‘And the old gentleman? What was your impression of him?’
‘Gaga,’ said Miss Tambly, firmly, saying openly what everyone else had implied. ‘Completely gaga. Or else just plain drunk — you couldn’t tell which. At this party, now — one moment he’d be there, next moment he’d be miles away. One moment you’d think you were talking to thin air, the next moment he’d come back with something quite sharp — then he’d be off again for minutes at a time. He’d latch on to a word and repeat it over and over again. Most of our governors are like that, so I know the signs.’
‘And that was the first time you’d met him, was it?’
‘No. I was press-ganged into some lecture or other he gave in the morning — bloody waste of time. That was pretty crazy too, if you ask me. Started talking about someone called Gaitskell who I’d never heard of, but before I finally dropped off, he was on about Jane Austen. But I don’t understand these things. English never was my strong point at Training College. I was in the physical education line myself, you know. Anyway I was thinking about a new kind of alarm system for the girls’ dorm, so you’d better get one of the academics to explain the finer points of the lecture.’
‘And there’s nothing else you can think of, nothing likely to help me?’ asked Royle, shifting his bulk around preparatory to heaving it up. There was a long pause.
‘At the moment all I can think of is another drink,’ said Miss Tambly. ‘Have one.’
Royle passed his glass and settled down in his chair again.
• • •
Driving away from the Methodist Ladies’, not smelling particularly Methodist, Royle drove as badly as he always did after he had had a few, but he was quite unconscious of it. Two of Miss Tambly’s whiskies were quite a few of anyone else’s, so it was surprising that as he approached the town he should recognize the figure of Bill Bascomb, going in the direction of college. He was carrying a bulging plastic bag from which protruded two large flagons of sherry and not much else. Remembering something he’d been turning over in his mind, Royle pulled up and opened the passenger door.
‘Want a lift to the Uni?’ he said with an approach of pleasantness. ‘I’m going that way myself.’
‘Don’t mind,’ said Bill, considerably surprised. He scrambled in, wondering whether it was the done thing to get in the back or front, and deciding he’d probably done right to get in beside the driver. He settled down in his seat, nursing his plastic bag. ‘I had a couple of beers at Beecher’s, so I left the car in town.’
‘Really?’ said Royle, suppressing a sarcasm. A smell reached Bascomb that suggested that he might just as well have driven himself home.
‘Been to a party?’ he asked.
‘A Methodist one,’ said Royle. ‘You’d be surprised. Anyway, cut out the back-chat. I want to ask you something.’
‘I thought so,’ said Bill. ‘I didn’t associate the Australian police with giving compassionate lifts, somehow. Haven’t we been over it all pretty thoroughly by now?’
‘Yes, I don’t want to go into any more of the details. In fact, I’ve looked into your story and as far as I can see, you’re completely in the clear.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Bill. ‘I was beginning to wonder if they’d done away with the rope in New South Wales.’
‘The only one that is in the clear, I may say,’ said Royle pompously. ‘The others have holes feet wide in their statements. That’s why I thought you might be able to help me.’
‘Always glad to oblige,’ said Bill. Royle slowed down and leant towards Bill, who backed away a little from the Scotch mist that accompanied him.
‘See, I don’t go much on these academic types,’ said Royle, now definitely attempting confidentiality. ‘Not really my line of country at all. You may not have noticed, but some of the time I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.’
‘No? Really?’ said Bill.
‘’Strue,’ said Royle. ‘Now, I thought — you being a wide-awake young blade, you might be able to do a bit of ferreting round about things where I’d be at a bit of a loss. People’s backgrounds, like, possible motives, that kind of thing. They’d all talk to you, you see, and you’d understand.’
‘You obviously don’t know university departments if you think we all talk to each other,’ said Bill. ‘Some of us go for months without. Still, I’m beginning to get your drift.’
