the wyndham case
by
Jill Paton Walsh



the wyndham case

An Imogen Quy Mystery

Jill Paton Walsh

Hodder & Stoughton

LONDON SYDNEY AUCKLAND

ISBN 0-340-58626-5

Copyright © Jill Paton Walsh 1993

First published in Great Britain 1993



1


Imogen Quy looked out of her office window into the
Fountain Court of St Agatha's College. It was just after
nine in the morning. The famous turf maze of the court,
with the 'Arab' fountain in the middle, was shining with
dew in the soft sunlight of a February morning. The
exquisite Jacobean brick of the court, with its Barnack
stone windows and doors - reputedly the finest door
cases in Cambridge - showed, she thought, better in the
cool fenland light of winter days than in the warmth of
summer. Imogen liked her view. So many of her colleagues,
college nurses in other colleges, had offices in
dark basements and remote, ugly corners. It was not so
much the rooms themselves, she often thought, but the
clear indication they gave as to what degree of importance
the senior members of college attached to the health
and welfare of themselves and their students. She had
had her share of bad luck in her thirty-two years, but she
was lucky in St Agatha's.


Sir William Buckmote was coming towards her down
the southern side of the court. She frowned. She was
very fond of the Master, and she could see at once that
he was very agitated. He seemed in haste, but he was
walking a wavering course, as though his right foot were
taking a different direction from his left. His hands were
flapping about. Imogen sighed, and used the little key on


her chatelaine to open the medicine cupboard. Before the
Master had got halfway across the court, his tranquillisers
were on her table, and she had counted out a day's
dose for him. She frowned more deeply. She would have
liked a word or two with the doctor who had started the
Master on these.

The Master was trying to get himself off the things.
They damped him down, and took the cutting edge off
his wits when he was working. They were, in fact, a
disaster for him. But he had so many worries. The crisis
over the Wyndham audit was barely over, and now he
was intolerably harassed by a possible benefactor to the
college, whose generous intentions were hedged round
with detailed conditions, and who seemed to think the
Master should be at his beck and call for days on end. So
Imogen had charge of the bottle of pills, and kept them
under lock and key. He had made a rule for himself that
he was to take them only one day at a time, and only
when he could give his college nurse a reason for being
under special pressure. She confidently expected him to
arrive in her office, sit down, push his glasses up on to
his forehead, and tell her some tale of woe, before taking
two with water, and departing with the rest of the day's
pills in his pillbox.

But she was wrong. The Master stumbled in without
knocking, and said, 'Miss Quy, you must come at once,
please! There has been a calamity in the library - oh, do
please hurry!'

Imogen was hurrying. But she was not going
anywhere leaving pills on the desk and the cupboard
unlocked. 'I'll be right with you,' she said, putting the
pills away and turning the key.

'What has happened, Master?' she asked him as they
descended the staircase on which her room was located,
and emerged into the court.


'I hardly know - I hardly know - I shudder to think!'
he said. 'We must be quick!'

Imogen turned through the arch towards the Chapel
court, but the Master seized her sleeve and drew her the
other way.

'You said the library?'

'Not the real library; the Wyndham Case!' He broke
into a lumbering run.

They reached the door to the Wyndham Library, with
its elaborate decoration, and the words FINIS EST SAPIENTIA
carved above it.

Imogen's duties did not take her into the Wyndham
Library very often. It was a large vaulted room, lined
down one wall with the famous 'Wyndham Case' - a
huge two-storey bookcase of ancient oak, with a set of
steps at one end, and a little gallery running along it
from end to end to give access to the upper shelves. It
was glazed and polished, and the magnificent books it
contained in sombre bindings scented the whole room
with a fragrance of old leather, saddle soap and dust.
There was no time to admire it now; the Master almost
pushed her through the door, stepped after her, and
locked it behind them. The room was not deserted.
Crispin Mountnessing, Wyndham's Librarian, was
standing by one of the tables provided for readers, with
a shocked and tense expression on his face. At his feet,
spread-eagled on the floor, a young man was lying. He
was wearing a lilac silk shirt with a narrow white tie,
and a black leather jacket with a wilted white carnation
in the buttonhole. He had long, tousled, mousy hair. His
bland, unlined face wore an expression of mild surprise.
His right arm was extended, palm upwards, at shoulder
level. Under his head there was a large pool of bright red
blood, which had flowed widely, towards and around the
leg of the table. It was now edged with a darkening rim,


like an island on an old map. All three of the people in
the room knew very well who he was. He was Philip
Skellow, a first-year undergraduate, the first student St
Agatha's had ever taken from his provincial school: a
very bright young man, who had been expected to get a
first.

'I found him like this when I unlocked the library this
morning,' said Mr Mountnessing.

'We can't rouse him,' said the Master.

Imogen knelt beside Philip, and took his wrist between
her fingers. He was quite cold. She tried gently lifting his
head. His neck was stiffening. Blood flowed over and
between her fingers, cool and shocking. Looking up, she
saw there was blood and hair on the corner of the table
above him and a little to the left.

'Too late, I'm afraid,' she said. 'No one can rouse him
now.'

The Master put a hand to his eyes. 'Dead?' he said.

'I'm afraid so. Master, I'm afraid you must call the
police,' said Imogen. She noted with clinical detachment
that she herself was trembling very slightly. She was
surprised. The eminent and unworldly men in the room
had probably never seen a dead body before; but Imogen
had. She had seen injuries much more gruesome than
the violent blow of head against table that had
apparently killed Philip Skellow, and though death is an
extreme kind of injury, and always, she knew, an
outrage, she had seen many deaths. Only, of course,
though on very slight acquaintance, she had liked young
Philip, and... She looked at her blood-smeared right
hand, baffled.

'A doctor?' the Master was saying. 'The next of kin?'

'The police, Master. This looks like murder.' She had
never seen murder before. This was different from other
deaths.


'Murder?' wailed Mr. Mountnessing. 'Oh, no! Surely
he just fell, and...'

'I do not see how a fall could have been hard enough.
I think he must have been pushed. But we do not decide;
we just call the police. Master, you absolutely must call
them at once. Think of the scandal.'

'Yes,' said the Master. 'I see that. Where is there a
phone?'

'I have one in my study,' said Mr Mountnessing.

'We should not touch anything,' said Imogen. 'Where
can I wash my hands?'

The three of them went through a doorway at the end
of the room into a side-room where Wyndham's Librarian
had a cosy study. A little lobby with a tiny window
had been made into a kitchenette for him. While Imogen
washed her hands, the Master picked up the phone. He
seemed not to have dialled 999 but the number of the
local police station. Imogen had spotted an electric kettle
on the side-table, and was hastily making therapeutic tea.
She thought the next hour would be rough on everyone.

The Master was saying, 'We have found a body in a
locked library at St Agatha's... Yes, there was a college
feast last night... What do you mean, tell you another?
No, I do not read detective stories...'

Imogen took the handset from him. On impulse she
asked for Sergeant Michael Parsons, the only police
officer in Cambridge whom she knew.

'Who shall I say is calling?' demanded the voice on the
other end.

'Imogen Quy. No; it rhymes with "why" but it's spelt
Q-U-Y. This is a very urgent matter...' To her relief, the
operator put her through to her friend. 'Mike, this is
Imogen Quy. I'm sure you remember me from that St
John's Ambulance training course. 'Good. Mike, there's
been a... an accident. It might be foul play. Please get


someone over here as quickly as you can.'

An hour later, Imogen was sitting in Mr Mountnessing's
study, overhearing conversations in the library
next door, and sunk in misery.

'But who could have done such a thing?' the Master
kept asking. 'A perfectly inoffensive young man like that!'
His interlocutor was a policeman - Detective Inspector
Balderton.

'First find out why, and then it's usually easy to find
who,' said the Inspector. 'What do we know about the
body? Debts? Girlfriends? Enemies? Supporter of silly
causes?'

'You must talk to his tutor,' said the Master. 'Mr
Benedict will tell you anything the college knows about
him.'

'Later,' said the Inspector. 'When the pathologist and
the fingerprinting boys have done their stuff. Hallo;
what's this?'

Someone had found a book. It was lying on the floor,
under the lethal table, and wedged against the skirting,
as though it had been projected from the outflung right
hand of the dead young man.

'Where does it belong?' asked the detective. 'Was he
stealing it, perhaps?'

'No,' said the Master.

'Why do you say that, sir?'

'Well, it would be such a wicked thing...'

'Does it come from one of these shelves?'

'I'll tell you if you let me look at it,' said Mr
Mountnessing.

'Look without touching, please, sir. There may be
prints.'

'Nova et Antiqua Cosmologia. Yes: it belongs in the
Wyndham Case.'

'Valuable, is it?'


10




'Fairly. Not by any means the best book here.'

'This room kept locked?'

'Always. It is a condition of the Wyndham Bequest.'

'Can I see the keys? Strewth! That might be the bloody
murder weapon! Where the hell did you get one like
that?'

'It's Christopher Wyndham's own design. Made in
1691.'

'If you could possibly do without me...' said the
Master. Imogen walked back to her office with him and
shook out three more of his pills. He sat in front of her
little fire, sunk in despondency, while she tried to comfort
him.

'Would you like me to contact his parents for you?' she
asked.

'No, no. That's my responsibility. Can't shirk that. But
thank you. A kind thought,' he said.

The day was getting worse and worse. And the Master
had hardly left her for five minutes when a girl undergraduate
appeared, looking upset. 'Miss Quy, could you
come, please? There's someone locked in the girls' toilet
on E staircase, crying her eyes out, and we can't make
her come out.'

Imogen accompanied the girl to the toilets. The sound
of racking weeping filled the chill, tiled little room.

'Who is it?' she asked.

'We think it's Emily - Emily Stody -- but we haven't
seen, only heard her,' the girl said.

It took Imogen ten minutes of exasperating pleading to
talk Emily into unlocking the door and emerging, tousled
and red-eyed, a picture of misery.

'What's it about, then?' Imogen asked, kindly enough.

'Philip's dead,' said one of the bystanders.

How had it got round the college so fast? The body
had not yet been covered and taken away. 'Oh, well,


11




colleges are like that,' thought Imogen.

Emily at once began to weep again, gasping for breath
between sobs.

'Emily, you'd better come to the sick room,' said
Imogen, leading her away. Emily was a healthy, a
positively glowing young woman who had never visited
Imogen's 'surgery', not even for the kind of advice young
women in a mixed college usually requested, so Imogen
knew nothing about her except by repute. Her friends
were an assortment of classy youngsters - Jack Taverham's
crowd given to wild parties about which wild
rumours went around. A confident and dominant sort of
girl. But she was certainly in something of a state now.
Imogen - with a motherly arm round the girl's shoulder
as they walked - could feel her trembling. And yet, once
she was sitting comfortably in Imogen's room, with a cup
of hot sweet tea in her hands, and confronted with
Imogen's professional kindness - 'Now, what is all this
about? Can I help you in some way? '- Emily suddenly
sobered up, and clammed up.

'Miss Quy, I'm awfully sorry. I'm a bit of a pig to take
up your time like this. I'm all right now, really.'

'Don't worry, Emily; that's what I'm here for. Of
course you don't have to tell me what has upset you, but
you can if you want to. I keep people's confidences, and
often I can help.'

The girl said nothing. Imogen risked, 'Is it about
Philip?' At that Emily looked up at her, as if startled. Her
pale blue eyes met Imogen's.

'Everyone is upset,' she said.

'But not everyone is bawling in the loo,' thought
Imogen, though she said only, 'Were you fond of him?'

'No,' said Emily. 'Why should I be? I hardly knew him.
Only at parties.'

'But you did know him; and now...'


12




'Oh, Miss Quy, people are saying he's been murdered!
That's not true, is it? It can't be true!'

'I honestly don't know what happened, Emily. The
police are here to find out.'

Emily's face looked about to crumple into tears again.

'Anyone would be upset the first time someone they
know dies very suddenly,' Imogen said, gently. 'It's
perfectly natural.'

Then, when the pause she left open in case Emily
changed her mind about confiding in her was left in
silence, she returned to her brisk manner and insisted on
taking Emily back to her room, and helping her to bed
with a hot-water bottle.

'You honestly don't have to bother,' said Emily. 'I'm all
right.'

But she obviously wasn't all right. Imogen escorted her
back to her room, which was in the Garden Court, high
up; a pretty attic with sloping ceilings and a view of the
castle mound rising from the immaculate lawns and trim
flowerbeds which were the pride and joy of the college
gardeners. The room was chaotic, full of discarded clothes
and scattered books, but the bedder had cleaned around
the mess, and the bed was made. Emily dropped her
culottes to the floor, pulled off her Benetton sweatshirt,
and climbed into bed in her peach satin undies. 'I expect
I've got flu,' she said.

Imogen opened the cupboard in which the architect
concealed the washbasins, looking for a tap to fill a kettle
for a hot-water bottle. The basin was heavily stained, and
there was a large number of test tubes and glass bottles
around. A strange and pungent smell was released into
the room by the open door. On the mirror above the
basin a sticky note bore the message:

'Please conduct experiments in the laboratory, not in
your room. M. Hillaston (your bedder).'


13




Imogen was hardly surprised at this. She filled the hotwater
bottle, and brought it to Emily with two aspirins
and a glass of cold water.

'I can't go to sleep,' said Emily. 'I've got a supervision
this afternoon.'

'I thought you had flu,' said Imogen. 'I'll cancel it for
you. You just sleep it off.'

'Whatever it is,' she added, under her breath.


14




2


When Imogen got back to her room she found Roger
Rumbold waiting for her. Roger was the college librarian
- 'the real librarian' he always called himself, in
ironic contrast to the Wyndham Librarian.


'I thought I'd drop in and see how my favourite nurse
is surviving,' he said. 'I expect you're having a bloody
awful day. Come for a drink?'

'I mustn't, Roger, thank you. I've hardly been in my
room all morning, and I don't suppose the usual crop of
student ills is suspended just because of poor young
Skellow. Another time. How's your mother?'

'She's all right in herself,' said Roger. 'But her roof still
leaks. I can't get our blasted Bursar to do anything about
it. Couldn't you mention to him that damp brings on
bronchitis, which brings on death in the aged, and the
college might be liable?'

'I could vouch for the damp to bronchitis part of that,'
said Imogen. 'You're right, Roger, I could certainly do
with a drink. If you'd care to have a whisky with me
right here...'

'Yes, please, Imogen.'

She set out two plain medicine glasses, and produced
her bottle of The Macallan from the back of the cupboard.

'Mmm,' said Roger. 'Just the ticket. I didn't know you
were a secret drinker, Imogen.'


15




'I'm very careful, Roger, as it happens. It takes a dire
emergency to drive me to drink as a pick-me-up. And I
never drink alone. A person who lives alone can't afford
to.'

'That's a touch puritanical for me, Imogen. Your
health. Besides, you don't live alone. Your house is
packed to the attics.'

'Well, I do and I don't,' said Imogen, collapsing into
the other armchair in her room, 'like you.'

Roger lived in college. Rather few of the college fellows
did that nowadays, most of them having families to go
home to. A live-in fellow was so valuable that when, a
few years back, Roger had announced that he would
have to live with his mother in future, as she was
becoming too frail to manage, the college had hastily
found Mrs Rumbold a place in Audley's Almshouses, just
a step from the college in Honey Hill, and belonging to
some trust entangled with the college by the Wyndham
Bequest. Ever since then, Roger had been grumbling in
a mild way about the administration of the almshouses,
which he said needed money spending on them.
Personable and hard-working as he was, he was one of
life's grumblers.

Roger was always nice to Imogen. He chose to regard
himself, though he was a senior member of college, as,
like herself, an employee, and brought a conspiratorial
tone to their relationship. Imogen thought of this as a
game, and mildly enjoyed it. She also enjoyed Roger's
company when, as he did from time to time, he took her
in to High Table, or out to dinner or a theatre. Life had
rather side-tracked Imogen, although she enjoyed male
company as much as anyone did, and Roger's friendship
was welcome to her. If, sometimes, she wondered what
motivated him, she remembered a line of Hazlitt her
father used to quote: 'The art of pleasing consists in


16




being pleased.' Only right now she wasn't feeling pleased
by Roger.

The whole place is humming with rumours like a
wasp's nest,' he said. 'My favourite theory is that Crispin
did it. The handsome boy rebuffs Crispin's lewd advances,
and there, in Wyndham's sacred chambers, the
Wyndham Librarian does him in. What do you think?'

'That you are disgraceful, Roger. I know you and Mr
Mountnessing have been feuding for years, but accusing
him of murder is OTT.'

'Perhaps he has flipped his lid. Being in charge of all
those books of ancient rubbish might push anyone over
the edge, I would think. I would go dotty in his position.
But of course, you have the advantage of us all; you may
know what happened.'

'Well, I know that Philip Skellow fell, or was pushed,
hard enough to crack his head open on the library table.
Mr Mountnessing found him. He was very upset.'

'I can't understand why that should count as an alibi.
Of course the murderer would be upset. I would be upset
if I had done someone in.'

'And,' thought Imogen, sipping her whisky, observing
her companion, 'you are a little not quite upset, but
uneasy, Roger.'

'A murder is very disturbing,' she said, 'to everyone's
peace of mind.'

'Why, Imogen,' he said, suddenly concerned. 'I believe
you are upset yourself. I'm so sorry. How crass of me to
joke about it! Forgive me.'

'There was blood all over my hands,' said Imogen,
suddenly near to tears. 'Poor young man! It's such an
outrage, Roger!'

'There, there,' he said, leaning forward from his chair
and taking her hand. 'Couldn't it have been an accident?'

'I'm not sure. Perhaps, just possibly. I think it's almost


17




as much an outrage anyway, even if only God or chance
are to blame.'

'That's too deep for me, I'm afraid,' he said, getting up.
'And one can't help wondering, you know, what the
victim was doing in the Wyndham Library. Perhaps he
was nicking books.'

