Parting Breath (7 page)

Blood.

She stumbled to her feet and ran and ran.

5 Feint

‘Almstone Admin., I suppose,' said Detective Inspector Sloan unenthusiastically when the call from the University came through to the Police Station. He – and most of the rest of the modest local force there – had been on stand-by duty all day long.

‘No,' snapped Superintendent Leeyes. ‘Tarsus College.'

‘Not the sit-in, then?' said Sloan, surprised.

‘Not the sit-in,' came back Leeyes smartly. ‘A dead man in the quadrangle.'

Sloan looked up. This was quite different. ‘Identified?'

‘Oh, yes, they know who he is all right.' Leeyes pulled the message pad nearer. ‘No trouble there.…'

‘That's something, I suppose,' murmured Sloan, wondering exactly where the trouble was.

‘His name is Moleyns,' continued Leeyes. ‘Henry Moleyns.'

‘One of them?'

‘He's a student, all right,' grunted Leeyes. ‘No doubt about that. They say he's a second-year undergraduate at Tarsus College reading ecology, whatever that might be when it's at home.'

‘Nature study, sir.'

‘Really?' Leeyes lifted his bushy eyebrows. ‘Well, it hasn't done him any good.'

‘What happened to him, then?'

The Superintendent stirred irritably. ‘I don't know, Sloan. That's what you'll have to find out. All I know is that some girl or other found him dying in this quadrangle that they've got at Tarsus.'

‘I see, sir.'

‘And that you'd better get over there quickly.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Moreover,' added Leeyes, compounding his difficulties, ‘you can't have Sergeant Gelven because he's still over at Easterbrook on that fraud job that cropped up this morning. You'll have to make do with Crosby, I'm afraid.…'

It was Alfred Palfreyman, Head Porter of Almstone College, who took the action destined to be of the greatest immediate help to the police.

In the early part of the day he had maintained a watch on the sit-in without doing anything – just as all those years ago he had kept a close surveillance on Mallamby Ridge before the battle.

Even Mr Basil Willacy's much-heralded and nicely calculated arrival to encourage the students with a few well-chosen words had provoked the Head Porter no further than to a quick rolling of the eyeballs and a muttered reference to overgrown schoolboys. There had been a subaltern, he remembered, in the East Calleshires just like young Mr. Willacy – about as green as they came. At least, the subaltern had been green until the storming of Mallamby Ridge. Not after. Unfortunately Mr Willacy hadn't met a battle yet, but in Alfred Palfreyman's opinion it was exactly what he needed.

Michael Challoner, noted the Head Porter, had come and gone several times in the course of the morning, but even Alfred Palfreyman had not guessed where the students' deplorable old van had been until he saw Dr Wheatley being bundled out at the entrance and practically frog-marched into Almstone.

Mrs Wheatley had taken the news calmly enough. ‘He may even be better there, Palfreyman, than fretting here.'

‘Yes, madam, but his lunch –'

‘I don't think,' said the Dean's wife, ‘that missing his luncheon will do him too much harm. Or,' she added thoughtfully, ‘his dinner.'

‘No, madam.'

‘But, Palfreyman …'

‘Madam?'

‘You'll see that they don't actually hurt him, won't you?'

‘I don't think they'll do that …'

And as far as the Head Porter could make out they hadn't. From time to time he had circled the building and heard nothing but speeches, and one thing that being in the Army had taught him was that speeches hurt nobody. All that he had been able to see through the empty window frames was a sea of hands and a placard which read
JOIN US
.

He had seen to it, though, that no one at all had gone in or out of the Almstone administration block without his knowing. And as soon as he heard about Henry Moleyns he saw to it that not only did no one enter Almstone without his knowing but physically no one left the building at all.

‘Those locks, Bert,' he said to his assistant, ‘that we took off last night …'

Bert opened a locker. ‘They're over here.'

‘Get 'em back on double quick, and take the keys with you.'

‘Lock them in, do you mean?'

‘I do,' said the old soldier. ‘Then at least we'll know where some of them are. That boy Moleyns had blood on his chest and it didn't get there on its own.'

Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan (known as Christopher Dennis to his wife and parents, and ‘Seedy' to his friends and colleagues in the force) hadn't got as far as examining Henry Moleyn's chest yet. Up until now he and Detective Constable Crosby had only reached the Porter's Lodge of Tarsus College.

The harassed Bursar, John Hardiman, met the two policemen there, anxious that he had done all the right things.

‘We haven't let anyone near him,' he said, ‘and Higgins here' – he indicated the Tarsus College porter – ‘has a note of everyone who has been in and out this evening.'

‘Good.'

‘He closed the main gate at once.'

‘Excellent,' said Sloan. There would, he knew, be other exits and entrances – there always were – but finding them could wait awhile.

John Hardiman cleared his throat. ‘The Chaplain is with, er, Moleyns now seeing that, er, everything is, er, all right.'

Sloan took this euphemism at its face value and nodded.

‘We haven't touched anything, of course.' John Hardiman might have had a file in his hand marked ‘Action to Be Taken by College Bursars on the Discovery of a Dead Body.' Sloan knew that the Civil Service issued one on ‘Bombs and Threats of Bombs.'

‘Good,' said Sloan warmly.

He supposed that – figuratively speaking – bodies fell into the College Bursar's lap on much the same principle that the police collected a lot of their less happy jobs. If it wasn't anyone else's duty, then it was theirs. Sloan had been told that in the Civil Service, by some quirk of official irony, dealing with bombs came under the Accommodations Officer.

Since Samuel Pepys, perhaps.

Or even Guy Fawkes.

You never knew with traditions.

‘And,' continued the Bursar, oblivious of Sloan's train of thought, ‘I've sent Miss Hellewell over to Matron's room. I know you'll want to see her as soon as possible but she was very distressed.'

‘Naturally,' said Sloan, wondering what was possibly left to come after this. Not a lot, he hoped. Crosby was getting visibly restive already.

‘I have,' said Hardiman predictably, ‘also informed the Master of Tarsus.'

‘Quite,' said Sloan, concealing his own impatience as best he could. Death took people in different ways. It had obviously taken the Bursar by surprise because he was still trying to treat it as an administrative failure. Unless this was the way Bursars saw everything.

‘The Master,' continued the Bursar solemnly, ‘was dining with the Vice-Chancellor.'

Crosby could keep silent no longer. ‘That lets him out nicely, then, doesn't it?' he remarked.

John Hardiman turned courteously to the detective constable. ‘I beg your pardon.…'

‘If there's been any funny business,' amplified Crosby with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, ‘then that puts the Master in the clear, doesn't it?'

This, instead of clarifying matters, clearly confused the Bursar. His frown deepened. ‘I don't quite follow.…'

‘Of course,' added the detective constable conscientiously, ‘that would only be if the Vice-Chancellor is reliable.…'

The Bursar swallowed preparatory to speech of a more definite kind; while Sloan charitably decided that they went too far at the Police Training School. Natural suspicion – even a simple open-mindedness about suspects – was one thing, but you didn't include Caesar's wife: not to begin with, anyway.…

‘If,' said the Detective Inspector hastily into the silence, ‘we might see the deceased as soon as possible.…'

He managed not to murmur under his breath as well, ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.…' Bricks seemed to be dropped every time the insouciant constable was taken anywhere and the University was no exception. How Crosby got on when he was allowed out on his own nobody at the Police Station cared to think. They just tried not to let it happen too often, that was all.

John Hardiman turned back to Sloan at once and said rather abruptly, ‘Certainly. Follow me.'

The two policemen fell in behind him, Sloan reflecting that the fundamental and time-honoured differences between Town and Gown weren't going to be anything compared with those between Gown and … Gown and … Gown and Cape … no, that wasn't right.… Gown and … Gown and Truncheon.

‘It's not far,' the Bursar was saying. ‘Through here and into the main quadrangle and down this side on the left and then right. He's half-way down on that side.'

So he was.

Henry Moleyns was lying exactly where the girl Bridget Hellewell had left him – in an ungainly heap on the cold stone of the cloister floor, near the base of the pillar to which he had clung in his last moments. As they approached him a tall figure standing by in the shadows moved forward to greet them.

