An Advancement of Learning

by Reginald Hill

  ‘We had a clearing-out. And a bonfire. I’m sorry, Sergeant.’

  He stood up and escorted Pascoe to the door. Disappointed though he was, Pascoe still sensed the man’s relief at getting rid of him. Vindictively, he promised to mention Aird’s name to the locals. There might be something there.

  But that didn’t help his own present investigations. Nor would Dalziel be very impressed.

  Perhaps the academic life wasn’t so bad after all.

  When, on his return to Headquarters, he found waiting for him a message from Doncaster saying that Miss Jean Mayflower had died four years earlier as a result of a brain tumour, the academic life appeared as a very desirable haven of peace in a storm-battered, thunder-thrashed, Dalziel-haunted sea of troubles.

  Chapter 10

  … the arts which flourish in times while virtue is in growth, are military; and while virtue is in state, are liberal; and while virtue is in declination, are voluptuary.

  SIR FRANCIS BACON

  Op. Cit.

  That gentle voyeur, Harold Lapping, would have found much to please him in the college precincts that night. At 7.30 P.M. the sun was still bright and warm and young bodies turned towards it on every patch of greenery. Even the staff garden, once patrolled with protective fury two or three times an evening by Miss Disney, was now regarded as common ground in its state of limbo between holy land and a building site. The area immediately around the hole left by the statue was for reasons of decency or superstition unoccupied. But half a dozen small groups were scattered around the rest of the lawn, many stripped for sunbathing, those in swimming costumes practically indistinguishable from those who had merely taken off their outer garments, happy with the doubtful protection of their underclothes.

  If Harold, dissatisfied with anything less than total nudity, had been able to glide unnoticed through the college buildings, he would not have been disappointed there. It had been a long, very hot day and there was a growing heaviness in the air, promising thunder. The pleasures of a cold or at least lukewarm shower were attractive even to the least Spartan. The shock to an incorporeal Harold of drifting through the walls of Miss Disney’s flat would have been great, but not prolonged. The advantages of complete nakedness while actually showering were too great to be ignored, but it was not a state she chose to remain in for longer than was necessary. Two minutes after turning off the water she was sufficiently clothed to be able to face herself in the mirror.

  Something that she saw there, not in her physical proportions because she had long since come to terms with her lack of beauty, but in or behind her eyes filled them momentarily with tears. But they didn’t fall. Instead she picked up from her dressing-table the old Bible which was so often her only comfort and let it fall open at random. Frequent reading in certain places may have reduced the truly random element in some degree, but this did not occur to her. In any case, Miss Disney did not believe in random openings of the Good Book.

  It was one of her favourite passages.

  ‘Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,’ she began to incant, her eyes full now of a very different light.

  Harold, had he remained so long, would have surely drifted on at this stage.

  Thirty or forty yards down the corridor from Miss Disney he would have struck oil.

  Marion Cargo too had just taken a shower, and she had none of the older woman’s inhibitions. Lighting a cigarette she sank naked into a capacious easy-chair. Light filtered through the incompletely drawn curtains laying bars of gold across her brown body, turning her into a nymph of summer.

  But her mind was contemplating a cold and foggy day nearly five years earlier when her life had changed. She stirred uneasily and made a movement towards the telephone. She felt the time had come to talk to someone.

  The ringing of the doorbell prevented her. Quickly she rose and took a towelling wrap from the bedroom. She was still tying it one handed as she opened the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Arthur Halfdane. ‘It’s inconvenient? I just thought; well you said, come and have a drink some time.’

  ‘Of course it’s not,’ she said. ‘As long as you don’t mind. Look, come in. I’m glad you’re here. I’d like to talk to you.’

  Obviously there would have been no point in Harold’s remaining there for the moment anyway.

  Had he struck off at a right-angle and drifted through the evening air till he penetrated the next block, he might have found a much more promising situation.