'Perhaps we should not make slanderous accusations
until more is known,' said Imogen, crossly. Just for once
she was glad to see the back of Roger.

It was a great relief when her 'surgery hours' were
over. Imogen locked up and went on her little round. She
looked in on Emily Stody, and found her safely curled up
fast asleep. She visited a third-year flu victim and released
him from bed, starting tomorrow, and then - it was
hardly a duty, but she was concerned - she called on the
Master.

The Master lived at the far end of Castle Court, rebuilt
by Christopher Wren after the depredations of the Civil
War, when the castle had briefly returned to military use,
and the college had been exiled to Barnwell. An austerely
beautiful colonnade led at the far end to a wide blackpainted
door with an immense brass plate, which Imogen
always thought ought to read 'Mr Badger's House' but
which actually said 'Master's Lodge'. The Master was
sitting at his desk in evening dress. He looked ten years
older, and his face was a crumpled ashen grey. When
Imogen entered, he looked up at her and said, 'I've just
been talking to the dead man's parents. He was an only
child.'

'How terrible,' she said. 'I'm so sorry. Master, forgive
me, but do you think you should dine out this evening?'

Behind her the voice of Lady B. said, 'At last! The voice
of common sense. Do listen to her, William.'

'I can't,' he said. 'I'm dining with Lord Coldhooper.'

'Couldn't you make some excuse? Say you are ill?'


18




'But that wouldn't be strictly true, my love, would it?'
he said. 'I am perfectly well, only a little distraught.'

'Nobody else I know would worry about a technical
untruth like that, in the circumstances,' said Lady B.

'Wouldn't the strict truth do?' asked Imogen. 'Someone
has been murdered.'

'We don't know that,' said the Master. 'And I am in no
hurry to tell Lord Goldhooper about it, even if it is true.
He would be only too likely to take his three million
pounds somewhere else!'

'That dreadful man!' said Lady B. 'I really wish he
would do just that! He is leading you such a dance,
William.' She turned to Imogen. 'Miss Quy, you have no
idea! One ridiculous condition after another! Endless
meetings with lawyers! The college has perfectly good
lawyers, but he will only negotiate with William in
person. And whatever he asks, William feels obliged to
do, for the good of the college. Lord Goldhooper has the
finest astrophysicist in England dancing attendance on
him like his valet! It really is too bad!'

'Don't, my dear,' said the Master, looking pained. 'You
mean it kindly, I know, but you are merely rubbing salt.
How many more of these oblivion pills can I take, Miss
Quy?'

'No more till bed-time, I should say, Master,' said
Imogen.

'Going to the Pink Geranium at Melbourn,' lamented
Lady B., '...and driving, in such a state...'

'Not driving,' said Imogen. When her professional
view of things surfaced she was capable of bossing even
the Master. 'Let me order a minicab for you, and another
to bring you back.'

'Could one rely on a minicab?' asked the Master.

'We can rely on Zebedee's,' said Imogen. 'I was at
school with him; he's a good sort.'


19




She waited to give moral support until the Master was
collected by the cab. A malign coincidence resulted in
their having to wait in the gatehouse archway while the
ambulance and several police cars at last took their leave.
Imogen's friend Mike Parsons was driving the last car.
He waved, and wound down the window to greet her.

'What can you tell us, Mike?' she asked him.

'Not a lot,' he said.

'Will it be a murder enquiry?'

''Fraid so. You must have realised. We'll be back in the
morning, talking to everybody.' With that the car ahead
of his eased out into Chesterton Lane, and he was gone,
leaving room for the cab from Zebedee's.

'Good luck, Master,' said Imogen, closing the cab door
on him.

And she felt like a wrung-out dishcloth. She just didn't
feel like the bike ride home to Newnham straight away,
and on impulse she went into the college gardens. She
climbed the castle mound, on the zigzagging path. She
loved to see it as it was now, lined with crocus and
aconite naturalised in the grass. She felt both delight and
envy - her own little garden gave no scope for effects
like that. She observed with pleasure that the steepness
of the path caused her no breathlessness, barely affected
her pulse. 'You'll live, Imogen,' she told herself.

Below her, in the rapid dusk of early spring, Cambridge
lay outspread. St Agatha's was nowhere near the
famous Backs and had not even a glimpse of river or
river bank to its name; but it had, indeed it encompassed,
the highest point in the city, and topped the only hill.
From the summit of the mound Imogen could command
a view across the rooftops, starting with the backs of a
row of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses along
Chesterton Lane that were now all part of St Agatha's,
and the tiny, ancient church of St Giles, with its simple


20




bellcote - luckily a plan to knock the houses down and
replace St Giles by a huge new church in 1875 or so had
been rejected by the then fellows. Beyond, the Cambridge
roofscape was punctuated by towers and spires and
cupolas and the avenue of delicate Gothic turrets along
the sides of King's College Chapel. From here the fundamental
shape of the town was clear, its two main streets
jostling as they shouldered their way towards Magdalene
Bridge, to become Castle Street and mount the gentle
incline past St Agatha's. Imogen liked to reflect that one
of these ancient alignments had carried the Roman road
from Colchester to Chester. From the west the open
countryside still seemed to come right up to the edges of
the town, the massive tower of the University Library
was backed by green distance, and the just perceptible
rise of the last hills in England before the fen; ahead the
gentle wooded rise of the Gogmagogs impinged modestly
on the wide sweep of evening sky.

Imogen drank it in, and sighed. She loved this
townscape, this town. She was Cambridge born and
Cambridge bred. Even her name was that of a local
village - Quy, once a Saxon 'Cow Island,' in a fen long
since drained and dry. All her disasters in life had
happened somewhere else; she had usually been happy
here. She would never like to live anywhere else. But she
was harassed tonight, and a half-remembered quotation
was nagging at the back of her mind. Only as she
descended again, in quest of her bike, did the quotation
surface clearly:


'...On a huge hill,


Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will

Reach her, about must, and about must go...'


A good motto for a detective, Imogen thought, ruefully.



21




3


Imogen's house was in a terrace. The three slotted slabs
for parking bicycles which occupied her front garden
were all assigned to the lodgers, so Imogen wheeled her
bike down the tiny alley between garden fences that led
between her road and the next, to the back garden gate,
and put it in the shed that leaned against an ancient
apple tree. She noticed that the dark buds on the tree
were beginning to swell, and smiled at her little colony of
snowdrops beside the fence as she walked up the path.
Opening the back door into her trim little kitchen, she
was reminded at once that one day last week she had
found it left ajar.


The comfortable battered chairs beside the Rayburn in
the breakfast room were both occupied - it was cheaper
to sit beside Imogen's wonderful cosy stove than to put
coins in the gas meters in their bedrooms - by two of her
lodgers, Simon and Liz, who were amiably arguing about
something.

'Kettle's hot, Imogen!' Liz called. Imogen hung up her
coat, wondering uncharitably whose tea and milk were
in the mugs her two scapegrace students were holding,
and then, seeing the packet of tea-bags and the bottle of
milk they had brought down from their rooms, she was
repentant, and opened a packet of chocolate digestives
for them. In theory, Imogen's lodgers helped pay the
expenses of staying on in the large and comfortable


house she had inherited from her parents; in practice
they cost more in biscuits and such like than she would
have thought possible, and kept her washing machine
running non-stop day and night, though the obsession
with clean clothes that possessed them all did not extend
to clean rooms. Sometimes she thought it would be easier
to stop taking student lodgers. But they had inveigled
themselves into her way of life.

'But the climate must have changed!' Simon said.

'Well, but climates just don't change that easily,' Liz
replied. She had done Part One geography before
changing to law. 'It's an ignorant speculation, Simon.
Every time the weather changes people say the whole
climatic system has shifted for good; but really it has
changed very slowly, oscillated between narrow limits,
and very slowly, until very modern times. Of course the
greenhouse effect is another matter, I grant you, but...'

'Don't you go throwing words like ignorant at me!'
said Simon, still amiable. 'The fact is, your assertions are
based on nothing but theory, whereas when I say the
climate has changed I am basing the assertion on historical
documents. Not theory, but fact.' Simon was a
historian.

'I have a bone to pick with one of you,' said Imogen.
'I know I explained to you about the back door. And last
week I came home and found it open.'

'Sorry, Imogen, but it can't have been me,' said Simon.
'I was away last week, reading in the Newcastle County
Archive for the Prof. Don't you remember?'

'Liz, then,' said Imogen sternly. 'It really is important.'

'Well, I know,' said Liz, frowning. 'But...'

'No buts,' said Imogen. 'I won't have that door left
open.'

Liz, who was blonde and rather pretty, usually had
that vacancy of very young faces, and looked suddenly


interesting when she frowned. 'But I'm sure, Imogen,
really sure, that it wasn't me.'

Imogen, who had expected denial, realised that Liz
genuinely was sure. Of course people can be sure, and
mistaken. How many times had someone in Imogen's
care been sure they had remembered to take their pills?

But Liz was a steady, trustworthy sort of girl.

'Well, never mind about last week, just make sure it
doesn't happen again,' she said, and set about making
herself her supper. There was a problem there, though.
Not that Cambridge was much troubled with burglary;
when Imogen was a child every front door in the street
was left unlocked. She well remembered her mother
saying, when advised to lock up on going out, 'But one
of the neighbours might want to borrow something, and
then they couldn't get in!' However, that was then, this
is now. The little alley at the back was not overlooked,
and the kitchen door had a defective catch. If it was
closed but not locked, it was likely to blow open in gusty
winds, and could stand wide all day. She really ought to
put a Yale lock on it; no she could imagine only too
well getting locked in the back garden every time she put
rubbish out.

'But there was snow before Christmas nearly every
year, for centuries!'

'Well, whatever the reason was, it wasn't climactic
change!'

'You mean climatic, I think. And don't be ridiculous.'

Imogen put her chop in the oven - she couldn't
imagine living without the Rayburn, always warm and
ready to cook, and she felt a guilty pleasure every time
she used it, since having the coal-fired one which had
dominated her mother's life replaced by a gas-fired one.
All the benefit and none of the work - whatever would
her mother have said? Pretty much the sort of thing


24




Roger Rumbold said about the Wyndham Librarian!

And while the chop cooked Imogen left the youthful
disputatious voices in the breakfast-room, and did what
she had done the day she found the back door open: she
went up to the top of the house and inspected Professor
Wylie's flat. Professor Wylie was in Italy; he usually was.
He was a fellow of St Agatha's, but had retired from
active involvement and now spent all his time in pursuit
of the ancient books he collected. He needed a pied-dterre
in Cambridge, and Imogen's flat suited him as well as he
suited her. For him she had broken her usual rule that
her lodgers were never from St Agatha's: a good rule
usually, she reflected. She would otherwise have come
home today not to innocent and irrelevant chat about
snow before Christmas, but to more frantic talk of death
by violent means.

The flat did not have its own front door; it was simply
the top floor of the house with a kitchenette installed
under a skylight on the upper landing. Professor Wylie's
books filled it; they were piled high on the floor in stacks,
carefully made with the spines alternating with the page
edges, so that no undue pressure would damage the
squeeze on the spines. The rooms were lined with
crammed and crowded bookcases, the table was piled
high, the piles of books even advanced down the stairs,
occupying every tread left and right. To Imogen's eyes
nothing looked disturbed: the Piranesi prints which
decorated the chimney breast in the room the Professor
used as a sitting-room were still there; his bronze of
Laocoon with serpents was still on the mantelpiece; his
heavily tarnished Georgian silver teapot - full of cold tea,
Imogen discovered, picking it up to put it away - was
still on the draining board of the tiny sink. If the flat
looked chaotic, the chaos was home-grown. Imogen
knew the books were hugely valuable; but if several


dozen had been removed she wouldn't have known any
different. Reassured by the unfingered dust on every
pile - she was absolutely forbidden to dust the books
- she rinsed out the teapot, and returned to her chop.

Later, when the young had disappeared on their
evening amusements and Imogen had cleared the
kitchen, she lit the gas fire in her sitting-room, spread
herself in her cosy chair and, at peace for the first time
that day, began to think. At first her thoughts were
troubled; poor Philip! And what a calamity for his
parents! Of course, Imogen knew only too well that not
everyone in the triumphant flock of the gilded and gifted
young people who won places at Cambridge every year
would enjoy it; a considerable minority would spend
some or all of their too-brief three years being very
miserable, and some would shipwreck drastically - taking
their own lives, or getting into dire trouble. Many more
would merely disappoint their ecstatic parents and school
teachers by getting indifferent degrees, or taking diplomas
in sociology, or getting pregnant. Not that that was
the problem it used to be now that everyone was so
ruthless about abortion. Idly Imogen wondered if Emily
Stody's flu was anything to do with being a little
overdue. She must keep an eye on that girl.

By and by Imogen got up and fetched a battered
notebook from her bookcase. It had a pretty flowerprinted
cover, and a pencil tied to the ribbon placemarker.
Imogen had learned long ago how to take
patient histories, sitting at hospital bedsides asking
questions, ordering the answers carefully, and never,
never (her professor was very insistent) failing to explore
and eliminate the significance of anything that looked
merely coincidental. If the flu patient has, completely
coincidentally, just returned from West Africa, then the
flu may be Lassa fever; if this is the third member of a


26




family, completely coincidentally, to get sepsis in a
surface wound, then hygiene in the home in question
may be poor; if an unduly large number of people who
happen to smoke get emphysema... Imogen had learned
this lesson well. As she had learned the benefits for clear
thinking of writing things down. And there was, of
course, an oddity about Philip's death in the Wyndham
Library. The Wyndham Case, which was normally of
very little interest to anybody except Roger Rumbold - to
him it was like a raging toothache - had now figured,
coincidentally, in two successive college crises. Imogen set
herself to recall and set down everything she knew about
Christopher Wyndham.

Scholar, poet and eccentric, friend of Andrew Marvell
and Samuel Pepys, passionate opponent of Sir Isaac
Newton... she got up and looked up Wyndham in
Chambers' Cyclopaedia. 1629-92. The entry called him an
'occultist'. He had been extremely wealthy. St Agatha's,
of which he had been a scholar, was impoverished by the
Civil War, during which it even lost possession of its
buildings for a short time. Wyndham had made large
bequests during his lifetime, on which the prosperity of
the college still depended. On his death he had
bequeathed his books to the college, in a settlement
hedged about with conditions. Imogen wrote down what
she knew about those conditions.

Fundamentally the Wyndham Bequest had been a
scheme like that of Samuel Pepys' bequest to Magdalene
College. Like his friend, who had died a few years after
him, Wyndham had left to his old college a library of
books, complete with cases, on condition that in
perpetuity no book should ever be removed, and no book
should ever be added to the cases. But while Pepys had
merely contributed to a handsome building which eventually
housed his bookcases, Wyndham had commissioned


Wren to design from scratch. In almost every respect he
had tried to go one better. His bookcase, the great twostorey
affair with gallery and steps, that dominated the
Wyndham Room, had been made and decorated by
Grinling Gibbons. A permanent library keeper was to be
appointed, who should enjoy 'the usufruct' of four farms.
Wyndham had probably intended simply to make his
library-keeper as comfortable as any other college fellow;
but the four farms were now under Bayswater.

Two aspects of Wyndham's bequest caused trouble in
the present day, and the first troublesome matter was
just this. Wyndham's 'keeper', known now as the
Wyndham Librarian, the post currently held by Crispin
Mountnessing, was hugely overpaid. Essentially his job
- merely making sure that no book was ever removed
and none added to the collection - was a sinecure,
although now that the books were very old some conservation
work was entailed. He also had to supervise
any scholars who wished to consult the volumes, which
they were allowed to do at the reading tables provided in
the room. There were not very many of these visiting
readers, a matter which provoked the particularly vitriolic
comments of Roger Rumbold, because the books in the
Wyndham Case reflected Wyndham's opinions as clearly
as those in the Pepys Library, just down the road in
Magdalene, reflected the culture and urbane interests of
Samuel Pepys. But Wyndham had been a Ptolemaic
astronomer. He was equally opposed to astrology, still
relatively respectable in his time, and to Isaac Newton.
And there was not a soul left in the world, leave alone in
the University, who did not nowadays espouse one or
other of those two radically opposed opinions about the
celestial world. The books with which Wyndham had
thought to make an intellectual ark for his beleaguered
opinions were now of interest only as objects - valued as


28




incunabula, or for the light they cast on the history of
typography, or for their splendid bindings - reverently
inspected, but never read.

Of course the college had a real library, and, in Roger
Rumbold, a real librarian. He was paid the going rate for
academic Librarians, no doubt, but it did not amount to
more than a fraction of what Bayswater ground rents
bestowed on Crispin Mountnessing. Crispin did not need
to be, and was not, according to Roger, much of a brain.
Of course he was supposed to be a brain - or at least, a
scholar. He could not have been appointed otherwise. He
had written the definitive critical work on Alfred Austin.

'Who?' Imogen had asked Roger, on being told this.

'Well may you ask!' Roger said, grimly. 'The next Poet
Laureate after Tennyson, that's who.'

'Did he write anything good?' Imogen had asked.

'In a word, no,' Roger told her.

Mountnessing was working now on an edition of the
works of Colley Cibber. No wonder hardworking,
devoted Roger, whose real library was always short of
money, whose own research languished for lack of time,
grumbled and sniped at Mountnessing across the
common room!