‘This is Mr Pollock, the Chaplain,' said John Hardiman in suitably muted tones. ‘We tried to get our doctor, too, but he was out.'

‘They always are,' said Sloan, nodding a greeting. His own doctor hadn't better be, though, not if – when – Margaret, his wife, needed him.…

He brought his mind back to where he was and peered forward, suppressing an irreverent desire to quote some cynic of the past whose
memorabile dictum
had been ‘After death, the doctor.' Instead he pulled out a really powerful torch and shone it on the body on the floor. The cold light served only to emphasise the waxen appearance of the dead face. He shifted the beam about until he had had a good look at the immediate scene.

At that moment Sloan became aware of noises off.

‘I can hear music,' announced Crosby upon the instant.

‘The University Madrigal Club,' said the Bursar.

‘I think it's “Take Time While Time Doth Last,”' said the Chaplain, cocking his head slightly, glad to be looking away. ‘By John Farmer. For four voices. An old favourite.'

‘They meet in there,' said the Bursar, indicating a door half-way down the quadrangle in the direction of the sound.

‘When?' enquired the Detective Inspector, wondering if many clergymen came up actually unmusical.

‘Thursday evenings,' said John Hardiman.

‘When on Thursday evenings?' Patiently.

‘Oh … oh, I see … Quite … quite …' The Bursar's voice trailed away. ‘Seven-thirty I think; I could check.'

‘Please do,' rejoined Sloan crisply. ‘And would you find out if Henry Moleyns was a member of the Madrigal Club.' He suppressed a stirring of pity for the dead student, who was now a member of quite a different club.…'

The Chaplain shook his head. ‘He wasn't on his way there, Inspector, if that's what you mean. I can tell you where he was going. He was coming to see me.'

‘Oh?'

‘He left me a note asking for an appointment. I said I'd see him at half past seven this evening.'

‘Said?'

‘Well, no. Not exactly said literally, in that sense, seeing that you put it that way. Actually I put a note in his pigeonhole at the lodge.'

‘I see.'

‘So I was expecting him at my office at seven-thirty. I was waiting there for him when … when …'

‘Quite so.' Sloan nodded and continued to swing his torch about. There were no obvious signs of Henry Moleyns' having been involved in a struggle with anyone and what Sloan could see of his clothing was undisturbed. He let the torchlight dwell on the dead boy's fingers. There was no visible evidence of bruising or bleeding there.

‘Perhaps he was just taken ill,' suggested the Chaplain, looking unhappily about him. This was a far cry from dialetics over coffee.

Crosby, torch in hand, dashed his sentiment to the dust in an instant. ‘Could you just look this way a moment, sir, please?' he said.

Sloan swung his torch round in a wide arc until it shone where the constable was pointing. There was a patch of something on the stone floor of the quadrangle that could only be blood.

‘Not a heart attack, then,' faltered the Bursar, his last chance of considering the matter routine quite gone.

‘More like an attack on the heart,' said Detective Inspector Sloan soberly.

Several hundred undergraduate members of the University of Calleshire, each of whom had vociferously applauded speakers who had declared that neither wild horses nor armed force nor even sweet reason – least of all, sweet reason – would persuade them to leave the Almstone administration block until Malcolm Humbert had been reinstated
in statu pupillari
, took a totally illogical view of Alfred Palfreyman's locking them in there.

This, it seemed, interfered with their right to leave if they wanted to, which was different.

‘Is it?' said the Head Porter, deftly screwing one of the outer locks back into place.

‘It is,' said an Arts man with a Che Guevara moustache who happened to be nearest to the door.

‘But you don't want to leave, do you?' countered Palfreyman.

‘That's got nothing to do with our right to go if we wanted to.'

Palfreyman, who thought that it had everything to do with it, gave the last screw a final twist. ‘There we are.'

‘It is our fundamental freedom to leave if we wish,' continued the Che Guevara moustache, ‘that makes the sit-in significant.'

Alfred Palfreyman, who had seen a great many fundamental freedoms come to an untimely end on Mallamby Ridge in 1944, was unimpressed. ‘Believe you me, young man, what it signifies don't bear thinking about and I try not to think about it.'