Читать книгу A Charlie Salter Omnibus - Eric Wright - Страница 9

The following morning Salter phoned the chairman of the English Department at Douglas College and arranged for some interviews. He had often seen the college as he walked downtown from his office, and he had a vague impression of two or three converted warehouses, several shiny glass buildings, and a fountain. He established that the English Department was in one of the glass boxes, and set off from his office with plenty of time to walk. He wanted to have a look at the sleazy section of Yonge Street (his favourite stretch) to see what might be ‘cleaned up’ for the visiting Mayor of Amsterdam. What am I supposed to do, he wondered, as he viewed the morning sprinkling of bums, homeless adolescents and strained-looking gays who called this strip home. Should I get a couple of hundred off-duty cops to walk their wives up and down, like good Toronto burghers? What the hell does ‘clean up’ mean? It would be easy enough to avoid the issue and drive the Mayor round the Yorkville area where, he had read in the paper, Toronto’s beautiful people gathered to be looked at, but the Mayor had specifically asked to see Yonge Street because it was the only street he had heard of. Salter made a mental note to recommend that the Mayor be taken through at the lunch-hour when the street would be crowded with office workers.

The buildings of Douglas College appeared earlier than he had expected, now that he was looking for them, and Salter became aware that the College was much larger than he had thought. It was a quiet time of the academic year, between examinations and convocation, and there was only a handful of students about. The first three he asked had no idea where the English Department was, but finally he stopped one who directed him to the right building. Salter struggled through a pair of glass doors apparently designed to guard the entrance to a tomb, and found himself in the typical lobby of an academic building at the end of term. Every wall was covered with posters advertising last week’s concerts, lectures, dances and the monthly meetings of the Tae Kwon Do club. It looked like the day after the Boxing Day sale.

At one side of the lobby a security guard was talking to a small plastic box held up to his mouth. Salter had to wait for him to finish his chat, evidently with a colleague at another desk somewhere, about the need to make sure someone called Wong did his share of the work. ‘I said to Teperman last week, how come Wong’s always on days, and me and Eddie do nights? He said, Wong’s wife is up the spout, he said. He’s gotta stay home nights. I said, How do you know my old lady ain’t up the spout, too? Or Eddie’s. You know what he said? He said, You ain’t married, he said. I said, You don’t have to be married, not to get someone up the spout, I said. It’s all right to live common-law these days. He said, Are’ you? I said, No, but I could be couldn’t I? You never asked me, but you believe anything that fucking Wong tells you. He does, Eddie. Sure. Anything Wong wants, and there’s you and me left sucking the hind tit. You know?’ Listening to this, Salter wondered again at the thousands of security guards that had sprung up in Toronto in the last ten years. Was there a job for him in the business if he ever got totally fed up with errand work? Eventually the guard noticed him, and broke off from Eddie long enough to direct him to an elevator. He rode up to the fourth floor and stepped out into an empty corridor. More notice-boards, but this time most of the announcements were about literary events and plays that had taken place during the term. One small typed-notice advertised a ‘complete set of texts for English 022 for sale, never been opened’. Another huge poster, printed black on a grey background said, without explanation, ‘THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN CHANGED. IT IS NOW THE 28TH.’ Underneath, in pencil, someone had written, ‘Somehow, I still feel uneasy.’

Salter looked along the corridors which led away from the elevator at right-angles, one to the left and one straight ahead, wondering which route to take. Both looked as though they had been trashed during the night. Piles of dirty paper lay everywhere, concentrated in heaps around the office doors, but strewn along the walls as well. Some of it had been roughly gathered into cardboard boxes stacked side by side, evidently a first attempt at a clean-up. Salter’s eyes cleared, and he recognized the papers as English essays, waiting to be picked up by the students, but his initial impression, that he had stumbled into an alleyway where the department threw its garbage, remained.

He chose the corridor to the left, and walked along it reading the names on the doors. As he turned the corner he almost stumbled over a girl seated at a desk, typing, and he asked directions to the chairman’s office. She pointed to a corner office, the only one Salter had seen so far with the door open. There a secretary led him to the door of an inner office which opened as they approached it, and a large smiling man waved him in.

Hector Browne, the chairman of the English Department at Douglas College, was a fat dandy. Salter guessed his weight at two hundred and ten pounds, but there was nothing of the slob about him. His blue suede jacket, grey flannel trousers, and brilliant dark loafers were immaculate, and the toffee-coloured shirt made of some kind of thick linen, worn open at the neck, completed the impression of a carefully planned appearance. Salter found the total effect very pleasant, like stepping into a well-kept drawing-room. Because the building was new, Browne’s office was the usual concrete and glass cube, but Browne had done his best to warm it up with some blown-up photographs of portraits that looked slightly familiar.

The chairman led him to a settee and sat down with him. ‘It’s about Summers, of course, Inspector?’ he offered.

‘Yes. Just some enquiries about what he was doing in Montreal, and who was with him.’

‘It’s shaken us up here, I can tell you. I wasn’t close to David myself, but no man is an island, is he? Interesting how the clichés come into their own on the big occasions, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Salter said, ‘If you weren’t close to him — Professor? . . . Mister? . . . What should I call you . . . Chairman?’

‘No, no, not “Chairman”. It sounds like the head of the party, doesn’t it? “Mister” is fine. I am a professor, but so is everyone else around here, so we don’t use the title much except on passports and that sort of thing. It’s a great help in getting through the Luxembourg Customs. For hotel reservations, though, “Doctor” is better, if you are a doctor, as Stephen Leacock pointed out. Ideally, of course, one should have an arresting name—like Rockefeller.’

‘Summers was a professor?’

‘We all are, as I said. Do you know anything about Douglas College, Inspector?’

‘Nothing, sir. Perhaps you could fill me in.’

Browne leaned back and put the tips of his fingers together, parodying the gesture. He began in a lecturing style, with enough exaggeration to show he was not to be taken too seriously. As he talked, though, it was evident that, rehearsed as he was, he believed what he was saying.

‘Douglas College,’ he said, ‘was set up in the ‘sixties in response to the explosion in the demand for higher education, a demand which the voters, as the politicians read them, wanted satisfied. For a brief period, unique in Ontario history—in my time, anyway—education was politically fashionable. It was a period when Ontario politicians anxious for higher office sought the Education portfolio as having a very high profile, one of the largest budgets and plenty of opportunity for headlines. During this time the curriculum of the secondary schools was entirely remade—destroyed, some would say—as the trendy word went out that schools should no longer teach subjects, but students. Schools became people-oriented. Do you have children, Inspector?’

