She left in a shudder of flesh and a crash of door.
Fallowfield whistled a couple of bars of ‘The Dead March’.
‘Glass houses to you, Miss Disney,’ he murmured. ‘Bloody great glass houses.’
He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup even though it was cold.
The giant mechanical shovel-cum-crane lumbered through the herbaceous border on to the lawn of the staff garden. Miss Scotby winced visibly and Miss Disney took a step forward as though to lay herself beneath its tracks.
It was as well she didn’t. The ground was baked hard by the summer sun, but still the vehicle’s metal teeth left a deep imprint in the level green turf.
The college gardener, who had tended it and watered it to the last, spoke a word which normally would have caused the Disney bosom to push indignantly against the Disney chin. Now she nodded sadly as though in full accord.
‘What happens now?’ asked Halfdane.
‘I think they’ve drilled most of the base out of the concrete,’ said Henry, pointing with his much-chewed pipe. ‘Now they’ll take the strain with that thing, finish the drilling and haul away. Look. Here comes Simeon.’
The long, wirily energetic figure of Simeon Landor, the college principal, came striding from the mellow, castellated sandstone building known as the Old House which backed on to the garden.
‘Hello, Principal. Come to see the fun?’
Landor shook his head in reproof.
‘No fun, Saltecombe. A sad moment, this. For us all. Very sad.’
He raised his voice slightly. Miss Disney, who was standing some yards away, shot him an indignant glance and turned her back.
Halfdane had come in at the tail-end of this particular saga, but as usual with the help of the inveterate chronicler by his side he was in full possession of the facts.
The college had expanded rapidly since Landor had taken over as principal five years earlier on the death of Miss Girling, whose services to the college were commemorated by this very statue.
When he came, the place had been a teachers’ training college for some two or three hundred girls, though for the first time men were being admitted the following September. Now it covered a much wider range of courses, vocational and academic, some leading to degrees from the new university of East Yorkshire, situated some fifteen miles to the south. Numbers of students, staff and buildings had risen rapidly, and now the Old House, the early nineteenth-century mansion which once housed the entire college, was the centre of a star of concrete and glass. But it was an incomplete star. In one direction lay half an acre of cultivated beauty which had once been a source of pride and joy to Miss Girling and still was to Miss Scotby and Miss Disney and many others. It was like an artifact created for a nurseryman’s catalogue. It had everything, including a fringed pool and a ferned grot, and from the first crocuses in spring till the last dahlia in the autumn it was ablaze with colour. Above all, it had the long, level lawn, the finest Solway turf, five thousand square feet without a blemish. Till now.
For the Landor plan needed the garden. Where the blushing flowers had once risen in such profusion a new growth was going to gladden the eye, or some eyes at least. A biology laboratory.
The principal had tried to soften the blow by pointing out that an integral part of this was to be a hot-house for experimental husbandry. And that the fish-pool would likewise be preserved as a source of water insects and algae.
But the bruised feelings of many of his staff were not so easily salved.
And when he announced that Miss Girling’s memorial would have to be shifted this seemed the central symbol of an act of needless and unwarranted desecration.
Now the moment had come. A canvas sling had been wrapped around Hippolyta, one strap passing between her legs, another two crossing beneath the magnificent breasts.
‘Note how they shine,’ said Henry. ‘Some student wit paints a bra on them at least once a year and they always get a good polish when the paint comes off.’
But neither Halfdane nor Landor was listening. They were watching Marion Cargo, who suddenly ran forward anxiously and spoke to the man in charge of the tying operation. He nodded his head reassuringly and moved her away with a gentle push at her shoulder.
Then he waved to the man in the cab, who began to take the strain. Slowly the great arm of the machine pulled back towards the sky. The statue resisted for a second, gave a little jerk, then was swinging free in a stately semi-circle towards the truck which was waiting to take it into storage till a new site was prepared. A little trail of powdered concrete fell off its feet like talcum powder whitening the green lawn.
