help.”
He flung the last remark over his shoulder as he strode off hack towards the college. Lapping grinned broadly after him, Sandra looked thunderstruck at his apparent callousness.
Pascoe had been about to follow when Kent had issued his invitation.
It was a pleasant lunch. Kent had chatted amiably about a variety of subjects, with golf not unbearably predominant. Pascoe who had hitherto regarded the man as a slightly risible example of what not to be in the police-force, found himself enjoying his company. When talk got round to the case (or cases) in hand, he listened appreciatively to Kent’s assessment. He didn’t say anything new, but he missed nothing out either.
“It’s motive we’re after, not murderers. Not yet. Motive. It’s a truism, Sergeant, but it’s true. Find out why and you’ll like as not find out who.” “Agreed,’ said Pascoe, starting on his second pint. ‘.”
“Your astonishingly good health,’ remarked Kent, before carrying on his theorizing. ‘ to find out why, it helps to eliminate why not. Take the girl, for instance. Obvious thing is sex. But he never bothered.
Never touched her. Now why not?”
“Perhaps it was a woman,’ suggested Pascoe.
“She’d need to be a hefty one,’ said Kent. ‘. Something else, I think.
Now who’d have a motive for killing her, if it wasn’t just a nut?”
“Fallowfield?’ said Pascoe.
“Who?”
“Fallowfield. Lectures at the college. Don’t you know?”
His new-found respect for Kent began to evaporate. Somehow the man had contrived never to have heard of the relationship between Fallowfield and Anita. It would be Dalziel’s fault partly. He didn’t believe in Spoon-feeding his men.
Certainly not Kent.
Pascoe filled him in quickly, efficiently. Kent supped his beer and chewed on his cheese and biscuits with a distantly worried look in his eyes. Finally he swallowed and shook his head.
“No,’ he said. ‘. Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
“His mistress?”
“He admits it.”
Kent began to look really concerned.
She must have brought out the father feeling in him, thought Pascoe.
They can all look so innocent when they’re lying there, dead.
“No,’ said Kent again. ‘ was a virgin.”
“Don’t be daft.” “It said so in the medical report. A virgin.” “No,’ said Pascoe in a kindly voice. ‘ hadn’t been sexually assaulted. That’s what it said. Not quite the same thing.” “A virgin. It said she hadn’t been assaulted that night. And it said she was still a virgin. I should know. I read the bloody thing to the super.”
Pascoe froze, his glass in midair.
“You read it to him?’ he asked. ”t he look at it himself?”
“I don’t know. Not when I was there. You know he hates to be bothered reading things himself. Always gets someone else to do it if he can,” said Kent defensively.
“A virgin? You’re sure?’ said Pascoe, adding ” as he saw Kent react to his tone.
“Yes! But listen, Sergeant… “
Pascoe carefully put his beer on the table and stood up.
Thanks for the lunch, sir. I’d better be getting back now.”
Swiftly he moved out of the room before Kent could reply. It might have been a kindness to let him do his own reporting to Dalziel. But one kindness a day was enough for the likes of Kent.
Someone shouted at him as he marched across a beautifully-kept green, and he broke into a trot.
Dalziel wouldn’t be pleased. Kent would have some explaining to do.
But that would be nothing to the explaining that Dalziel would surely expect from Mr. Sam Fallowfield.
“The reason the English love cricket,’ said George Dunbar in his loud, guttural voice, ‘ that it structures their bloody indolence.” “Or masks their machinations,’ added Henry Saltecombe.
“Oh aye. You all like to think you’re so bloody clever,’ sneered Dunbar.
Looking round, Pascoe had to agree with Dunbar’s theory, much as he disliked the man. The thinly delineated oval of spectators, ‘ in brightly striped deck chairs, others recumbent in the grass, was positively Keatsian in its projection of indolence. But, he thought, as in all great works of art, realism alone did not do the work; realism only existed at a single level. What was needed for art was the living symbol at the centre, and the almost motionless white-clothed figures inside the oval were precisely that symbol. Yes, it was more than just a demonstration of indolence, it was an act of worship.
But Pascoe also saw with a policeman’s jaundiced eye; and that part of his mind was very ready to accept the hypothesis that machinations were being masked.
Roote, for instance, and that little gaggle of students almost hidden in the tall grass at the end of the oval farthest away from the pavilion.
Reginald Hill
D amp;P02 — An Advancement of Learning
They looked as if they were merely enjoying the innocent pleasures of sun on flesh. A bit perhaps of the less innocent pleasures of flesh on flesh. But nothing more. Yet he wished he could listen in on their talk.
Or Miss. Disney. Her deckchair as upright as it would go, her long skirt pulled challengingly low over her short, chubby legs. Her face showed nothing except the usual indignation at life’s insults it always seemed to bear. She spoke to a passing girl, Sandra what’s-‘er-name, who paused, obviously reluctant even at a distance, shook her head twice, answered briefly, and moved on towards the Roote group. The Disney basilisk gaze shot after her, but, happily, she did not look round. What had been said? What was she now thinking? And why, even as Pascoe watched, did she stand up and stride purposefully away?
Or Halfdane, still to be talked with, but now reclining elegantly between two deckchairs in which Ellie and Marion Cargo were competing in a whose-leggoes-farthest competition. Ellie, he felt, was just inching ahead, but looked to have little in reserve. Perhaps he should stroll over and talk to them, but if Ellie still had ambitions in the Halfdane area, he was unwilling to butt in. Or worse still, despite the previous night, appear as a competitor. Though why it should be worse still, as memories of the previous night flooded back, he could not really imagine. In any case, the point was, what was really going on inside those three minds?
Or Jane Scotby, listening with the obvious dislike sometimes called deep interest to Mrs. Landor’s sparrowy voice twittering from under the eaves of a broad-brimmed hat, which was supplemented by a fringed parasol of golf umbrella dimensions. The principal himself sat slightly apart, though still in his wife’s penumbra, and viewed the two women thoughtfully. Perhaps, thought Pascoe, he and Scotby are busily deceiving poor Mrs. Landor and even now are throbbing with frustrated lust after a brief passionate embrace behind the pavilion.
The thought made him smile but his policeman’s eye continued on its beat and the next tableau it paused at swung him wholeheartedly towards Henry Saltecombe’s view of the situation.
Two elderly gentlemen, one corpulent, bald, jolly, the other spare, white-haired, straw-boatered, their heads, wreathed in cigar smoke, nodding like mountain peaks through the mist as some piece of action in the central ritual caught their attention, their hands clapping, once, twice, even three times in moments of wild excitement; old friends relaxing together watching the youngsters carrying on in ancient, revered tradition.
One was Captain Ernest Jessup, chairman of the governors. The other was Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.
Of one thing Pascoe was convinced — however involved in a ritual of indolence the others might really be, here at least there were mental machinations aplenty.
Not a bad sort of chap, Jessup was thinking. Self-made of course, with the stitching poorly concealed, but there was nothing wrong with that.
He himself belonged to a service with a long tradition of advancement through merit. And at least the fellow could relax. He had feared total interruption of his afternoon’s cricket when Landor had introduced the man. Not that he wouldn’t have been willing to talk with Dalziel all day and all the next day too if it promised to help get to the bottom of this business.