‘I have two boys, Mr Browne, but they go to a private school.’

‘A cop-out, if I may make a play on words, Inspector. You’ve never had to deal with the system. However, let me go on. All the subjects were revamped: in English, Creative Writing replaced the study of grammar; in the universities, the explosion in the student population coincided with the activist movement and the students demanded the right to study what they liked. This was instantly granted, as were all other student demands. But back to numbers. To satisfy the hordes of potential voters demanding access to higher education, or further education as it was more and more called, dozens of new colleges and quasi-colleges were created, granting new kinds of degrees, diplomas and certificates in a variety of new ‘disciplines’, such as Photographic Arts, Horsemanship, and Gardening. The older universities welcomed these new institutions at first. As one professor at our rival across the street—’ Browne pointed an elaborate finger in the direction he meant ‘—said to me at the time I took this job, “We are hoping you will take all the students we don’t want.” But inevitably the baby boom died down and all of the institutions of further education, new and old, started scrambling for students. The older institutions got frightened, for many of the students of the next generation actually chose us even though they would have been welcome across the street. The establishment rushed to protect itself. First, they lowered their entrance standards, though they will deny this violently, then they organized to prevent the upstarts from offering any further competition with their own programmes. But it was too late. In the struggle that followed seme cf the new institutions did suffer, but most survived and a few prospered. Their enrolment increased, against the trend, and in some areas they became established as the equal of their older sister institutions. They became, in a word, respectable.

‘Douglas College—to come to my subject —is an outstanding example. We were among the first of the new colleges, and we were blessed by an ambitious president, a downtown location, and enough time to get our feet under the table before anyone noticed. We now have ten thousand students, some programmes which take only one of four qualified applicants, our own degrees, a faculty club, and an alumni association. And we have professors with tenure, of whom David Summers was one.’

Browne was finished. Salter felt like clapping, but he had work to do. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Now about Professor Summers. If you weren’t close to him, who was?’

Browne threw all his limbs into the air and arranged himself in thought. ‘Good question. Pollock, of course. After that, two of the people he was in Montreal with—Carrier and Usher, and, oh yes, Marika, Marika Tils. They were all together the evening before.’

‘And his enemies?’

‘No one who would kill him, Inspector, Just academic squabbles.’

‘I didn’t expect you to give me the name of the killer, Professor—sorry, Mister—Browne. But an enemy might tell me something a friend would not see.’

‘You can tell a man by his friends, but his enemies can save you the trouble, eh, Inspector? There are a few people who resented David. I didn’t warm to him myself, although lately he’s been more relaxed, more fun to be with.’

‘Does anyone detest him?’

‘This conversation is entirely confidential? Then Dunkley is your man. He was in Montreal, too. They couldn’t bear each other. There was an ancient coolness between them, so that you would never put them on the same committee. They got on each others tits.’ Browne leaned forward, smiling roundly, as he descended into argot.

‘This ancient coolness. What was it about?’

‘It started before my time. I’ve been here ten years, but Summers and Dunkley and several others go back twenty. Back then, those two were on opposite sides of the fence on some issue and they never forgave each other. I’ve heard it talked of often enough but I’ve never got to the bottom of it. I doubt if anyone could tell you now what happened, if anything did. It’s like a neighbour thing that turns into a feud. So we kept them apart and the two of them never mentioned each other, even to their cronies. It was as if they knew some dreadful secret that kept them apart while it linked them in silent bondage, if you know what I mean. Like a theme for a Conrad story.’ Browne pointed to one of the huge portraits, that of a bearded, middle-aged man.

‘Conrad?’

‘Joseph Conrad, the novelist, Inspector. That’s his picture.’

‘I know who Joseph Conrad is, Mr Browne. I meant which Conrad story. I’ve read some.’ One, anyway, about someone on a boat.

‘Have you? Not too many, I hope. They have a very bad effect. No. I meant it was like a Conrad story. One thought of Mallow and Kurtz, or “The Secret Sharer”— one of those “he - and - I - shared - a - knowledge - that -was - never - to - be - divulged - between - us” themes.’

‘I see. A story Conrad never wrote.’

‘No, no. The one he wrote interminably. Please don’t take me too literally. I doubt the presence of a ghastly secret. One just thinks in these ways after years of trying to find useful analogies for first-year students.’

The phone rang and Browne answered it. ‘Yes, my dear. I hadn’t forgotten. Yes, my dear. I’ll buy one at the Cakemaster.’ He put the phone down. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘Reminding me that it is my daughter’s birthday. I have to buy the cake. You thought I was a bachelor? I wallow in uxorious delight, Inspector. I have six daughters, one better than Mr Bennet. You assumed I was a bachelor because I still polish my shoes? It is possible to maintain one’s standards within the nuptial bonds, you know. Conrad taught me that.’ Browne was having a wonderful time.

Salter said, ‘Nothing surprises me any more, Mr Browne. See? Another cliché. Now, where can I find these people? Carrier or Usher first, I think.’

‘They are waiting for you. I’ve arranged interviews with everyone who was with David in Montreal. They are upset, but you are used to that I expect. Marika is in misery.’

‘And his buddy,—Hillock?’

‘Pollock. He’s here, too.’ Browne stood up with a little jump and started to bustle. ‘Now I can’t ask you for lunch because I always bring my own.’

‘Diet, sir?’ Salter asked rudely, curious to know what kept this shining beauty in trim.

‘Wrong again. I like myself the way I am. So does my wife. See?’ He opened the brown paper bag. Inside were four jelly doughnuts and a pint of chocolate milk. ‘I pick them up on the way to work and I look forward to them all morning. I’m in my office all the time if you need me.’

‘Will you be at the funeral?’

‘Yes. Will you be there?’

‘I expect so, sir. The killer always turns up, doesn’t he? I read that somewhere.’

‘Ha, ha, ha. I get it. Another cliché.’

‘Would you keep our conversation confidential, sir? And try to stop any speculation around the office.’

‘Mum’s the word, Inspector. Good luck.’ He looked forlorn for a moment. ‘I hope it turns out to be a passing thug and not someone we know.’ His voice was quavering slightly. Through the sparkle, Browne was keeping the horror at bay.