A fine sight!’ breathed Henry.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Landor.
Halfdane turned his attention from the statue to the watchers. A contingent of students had gathered and with an instinct for the end of prohibitions were using one of the larger rockeries as a grandstand. Franny Roote, the student president, a large, quiet-mannered youth, was there, marked out by his height and his very blond hair. As usual he had three or four attractive girls crowding around him. Most of the staff were standing in a semi-circle on the edge of the lawn nearest the building. Jane Scotby looked as if she were praying. ‘Walt’ Disney was looking with contempt at the man next to her. He was three or four inches shorter than she was, a little man with a big, loose, Glasgow mouth. This was George Dunbar, Head of Chemistry, who shared with Henry Saltecombe the distinction of being the first man appointed to the staff. The older women hated him.
Marion Cargo had moved back to the edge of the lawn. Her face was set and tense, but no less attractive because of it. Halfdane felt a slight stirring of interest and resolved once again to get to know her better. He noted with surprise that Fallowfield had appeared beside her, though he didn’t seem to be looking at the moving operation. Curious, he followed his gaze over to the students’ rockery and found the answer. Behind Roote had appeared the tall long-haired girl who had been pointed out to him as Anita Sewell.
‘There she goes,’ said Henry as Hippolyta was deposited gently into the back of the truck.
‘A perfect operation,’ said Landor, gratified. ‘Now there’s just the base.’
Halfdane had turned to go but he stopped when he saw no one else was moving. The tackle had been taken off the shovel-arm and it was now swinging back along the white path left by the statue. A workman was busy at the concrete base which remained sticking forlornly out of the ground. He was removing the commemorative plaque. When he had it in his hand, he turned uncertainly towards the staff.
‘Over here!’ called Miss Disney peremptorily, but Landor made a small motion with his hand and the man came directly to him.
Now the mouth of the grab was opened wide, like some monster in a horror film. The driver was manoeuvring it carefully into position over the base, following the foreman’s hand signals. Finally both were satisfied and the foreman stepped back.
‘He’ll never drag that thing out!’ said Henry, amazed. ‘It must weigh …’
The rest of his sentence was drowned as the arm went slack and the gaping grab crashed down with all the violence of its huge weight on to the concrete slab. The shining metal teeth dug gratingly into its sides as the driver manipulated the controls.
They can lift almost anything,’ said Landor, making it sound like a personal boast.
The arm began to pull up, the machine bucked forward slightly on its tracks and Halfdane began to have doubts.
Again it tried and again the same happened.
But the third time, just when it seemed the machine must capsize itself with its own strength, the concrete block stirred, the exquisitely mown turf, which ran up to the base as though the mower had gone right through it, began to buckle and tear, the great machine sat back triumphantly on its haunches and the solid cube began to slide slowly out like a cork. The rich dark earth clung tightly to its sides, and even more solidly to the bottom, it seemed, as the great block swung free in
the air. It followed the same semi-circle as before, only this time earth fell to darken the white trail below.
Earth, and something more solid than earth.
‘Hold it, Joe!’ cried the foreman who was nearest. The machine halted, the concrete maintained its momentum and swung forward like a pendulum dislodging yet more of the substance that adhered to its base.
‘Oh, my God!’ said someone as the foreman stooped, then stood up gingerly with something long and thin in his hand.
It was a shin-bone.
He poked at the underside of the concrete with it. Something like a narrow grille fell down. It might have been part of a rib-cage, but no one watching was ready to believe it. He poked again, dislodging an even more solid something. The earth fell away as it hit the ground.
Now they were ready to believe it.
It was a skull, grinning empty-eyed at them. And most hideously there was a mop of dark red hair hanging rakishly down over where had been the left ear.
Jane Scotby’s hand went to her mouth, but only the dilating of her pupils showed she was not just stifling a little yawn; Marion Cargo was white as death, Henry Saltecombe gripped Halfdane’s shoulder with unconscious violence, while Ellie Soper seized his other hand so he could not move.