  Sandra Firth lay naked on the bed. Beside her, standing looking down at her, was Franny Roote, his shirt in his hands. She reached up and pulled it from him.

  ‘My word,’ he said. ‘You’re impatient, love. Is it my manly charm?’

  ‘The others will be coming soon,’ she said.

  He glanced at his watch as he took it off and put it carefully on the bedside table.

  ‘So they will. Perhaps we shouldn’t bother?’

  She turned her face away from him and he laughed, undoing the heavy brass-buckle of his trouser-belt.

  ‘By the way, love,’ he said, ‘what were you saying to that nice fat policeman today?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, pushing herself up on her elbows. ‘Nothing. I just wanted to ask, well, you know, what they were doing.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, still again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said urgently. ‘I just wanted to see what I could find out.’

  ‘And what did you?’

  ‘Nothing, of course. What do you expect?’

  ‘I expect discretion.’

  ‘Discretion! Don’t you want to know who killed Anita!’ Her voice rose and he reached out his hand and caressed her gently.

  ‘Of course I do. Very much.’

  Something in his voice chilled her.

  ‘Listen, Franny, let the police do it. It’s their business.’

  ‘Everyone to his trade, eh?’ He laughed again. ‘Well, you stick to yours in future. I thought I could trust you. Everyone’s getting all independent. Stuart thinks he’s laying the base-work of the people’s bloody revolution. Now you’re off Sherlocking about the place.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Franny. Really.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, pushing his trousers down.

  Harold would have been puzzled to observe he did not seem in the slightest degree excited. But Sandra seemed capable of remedying that.

  Unfortunately once again there was an interruption, a sharp banging at the door.

  ‘Franny? Open up. Stuart here. I wanted to see you before the others arrived.’

  ‘Hang on a sec! Sorry, love,’ he said to Sandra as he rolled off the bed. ‘I don’t think I can concentrate with Cockshut listening at the door. Later, eh? OK?’

  With a blank expression almost amounting to despair Sandra rose up and began to dress.

  Harold with a shrug of resignation would surely at this point have launched himself seawards to the more certain delight of bird-song and the golf club.

  Miss Scotby and Simeon Landor were strolling in the garden of the principal’s house, apparently admiring a fine display of roses. The house itself standing on the edge of the college grounds was only two years old. The long line of spinster principals had been easily accommodated in a flat in the Old House. But the ready availability of college-employed labour had already turned the garden into a thing of beauty.

  They had been discussing matters of college business. Miss Scotby still held a writing-pad in her hands in which she had been jotting down notes.

  ‘Roote came to see me today,’ said Landor. ‘Very polite. He expressed student concern. He said they were worried.’

  ‘Aren’t we all? We must be careful. That boy Cockshut will be out to cause trouble. Roote’s just a pawn.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him today. Cockshut. Mr Fallowfield was passing. Some very unpleasant things were said. Mr Fallowfield looks quite ill which was a blessing in a way as I don’t think he heard them. But he ought to see a
doctor.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him,’ said Landor. ‘But it’s a hard one this. He’s still officially suspended, but now of course …’

  ‘With the girl dead,’ concluded Miss Scotby, ‘there’s not much that can be done.’

  ‘No. Well, I think that’s all, isn’t it? Shall we go in?’

  They turned back to the house. Behind a closed upstairs window, the pale gleam of a face was visible, staring down at them. Landor raised a hand in acknowledgement and it turned away.

  Among the roses the principal and the senior tutor stood still for a moment before moving over the lawn to the open french window.

  ‘Nice of you to come back,’ said Dalziel. ‘I was beginning to think you’d bloody well gone to Austria.’

  It wasn’t as bad as Pascoe expected. Dalziel listened to his report with hardly a comment till he came to the end.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘We’re no further on? What about her car?’

  Pascoe was ready.

  ‘At the airport in the long-term car-park.Where you’d have expected it to be.’