‘It usually does, sir,’ Salter said, resisting a mild impulse to give Browne a pat. ‘Goodbye.’

Carrier was next. He sat behind his desk without speaking as Salter sat down in a chair opposite him. A tidy man in his early forties with fair, thinning hair, he was wearing a neat checked sports shirt and khaki trousers. He had his own teapot and cup beside him on a little table, and a packet of Peek Frean’s biscuits. On the wall, three posters under glass gave the appearance of a matched set, although their subjects didn’t seem connected as far as Salter could see. One was a portrait of a delicate young man with lace around his wrists, probably Shelley or someone; the second was a reproduction of a lot of writing—a page from the oldest book in the world? The third picture looked familiar, being an advertisement of an art gallery exhibit with a reproduction of a picture of a red checked tablecloth. What luck, Salter thought; as he recognized the only Canadian painting he had ever looked at closely. The original belonged to some cultured friends of his wife, and Salter had frequently studied it and failed to find any reason for its artistic and (huge) monetary worth. He introduced himself and pointed to the poster.

‘Have you followed de Niverville’s career, Dr Carrier?’ he asked, one connoisseur to another.

‘Yes,’ Carrier said.

‘Interesting painter,’ Salter said, trying to remember a single fact about him.

‘Yes,’ Carrier said.

So much for art, the key that opens all doors, thought Salter. ‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘I want to ask you a few questions about Professor Summers. First, I’d like you to tell me what happened when you were all together on Thursday. You were with Professor Summers for dinner, I think. Who else was there?’

‘Usher, Dunkley, Marika Tils and I. That’s all. Nothing happened. We just had dinner.’

‘Wasn’t it unusual, Professor, for Summers and Dunkley to be having dinner together?’

‘Yes.’

There was a long pause.

‘Well?’ Salter’ asked.

‘Yes, it was unusual.’

‘Then why were they together?’

‘We all were.’

‘So you say. But normally Dunkley and Summers avoided each other.’

‘Yes.’

‘But not this time.’

‘No.’

Jesus Christ. ‘Mr Carrier. I’m trying to find out who killed a man. I’d be glad of any help. Could you tell me, please, why, on this particular night these two old enemies were together?’

‘Summers invited him along with the rest of us.’

‘Ah. Why?’ Could you perhaps offer an interpretation? Rack your trained, scholarly brain, Salter thought.

‘He said that tonight was his night. He said the gods were smiling on him. So he insisted we all go out to dinner. Including Dunkley.’

‘What did he mean by “The gods were smiling”?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He never said?’

‘No. He just seemed very happy.’

‘I see. He just said, “The gods are smiling; this is on me”?’

‘I don’t remember exactly what he said. We were all having a drink in a bar after the last paper.’

‘All of you, including Dunkley?’

‘Yes. He had just read a paper.’

‘Read a paper?’

‘Yes. On favourite epithets in John Clare’s poetry.’

‘I see. Read it to other people, you mean. Lectured, like.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then Summers issued his invitation.’

‘Yes.’

‘And no one asked what it was all about?’

‘Oh yes. We all asked him. But he wouldn’t tell us. He said he would tell us later.’

‘A good dinner?’ Salter knew the answer but was curious to know how long it would take him to get this bugger to tell it.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Did he give you a good dinner?’ That seem clear, sir?

‘Yes. We went to the Maison Victor Hugo. I can’t remember what I had but it was very good.’

‘Did you notice the bill?’

‘Yes.’

In a minute, thought Salter, I am going to take this loquacious bastard back to the office and stick the Oldest Sergeant on the Force on to him. Gatenby would enjoy asking him the four hundred niggling questions he calls interrogation, and with this one it might work. Aloud he said, ‘How much was it?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

‘Roughly. Give me a round figure.’

‘About a hundred and thirty dollars. Plus the tip, of course.’

‘Cash or card?’ asked Salter, who had already seen the charge slip.

‘He used a Visa card.’

‘And then what?’

‘After a while we went back to our rooms.’

‘Where did you go first?’

‘Marika went back to her hotel right away. About nine o’clock. Then we walked about a bit. Then Summers left.

Then the three of us went for one more drink. Then we walked to the hotel.’

‘You were all staying at the same hotel?’

‘Yes. The Hotel Esmeralda.’

‘But Summers was staying at the Hotel Plaza del Oro or some such name?’

‘Yes. But the rest of us were at the Esmeralda.’

‘And you all went back to bed.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t see or hear anything of each other, until breakfast the next morning?’

‘I saw Dunkley, of course.’

‘Why, “of course”?’

‘We shared a room.’

‘I see. That’s wonderful. You two have alibis.’

‘I think that is a ridiculous and extremely unpleasant remark, Inspector,’ Carrier said, flaring up in a temper.

‘True, though, isn’t it? And Usher?’

‘He shared a room with a friend of his from another university.’

‘And Miss Tils?’

‘She was on her own.’

‘I see. Well, that seems to be everything you know, doesn’t it? One or two more points. Were you all drunk?’

‘Drunk?’

‘Smashed. Loaded. Pissed. I don’t know the academic term.’

‘We had a lot of wine. But I wasn’t drunk.’ Carrier was still simmering.

‘Who was?’

‘Summers drank a lot more than the rest of us. He was stumbling a little.’

‘Finally, then, you know of no reason why Summers should have been celebrating?’

‘I had the impression that more than one thing was contributing to his state. “Everything’s coming up roses” was what he said once.’

‘Might there have been a woman involved?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Could he have been in love, say?’

‘I don’t see why that should have made him buy us all dinner.’

Salter sighed. ‘Nor do I. But middle-aged men, men of our age, Professor, do funny things, I hear. Thank you. Don’t go out of town without telling me, will you? And don’t talk about this case to anyone, especially the people you were with on Friday night.’

‘Am I under suspicion, Inspector?’

‘At this stage, Professor, we try to keep an open mind.

Salter walked down the corridor until he found Usher’s office, wondering if all the interviewees would be as tight’ arsed. His initial sight of Usher cheered him up. The door was opened by a swarthy little man so covered in hair that only his forehead and nose showed through.

‘Come in, come in, Inspector. Here we go. Sit down here. Cup of tea? If this was Oxford we could have sherry, but here we have to make do.’