‘Then again,’ said Royle, ‘you’ve been to Oxford College, if I remember, and you might have a few contacts there that could be of help. They might be able to run down a few facts, either about the poor old bugger who died or about some of those other academics who’ve been to Oxford in their time.’
Bill Bascomb paused for a bit.
‘So what it boils down to is, you’d like me to do a bit of detective work — more or less commissioned by you.’
‘That’s about it,’ said Royle. ‘I’m looking for a bit of promotion from this little job, so I’ll make it worth your while. But God help me if I don’t catch anyone.’
Bill Bascomb was exceedingly pleased. Such a suggestion appealed strongly to the ‘Adventurous Five’ side of his nature. Until not so very long ago Enid Blyton had been his favourite reading. Again, the thought of finding one of his colleagues out to be a brutal murderer was not without its attractions. Quite apart from the fillip it would give to the rather dull life he led in this dreary little Australian town, he had one or two scruffy Oxford friends who would be glad of an academic job in Australia, and while they would not be very good acquisitions to the department, nor would Dr Day or Dr Porter be any great loss. He had settled on those two already in his mind as the most likely, since he thought the latter had the necessary malice, and the former (when sober, a large qualification) the necessary intelligence to get away with murder — at least when up against the Australian police force. Then again, though he didn’t really think that Professor Wickham had either the brains or the guts to do it, the thought of Lucy Wickham weeping copious tears down the bosom of her useful little black dress had a certain dramatic appeal. It would be worth being proved wrong just to see it.
‘You’re on,’ he said.
‘Right,’ said Royle, foreseeing his load lightened and feeling considerably relieved. ‘First of all, then, you’ve got to be very discreet. Obviously no one must suspect you’re in cahoots with us.’
‘Right you are,’ said Bill.
‘And be discreet if you come to see me at the station, because I don’t want anyone there to know either.’
‘Right you are,’ said Bill.
‘And not a word to anyone. No taking of people quietly into your confidence because you don’t think they did it. Anyone could have done it — anyone at all. Understand?’
‘Of course, naturally,’ said Bill.
‘Good luck, then,’ said Royle, awkwardly, extending his hand like a sales manager sending out a raw recruit to take over his first area. Bill Bascomb took it equally awkwardly, and was let out of the police car just outside his block of Menzies College.
He lugged his sherry flagons up to his room, poured himself half a tumblerful, and got on the phone to tell Alice O’Brien about it.
CHAPTER XI
THE DRUMMONDALE SCHOOL
INSPECTOR ROYLE drove through the gates of the Drummondale School, and through the extensive grounds and playing-fields towards the main school building, a solid Edwardian affair over which John Betjeman had also once cast an eye of over-Catholic appreciation. Clearly, if the New South Wales upper-middle-classes believed in locking up their daughters, they were content with a very open prison for their sons. The gates were wide, the grounds unpatrolled, the general atmosphere was relaxed, not to say soporific. Over on the playing fields a few flannelled fools were putting in a spot of practice, immaculate in their flannels and probably in their foolishness. Otherwise there was little noise to be heard except for an uproar from a distant class-room — no doubt one of the teachers newly recruited from England. They were said to raise the tone, b
ut they did very little for the discipline.
Inspector Royle took all this in approvingly. Here he was on home ground. The Methodist Ladies never came through his hands (to use a not inappropriate metaphor) during term time because they were never allowed outside the walls to get up to anything. But the Drummondale School he had visited frequently in connection with petty pilfering from shops, stolen cars and such like. And then there had been that incendiary lad last year. In most cases it had been discovered that everyone — especially the boys’ parents — had been anxious to avoid a prosecution, and Royle counted these as among his most rewarding cases. The general feeling of well-being increased as he got out of the car in front of the moderately imposing front entrance: a passing secretary recognized him immediately, paid due attention to his status and appeared blushingly conscious of the handsome figure he made in his uniform; she ushered him straight in to Mr Doncaster, who she said had been expecting him, and had kept himself as free from engagements as possible. This is something like, thought Royle. This is showing respect for the law.
