Then I started getting involved a bit with Franny and his lot.
She glanced at Pascoe under lowered eyelids.
This is confidential, is it? I wouldnt like
Absolutely, said Pascoe. A policemans fingers are always crossed, he thought.
Well, they were are fun. Sometimes a bit weird. And sometimes
well, we did the usual thing, you know. Drank a bit, smoked a bit of pot; there was one night when we got hold of some acid. It seemed fantastic to me. And I had this thing about Franny. Still have, I suppose.
She spoke so lowly, Pascoe had to strain to hear her. But he did not interrupt.
You asked about Mr. Fallowfield. Well, I got the impression that he had once been pretty close to the group in some way, I dont know. A kind of Socratic figure, I suppose, showing the light. But he wasnt any longer.
And all this business about him and Anita was somehow mixed up with this, I dont know how. That was one of the sacred mysteries of the group, reserved for members of the inner sanctum only.
She laughed as she said this, but with a slight trace of bitterness.
You never made the inner sanctum?
She laughed as she said this, but with a slight trace of bitterness.
You never made the inner sanctum?
The? No. Newly-come, that was me. Good for the preliminary lay, but not yet ready for the full initiation. And Frannyll be gone next year hell, this place will be dead without him!
She looked around desperately. Whats the mans secret? asked Pascoe enviously. Disney should think herself lucky he didnt fancy her!
He began sorting out some words of kind reassurance to offer Sandra, but she prevented them by glancing at her watch.
Hell. Nearly lunch time. Theyre dead traditional here. Roast and two veg. whatever the weather. Phew!
She wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
Remember. Confidential, eh? See you. See you, said Pascoe. Thats how I lose all my witnesses, he thought.
I start being kind and they just bugger off.
After a working lunch with Dalziel (Sandra had been right roast beef, carrots and peas) during which he gave the superintendent an account of his talks with Disney and the girl, Pascoe finally managed to track down the senior administrative officer, a long, lugubrious individual called Spinx, whose office contained all the expense records for the college.
Grumbling constantly about the interruption to his day of rest and assuring Pascoe that there wasnt a hope of such a record being kept for such a time, he unlocked a large store cupboard and began to dig around among a mound of dusty files and folders. Pascoe left him to it.
Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the study door and Spinx, now very dusty, stood there looking very disappointed.
Sorry, he said.
Thats all right, began Pascoe.
I was wrong. Here you are. Is that what you wanted? Yes. Why yes, said Pascoe taking the dog-eared, stained sheet of paper from his hand and looking at it. you very much.
Pleasure. That all? Right.
Pascoe was reading the sheet before the man had closed the door behind him.
A car allowance had been paid based on the mileage between the college and Chester. He glanced at the copy of Fallowfields curriculum vitae which along with those of the rest of the staff he had obtained a couple of days before. Fallowfield had been the senior biology master at Coltsfoot College near Chester which Pascoe knew as one of the modern, reputedly progressive, public schools. The route to Chester would pass, or could be made to pass, conveniently close to south Manchester, to the airport. Somehow Alison Girlings car had got there, had left the college that foggy night in December and made its way slowly, crawlingly, across the Pennines, while Miss. Girling herself almost certainly lay in a thin cocoon of earth in the hole in the college garden.
But if Fallowfield were at the wheel, then how did he get his own car to Chester? He couldnt just have left it parked at the college. Even in the holidays there would be a sufficient number of staff, academic, administrative and maintenance, on the premises to notice it. Perhaps someone had. He hadnt asked. But no; it would have been too wild a risk to take anyway.
And above all, why should Fallowfield have wanted to kill this woman he had just met for the first time? As far as they knew.
Its all wrong, thought Pascoe gloomily, Im like Dalziel. It would be pleasant for once to find everything nice and neat. Two murders, one killer, who commits suicide. Bingo! then we could get back to reality and start catching some thieves.
He took the expense sheet out to show Dalziel who had abandoned the shade of the study and taken a couple of chairs and a small folding table out on to the lawn where he sat with deliberate irony about four feet from the hole, now boarded over, in which Miss. Girling had been found.
Let the buggers see were still here, he had said. reckon theres some here as are dying to see the back of us.