‘It’s Miss Girling!’ shrieked Miss Disney.
‘Yes, it is,’ she added in a matter-of-fact way as though someone had denied it. Then, unbelievably, she fainted into the reluctant arms of George Dunbar.
‘Clear a space,’ he shouted. ‘Hey, Fallowfield, give us a hand here.’
Fallowfield was the staff medical expert, having done two years of a medical degree course before abandoning it in favour of straight biology.
But when they looked for him now, he was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 3
… they are ill discoverers that think there is
no land when they can see nothing but sea.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
Op. Cit.
‘This is what they spend my bloody taxes on, is it?’ said Detective-Superintendent Dalziel, peering out of the window of the principal’s study.
Sergeant Pascoe said nothing and kept his gaze fixed firmly on an area of neutral space midway between the balding, taurine figure at the window and the long, spare frame of Simeon Landor seated at his desk.
‘I sympathize,’ said Landor, smiling. ‘I feel much the same when I see the way you go about your work, Superintendent.’
‘Sorry?’ said Dalziel turning. ‘What’s that you said?’
He cupped a large hand to a proportionally large ear.
If the buggers get clever, he had once told Pascoe, pretend you can’t hear. Then pretend you can’t understand. Nothing’s funny if it’s repeated and explained.
Landor shook his head, still smiling.
‘Now, Superintendent,’ he said. ‘We want to help your enquiries in every possible way, of course. So just fire away with any questions you like.’
Oh God, groaned Pascoe. Honours even, so he extends the hand of friendship. Give the bull a scratch!
‘What was going on out there?’ asked Dalziel, pointing to the staff garden which the room overlooked. The mechanical digger had gone now but the deep furrows of its progress were still clearly visible. Over the cavity left by the removal of the concrete base a canvas shelter had been erected. Men were moving slowly, efficiently around, watched by a silent crowd of students on the edge.
‘We’re extending on all sides as you can see,’ said Landor. ‘A new biology lab is planned there, so naturally we had to move the statue.’
‘Who was out there watching?’
‘The principal was good enough to make out a list, sir,’ said Pascoe smartly in his best young executive manner, making a feint towards his brass-bound genuine-leather document case, an object of some derision from Dalziel when it first appeared.
‘Of course, it’s almost certainly incomplete,’ began Landor, but Dalziel waved aside his apologies along with Pascoe’s contribution and, by implication, any further interest in the list.
‘Why were they watching?’ he asked, scratching his inner left thigh voluptuously.
‘I’m sure I don’t know, Superintendent,’ laughed Landor, still pursuing his sweetness-and-light policy. ‘In most cases it would merely be the old hole-in-the-road syndrome …’
‘What?’
Landor was wise enough not to explain. Pascoe gave him a mental tick.
‘Was that all?’ asked Dalziel as if an explanation had been given.
‘Well, no. There were emotions other than mere curiosity on display, though I don’t see what they can have to do …’ He tailed off thoughtfully, then started again with renewed vigour.
‘Miss Cargo of our Art Department was there for a special reason. Concern, I suppose you’d call it. You see, she had designed the statue and was naturally concerned to see it suffered no damage.’
Pascoe was taking shorthand notes, a skill Dalziel mocked as feminine.
‘Then there were some older members of staff who were there to express their disapproval, I felt.’
‘Disapproval? Because their garden was being dug up?’
‘Partly that. But partly also because the statue was a memorial. They felt it smacked of sacrilege to pull it up.’
‘A memorial? Who to?’
In answer Landor picked up the bronze plaque from his desk and handed it over. Dalziel read it carefully with an expression of grotesque devoutness. Like a close-up in Songs of Praise on the telly, thought Pascoe.
‘Alison Girling,’ he said, enunciating each syllable with great care like a child reading.
