticed the bare-bones arrangement at the boathouse. “Anyone could get to the boathouse, although the building itself is kept locked and the keys strictly accounted for. And b
efore curfew, anyone could get into the grounds at the back. It’s part of the Porters’ duties to patrol, but of course they can’t be everywhere. The Fellows’ Garden has an outer gate kept locked after curfew following an unfortunate incident in which we found a donkey drinking from the commemorative pond. He wore a Magdalene scarf and a straw boater, as I recall. The undergraduate population, sadly, is not what it was.”
There was a moment of silence as St. Just and the Master appeared internally to review the changes wrought by the passage of time, and by the influx of scholarship students. Fear, sitting in his corner like a spider with a notebook, recognized this as one of his superior’s techniques: He was good at getting the nobs to let down their hair. Fear tested the point of his Biro against his notebook and waited.
St. Just said at last, “Things are not what they were in my day, I can tell you.” Silently he added: Thank God. “Well, I’m sure you will appreciate that we’ll need to talk with the Porters, especially whoever was on duty tonight. And I will need a list from you of everyone present in the college this night, including staff, of course. Those in the kitchen, the bedders, and so forth.”
“The college servants. Yes, yes, of course. But you can’t think—some of them have been here years, since I’ve been here. Anyway, there’s a reduced staff, because of the time of year. We shut up entire areas of the college. It empties out except for the ‘orphans’ who can’t afford to fly home. Even when we’re at full capacity, there’s often not enough to go around to operate as we’d like,” the Master finished sadly.
St. Just said in a commiserating tone, “Not quite what it was in the day?”
“My, no. Not that St. Michael’s ever had much of a day, really. But now, we’re running this place on a veritable shoestring. You get half what you used to get out of the servants, too.”
I’ll bet.
“I do hate to trouble you,” said St. Just, “but we’ll need a room set aside, somewhere where we can conduct our interviews. I think that’s much preferable to asking everyone to come to the station, don’t you?”
The Master, who had turned several shades paler at the mention of the station, agreed wholeheartedly that holding the interviews at the college would be much the better course.
“I think it would be easiest if you use my study, at least until other arrangements can be made,” he added. “You’ll have complete privacy here. I hope you won’t mind my asking, but how was she killed?”
St. Just told him.
“Oh, dear. Oh, my, oh my. My goodness me.” He began wringing his hands again. It was a little like holding a conversation with the White Rabbit. “There’s been nothing like this since—well, I shall have to check the archives. Possibly that gambling dispute in the early eighteen hundreds. That ended badly. One dead, but no one sent down for it, thank God. They were able to hush it up rather quickly. Anyway, I’ll go and see what I can arrange for you.”
“One question before you leave: Who else representing the college was at tonight’s dinner?”
“Apart from myself, the Bursar, and the Dean: Portia De’Ath. Also Hermione Jax—she’s a Fellow of the college, but she was also here as part of the alumni group.”
“We’ll need a word with all of them.”
“All?” Again, the Master blanched. “The Reverend Otis, as well?”
“I gather he is the Dean? Yes. Is there any reason not to speak with him?”
The Master, as has been noted, regarded the Reverend as a moron at the height of his powers, but thought better of saying so.
“I’m sure it will be all right,” he said weakly. This was all spinning far too far out of his control for the Master’s liking. The Dean would warble on, saying God knew what, with no one to contain him.
Once the Master had rabbited off, St. Just said to Fear, “Any member of the college would have easy access. And of course there is no limit to the number of old members who might be running around with keys or duplicated keys to heaven knows what—the Master doesn’t seem to have taken that into account. It makes it all the more trying, this sort of monk-medieval atmosphere. Not like a murder in a modern block of flats, for example, where one could at least hope for decent video camera surveillance.” In fact, many of the colleges had reluctantly gone in for these modern protuberances attached to their stone walls, the unsightliness being the lesser of two evils—the other evil being robbed blind. But St. Mike’s clung steadfastly to appearance and tradition, St. Just had noticed; although there were static cameras at the boathouse, which was a relatively modern building, he hadn’t noticed them otherwise.
This murder, he thought, would undoubtedly change things. Or would it? This was Cambridge, after all.