Usher was a shouter. His voice was as noisy as a television set tuned for the deaf. His accent was English working class, not quite cockney, for all his aitches were stressed heavily, but otherwise it was classically what the English call ‘common’. As he made Salter comfortable, he moved about the office in giant loping strides that kept him close to the ground; he put a chair in place, settled an ashtray, cleared a space for Salter to write on, and finally seated himself behind his desk, all the while shouting and smiling through his beard, an enormous crescent of yellow teeth splitting his face like a half-moon.

‘You all right now, Inspector? That sun bother you? Move your chair a bit over there. Go on. That’s it. You want something to write on? Take my statement? Har, har. No. You all right, really? Off we go, then.’

When he had subsided, Salter asked, ‘Professor Usher?’

‘Yes, that’s right. The name’s on the door. Smoke? Don’t mind me. I don’t. My kids won’t let me. Har, har. Terrible’n’t? I don’t mind if you do, though. It won’t come this way. No. I suppose you chaps are givin’ it up like everybody else. Funny how it’s changed. I used to smoke forty a day once.’

Usher did a comic cough, and Salter shot through the tiny gap. ‘I wonder if you would corroborate your colleagues’ story of the events of Friday night.’

‘Glad to. Glad to. We met in the bar about half past five, had a drink and left about a quarter past six. P’raps twenty past. No. I’m tellin’ a lie. It was half past six ‘cause they were closing the bar up, you see.’

‘I’ve got the main story, I think,’ Salter shouted. ‘Just one or two details. First of all, would you say Summers was drunk?’

‘Drunk as a fart, Inspector. I’ve seen some people lap it up, but him! I thought we’d have to put him to bed. You think that’s what did it? Someone saw him, followed him home? Seems likely, doesn’t it? Rotten, really. He was having such a good time, too. I must say . . .’

Salter attacked again. ‘Why?’ he bellowed. ‘Why was he having such a good time. Did he say?’

‘No. He went on all night about the gods smilin’, but he never told us why.’

‘After he left you, you and Dunkley and Carrier stayed in the area for a while and had a few more drinks, right?’

‘Old Carrier tell you that? You could call it that. Not quite true, though. He’s a bit shy, is Carrier. No, we went back to one place and had a nightcap, if you like. More of an eye-opener, really.’ Usher imitated a man looking through binoculars, and waited to be asked what he was up to. Salter waited in turn. Usher continued.

‘Place called “Les Jardins du Paradis” — French place. More like the Black Hole.’

‘A bar?’

‘Yerss. A bar. With gels. Strippers. Continuous live performance. Take it off, take it off, all the customers cried, and they did, right on the table.’ Usher roared with laughter.

‘You went back to this place. You had already gone there with Summers.’

‘Yerss. Soon as Marika went home, old Dave started talking about finding the action. So he asked a policeman—that’s what you do in Montreal—and he told us about these two bars. One of them wasn’t much, but this second one, the Jardins place, was full of lovely crumpet. We had a real basinful.’

‘A basinful wasn’t enough, though. After Summers left, you went back.’

‘That’s right. Soldiers on leave, we were.’

‘Then you all went back to the hotel. Did you stay in your room that night? I have to ask that.’

‘ ’Course you do. No. I didn’t sneak out and do in old Dave. You can check up with my mate from New Brunswick, if you like. He was in the room when I got back and we were up half the night, talking.’

‘You stayed with a friend from New Brunswick?’

‘That’s right, Inspector. That’s the nice thing about these conferences. You get a chance to meet old pals.’

‘Is that the main purpose, Professor?’

‘Now, now, now, Inspector. Don’t you start. A little conference once a year is the only perks we get. No. It’s not the main purpose. The main purpose is to refresh us academically.’ Usher gave a low-comedy wink. ‘But it’s one of the nice things about them. We all move around a bit in this game, first in graduate school, then usually a couple of jobs while we’re finishing the thesis, and these conferences bring together everybody you’ve met. Actually it is a little outing for us. You see a different place every year. Last year we all went to Moncton—smashing lobsters there—and the year before that was Saskatoon. Only a couple of us went there.’ Usher roared with laughter. ‘Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,’ he said derisively. ‘The year before that it was Edmonton. That turned out all right because of the Hot Springs at Jasper. Lovely, they are. Next year we go to Halifax. There will be a line-up for that one, I can tell you. The maritimes conferences are always popular. Except Newfoundland.’

‘Kind of a convention, is it? Like the Kiwanis?’

‘Now you’re being a bit sarcastic, I can tell. Still, fair’s fair. We do some work, of course, but the main thing is getting away in a gang.’

‘And is that how you go? All of you, in a gang?’

‘If we can. Of course, we’re not all as thick as thieves when we are at home, but at the conferences we do stick together, yes.’

‘You travel down and back together?’

‘We did this time. Marika and John Carrier and me. We went down in my car. Dunkley always goes on his own.’

‘Why?’

‘Who knows? He just does. But so did old Dave. He always went on his own, too.’

‘Why?’

‘Search me. There was room in my car, but he went down by train. Did the same thing last year. And he always stays in a different hotel from the rest of us. I used to think it was just chance, but I watched him this year, out of curiosity. Sure enough, he dawdled about when we were trying to make our arrangements, putting us off when we were trying to double up in rooms, to cut down the cost; then, when we’d all booked, he reserved at another hotel. I realized then that he always does that. I still don’t think there’s anything in it, though. I’ll tell you why. When we were in Moncton last year, he always turned up late at the parties they have in the evenings. A bit mysterious, you’d think? So would I. But you know where he’d been? At the races. They have harness-racing at Moncton, and he snuck off every night to play the gee-gees. Someone saw him there. Sly bugger. But I think he was just shy about telling us. Not very academic, is it?’

Usher had quietened down slightly as he grew reflective, and showed signs of stopping altogether. Salter thought he would never have a chance to hear about Summers from someone with as little bias as Usher, and he prodded him on.

‘So you don’t think it was unusual for Summers to be in a room to himself in another hotel from the rest of you?’

‘As I say, I did once. But he always stayed on his own,’ didn’t he? Every year.’

‘So. At night he went to the races. What about during the day?’

‘He heard a few papers, like the rest of us. Not all day, of course, and not the same ones.’

‘There are different discussions going on at the same time?’

‘Oh yes. There were four sessions a day, and five or six different papers at each session. In different rooms, of course. There are always a couple of important sessions, given by the big-wigs, and everyone goes to them, but generally, for the small ones, we all go to different ones and meet afterwards.’

