Parting Breath (11 page)

But not immediately.

The room was a pigeon pair with that occupied by Colin Ellison, which he had seen the evening before – and no doubt with a hundred others, too. Crosby's search of it was not done on ‘Hunt the Thimble' lines. It was, on the contrary, done very methodically indeed. Constable Crosby would have found Edgar Allan Poe's purloined letter first time round.

He began with the bed. He had once found a shot-gun under a mattress – only just before its owner reached it, too – and now he always looked there first. There was nothing under Henry Moleyns' mattress, nor, as it happened, under the bed either. The College beds were high, narrow and well-castored for ease of making. In spite of all these things Henry Moleyns' bed had been no more than cursorily pulled together to give the semblance of tidiness. A complete search of it yielded nothing whatsoever.

Crosby then turned his attention to the built-in cupboard that served the office of a wardrobe. It was behind the hanging dresses here that ladies usually kept that which they did not want found.

Bottles, as a rule.

All that Henry Moleyns had hanging up in his wardrobe were a couple of jackets and some two or three pairs of trousers. Behind the door was a style of windcheater called a combat jacket by young men who had never known the meaning of the word. The University authorities in their wisdom did not provide dressing tables for their Malvolios. Instead there was a tallboy with a mirror beside it on the wall.

Crosby went through the drawers of this one by one. He performed the operation police-fashion by taking them out in turn, placing each one on the bed and examining both the contents and the drawer itself. The pinning of stolen property to the outside back of a drawer had been known to happen in criminal circles. It had not happened here. In fact the drawers contained nothing more than a student might have been reasonably expected to need in the way of clothes for the autumn term.

Beside the tallboy was a shoe-rack. Crosby stopped to look at Moleyns' shoes. Shoes told you such a lot about a man – how he walked, rich or poor, particular or careless and, as often as not, where he'd been. Poor but particular, decided Crosby a moment later. And the student had walked quite firmly on the centre of the sole without scuffing heel or toe. As to where he'd been, there was nothing to show that without using a microscope. Deciding to leave any hunting of the slipper to others, he turned his attention to Moleyns' desk.

Here again there was a marked likeness to Colin Ellison's possessions. Crosby mentally ticked off a list of items that it seemed no ecology student should be without – lecture notebooks, textbooks, microscope slides, course work … as far as he could tell, in Henry Moleyns' case they were all present and correct, but other and more expert eyes would also have to check on that.

The desk itself was not of the tidiest. Lecture schedules jostled with Club notices – Moleyns would seem to have been a member of the University Fencing Club and the Tarsus Debating Society – while the University Calendar itself and the Collegiate Church Kalendar (in this setting Constable Crosby unhesitatingly laid the disparity in spelling at the printer's door) took pride of place on the much-pinned wall behind the desk. Of a more personal nature there was very little, and nothing of moment on the desk itself. Then he pulled open the first of the three drawers – and became very thoughtful indeed.…

Later he moved over to the bookcase, which was also a standard fitment. There were more textbooks here, and plenty of paperbacks – which, though they could be said to be loosely about the study of nature, were also about a decidedly extra-curricular aspect of it. Whoever told them that Henry Moleyns hadn't got a steady girl friend might well have been right. It did not mean that his mind was elsewhere.

The wastepaper basket yielded a short, screwed-up note from the Reverend C. A. T. Pollock, University Chaplain, saying that he would be happy to see Henry Moleyns in his office at 7.30 P.M. on Thursday evening as requested. Crosby retrieved this and laid it carefully on one side.

He then returned to the centre of the room and stood there as he had done when he first came in, trying to recapture a feeling that he had had when he had entered the room earlier.

He did his best to explain this to Inspector Sloan afterwards. ‘A funny feeling, sir.'

‘Yes?' Funny feelings were not encouraged at Berebury Police Station.

‘I didn't know what it was at first.'

‘And what was it?' enquired Sloan with what patience he could muster. It had been a long day and it wasn't over by any means.

That someone else had been and done a search ahead of me.'

Sloan looked up alertly. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘This feeling, sir.…'

‘And what else?'

‘The top drawer of the desk.'