The other troublesome aspect of the Wyndham
Bequest, as Imogen understood it, was the codicU. As
Wyndham got older it seemed he got nuttier. His books
were installed in the college, the will was written, the gift
accepted, the conditions understood. But Newton's hated
Principia was setting the world aglow - the Ptolemaic
system was everywhere in disrepute. Wyndham spent his
twilight years trying to disprove the law of gravity, and
becoming ever more paranoid. He became convinced that
everyone was waiting for him to die, in order to violate
his sacred collection wholesale. The result was his codicil.
Imogen methodically wrote down what she knew about


29




the codicil. It provided for a system of audits to be carried
out to check that the contents of the Wyndham Case
were intact. The Wyndham Room was to be kept locked
at all times, except when the keeper-librarian was
present. The college was to have only one key. Wyndham
himself designed the lock, and the key. The lock was
never to be changed, nor any second lock added to the
door. But there was a second key, to be used by the
auditor. The audit, for which Wyndham had made
undisclosed arrangements, was to be carried out once, on
a date chosen at random, in every successive century
from the date of the bequest. It was to be carried out
without warning. If all was found to be in order, the
auditor would announce the fact, and the college was to
have a feast, paid for from the Wyndham estate. But if
ever any book was found to be missing, or any spurious
book was found to be present, then the college was to
lose all benefit under the will. The books were to be sold,
the keeper 'sent forth into the world', and all the money
raised by the sale of every part of the Wyndham Bequest
was to be applied to Audley's Almshouses, a modest
charity for housing twelve elderly poor men and women
of the parish of St Giles, which a friend of Wyndham's
had set up in 1689.

Imogen put down her notebook, and sat deep in
thought. She very well remembered the panic the
Wyndham audit had generated last term. It was on one
of the rare occasions when she dined at High Table.
Roger had invited a suitably eminent guest - a lady from
the Library of Congress - who had then gone down with
flu, and was confined to her hotel room in London. Of
all the senior fellows, only the Chaplain was likely to
raise an eyebrow at Imogen's appearance as Roger's
guest. He had once complained bitterly that some
provision or other under discussion in the college


30




committee 'reduced the Chaplain to the level of the
college nurse', whereupon such a fury in defence of
Imogen had browbeaten him that he kept clear of her
ever after, though, as Imogen said to Roger, how could
this be her fault? Anyway, that night it must be about
a year ago, Imogen supposed - there were quite a few
fellows dining in, and one or two other guests, including
an economics don from Oxford and a Queen's Counsel.

The Wyndham Bequest was mentioned, and the
Master outlined the provisions of the will to his guests.

'Was this extraordinary audit ever carried out?' asked
the lawyer.

'Crispin?' said the Master. Mr Mountnessing was
something of an expert on college history, having, as
Roger so often said, few more urgent demands on his
time.

'Yes, indeed; the first time some thirty-five years after
Wyndham's death, in 1728. There was a most splendid
feast, involving five dozen roast swans. Everybody
seemed to have forgotten about it after that, so that the
second audit caused considerable surprise. But it was
carried out in, I believe, 1855, and another feast was
given.'

'But it was out of time, surely,' said the Oxford
economist, 'if more than a hundred years had elapsed
since the previous audit.'

'No,' said the Master. 'Crispin will correct me if I am
wrong, but as I understand it the crucial date each time
is not the date of the previous audit, but remains the date
of Wyndham's death. An audit must occur at some time
within each successive one hundred years after that. It
could be nearly two hundred years since the last audit,
and still be within the relevant century.'

'However,' remarked the lawyer, 'if no audit has been
carried out since 1855, you must be expecting one daily.'


31




'Must we?' said the Master. A sort of hush had fallen
over adjacent conversations.

'Well, the third century since Wyndham's death is
nearly up. What month did he die in?'

'January,' said Crispin. 'January the eighth, 1692.'

'Then there has to be an audit within a month, I
should think,' said the lawyer.

'I imagine that whatever arrangements Wyndham
made have lapsed by now,' said the Bursar.

'Why do you say that?' enquired Roger.

Imogen offered her only general observation of the
evening. 'If the purpose was to surprise the college, then
it has been left too late. It won't be a surprise if we can
be certain it will happen within a month.'

'I wouldn't call any such antique farrago a certainty,'
said the lawyer. 'I imagine there is a trust of some kind,
set up for the purpose. But you know, over great lengths
of time trusts become moribund, people die, solicitors get
taken over... a secret trust in particular could very easily
get lost in the mists of time. Does the will provide what
is to happen in the event that the audit does not get
carried out?'

'We would presumably acquire control of the bequest,'
said the Bursar. 'Who could say us nay?'

'Would you say we had nothing to worry about?'
asked the Master. And, Imogen thought, nobody did
seem very worried. They were talking about the whole
matter in the tone of voice normally used for discussion
on varying the procedure with the rose-bowl, that college
tradition asserted should be brought out after dinner.

'I think I would be worried enough to make sure that
there-is nothing out of order with those books,' said the
lawyer.

'What happens if there is?' asked the Oxford economist.
He was told. For a while the conversation dallied


32




with the vast sums of money that would be lavished on
the twelve pensioners in Audley's Almshouses.

'We could billet them all in the Garden House Hotel
for life on a fraction of it,' said the Bursar.

'Then I think I shall give you some excellent financial
advice,' said the man from Oxford. Tamper with the
books; make sure the audit will fail. When it does, apply
to the Charity Commission to vary the terms of the
Wyndham Bequest, on the grounds that it is unreasonable
in present conditions, that the intention of the
benefactor is impossible to fulfil. You get a splendid
windfall. You would of course do something for the
Audley's pensioners.'

'What a shocking idea!' said the Master.

'It rather appeals to me to divert some of Wyndham's
loot to some useful books,' said Roger.

'Or to a new hall of residence,' said the Bursar. There
was a sort of glint in people's eyes, a certain hopeful,
wistful tone in their voices.

'There is, and will be, nothing wrong with Wyndham's
books,' said Crispin stiffly.

'Oh, well, you would have to bribe the curator
lavishly, of course,' said the Oxford man, laughing.

'What price Crispin's honour?' asked one of the
younger fellows.

'Oh, it needn't affect his honour,' said Roger, with a
glint in his eye. 'All that is needed is for some of the
books to be at the binder at the crucial moment. Didn't
you tell me, Crispin, that A Treatise on the Astrolabe was
being rebound right now?'

Wicked Roger! He took malign pleasure - Imogen,
sitting opposite him, could see the glee on his face - in
the bombshell he had dropped. Mountnessing had turned
a distinctly paler shade.

'Come, come,' said the Master briskly. 'We mustn't


33




bore our guests with this sort of thing. Ghosts of the
past. We must turn our eyes to the future. We must have
a care; even joking about a dishonourable manoeuvre
such as we htive been adumbrating tonight, leave alone
putting one into practice, might deter future benefactors.
Would you fetch the rose-bowl, Mr Sharkin?'

The most junior senior member present rose and
brought from an ancient sideboard behind the high table
a large shallow silver bowl, exquisitely chased, full of
water topped with floating rose petals. Gravely the
company passed the bowl round the table, and each
person in turn dipped a corner of his extensive damask
napkin, and wiped himself on the forehead and behind
the ears. Some pleasantly nutty earlier benefactor had
bequeathed the bowl for the purpose, having apparently
believed that cold water behind the ears was a sovereign
remedy for gout.

'Shall we go up?' said the Master, rising as soon as the
ritual was complete. He led the way across the Fountain
Court to the common room, where dessert was laid out
in a splendour of old silver, overlooked by portraits of
past Masters, and the company talked pleasantly of other
things.

There had followed two weeks of the most appalling
anxiety. Imogen recalled, wincing, how the Master and
Mountnessing had both needed moral and pharmaceutical
support while frantic efforts were made to retrieve
the books from the binder. Mountnessing had refused to
leave the Wyndham Case, but spent all day there, and all
night on a camp bed in his office, so that should the
auditor appear, he could be reasoned with. Of course the
whole senior common room knew what was afoot, and
the college buzzed with excited gossip. The discomfiture
of one of their own members, and the associated windfall
of money for college affairs, had just the elements to


34




make eyes sparkle and tongues wag, and living-out
fellows come in to dine in flocks.

Crispin's discomfiture was acute. The three books
being rebound had gone to an eccentric lady who for
many years had worked for the British Museum
Department of Printed Books, and was incomparably
skilled at her job, but who on retirement had moved to
Skye, where she worked on a few special commissions.
She was, luckily, on the telephone, but not cooperative.
She very nearly refused to get the books finished at once,
saying they should not be removed from the presses so
soon. Then she agreed to complete the work in haste; but
she absolutely refused to drive the books to Cambridge
at short notice. She would deliver them, as arranged, in
three months' time, in person, or she would send them
by courier, at the college's own risk. Crispin wouldn't
hear of that, and so somebody had to drive to Skye to
fetch them. And Crispin wouldn't leave the Wyndham
Case.

The Master was tied down with multiple onerous
duties Imogen thought he was already dealing with
Lord Goldhooper, and he was on numerous weighty
committees of the great and the good. It was held to be
unfair to ask a college servant to take responsibility for
priceless, uninsurable, irreplaceable objects. Crispin was
beside himself.

'How did he get them there?' Imogen had asked Lady
B., with whom she was discussing the wear and tear on
everyone's nerves.

'The lady comes down from Skye once every six
months. She fetched them.'

They've been gone six months?'

Tour, I understand. Anyway, Imogen, everybody
senior enough to be trusted is either too doddery to drive
or too busy to be spared. Do you fancy an excursion? I


35




think we shall have to go ourselves, don't you? To share
the driving.'

It had taken them five days for the round trip. Imogen
had called on the 'Babysitting Circle' an informal
freemasonry of college nurses that arranged for them to
cover each other's duty hours when required. Lady B.
had booked them into an excellent hotel in the Forest of
Bowland to break the journeys, and she was very good
company. Though Imogen would have said the two of
them had nothing in common except affection for the
Master, it turned out that they had read a lot of the same
novels, that they both liked gardening, that they both
secretly thought St Agatha's in many ways laughable.
The books were retrieved from a very cross lady bookbinder
and driven away, wrapped in blankets, in the boot
of Lady B.'s car.

Sitting comfortably after dinner in the hotel, on the
return trip, Lady B. had suddenly quizzed Imogen. 'Come
on now, my dear, tell me about yourself.'
'What do you want to know?'

'Primarily, what you are doing apparently unattached.'
'WelJ, there was somebody once. It didn't work out.'
Under gentle probing, Imogen had told Lady B. the
whole sad, commonplace story. She had been studying
medicine at Oxford. The young man was older than her
and universally thought to be brilliant. She had been
deeply in love. When his professor offered to take him to
Harvard with the research project they were working on,
they couldn't bear to be parted; she had thrown up her
studies and gone too. It had never occurred to her that
the ruthless dedication to science which she admired so
much in him included ruthlessness about her. Not, that
is, until he left her, abruptly, in favour of an American
girl who was nearer his own level of brilliance, and had
good connections her father was a college president.


36




Coming home penniless, and without a right to a grant,
she had not felt up to resuming a medical degree, and
had trained as a nurse. She had intended to work in
India, but then her mother had broken a hip, and her
father needed her. She came back home to Cambridge,
found part-time work as a nurse at St Agatha's, looked
after her parents...

Lady B. offered no sympathy. She simply said, 'Luckier
is not necessarily happier, you know. And there will be
somebody for you, sometime.'

'Perhaps,' said Imogen. 'If I want. One gets to like
independence. It puts people off.'

'Does it, still?' mused Lady B. 'I would have thought
nowadays there were those who found strong-minded
women a turn-on.' Imogen redirected her thoughts
sternly to the matter in hand.

By the end of the following day, the precious books
were safely returned to their places on the sacred shelves.
The auditor had not turned up in the meantime, and a
grateful college had given Imogen a generous bonus.

The auditor had not turned up while Imogen and Lady
B. bowled along the high roads; he had not turned up at
all. January 8, the tricentenary anniversary of Wyndham's
death, came and went. There had been no audit in
Wyndham's third century; the arrangements for enforcing
his will had collapsed. And, as Imogen would
have predicted if she had been asked, nothing happened.
The college fellows voted to continue Mountnessing's
emolument as before, to continue to respect the terms of
the Wyndham Bequest. Any deviation from these
immemorial arrangements would be bound to attract
notice; and the practice of making generous donations to
ancient colleges with conditions attached had not ceased
in the seventeenth century; Lord Goldhooper was busy
arranging just such another right now.


37




But the crisis was over, the audit now out of time. A
body in the Wyndham Library was, in relation to the
events Imogen had been carefully mulling over and
noting down, just a coincidence. It had to be.

'A person perfectly well could have come back from
West Africa without Lassa fever, and then caught
ordinary flu. Coincidences do happen sometimes,'
Imogen said aloud, addressing the remembered medical
guru under whom she had trained. She closed her
notebook, put out the lights and went to bed.


38




The college was uncannily quiet the next day. The
weather was cold, and a grey drizzle descended from a
sulky sky. From her window Imogen saw the unfamiliar
sight of policemen coming and going to the Wyndham
Library, and to the college office on the opposite side of
the court, where they had set up an operations room.
They were interviewing people all day. All day a
uniformed officer stood guard at the foot of the staircase
where Philip Skellow's room was; the other occupants of
the staircase had to give their names coming and going.
Everyone, it seemed, had other things to worry about
than the usual aches and pains they brought to the
college nurse. Imogen had a quiet day.

She checked up on Emily Stody; the girl was better,
and out of bed. She opened the door to Imogen's knock
and stood her ground, stony-faced. No, there wasn't
anything she needed; only to be left alone. As Imogen
left she added ungraciously, Thank you.'

As Imogen had fully expected, the Master dropped in
for his quota of 'oblivion pills'.

'I am ashamed to confess that I need them again today,'
he said.

'Be easy on yourself, Master,' said Imogen. 'The time
to cut back on them is when things are normal. Not
when a major disturbance is going on.'

'Disturbance?' he said. 'You will think badly of me. But


39




it isn't the police, Miss Quy, nor yet that poor young
man's death, however distressing that may be. But if
Lord Goldhooper can be persuaded to act sensibly as well
as generously it will benefit the college for many, many
years to come. It is that question that is agitating me.'

'The only aspect of it that I should ask you about is
how long you think it will continue to worry you, since
that has some bearing on the rate at which we can
reduce these pills.'

"I don't know. It has been getting more and more
tricky. I don't mind telling you about it, in confidence of
course; perhaps an outside opinion would clarify my
mind. The problem is this. We start from Lord Goldhooper's
wishing to unload his fortune on the college. He
wants to endow three fellowships, and nine student
scholarships, for work using computers to advance
science. He wants to give the college funds for these
positions, and for highly advanced personal computers
for these new fellows and their students to work with. It
would make the college independent of what the rest of
the university has available, and there would be money
to update the hardware and software indefinitely. It
would put the college in the world class for computer
projects in science.'

'But?'

'But there are conditions. Lord Goldhooper is an
admirer of what he calls hard science: physics, astronomy,
inorganic chemistry. He dislikes - he positively
despises - what he calls soft science: sociology, statistical
analysis, economics, that sort of thing. He wants to tie us
up so that we can never use his computers or one second
of any of his scholars' time on any such thing.'

'Is there any problem doing what he wants?' asked
Imogen. 'There would never be any end of projects that
he would approve of.'


40




'No. But there would certainly be very tempting
projects that people would badly want to embark on, that
he would definitely disapprove of.'

'Do you have to decide this all by yourself?' Imogen
asked. 'What do the other senior members think?'

'Oh, that we should take the money and run, to use a
cliche. The decision is mine, but I shall be very unpopular
indeed if I refuse to take the gift.'

A thought struck Imogen. 'Is medicine a hard, or a soft
science, according to Lord Goldhooper?' she asked.

'Soft, I'm afraid. Out of the question.'

'And the difficulty is that you yourself disagree with
the great man's value judgment?'

'Well, no; not entirely. I agree that the great thing is to
work in areas of science which are capable of yielding
precise answers to precise questions. We would have no
difficulty keeping the terms of the donation for the next
few years. The trouble is, Miss Quy, that I don't think it
will long be possible to distinguish hard from soft science.
Organic and inorganic chemistry, and molecular physics,
and genetics, and probability theory applied to genetics,
are all going to collide and coalesce. Nearly always good
new science takes place on the boundaries of subjects. I
can foresee the college entangled hopelessly in futile and
intellectually disreputable attempts to maintain distinctions
which everyone else has abandoned, forced to do so
on pain of losing the Goldhooper trust. Allowing one
project, disallowing another on the advice not of
scientists, but of lawyers. Distorting projects to make
them fit; becoming notorious for such things. A result
compared to which overpaying Mountnessing is a mere
pinprick. It is this I am fretting over when I can't sleep!'

Imogen offered sympathy. She doled out a day's pills
with a gentle admonition to try to have two left at
bedtime, to help with that sleep problem.


41




As the Master left she asked him, 'Is the dreaded Lord
Goldhooper a scholar himself? What did he study?'

'Sociology,' the Master said. 'That's the trouble.'

The Master was Imogen's only visitor until just before
five o'clock, when Mike Parsons, her policeman friend,
suddenly appeared.

'Sit down, Mike,' Imogen said. 'Are you off duty? I can
offer tea or whisky.'

'I won't have a drink, thanks,' he said. 'I'll be off to the
Pickerel in a mo. Am I off duty? Well, that rather
depends. The chief doesn't know why I'm calling on you,
but it wouldn't be a sacking matter if he did.'

'Hum,' said Imogen. "I ought to tell you before you
start that college medical records are private property.
College permission to see them, or a warrant, Mike, even
if we are old friends.'

'Well now,' he said, rocking his chair back on its legs,
and swinging himself gently, 'perhaps I would like a cup
of tea, after all. And while you're getting it, maybe I'll
just do a little thinking aloud. I take it I don't need a
warrant to have a little talk with you?'

'Of course not. Milk and sugar?'

'Milk and three, please.'

'Three?' Imogen looked at Mike's lanky form sprawled
in her chair, and decided he must be burning sugar as
fast as she could supply it. He was wearing a suit which
looked as though he had borrowed it for the day: his
natural foliage would have been a track suit.

'You saw the body, Imogen,' he was saying, 'so you
will realise there's a time-of-death problem.'