‘Did you see Summers at any of the papers?’

‘There was only time for one session, wasn’t there, and Dunkley was giving one of the papers. I didn’t go to it, and I don’t think anyone else did, either. Even David didn’t go, and it was in his field.’

‘What field is that?’

‘Romantic poetry. Wordsworth was all David cared about.’

‘He should have gone, then, to Dunkley’s paper?’

Usher looked unhappy at seeming to criticize a colleague. ‘Yes, he should have,’ he agreed.

‘Dunkley and Summers both taught Romantic poetry, did they?’

‘No. That was the trouble.’ Usher looked even more miserable. He consulted his watch. ‘Here. Inspector. What about a bite. Let’s go and have a sandwich and a bowl of suds and I will fill you in. It’s all bullshit, really, but you might as well know it.’

Salter agreed, and Usher loped around the room, collecting his jacket and tidying his papers. ‘I’ll take you to the Faculty Club,’ he said. ‘Give you an insight into life at Douglas College.’ Usher roared with laughter again.

‘You know the college, Inspector?’ he asked as they were descending in the elevator.

‘I’ve walked past it dozens of times and your chairman told me the history. Why?’

They left the building and paused on the steps. ‘We are now in the Arts Building,’ Usher began. ‘Over there is the Administration Building, the great big shiny one. That there is the library, and all those old houses contain the other departments. This is called the quad.’ Usher pointed to the square of grass in front of them. ‘We are going over there.’ He started off across the grass in an outdoor version of the giant steps he used in the office. Salter was hard put to keep up without trotting as they raced across the tiny quadrangle.

‘Here we are, then,’ Usher said, leading Salter into the front door of a renovated old brick house. ‘The Faculty Club—among other things.’

Inside a little hallway they hung their coats on a peg and moved into the dining-room, a pleasant, sunny little room furnished like a superior hotel coffee-shop.

‘Mr Usher!’ the waiter shouted, as soon as they were inside. ‘How did I do, sir?’

‘Bombed, laddie, bombed. Absolutely buggered,’ Usher shouted back, grinning at the student. ‘Good thing you’ve got a job here, but judging by your English exam, you must have trouble reading the menu. I have never come across such a load of unadulterated, illiterate twaddle in all my born days. And what did you use for a pen? Your handwriting, laddie, looks like the death-throes of a mad chicken who’s just run through a puddle of ink.’

The waiter accepted all this with a grin, and asked again, ‘How did I do?’

‘You passed, laddie, you passed. Now get us two draught and I’ll give you an “A”.’

To Salter’s relief, the horseplay now seemed at an end, and the waiter led them to a table. Usher looked round the room, waved at a couple of people, called greetings to another, and the beer arrived. Salter was beginning to be sorry he had accepted Usher’s invitation. How was he going to question the man with a dozen people listening? He hoped his host had a confidential voice, but as soon as they were settled Usher picked up the story again in the same penetrating tones. Most of the conversation in the dining-room stopped as the other diners listened.

‘The thing you’ve got to understand, Inspector,’ Usher said, causing Salter to hope the others would take him for an inspector of drains, ‘is that we all have a field. What we specialize in. My field is Lawrence. D.H. I come from Nottingham—did you realize I’m English?—and my grandfather knew Lawrence, or said he did, like most of the old codgers in Nottingham.’ Usher broke off again for a sustained maniacal laugh at the lies Nottingham codgers told about Lawrence. ‘Anyway, he had a lot of stories about Bert, so when I went into English, Lawrence seemed a natural to specialize in. Our chairman is a Conrad man, Carrier is working on Tennyson, and Dunkley and old Dave are Romantics. That’s the trouble. You see, we don’t have many students, only about twenty in Honours English, and we don’t have enough of any kind of students for two sections of anything—do you follow me?—and Dave taught our only Romantics course. He had seniority, and until he went on sabbatical, Dunkley wouldn’t get a look-in.’

‘When would that be? Summers’s sabbatical?’ Salter spoke so quietly that he could feel the other diners straining to hear.

‘Year after next, I think.’

‘I see. So, in a sense, Summers had Dunkley’s course, until then.’

‘I suppose so. But talking about “your” course or “my” course just leads to a lot of bad feeling, and there was enough of that.’

Their sandwiches arrived, and Salter took the opportunity to change the subject. He asked Usher questions about how hard he worked, how much professors were paid, and what the pressures were on a teacher of English at Douglas College, all designed to look like part of his investigation into the causes of Summers’s death, and he got for his pains a lengthy speech on the teacher’s life as Usher saw it, which ended with the information that Usher, personally, was delighted to be paid well for doing something he enjoyed and would do for much less if he had to.

‘But not everyone feels like you do, eh?’ Salter asked.

‘There are just as many teachers who shouldn’t be doing it as there are policemen, I expect,’ Usher said. And then, ‘Not us, though, by God. Not you and me, Inspector,’ and he roared with glee again.

They walked back to the Arts Building together. When they reached the door, Usher put out his hand. ‘I’ve got some errands to do, Inspector. I might see you later. I wasn’t all that pally with David. Didn’t know him well at all, but I was one of the last to see him alive.’ Usher for the first time was speaking quietly. ‘It’s like the Venerable Bede said—in one window and out the other—that’s life.’ He turned away and walked off down the street.

Back in the English Department, Salter had plenty of time before he was scheduled to meet Dunkley, the next on his list, and he got the secretary to let him into Summers’s office, which had been locked since his death.

A small room, furnished with two chairs and a desk, like all the others. On the wall, four or five mounted but unframed photographs, more artistic than realistic to Salter’s eye (one of them was so out of focus it must have been intentional). Four shelves of books: on one shelf the books were interleaved with notes; all the other books looked like old texts or publishers’ free samples. Salter opened a desk drawer; it was full of rubbish—overshoes, a coffee-pot, and a clock with a broken face. He opened the other drawers, and found a few personal-looking letters which he began to read. The door opened and a young man poked his head round it.

‘Dave in?’ he asked.

Salter shook his head.

‘Know when he’ll be back?’

Salter shrugged, dodging. ‘Why? Who wants him?’

‘I do. He’s got my essay.’

‘You a student?’

‘That’s right. Theatre Arts. Dave teaches us Modern Drama. Oh well.’ The head disappeared.

