‘That’s true,’ said Doncaster.
‘Did you know the old chap there then?’ asked Royle.
‘No, I’m afraid our paths never crossed.’
Doncaster wasn’t being very forthcoming, but Royle decided that with an old and valued client like him he could afford for once to betray his ignorance.
‘Can you tell me one thing?’ he asked with an air of exasperation. ‘Practically everyone around here seems to have been to Oxford College, and yet not a soul seems to have clapped eyes on Belville-Smith while they were there. Seems bloody unlikely, if you’ll pardon my saying so. Unless he was some kind of hermit.’
Mr Doncaster put on his kindest air, the one he used while attempting to explain the Wars of the Roses to the more backward classes, and tried to look as if he thought Royle’s ignorance was not just natural but even in some way commendable.
‘I see it must be confusing for you,’ he said, and went smoothly into a detailed account of the size of Oxford University, the large number of different colleges that made up the University, the independence of those same colleges, the organization of the tutorial system, and several other related points. He was so experienced at exposition of this kind — unlike Bill Bascomb, who always assumed that anything he knew was something any idiot ought to know — that Royle seemed to be taking some of it in.
‘I get you,’ he said at the end. ‘So if you weren’t in the same college as he was, the chances are you wouldn’t clap eyes on him.’
‘Exactly,’ said Doncaster.
‘Even if you were studying English.’
‘Even so. Though you might attend some of his lectures in that case, that is if he gave any.’
‘None of that lot out there did, or so they say.’
‘Well, of course, they could be telling the truth,’ said Mr Doncaster. ‘People go to fewer lectures there than they would here. And I must say my impression was that he was not the most cogent or inspiring of speakers — whatever he may have been in his younger days.’
‘And you weren’t studying English . . .’ said Royle.
‘History,’ said Doncaster.
‘And you weren’t in his college?’
‘That’s right, I was at St Catherine’s.’
Doncaster noticed that — as with most Australians — saying ‘St Catherine’s’ meant no more than if he had said ‘St John’s’ or ‘St Edmund Hall’. All equally conjured up a picture of lawned quadrangles, jovial porters and ivy-cluttered walls. Except, of course, that for Royle, judged by his face, no image was conjured up at all. He might just as well have said ‘St Francis of Assisi’s.’
‘When were you studying at Uni?’ asked Royle, begining to make I-might-as-well-be-getting-along motions in his chair.
‘Just before the war,’ said Doncaster. ‘I was lucky, I got my study in before I did my bit. Oxford wasn’t quite the same afterwards, I’m told, with all those ex-servicemen around.’
‘Ex-servicemen?’ said Royle incredulously. ‘You mean people actually came out of the forces and went up to Uni?’
‘Yes indeed. And it made things enormously crowded there. Most of the lectures were full, and libraries too. It wasn’t like that in pre-war days. I suppose it has gone back to normal now. I certainly hope so.’
‘I bet it’s not like in your day,’ said Royle, edging forward in his seat. ‘Lots of bloody long-haired layabouts if the lot we get here is anything to go on. Wasn’t Professor Wickham there after the war, by the by — about 1947 or 1948? He said something about ex-servicemen, I recall, though I didn’t get his point at the time.’
‘I believe he was, but I’ve never discussed Oxford with him. He’s younger than I, so I doubt if he can have been there in my time. And of course I had no thought of coming to Australia at that stage, so I didn’t go out of my way to mix with the Australian groups there.’
Royle thought he detected a note of pommie-bastardry there, but he let it pass.
‘I believe his wife followed him to Oxford later, didn’t she?’
‘I believe so. As I say, I was not there myself, but I do seem to remember some talk about her from friends. You know the sort of story that goes round . . .’
‘I do,’ said Royle emphatically, getting interested at last. ‘That’s something that could be important. What kind of talk was this?’
‘No, it wouldn’t be fair to say anything, Inspector. After all, the memory is very vague, it was entirely second-hand, and it could have been a quite different girl. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything at all.’
