Death of an Old Goat (16 page)

‘Thought I'd try it again today,' said Bill apologetically. ‘Chef doesn't seem to have got any new ideas.'

‘Oh, are you eating?' asked Peter.

‘I thought it was the idea.'

‘The secret,' said Peter, ‘is not to start until after you've had three glasses.' He waved his large tumbler. ‘Then you don't notice the food.'

‘I suppose you wouldn't,' said Bill.

‘This is my third now,' said Peter, draining off half a tumbler. ‘Keep my place. Everyone wants to get near the grog.' And he weaved off towards the table, as usual looking like a music-hall comic doing a parody of a drunk asked to walk a white line. He returned in the same fashion, carrying a plate piled high with a bit of everything, and spilling gravy and little bits of spaghetti over himself as he went. As he sat down he reached straight for one of the flagons and tucked into both food and drink with appetite.

‘People make a fuss about their food,' he said, ‘but I find that most things go down.'

‘As far as these dos are concerned I find that most things come up,' said Bill.

Peter Day laughed, and a little more gravy spilled over his trousers.

‘Did I ever tell you about the girl from Sheffield I met at my adult education classes?' he asked.

‘Yes,' said Bill, ‘innumerable times. So often that the story is engraved word for word on my memory like the Lord's Prayer. So often that I wake up in the morning muttering it by rote.' It was as well to exaggerate a little with Peter Day when he was drunk, since he was inclined not to take no for an answer. ‘Don't you have any reminiscences drawn from any other period of your life?'

Peter took the invitation perfectly seriously, thought a little, then launched into a story about a brothel in Khartoum, which somehow became a brothel on the left bank in Paris about half-way through. This in turn gave way, without any obvious transition, to a story about illicit love in Argentine in the days of Evita Peron. By this time Peter Day had had seven tumblers, had got rid of his plateful partly down his mouth and partly over his person, and was beginning to show signs of wear.

‘Must have been a change after Oxford,' said Bill, desperate for a change of subject, quite apart from his supposed investigations. Peter Day's eyes refocused, as if trying
to remember what or where Oxford was. Finally some sort of light seemed to strike.

‘Paris was before Oxford,' he said firmly. ‘Canada was after, and Khartoum was after, but Paris was before. Went to Ox . . . Oxford late, you know. Not like you young sprigs of the aristocracy.'

Bill accepted the implied insult, though it was untrue.

‘What exactly were you doing at Oxford?' he asked.

‘Research,' said Peter, very definitely. Then he made another attempt to focus his eyes, on what Bill was not quite sure. ‘Research into the poetry of George Eliot. Or the plays of Dickens. Or was it the novels of Mrs Humphry Ward? I've forgotten which. Done 'em all in my time. I'll say this, I've never wanted for a good subject. They ought to send the honours students to me for ideas.'

‘Weren't you working at the same time?' asked Bill.

‘Worked at the Bodle . . . Bodleian for a bit,' said Peter, not noticeably reluctant to tell. ‘In the background, you know. In the . . . background. Getting the books up for the readers. Bit of cata . . . cataloguing too. That sort of thing.'

He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate. He had something else on his mind, and his eyes kept straying round to the flagons, and jealously fixing a look of hatred on anyone who came near them. On one occasion they had run out, and he was going to make sure that this time they ran out into his glass.

‘Was it interesting?' asked Bill.

‘Eh? Was what interesting?'

‘Working. In. The Bodleian.'

‘If you liked books, I suppose,' said Peter, as if trying to be fair. ‘I didn't go much on it myself.'

‘Pleasant company, though.'

‘If you call librarians pleasant company, you must have some kind of a . . . some kind of a — ' Peter searched at his leisure for a word, and finally found one — : ‘some kind of a kink.'

‘Still, it must have brought you into contact with all the academics,' said Bill.

‘Best academics never went near the Bodleian,' said Peter firmly. ‘Same everywhere. Good academic should b'able to go to the lecture hall and talk for an hour on any subject under the sun. If he can't, he's wasting his time.'