Dave? A palsy-walsy teacher? Or was that standard these days? Salter continued reading the dead man’s mail without much interest. A letter from a friend in England. Two others from former students.

The door opened again and another student stood in the doorway.

‘Professor Summers?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘You’re not Professor Summers?’

‘No. What do you want him for?’

‘I was told to see him. By my chairman. Professor Summers is my English teacher.’

‘And you don’t know what he looks like?’

‘I’m in Journalism. We’re pretty busy. Not too much time for English. I haven’t had a chance to check out what’s going on this term. Oh well. I’ll come back later.’ He disappeared.

Salter finished turning over Summers’s desk and leafed through his desk diary—looking for what? Before he could answer that to himself, the secretary appeared to tell him that Dunkley was waiting in his office.

‘I didn’t like Summers, as you have no doubt been told.’ Dunkley sat behind his desk, being interviewed. A handsome man; tall, thick fair hair to his shoulders, slightly balding in front. A still upright carriage. He was wearing army surplus clothing which he seemed to invest with its original military purpose. His office was lined with notices of meetings concerning aid to various refugee groups. Like most of his colleagues that Salter had seen, Dunkley was about forty.

‘I’ve heard as much. But no one has told me why.’

‘Because they don’t know. It has nothing to do with them. Or you, either.’

‘It might, you.know. You’ve been feuding for ten years, I hear. Might be reason enough to kill him.’

‘You are not paid to joke with suspects, are you, Inspector?’

‘Perhaps you could fill me in on what I am paid for, Professor?’

‘Persecution, mainly, of people who can’t defend themselves, as far as I can tell.’

‘Fascist pigs, are we?’

‘Could you come to the point?’

‘All right. Why were you feuding?’

‘There was no feud.’

‘Just you hating him and him hating you, for ten years.’

‘We disliked each other. Can we get on, please? I am extremely busy.’ The diction was precise, but underneath the vowels were flat.

‘You are Australian, Mr Dunkley?’

‘I was born in New Zealand. My family was German, originally. They changed their name from Dunkel in 1939 for patriotic reasons. I am married but separated from my wife, whom I still support. What else?’

‘It’s Summers I want to find out about. What did you have against him?’

‘I detested him. In my opinion, he should not have been teaching here?’

‘Why? Did he fuck the students?’

‘Probably. I was more concerned with his academic standards.’

‘Poor, were they, in your opinion?’

‘Non-existent.’

‘Bad teacher, was he?’

‘In my opinion.’

‘What about the students?’

‘Some of them enjoyed the kind of thing he did, no doubt.’

‘Did you ever see him teach?’

‘No.’

‘But you heard?’

‘Yes.’

‘From the students.’

‘Yes.’

‘They complained to you, did they?’

‘They rarely knew enough to complain, but from what I heard I knew what was going on.’

‘I see. Were his politics very different from yours?’

‘He had no politics. He was an opportunist in that area, too.’

‘I see. Well, well. He sounds pretty bad. Could we get back to the Friday night in Montreal? You got over your distaste for him enough to accept his hospitality. He bought you a dinner, I believe.’

‘Yes, he did. I don’t know where he got the money.’

‘Why did you accept his hospitality?’

‘He asked me in front of the others. They knew I had no plans. So I took the easy way out.’

‘For a change.’

‘What?’

‘You took the easier path for a change. In spite of your preference for the hard one.’

‘What are you talking about, Inspector?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Which was true. Salter had forgotten himself in his dislike for the man he was talking to. ‘So you went along,’ he continued. ‘When did Miss Tils leave the group?’

‘After dinner. About nine.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then Summers took -us to a striptease show.’

‘Then what?’

‘Summers went back to his hotel.’

‘Was he drunk?’

‘Sodden. At least I thought so at the time.’

‘What time did he leave you?’

‘About ten o’clock.’

‘Why do you say “you thought so”?’

‘I think he may have been play-acting.’

‘Why?’

‘I think he may have gone off to get a whore.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘He talked about it during the show.’

‘But you were just watching the show to keep him company?’

‘I saw it differently. Those girls were being paid to cater to the likes of Summers.’

‘Exploitation of minority group?’

‘Yes. As a matter of fact.’

‘What happened after Summers went home?’

‘We had another drink and walked about a bit. Then we went back ourselves. Carrier and I went to our room. I presume Usher did, too, although I can’t confirm that.’

‘That’s all right, Professor. I can. But this last drink. Where did you go for it?’

Now Dunkley’s face went darker. ‘Back to the bar,’ he said. ‘As you obviously know.’

‘I have to confirm everything, Professor. You tell me. The same show?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t talk behind my colleagues’ backs. Ask them.’

‘I have. They wanted to see some more tits. What was your idea? To organize a protest?’

Dunkley said nothing. Salter pressed on. ‘The striptease show didn’t have the same effect on you, Professor? There was no thought of you finding a girl?’

‘We went home to bed.’

‘What time was that?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. About half past ten.’

‘That’s a bit early, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t have to explain my sleeping habits to you, I think.’

‘It was your regular time, then, was it? Ten-thirty?’

‘Yes. And I had had a hard day.’

‘Right. You read a paper that day. Get a big audience?’

‘The room was half full.’

‘But none of your colleagues here came.’

‘None of my colleagues knew anything about my subject.’

‘Summers did, didn’t he? His field was the same as yours, wasn’t it?’

Dunkley was silent.

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Summers didn’t have a field.’

‘I see. He thought he did, though, didn’t he? Wordsworth, Keats, and such-like.’

‘So I believe.’

‘But you and he never discussed your fields?’

‘Very few people around here talk about literature. Mostly they talk about mortgages and wine-making.’

‘Sounds like our canteen. Could we get back to the night you went to bed at ten-thirty, your normal time. What time do you normally get up?’

‘At six, as a matter of fact. I usually get a couple of hours’ work in before breakfast.’

‘So you got up at six,’ Salter said, writing laboriously in his notebook. ‘Carrier, too?’

‘No. I didn’t get up at six that morning. I had a very restless night, and I didn’t get to sleep until the small hours. We didn’t get up until after eight.’

Why is he lying, Salter wondered. Surely he and Carrier didn’t do a Burke and Hare on Summers?

‘I see,’ he said. ‘You won’t mind signing a statement to that effect will you, sir?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Thank you, Mr Dunkley. And I’ll tell you what. If you ever feel like telling me what you had against Summers, here’s my number. I’ll ask everybody else, anyway.’

