Injury Time (6 page)

‘Do they, indeed!' snorted Leeyes.

Detective Inspector Sloan consulted a list. ‘Joe Hinkins, Hezekiah Lavender, Harry Gotobed—'

‘You're not having me on, Sloan, are you?' Leeyes interrupted dangerously. ‘Because if you are …'

‘No, sir,' Sloan assured him, resuming his notebook. ‘I'm dead serious … Jack Godfrey, Esra Wilderspin, Donnington …'

‘Didn't Donnington have a Christian name, then?'

‘Not that the author told us,' said Sloan precisely, ‘any more than did Young Pratt … No, I'm wrong there, sir. Sorry. My mistake. He was Wally.'

‘Are you quite sure that you're not having me on?'

‘Quite sure,' said Sloan.

‘Anyway, that's only seven,' said the Superintendent, who invariably argued that good detection was always based on minute attention to detail.

‘I'm afraid,' sighed Sloan, ‘that that's the whole point.'

‘Is it?' asked the Superintendent testily. ‘Then I'd be obliged if you'd tell me more. I've been waiting to know what the whole point is.'

Detective Inspector Sloan took a deep breath. ‘In this book that they're all going on about …'

‘The Nine Tailors
. I'd got that far.'

‘The eighth ringer, one William Thoday, was taken ill and Lord Peter Wimsey stepped into his shoes.'

‘Ah,' said the Superintendent alertly.

‘This group of ringers—groups call themselves “towers” by the way …'

‘Well, it's better than calling themselves “Happy Bands of Pilgrims”,' said Leeyes realistically.

‘They meet about twice a week to practise and to ring these peals.' Sloan paused and then said, ‘Silly, really, I suppose, sir, them taking names like that.'

‘It's been done before,' said his superior officer perversely. ‘In fiction, anyway.'

‘Sir?'

‘By Rudyard Kipling in a short story called “The Janeites”.' The Superintendent was a great one for attending Adult Education Classes and ‘Rudyard Kipling—The Writer and The Man' had been the most recent. ‘The people in that were all from Jane Austen's
Emma.'

‘Just like that,' said Sloan, blessing Kipling. As a working policeman the line of that writer's which he liked best was the one describing the crimes of Clapham as being chaste in Martapan but he got straight down to business. ‘Last night in Almstone Tower the man on number two bell, William Thoday, couldn't come and a friend of the Rector's stood in for him …'

‘And?'

‘The man on number six bell, who called himself Donnington, got killed.'

‘By accident? You don't get a lot of accidents bell-ringing, Sloan.'

‘You might say, sir, that he was taken up by excess rope.'

‘You might,' responded Leeyes briskly. ‘I wouldn't. Put it in plain English.'

‘The bell fell over the balance point, Donnington hung on to the rope and went up with it at about fifty miles an hour, hit his head on the beam and fell fifteen feet back on to the stone floor of the bell tower.'

‘A Dead Ringer,' commented Leeyes, more of an Edgar Wallace man himself in spite of the classes on Rudyard Kipling.

‘They call it a “high-speed lift” among themselves, do the bell-ringers,' said Sloan. ‘It's one of the big bells, you see, sir. It must weigh the best part of a thousand kilograms.'

‘And how much is that?' The Superintendent would never have any truck with measurements devised by Napoleon Bonaparte.

‘Well over nineteen hundredweight.' Sloan paused. ‘This visitor of the Rector's seemed to know what he was doing, though. After he'd made sure that there was nothing to be done for this man Donnington he went up into the belfry to have a looksee …'

‘Couldn't wait for us to get there, I suppose,' grumbled the Superintendent. ‘That's the worst of amateurs.'

‘When he got up there,' continued Sloan, ‘he found that the stay was broken. The stay, sir, is what supports the bell.'

‘I could work that out for myself, thank you, Sloan,' said Leeyes. ‘Why did the stay break?'

‘The wood was rotten with woodworm,' said Sloan.

‘Don't they inspect it?' asked Leeyes, ‘And treat it?'

‘Yes to both those things, sir. But that wasn't what this friend of the Rector's wanted to know.'

‘All right then, tell me. I suppose I'm never too old to learn.'

There would have been nobody at the police station at Berebury who subscribed to this view of the Superintendent, but all Sloan said was: ‘He asked if the man calling himself Donnington always took that bell.'