Royle felt like telling him to give him the story, whatever girl it was about, but he left the subject regretfully.
‘Now, after the party, sir, you came back here, I suppose?’
‘Yes, indeed; I left immediately after the Professor, and I suppose I’d be back here five minutes later.’
‘Is there anyone who can testify to that?’
‘I’m afraid not, Inspector. You’ll just have to take my word.’ He gave Royle a straight, piercing look which was meant to convince him that a schoolmaster’s word was as good as a parson’s any day. Royle had his own opinion of schoolmasters, however. And of parsons.
‘It would help if anyone saw you arrive home,’ he said. ‘You don’t have a gate-keeper, for instance.’
‘Alas, no. I let myself in. We do have a night porter, but I’m quite sure he didn’t see me. He is inclined to doze. I believe he is a postman in the daylight hours — he’s saving up for his passage home, poor man.’
‘And you live alone, do you, like Miss Tambly?’
‘Not like Miss Tambly,’ said Doncaster, ‘but, yes, I am a bachelor, if that’s what you mean, Inspector.’
‘Well,’ said Royle, ‘I think that will probably be all — at least for the moment, sir,’ and he heaved his bulk into the air. A moment later he wished he hadn’t.
‘Have a small drink, Inspector,’ said Mr Doncaster as he usually did after his interviews with the police. He waited till they were over so there could be no question of corrupting the force. His scruples were quite lost on Inspector Royle, who merely cursed him mentally for not asking before he had made the effort of getting himself up. The thought crossed his mind that not one of the academics had offered him a drop, though he was pretty sure most of them kept stacks of it in their rooms and he’d actually seen yards of it in Alice O’Brien’s. He thanked his God for the Australian private schools.
‘Just a quick one, then,’ he said.
• • •
When he got back to the station, in moderately mellow mood, Royle put through a call to Bill Bascomb at Menzies College. It was just before lunch time, so he knew he would find him at home.
‘Anything your end?’ he asked.
‘Give us a chance, Inspector,’ said Bill. ‘I’ve only been on it a few hours. I’m not used to the game.’
‘Have you had any ideas about how to set about it, then?’
‘Well, I’ve sent a telegram to a friend at Oxford. He’s working on the Oxford Mail — that’s the local paper — and I thought he might be able to look in his files for anything interesting about the people who were up there — Wickham and the rest.’
‘Criminal things, you mean?’
‘Well, not necessarily. I presume you’ll have been in touch with the Oxford police over that.’ (Bloody young twit, trying to teach me my job, thought Royle. He hadn’t.) ‘It just occurred to me that there might be something not criminal, but which would give us a link between Belville-Smith and someone here. College gossip, some old scandal or other. Then we could follow it up — you know, try to trip them up, or accuse them of covering up and get them confused.’
‘Good idea,’ said Royle heartily. ‘None of them will admit to having set eyes on him before, so if we get a lead like that we might be able to twist the knife a bit.’
‘Exactly,’ said Bill, sounding as if he didn’t quite like the imagine. ‘Then I’m going to try a bit of probing at coffee-time tomorrow
.’
‘OK,’ said Royle, ‘but don’t make it too obvious. The last thing we want is for anyone to think you’re in this with me.’
‘I’ll be as crafty as I know how,’ said Bill, ‘but I don’t think anyone will twig. After all, we’re pretty unlikely bedfellows.’
‘Too bloody right,’ said Inspector Royle.
CHAPTER XII
THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
WHEN HE ARRIVED at work the next morning, at his usual time of ten to ten-thirty, Bill Bascomb was surprised by the look of vindictive hatred which he received from Professor Wickham as they passed in the corridor. It was a why-do-I-engage-these-Oxford-adolescents look, and it boded little good for Bill’s future. Deciding that extreme measures were warranted by his new status as Watson to Royle’s Sherlock (or possibly vice versa) he did what he would have done in any case — listened outside the Professor’s door. Owing to the ‘temporary’, jerry-built nature of the sprawling hut in which the English Department was accommodated, he soon found out the cause of his unpopularity.