‘What about it?'

‘Everything in it was the wrong way round.'

‘Upside down?'

‘Back to front.'

‘Ah.…' Sloan let out a sigh. The boy was learning something after all.

‘You wouldn't sit at a desk and put everything in it facing the wrong way, would you, sir?'

‘No,' agreed Sloan thoughtfully, ‘you wouldn't.'

‘Bit if you'd emptied the drawer quickly, looking for something …'

‘And found it,' said Sloan pessimistically. It was obviously going to be this sort of a case.

‘And then been disturbed and had to put everything back quickly …'

‘You'd have been standing, of course,' said Sloan, tacitly accepting the argument, ‘working from above.'

‘In a hurry, too, sir.'

‘So if you heard someone coming you'd just stuff everything back from where you stood.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Sloan looked up. ‘What wasn't there?'

‘I don't know, sir,' said Crosby, not unreasonably.

‘We shall need to know.'

‘Yes, sir,'

‘Well done, anyway,' said Sloan absently. ‘Find anything else?'

Crosby coughed. ‘Yes, sir, there was something else.'

‘Tell me,' commanded Sloan.

The detective constable produced a small plastic bag, duly sealed and labelled. Lying in the bottom of it was a solitary seed of wheat. ‘I just happened to notice it, sir,' he said modestly.

‘Where?' barked Sloan impatiently.

‘In the bottom of his wardrobe.'

‘Trouser turn-ups, I'll be bound,' breathed Sloan, beaming. ‘The greatest gift to forensic science after finger-nails.… Here, pass me that telephone.'

‘What the devil,' demanded Superintendent Leeyes a moment or so later, ‘was Henry Moleyns doing stealing stuff from Ellison's room?'

‘We don't know yet if both ears of wheat are the same, sir,' Sloan said cautiously. ‘They only look alike to me.'

The Superintendent dismissed this as mere quibbling.

‘Moreover,' continued Sloan energetically, ‘we don't know if Henry Moleyns was the one who had stolen Ellison's things. After all, someone else might have got into both rooms.'

‘And crouched at the back of the wardrobe?' enquired Leeyes acidly. ‘Be your age, Sloan.'

‘Yes, sir.' Sloan sighed. He certainly felt it today. He'd need more vigour than this if he was going to show his son how to keep his cricket bat straight in ten years' time.

‘That wheat came from Henry Moleyns' clothes all right,' decided the Superintendent. ‘You'd better do another search of his rooms.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And his home, wherever that may be.'

‘It was in Luston, sir.' A shocked aunt was even now on her way over to Berebury from there to see Sloan. Someone was going to have to show her Henry Moleyns' body. It sounded such a simple procedure as ordained in
Jervis on Coroners
.…

‘And this man who had his things stolen yesterday.…'

‘Colin Ellison,' said Sloan, ‘and “removed” might be a better word than “stolen”, seeing as we think they've all turned up.'

‘Don't come the Theft Act with me, Sloan,' rumbled Leeyes, changing tack suddenly. ‘It's given me quite enough trouble as it is.'

‘Sorry, sir.'

‘It was meant to stop argument and all it's done is cause it.'

‘Yes, but these things of Ellison's on the fountain parapet –'

‘It's always the same with new legislation,' went on Leeyes, undiverted. The mere sighting of a hobby-horse was enough to set him off.

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Sloan – and meant it. It was only since he had been a working policeman that he had realised why it was that they had given King Alfred the extra title of ‘Great.' To be a good lawgiver you had to be really great.

‘They always think they're improving things, Sloan.'

‘Motives of the highest, sir,' said Sloan. It didn't do to argue with Superintendent Leeyes, and in any case the Superintendent's thinking on criminality hadn't really advanced since certain tablets had come down from Mount Sinai and it wasn't likely to make any progress now.

‘This Colin Ellison, then,' said Leeyes grandly, ‘you'd better give his room another going-over too.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And find out where he comes into things.'

‘That's not really clear yet,' said Sloan frankly.

‘Where is he?'

‘We're not too sure about that, either,' admitted Sloan. ‘We are looking for him.…'

‘Ah …'

‘But we haven't found him so far. He's not at the sit-in.'

