Parting Breath (16 page)

‘On the other hand, she is not a member of this University,' sticklers for College etiquette would insist to the Bursar when the smaller invitation lists were being compiled.

‘Governesses used to exist in the same sort of no man's land,' a social historian had once informed him unhelpfully.

‘Neither one thing nor the other.' One of the philosophers picked up the conversation. ‘Incidentally, that is one of the most interesting of theoretical propositions because if one is not one thing, logically one is something else. Plato said …'

On the whole the Bursar found they got on better when Plato was left out of discussions.

‘Perhaps,' another learned voice had suggested, ‘we should regard her as a Liberal Unionist.'

There had been a pause, then:

‘Ah,' with satisfaction, ‘Oscar Wilde.'

‘“Oh, they count as Tories.”' Someone supplied the rest of the quotation in a Lady Bracknell voice. ‘“They dine with us. Or come in the evening at any rate.”'

‘Neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring.…'

The Bursar, John Hardiman, mindful of much co-operation in the matter of the emergency use of sanatorium beds late at night, would outwardly concur but later consult the good lady in question on the more germane matter of whether or not she wanted to come.

All that Detective Inspector Sloan knew about Matron was her ready acceptance of his bizarre proposals about the use of her sanatorium tonight. There had been nothing equivocal about her response to those – she had been as practical as Florence Nightingale at Scutari. He set off towards the sanatorium confident that she at any rate would have done her part.

Nevertheless he approached the building with circumspection and stood in the darkness of the University grounds until he could make out the other watchers. Even then he made no move, mindful of some highly idiosyncratic advice that he had once had from the Assistant Chief Constable. His mannered voice came unbidden now into Sloan's mind: ‘Never put up a bird, Inspector, until you're ready to shoot it.'

The Assistant Chief Constable's analogies were all taken from the world of huntin', shootin' and fishin'. What was so interesting was the way in which they fitted so well into the world of thief-taking. Sloan glanced about him. Perhaps someone in the darkened campus which surrounded him was already writing a thesis on this.

It did not take him long to spot the watchers by the threshold. There was a whiff of tobacco smoke in the late evening air that betrayed the general direction of Police Constable Smith. Smith would not be the first person to be given away by my lady nicotine – she was as wayward a mistress as any of her sex. There was no tell-tale glow in the darkness, so Smith had either heard Sloan coming or perfected the art of invisible smoking. One of the first things a man learnt on the beat was the cupped hand, the swallowed smoke.…

Over on the other side of the path Police Constable Carpenter trod on a twig. Sloan could make out his outline against a bush.

‘Dogberry and Verges,' the Superintendent had said when he sent them over. ‘They can be your officers of the watch, and Heaven help the lot of you if anyone lays a finger on Battling Bertha.' He had paused and added thoughtfully, ‘And Heaven help them, too, of course.'

Sloan had taken his point.

When he had first asked for a woman police officer for the Moleyns case the Superintendent had taken it for granted that he would want Policewoman Perkins – people usually did want Policewoman Perkins. Not for nothing was she known affectionately throughout the Calleshire force as Pretty Polly. The County's other woman police constable was known, equally affectionately, as Battling Bertha.

True, motorists disadvantaged at being found in the wrong had been known to refer to her less affectionately. Shouts of ‘Seig Heil' had been heard in Berebury High Street and muttered references to ‘Fascists' in the more restrained atmosphere of the Crown Court – though one youth who had succumbed to the temptation offered when she had stooped to attend to a shoelace in Berebury's shopping precinct had to be hurriedly let off with a caution by a Bench in very real danger of losing its self-control.

Sloan had wanted Battling Bertha because she looked more like Bridget Hellewell than Polly Perkins did: that was all, not because Polly Perkins wasn't as good at looking after herself as Battling Bertha. Many a man had attacked Polly in a lonely spot on a dark night only to find himself pinned to the ground until he was arrested. But there could be no confusing Polly's features with the raw-boned earnest ones of Bridget Hellewell, student leader.

And with a deep conscientious fervour Sloan hoped that Battling Bertha's homely features would do, and would not be injured in the process.