‘Do you know what that fool Bascomb has done?’ Professor Wickham nearly shouted down the phone, for once forgetting to address his wife with his usual wheedling ceremoniousness. ‘He’s sent a telegram to some idiot friend at Oxford, someone on the Mail, asking him for anything he could dig up on any of the Oxford people around here. I’ve never heard of such bloody cheek.’
There was a long pause. Clearly Lucy had never heard of such bloody cheek either. It was one of those rare occasions on which they were completely at one. The honeymoon period between Mrs Wickham and the latest young recruit from Oxford was obviously destined to be even shorter than usual.
‘Me, and Day, and Doncaster,’ went on Wickham. ‘But he’s also put the other names in, just in case. Except the O’Brien, of course . . . Well, they’re in this together, that’s obvious — some childish nonsense they’ve thought up . . . No, I couldn’t get the thing suppressed. It’s already sent. Wylie the post-master up here said it was more than his job was worth, but he thought I ought to know . . . Yes, of course I gave him something . . . How could it be much when I never have much?’
Bill Bascomb went busily into the secretary’s office as someone came along the corridor. Coming out a minute later with some unnecessary stationery, he heard Wickham say: ‘I don’t see how he could be on to that. There was never anything in the papers. It’s just black ingratitude, and that’s what really gets me: you give a chap a job, only just down, nothing in writing except this supposed article which will never see the light of day I’m willing to bet, and when you expect an ounce of loyalty, this is your reward . . . I imagine it’s just some childish itch to play detective . . . Why I let him go on to the permanent staff I’ll never know. I must have been off my head.’
Bill shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He was mentally kicking himself for sending the cable off from the University Post Office — but then who could have imagined it would have been shown to his boss? In civilized countries telegrams were a private matter, like one’s prayers or one’s bank balance. Here, obviously, it was different altogether. Here it was the done thing to go around blabbing people’s telegrams over the entire campus.
‘What? The Inspector?’ Wickham’s voice boomed through the processed cardboard partition. ‘Inspector Royle? Why should he be coming to talk to you? I told him all that we could give him — there’s nothing you could add. Yes, I suppose he has to, as routine, still . . . All right, I’ll ring you back later. Be nice to him.’
Bill took himself off as the receiver was bashed down on to its holder. Whichever way you regarded it, this was a set-back to his investigations. Here was one suspect who obviously wasn’t going to be unburdening his soul to him in an unguarded moment. In fact it looked at the moment as if he wasn’t going to be talking to him for the rest of the term. He would have to pin his hopes on the rest of the staff, at least until he heard something from Oxford. Perhaps he and Alice would be able to pick something up during the coffee break.
Alice’s reception of the news of his new position as sidekick to the unimpressive Inspector Royle had been less than flattering. She had let out an eldritch shriek of laughter, and had run through a collection of fictional characters — Watson, Bunter, Lugg and Fox — which was designed to suggest that as a detective combination she didn’t find him and Royle very impressive. She was inclined, too, to be snooty about his being in the clear, and was taking some pleasure in herself still being a suspect. Nor had she been very hopeful about picking up anything by pumping the other members of the department, trying to catch them in an unguarded moment.
‘It’s not as though the art of conversation is being revived in this remote spot,’ she said. ‘I’ve never noticed any eighteenth-century expansiveness.’
‘I agree some of them will be difficult,’ Bill had replied. ‘Merv Raines, for instance. The Porter won’t be any walkover either — she still confines herself to words of two syllables when she’s talking to me.’
‘Have you got that far?’ said Alice. ‘She must have her eyes on you, unlikely as that may seem.’
‘But the others talk enough — and even Raines can do when he’s got a few beers in him. In the end they’re bound to let something slip that gives the game away.’
‘The precept of Miss Marple, if I remember rightly,’ said Alice. ‘Watch it, or your own precious little throat may be in for a shave. They always do it a second time, according to Aunt Agatha.’
‘I did lock my door last night, I must admit,’ said Bill.