Mr Doncaster had two very effective manners which had secured and advanced his position in the shifting, volatile world of the Australian private school. One was his parent-pleasing manner, the other was his teacher-to-teacher manner. He could, like an experienced cocktail-mixer, occasionally produce a subtly different blend of the two, and this he now did for Inspector Royle. The latter sank into a very easy easy-chair, feeling at home, respected, and at peace with the world; except, of course, for the damned investigation. He felt more like bemoaning his lot than asking questions, and he let Doncaster talk on as his eye roamed the study with a renewed interest which came from the fact that this was the first time he had been there on a case in which Doncaster could be considered in the light of a suspect. It was a gentleman-scholar’s room: photographs of cricket teams, school groups, a smart army photograph with a rather artificially grim expression. On the wall a college shield, and a cricket bat signed by one of the school’s dimmest past students, who had gone on to play for the state and become a Country Party politician. The bookshelves were full of books, old, dirty, and looking very thumbed. Royle idly wondered whether the thumbs that had thumbed them had been Doncaster’s thumbs, or if they had been picked up cheap in a second-hand bookshop. He’d never actually seen Doncaster reading, and unless he actually saw people reading, Royle was inclined to suspect that they never did, since he had no time whatsoever for the occupation himself.
Mr Doncaster was commenting on the terrible nature of the atrocity, and how things struck him:
‘Quite apart from the shock one feels oneself,’ he said (he could be relied on to wield a magisterial ‘one’), ‘and it really is a shock when one remembers one was talking to the poor old fellow only a matter of hours before, there is the damage to the community as a whole. One of our most important assets is that we are quiet, rural — a bit withdrawn from the fuss of twentieth-century life, as you might say. That’s why quite a few parents in Sydney, quite a few, prefer to send their boys to — to a place like this. Anything of this kind is bound to disturb our “image”, to use the current term. That’s why it is so important to get the thing out of the way as soon as possible. I’m speaking here as a professional man, of course, but also as an ordinary citizen of Drummondale. Stop all the talk, get rid of the nasty atmosphere, so we can get back to normal, that’s my view.’
Mr Doncaster was inclined to say everything twice over, even if what he said was usually straightforward enough to be grasped first time. One of his staff after a speech-day had said his address had reminded him of Mr Chadband, and he had received a dignified word of thanks and a degree of modest advancement as a result.
‘Don’t you agree?’ added Doncaster, as his last words echoed to silence.
‘Oh yes, quite, quite,’ said Royle, who hadn’t been listening. ‘And then there’s my career to think about.’
Mr Doncaster’s expression of sympathetic interest was in his most sincere and encouraging vein. Royle pulled himself back from entering into his personal problems, and tried to focus his mind on what he was supposed to be there for.
‘You say you were talking to the old chappie,’ he said. ‘Could you tell me what you were talking about at the Wickhams’ party?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ve been doing my best to remember, knowing that you would be interested. Of course, you have to remember it was a party, and one can’t always remember details afterwards.’
Royle nodded agreement and tried to look interested. He took out his cigarettes, and before he could fumble for his match Mr Doncaster was behind his chair, lighting his Pall Mall with the unobtrusive air of a good waiter.
‘Well, then,’ he said as he sat down behind his desk, and spread his hands, palms down, over its paper-bestrewn surface, ‘we talked about the school, of course. I suppose they have to show interest in the local institutions as they’re travelling around — but actually I think it was Mrs Lullham who introduced the subject. Not that her son is to be counted as one of our major successes, I’m afraid — ’ here he gave a conspiratorial smile at Inspector Royle, who knew perfectly well why — ‘Still, she is grateful, and I must say the graziers in general are very proud of the school, and we are greatly indebted to them — in every way. So of course it’s pleasing when they do praise us to outsiders. Yes, then; what else? Oh yes — we talked a little about the curriculum, sports, outside activities, scouting — that sort of thing.’
