The neither. You’d think I had the plague. Every bugger at HQ thinks I’m having the time of my life.”
He emptied his glass and said diffidently, ”ll have looked in his clothes, of course.”
“I should think so.”
Pascoe too finished his drink, taking an ice-cube into his mouth and crushing it between his teeth.
“But I’ll go and see.”
“As you will. You could phone.”
“No. I’ll look for myself. It’s absurd. There’s something, I’ll swear.
Perhaps when I’ve cleared away all these impossible possibilities
… And I’ll check with the ambulance men just in case.”
“You think this note’s important.”
Pascoe stared at his superior.
“You said he seemed the kind of man who would want to explain himself.”
“Did I? Then it must be true.”
After Pascoe had left, the fat man hefted thoughtfully in his hand the set of master keys he had taken from Sandra Firth.
The,’ he murmured to himself, I’ll just have my dinner and do a bit of pedigree checking.”
Dinner was particularly good and he washed it down with the rest of his Glen Grant, which in its turn brought on the need to rest. It was almost nine o’clock when he finally let himself stealthily into the admin, block.
After all, he told himself, as he gently eased open a filing cabinet drawer in the registrar’s office, half the bloody students in the place have seen them, so why not me?
Them were the staffs’ confidential files. He skipped lightly through them, pausing here and there, till he came to Fallowfield’s. Now he lit a cigarette, sat back at his ease and began to read slowly and thoroughly.
His academic qualifications he had already seen on the curriculum vitae.
They were excellent, a very good first degree and a couple of high post-graduate qualifications. But it was in the comments made by those who taught and employed him that Dalziel was most interested. He read the letter from the headmaster of Coltsfoot College twice. It was couched in terms of high praise. Great stress was laid on Fallowfield’s ability to influence thought, his progressive thinking and his pre-eminent suitability to work with older students. Almost too much stress, thought Dalziel. He had many years’ experience of reading and hearing between the lines.
On an impulse he picked up the phone and when he got the operator, gave her the number of Coltsfoot College. You never knew your luck.
While she was trying to establish a connection, he helped himself to a few select student files and began to read them. He didn’t know his luck.
Pascoe knew his luck. It was rotten. The clothes had contained nothing helpful, the doctor who had examined Fallowfield could offer no useful contribution other than reiterating the cause and probable time of death; and the ambulance men, who were off-duty and had to be tracked to their homes, were no help either and in fact took umbrage at the suggestion that something other than the body might have been removed from the lab.
Pascoe realized he had not been as diplomatic as was his wont and after looking in at Headquarters where the heavy ironies of his mock-envious colleagues did not help, he went round to his flat for a change of clothing and a bite to eat. There was a stack of mail, mostly circulars, and he tossed them on the table beside the telephone. He made himself a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich and sat down in the ancient but extremely comfortable armchair which stood beneath the open window.
An hour later he woke with the cup of cold tea miraculously unspilt on the arm of the chair and the sandwich, one bite missing, still clutched in his right hand. He saw the time, groaned and pushed himself unsteadily out of the chair, knocking the teacup on to the floor.
Cursing now he mopped up the mess with an antimacassar and pulled the phone towards him. This time it was his mail which fell to the carpet.
He swore again, looking down at the colourful display.
Threepence off this; half-price subscription to that; win half a million for a farthing. (Could you legally wager a non-legal coin?) It wouldn’t be so bad if he ever got any of the sexy stuff people were always complaining about. Still, he supposed it all brought revenue to the Post Office.
It was time he reported in. Not that he had anything to report. He might as well send a letter.
It came to him as he lifted the phone. He had known the answer all along. The mail! Fallowfield had gone to the college to post his note.
Not for him the last letter confiscated by the police and read by the coroner. No, this was one note which was going to reach the addressee.
And with the thought came another, almost instantaneously. Someone else had been a lot cleverer than he was. A lot cleverer and a lot quicker.
Someone had broken into the college posting boxes last night. But whoever it was wasn’t just quick. Breaking into the boxes, looking for a letter in Fallowfield’s hand (he’d bet that all the letters opened had typed envelopes), this meant, could mean, probably meant, he knew that there was no letter in the cottage and no letter in the lab. How? The first was easy; the person who wrecked the house before Disney would have known, been fairly sure. But the lab? Sandra — it had to be Sandra.
She must have gone through the sequence of events with any number of people, students and staff, before going to bed. Damn!
So much for the letter then. If it had been in one of the boxes, then it was gone for ever. Anyone who was so keen to get it would surely have destroyed it instantly.
“But was it in one of the boxes?’ asked Pascoe aloud. Three had been opened. Fallowfield would certainly have used the one nearest the lab block which was the one outside the bar. Or if not wishing to be seen, and it must have been after opening hours when he arrived at college, he would use the one by the side of the Old House. But he would never have bothered to walk over to the Students’ Union. So why all three? A blind perhaps. Or perhaps desperation; it wasn’t in the first, or the second; could it be in the third? And if it wasn’t, then perhaps there was no need to wish it goodbye. Perhaps it still did lie somewhere, waiting to be picked up… waiting… “It might just be!’ said Pascoe and dialled the telephone so rapidly he made a mistake and had to do it again.
If he wanted Superintendent Dalziel, the college switchboard girl told him, he wasn’t in the study, he was in the registrar’s office (though what he was doing there, she didn’t know, the voice implied) and she would put him through there.
“Where the hell have you been?’ snarled Dalziel.
Pascoe didn’t waste time on apologies but tumbled out his theory as rapidly as he could.
“And,’ he concluded, ‘ reckon it might still be there somewhere. It’s so obvious, perhaps he missed it. The staff must have somewhere they collect mail, pigeonholes or something.”
“Yes, they do. In the Senior Common Room. I remember seeing them.”
“Well, perhaps that’s what Fallowfield did. Put it straight into someone’s pigeonhole. It could still be there.”
“Right. I’ll look. You get yourself back over here as quickly as possible. And here’s something to chew on while you’re coming.”
“Sir?”
“Franny Roote is an old boy of guess where? Coltsfoot College. And he was interviewed for entry to this college on the Friday before the Monday when Girling died.”
The phone went dead. It was nearly thirty miles to the college but Pascoe did it in just over twenty minutes. Even then he was nearly too late.
Chapter 16
… as the fable goeth of the basilisk, that if he see you first, you die for it; but if you see him first, he dieth…