‘And did he?'

‘Yes, sir. Though it's not usual these days to stick to the same bell.' It wasn't usual not to have any women either but Sloan didn't say so. This was no moment for feminism. He hurried on. ‘Then I'm told this chap—I did say he was a gentleman, didn't I, sir?—took out a rather old-fashioned sort of eyeglass and had a good look at the bolts keeping the stays in but talking nonsense all the while he did it. “Fop first, hero second” was how Jack Godfrey described him to me afterwards.'

‘If you ask me,' said Leeyes gratuitously, ‘it sounds as if they had had the vapid Sir Percy Blakeney with them.'

‘“The Scarlet Pimpernel”?' Sloan must have been all of eleven years old when he'd first read that book. ‘Oh, no, sir, I don't think so. Not,' he added hastily, ‘that we're not all literary inheritors in our way.' As far as the Calleshire force was concerned, opinion on the Superintendent's origins was divided between two schools of thought: Ghenghis Khan and Harold Hardaxe.

Leeyes grunted. ‘That's as may be. How much evidence had this character destroyed by the time you got there?'

‘None, sir. On the contrary. He wouldn't let anyone at all into the bell-chamber until our people arrived.'

‘That's something, I suppose,' said Leeyes grudgingly. ‘Then what?'

‘He said we should treat it as a case of murder and then he went off to talk to the Rector.'

‘Leaving us to hold the baby …'

‘Not quite, sir. He came back about ten minutes later with the reverend gentleman and said we should arrest the man going under the name of Wilderspin. Seems as if in real life he's a carpenter.'

‘That doesn't make him a murderer.'

‘No, sir, but he's the one among them who best knows about wood.'

‘What about it?'

‘This friend of the Rector's said that all the wood in the church tower was chestnut except for the bell-stay. Chestnut doesn't rot—or at least hardly at all—especially in the dry.'

‘So?'

‘This bell stay was pitchpine.'

‘Well?'

‘Bell stays are always made of ash.'

‘Are you going to come to the point while I'm still on duty, Sloan?'

‘Pitchpine, which is highly subject to woodworm into the bargain, wouldn't hold. It hasn't got the spring of ash. This chap—the visitor—said it must have been put there with malice aforethought and was there any reason for anyone wanting to kill Donnington.'

‘And was there?'

‘Oh, yes. He'd been carrying on with Wilderspin's wife.'

‘Sloan, what did the Rector call this friend of his?'

‘Sui generis.'

MEMORY CORNER

‘He said what?' echoed Detective Inspector Sloan in disbelief.

‘Would we kindly step round,' repeated Detective Constable Crosby, ‘when we had a moment, because he'd just killed a man.'

Sloan groaned. ‘A nutter?'

‘To Almstone College at the University.'

‘An academic nutter, then?'

‘I don't know, sir,' said Detective Constable Crosby. ‘That's all he said.'

‘And who, might I ask, is he?'

Detective Constable Crosby glanced down at his notebook. ‘Edward Francis Mainprice Linthwaite. He made me write it all down and read it back to him. Very particular about it, he was.'

‘H'm.'

‘Most murderers don't bother about the spelling of their names, do they, sir? And the exact time,' said Crosby. ‘He made me write that down, too, sir. He said he always understood that in these matters time was'—the Constable frowned at the effort of recollection—‘time was of the essence.'

‘Sounds to me,' said Sloan resignedly, ‘as if what he needs are two little men in white coats, not a pair of heavily overworked detectives. All right, Crosby. Let's go.'

This baleful view was reinforced by the total calm prevailing in the Porter's Lodge at Almstone College. Enquiries for an Edward Linthwaite produced a response in which lay the gentlest of reproofs. ‘The Professor of Twentieth-Century English Literature, gentlemen,' said the porter, ‘has his rooms in the main quadrangle.'

Sloan, who at another time might have wondered aloud whether there was any such thing at all as a literature of the twentieth century, followed the porter's pointing finger with his eye.

‘See—over there on your right—the first-floor rooms with the bay window,' said the porter, who, having no great faith in the Force, added: ‘You can't miss the quadrangle archway.'

‘On your mark, Crosby,' said Sloan in quite a different tone of voice. ‘Get set. Go.'

