An Advancement of Learning (8 page)

But there were pressures. Others could see the way things were going, so we were a kind of concession. Reckoned we were pretty harmless. Mind, I think Disney would have had us operated on if she could. There was a girl got pregnant that year. She didn't speak to us for days."

He laughed loudly and his breath scattered charred shavings from his pipe.

"I don't know how I've stuck it all this time."

"But now ... ?"

"Now? We exchanged one old woman for another."

"You speak very frankly, Mr. Dunbar."

"It's my nature, laddie. Look, how the hell did it happen? I mean, what's she doing here when she should be feeding the edelweiss in Austria?" That's what we wish to find out. Tell me,' said Pascoe, ' did you last see Miss. Girling. Alive?"

"Man, that's a hard one! Let's see. That morning. The last day of term."

"December 16th?"

"If you say so."

"Friday."

Dunbar looked at him puzzled.

"Ah, no!' he said. ' would be when the students went off. But not us. Oh no. We used to hang around over the weekend so we could have a cosy little postmortem at a staff meeting on the Monday morning. The 16th, you said? Then it would be Monday 19th."

"I see. So all the academic staff were there on Monday 19th. Have you any idea when Miss. Girling would have set off on her holiday? She was flying to Austria, you'll recall."

"No recollection at all. The day is dead to me. I'd be off myself as soon as I humanly could."

"A pity. Perhaps Miss. Disney, or someone on more friendly terms ... "

Dunbar stood up, letting loose his unpleasant laugh once more.

"Disney! Friendly! Man, you've been propagandized!"

"But I understood ... "

"It's a myth. She's got no friends among the living, that one, so she appropriates the dead. One of the few things in Al's favour was that she couldn't stomach Disney. Good day to you!"

"Goodbye. I'm sure the superintendent would like to talk ... "

But the door was already slamming shut.

"Not a very nice kind of man,' said Kent from the window-seat. Pascoe had forgotten he was there.

"You handled him well, Sergeant. I think I'll take a little stroll around the estate and soak up a bit of atmosphere. Back in half an hour if I'm wanted."

Pascoe watched him stride purposefully out of the room. Perhaps I'll be like him with a year to go to retirement, he thought wryly.

He turned back to his work. Dunbar had been interesting. But first things first. At what stage did Miss. Girling cease to be Miss. Girling on her way to a winter holiday and become a corpse ready for its grotesque interment beneath her own memorial? Any point you cared to choose on the road from the college to Osterwald seemed as impossible as any other. Only the reasons changed.

At least this wasn't one where time was of the essence. There was no freshly killed corpse to be examined, no relatives to be informed (perhaps there were? but it wasn't the same), no frantic rush to track down a killer, while the traces were still fresh. There was no need to browbeat witnesses, to cut corners.

This one could be taken leisurely, almost academically (not that Dalziel would approve of either of those words!).

But it was true. Pascoe felt almost happy as he went about his work.

There was a feeling of cosiness in the old panelled room with the wind outside pushing vainly against the windowpane.

Perhaps he should have gone in for the life scholastic after all. These boys knew what they were at, arriving at their (qualified) conclusions after taking the long way round.

Welcome aboard! he told himself.

Down near the shore the wind was stronger than ever, gusting with violence off the land.

Captain Jessup was having difficulty in coping with it. It blew his drives into the rough, his approach shots into bunkers and even his putts he was willing to swear were being steered inches off course by the malevolent blasts.

The captain's lips pressed together in a tighter and thinner line beneath his sadly ruffled white moustaches.

Douglas Pearl on the other hand had discovered the secret of the perfect golf swing.

Again.

It was a cyclical business this, like the old religions. An endless circle of discovery and loss, death and resurrection. And to be conscious of the gift was often the prelude to losing it. So he viewed the fourteenth fairway uneasily. It ran along the sea shore, separated from the beach by a range of steep-sided dunes, vicious with tangled heather and gorse. The fairway ran round inland in a wide arc; the wise man followed it. The brave and the stupid attempted to carry the broad peninsula of dunes which lay between the tee and the hole.