  ‘You spoke to the attendant?’

  ‘It’s five years, almost,’ said Pascoe protestingly. ‘What can you remember about that Christmas?’

  It was, to say the least, an unwise question. By itself it smacked of impudence when directed at a superior officer. In terms of Dalziel’s broken domestic life, God knows what significance it had. Once again Dalziel’s reaction was surprisingly mild.

  ‘Not much,’ he agreed. ‘But you asked?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing.’

  ‘So all we have is that Disney saw her drive off into the fog that night, and that is that, till her bones turn up back here two days ago.’

  ‘What about the girl, sir? Anything there?’ asked Pascoe hoping to strike a more promising vein.

  ‘Not much. What there is is bloody puzzling.’

  Briefly Dalziel filled his sergeant in on the events of the day.

  ‘That’s very interesting!’ said Pascoe when he heard Harold Lapping’s story. ‘It sounds like a coven.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Witches, sir.’

  ‘You mean black magic? That stuff? Perhaps.’

  ‘What did the autopsy say?’

  ‘If you’re thinking it’s a nice ritual murder, you can forget it. It was a straightforward case of jumping on her back and holding her face in the sand till she stopped breathing. No frills. No white cocks, black candles or any of that how’s-your-father.’

  ‘No. Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? Obviously something or someone disturbed them and it was after they all split up that this happened.’

  ‘Likely. The time fits,’ said Dalziel without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Do we know who else was in on it?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘Nothing definite. I’ve a feeling this girl, Firth, can tell us something. But everyone seems to have shut up tight as a virgin’s knees. We’ve been asking around. Nothing. Landor expresses amazement at the thought of such goings-on. I’m beginning to think he’s as wilfully blind to realities as Disney and Scotby. Perhaps more.’

  Moodily the superintendent pulled a bottle of scotch and a couple of glasses out of a desk drawer. He filled them both and pushed one towards Pascoe who took it quietly and raised it to his lips.

  He had seen this pessimistic, almost self-doubting mood come upon his superior before but was still at a loss how best to deal with it. Nor was he certain whether his presence at these sessions was a mark of favour or a potential source of disfavour when Dalziel recalled his own weakness.

  The sun was still bright outside, though now the shadows lay long. Very distantly there came the mumble of thunder.

  The sound seemed to rouse Dalziel.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve a feeling I’m missing something about this bloody place. Perhaps that’s what comes of leaving school at fourteen. I talked to those buggers this morning but I’m not sure we really made any contact. They’re meant to be educating these kids about society, but all the time I could feel they didn’t trust me themselves. Not that I give a toss about that. I’m not looking for love.’

  Pascoe essayed an expression which he hoped could pass for either amused appreciation or serious agreement depending on what Dalziel’s comment required.

  ‘But it worries me, not knowing what makes the place tick. I thought I had it sorted out. An old guard, represented by Disney and Scotby and what-have-you, and a new guard represented by Landor and his supporters. Reaction and radicalism. Christ, I come from a good trade-union background, I know all about that. But suddenly people start making nasty cracks at Landor, as if he belongs in the dark ages. And he’s obviously shit-scared of the students. Someone wants to tell him about appeasement in the thirties.’

  ‘He has a degree in history, I believe,’ ventured Pascoe.

  ‘Christ, what’s that mean? Flint axes, stately homes and kitchen gossip! That’s the trouble, most of these sods have spent all their bloody waking lives in schools and colleges and universities. It’s all inbreeding, like a Welsh village.’

  Dalziel refilled his glass but didn’t offer a second helping to Pascoe. It was pure malt, Glen Grant, and not to be wasted.

  ‘I don’t think you’re quite fair,’ said the sergeant diffidently. ‘It’s the nature of the institutions which matters rather than people’s backgrounds. You’re bound to get a certain special kind of underlife developing. Like in a prison.’

  Dalziel studied the analogy for a moment.