‘And if he does, he's wasting the students' time,' said Bill, but he wasn't being listened to.

‘Anyway, I'm glad to say I can, and I do.'

Bill knew he did, and he also knew he shouldn't. He switched the subject back again.

‘So you didn't meet Lord David or any of those?'

‘Christ no. Anyway I was down in the slacks . . . down in the . . .
stacks.
Didn't meet anyone. Not a soul. Not the ghost of a soul. Not the ghost of a . . . ghost.' His voice was getting far away, as if he was talking of a long time ago. ‘Only the odd little librarian lass, burrowing away there . . . burrowing away there, like a little . . . mole . . . a little, snuffling . . . mole. Get me another drink, will you, Bill? I don't think I could lift the bloody flagon. And you've got to get your money's worth.'

Bill got him another drink, and then half-walked, half-carried him over to the fresh air. He was already ten minutes late for his tutorial. Quite suddenly, as the heavy afternoon sun revived him, he shook off Bill's protective arm, and shot off determinedly down the hill, only to trip over a small hillock in the grass. Half an hour later Bill saw him through the window holding forth, and he thought he heard the name Mintinguette. He could not see if there were any students in his room, but he rather suspected not. At least that was one tradition he had picked up at Oxford.

• • •

When Professor Wickham came down to the department from his sandwich and coffee lunch, he rang his wife to see how the interview with Inspector Royle had gone.

‘All right. Quite all right,' said Lucy in a rather surprised
manner. ‘He was very nice. I'll tell you this evening. I'm busy now. I've got something on the stove.'

Professor Wickham was puzzled, because he thought he could hear heavy breathing behind her voice.

A
S
R
OYLE
drove from the Wickhams' residence towards the outskirts of town, and thence on to the gravel road which led to the Lullham property, he had a secret source of self-congratulation which had nothing to do with the progress of the case. Several times he came near to smiling, and frequently he passed his tongue around his lips, as if he had been eating ice-cream. This secret source, and preparing his approach to Peggy Lullham, kept him pretty happy throughout most of the long, bumpy drive out to Tara Magna. He had two different manners with the grazing aristocracy: for the most part he was servile, as befitted his dependent station, but when he had recently conferred favours, he adopted that hearty benevolent-paternal manner which is one of the law's best cards. Sometimes this manner could wear a little thin, and a distinct trace of his natural bully-boy manner show through, it is true, but in this he differed in no way from most benevolent paternalists, and he did try to keep it in check. After all, these were people with money.

The landscape became drier, dustier, more choking the farther he went. The Lullham property seemed to be in no condition to resist the rigours of the drought. A knot of cattle-men and jackaroos gathered by a crossroads looked as if they could do with a cold Grafton's. The paddocks
looked the same way, but they wouldn't be getting one. Royle drove up to the Lullham residence, a long, low, much-built-on-to old house, which looked comfortable and homely. The front door stood open, and as he got out of his car he was conscious of a curtain falling back into place at one of the downstairs windows. He thought to himself with some satisfaction that he must have been waited for for some time.

Mrs Lullham came hesitantly towards the open front door as he walked up to it, and he could tell by the nervous flutter of her hands that she was expecting an ordeal of the most ferocious kind. Her hair looked as if it was used to weekly attention from someone expensive, but hadn't had it very recently — it looked dead and perfunctorily brushed, and the woman's skin looked tired, the make-up carelessly applied. Royle didn't feel anything that could be identified as pity, but he did get a certain satisfaction in acting the part of deliverer from worry and fear. He held up his hand in a manner which derived largely from his experience earlier in his career of stopping the traffic in the high street on Saturday mornings. He had always felt good doing that.

‘Now, before we get under way,' he said in his best Dock-Green manner, ‘let's get this clear. I'm not in the least interested in that other little matter any longer.'

‘Really, Inspector?' said Peggy Lullham hopefully, experimenting with a little-girl flutter of the eyelashes, for she had heard of Inspector Royle's reputation.