‘So did old Belville-Smith on the night in question, I expect,’ said Alice cosily.
‘Anyway, we Fearless Five never worry about our own throats,’ said Bill. ‘Give up the pouring-cold-water lark. There’s got to be something somewhere, and the likelihood is it’s among the academics. Whichever way you look at it, some guilty secret shared between Belville-Smith and the Turbervilles is a non-starter. Someone’s got something to hide, and it’s pretty sure to be one of us.’
‘I’ve no doubts about that, believe me. If I snuffle around in the Porter’s private life or her academic career I’d be disappointed if I couldn’t fetch up something pretty murky. But how is that going to help? There can’t be anything to connect her with that poor old goat, and we’re just going to land up with a lot of useless dirt.’
‘Since when have you despised useless dirt?’ asked Bill.
‘Fair enough,’ said Alice. ‘All right, I’ll give it a go.’
So when the department gathered for coffee — minus Professor Wickham who always absented himself when he could not look on his staff with the eye of favour — Bill and Alice turned the talk to the murder, and kept it there. It didn’t need much turning or keeping. The talk for the last few days had been of very little else. At first the members of the department who had not been at the Wickhams’ gathering had been rather unpleasantly self-congratulatory about it. Smithson, the only other remaining young Oxonian, had been at Bathurst, conducting a weekend school for external students, and his presence there throughout the night in question had been vouched for by a very willing young external. The other two absentees had been the two tutors, who had apparently been deemed too junior, or perhaps too crude, to be invited. The slight had given them one of their rare, brief, us-against-the-rest moods, which were a relief from the us-against-each-other ones. By now they were beginning to get bored by the whole thing, and to wish they had had a part in an event which was obviously destined to be the major topic of conversation in Drummondale for the next couple of years. Their presence would also have given them immense cachet in the poky little country towns from which they came. The consolation was that, if there was a certain glamour about being a suspect, there was also a certain danger, particularly in Australia. Though the police force of Drummondale was probably no more stupid and vicious than the police forces of any other small town, one still needed more than innocence to protect oneself. So Spokes and Finlay sat around only v
aguely listening to the conversation, mentally rearranging their card-indexes and being congratulated by Professor Wickham on their method.
‘Did you ever read any of the old boy’s stuff?’ said Bill Bascomb to Dr Porter.
‘Never.’
‘Not even when you knew he was coming?’
‘Never in my vocabulary means on no occasion,’ said Dr Porter, with a smile to freeze the Pacific.
‘Sorry,’ said Bill, ingratiatingly. ‘I just thought it was your area — Wickham said something about the eighteenth century when he was introducing him, didn’t he?’
‘The eighteenth century,’ said Dr Porter through her tight lips, ‘is a considerable area of study.’
‘What had he written on, do you know?’ asked Alice.
‘I have no idea, I’m afraid,’ said Dr Porter. ‘Certainly not on Akenside.’
Akenside was the subject of Dr Porter’s thesis, a poet so utterly minor, so totally lacking in any spark of originality or fire, that he had been well within the scope of her mind. The thesis had been virtually unexamined, since nobody in Australia could be found willing to waste their time reading the outpourings of her subject. However her footnoting and her bibliography had been found to conform in an exemplary fashion to the commandments of the MLA style-sheet, and she had been granted her doctorate like many another, through a sort of academic exhaustion. She drank her coffee in moderate, regular sips, with the air of one who did not let a little thing like murder upset her academic routine, unlike other more volatile souls. Bill gave her one more look, and turned toward Merv Raines, who was sprawled over two chairs, a heavy, ugly grey pullover adding to his ungainliness, glowering into his coffee cup, and mentally cosseting the chip on his shoulder.
‘The old boy didn’t do anything in your line, anyway,’ said Bill, ‘not to judge from what you were saying at the party.’
‘That’s for sure,’ said Merv.
‘You said he wasn’t well up in Australian literature at all, didn’t you?’ said Bill. Merv unbuttoned the corner of his mouth a little further, remembering his grievance.
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