Now he looked at the expense sheet, shading his eyes from the sun.
That doesnt help, he said as if it was Pascoes own personal fault.
No, sir.
He stopped three nights?
I noticed that.
And he should only have stopped one.
Whoever it was who had checked the expense sheet had with exquisite parsimony deducted fifteen shillings from the total payable. This was itemized at two nights stay in the college, at seven and six per night, which were not chargeable to expenses.
Cheap, said Pascoe. that what we pay?
Dalziel ignored him.
It means he came, unnecessarily in the eyes of the office staff, on the Friday. I wonder why?
Is it important, without a motive?
Youve changed your tune, lad.
Pascoe shrugged.
Ive given him up for Girling. But I think hes a strong runner for Anita.
And no connection between the two?
No, sir. Coincidence. Or perhaps the connection is merely that the discovery of the body under the statue put the idea of murder before everybody. You could get away with it well, nearly. The body had lain there all those years and might have lain there for ever if it hadnt been for a turn of fate.
Dalziel yawned mightily, sunlight glistening off his fillings.
Youre probably right, he said. know, Im sick of this place and most of the people in it. I dont understand it, thats my trouble. My generation, most of , worked bloody hard, and accepted deprivation, and fought a bloody war, and put our trust in politicians, so our kids could have the right to come to places like this. And after a few days here, I wonder if it was bloody well worth it.
He was silent. Pascoe felt obliged to say something.
These places dont just train people, you know. They help them to grow up in the right kind of mental environment.
Dalziel looked at him more coldly than ever before.
I bet you grew up more in your first six months with the force than in the twenty years before.
Pascoe shrugged again. There were arguments, he knew; but he couldnt be bothered, didnt have the energy or inclination, to use them now.
To get back to the case, he said, now? The, said Dalziel, m going to sit here, and see who comes to talk to me. Then Im going to drive into Headquarters just to liven things up there. As for you, well, therere just two or three things that bother me still about Fallowfield. Why no note? Who had a go at his cottage before Disney? And why did he come all the way to college before killing himself? Let me know the answers before supper. And then Ill tell you who killed everybody.
He closed his eyes and began snoring so realistically that it was hard to tell whether he was really asleep or not.
Some hope, thought Pascoe. This is one that wont be solved before Christmas. Girlings perhaps never.
One of Dalziels questions kept running through his head. Why did Fallowfield come all the way to college to kill himself? I know the answer to that, he thought. But if he did, he wasnt telling himself.
Stuff it, he thought and snatched half an hour to read the Sunday papers. There was nothing about the previous nights events. Too late perhaps. The murders themselves got a bit of space though the dailies had picked most of the meat from the bones. Dalziel was mentioned. They made him sound quite good. I suppose he is quite good, thought Pascoe reluctantly.
Out of the window he saw the fat man stir and stretch himself. It was time, he decided, that he should do the same.
Out of the window he saw the fat man stir and stretch himself. It was time, he decided, that he should do the same.
The rest of the afternoon he wasted, talking first to Disney, then to Sandra. Both denied absolutely removing any suicide note. Disney was back in her old form. A couple of hours meditation had rinsed any Vestigial traces of guilt from her lily-white soul. Pascoe could have gladly pushed her teeth down her throat, but he had to admit he was convinced by the time he left her. An after-effect of the Disney treatment was that he was twice as rough with Sandra as he might else have been, bringing her close to tears, but again coming away convinced she had been telling the truth.
He then spent more than an hour searching and researching the cottage and, after that, the laboratory. Both searches were doomed to failure, he knew before he started. But something in himself demanded that they should be done again.
When he returned to the study, it was fast approaching dinner time and Dalziel, red as a Victoria plum, had just come back from town. He noted Pascoes frame of mind and for once exercised some tact. From somewhere he had obtained a jugful of ice-cubes and a soda syphon. He splashed an ounce of Glen Grant into a glass, followed it with a handful of ice and a jet of soda, and handed it silently to his sergeant.
No luck? he said.
No.
The neither. Youd think I had the plague. Every bugger at HQ thinks Im 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 Ill go and see.
As you will. You could phone.
No. Ill look for myself. Its absurd. Theres something, Ill swear.