The door to Professor Linthwaite's rooms was opened to them by a short spare man, who looked worried.

‘If that's the police, Arthur,' called out a deep voice from behind him, ‘let them in.'

‘It is,' said Sloan.

‘Good, good,' boomed the voice, its owner still unseen. ‘No point in hanging about at this stage, is there?' There was a movement inside the room and a stout, untidily dressed figure hove into view. ‘Besides, his people will have to be told as soon as possible, won't they?'

The college room was a very beautiful one, the walls panelled in oak and lined with books. Its largest piece of furniture was a great Knole sofa facing the fireplace. It was tastefully upholstered in a material and design that owed more than something to the great medieval tapestry workshops of the Low Countries. What was less appealing was the body of a young man lying on it with much of his head covered in blood.

On an elegant sofa-table set behind this piece of furniture lay—on top of an academic journal—a blood-stained poker. On the floor, almost hidden by the frill of the sofa, was a lady's handbag.

‘I'm sorry about the mess,' said the stout man, as if reading Sloan's thoughts. ‘I've never killed a man before.' He seemed to collect himself. ‘Oh, I'm sorry. This is Professor Arthur Maple, who is Calle Professor of Moral Law here at the University. He happened to come round just er—afterwards.'

‘And you are …?' said Sloan, concentrating on the stout figure. He was wearing a flowery-patterned shirt without a tie. There was something odd about his shirt, but Sloan wasn't sure quite what.

‘Professor Linthwaite, Inspector. Edward Francis …'

‘Mainprice Linthwaite,' finished Detective Constable Crosby for him.

‘And who,' enquired Sloan frostily, ‘is the dead man?' The edge of the coloured silk shirt was peeping out untidily from under one of the professor's cuffs.

‘Good question,' said Linthwaite as one encouraging a backward pupil.

‘You don't know?' asked Crosby in spite of himself.

‘I know his surname naturally, officer. It's Carstairs. But not his Christian names.' Linthwaite waved a hand. ‘The Dean will know, though, won't he, Arthur? The Dean's very good about that sort of thing—besides, he'll have a list. Bound to.'

‘So the dead man is a student here,' said Sloan, half-expecting the Mad Hatter to drop in at any minute to join the throng. Or perhaps, in view of the handbag, Mrs Linthwaite. If there was a Mrs Linthwaite. He was beginning to doubt it.

‘Oh, yes, Inspector.' Linthwaite looked surprised. ‘That's the whole trouble. Didn't you know?'

‘Not quite the whole trouble,' said Sloan with a touch of acerbity. ‘Suppose you start at the beginning …'

Linthwaite beamed. ‘Good, good. Primary sources are so important … I always tell my students to go back to first things.'

‘Edward,' warned Professor Maple, ‘this is not a lecture.' He glanced at the body of the dead man and then averted his eyes. ‘Nor even a demonstration.'

‘I know that,' said the stout man indignantly. ‘Well, the whole business began, Inspector, at the beginning of the academic year when a University Senate Sub-Committee decided to institute a series of inter-disciplinary lectures and meetings.'

‘Leading, it was hoped,' augmented Arthur Maple, rolling his eyes heavenwards, ‘to some cross-faculty thinking.'

Detective Constable Crosby, who had had to have cross-dressing explained to him very carefully indeed, looked totally bewildered.

‘Not, though, surely,' said Detective Inspector Sloan with some irritation, ‘Professor Linthwaite, leading to a dead man on your sofa.'

‘Oh, yes it did,' retorted Professor Linthwaite vigorously. ‘You see, these lectures were designed to bring scientists and artsmen together. The theory—decussation, it might well be called—was that nuclear physicists should know about Wittgenstein and so forth …'

‘Edward,' warned Professor Maple, ‘I think you should leave Wittgenstein out of this.'

‘Not a help?'

Arthur Maple shook his head. ‘No.'

‘Oh, all right, if you say so. I can't leave Darwin out, though, because he comes into things.'

There were those down at the Police Station, thought Sloan, who would agree with that. They had no quarrel at all with the Darwinian view of the origin of the species. Especially on Saturday evenings after a home football match.

‘He comes into the evolution side—with Lamarck, of course,' puffed Linthwaite. ‘Well, I gave the lectures myself. On Orwell and Huxley, mostly …'