'Rigor setting in, and blood still wet. Yes, I realise,' she
said. 'But he wasn't haemophiliac, Mike. I would have
known about that.'

He nodded. 'We haven't had the path, report yet.
Maybe that will cast light on it. It wasn't that I wanted to


42



I


think aloud about, really. I thought to myself, "I bet that
nice Miss Quy gets fond of these little perishers. In the
course of her work."'

'Some of them,' said Imogen, cautiously.

'We're having a little trouble interviewing victim's
known associates, otherwise known as students in this
blessed college. I thought it just possible you could help.'

'I'll help you in any way I can that doesn't conflict
with my duty.'

'Well, thanks. But really I was wondering if you could
help them.'

'TelJ me about it. As far as allowed, of course.'

'Some of them are bloody rude. It gets you down,
having people be rude to you all day.'

'Sorry, Mike. The Cambridge citizenry doesn't hate its
police force, I know, but these youngsters come from all
over the place, and they bring their attitudes with them.
I can't do anything about that!'

'I didn't think you could teach them manners, love.
Too late for that. Look, here's what it comes down to.
We've been buzzing about trying to find young Skellow's
friends, and ask them simple questions about him. You
know the kind of thing. When did you see him last? Did
he have a quarrel with anyone that you know about?
What were his interests? the usual things. And we have
a problem I could put to you like this. We have a list of
young sprigs to see. Some of them are very rude; all of
them are uncooperative.'

'Which makes things difficult?'

'Which makes things slower. They always tell one
more than they mean to. We can piece things together.'

'But a few little jigsaw pieces from me might help?'

'Look, why don't I put you in the picture - off the
record? And you fill in where you can - likewise off the
record?'


43




'All right, Mike. The sooner you get to the bottom of
this the better.'

'Natch. Well, the one thing nobody minds telling us
about is the victim. A pansy boy, one would gather.
Didn't row, didn't play rugger, did play chess; a swot.
Dubious honesty, I am led ta believe.'

'You amaze me, Mike. A perfectly nice young man. I'm
sure he had girlfriends.' Imogen remembered seeing him
in a pub, drinking and holding hands with a young
woman. 'And why does anyone think he wasn't honest?'

'He seems to have had more money to spend this term
than his friends reckoned he ought to have had.'

'Now if you had said he had less to spend than they
expected I wouldn't have been surprised. He was sharing
a set a set of rooms with Jack Taverham, and Taverham
is very wealthy. Has money to burn. Has well-off
friends.'

'I gather Skellow's presence in the set of rooms was an
embarrassment to Taverham,' Mike said.

'Yes, perhaps. I think they had both asked to be
moved.' Imogen got up and opened her filing cabinet,
and looked at her notes. 'Taverham asked to have
Skellow moved and replaced by someone else at the end
of the first week of their first term. About six weeks later
Skellow also asked to be moved. The Domestic Bursar
sees to such things, but I make a note in case it casts
light on some upset they bring to me.'

'Psychological?'

'We are talking about very clever young people. Or
perhaps I mean very young clever people; sometimes
they get upset badly by what seem like small difficulties.'

'So why didn't the Bursar move these young primadonnas?'

'Rooms
are always short; moves hard to arrange. And
besides, the college had almost certainly put them


44




together deliberately. Taverham came from Drummer's
School; he had six schoolfellows arriving in the college at
the same time, and at least as many ahead of him in the
second and third years. We like to split them up - they
are very cliquey, as it is. Skellow was a grammar-school
boy. As a general thing the college puts unlike people
together, and they rub each other's corners off, and
widen each other's view, and become reasonably cordial.
Looking at this note now, I can see exactly why
Taverham's request was ignored. They had a very nice
set of rooms, overlooking Garden Court. He didn't ask to
be moved; he asked to have Skellow moved, leaving
himself in possession. The Bursar offered to move
Taverham, to a room in a college house in Honey Hill;
Taverham preferred to keep the rooms in college and put
up with his companion. I should think the Bursar didn't
even consider allowing Taverham to get his roommate
removed from a pleasant set.'

'And when Skellow himself asked to be moved?'

'That would have been different; but by then there
really were no rooms available.'

'So they were stuck with each other?'

'Till next year.'

'And it seems Skellow was a pain in the neck at
Taverham's parties. Cast a gloom over the fun. Made a
fuss.'

'Maybe.' Imogen had no knowledge of that.

'But people don't get themselves murdered because
they whinge at parties, Imogen, even though there was
a helluva party the night before last. Or so we
understand. There's got to be more to it.'

'Mike, I know it doesn't look like an accident, but...'

'We are to believe that nobody, but nobody, who was
at that party can remember whether Skellow was there
or not. If he was, he wasn't having much of a time,


45




because everybody is absolutely certain that they didn't
talk to him.'

'Why not ask Taverham?'

'We'd love to; but we can't find him. You wouldn't
know where he might be, I suppose?'

'Haven't a clue, Mike, I'm afraid. In the old days people
needed permission to be away from college during term,
but not any more. As long as he doesn't miss a supervision
nobody will notice for days. He could have gone
fishing, gone home, gone to London...'

'His supervision isn't due till five o'clock tomorrow. He
didn't go home. If he went to London, it wasn't on the
train.'

'Nobody keeps tabs on a student's movements any
more. Certainly not me. I can't help.'

'Let me go back to the beginning,' said Mike. 'We are
interviewing people who were at a party on the night of
the murder, that the victim was probably at. It was in his
rooms, anyway. And some of them are rude, most are
uncooperative, and all are frightened. Imogen, they are
all very scared. You get a feel for it in my job; they are
holding something back. And I thought you might like to
try to help them; to limit the damage a bit. Murder is a
very serious matter. Withholding information from the
police in a murder enquiry is a very serious matter. They
could get themselves into unpleasantly deep water.
Someone ought to tell them to be sensible; someone
ought to tell them to be careful. They can't all have
murdered Skellow. The ones who didn't are digging an
elephant trap for themselves. They could do very
urgently with some friendly advice, and they won't take
it from the police. So do you think...? Does your pastoral
care extend to that?'

Imogen sat thinking. 'I could try,' she said at last. 'I
could try talking to people and see if I got anywhere. To


46




be honest, Mike, I think it would be easier to get them to
tell me if Skellow was at the party, and when he left,
than to get them to tell you, although I can try to
persuade them to help you.'

'Then I'll make a Little friendly deal with you,' he said.
He looked at his watch. 'I'm definitely off duty now. I'll
keep you abreast of the investigation, as far as duty
allows me; you'll ferret around for me a bit and let me
know anything you find out, as far as duty allows you.
Here's a list of people who admit to being at the party.'
He put a piece of paper on her desk. 'The ones I rather
think aren't coming clean with us have a tick against
them. Done?'

'Done,' she said.


47




5


Imogen took the list of names to her filing cabinet. It had
been a big party, evidently there were at least thirty
names on Mike's list. Five of them were ticked. She
began methodically to look them up in her case notes,
reminding herself whether she had seen any of the
young people, apart from the initial medical, and if so
why, and what they were studying, and where they
came from. Nick Sanderson. Reading economics. From
Felixstowe. In the college first eight. Imogen had seen
him twice: to bind up a pulled ligament in the left knee
and then to give him simple exercises to speed recovery.
She remembered him perfectly - he had the sort of sharp,
intelligent features that often went with a weedy
physique, set atop a massive athletic frame. He had been
very agitated about his slight injury, in case it took the
edge off his top performance. If he went to wild parties,
she reflected, that would take the edge off him for a day
or two, without any other cause required.

Frances Bullion. Reading English. From Taunton. She
had never consulted Imogen on her own account; nevertheless,
Imogen had seen her several times, when Mary
Jakes, her room-mate, became depressed. Fran Bullion
had turned up and consulted Imogen on how to befriend
a person in psychological deep water. A cheerful,
uncomplicated, well-meaning girl, very good-looking. And
kindly: she had visited Mary in hospital, for Imogen had


48




bumped into her there. Hers was really not a name
Imogen would have expected to find on a list of those
withholding information from the police. One of the most
likeable undergraduates in the college, Imogen thought.
But then, she told herself wryly, the fact that I like
someone isn't evidence!

Terence Masters. Languages Persian and Bengali.
From Finchley. Imogen knew him well: he had picked up
a very nasty tummy bug in Bangladesh last vacation, and
been chronically ill for months. He had missed a lot of
term, but he was bright. He was repeating the second
year. A lanky, rueful lad with a sarcastic tongue.

Felicity Marshall. Medicine. From Birmingham. Must be
healthy; Imogen knew nothing about her.

Catherine Brack. Zoology. From Bournemouth. Ah yes;
that one had needed Imogen's services a lot. She had had
detailed contraceptive advice, and several tests, both for
pregnancy and Aids. The fact that Imogen had not seen
her recently might mean her turbulent life had settled
down somewhat, and it might mean that she had
acquired the expertise her lifestyle required. A darkhaired,
delicate-looking girl with large blue eyes and an
elfin appearance; Imogen could well imagine her as the
centre of attention.

While she was at the filing cabinets, Imogen looked up
the missing Jack Taverham. Agriculture. From Woodbridge.
Had never consulted her. Imogen frowned. Why
did she think he had? Then she remembered - he had
dropped in on her last term to borrow her typewriter
over the weekend. She had been reluctant to lend it, she
recalled, and he had beamed charm at her, and she had
given in. He needed it to fix up a newsletter for some
undergraduate society or other. He promised the machine
would be back on Monday morning. She remembered a
great handsome oaf of a fellow, standing in the doorway


49




with her trusty Olympia in his arms, saying, 'Just to
reassure you that your kit is safe with me, Miss Quy, I
should tell you that I was at school at Brummer's.' The
typewriter had been promptly returned, undamaged.

And last why hadn't she thought of it before? - she
looked up poor Philip Skellow. History. From Helmsley.
And there was a recent note on his file. He was going
trekking in Kashmir at Easter, and he needed jabs - the
usual holiday inoculations. He was supposed to pick
them up at the chemist and bring them to Imogen to
inject for him. He should have come the day before
yesterday, and he hadn't turned up. Had he forgotten?
Had he cancelled his trip? But within hours of the missed
appointment he had been dead.

Imogen considered the list of names again. Then she
checked a room number, locked up for the night, and set
out across the college court to see if she could find Fran
Bullion and entice her home to a quiet supper in
Newnham. Fran accepted very willingly, saying, 'I'd love
to get out of college for a few hours!'

Imogen biked home ahead of her to prepare the meal.
Her quickest way home involved wheeling her bike
through the Castle Court of the college, past the Castle
Mound, and through the little churchyard surrounding
St Giles, all now within the college perimeter; then
through the Chesterton Lane gate of the college. Imogen
liked graveyards, usually; she liked idly reading
inscriptions, and indulging the pleasing and poignant
melancholy they brought on. Somehow, since the murder
enquiry had begun, she was avoiding thoughts of death,
those having become altogether more immediate and
sharper. She had been coming and going via the main
gate. But now she was in a hurry. The gravestones stood
about among the leaf-blades of daffodils about to break
into golden trumpet voluntaries, and the shorter darker


50




blades of the promised lake of bluebells that would
follow. The gardeners left the graveyard unmown until
midsummer, when they would scythe the herbage down,
and already the footstones and the little headstones that
marked the places for the poor and the very young were
obscured by the marching armies of advancing daffodils.
Imogen had no time to linger today, anyhow.

Once in Imogen's house, Fran got on famously with
Liz and Simon, who were again sitting in the breakfastroom,
warming their toes by the Rayburn, and still
arguing about snow before Christmas. They were only
too willing to exchange their half-drunk mugs of
powdered coffee for some of Imogen's sherry in honour
of her guest.

'It wouldn't take much of a change in the climate,' Fran
offered, when the problem was put to her.

'Come again?' said Simon,

'Well, as you say, we pretty well never have snow
before Christmas; but we quite often have it in
January-just after Christmas, in fact. The change
required would only be about a fortnight on one of those
season maps.'

'What's a season map?' asked Simon.

'Imogen, do you have a good gardening book?' asked
Fran, wandering sherry in hand into the kitchen, where
Imogen was dealing with supper.

'Second shelf on the left in the sitting room,' said
Imogen.

Soon they were all three poring over the 'Advance of
Spring Isothermic Map' in Imogen's Climate and Gardening
in the British hies. The wiggly lines on the map showed
spring a fortnight later at Wisley in Surrey than in
Penzance; ten days later in Cambridge than at Wisley.
With renewed zest Simon and Liz began to explore the
possibility that the interpretation of Simon's historical


51




records needed the assignment of a place on the
isothermic map for every one before it could be held to
prove anything. The conversation flourished until Imogen
began to set the table for two. 'Supper is chops,' she said
firmly, 'and there are only two of them.'

'Time we were off, Liz,' said Simon, amiably. 'Never let
it be said we were slow on the uptake.'

'Hints uptaken instantly, that's us!' said Liz, getting up.

'How d'you get lodgings here?' asked Fran. 'If only I'd
known!'

'You go to Clare rather than St Agatha's,' said Imogen.
'I don't like mixing work and home.'

'I think you are mixing work and home, though,' said
Fran while Imogen was making coffee, when chops with
three vegetables and apple pie with cream had been dealt
with. 'I can't think why you should suddenly invite me
otherwise. But whatever you did it for, it is nice to be
here. In a real place for an evening.'

'Isn't St Agatha's real?'

'Well, not really. Not like someone's house. It's a stage
set, sort of, isn't it? For playing dramas in. Comedies
most of the time, but... You want to ask me about
Philip?'

'I need to talk to somebody sensible.'

'About Philip?'

'About that party on the fifteenth. And about why
people won't help the police.'

'You can't blame them,' said Fran.	j

'Let's go and sit by the fire and be comfy,' said
Imogen. 'Would you bring that box of chocolates, and I'll ,
bring the coffee tray. Why can't I blame people for not
helping the police?'

Fran curled up in Imogen's fireside chair and stared at
her with wide, candid grey eyes. 'They give young people
a hard time. They rough them up outside pubs, looking


52




for drugs, they pick on their black friends, they are pretty
well always rude to anyone in denim or under forty, and
then suddenly they turn up saying 'Help us'. What do
they expect would happen? People are actually afraid of
them. People may have been beaten up...'

'Is that what it is?' said Imogen, pouring the coffee.
'Let me think aloud at you, Fran. We are talking about
my friend Mike Parsons, and his chief. And we are
talking about attempts to find out who murdered one of
a group of friends. I find it a little hard to believe that
anyone thinks Mike might be going to beat them up; and
I would expect, I think, that Philip's friends would be
more afraid of the murderer than of the police. Now,
where am I wrong?'

'Well, for one thing, everyone seems to think that the
people at the party were Philip's friends. Just because it
was in his rooms. But they were Jack's rooms, too. Jack's
party. Jack's friends. They didn't all like Philip. Some of
them loathed and despised him.'

'Enough to want him dead?'

The girl shook her head. 'No, I don't think so. I
wouldn't have thought so.'

'So where does that get us? I think the police want to
know if Philip was at the party...'

'He was. I saw him there.'

'...and when he left.'

"I don't know. If it was me who knew that, I wouldn't
mind saying. But I didn't see him go. The rooms were
packed, and I wasn't paying much attention to Philip.'

'It's a nice big set of rooms, isn't it? Doesn't it have
two little bedrooms off a big main room? Couldn't Philip
have just gone to bed and closed the door on the party?'

'His room would have been - well, borrowed. Occupied.'

'Continuously?'


53




'Repeatedly. He used to get browned off. He used to
push off somewhere else; all night sometimes. So perhaps
he didn't go straight from the party to the Wyndham
Library. And no, I don't know where he used to go. And
I don't know what he was doing in the library. And I
have answered every question about Philip the policeman
asked me. Honest, Miss Quy.'

'Fran, I'm not accusing you of anything. But if I tell
you that some of your friends may be getting themselves
into deep trouble by not "helping with enquiries", what
would you say?'

'I wouldn't say anything,' Fran said, glumly.

'Suppose the police were right in thinking that people
were holding something back? Suppose that I am right in
thinking that if they are it must be for some better reason
than just dislike of policemen in general? What then?'

'What sort of trouble would they be in?'

'Obstructing a police enquiry - and a murder enquiry,
too! Accessories to murder. Even simply making themselves
suspects for a crime they didn't commit; surely
only one person did the deed. There are some half a
dozen people clamming up when asked questions, I
understand. Any friend of the innocent would advise
them strongly in their own best interests to cooperate
with the police.'

'Have you heard of E. M. Forster?' asked Fran,
suddenly.

'The novelist. Yes,' said Imogen. 'My father took me to
tea with him once,' she added.

'Do you know what he said about treason?' said Fran. f
'That if he had a choice between betraying his friend and
betraying his country, he hoped he would have the guts
to betray his country.' But she was looking more
unhappy than defiant.

'It sounds wonderful, doesn't it?' said Imogen. 'Are you


54




telling me you think it would justify concealing evidence
in a murder enquiry?'

'You see, I, personally, myself, wouldn't conceal anything
about murder,' said Fran. 'But there might be lots
of things apart from murder that people wouldn't particularly
want to tell the police about. I mean, just
because people are concealing something, it doesn't have
to be murder.' She stopped, and coloured. 'I can see it's
dangerous to talk to you. I like you; and if I'm not careful...'

'You will betray your friends?'

Fran looked up at Imogen. Her eyes gleamed with a
trace of tears. 'I'm in a blue funk,' she said. 'I'm just
scared.'

'Not for yourself,' said Imogen gently, 'but for your
friends?'

Fran nodded, dumbly.