‘And is that all?’ asked Royle to gain time, not seeing anything to latch on to here.
‘I’m afraid it is. Certainly all I can remember. We all sort of moved around you know, as one does, so I was only talking to him for a comparatively small part of the evening.’
‘Was there anything you talked about that he seemed more interested in than other things you talked about?’ asked Royle, his questions getting rather desperate as he found Mr Doncaster increasingly soporific.
‘Not that I remember, no,’ said Doncaster after a pause for mature thought. ‘What exactly had you in mind, Inspector?’
The only thing that was remotely on his mind was something he would rather have phrased delicately, but, the question being sprung at him like that, he utterly failed to do so.
‘You don’t think he could have had a thing about Boy Scouts, do you? I don’t have to tell you about scoutmasters and the like. Do you think he could have been some kind of sexual prevert?’
He brought out the last phrase with considerable aplomb, and gazed up at Doncaster’s handsome, aquiline face which did not betray the shadow of a smile. Doncaster had long practice at keeping a straight face when little boys said silly things, and — like most good schoolmasters — he didn’t have any sense of humour to speak of anyway. He put his fingers together in a judicious, weighing-the-evidence kind of way:
‘Oh, I don’t think so, Inspector. No, I didn’t get any feeling of that. And, of course, he would be well past it, even if he had once had that . . . interest, shall we say.’
‘Some people never get past it,’ said Royle optimistically.
‘And, you know, when I said he didn’t show special interest in any one part of the conversation, I should perhaps have added that he really didn’t show much interest in anything at all. He was just making conversation, more or less automatically. He seemed to me terribly old and tired — one felt almost sorry for him, felt he must have undertaken something well beyond his strength.’ Mr Doncaster’s loquacity paused as he tried to find a way of summing it up. ‘Most of the evening he sort of flickered, you know, as if he was about to go out.’
‘He’s certainly snuffed it now, anyway,’ said Royle coarsely. Mr Doncaster, after a fraction of a second for consideration, allowed himself the luxury of a man-to-man laugh, though he carefully kept any suggestion of coarseness out of it.
‘You didn’t see anything in his behaviour to the other guests that was in any way unusual, did you?’ asked Royle, wiping his mouth with his handker
chief, and fingering the sweaty arm-pits of his shirt.
‘Nothing, really; nothing at all. There was the little episode at the end of the evening — the one involving Professor Wickham. No doubt you have already been told about that?’
What had the Wickhams done to people that every one of their guests should remember this so clearly, and bring it up? Never had hospitality received such ill returns. Royle indicated that he had had several accounts of the episode already.
‘What did you make of it, sir?’ he asked.
Mr Doncaster deprecated the ‘sir’ with an elegant, almost Italianate gesture of the hands.
‘Personally, I wouldn’t make too much of it. I doubt whether it had any importance. I’m not trying to teach you your job, of course, but I think on the whole that the incident only stands out because — well, frankly, it hadn’t been a particularly bright evening all in all, and so one noticed this, and in a way welcomed it.’
‘You don’t think there could have been any hostility between the two from way back, then?’
‘That I can’t say, of course. But I don’t remember anyone suggesting that they had met before — correct me if I’m wrong. And you know these old men do get a little cantankerous at times, especially when their comfort isn’t being attended to.’ He quickly amended this: ‘When they imagine that their comfort is not being attended to.’ He had remembered that the Wickhams were, after all, parents. ‘It’s not all that easy to keep people of that age happy. Personally I wouldn’t pay overmuch attention to the matter — just a trivial incident.’
Royle had noticed, however, that he had thought it worth talking about at some length.
‘You yourself were at Oxford, I believe,’ he said, conversationally. He had found out after struggling through the school prospectus that Mr Doncaster was MA (Oxon), and had ascertained by telephoning the librarian at police headquarters in Sydney that this meant he had obtained his degree at Oxford. He had later confirmed this with Bill Bascomb, not trusting librarians.
Death of an Old Goat Page 10
