“Dinner ended at nine-fifteen, but then I stayed a bit to talk with the Master. He is a dear but he does tend to wander on. Of course, he’s on a mission this weekend. We walked together to the SCR.”
“You were with each other the whole time?”
“That is correct.”
“Now, I realize this is awkward, given your situation, but I will need your impressions of Lexy Laurant.”
She nodded understandingly as he spoke. “I can only feel pity for her now, of course,” she said, “but in life she could be … difficult.” A heavy note of irony had entered her voice: She might as well have come out and said she had found her impossible to deal with. “The divorce hit her hard, no doubt of it, but it was all ages ago.” There seemed to be an unspoken “These things happen” subtext to her words.
“Did she seem to be over it?”
“Not entirely, no. But we were spared the hysterics and scenes of previous years. Her new angle seemed to be to wave Geraldo under my husband’s nose at every opportunity. It was the sort of behavior that is much easier to ignore.”
“So. Let’s back up for a bit. You walked with the Master to the SCR. That took how long?”
“It’s rather a large college and so a bit of a walk, with the gallery and then the long corridor leading to the SCR. I’d say a few minutes, walking slowly, yes.”
“And you went straight to the SCR. You didn’t stop at the cloak room, for example.”
“Oh! Well, I did, of course, but only for a moment. Really, I was just trying to shake off the Master, if you want the truth.”
“That’s why we’re here, yes,” said St. Just, with just a tinge of exasperation. “To get at the truth. I understand at some point while you were in the SCR the curfew warning bell rang. You all could hear it?”
“Yes. Quite clearly; it’s a most annoying sound, like a flock of geese calling for help from inside in a large tin. And then shortly after that, Seb came running in. Poor child.” She shook her head. “Seb and his precious rowing. Do you know, he is so disciplined in that regard—I can’t tell you what a relief it’s been since he discovered this talent. He’s not terribly disciplined in any other way.”
“Who was in the SCR when you entered?” asked St. Just.
“That’s rather difficult. The Master had reattached himself and was bending my ear again by then. Let’s see, I believe the Americans were there—they’re always frightfully hard to miss, aren’t they? At least, she is—Constance. And dear old Hermione was gassing away about the polar ice caps.”
“When did your husband arrive?”
“Oh, didn’t I say? He was already there. I tell you, I was rather waylaid by the Master. They are quite desperate for donations, poor lambs.”
Fear, pen flying, found he was a bit in awe of this woman who could speak so offhandedly about the Master. He thought: She’s the real thing; not given to show. Upper crust—not flashy, though. Real upper crust.
“So, you weren’t entirely fond of Lexy, would it be true to say?”
She answered coolly, “Some women make rather a success of divorce. Lexy was not one of those women. I’m afraid that instead she continued to carry a torch for my husband. Writing him letters and so on. ‘Asking his advice’ on this, that, or the other. Just ‘happening’ to be where she knew he would be. To be completely frank, she never stopped thinking of him as her husband, I don’t think.”
“Do you have any of those letters?”
“Oh, I’m sure not. They used to aggravate James no end. I’m certain they went straight into the fire, as he told me they did. But you should ask him.”
“Her view of things was rather ‘finders, keepers,’ was it?”
“Something like that. Exactly like that, now you mention it. Her head, I think, was rather filled with romantic nonsense, and she always had an inability to deal with reality. In the real world, relationships dissolve, lose their—I suppose one must say—their usefulness. Hard as that sounds, it is the way of the world, and Lexy never came to grips with it. She was, in many ways, a born victim, you know. The manner of her death was, while a shock, not completely out of character, if one can put it what way. Lexy would always manage to create, and to cultivate, chaos around her person.”
Sergeant Fear, hearing this opinion voiced with such confidence, felt somehow this assessment was spot on—even without his ever having met the victim.
“I mean, here she was,” India went on, “intelligent in her own way—although crafty might be a better word, and educated—” here she threw wide one arm rather as St. Just had done earlier to encompass the paneled walls, the Carolean bookcases, the seals and crests and other emblems of prestigious learning, “and beautiful to boot. But what did she do but throw herself at someone like—well, forgive me, but that boyfriend of hers, whatever his name is, is so obviously a scamp. What on earth could she have been thinking? You don’t suppose …”
“Suppose?” prompted St. Just, responding to her look of confusion.
“Well, that he had anything to do with this? Some heat of passion type of crime? I overheard them quarreling you know.”
She nodded emphatically, gratified by the effect this had on her listeners.
“Indeed. I heard them quarreling, and quite violently.”
OVERHEARD
“That’s right. You may well look shocked.” India rearranged the diamond bracelets on each arm, creating a show of twinkling lights against the wall and ceiling as table lamps caught the sparkles and made them dance. Seeing she had the full attention of her audience, she went on:
“It was our first night here … just last night, in fact. The windows in my room were open, as they were in most rooms, I’d wager—apart from Mrs. Dunning’s. She’s done nothing but complain about the cold since she got here. Hermione, although rather mad in her way, is quite right about global warming, you know. The college used to be freezing year-round. It’s been quite warm since we got here, even in the dungeon-like rooms along that corridor, and we’ve had to keep the windows open all night. No air conditioning in the old part of the college, of course, and—”
“Anyway,” St. Just cut in. She smiled charmingly, not in the least offended.