'Well,' said Imogen, pouring more coffee, 'I'm going to
think aloud at you again. All you have to do is listen.
You can't betray anybody by listening, can you? Here are
a group of people behaving stupidly. They have drawn
attention to themselves by their attitude. If they think the
police will just go away and stop asking questions, they
are very mistaken indeed. The police will ferret around
till they find out what they want to find out, and
anything else that may be carefully concealed is more
likely to be discovered than hidden in the process. If
these were my friends I would advise them to tell the
police everything they know about Philip and the party.
That's good advice. Perhaps, like you, I would draw the
line at telling the police myself. But I would try very hard
to talk people into coming forward on their own two
feet. Of course, if there really is a murderer among them,
then that person is in really terrible trouble. I would say
there was no saving that person. But whatever the others
may be concealing, it can hardly be as serious as the risks


55




they are running. I wouldn't expect it to be any good my
trying to talk them round. I'd say I needed a kind of
Trojan Horse for good advice, some way of smuggling
through to them what I have been saying to you, without
them refusing to listen to it.'

"I see,' said Fran. "I suppose I could try.'

'E. M. Forster would be proud of you,' said Imogen.

'Did you really have tea with him?' asked Fran,
brightening. 'What was he like?'

'I was only a small child at the time. I don't remember
much. He was doddery, and kind. He served very sticky
buns,' said Imogen, launching into reminiscence. From
reminiscence the talk got round to the novels. Was he a
misogynist, they wondered? If so, not the usual kind,
Fran asserted. Far from thinking women were inferior
minds, and only of interest sexually, he seemed to think
intelligent women had superior minds, and only when
they acted sexually did he deplore them.

'Come to that,' Imogen observed, 'he wasn't so good
at describing men acting sexually.'

'Well, he wasn't allowed to write as himself about that,'
said Fran. 'He was a persecuted minority, wasn't he? He
couldn't publish Maurice in his lifetime.'

'Well, I sympathise with him, biographically speaking,'
said Imogen. 'But when I'm reading a novel, either it has
got the sexuality of the characters convincingly described
or it hasn't. No excuses possible.'

They talked happily till Fran had to go.

'Come again, any time,' Imogen said.

'I will,' said Fran. 'Trust me.'

Thinking it over, before going to bed, and making
notes in her book of what she had learned about Mike's
delinquent five, Fran herself included, Imogen rather
thought she did.


56




Imogen's day began with the usual small medical
emergencies, and a visit conveniently near coffee time
from Roger Rumbold.

"I haven't got any biscuits,' she said, looking at him
severely.

'Now, would I come for the biscuits?' he said,
reproachfully. 'Would I? How could you, Imogen? As a
matter of fact I came to see if I was still in bad odour.
Naturally enough hoping to find myself restored to your
good books.'

'What do you mean, Roger?' she asked.

'Well, I thought you were rather tart with me last time
I was here. Perhaps I just imagined it. But I say, Imogen,
murder does rather seem to put everyone in bad humour.
The senior common room is glum and jumpy, like the
junior one just before exams.'

'Well, it's reason enough,' said Imogen.

'Of course. Not that being glum about it helps. It
neither resurrects the dead nor apprehends the killer. I
said as much to Mountnessing, and he near snapped my
head off. Particularly hard to live with at the moment, is
our distinguished Librarian.'

'Well, what do you expect, Roger? How would you feel
if it had happened in your library?'

'Oh well, if it had happened in my library it could have
been anyone,' he said, looking slyly at Imogen. 'My


57




library isn't supposed to be kept locked, you know.
Rather the opposite; it's supposed to be available to all.
That's part of the idea. The police have got a fullpowered
watch-the-docks search going for Jack Taverham;
did you know?'

'He didn't turn up for his supervision yesterday, then?'

'No. And his supervisor says it wasn't like him. Bit of
a lad, it seems, but not given to skipping supervisions.
His parents are distraught; say he hasn't been home, or
been in touch. So it seems he's done a bunk.'

'Well, why would he have done that, unless...'

'Unless indeed!'

Imogen was frowning at him across the table.
'Somehow I'm surprised,' she said.

'Oh, good. I thought that frown was displeasure,
rather than simply thought. And I'm hoping to entice
you to dine at High Table on Sunday. The Master is
bringing the dreaded Lord Goldhooper, and I thought
you would be pleased to get a glimpse of the persecutor...
oops, benefactor, I mean.'

'Won't you be neglecting your mother?'

'Not at all. Crazy Uncle Arthur is visiting from
Gloucester, and she's as good as let me know my
company would be uncalled for.'

'Then I'd love to come,' said Imogen.

Fran must have got busy right away, for shortly after
Roger left a little procession of visitors began to call on
Imogen. Terry Masters came first. A lanky, energeticlooking
young man with a faded sun-tan, left over from
those far eastern travels, no doubt. He sat down on the
very edge of the chair, looking uneasy.

'I, er, gather that you would like to know when Philip
left that blasted party,' he said.

'The police would like to know.'

'But we could tell you instead, and you'd pass it on?'


58




'Yes, if you preferred. Of course they might just come
straight back to you, asking supplementaries.'

'He left early, as a matter of fact.'

'When would early be?'

'Before ten.'

'Did you see him go, Terry?'

'No; but I wanted to, well, borrow his bedroom for a
bit, and someone told me he had gone, so never fear, so
I had a quick look round the crush of people to make
sure, and he wasn't there. You see, Miss Quy, I can
hardly tell that to a policeman, can I? He'll want to know
which girl it was, and that's none of his damn business,
and it doesn't make any difference which girl it was, it
just means I happen to know that Philip had gone by
ten.'

'Terry, were you surprised he had gone?'

'Nope. I thought he might have been feeling a bit off.
Gone to bed early.'

'Somewhere other than his own bed?'

'Well, there wouldn't have been much peace in his
own pad.'

'Why did you think he might have been feeling dicey?'

'He was having jabs. The whole lot for India: typhoid,
typhus A, polio and tetanus, meningococcal... you know.
They made me feel very ropy every time I've had them,
and I had warned him the party might be a bit much. He
was there earlier, though.'

'You saw him?'

'He was there when I arrived. Look, Miss Quy, it
would be really good if you could tell the fuzz what they
want, so I don't have to go naming girlfriends. If there's
a chance.'

'Terry, why don't you go and tell them yourself?
You've got a little piece of hard information there; Philip
had left by ten. Why not go and tell the police that you


59




looked for him at ten, and couldn't find him. Just say you
wanted to ask him something. There's a good chance
they won't be interested in what you wanted to ask. And
if you did have to say what it was about you could ask
them to be discreet.'

'I'll think about it,' he said. 'But just in case I decide
against, you tell them. OK?'

Imogen's next visitor was Catherine Brack. Such a
pretty girl, Imogen thought. She was looking tense and
pale; it appeared to suit her. 'Miss Quy, I gather one
could tell you things instead of telling the police.'

'Not really instead of, Catherine. The police might
want to ask you questions, whether you tell me things or
not. But you could try telling me, if there is something
you think they ought to know.'

'Philip left early. Definitely before ten.'

'You saw him go?'

'No, but...'

'But you're sure?'

'Everyone was looking for him. He wasn't there.'

'When was everyone looking for him?' Imogen spoke
patiently. Long training in teasing out of people what
they dreaded to tell you, long training in eliciting lists of
symptoms was bearing fruit.

Ten. So he had gone by then.'

'Catherine, why was everyone looking for him at ten?'

Catherine looked down at her hands. She hesitated.
'They wanted to play a joke on him.'

'What kind of joke?' asked Imogen.

'Does that matter?' asked Catherine, looking up in
alarm. 'Nobody did it. He wasn't there.'

'I don't know if it matters, love,' said Imogen. 'But I
think the police might want to know what it was.'

'I thought it wasn't very nice,' said Catherine. 'He was
always being picked on; well, he asked for it, really, in


60



some ways. He was a bit of a wimp, you know, Miss
Quy. But this was a bit much. Well, it would have been
a bit much, only Philip wasn't there. He left early. Someone
warned him.'

'And you don't want to tell me what the joke was?'

Catherine shook her head.

'Even though it was you who warned him?'

Now the girl was really startled. 'How did you know?'
she wailed.

'Not hard to guess,' said Imogen.

'You mustn't tell anyone it was me!' Catherine said.
'Please, Miss Quy. Promise. Please.'

'Catherine, since the joke wasn't played, since Philip is
now dead, does it really matter who warned him?'

'It does to me. Please don't tell anyone.'

'I'm not going to tell anyone if you don't want me to.
But Catherine, you're going to have to tell the police
yourself. You really are. If only to fix the time at which
Philip left the party.'

'If I start telling them things they're going to ask me
more and more.'

'You must help them find who murdered Philip.'

'I don't know who. Somebody killed him in the
Wyndham Case; it wasn't anybody at the party. We were
all in Jack's rooms until late, whooping it up.'

'Including Jack?'

'Jack was there all the time, and right till the end.'

'When was that?'

'About half past one. He said he had to go to bed, and
we all went.'

'OK, Catherine. Now, what I suggest is this. Go and
see Detective Sergeant Mike Parsons, and tell him what
you have told me. Ask him to keep it all confidential if he
possibly can. Don't be afraid; you haven't really any
°ption, and it's much easier to offer information than


61




have it pressured out of you, believe me.'

'I'll think about it,' said Catherine.

Imogen also thought about it. She turned over what
she had been told. So when, just before her office hours
were up, Nick Sanderson came in to see her, without
waiting for him to tell her when Philip left the party, she
said, 'Now, Nick, what is all this about a practical joke?'

He didn't show signs of surprise or guilt. 'Oh, that,' he
said. 'Very stupid really. Someone was going to bop
Philip one; give him a nosebleed. That's all.'

'That would have been funny?'

'Well, he was goofy about blood. Even a drop of it. The
first week he was sharing rooms with Jack, Jack came in
with a cut cheek from being booted at rugger, and Philip
fainted clean away.'

'It does happen,' said Imogen. 'I trained with someone
who had a terrible time with it. Used to get a needle into
someone's arm, practising injections, and the needle
would smoothly slide out again as the pupil nurse fainted
holding it.'

'That's it,' said Nick. 'He was like that. Bit soppy in a
man, don't you think?'

'I don't think soppiness has anything to do with it,'
said Imogen crisply.

'Well, I didn't think it was that funny myself,' said
Nick pleasantly. 'As a matter of fact I was going to come
to his aid; tend off his assailant, you know; get bopped
myself if need be. Doesn't worry me. So I was keeping an
eye out for Philip and any sign of an ambush anywhere
near him. And it didn't happen. He stood around having
a few drinks. Talked to Emily a bit. Talked to Terry. Then
he left. At about ten.'

'Nick, what exactly is the objection to telling the police
about this?'

'Can't think, really. Perhaps it seems a bit off, telling a


62




policeman you were going to give some poor bloke a
bloody nose and have a good laugh when he fainted,
when the bloke in question has just been found seriously
dead.'

'Well, I do see that. Nick, you are quite sure nobody
hit Philip at that party?'

'Absolutely sure. I was all ready to interpose my
person, in the famous phrase. And nobody followed him
out, either; I was on the look-out for that. Jack was
pouring drinks at the other side of the room.'

'Was it Jack you were expecting to do the bopping, as
you call it?'

'No, it wasn't. I'm not saying who.'

'But lots of people knew about it?'

'Quite a few, yes. I suppose it sounds a bit naff to you,
Miss Quy?'

'It does rather, Nick. I'm glad to think there was one
person ready to try to stop it.'

The young man blushed slightly. 'Yes, well...' he said,
getting up to go.

Imogen had quite a lot to tell Mike Parsons, she
reflected on the way home. And she didn't like the feel
of things at all. There was something both poignant and
nasty about the thought of a young man with a horror
of blood lying dead in a pool of his own.


63




7


Imogen had Tuesday mornings free. Barring emergencies,
she arrived in college at around midday, and dealt with
the day's enquiries then. One of the benefits of her way
of life was a good deal of freedom. For a while she had
done a second job, as a college nurse at another college,
for the hours required at each made it perfectly possible,
and only in the frenzy before finals was the work too
taxing. But the small legacy from her parents and the
mortgage-free house they had left her eased her need to
earn money, and after a while she had decided that the
most splendid luxury money could buy was a modicum
of free time.


The job at St Agatha's, which was officially a half-time
job, expanded in practice to more like two-thirds. Imogen
was not cut out to be a clock-watcher, and interpreted
her duties to the college very generously. Nevertheless
she did have time to herself.

Tuesday was her day for pottering around the town,
inspecting the garden plants and produce on sale in the
market, window-shopping, and if she felt self-indulgent,
buying herself a tiny box of exquisite chocolates from
Thornton's or the Belgian Chocolate Company in All
Saints Passage. Somehow these delights were less
enticing than usual with murder on her mind, and she
was nearly an hour early at the foot of Castle Hill when
she passed the hairdresser's shop. Glancing in she saw it


64




was nearly empty, and on impulse went in and asked if
they could manage a cut and blow-dry without an
appointment.

The manageress seemed uncertain. She disappeared
into the staff quarters behind a curtain at the back of the
shop, and re-emerged a few moments later to ask Imogen
to take a seat. Then the stylist appeared: a young woman
with a very tall hair-do, a very short skirt and very red
eyes, who had obviously been copiously weeping, and for
some time.

'It honestly doesn't matter if you're not well,' said
Imogen. 'I can come back another time; I work quite
near.'

'I can manage,' said the girl tearfully. 'Gives me
something else to think about...'

'As before, but shorter,' said Imogen. It didn't seem like
the moment to embark on a discussion of changes of
hair-style. Then, looking at the woebegone face of the girl
in the mirror, she said, 'Cheer up; it's probably not as
bad as you think,' and was appalled at the expression of
anguish in the girl's face before she again burst into
tears. The manageress rushed over to her. 'You'll have to
go off sick, Tracy love,' she said. 'You can't cope.'

And to Imogen she said, 'Please bear with us, Madam.
Tracy's boyfriend has...'

'...been murdered,' the girl said. Her voice was
suddenly cold and calm. 'They've bloody murdered him.'

Imogen took several seconds of shock to recover. A
hairdresser's shop is such a refuge normally; such a
palace of triviality, a shrine to harmless vanity. One sits
being preened before a mirror, and vacuous conversation
is administered to one's mind like the conditioner to
one's split ends; the last thing she expected was this
sudden face-to-face with real disfiguring grief, and the
word 'murder'. She reeled inwardly, shuddered, and said


65




softly, 'He wasn't called Philip, by any chance, was he?'

'How do you know?' said Tracy, through her tears.

'It's in the Cambridge Evening News, love,' said the
manageress. 'Everybody knows.'

'I work at St Agatha's,' said Imogen.

'She's bloody one of them!' cried Tracy, 'I'm not doing
her.'

'I'm sorry, Trace,' said the manageress, 'but whatever
has happened, I can't have you insulting the customers.
Do you understand? You're off sick, this minute. Upstairs
with you, before you get the sack!'

'I just don't know what to do,' she continued, to
Imogen, as Tracy fled, weeping. 'She needs a bit of
looking after, and I'm short-handed without her as it is.
She's such a nice girl, normally, too. Very pleasant with
the clients, and reliable. I hope you'll excuse her, madam...
exceptional circumstances...'

'Look, don't worry about that,' said Imogen. 'I'm not
offended. But I don't think she should go home alone.
I'm a nurse; do you think she would let me walk her
home?'

'Well, it isn't a walk,' the manageress said. 'She lives in
the flat above the shop here. Top floor. But it would be
most kind of you if you would go up and see if she's all
right. She could do with her Mum, I reckon, but her
people are in Manchester somewhere, I think.'

Imogen climbed the stairs. She wondered what she
would do if Tracy wouldn't let her in, but when she had
climbed past the store-rooms full of cardboard cartons of
shampoos and dyes, and reached the door of the flat in
the attics, she found it open, and the bedroom door open,
and Tracy lying face down on her pillows, sobbing in a
muffled frenzy.

Imogen found the little kitchenette and made tea.
Making tea, she reflected, stirring sugar into the brew,


66




seemed an immediate and recurring consequence of
murder. She took the cup in to Tracy, sat on the foot of
the bed, and began to try to open a line of communication.

'I'm the college nurse, Tracy. I knew Philip a little
because of that. I didn't murder him.'

The sobbing gradually quietened while Tracy took that
in. At last, 'He liked you,' she offered. 'He said you were
kind.'

Imogen winced inwardly. Of course she was kind; it
was her professional duty. It came naturally to her;
otherwise she would have hated her job. But there was
an important difference between duty-kindness and real
liking. If only more people understood that! Roger
Rumbold, for example. To Tracy she said, 'We need to
know who murdered him, Tracy. Can you help in any
way?'

'I don't know,' the girl said. A deathly calm had
replaced the sobs. 'I don't know if I ought to tell the
police, or what. It was funny, what he said.'

'Would you like me to help you sort out what to tell
the police?'

The girl nodded. She had hair of so beautiful a colour,
rich honey-blonde, that Imogen had at first assumed it
came out of one of the bottles on the floor below. But a
longer look showed it to be natural. The eyes red with
weeping were a pale golden hazel colour; the figure
disguised rather than displayed by cheap ultrafashionable
clothes was shapely and full - a very beautiful
young woman, Imogen realised. 'Tell me about Philip,'
she prompted.

'Well, we're unisex here,' said Tracy, improbably. 'He
come in for a haircut. Then he asked if I wanted to go to
the cinema. Then we went out together. He came back
here sometimes,' she added. 'He said I was a million


67




times better than those stuck-up frumps up there!' She
waved in the vague direction of Castle Hill.

'Tracy, did you see him last Wednesday?'

'Yes, I did. We were supposed to go for a walk in the
afternoon, my half-day, but he didn't make it. Then he
came here late, and we went to bed. I thought he'd
maybe stay till breakfast, but he said he had to go. And
I've been thinking ever since, what if I'd talked him into
staying? It wouldn't have happened. He'd still be alive.'
She began to cry again, silently this time, just brimming
and overflowing tears.