NARCISSUS
St. Just was a fair man, and he struggled to meet all suspects, however suspect they might be, with an open mind and on an even footing. But he did not like Geraldo Valentiano on sight and that was a fact. The man reeked of wealth, in addition to an overpowering men’s cologne. Wealth and entitlement and having far too much time on his hands to, oh, say, cruise about the world on his yacht. His idea of hard labor would be taking the helm of this yacht for a few thrilling moments before going below decks to order up more champagne.
He was extraordinarily handsome in his movie-star way, with more than a hint of the voluptuary in the full mouth, the languor in the large, long-lashed, slightly downturned eyes. Like Bambi fallen into a vat of cologne. Perhaps in his upper thirties. St. Just did not doubt he was attractive to women. The thought of this man under the same roof as Portia made his stomach clench with anxiety. There she was, innocently toiling away night and day on her thesis, oblivious to the danger. He trusted Portia absolutely, but he was also absolutely certain this man would not be able to stay away from her loveliness. St. Just could not bear the thought of Portia anywhere near this … this rogue.
With an effort, St. Just pulled himself together, plastering an amiable expression on his face.
“How did you come to know Lexy Laurant?” he asked him now, rather more bluntly than he intended. “And for how long did you know her?”
The man shot his cuffs, arranging the fall of his sleeves just so, before answering.
“We met in London, a few months ago. At Boujis.”
Sergeant Fear looked up from his notebook. “Please spell that, Sir.”
“B-O-O … ” he began. “I don’t remember. It’s a nightclub.”
“How old was she, by the way?”
“She said she was thirty-two, but you know how women lie about their ages.”
“No matter, we’ll of course have access to documentation regarding her age. Now: Did she have any enemies?”
“How should I know?”
The amiable expression was starting to hurt. “Tell us what happened tonight,” St. Just said evenly.
“Again, how should I know? We all went to dinner, we came out, this kid came running into the SCR screaming bloody murder. Oh, sorry. He was yelling, I meant to say. It was only then I realized Lexy had not joined the gathering. Sir James ran out to see what was the matter. A few of the men followed him.”
“Had anything been troubling her? Had anything happened out of the ordinary, either tonight or earlier?”
“Hmm?” A chip in his manicure had diverted Geraldo, occupying his full attention.
“I asked you,” said St. Just with stilted patience, “if anything had been troubling Lexy.”
“Oh. Well, there was this situation with her ex being at the reunion.”
“How was she taking that?”
As anything that did not directly concern the man seemed to bore him stiff, he looked for a moment as if he might not answer. Having Lexy’s affections sidetracked away from himself seemed to strike him as either an impossibility or, at worst, some minor social embarrassment, like losing one’s date for the May Ball to a rival. Annoying, but nothing to worry about. She’d come crawling back—they always did. The man exuded a sexual self-confidence that would have been comme
ndable in a Darwinian sense, had St. Just not found it so maddening.
“What caused the pair of you to come here this weekend?”
“It was Lexy’s idea. I thought it might be fun, so I came down from London with her.”
“And what did you do once you arrived in Cambridge?”
“After we unpacked? The usual. Had a late lunch, rented a punt, wandered about. Came back here, had sex, changed for dinner.”
The casual mention of sex was jolting. It may have been intended to provoke, or it may have been simple braggadocio. St. Just suspected it was in the man’s character to make the nature of his conquests clear. He heard Sergeant Fear stir uneasily behind him.
“Did she talk about Sir James to you?”
“She may have done. I tuned most of it out. She liked to relive the moment when he ran off with India. Mostly, she was over it. I helped.”
I just bet you did. St. Just wondered how much the man’s ego might be shielding him. He might be telling the truth to the fullest extent of which he was capable. His belief that no woman would want anyone else, having met the divine Geraldo Valentiano, was no doubt solid and sincere. Whether it had anything to do with present reality was anyone’s guess.
“How were you and she getting along?”
“Just fine.” Noticing the weighted silence, he managed to tear his eyes away from examining his manicured nails to look at the policeman directly. “Really great.”
“That’s wonderful, Sir. No quarrels, no misunderstandings then?”
“I just told you, we were getting along fine.”
“She could be a little … clingy, is my understanding.”
“She was a very feminine woman. That didn’t bother me. I am used to dealing with all kinds of women.”
“How very splendid for you, I’m sure. Now, you say she was feminine. What else? What kind of woman was she?”
Death at the Alma Mater Page 8