‘My predecessor,’ explained Landor.
‘She wasn’t old,’ observed Dalziel. ‘What happened to her?’
‘A tragic accident,’ said Landor, doing with his voice what Dalziel had done with his face. ‘On holiday abroad at Christmas. She was a close friend of some of the senior staff here. They felt it deeply when the statue had to be moved.’
‘Who are they, Mr Landor?’ asked Dalziel. ‘And how deeply did they feel it?’
‘Well, Miss Scotby, she’s my Senior Tutor, and Miss Disney, who’s in charge of our divinity department, and very much the moral conscience of the college.’ He gave a snort which might have been amusement or amazement. ‘It was rather bizarre when those bones started to fall from the base of the statue. Miss Disney let out a kind of shriek and screamed, “It’s Miss Girling!” A Gothic notion, don’t you think?’
‘Bizarre,’ echoed Dalziel, as though savouring the word. ‘Gothic. Get that, Sergeant? You mean she reacted as if it was Miss Girling’s tombstone rather than just a memorial? Where is Miss Girling buried, as a matter of interest?’
‘I’m not certain. Austria, I believe. That’s where she died. It was all several months before I first came to the place, of course.’
‘Of course. Were you here when the memorial was erected, Mr Landor?’
The question was dropped very casually. Landor answered it just as casually.
‘No. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t take up the post till the beginning of the following academic year, September that is. And now I come to think of it, I’m sure the statue was up when I came for an interview here the previous March.’
‘Good, good,’ said Dalziel, suddenly expansive. ‘Very good.’
He came to a halt before an oil painting of a large amiable woman with warm blue eyes and bright red hair.
‘Why, it’s Miss Girling,’ he said, peering closely at the frame. ‘She’s well remembered, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Landor drily. ‘She is.’
There was a perfunctory knock at the door and a large well-rounded woman burst in. She had a formidable chest development, but it looked quite solid with no hint of a central cleavage, and seemed the natural descendant of a series of fleshy outcrops which began with her lower lip and progressed downward and outward through three chins.
She looked indignant, but this mea
nt nothing, Pascoe decided. Her features didn’t seem equipped to deal satisfactorily with any other expression.
It turned out, however, that she was indignant.
‘Good morning, Miss Disney,’ began Landor. ‘I’m rather busy
‘Principal!’ she interrupted, ‘I really cannot tolerate this. I am scheduled this afternoon to conduct an extremely important seminar on Isaiah. But there’s no one there. No one!’
She paused triumphantly.
Landor eyed her warily.
‘Where are they, you ask? I’ll tell you. I’ll show you. They are there.’
A dramatic arm was stretched out towards the window and the garden beyond.
‘Look at them! That boy Roote, he should have been reading a paper at my class. He has degenerated visibly since becoming President of the Union. I knew it was the beginning of the end when we admitted men in the first place. We never had this kind of trouble in Miss Girling’s day!’
Once again Landor showed his quality.
‘I’m glad you called, Miss Disney,’ he said blandly. ‘We were just talking about you, the superintendent and I. I know he wants to ask you a few questions. Please use my study for any interviews you care to make, Superintendent. I’ll be with the Registrar if needed.’
He was out of the room before anyone could reply. Miss Disney seemed ready to pursue him through the door, with or without opening it, but Dalziel stepped forward smartly.
‘Please sit down, Miss Disney. You have had a trying day. These things hit some of us more than others, I know. It’s a question of sensitivity.’
Oh Christ, scribbled Pascoe in his neat short-hand. Extreme Unction. Oily Dalziel oozing over stormy Disney.
Neatly he scratched it out and waited.
Miss Disney glared at Dalziel, decided here was a soul mate, and made her way round to Landor’s chair behind the large desk, which seemed to swell visibly as though to take on the proportions of its new incumbent.
‘Well?’
‘Mr Landor told us how distressed you were this morning.’
An Advancement of Learning Page 2