Little by little, gently prompting and leading, Imogen
got her talking. She learned a lot about Philip in the next
hour. And also, of course, about Tracy. Tracy had been
brought up in a children's home. She had an aunt in
Manchester, who was kind to her but had six children of
her own and couldn't cope with doing much for Tracy.
The thought that Cambridge was romantic, and the flat
above the job, had tempted her south; her only friends,
apart from Philip, were the other stylists, all very young
and wrapped up in their hectic love-lives. There didn't
appear to be an available adult on whom Tracy could
lean.

'What am I going to do, Miss?' asked Tracy, by and by.

'Well, you've got the afternoon off, haven't you? I
think the best thing would be some sleep.'

'I can't seem to sleep a wink.'

'Are you registered with a doctor here?'

'No. I'm never ill.'

'Well, I have to be on duty in college in a few minutes.
Why don't you come with me? We have a doctor in the
college for a couple of hours on Tuesdays, and he will
give you something to help you over the next few days.
And you can talk to the police there too, instead of
having to go to the station. And then you can come


68




home here and get some sleep, and I'll pop in on my way
home and make sure you're all right. How's that?'

Thanks,' said Tracy. 'Are you sure I won't be
bothering you?'

'Quite sure,' said Imogen.

A few minutes later this plan gave her an interesting
sidelight on Tracy, who came through the archway of the
college gate into the Fountain Court, and stopped short.
'Cor!' she said.

'It is beautiful,' Imogen offered.

Tracy was looking round it, wide-eyed. 'It's wacky,'
she said. 'It's really something else! Philip didn't say.'

'Haven't you seen it before?' said Imogen, surprised.

'No; I didn't like to come bothering Philip here. Are
they all like this?'

'Are all what like this?'

'Colleges.'

They're all different. Many people would say that
Trinity or King's is finer by far than St Agatha's. Haven't
you seen any of them?'

'No.'

'I'd love to take you round and show you some of
them, when you feel up to it,' said Imogen. She felt
rather rueful about Tracy. Someone who could, from a
baseline of complete ignorance, appreciate at one glance
the qualities of the Fountain Court lacked neither brains
nor eyes. What was she doing languishing in a
hairdressing salon, uncultivated, unnoticed? Well, of
course, Philip had noticed, and done some cultivating of
a kind.

Imogen took Tracy to see Dr Feltham, explained the
circumstances, got her a few doses of Valium, properly
prescribed, and took her to the enquiry room, where
Mike, glancing up, seemed instantly to realise a gentle
manner was called for, and became avuncular and kindly.


69




A woman police officer was summoned to chaperone
him, and he escorted Tracy into the interview room,
saying 'See you later' to Imogen.

Imogen had a quiet afternoon. She pulled her notebook
out of her handbag and began to record meticulously
what she had learned from Tracy. Philip felt ill at ease
with the toffs in Jack Taverham's circle. They were rotten
to him; he despised them. They didn't do any work, just
messed around, but he had come to Cambridge to learn
things. 'He really loved his books, Miss Quy.' It was
desperately uncomfortable in the set of rooms, never
quiet for him, so he had to study in the library all the
time. People kept playing jokes on him. He spent a lot of
his spare time with Tracy, and was sleeping with her
fairly often, but they were very quiet about it. He would
have hated any of his college friends to find out and
mock; she was worried about losing her job and her little
flat if she wasn't respectable.

Last Wednesday Philip hadn't met her as arranged for
a walk. He was supposed to be having his travel inoculations
done by Imogen. Tracy had picked up the stuff at
the chemist for him and given it to him the day before,
but when he went to get it to bring along to Imogen he
couldn't find it anywhere. He ransacked the rooms and
got very cross. He went through all Jack's things as well,
and he still couldn't find it. It got too late to keep his
appointment with Imogen. When Jack came in, Philip
challenged him. He thought the stuff had been hidden as
yet another tiresome joke. Jack said he didn't know
anything about it, and somehow, although Jack could
well have done such a thing, Philip thought it was true.
The two young men together went round knocking on
people's doors, asking if anyone who had been in their
rooms yesterday or earlier that day had seen, moved,
hidden, or whatever, the chemist's sealed paper bag. One


70




of the girls produced it at once, saying she was very
sorry, she had thought it was hers. It had been on the
floor near where she was sitting last night, and she had
a prescription herself, likewise unopened. She had just
picked it up, sorry, here it was... Tracy thought Philip
had said which girl, but she couldn't remember. Anyway,
Philip had complained that he had missed his appointment,
and the jabs had to be given by a certain day, to
give enough time between first dose and booster dose.
Jack had said not to worry, one of the medical students
could give it, it didn't need a nurse, and so they had
gone off and found somebody to inject the stuff; sorry,
Tracy didn't know who. She had just listened to Philip
telling her all this without realising that any of it
mattered specially; it was just why he hadn't gone for a
walk with her. The explanation had been given to Tracy
when Philip turned up a little after ten o'clock, maybe
ten past, or quarter past. (That would be about right; the
hairdresser's was about ten minutes walk from the
college.) Imogen deduced that they had been in bed,
talking, but not only talking, and Tracy's blurred recall of
details like people's names was perfectly understandable.

What she did remember perfectly was that Philip
hadn't stayed long. She knew there was a party in full
swing, and he couldn't hope for any sleep till it was over,
so she was hoping he would stay all night. But he said
he had something to do. 'A little night work,' he had
said. She had said surely he couldn't have work to do so
late, and he had said it was important. He had kissed her,
and left by midnight.

Imogen finished writing and sat thinking. She could
well understand Philip's fury about missing the
appointment for his inoculations. She, Imogen, was not
allowed to give them except when there was a doctor on
the premises. Dr. Feltham would not be there till the


71




following week, and she must have warned Philip - she
warned everyone - that they could not just drop in any
time they liked to have inoculations. A whole week's
delay would have entailed throwing out the recommended
time-lags and intervals for the important ones.
Two contrary emotions contended in Imogen's mind
below the surface of conscious thought. On reflection she
identified them. One was sharply escalating unease at the
possible pattern of events, at things which might just be
coincidence, but perhaps were horribly significant. The
other was relief. Real relief and gladness about Tracy.
Someone had loved the young man who now lay dead
in the morgue; someone had cared about him. Someone
could talk about him without using the word wimp, and
someone, now he was dead, shed bitter tears. Imogen
couldn't at first think why she thought this was a good
thing: a less upsetting thing by far than the picture of the
victim as universally despised and unwanted. Wasn't his
parents' grief enough for her? Nevertheless, Imogen did
feel glad that Philip had inspired love as well as scorn.


72




8


When Mike Parsons turned up to talk to Imogen it was
six o'clock, and he suggested driving out to a pub
somewhere. 'Not in Cambridge. Do you know the Ship
at Sutton Gault?'


Imogen agreed to be shown. They drove northwards,
through Cottenham and across the bleak acres of the fen
at dusk, flat as a map, and ruled with lines of brilliant
golden dykes by the setting sun. A thin moon waited
faintly for the sun's last exit. The Ship crouched behind
a grassy river bank, beside a lonely bridge. It was quiet,
beamed, panelled, quarry-floored, with open fires, local
history books on the bar, real ale, and Palestrina on a
very muted sound system. Before they settled in a corner
pew they wandered outside and climbed the bank to look
at the river, almost in darkness now, and with a flock of
swans moon-faint against the water, quietly gliding. As
Imogen and Mike watched, something startled the swans
into flight, and they took off, lumbering into the air with
wings that cracked like sheets in a high wind, and then
creaked overhead.

'Wow!' said Imogen. But it was cold on the Ouse bank;
they went indoors and settled comfortably at a table in
the corner, within sight of the blazing fire.

'How are things, Mike?' Imogen asked. It was two
years - must be at least two - since Mike, with three
other policemen, had taken the St John's Ambulance


73




training course, to help them cope with medical emergencies
on the streets, in the cells, at football matches
and the like. Imogen had taken it herself, to keep up to
date on emergency resuscitation and the treatment of
burns, which had moved on since she trained in casualty.
At that time Mike had been living apart from his wife,
and was having a hard time. He had confided in Imogen
once or twice. This was the first chance she had had to
talk to him personally during the current ruckus.

'Could be worse, I suppose,' he said, pulling a rueful
face. 'That course wasn't much good to me, except for
meeting you, naturally.'

'Why not? Did the citizenry stop fainting in Petty Cury
as soon as you had learnt what to do?'

'I got promoted,' he said. 'I'm not on the beat any
more.'

'What about your little girl? Do you get to see her a bit
more?'

'Barbara relented, and took me back. We're rubbing
along together somehow. And at least I'm there, bringing
up the babe. She can talk now - rattles away like ninepence!'

'I'm
glad,' said Imogen.

'Things could be better,' he said, 'but they could be
worse. I haven't forgotten how lousy they were back
then, and how good your advice was. What will you
drink?'

'Glenfiddich, please, Mike. No water, no ice.'

While he fetched it she dealt with the rueful feeling
which beset her. You reach an age at which all your
contemporaries are entangled, and any fresh start
involves hacking through tendrils of connections, leaving
the sound of weeping behind closed doors. It seemed an
insoluble conundrum. Those who hastened to marry or
become long-distance 'significant others' proved so often,


74




as soon as hindsight became available, to have been
rashly mistaken. But those who lingered found equally
predictably that they had left it too late; that barring
amazing luck or amazing unscrupulousness in wreaking
havoc, everyone normal and personable was spoken for.
And of course, as you get older you become much more
demanding and difficult yourself. Imogen liked something
very rare what she thought of as a ballasted boat- a
personality that could sail, could take life gracefully,
leaning to the wind, but which still had some weight,
some load of seriousness to give it purpose. Roger's wit,
and Mike's earnestness, combined. Whoever he was, she
hadn't met him.

Mike returned with drinks and peanuts, and then the
waiter brought menus and they chose their food. The
administration thus dealt with, Imogen asked, 'Did it
work? Did anyone come and see you, and come clean?
Apart from Tracy, I mean. I know about her, of course.'

'Three of them did. One Terry Masters, one Nick
Sanderson and one Catherine Brack. So we know three
times over that Skellow left the party at ten. And thanks
to a bit of lucky deduction we know from Tracy Jones
where he went.'

'I've never heard of lucky deduction,' said Imogen.
'What's that?'

'It's what amatcher detectives do,' said Mike, grinning.
'Like you.'

Mike settled down beside Imogen on the pew, and
pulled out his notebook. 'Right,' he said. 'So what have
we got?'

'Mike, it's just a little difficult for me,' she said. 'People
tell me things... I might need to respect their confidences,
even if I have urgently advised them to tell you.'

'Fair enough. I'm not promising to tell you the entire
state of the police enquiry, come to that. We each have


75




our guidelines. All we're doing is synchronising our
watches, to coin a phrase. But I did think best we should
come out of town a little way, all the same.'

'All right. Sorry to be jumpy.'

'So. Philip first. Left the wild party at ten; visited his
bird in nearby flat. Left her around midnight, saying he
had something to do. Whatever it was took around eight
hours, or something like that...'

'Time of death around eight in the morning?'

'Or thereabouts.'

'What are you going on?'

'Blood still wet and tacky when you saw the body.'

'Yes, it certainly was. But -I lifted his head from the
floor. The neck was a little stiff. Not rigid; but stiff. I
thought rigor might have started. What does the path,
report say?'

'We haven't got it yet. You've been watching too much
television. Anyway, doesn't it rather look as though the
little job he had to do in the middle of the night was a
spot of breaking and entering in pursuit of theft?'

'Theft?'

'Well, the room is stuffed with valuable books, and
kept locked, Imogen!'

'Books aren't that easy to steal,' said Imogen thoughtfully,
sipping her whisky. 'Well, I suppose they are as
easy to steal as anything else, but much harder to dispose
of. Famous books like the Wyndham Collection would be
known to every dealer, every scholar, every librarian in
the world; you couldn't just take them down the road
and flog them to a local villain.'

'That doesn't stop people stealing Impressionist
paintings.'

'No, I suppose not. But look, this is just a boy from
Yorkshire...'

'Someone has got to him. Someone is using him.


76




Someone wants the books; particular books, perhaps.'

'Perhaps is the right word, isn't it?' said Imogen.
'Where's the evidence?'

'You really have been watching too much television,'
said Mike. 'Police work isn't like something on the box,
Imogen, with everyone mystified till they build a case
with one scrap of evidence after another. The world is
full of evidence: evidence for everything, down to the
prowl-paths of the local cats. You make a guess what
happened, and then look and see if any of all this
evidence supports it.'

'You could be wildly out. What about proof?'

'Seldom necessary. People usually confess when
confronted with a true story, even if it is based on guesswork.
The trick is to guess right. Evidence does help one
guess right... are you shocked?'

'Horrified,' said Imogen.

'The boss says,' Mike continued, 'find why, and you
find who, find who and you find how.'

'Well, go on, then. Philip is stealing books in the
Wyndham Case, and somebody comes in and kills him.
Who?'

'The prior question was why?'

'Someone tries to stop the theft... there is a scuffle...'

'Victim is knocked over, bangs his head hard, drops
book he is stealing...'

'It doesn't work, does it?' said Imogen.

'Sounds all right to me,' said Mike.

'Your boss's theory, not yours. Why doesn't lead to
who, if this is why. And, Mike, what about that massive
lock?'

'Well, I reckon your ineffable Mr Mountnessing forgot
to lock it. He swears blue that he locked it that night, as
always; but then he would, wouldn't he?'

'So perhaps the door was open; anyone could get in;


77




anyone could have discovered a theft, if there was a
theft.'

'Well, the one person who isn't where they ought to
be is Taverham; and we gather there's no love lost
between him and the victim. So at first we thought, well,
Taverham followed Skellow into the library, pushed him
over, panicked, and ran. On one level this enquiry isn't
getting anywhere until we find Taverham.'

'And hear what he has to say?'

'If he says anything.'

'You mean he might clam up and refuse to help you?'

'I mean he might be dead.'

'Why?' asked Imogen. 'I mean, why do you think so?'

'He was in for breakfast the next morning.'

'So?'

'About a hundred people saw him calmly earing
breakfast in hall, looking perfectly cheerful, at nine the
next day, just about the time when Mountnessing arrived
and opened the library. So it makes an odd sort of story,
doesn't it? He panics because he's killed his roommate,
so he runs away; but not till after his bacon and eggs
and three toasts. We're still looking for him, but it's alive
or dead.'

'You mean, someone killed both of them? Why?'

'It's got to be about what those books would fetch on
some black market or other. South America or somewhere.'

'Like Impressionists. Somehow, Mike, I think books are
different.'

'Humm,' said Mike. 'Meanwhile, back to the body.
Someone has pushed Skellow and killed him.'

'But perhaps not deliberately,' said Imogen.

'Yes, indeed. Or do I mean no, indeed? A fatal blow to
the skull caused by falling backwards against a table
might easily be the result of an 'accident.'


78




'It just might have been an accident,' said Imogen.
'Mike, if it wasn't done on purpose to kill, is it murder?'

'Maybe not,' said Mike, 'but it's certainly something.
I've been trying to imagine it. Suppose I - you -- somebody
pushes someone over hard. We don't mean to kill,
but there to our horror is a dead body at our feet. What
would you do?'

'Fetch help; hope against hope...'

'Or fetch the police, explaining vociferously how you
hadn't meant it, how he just happened to bang his head
I've known assailants do both those things. But if you
were just an honest thug going in for a little bit of GBH,
and you just happened accidentally to kill someone,
would you leave them lying there and run away?'

'Mike, some of the students here are somewhat halfbaked;
they don't necessarily behave in ways that we
middle-aged folk think of as mature and rational. You
have to be able to remember being very young to understand
the things they do.'

'Like what, for example?'

'Locking themselves in the loo and bawling when
upset. Coming to see the nurse or doctor in such a state
of terror in case they have some disease that they lie
about their symptoms to make sure you don't tell them
what they think they've got; throwing each other in the
fountain; copying each other's essays; spending their
grants on fruit machines; I could go on and on.'

'And these are the flower of the nation's youth, handpicked
for privilege?'

'There is an imperfect correlation between brains and
sense. And of course, I'm slandering the majority of
them; most are perfectly sane, most of the time.'

'So a jolly joke like sloshing someone to make their
nose bleed and see if they fall fainting would not be
typical undergraduate humour?'


79




'Oh, good,' said Imogen. 'Someone told you about that.
I rather think natural shame about that explains why
they all clammed up when you first interviewed them.'

'Ah,' said Mike. 'I don't think so, Imogen. I mean the
resistance we were meeting, and the fright, seem to me
out of proportion to the natural but not paralysing
embarrassment the jokers might feel describing their
proposed jolly jape to a reasonably decent fellow human.
Now if that joke had actually been played, and gone
badly wrong...'

'But it wasn't played.'

'So it doesn't explain much, does it?'

'I'll tell you another thing that needs explaining,' said
Imogen. 'Emily Stody. Weeping her eyes out in the ladies
that very morning. Wouldn't say why. Might be coincidence,
of course, but a mention of Philip caused further
convulsions of grief.'

'Tracy's rival for victim's heart?' said Mike. 'More your
line of enquiry than mine, I think.'

'Not as easy as you think, Mike,' said Imogen. 'One
can't go around asking the young about the state of their
hearts. Emily has rebuffed several offers of a sympathetic
ear from me. I don't think I'd get anywhere with that
young woman.'

'Asking her pals?'

'They probably wouldn't tell. And in any case they
may not know. Perhaps she keeps her secrets kept.'

'Well, I could always escort folk into the interview
room, and caution them, and demand the information.
Would that work any better?'

'The trouble is, shedding tears isn't a crime. You can't
investigate that with criminal enquiry methods.'

'I keep warning you off television,' said Mike amiably.
'All we do is try to cotton on to what happened. Then,
with luck, people admit it all; without luck we go


80




ferreting around for forensic evidence. Why the girl was
weeping might just be the clue that helps us cotton on.
I have to admit that most of the time it's pretty bleeding
obvious what happened, and the only problem is to find
the villain. This is a bit different. Interesting case. Makes
you think.'