Pearl stood uncertain. The wind galed forth in new fury. The captain sniffed impatiently. He made his mind a blank, and swung.

It looked good for the first hundred yards. Then like a Spitfire in a dog-fight, it seemed to accelerate upwards and banked violently to the right, finally crashing out of sight beyond the dunes.

"Oh, bother!' said Douglas, much distressed. But his careful solicitor's mind took close note of the last-known position of the ball.

The captain sent his shot on a flat trajectory one hundred-and-seventy-five yards down the fairway. It ran on another thirty.

He spoke for the first time since losing two balls at the fifth.

This letter you've sent me. You know it can't be done?"

"It's not asking much, I feel,' replied Douglas. ' early decision, certainly before the end of the month, is necessary if my client is going to have a chance of finishing her course this year."

"Naturally we'll come to a decision before the exams,' said the captain.

"She can still carry on with her private work now, can't she?" "Oh, don't be absurd!' said Douglas excitedly. Think of the strain she's under. In any case, while under suspension, she can't attend lectures, as you well know."

"Well, these students spend most of their time saying they're a lot of bloody nonsense anyway, as far as I can see,' said Jessup unrepentantly.

"And you know what's holding things up as well as I do. Fallowfield's protests have brought up a pretty complicated constitutional position.

It's not at all clear whether "college representatives" means the student members of the governing body as well as the staff. They've taken advice, I believe. I thought they might have come to you." They did,' said Douglas. ' couldn't help them. It might have conflicted with my client's interests."

Jessup pondered the implications of this as they trudged up the fairway together.

"I can understand Fallowfield though. It's like a court martial with midshipmen sitting in judgment,' he said finally.

"It's a college, not one of Her Majesty's ships,' observed Douglas ironically. ' think he's deliberately delaying things. The longer he spins things out, the more likely it is the girl will jack everything in."

"But he's admitted he slept with her!"

"He's not a doctor, Captain. She's over age. No, the real thing here is this question of maliciously trying to get her out of the college. If that's proved, then he's had it. Perhaps he's hoping she'll have a change of heart." "And will she?' asked the captain. ''m not prejudging, mark you.

Nothing's proved. She may yet turn out a liar. But could she have a change of heart?"

Douglas considered, then shook his head.

"No,' he said. ' haven't really been able to make her out yet. She's a very reserved girl in many ways. But, true or not, something very powerful drove her to make these accusations in the first place. And it's my reckoning that it would take something even more powerful to stop her now. I can't imagine what. But certainly more powerful than any blandishments of Fallowfield. I reckon it was just about here."

He turned off at right-angles and began to climb through the heather up the dune.

"Give us a hail if you don't spot it,' said the captain. I'll save my old legs an unnecessary walk."

"Right,' said Douglas.

At the top of the dune, he paused. There was a narrow parapet of scant, wiry sea-grass, then the dune fell steeply away in a bank of fine white sand. He stood staring out across the white-flecked sea for a moment. A few gulls wheeled and hung in the turbulent air.

"Any luck?' shouted the captain.

"Not yet,' said Douglas. ' might be a bit farther. It wasn't a bad hit."

On the seaward side of the dunes, wind and waves had scooped out a series of semicircular bays which provided ideal situations for bathing parties. Usually in the summer there were some students around, but the chill edge of the wind seemed to have kept them all away today.

Or nearly all. Douglas walked a little farther along and looked down into the next bay. He drew in his breath sharply. Lying on her side in the white sand was a girl. She had her back to him and seemed to be asleep. She was also naked.

His ball lay gleaming, challenging, a few inches from the smooth curve of her young buttocks.

Absurdly his mind began wrestling with the difficulty his next shot presented. Should he awaken her and ask her to move? Or perhaps he could claim a drop without penalty.

But the non-golfing part of his mind was beginning to notice other things. There was no pile of clothes nearby, for one thing. And there was an awkwardness about the sprawl of her limbs and a strange stillness about the whole body which he did not like.

"Shall I come up and help?' called the captain.

Douglas did not reply but, laying down his golf-bag, he jumped into the bay, half-falling, and reaching the bottom in a slither of sand. Down here out of the cut of the wind, it was quite warm.