He moved over to Carpenter, giving Smith the chance to extinguish whatever he had been smoking. ‘All quiet?' he asked softly.

‘Not a dicky-bird anywhere near, sir. Matron's gone to bed. She went up at her usual time, just as we arranged. Bathroom light out first, than her bedroom one. Ten minutes after that the other bedroom light, like you said.'

‘Who's up there with her?'

‘Police Constable Baynes is in the bedroom and P. C. Collet is downstairs but out of sight.' Carpenter tapped his pocket. ‘We've got all our signals laid on if anyone shows up.'

‘But nothing has so far?'

‘Nothing near the sanatorium.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘There's been someone over by Tarsus.'

‘Someone?' queried Sloan sharply. Carpenter should know better than this.

‘A woman, sir.'

‘What doing?'

‘Pacing up and down. At least, that's what it looked like from here. It's a tidy distance, sir, and it's pretty dark.'

‘Where exactly?' demanded Sloan. It was like drawing teeth, extracting information from Carpenter.

‘This side of the Tarsus quadrangle.'

All the Berebury Force used the word in full: always had. ‘Quad' sounded like something very different to a policeman, and they couldn't be doing with confusion.

Carpenter hastened on. ‘This side of the main building. It was only when she crossed in front of the entrance that you could see that there was anyone there at all. There's a little bit of light spilling out from that lamp above the entrance.'

Sloan turned to look for himself.

‘You've got to step into the light, sir, if you're going that way.'

‘And which way was she going?' asked Sloan, trying not to make his patience sound elaborate. That never got you anywhere with anybody.

‘Nowhere,' said Carpenter, contriving to sound injured. ‘Like I said, sir, that was the funny thing. She was just pacing up and down.'

‘Height?'

‘Shortish.'

‘Fat or thin?' If a silhouette could convey anything, it was that.

‘Plumpish.'

‘Anything else about her?'

Carpenter paused. ‘Not young,' he said at last. ‘I think.'

‘We're getting on,' conceded Sloan.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Clothes?'

‘I couldn't rightly see, sir. I should say she had a coat on but I couldn't swear to it.'

‘I see.' That was another thing that sorted out policemen from the rest of the world: the likelihood of having to swear on oath to whatever it was they said. ‘She's not there now, is she?'

And that, thought Sloan to himself fairly, was as silly a remark as any that poor Carpenter was likely to make. Superintendent Leeyes would compare Sloan with Horatio asking the nightwatchmen at Elsinore if Hamlet's father's ghost was still around on the battlements.

‘No, sir,' replied Carpenter, who, if asked a silly question, still answered it.

‘Right,' said Sloan more peaceably. ‘Now, remember what you're to do.…'

The trouble with both the Superintendent and his preoccupation with Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was that they got into everything.

Higgins, the porter on the Tarsus gate, was having quite a struggle with one member of the University. Only the knowledge that his orders came from the Master of Tarsus in person strengthened his arm.

‘No one is to come into the College tonight, Professor, without I let Dr Lorimer know.'

‘Much too late to trouble him,' said Simon Mautby with his customary firmness. ‘I'm only going across to my rooms for a moment. I'll lock up behind me, don't you worry about that.'

That wasn't what Higgins was worried about but he didn't say so to Professor Mautby.

‘An experiment,' said the ecologist breezily. ‘Needs a special time-setting. I won't be long, Higgins. Time you shut up shop anyway, isn't it? All our late birds should be back in the nest by now, surely?'

‘Most of them,' said Higgins feelingly, ‘are still over at the sit-in at Almstone. I'm keeping open in case they aren't.'

‘Serve 'em right if they are locked out.' Professor Mautby jangled his keys and set off through the Tarsus quadrangle. ‘Don't you lock me in, Higgins, either. That would never do. I've got work to do at home tonight.'

Detective Inspector Sloan shook
Hamlet
out of his mind by walking across to the administration building at Almstone to check on the sit-in for himself.