'Well, I'm willing to find out what I can about the
child's love life,' said Imogen, sighing.

'If you would, friend,' said Mike. Then he added,
suddenly sombre, 'and while we're treating it like a
holiday crossword, let's not forget it's a murder, shall
we?'

'What did I say to deserve that?' asked Imogen,
surprised.

'Sorry. Nothing. Sorry. It's just that we all run about
tidying it up, explaining, understanding, forgiving,
punishing, and all the while the poor damn body is
bloody well dead; and from its point of view nobody is
going to put that right!'

Imogen looked at Mike with interest. She remembered
very clearly her own sense of outrage.

'His parents' only child, with a good hope of a happy
and useful life in front of him... I know,' she said gently.

'It's just as bad if it's a sodden old meths drinker,
butchered for fifty pence,' said Mike. 'We still run around
tidying up, and collar somebody for it, and say to
ourselves, "That's all right, then." Don't we?'

'Obviously you don't,' Imogen pointed out. 'Are you
in the right job, Mike?'

'Somebody has to do it,' he said lugubriously. 'Or
there'll be more murders, not less. And the somebody
needs all the help they can get.'

'Yes; I did say I would try,' said Imogen.

They talked of other things on the drive back across
the fen in darkness, through (Tottenham, into Cambridge,


81




round the Backs to Newnham. Mike had an allotment,
Imogen discovered, and they chatted about sweetcorn,
and the worthwhileness of growing one's own, compared
with buying it in Cambridge market.

She was entirely unprepared for what met her when
she opened her front door.

Professor VVylie was sitting on the bottom step of her
stairs, unkempt as usual, his passport sticking out of his
jacket pocket, his tie askew. 'I have a bone to pick with
you, Miss Quy,' he said portentously.

'Oh, hullo, Professor Wylie,' she said. 'What's the
matter?'

'What is the matter?' he said, obviously struggling with
exasperation. 'You know all about it, I hope. It is, after
all, your responsibility. I have relied on your assurances.'

'What about, Professor?'

'The safety of my property. I returned just an hour ago
to find one of my books is missing. I cannot imagine why
you should have abstracted it; it is of interest only to
scholars. But, Miss Quy, I want it returned, now!'

She would have been angry if it had not been so
apparent that he was genuinely upset. There were
actually tears in his childlike old eyes.

Imogen was in for a hard time. The first problem was
to comfort Professor Wylie and persuade him to look for
the book. His flat was in such chaos, it seemed to Imogen
at first that the book was simply mislaid, and it was
impossible for him to have walked into his room an hour
ago - for he had arrived on the ten o'clock from King's
Cross and could not have been in very long when she
got home herself - and immediately and correctly spotted
the absence of one volume among so many. She would
have liked to calm him down with cups of cocoa and
motherly talk, and then help him look for it.

But he was by turns inconsolable and enraged sitting


82




on the stairs hugging himself and rocking to and fro, like
a two-year-old, with tears in his eyes, and saying, 'My
book, my Bartholomew, oh, my Bartholomew, oh, my
rarest book!' so that he sounded like nothing so much as
an undergraduate actor playing Shylock, crying, 'My
ducats and my daughter! a thought which made
Imogen struggle with the urge to laugh-or ranting at
her about her responsibility, and her promise that the
house was kept locked, that the lodgers would be honest,
that his treasure would be safe... most of which she did
remember having said.

By the time she contrived to get him upstairs in his flat
and looking for the book, his shouting had roused the
household and Liz and Simon had appeared in pyjamas,
round-eyed, to hear their innocuous landlady accused of
wicked neglect, or even of actual theft, since the
Professor was imploring her to tell him where the book
might be and get it back for him.

'Just tell us what it looks like,' said Liz cheerfully, 'and
we'll help you find it. I expect it's just got moved.'

The three rational beings in the room looked round
expectantly at the crammed shelves and tottering towers
of piles of books, through which the Professor's narrow
trade routes wove paths between chair and door, door
and bed. In accordance with her promise not to touch
books, even to dust them, Imogen had let dust accumulate
on the volumes till the piles looked well on the way
to resemble Miss Haversham's wedding cake.

'Where exactly was it, sir?' asked Simon helplessly.

'There, of course!' said the Professor, as though any
idiot would have known. 'In that pile there!'

Simon picked a book off the top of the pile. 'Near
Newton's Priiicipia?' he asked, opening the book.

'Don't drop that!' said the Professor sharply. 'It's a first
edition!'


83




Simon put it back, very gently. 'What does the one we
are looking for look like?' he asked.

'No good; no point! It isn't here! Do you think I
couldn't find it if it were?'

'Just the same, humour us; tell us what it was like,'
said Imogen.

'A calf-bound quarto; a nineteenth-century library
binding, with "Bartholomew" gold-tooled on the spine,
nothing special from the outside,' he said, grudgingly.

They looked for it. They looked all down the pile the
Professor said it should have been in, and then in every
nearby pile. Liz and Simon crawled around on the floor,
reading the titles, since handling the books seemed to
increase the fury and grief of the Professor.

Imogen helped. By midnight they were certain the
book was not in any of the piles; by one-thirty they were
certain it wasn't anywhere in the flat.

They were all very tired, rather grimy from all the
dust, and very fed up with Professor Wylie. 'Theft!' he
was saying, his head in his hands, as they finally finished
searching. 'I have been a victim! I hold you all responsible!'

'What was this thing worth?' asked Liz.

'I have no idea. Beyond price.'

'Well, I suppose you had it insured,' said Simon
helpfully. 'What was it insured for?'

'Insured?' said the Professor, staring at him. 'You really
have no idea, have you? One insures a car, or a refrigerator*.
Bartholomew is irreplaceable. There are no more
copies known. The last one was bought by Pierpont
Morgan in 1923 for ten thousand dollars. Now it would
fetch three million; but there are no other copies. I shall
call the police.'

Rather to Imogen's surprise the police sent someone
round at once; she had thought they would wait till


84




morning. A young woman arrived, who took down
details, said she hoped nobody had touched anything,
especially window or door handles, said it was a rather
unusual burglary and someone from serious crime would
be round in the morning, drank a cup of cocoa with the
exhausted company, and left, saying kindly, 'Don't take
on so, sir. I expect it will turn up!'

Imogen was so tired when she finally persuaded the
Professor to go to bed that she only took off her outer
clothes before scrambling between the sheets. Above her
she could hear the Professor ranting away and weeping
to himself. She lay awake. Of course she was remembering,
as no doubt Simon and Liz were, the little matter
of the back door left open one day, not so long ago...
when exactly? She couldn't remember. But even if the
lapse with the back door had given some evil person a
chance for thieving, it really was a weird kind of theft,
wasn't it? Imogen tried to imagine it. A sneak thief enters
her house. He ignores the hi-fi and the television in her
front room, takes no notice of money or documents in
the bureau, takes no notice of anything belonging to
Simon or Liz - well, admittedly, most of their kit looks
more like the trawl from a jumble sale than desirable
loot and goes upstairs. He ignores the Professor's silver
teapot, does not ransack the place for money, but takes
a book. In a treasure trove of old and rare books he takes
just one, and that one something in a nineteenth-century
binding: 'Doesn't look like anything from outside...' the
Professor had said. You would need to be imagining a
hugely knowledgeable thief, frankly someone who knew
what was there. How do thieves dispose of rare books?
If on the market, then the Professor could put out a red
alert for his Bartholomew round all the antiquarian
dealers in England - in the world. It could only make
sense if someone wanted the book and had briefed the


85




thief; no getting away from it, somebody had to have
known that the blasted book was there; and the
Professor, even when he was in England, had few visitors.
Glumly Imogen foresaw the suspicion that would fall
on herself and her lodgers.

Even more dismal were her thoughts about the
unhappy man stiJl groaning and pacing around upstairs.
How awful for him to lose something he seemed to love
more dearly than an only child; how dreadful to have
such an attachment for any material thing; how arid,
how terrible a life, which leads to a grown man weeping
inconsolably for such a thing as an old book, however
magnificent! Imogen wondered what she herself valued
as much as that.

Pacing restlessly, going to the bathroom for a glass of
water, she stared at herself in the cabinet's mirrored
doors. A full and rounded face stared back at her - how
Imogen admired hollows below cheekbones! Tousled,
curly hair haloed her face with bright red. Most of the
clothes in any shop were ruled out by that colour. And,
already, thirty-something. Well, admittedly, not thirtyvery-much.
She peered anxiously at the reflection,
looking for the onset of wrinkles. Being a college nurse
was such a motherly role, she felt she ought to look at
least fifty; she often felt at least fifty. The mirror didn't
tell her what she looked like, of course - mirrors are bad
at that. It didn't show the attentiveness of her expression
when others talked to her, or the tilt of her head, which
tended to shade her eyes. She didn't sparkle at people;
instead, her dark eyes looked mysterious - kind enough,
but keeping an inward kingdom in reserve, like Saskia
painted by Rembrandt. No bathroom mirror, no bathroom
striplight in the middle of the night was going to
show Imogen to herself, and in daylight she was too
busy even to look.


86




Imogen woke to the sound of Professor Wylie's footsteps
on the floor above. It was only five-thirty, she saw,
blinking wearily at her alarm clock. Even so, she got up
and plodded downstairs to make coffee. Her only reward
for taking coffee and toast to the sufferer however was
another half-hour of his desperate ranting for his book.
In the end she simply walked away from him, withdrew
to her room and got dressed. She was sorry for
him - truly she was but she had a day's work to do.
No sooner was she seated in the little breakfast-room
eating her own breakfast than he appeared in the door.

'I have come to apologise,' he said, sweetly. 'Do forgive
me. I am aware that I love my volumes with an uncommon
love -I do not expect anyone else to sympathise
with such a passion, but if only you knew, Miss Quy, if
you could only imagine what it means... to lose... treasured...
irreplaceable... glory...' He began to catch his breath as
he spoke, and then burst into tears and sat down
abruptly on the step into the room, dropping his head in
his hands.

She sighed, taking what she supposed would be her
only bite of breakfast.

He looked up at her. His expression was wild, but his
voice was suddenly calm. 'I am beside myself,' he said. 'I
never knew what the expression meant! But what am I
to do, Miss Quy? How does one, so to speak, recover


87




oneself? Do I require a tranquilliser? Do I require a
psychiatrist?'

'No,' she said. 'You are not irrational in being
distressed at losing something you love. What you
require most, I think, is sleep. And then a plan of action.
Whatever can be done to alert booksellers to the theft,
you should set yourself to do it, carefully and methodically.
And now you must excuse me.'

She escaped the house and rode down the street,
eating her cold toast with her right hand, and steering
with her left on the handlebars. Luckily there were no
horrors awaiting her at work. She came home early to
change for dinner at High Table as Roger's guest,
thinking that she would have to struggle through more
of the Professor's demands while getting into her posh
clothes, but she found the house dark and empty. It was
half-past five. Liz and Simon might have been in, or
might not have; one could never tell. Her relief at the
Professor's absence, her liberty to soak in a hot bath and
to change at leisure and undisturbed was great. She was
only mildly surprised at his absence. And in spite of the
pressure of events piling up round her, she had
preserved some curiosity about Lord Goldhooper, which
the evening promised to satisfy.

Lord Goldhooper was not what Imogen had expected.
She had somehow thought of a man of power as having
bulk as being tall, or at least stout. Actually he was a
bird-boned little man, with a slight stoop and nervous,
somewhat fluttery gestures. He had a hooked nose, and
gold-rimmed glasses, and a shock of untidy white hair, in
contrast to his Savile Row dinner jacket, his boiled shirt
and black tie. Everything about him which was in the
care of his manservant was immaculate, whereas he
himself was unimpressive and rather unkempt, giving a
curious impression of letting his own show down. The


88




senior common room had turned out in force to entertain
the great man; all the 'hard' scientists were there, and all
the most glorious of the college fellows. Debenham, a
junior research fellow in laser-optics, had invited a very
famous woman fellow of the Astronomical Institute, who
had recently discovered a new star and been very
prominent in the papers. The most splendid college silver
was in use, and everyone was on their best behaviour.

Crispin Mountnessing, still looking strained and pale,
and displaying as his guest the eminent curator of
antiquarian books for the University of Salamanca, was
actually wearing a baroque decoration, mounted on a
primrose yellow sash, which he had received from a
Jesuit Institute in South America. Wryly amused and
mildly shocked at it, Imogen perceived at once what kind
of competition was going on between him and Roger,
who had brought her. Some time she would have to
explain to Roger that she didn't like being played as a
low-scoring card in a private poker game, but for now
she accepted the opportunity to observe her college in
full force, and form an opinion of its prospective
benefactor.

Roger might have intended only mischief in having her
as his guest, but the Master, as she came into the
combination room, said, 'Ah, Imogen!' and introduced her
to Lord Goldhooper. Instead of the cool greeting and
indifferent reaction she expected, Lord Goldhooper
looked brightly at her, and asked her for a professional
opinion of acupuncture. While she and Mike had been
supping at the Ship, it seemed, everyone else had been
watching a surgical operation shown on television,
carried out in China without anaesthetics but with
acupuncture. The patient had chatted cheerfully to the
surgeons with his abdomen slit open. Imogen expressed
a willingness to consider acupuncture, if it was explained


89




to her, and the conversation became animated. The
Master said it was a typical western attitude to suppose
that something would work only given an explanation,
only if we could understand how and why it worked;
perhaps if the patient had been a western intellectual
instead of a Chinese peasant the acupuncture would not
have worked.

As the company filed in to the great hall and took their
places for dinner, the conversation had turned to Chinese
science, and the strange tangents to western science
which it had taken. Chinese emperors had adored
western clocks, but used them as toys; the Chinese had
invented gunpowder, but used it for fireworks; had not
invented computing, but made a simple abacus perform
amazing calculations... In the discreet scramble for
seating at the long narrow tables, Imogen and Roger fell
back and sat modestly at the far end from the Master and
the great man. The clear and confident voices from above
the salt were speculating as to what it could be which
had made the Chinese fail to exploit their discoveries,
western style.

'Wisdom, perhaps,' said Imogen quietly, and the group
around her laughed.

'Hush,' said Roger. 'We must all worship the great
God Western Science, or we won't get the money!'

'Well, as I understand it,' offered Debenham, 'the case
is worse than that. We must worship a particular kind of
science only.'

'I have no difficulty over it,' said Pearce, a fellow in
English. 'It's all the same to me.'

'Just look at that gewgaw Mountnessing is wearing,'
said Roger. 'What does he think this is - a carnival ball?'
The conversation became amiable and sociable. The college
chef had excelled himself, and the food was engaging
their attention. Later, however, a certain urgency of


90




tone, or perhaps a rise in the volume of the conversation,
at the upper end of the table communicated itself to
them, and they began to quieten and listen.

'What is your subject?' Lord Goldhooper was heard
asking.

'I am the tutor in English,' said Fred Barnes.

'I admire you,' said Lord Goldhooper. 'You have found
a way of earning a living by enunciating your private
opinions. But at least you make clear that your wares are
simply opinions. I take it you would not claim any special
authority for them?'

'Only what authority a lifetime of thought and reading
may confer on them,' said Fred stiffly.

'Whereas this fellow here,' said Lord Goldhooper, indicating
Soppery, 'is a sociologist, he tells me. I take that to
mean that he falsely claims for his private opinions the
status and the authority of science. He is a charlatan, I
think.' This view was delivered with a smile of great
sweetness, which nearly, but not entirely, drew the sting
of his words.

Soppery began to defend himself. The degree of certainty
available in certain sciences - those Lord Goldhooper
described as 'hard' sciences - was simply not
available in other fields of knowledge; one managed with
whatever degree of certainty could realistically be aspired
to, otherwise one would have to abandon large areas of
human understanding entirely.

'Guesswork, pure guesswork,' said Lord Goldhooper.
'A natural resort of primitive thinking. Of course, in a
subject like yours, Soppery, it is inevitable; you have my
sympathy. But you don't get a penny of my money. I
have no intention of investing in guesswork!'

Dr Forshaw spoke up. 'Might you perhaps be overestimating
the degree of certainty available in even such
a subject as physics?' he asked. But the conversation


91




around Imogen resumed; she caught only phrases from
the other end of the table -'...uncertainty principle...
probability theory...' Nearer at hand, among the more
junior members, the conversation had turned to the
prospects of the college rowing club in the Lents. Mr
Pearce, it seemed, was wrestling with his conscience. He
really ought to send down the young man who was
stroke in the first college boat; he had done no work at
all this year. Was it an abuse to postpone his banishment
until after the Lents? The less sporting the fellows, the
more they were inclined to think it was, Imogen noticed.

'Being head of the river won't cut any ice with that
lethal little gnome up there,' Roger observed, and then
hushed at once, for the Master had risen, and the lethal
little gnome was moving into earshot, as the diners
proceeded to effect a ritual change of places at the tables,
so that everyone sat next to someone different while
pudding was served.

Over an elaborate confection of whole pears in port
wine the conversation continued animatedly. 'You may
have the wrong picture, to some extent,' Dr Forshaw was
saying as they took their places round the table. 'Scientific
knowledge does not usually advance inch by inch,
pure empirical deduction every step of the way. Someone
gets a brilliant hunch - someone guesses what the truth
may be and then of course one sets up experiments to
test whether it be so. It is hard to set up experiments in
the absence of a theory to test.'

Imogen sat carefully eating a pear with a knife and
fork. The redistribution of the company had left her
sitting between a paralytically shy and silent research
fellow in ophthalmology, and Dr Forshaw, intensely
occupied with talking to Lord Goldhooper and the
Master. Roger was seated out of conversational distance.
She could simply listen. Dr Forshaw on science reminded


92




her of Mike Parsons on detection. She was fascinated by
an image of the universe as a recalcitrant suspect. But if
you correctly guessed a truth, the universe usually
confessed...