Dunkley allowed the card to lie on his desk. He said nothing.

‘Don’t get up,’ Salter said, rising from his chair, ‘And don’t leave town.’

‘I am a suspect?’

‘Everyone is, Professor, until we find the killer.’

Marika Tils spoke English with a thick, north European accent. What was she doing in an English Department?

‘I am Dutch, Inspector. I learned my English as a second language, although I have an M.A. from the University of Toronto, which is the one they all bow down to here. I compared Paradise Lost with a Dutch poem of the same kind. Here I teach English to foreign students, mostly Chinese from Hong Kong, although we are getting them from everywhere.’ The syntax was impeccable, but the accent was so thick it sounded affected. Salter was reminded of a story he had heard once about a similar situation, and he tried to joke.

‘Isn’t there a danger of turning out a lot of Chinese students with Dutch accents, Miss Tils?’

She smiled. ‘Not much. But if the grammar were all right, it wouldn’t matter much, would it? Just an interesting problem for the local Professor Higgins.’

Good. A nice relief from Dunkley. She was a woman in her late thirties, just beginning to wrinkle slightly. Straight blonde hair, nice, slightly lumpy features and a good, if large, body. Graceful, feminine, she looked like an athlete, a swimmer or an equestrian. In the right dress, (or naked in the sun, thought Salter) she was probably breath-taking. Her one disturbing feature was that in colouring and in her carriage she seemed distantly related to Dunkley. Her complexion was splotchy, and her eyes looked sore. Someone,’ at last, was grieving for Summers.

I’ll come to the point, Miss Tils. Would you call yourself a friend of David Summers?’

‘Oh yes. I liked him very much.’

What did that mean, translated from the Dutch?

‘Does that mean you were lovers?’

‘Oh no. Not in that way. But I wish we had been, now. He was happily married, and I am also not free. No, I mean I liked him. He was wonderful.’

‘In what way?’

She shrugged. ‘I could talk to him. I could trust him. He liked me. What else?’

‘He doesn’t seem to have affected everybody that way.’

‘Of course not. He was my friend, very special to me, but I don’t mean he was Jesus Christ. Lots of people didn’t like him.’

‘But you weren’t lovers?’

‘I told you, no. But that was by the way. We didn’t lie down together, but I might have.’ She was annoyed at Salter’s interest.

‘Could I ask you about the Friday evening? First, do you know why he was so happy?’

‘No. But it wasn’t just a mood. Something had happened, but he never got a chance to tell me in front of the others. You know about him and Dunkley?’

‘I know something. What was the trouble between them?’

‘I don’t know. They were involved in a way that made them hate each other. Like old accomplices who were ashamed of the old days. If you want to know what I think, I think it was something stupid, like they bumped into each other in a body-rub parlour or something. Dunkley is a fanatic, of course, and he would hate anyone who caught him doing something wrong. Maybe it was politics. I don’t know. You can be sure it was something not very interesting.’

‘Your chairman said they were like two people in a Conrad story.’

‘Yes. I’ve heard him say that. But Conrad was another one who made mountains out of molehills.’

‘From what you and others have said, Dunkley and Summers were very different people.’

‘As chalk from cheese, Inspector.’

‘Does that mean you don’t like Dunkley?’

‘This is very—unorthodox, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. But I’m trying to find out what kind of man Summers was, and something about the people around him. You don’t have to tell me.’

‘All right. No, it doesn’t mean that, of course, but in answer to your real question, I don’t like Dunkley, but not for any reason connected with David.’

‘What then?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. I don’t like the way he eats. His breath is bad. I don’t know. Why don’t you like people? I just don’t like him.’

‘Sorry. Now, after dinner you went back to the hotel. Did you spend the rest of the night by yourself in your room?’

She blushed deeply. Embarrassment or anger?’

‘What does that question mean?’

‘I’m sorry. I put it badly. Did you leave your room for any purpose after you returned to the hotel.’

‘No. Oh, I see. You mean did I kill David.’ Her tone was disgusted. ‘No I did not leave my room and go to David’s hotel and kill him.’

‘That wasn’t what I meant, although you are strong enough, and you might have a motive I don’t know about. We found a glass with lipstick on it in his room.’

‘Ah, you think I might have gone to make love with him?’ She relaxed and shook her head. ‘I wish I had. He might be alive now.’

‘Somebody visited him, Miss Tils. A woman.’

‘Apparently, Inspector, but not me. I haven’t worn lipstick in ten years.’ She looked interested in spite of herself, ‘I wonder who David had tucked away in Montreal?’

‘I’ll find out. Miss Tils, as a friend of Professor Summers, do you know anything about his private life that might lead to someone killing him? Women, debts, anything like that?’

She shook her head. ‘It must be something like that, I know. But I don’t know of anyone. Certainly no one here, not even Dunkley.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘He’s got an alibi, hasn’t he? But call it my intuition. I know Dunkley. He wouldn’t do anything like that.’

Once again the hair prickled on Salter’s scalp as he felt her withholding something. What’s going on, he wondered.

On an impulse, instead of meeting his last appointment immediately, he returned to Carrier’s office and walked in without waiting for an invitation. As he appeared, Dunkley rose from his chair and walked past him, ignoring him. Carrier sat still, saying nothing, and Salter took the vacant chair.

‘Mr Carrier. I forgot to ask you about a statement. Since you and Professor Dunkley roomed together, you will be able to confirm each other’s story, won’t you? I’ll need a statement signed. May I just check the facts again?’ Salter consulted his notebook and pretended to read back to Carrier what he had said. He continued, ‘A couple more details then. What time did you and Professor Dunkley get to your room?’

‘About ten-thirty.’

‘And you stayed all night in your room?’

‘Yes.’

‘What time did you leave it in the morning?’

‘I don’t remember. After eight.’

‘You must have been tired out. A bit drunk?’

Carrier said nothing.

‘Well; that checks, doesn’t it?’ Salter said with a smile. ‘If you can think of anything that might help me, anything at all, anything Summers said or did, for example, you’ll let me know won’t you? I’ll check all this with the hotel staff, of course, but I don’t expect they will have noticed anything, will they?’

Why are you looking so frightened, Salter wondered. Probably because you went back for a last trip to the stripjoint. Or a whorehouse. Were they legal in Montreal? Salter stared hard at the professor, wishing he knew more about interrogation techniques.