“Sorry, I do go on. Anyway, I was unpacking—James was down the corridor, trying to coax hot water out of the college’s rusty old pipes for a shower. This was before the big kerfuffle about Lexy’s room being broken into, which was also impossible not to overhear. Oh, I see you do know about that? Well, I’ll get back to that in a minute, shall I? Anyway, I was unpacking when Lexy and her friend started a real argy-bargy.”
“What was said?”
“I could really only hear half the conversation without actually hanging out of the window, you know. Her little girl voice didn’t carry, somehow, and it sounded anyway as if he were nearer the window, she on the other side of the room. I did hear her say—she got rather shrill at moments, which is when I could hear her well—I heard her say, ‘I didn’t bring you here to make a fool of me.’ To which Geraldo replied, ‘No, you don’t need anyone’s help for that.’ I thought that was rather good, frankly. But he mainly kept saying, ‘Don’t be absurd!’ or ‘I did nothing of the sort!’ and so on. Denials. I remember particularly when he said, ‘You’ll get your money back and more, don’t worry.’”
“You’re quite certain, money was mentioned?”
“Quite certain.”
“Do you recall anything else you may have overheard?”
She shook her head. She wore a little diamante headband—not quite a tiara—and the movement dislodged it. Her hand flew up to catch it before it fell. She placed it in what looked like an antique jet-beaded handbag.
“I’ll try to remember, but I think that was it.”
“As to her room being broken into … ?”
“Yes, wasn’t that another tempest? Honestly, being next door to that room was like trying to fall asleep in King’s Cross. Again, because it was so stuffy in the room, we heard more th
an perhaps we were meant to, through the open windows.”
“Your husband was with you, then?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“We heard Lexy raise the alarm. This was Saturday afternoon. Complaining that the lock on her room had been forced. I guess the Porter and several members of staff were called in to investigate—we could hear various voices, all talking at once, asking her if anything had been stolen. ‘No, I don’t think so’—I heard her say that plainly enough. ‘That’s what’s so very odd,’ she said. ‘All my jewelry is right here’—presumably, still in her jewelry case or whatever she travels with.”
St. Just sat for a moment, lost in thought. Sergeant Fear took advantage of the lull to extract another Biro from his pocket, having run the first one nearly dry. At last, St. Just said, “You are certain it was Geraldo Valentiano she quarreled with?”
“Positive. I mean, there can’t be too many others running about the college with that Rubirosa-type accent.”
“I’m sorry,” put in Sergeant Fear. “Would you spell that, please?”
She spelled it out for him, and seeing the Sergeant’s continued look of puzzlement, said kindly, “He was a bit before your time. Mine, too, come to that. He was a famously louche playboy of the ’40s and ’50s. Worked his way through the list of any heiress or actress of the day worth knowing. A legendary Lothario. I only know who he was because my mother used to speak of him with great fondness—she was suspiciously fond, if you know what I mean. Anyway, our Argentine is much the same type of egg. All melting glances under the moonlight. Then, poof! Next day, gone. Lexy was rather a fool, you know.”
“Well, this has been most helpful, Lady Bassett,” said St. Just.
“India, please! We shall all get to know each other rather well before this is over, I should imagine.”
“I imagine so. Please let us know if you can add anything to what you’ve already told us.”
She merely shook her head, looking, for the first time, rather helpless. When she had left, Sergeant Fear turned to St. Just and said, “Funny Geraldo didn’t mention any quarrel over money while we had him in here.”
“Yes,” said St. Just faintly. “Of course, if Lady Bassett is the only one who overheard this altercation … ”
“You think she was lying, Sir?”
“I think she might have a motive to protect her husband if she thinks he might be implicated. Not quite the same thing, is it, Sergeant, as proof she’s lying?”
Sergeant Fear allowed that it was not.
“As to the break-in, if that’s what it was, it sounds as if there were plenty of witnesses to the conversation about that. We’ll have to talk to the Porter and find out what he knows about it. We’d better have a look in Lexy’s room. Make sure Geraldo kips somewhere else tonight, if he thinks he’s staying there.” First pulling back his cuff to look at his watch, St. Just drew the list of names towards him again and said, “Who’s next? … Mr. and Mrs. Dunning of New York, USA. We’ll have the wife first, I think.”
–––
Constance Dunning was a formidable-looking woman of militaristic bearing whose counterpart in Great Britain would no doubt be the mainstay of the Women’s Institute; the heart and soul, not to mention the veritable backbone, of the village fete; the bastion of the Bring-and-Buy table. What equivalent role she might perform in the United States, St. Just could not imagine, but surely the entire world needed someone such as she to keep it whipped into shape. Stepping with thunderous intensity into the room, she seized the reins of the conversation immediately, settling into an armchair and proclaiming in ringing tones, “This is a shocking thing to have happened. Positively shocking. We come to England to get away from this kind of thing.”
“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 clichés 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.”
Death at the Alma Mater Page 12