  ‘You mean there’ll be gangs? tobacco rings? that sort of thing?’

  ‘Not quite the same, but something like it. Initiation ceremonies for instance. An encouragement to belonging, a threat to not belonging. Food fiddles. Gambling schools. Witches’ covens even.’

  ‘But, OK, so that could happen, but why isn’t something done? I mean, there are rules. Who knows? If you know, then a hell of a lot of other people must have worked it out too.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pascoe impatiently. ‘But knowing and acting, or even admitting are different things.’

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel, finishing his drink once more. ‘It sounds - well, there’s something not right. It isn’t a prison after all. They don’t seem to have any rules at all here!’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Pascoe. ‘But in a place like this, it can be more than just rule-breaking. There must exist whole areas of shadow where self-deception is necessary because clarity would be too awkward to deal with.’

  Dalziel slapped his broad knee violently, evidently found it pleasurable, and did it again.

  ‘Like me at school!’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘When I was a lad at school, about ten, I was supposed to be an innocent little boy, playing football and so on with other innocent little boys. But what I was really interested in was chasing girls into the lavatories and if possible having a look at their crotches. But no one ever seemed to notice this. They all must have known, parents, teachers and all, but no one ever said owt!’

  ‘That’s the kind of thing,’ said Pascoe drily.

  ‘So what you’re saying is that those buggers on the staff probably know a lot more about what the students do than they let on?’

  What did I expect? Pascoe asked himself. A nice philosophical discussion on the nature of institutions?

  ‘That’s about it, sir,’ he said. ‘And vice-versa, of course. There’s a whole range of non-official relationships which offer access to areas of privacy like baby-sitting, car-washing, that kind of thing.’

  ‘And we mustn’t forget friend Fallowfield,’ said Dalziel. ‘He seems to have been offered plenty of access.’

  He glanced at his watch.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘It’s not late. Let’s get to work.’

  ‘What at?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Well, you go and exercise that charm of yours on the staff. Take a trip down memory lane with your Miss Soper, see if you can soften her up. Oh, and that lad, Halfdane, the one wh
o looks like a consumptive haystack, he was after you earlier. Wouldn’t say anything to me.’

  ‘And you, sir?’ prompted Pascoe. ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘With my own kind,’ said Dalziel rising and patting his paunch. “They hate us youth.” That shakes you, eh? Erudition in unlikely places. I’ll be with the top student brass. I think there’s something on tonight. Something that girl Firth said. We’ll see. Give us a hand to clear this stuff away, will you?’

  He began to shuffle the papers which lay on the desk before him. Pascoe hurriedly joined him, knowing from experience who would be held responsible for the superintendent’s chaos.

  Rapidly, efficiently, he began transferring material to the appropriate files in the large cabinet Landor had loaned them. One piece of paper caught his eye and he paused to read it.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Dalziel whose own sole contribution to the clearing-up operation had been the careful removal of his bottle of scotch from the table.

  ‘It’s just the information from CRO,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Oh, ay. We sent them all in, staff and the student officers just for good measure. Don’t want to discriminate, do we?’

  ‘And nothing’s known. Only to be expected. Except

  ‘That lad, Cockshut? Yes. Quite a list, isn’t it? Obstruction. Damage to property. Resisting arrest. A big demo man. And I bet the bloody state subsidizes him heavily enough to pay his fines.’

  ‘I’ve heard of these people.’

  ‘The International Action Group?Student bloody communists. We’ve had our eyes on them,’ said Dalziel darkly.

  Pascoe smiled, wondering whether Dalziel would shed his Fascist Beast role before he started talking to the students. Possibly not. He worked mainly through antagonism.

  ‘Still I can’t see any political motives for what’s happened here.’

  ‘Someone probably said that about Lincoln,’ said Dalziel.

  He dropped the bottle he was still clutching into the top drawer of the filing cabinet, slammed it shut, tested it and nodded.