‘Last seen?'

‘In the quadrangle,' said Sloan.

‘When?'

‘About seven-thirty,' said Sloan unhappily.

‘Ah,' said Leeyes – just as Sloan had known he would.

‘You don't,' ventured the Detective Inspector, ‘usually stab people in the chest for stealing your notebooks.'

‘Sloan,' said Leeyes irately, ‘I won't have you coming that “it can't be him because it's too easy” line with me.'

‘I'm not, sir.'

‘Because,' said the Superintendent, totally unheeding, ‘if the villain wasn't nearly always the most obvious person in sight this new generation of constables would never even know which collar to feel.'

‘No, sir.'

‘If Ellison's gone to earth – and if that's not a guilty action I don't know what is – you'd better find him quickly.'

‘Yes, sir.' Sloan coughed. ‘There was something else, sir.'

He told the Superintendent about Crosby's theory that someone else had searched Moleyns' rooms before him.

‘And not for stray ears of wheat either, I take it?' concluded Leeyes.

‘No, sir. The desk.' He explained about the papers in the drawer.

‘And Crosby's quite sure it wasn't just Moleyns putting the contents back wrongly himself?'

‘He took the trouble to do it with gloves on if he did,' said Sloan succinctly. There was one thing that could be said about Crosby. There was no one to touch him with a can of Aluminium No. 1 Finger-print Powder. ‘And all we know about whoever it was is that they had the regulation number of fingers and thumbs.'

‘Anything else there?' enquired Leeyes.

‘Just the note from the Chaplain. We knew Moleyns had made an appointment to see him because Mr Pollock told us.'

‘What about?'

‘That we don't know,' said Sloan, ‘and neither does the Chaplain. It could have been about almost anything, I suppose.…'

‘Saw one once myself,' said Leeyes unexpectedly.

‘Sir?'

‘Before we went ashore at Walcheren in '44. The Brigadier seemed to think we should.' He grunted. ‘In case we had anything to declare to St Peter, I suppose. You know what soldiers are.'

‘Yes, sir.' And he did, too.

‘Told him I was a copper,' said Leeyes reflectively, ‘and that shut him up.'

‘It does most people,' said Sloan. It went with the job, did that. It wasn't only the hours that were unsocial. Even if you said you were a copper's wife most people fell silent – or so his own wife, Margaret, told him. He wondered how a copper's wife's son would get on.…'

Leeyes was still talking: ‘… and then I said that I believed in law and order and the enemy didn't and as far as I was concerned that was that.'

Sloan felt a pang of sympathy for some anonymous cleric. A faith as simple as the Superintendent's must have been refreshing but hardly textbook.

‘He was an Army Chaplain, of course, Sloan.'

‘Naturally,' said Sloan hastily.

‘All the same, you'd better find out what the deceased wanted to see the University Chaplain about, Sloan, hadn't you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Now, if Hamlet had only got things straight in his own mind right at the very beginning …'

Sloan rang off as soon as he decently could.

The little group of dons that had foregathered in the Combination Room at Tarsus College had now moved into the Hall and taken their places at High Table. Their numbers did not compare with those present on the previous Tuesday evening, the first night of term – there were too many absentees for that. The Master of Tarsus, Kenneth Lorimer, was with the Vice-Chancellor: the news about Henry Moleyns and the sit-in had seriously up-staged his own recitation, rehearsed in the train, of how he had got the University Grants Committee round to his way of thinking, not easily, mind you, but after a struggle.…

Basil Willacy was at the sit-in, where he was – much to his annoyance – totally eclipsed by Professor Timothy Teed, who was there, too, and who for some reason best known to himself had adopted the rig-out favoured by his late Majesty King Edward the Seventh when out for a day's shooting at Sandringham. John Hardiman, the Bursar, hadn't felt like eating after seeing Henry Moleyns and – in between finding somewhere for what Detective Inspector Sloan bluntly called a murder headquarters and he himself still preferred to think of as an office – was fortifying himself with eggnog instead in his room. Hilda Linaker hadn't appeared either.