‘Not at all, ma'am,' said Royle, showing disappointingly little reaction to her advances. ‘That's over and done with as far as I'm concerned, and has nothing to do with this murder in any case. I haven't been a policeman all these years without knowing that people can do some funny things at times' (and profiting from this fact, he might have added), ‘and anyone can see you must have been off your head with worry about this drought.'

As a matter of fact Peggy Lullham had refurnished the
living-room on the drought-relief payments, and her main worry was whether she and her husband would be able to get away for their bi-annual trip to The Old Country next year, but she entered wholeheartedly into Royle's little fiction and breathed a theatrical sigh of relief.

‘You're so understanding, Inspector. As you say, it was a case of complete absence of mind, but it's difficult to make someone like John Darcy understand that. The shopkeeper's mind, you know. You must see an awful lot of it. Come in, won't you, Inspector, and I'll try to remember anything that could be of any help.'

She led the way through the hall into the sitting-room, which was large, expensively furnished, but comfortable. As she motioned Royle into one of the large luxurious arm chairs, tailor-made for policemen, she stood by the mantelpiece — a heavy, capable woman who looked as if in the past she would have been able to turn her hand to anything. Now she was running a little to fat, and the remains of a nervous diffidence sat oddly on her, as if she were uncertain of her role. Royle remembered her penchant for shoplifting pretty, feminine clothes, and began to conjecture whether she wore frilly underwear. On this occasion he was not particularly anxious to be given the chance of finding out.

‘Have a beer, Inspector. I've got some on ice,' said Mrs Lullham.

‘I'd love one,' said Royle before she had finished. ‘I've had a thirsty day, so I'll forget the rule book for once.'

‘You won't find me reminding you of it, anyway,' said Mrs Lullham, bustling towards the kitchen.

‘I've just got you and Mrs McKay,' said Royle, raising his voice to the bull-bellow he habitually used with his children: ‘I say I've only got you and Mrs McKay to go, and then I've had a word with everyone of importance, I think.'

‘Nice to be important, of course,' shouted Mrs Lullham
from the kitchen, where she was fussing around and putting Royle's glass on a tray of all things, ‘but really neither Joan nor I had met the old chap before, so I don't think we'll have much to add that'll be of any use.'

‘That's what I guessed,' said Royle, relaxing further into his armchair, which was really almost as comfortable as if it were old, ‘but of course one simply has to see everyone in a case like this — the rule book does insist on that. Otherwise you can see how it would appear to the others involved, can't you?'

‘Would you like me to ring Joan McKay and get her over here now?' said Peggy Lullham, coming back to the living-room with a dewy glass of the nectar of the Australian Gods. ‘She's only the next property, as you know, so she could be here in half an hour.'

Royle reflected for a moment. It wasn't the right procedure, but then, these two hens weren't going to be able to give him anything. Peggy Lullham had a generous soul and a guilty conscience, whereas Joan McKay was known to be on the near side. The McKays' Scottish ancestry came out in some odd little ways: they took their holidays in the Far East instead of Europe, and pretended an interest in Asiatic culture which wouldn't have deceived a koala bear. With a bit of luck, Royle thought, he'd be well set here for another couple of beers and a pleasant, undemanding chat. He made up his mind.

‘OK, that sounds fine, if you would,' he said. ‘Tell her I'd be obliged, as a special favour . . .'

Mrs Lullham went into the hall, and Royle heard her say that he was being ‘charming', in a voice that was obviously intended to carry back to him. He was being buttered up.

One and a half glasses later Mrs McKay arrived, and Royle took the opportunity of Peggy Lullham's going to let her in to have a really good belch — one of the rafter-ringing variety he entertained his family with on those rare
occasions when he stayed at home of an evening. Thus relieved, and feeling several trouser-sizes smaller, he positively sprang to his feet when the ladies came in — he'd seen it done somewhere, though he didn't see the point of it himself — and ushered Joan McKay into a chair with as much aplomb as if he owned the place. Peggy Lullham had to repress one of the sarcasms she reserved for the uppity. After all, she was in his debt, and in view of the cost of the coat, was likely to remain so for some considerable time.