But all was going well, it seemed. The assistant chief’s confidence in the man seemed justified (though he had been less than warm about his personal merits) and their conversation so far had been restricted to the field changes between overs. It looked like being a good game.
What a bloody way to spend an afternoon! groaned Dalziel to himself.
Rugby he could enthuse over, soccer could move him deeply, but these flannelled fools moved to a music too refined for his coarse ears. And the deckchair! A direct descendant of the rack out of the Iron Maiden!
He had not yet recovered from Pascoe’s news about the dead girl. That had come dangerously close to being a blunder. He didn’t normally make blunders. He prided himself on being able to extract from all the usual scientific twaddle in these reports the few important facts. These generally confirmed his own observations and deductions. Or often there were none at all.
Pascoe would have noticed and subtly drawn his attention to it. But stuff Pascoe! He didn’t want a kind of constabulary Jeeves hanging around all the time. Yet if poor Pascoe were to be stuffed, then what of Kent? Lash him naked in a deckchair with his back to the eighteenth green at St. Andrews during the Open? It would bear further thought.
As for the information itself, that the accusation made against Fallowfield by Anita Sewell could not possibly have been true, the implications were far from clear. Fallowfield’s reason for admitting the truth of the accusations, or at least that part of them which said he had been knocking the girl off for a couple of years, would bear investigation. But he had no intention of rushing in like the bear he was popularly reputed to be. With a bit of luck he’d run into Fallowfield during the course of the afternoon, though there was no sign of him yet.
But this old goon on his right had to be kept happy for a while. He had been quite unable to remember a single thing about the meeting at which Miss. Girling had made her last public appearance. He probably had difficulty remembering the way home, thought Dalziel savagely and quite unjustly. But he had agreed to telephone the clerk to the governors who had promised to dig through the records and send any pertinent information to the college that afternoon.
Meanwhile an hour and a half, two wickets, and thirty eight runs had trickled away with agonizing slowness. But despite his discomfort and his boredom, Dalziel had felt curiously enervated and quite unable to rise from his chair to do something useful. In any case everyone was here, everyone that mattered. Nearly everyone. Big ‹ wheels were moving elsewhere, and all those who had left the college since Girling’s death were being traced and interviewed. But Dalziel was somehow certain the solution was here somewhere.
“Well hit, sir!’ boomed Jessup. ‘ think that’s our man, Superintendent.” “Oh, yes, indeed. Very promising,’ said Dalziel.
“By the pavilion. The man with the minutes,’ said Jessup patiently.
“Let’s go and see.”
The shade of the pavilion was a relief. Dalziel realized his shirt was wringing with sweat; Jessup on the other hand in his absurd hat looked quite cool as he glanced through the papers he had been given.
“No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘ doesn’t bring anything back at all, except very vaguely. Certainly nothing which might help you, Superintendent.
Though I see now why it was so late in the term. It was an appointments meeting and obviously we hadn’t been able to convene the full interviewing panel earlier in the term. Miss. Girling would be eager to get things like this done as soon as possible, before the good candidates got offers elsewhere, you understand.” “Interviewing?’ said Dalziel sharply. ‘ what?”
“A post, of course. It was a short list, only three. For a lectureship in the Biology Department.” “Let me see,’ said Dalziel, unceremoniously removing the papers from Jessup’s hand.
Quickly he flicked through them till he found what he wanted. A list of three names. One stood out as though embossed on the paper.
Samuel Fallowfield.
“Excuse me,’ he said, moving quickly out of the pavilion leaving Jessup tugging his moustache in exasperation.
Dalziel’s cry of ‘!’ as he strode round the outer oval of spectators almost certainly caused the fall of the third wicket. But by the time the angry batsman had returned to the pavilion, Dalziel had disappeared in the direction of the sea and only Pascoe’s head was visible as he went in hot pursuit.
Chapter 12
For many are wise in their own ways that are weak for government or counsel; like ants, which is a wise creature for itself, but very hurtful for the garden.
The dismissed batsman was not the only one who noticed Dalziel’s sudden departure. Halfdane and his two female consorts did.
“Perhaps he’s off for a swim,’ he suggested.
That’s not a bad idea,’ said Ellie, watching Pascoe picking himself up from among the daisies.
She stretched herself voluptuously, back arched, breasts at maximum projection, legs at maximum exposure.
“I wouldn’t mind myself,’ she added, watching Halfdane carefully. She saw she had his interest.
Something’s happened to me recently, she thought. Suddenly I’m a huntress! I’ve been eyeing this poor bastard hungrily for a month or so now. Then last night; that was me. And what do I want anyway, for God’s sake? Some memories for a lonely old age? Or something permanent? It’s too late for that with PC Pascoe, even if he doesn’t know it yet. And I’m not really going about it the right way with this one. Any lasting erection must have a firm foundation, so they say.
She giggled at herself, let her body relax and pulled her skirt down.
“Do you think they’d miss us if we did?’ said Marion Cargo from the other chair.
Quietly confident! groaned Ellie inwardly.
“Who cares?’ said Halfdane. ‘ we might see the bold gendarmes again and I want a word with Ellie’s mate. Let’s get our things.”
Ellie’s mate! Perhaps Pascoe was the only hope after all. The beach might tell. It was ground of her own choosing. In or out of the water she knew she was physically superb.
“Let’s go,’ she said.
Landor rose to adjust his wife’s parasol against the threatening manoeuvres of the sun. He had met her and courted her in the long winter of 1947. Curled up deep in an armchair before a roaring fire, or muffled against the snow in layers of clothing which permitted only the slight pale oval of her face to show, she had appealed deeply to his protective instincts. They had married in the spring and the tremors of doubt he had felt even then had been confirmed in every summer thereafter.
He looked at Jane Scotby and received from her a cold impersonal smile in return. She had resented him deeply when he first took up the post, he suspected. But he had met the senior tutor on the beach one morning more than a year ago, perilously perched on the back of a huge brown horse, her face slightly flushed with excitement, her eyes brighter than ever. It had seemed odd at first, almost ludicrous, till he realized how completely in control she was. And the beast was no milk-horse, it terrified the life out of Landor. The meeting had subtly changed their relationship.
His wife on the other hand controlled nothing, not even the running of the household. Lunch today had been all right. Salad and strawberries were difficult to spoil.
That young policeman was most brusque this morning, I felt,’ she said, watching Dalziel and Pascoe depart. ‘ police are not what they were.”
Landor caught Scotby’s bright blue eyes again. She gave no sign of any reaction to his wife’s inanities, for which he was grateful. But comfort was pleasant, it was good to be comforted from time to time.