Last came Pollock. The name sounded familiar to Salter, but the man was a stranger to him. He was the first one Salter had met who looked like a proper professor. Dark suit, large bow tie, and black, old-fashioned boots which he placed at right-angles to each other as he bowed (or seemed to) his visitor through the door. Smallish and dapper, he affected a curly pipe with a lid, held in his mouth with one hand. When Salter was inside, he turned, placed his boots at right-angles again and waited for Salter to speak.

He’s trying to twinkle, Salter thought, but he’s a bit young for it. About thirty-five.

Eventually, after a long puff at his pipe, Pollock went around his desk and sat down, crossing his legs sideways to the desk and propping the elbow supporting the pipe on the desk with his head facing Salter.

He’s going to say, ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’ thought Salter.

Pollock removed the pipe, looked at it, put it back, puffed on it, removed it again, and said, ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘I need a motive, Mr Pollock, and I might find it in Summers’s background. I am told you were his oldest friend here. First, do you know of any women in his life, apart from his wife?’ Salter felt as if he was on stage, playing ‘the policeman’ to Pollock’s ‘professor’.

Pollock considered. ‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘There have been. But not for years.’

‘You are sure of that?’

‘Certain. David never had long affairs. Over the years he fell in love once or twice; I always knew, because he told me. And his wife. That’s why they didn’t last long.’

‘His wife put a stop to them?’

‘No. Just the fact that she knew.’

‘But he was not “in love” at the moment?’

‘No.’

‘You are certain?’

‘Yes.’

‘There could have been no brief fling in Montreal with one of his colleagues, perhaps?’ I don’t usually talk like this, thought Salter wonderingly.

‘No.’

‘You are certain?’

‘Yes.’

Now it was in danger of becoming one of those nightmares on stage where a bit of dialogue keeps returning to its departure point because of a wrong cue. Salter shook himself.

‘Do you mind telling me how you are so sure of yourself?’

Pollock puffed four times and delivered his line. ‘Because he only has one female colleague, Marika Tils, and he did not have a brief fling with her.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I asked her.’

‘I see. And she is to be believed, is she?’

‘Absolutely.’ Puff, pause, puff. ‘You see, Inspector,’ puff, ‘Marika and I are lovers.’ Puff, puff, puff.

Jesus Christ, thought Salter. What a world these people live in. He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. ‘These conversations are entirely confidential, Professor, and I think I can trust you. This message was found in his mailbox in the hotel.’ He read it: ‘See you later. Wait for me. Jane.’

Pollock looked confused.

Gotcha, thought Salter.

Then: ‘Ah yes,’ Pollock said. ‘I knew all about Jane, of course. But she didn’t seem to be covered by your question. Jane is Jane Homer, Dean of Women at Wollstonecraft Hall. They were just old friends.’

‘I see.’ Salter made a note. ‘Now, Professor, I wonder if you would mind telling me everything about Summers that might help me to understand him. If I can get an idea of what kind of man he was it might help a great deal.’

Pollock began a seminar on his dead friend. Salter pretended to take notes to give Pollock’s words their proper value.

‘He was, I think, a good teacher, a very fair critic, a poor scholar, and a very poor student. He worked hard at his job here—too hard, probably; he had something interesting to say about what he was teaching, but he didn’t keep up with his field and he didn’t produce anything. His friends thought he failed to apply his talents, and his enemies accused him of having a butterfly mind. I think myself he had reached the age when it is now fashionable to change careers. The symptoms were that he had become involved in a whole host of activities in the last year or two that one could only see as distractions.’

‘Like?’

‘Like squash, Inspector. He took up squash last year, and played it four or five times a week. It was the high point of his day.’

‘Was he good?’

‘No. I played him after he had been playing for a year. He was no good at all. But among the people he played down at that club of his, he was able to find keen competition.’

‘What else?’

‘Making money. Obviously, he had decided to try and make his fortune, lie was always a bit of a gambler—poker, the races—that sort of thing—he bought every lottery ticket going—and lately he was dabbling in commodities.

‘Did he break out in any other ways?’

‘You want to know if he was having a “mid-life crisis”? I think that’s the jargon. Perhaps. He didn’t start to dress like a gypsy, though, or wear a wig, or any of the other symptoms I’ve heard about. No, if I understand the mid-life crisis, it is an attempt to have a few more years of boyhood in middle age, at least that’s how it manifests itself around here. Well, perhaps that’s what he was doing, but in his case the symptoms were a sudden renewed interest in games and in taking risks.’

‘Who were his friends, Professor?’

‘Me, of course, and Marika. One or two others in the department enjoyed his company. Otherwise the people he and his wife socialized with. He didn’t have many friends, the way people use that term nowadays, but he tended to keep them.’

‘His enemies?’

‘A lot of people were wary of him. He had a bad habit of looking for the funny side of any situation, and sometimes he was witty at the expense of others. He teased people and they took offence. And teasing is a form of cruelty, isn’t it?’

‘I’m trying to understand the relationship between him and Dunkley,’ Salter said, coming to the point. ‘Can you help me there?’

‘Yes. I thought we’d come to that. You’ve heard Browne’s theory, no doubt, of a Conradian link?’

‘Yes. You think it makes sense?’

‘Oh, it makes sense, Inspector, but it would be more impressive if someone else had put it forward. Coming from Browne, it doesn’t carry much weight. Browne did his thesis on Conrad. That is the only author he knows.’

‘You don’t think much of it, then.’

‘Not really. I think they just struck sparks off each other.’

‘Summers never confided in you—about his feelings for Dunkley, and the reasons?’

‘No, he didn’t. That’s why I don’t think there’s any mystery. He would certainly have said something to me. We were very close.’ And then, quite unexpectedly, Pollock stopped acting, and his eyes filled with tears. He put his pipe down, and blew his nose.

Salter gave him a few moments by pretending to scribble. Then he said, gently enough, ‘It does seem strange, though, that he never discussed such a well-known feud with you, sir, his closest friend?’

But Pollock was now too upset to speculate with him. He shrugged and fiddled with the relighting of his pipe.

Salter put his notebook away and stood up. ‘If anything occurs to you that you think I might find helpful, you can find me at the Headquarters building. Thank you very much, sir.’ He left the professor still blinking at his pipe.

As he walked down the corridor he heard someone behind him, and he slowed down enough at the corner to see Marika Tils go into Pollock’s office.