There had been no change in personnel there. Other people – and other ranks – were permitted to show tiredness, battle-fatigue, even, but not men who were or had been sergeant-majors in the British Army. Alfred Palfreyman, presently Head Porter at Almstone College, but first and foremost sometime of the East Calleshire Regiment, looked in just as good trim now as he had looked that moment many, many hours ago when he had first come on duty.

Whether he had in fact snatched some sleep Sloan couldn't begin to guess: it might only have been that he could rest awake, as generations of recruits were led to believe, or perhaps that sergeant-majors needed no sleep – as Her Majesty's enemies were encouraged to think. In any event the secret of his untiring strength belonged with the other secrets of his profession, and the policeman, who had his own survival methods, secret to his own calling, invoked when life – or death – became too pressing, wouldn't have presumed to question him about it.

He greeted Sloan as an ally.

It was a nice point. The relationship between the Army – the military power – and the Police – the civil power – has traditionally been a delicate one. Indeed, the quality of the relationship was often a factor in revolutions in Ruritanian countries – banana republics couldn't always afford a police force – but there was no room for doubt in Alfred Palfreyman's mind about where either stood. The Army was there to protect Queen and Country; the Police to preserve the Queen's Peace and to protect the law-abiding. He saw Justice as clearly as did the Lady with the Scales at the Old Bailey as having a duty to ‘Defend the Children of the Poor and Punish the Wrong-doer.'

‘Where will all this end?' he demanded of Sloan. ‘That's what I want to know. First you have your student power and now they want pupil power:…'

‘Pram rule?' suggested Sloan lightly, though he was certain that there was going to be none of that in his own house, come the arrival of the new baby.

‘Anarchy, more like,' said Palfreyman. ‘Just you wait. They'll need the Army again then. Any rule's better than no rule, you know.'

‘The students …' said Sloan, ducking out of debate on this. How not to argue was lesson one at some police training schools. ‘The students. You've got them bottled up nicely for us.'

‘No trouble,' said Palfreyman with a deprecating wave of the arm towards the administration block. He grinned a bit. ‘Like our old grenade instructor used to say, they're only dangerous until you know they're dangerous – then they're safe.'

‘This boy Moleyns,' said Sloan. ‘Anything funny about him?'

‘He wasn't a gentleman's gentleman if that's what you mean,' said the Head Porter sagaciously. ‘Our trouble here is that they're all looking more like each other every day.'

‘Unisex,' pronounced Sloan.

‘What they want to do,' said Palfreyman, and not for the first time, ‘is to get their hair cut.'

‘Yes,' said Sloan. He, too, had heard that before. You would have thought that every Magistrate that ever was had been hand-reared on the legend of Samson and Delilah.

‘Queen's Regulations,' prescribed Palfreyman. ‘Now, if they all stuck to those there'd be no trouble anywhere.'

‘Quite so,' said Sloan, old enough to be aware that sooner or later everyone had to have their own articles of faith. Thirty-nine did for some. And a Little Red Book for others. Some people – however long they lived – got no further than a schoolboy code; others found ‘My Country, Right or Wrong' was as good as any. Moses or the Medes and the Persians – all Sloan knew was that very few people managed without one altogether.

‘And after unisex,' prophesied the other man, ‘we're going to get something much worse.'

‘Tell me,' invited Sloan, short of time though he was.

‘Women's lib,' said the old soldier. ‘Sign of real decay, that is. You mark my words – women in power means the men aren't up to much. Stands to reason, doesn't it?'

‘A bad sign,' agreed Sloan gravely. ‘Civilisation on the way out and all that.'

‘Though,' said Palfreyman in a belated attempt at fairness, ‘the Amazons were a well-run tribe. Many's the time I've heard Professor Teed say so.… I daresay you'll have heard of him, Inspector. Most people have, what with television and his books. You can see him through the glass door. Look – over there.'

As it happened, as the Head Porter was speaking Professor Timothy Teed was laying down the law about something other than Amazons. The time of day made very little difference to the Professor's loquacity. Indeed, unkind spirits said that if you put him into a darkened room and turned a light in his direction he automatically went straight into his television performance.