But the coldness of the girl's skin as he gently touched her shoulder told him she felt nothing of this. He knew at once she was dead.

And as he turned her over and looked down into her stiff contorted face, he knew he had been right.

It had taken something very powerful indeed to stop Anita Sewell from carrying on along her chosen course.

Chapter 8.

The parts of fifteen are not the parts of twenty; for the parts of fifteen are three and five; the parts of twenty are two, four, five and ten. So as these things are without contradiction and could not otherwise be.

SIR FRANCIS BACON Op. Cit.

Now there was twice as much work and more than twice as much activity.

Pascoe had visible evidence that he had been right to feel that old bones didn't produce the same sense of urgency as a fresh corpse. It was Kent's finest hour. For the second time in a quarter of a century he had been in the right place at the right time. (The first occasion had given him the promotion momentum which had brought him to his present eminence.) He had come across Pearl and Jessup in earnest conference by the fourteenth fairway. By the time Dalziel arrived everything needful had been done, down to a list of those who had played a round that day, and a methodical search of the dunes and the beach was taking place.

All Pascoe wanted to do was to re-immerse himself in his (so-far, unproductive) researches into the last movements of Miss. Girling. But Dalziel didn't seem in the mood for demarcation disputes.

These are distinct and separate enquiries, sir?' said Pascoe hopefully.

"If you mean, is there any connection, the answer's yes,' snapped Dalziel. Two bodies in the same place means a connection to me. It might be accident; but coincidence is like the bastards we pull in, assumed innocent till proved guilty. And we do that by finding two distinct and separate killers. Right?"

"I suppose so,' said Pascoe.

"Anyway, how are you getting on? Any progress?"

"Precious little. I was just getting into it when news of the girl came in. I've got an outline of the day here. Look. Mostly from Miss. Scotby's old diary of events. She hoards them. The students had gone down the previous Friday. There was a staff meeting on the Monday morning and a governors' meeting in the afternoon. Now Miss. Girling was catching her flight at 11.30 p.m. or thereabouts. She was evidently a believer in starting the vacation as soon as humanly possible. Anyway, Miss. Scotby saw her after the meeting, about 5 p.m. and she says she waved to her as she drove out, presumably on her way to the airport, about an hour later."

Dalziel grunted. ' didn't leave herself much time. It's well over a hundred miles."

That's what I said. But Scotby says she thinks the governors' meeting may have been arranged late in the term, after Girling had made her holiday plans. The ink confirms this."

"Ink?"

"It's not the same as the stuff she used for the other major events. So she deduces she noted the meeting later."

Dalziel rolled his eyes. The whites were quite revolting without the little brown pupils to hold the attention.

"So what are you doing now?"

Pascoe was ready for this.

"What I'd like to do is check at the airport. The big question is, did she get that far or not? They may still have records. And at the other end, Austria, too." "All right,' said Dalziel. ' remember, it's taxpayers' money, lad." "It's the tax-payers' bodies as well,' said Pascoe, but only after Dalziel had gone out of the door.

His destination was the golf clubhouse where Kent had set up a temporary HQ. He found the inspector gazing dreamy-eyed at a large gilt-framed photograph of Harry Vardon in mid-drive.

"Look,' he said. ' had his jacket on. And a tie."

"Was he playing here today?' asked Dalziel.

"No. Of course not.' Kent returned to earth. '."

"Anything new?"

"Nothing much. The p.m. report won't be through for a while yet, but I'm sure they'll confirm what the doctor said. Death by asphyxiation. Her mouth and nostrils were full of sand."

He grimaced at the memory.

"Next of kin?"

"Her parents. They live in Newcastle. They'll be on their way."

"Have you seen Mr. Landor? I couldn't find him at the college and they said he might have come up here."

"That's right. He's through there."

Kent nodded at a door to his left.

"He doesn't look well."

"Right. How's the search?"

"Nothing yet. Or rather, a great deal. Those sand dunes are pretty popular evidently, by day and by night. But nothing obviously relevant." I'll have a look later,' said Dalziel.