At the same time the worldly-wise element in Imogen
was touched and amused by the unworldliness of the
college fellows. Although they could not all like each
other, and visibly did not, a profound brotherly respect
for each other, often suffused with affection, gave them
solidarity. What was happening, in effect, was that the
'hard' scientists were riding to the defence of Soppery,
even if that imperilled the prospect of enjoying Lord
Goldhooper's money. They were trying to argue him
round, as though he were a slightly obtuse undergraduate.
He would not win support for his project by calling
one of them a charlatan; though any of them might have
called Soppery that among themselves. The college was
putting on a good show - the glories of its architecture,
its fine silver, the discreetly hovering college servants, the
haughty faces in the portraits, all giving the sense that
the discussion now in progress was part of a conversation
that had been continuing for five hundred years.

Once more following long-established custom, when
the pudding was eaten, and after the circuit of the rosebowl
and a two-word benediction pronounced by the
Dean, the diners rose and left the hall for the combination
room, where port awaited them, and dessert in
sumptuous silver dishes, and yet another redistribution
of the company could be effected. The combination room
was eerily beautiful, being in the Jacobean court, in a
Gothic room with vaulted ceiling which had been the
college chapel before Christopher Wren built the
dauntingly austere and symmetrical present chapel. The
lovely little late Gothic room made a perfect setting for
dessert by candlelight; the only snag was that reaching


93




it from the dining hall entailed crossing the Fountain
Court in the open air. It was a night of bright stars, and
sharply cold, and the members of college were disposed
to hasten. But Lord Goldhooper, less familiar with the
staggeringly beautiful effects of moon and starlight on
the glories of the court, lingered beside the great basin of
the fountain. The water jets had been turned off at
midnight, and the surface of the basin was glass-smooth
and reflected the stars between the remaining water-lily
pads and the creeping web of paper-thin ice which was
beginning to draw lines defining matt areas in the mirror
made by the water.

Reluctantly but politely, the company halted beside the
pool. They hugged themselves and drew the fronts of
their gowns together across their dress shirts. Crispin
Mountnessing stamped his feet on the worn flags of the
path; the Master more discreetly blew warm breath at his
curled fingers. Lord Goldhooper extended an arm in a
wide gesture to embrace the scene; he opened his mouth
as though to make some comment, but not a syllable
emerged. Instead he remained frozen, he and everyone
else watching while the tissue of ice was disturbed by
something surfacing in the pool and floating. The moon
sailed up from behind the tower over the porters' lodge
and showed them what it was - the body of a young
woman, her hair drawn in strands across her face, her
mouth open, submerged and full of water, her skirt
ballooning gently among the lily leaves, releasing bubbles
at the hem.

Like a green and pallid Lady of Shalott, she floated
among the reflected stars, slowly surfacing to the sound
of a woman screaming.


94




10


The moment Imogen realised that it was she herself who
was screaming, she stopped, abruptly. But her legs were
shaky under her; she sat down on the freezing
pavement, shivering, while a revealing theatrical scene
was played around her. Fred Barnes sped away to the
porters' lodge, roaring for help and the police. Mount-
nessing turned his back, walked to the frozen moonlit
flowerbed in the corner of the court, bent double and
was sick. The Master began to dance - to perform his
wavering uncertain walk on the spot, while the Dean put
an arm on his shoulders as though to hold him down.
Lord Goldhooper, however - the object of so much desire
to impress that had now, everyone must have been
certain, terminally miscarried - assumed the wicked,
gleeful expression of a little boy, and, turning to the
Master a face full of moonlit schadenfreude, said, 'This
young person seems to have met with a mishap. Isn't this
your second dead body in as many weeks? What an

interesting college St Agatha's must be!'


Roger helped Imogen to her feet. She stood, still dazed,
and watched the porters running across the lawns
towards them. Then, as though she had pressed her own
inner emergency button, she stepped forward, edging the
Master out of the way, and took command of the porters.
They waded into the basin and lifted the body between
them. The moment it was laid on dry ground Imogen


95




saw it was not who she had thought it was. She told
them to lift the girl by the legs. Kneeling, she lifted the
head backwards by the hair, and held it while water
drained from the girl's lungs. Then they laid her down
and Imogen began the kiss of life. John Fairfield, the
tutor in medicine, joined her, and began pounding the
girl's chest in the drumbeat rhythm of cardiac massage.

'Who is it?' voices behind Imogen were asking.

'It's Flick Marshall, I think,' someone said, in a low
voice.

'Who?'

'Marshall. Third-year medicine.'

'We shouldn't be watching this!' said a distressed voice.

'And I was looking forward to the port!' said Lord
Goldhooper. He was led away to the dessert by a group
of the junior fellows. When the ambulance men arrived
they found only the Master and Roger watching Imogen
and John Fairfield doggedly at work. A brief muttered
agreement between the medically knowledgeable, and
they stopped trying. The body was lifted on to a
stretcher, and covered with a blanket. Then the police
arrived. They were unknown to Imogen; the inspector in
charge seemed young and world-weary. He spoke as
though it was accident or suicide; he would take statements
in the morning. No, there would be no need to
detain Lord Goldhooper; his chauffeur could drive him
home as long as his name and address were available...

Eventually Imogen found herself wrapped in a blanket
beside the fire in Roger's room, sipping brandy and being
comforted. The terrible possibility of encountering Professor
Wylie on a midnight wailing walk on her stairs in
Newnham - she could hardly bear the thought in her
present shattered state had led her to accept the offer
of the spare bed in Roger's set.

'That wasn't like you, Imogen,' he observed, pouring


96




himself a brandy, and sitting in the opposite chair.

'What wasn't?' she asked. The shivers produced by
shock and cold had worn off, leaving a deadly weariness
in their place. She felt as though she could hardly
summon strength to lift her glass.

'Screaming like a girl at the sight of a body. We were
all very shocked, of course. Did you see Mountnessing
cross himself?'

'No, I...'

'And our poor Master! What a calamity for him; oh
dear, oh dear!'

Imogen didn't want to talk to Roger. It had been a
mistake to accept his brotherly attentions. But she was
hardly in a state to walk home.

'But you, to whom bodies are an everyday affair? You
certainly were very upset. Who did you think it was?'

'Dead bodies are not an everyday affair for me, thank
God!' she said.

'Aren't you going to tell me who you thought it was?'

'No, Roger, I'm not.'

'But your cries were from distress at mistaken identity?
How fascinating!'

'Fascinating? Roger, are you really a reptilian, coldblooded
monster, or are you just pretending?'

'Sorry, sorry,' he said. 'I'm just pretending, of course.
One way of dealing with it.'

'Yes, I know. Didn't mean to bite your head off.'

'We both need some sleep,' he said. 'Have you any
idea how late it is?'

But Imogen was too weary and over-stressed to fall
asleep quickly in an unfamiliar bed. She lay looking at
the sloping eaves ceiling above her head, and the
moonlight slanting through the uncurtained little dormer
window. And thinking, painfully. Of course Roger had
been right: she had thought the body in the pool was


97




Fran's. Felicity Marshall was faintly similar in build; her
drenched hair had looked dark enough, her height and
build similar enough... Half submerged, she had looked
like Fran. And if it had been Fran in the lethal water,
Imogen would have known several things clearly. Several
terrible things. It would have been murder. And it would
have been Imogen's fault. Her remorse was sharp and
biting. How could she have so lightly involved Fran in a
trawl for information, when a murderer was at large?
How could she not have thought of the danger she
might be getting the girl into? All very well to rebuke
Roger for taking it lightly; he was only bandying flippant
remarks; what she, Imogen, had taken lightly was the
safety of an unoffending student.

Tossing around in the darkness left by the setting
moon, Imogen identified the source of her own wickedness.
The reason why she had so cheerfully tried to
recruit an informer, the reason why she had actually
been as concerned about Professor Wylie's blasted book
as about helping Mike Parsons. The reason why she
hadn't, till now, actually been afraid. The trouble was she
hadn't really believed Philip Skellow had been murdered.
Obviously she had known, and therefore believed, that
there had been some puzzling skulduggery or other. But
murder? It had looked to her like a nasty accident. Or
rather, like something which was possibly a nasty accident.
So that, however much she had been thinking
about it, she hadn't actually imagined malice - a will to kill, stalking among the quiet courts, among the young
and unworldly people she worked with.

She was very sufficiently frightened now.

Only where did that leave her? Should she refuse to
have anything more to do with helping Mike Parsons?
The police are paid to take risks, she tried telling herself.
Fran is not; I am not. Or was it more reasonable to think


98





that another death made it twice as urgent to help the
police all she could?

She slept at last, fitfully. Only in the grey light of a late
winter dawn did it suddenly occur to her that death by
drowning is often accidental; haven't strong swimmers
been known to drown in shallow water? Neither a
suicide nor an accident would give rise to grounds for
cold terror. It might have nothing to do with anything;
it might be just another, separate, coincident disaster. A
person straight back from West Africa with a burning
fever might - they really might, mightn't they?-just
have plain simple flu.


99




11


In the morning Imogen woke, uncomfortable and
promptly at her usual time. She considered what to do.
Roger must be still asleep - there was no sound of
movement in the flat. She had slept in her underwear,
and found the thought of spending the day in it,
unchanged, distasteful. Should she go home to
Newnham for clean smalls? But her bicycle was left
behind in Newnham - she had walked to college last
night rather than cycling in a heavy silk skirt - and
walking home now would take some time. She borrowed
a dressing-gown from the hook on the bedroom door,
slipped her shoes on bare feet, and, bundling up her
underwear, she let herself out of Roger's rooms, leaving
the door on the snib so as not to lock herself out, and
descended to the student laundry room in the basement
three staircases along the court.


She had thought it would be empty at six in the
morning, but it wasn't. Another dressing-gowned figure
was there, slumped in a chair in front of a lumbering dim
kaleidoscope of clothes -- Emily Stody. Imogen dropped
her clothes into the machine and set it going. Emily
glanced up and scowled deeply.

'You're up early, Emily; can't you sleep?' said Imogen.

She got no reply. And Emily really had been up early,
for her washload was just clicking and humming into its
final spin. It made too much noise for conversation, and


100




Imogen waited until Emily had pulled the clothes into a
plastic basket and moved them to one of the driers.

'Are you still upset about Philip?' she asked. She
wasn't expecting a reply to this either.

'Philip?' said Emily, exploding. 'That...that... why does
anyone think I would give a damn about him?'

'Sorry, Emily, but lots of people were upset that day,
including you. I just thought...'

'Well, you thought wrong. He was beneath caring
about, he really was. I wouldn't have sunk so far.'

'As to mind about someone being murdered?'
exclaimed Imogen.

'As to give a damn about him! He was a rat, Miss Quy.
An absolute rat!'

That's harsh. Do you really mean it?' Imogen persisted,
doggedly.

'A pest. Scuttling around where they aren't wanted,
that's what rats do.' Her drier came to a halt, and she
bundled the contents into a pillowcase. 'Like you, really,
nibbling around getting crumbs of information for the
police. And you know what happens to rats, Miss Quy,
don't you?'

'Philip was a nuisance to Jack Taverham, you mean?'
said Imogen mildly. 'Emily, you must have realised that
the fact that Jack has disappeared looks very bad...'

Emily turned on her a furious gaze which rapidly
became crumpled with distress. 'If I knew where he was,
do you think I'd be moping around here?' she wailed.
'And you stop sucking up to me with your sicky pretend
sympathy and your leading questions! You just fuck off!'

'When my washing is done,' said Imogen calmly.

'Well, mine is done now, I'm glad to say. I'm off!' said
Emily, scooping up her hot smalls, crackling with static,
and removing herself.

Later, back in Roger's spare room, dressing herself,


101




Imogen reflected. Emily had a point really. She might
have been deeply stung by those remarks, and spent time
thinking and rethinking; only she was rapidly becoming
numb. Too much was happening, too many shocks and
panics and re-evaluations. She simply hadn't time and
strength to meditate on a childish outburst from a girl
like that. A girl like what? Well, Emily couldn't get to
Imogen with any accusation, however violent, as Fran
could have with the mildest rebuke. Imogen disliked
Emily with skin-hardening intensity.

However, she had a day to manage. She got herself
dressed, carefully pocketing the sparkling tourmaline
Victorian ear-rings she had been wearing for dinner, left
a thank-you note propped on the kettle for the still
sleeping Roger, and crossed the courts to her office.
There she would cover her grand shirt with an old
cardigan, kept in reserve against the whims of the college
central heating system, swap her evening skirt for the old
washable twill one that she kept in her office cupboard
in case she needed a change of clothes in emergencies,
and be ready for whatever ills the students might be
suffering from.

As she unlocked the door she saw a white rectangle
lying on the mat. A note pushed under her door, some
time after she left yesterday. It rang no alarm bells, and
she dropped it on the desk, put the kettle on for some
coffee, rattled the biscuit tin and found two digestives for
breakfast, found and put on her cardigan. It was some
few minutes before she sat down at the desk and opened
the note.

Miss Quy, I need help. I'll come and talk to you
tomorrow, only I need to tell someone this RIGHT
NOW it may be my fault. I forgot to check the
seals. I'm so frightened. F. Marshall.


Fear, Imogen found, was like being punched very hard



102




in the stomach. The implications of the note unfolded
and reverberated in her mind, appalling all the way.
Neither suicide nor accident seemed possible in the case
of a girl who had written that note only hours before she
surfaced, so horrifying, so moonlit and beautiful, in the
fountain pool.

Her hand shaking, Imogen picked up the phone to the
incident room the other side of the court. 'I was coming
across to see you as soon as I got a mo,' said Mike
Parsons, cheerfully.

'Please come now; please come yourself,' said Imogen.

He came in and sat down. 'Is this another enquiry, or
another body in the same enquiry, we wonder,' he said
pleasantly. 'You'll need to make a statement about last
night's little drama, either way. Golly, you look peaky.'

She pushed the note across the desk to him. He read
it in silence. Then, 'Another body in the same enquiry, I
conclude,' he said. 'Do you understand this, Imogen?'

Imogen shook her head. 'No. I didn't know her at all.
But... I had thought perhaps it was accidental; or
suicidal, maybe...'

He shook his head. 'No, m'dear. Not unless someone
accidentally held her under. There are marks of struggle
on the body, and what look very much to us like bruises
left by the grip of someone thrusting her down. I would
have thought the whole thing would have been in view
from the porters' lodge, but they tell me not. They say
the water jets would screen the view, and cover the
sound of splashes. Anyway, this note makes it rather
clear, don't you think?'

She nodded. 'It doesn't read like someone intending to
quench themselves,' she said miserably.

'She was going to tell you something; someone
stopped her. The someone didn't know she had already
spilled the beans in a note,' said Mike. 'That's what it


103




looks like. But what are these beans? What might be her
fault? What seals?'

'I need time to think,' said Imogen. 'I'm very shaken,
Mike.'

'Over a girl you didn't know?'

'Someone murdered. A second someone; someone,
somewhere, capable of that, and prowling around among
us...'

'Are you afraid for yourself?'

'It had crossed my mind to wonder if I was doing the
right thing, trying to help. I thought for a moment it was
Fran Bullion.'

'You should be. Afraid for yourself, I mean. We'll be
keeping an eye on you, here and at home, for a few
days.'

'Watching my house?'

'Discreetly. Do you mind?'

'I rather think I'm relieved,' she said.

'I must take this to the chief,' he said, getting up.

Imogen had a number of students to advise. One or
two perhaps really sick - one silly great fellow ignoring
a probable fracture under the impression that it was a
sprained ankle - the usual things. She left her door ajar,
her 'Back soon, please wait' notice displayed, and crossed
to the Garden Court twice, looking for Fran, but she
wasn't there. Just after twelve Lady Buckmote came in.

'How's the Master?' asked Imogen.

'He's very distressed,' said Lady B. 'Another set of
parents to be told terrible news. But no more distressed
than you are, by the look of you. You look distinctly
green this morning. It's all rather nasty isn't it?'

'Nasty and...'

'Frightening?'

'Yes.'

'I know,' said Lady B. 'But it isn't about that I've come


104




across. I've had a frantic phone call from the man who
organises the Banks Lectures, wanting to know what's
happened to Professor Wylie. It seems he hasn't turned
up. I thought I saw him in the market only yesterday
- he has come back from Italy, I take it?'

'Yes, he's been back three days. The Banks Lectures?'

'Tremendous honour. He's supposed to be sipping
sherry at a reception packed with bigwigs right now,
before delivering the opening lecture in the Mill Lane
Lecture Rooms in fifteen minutes. The house is filling to
the doors and he hasn't turned up, so they got hold of
the Master, since Professor Wylie's a fellow here. He
doesn't seem to be in college; the porters haven't seen
him this morning and they can't find him. I thought you
might know.'

Imogen picked up the phone and began dialling her
own number.

'No good,' said Lady B. 'They can't get an answer.
They've even sped round to your house and hammered
on the door without result. Have you any ideas?'

'He's in a funny state,' said Imogen. 'He's lost or been
robbed of an important book. The night before last he
was prowling all night, lamenting. He's very upset...'

'Upset enough to stand up the Banks Lecture that he's
manoeuvred for years to be invited to give? Or so
William tells me.'

'No, I shouldn't think so. I'd better go home and see if
he's there.'

'Imogen, when did you last see him? Was he OK this
morning?'

'I don't know; I didn't get home last night, what with
finding poor Felicity Marshall.'

A tiny spark of interest showed in Lady B.'s expression,
but it died instantly in the immediate concern.

'I'll go at once,' said Imogen.


105




'I'll drive you,' said Lady B. 'It will be faster.'

Imogen let them in to her narrow front hall, and
called. No reply, except Liz, leaning over the banisters.

'Oh, hullo, Imogen.'

'Is Professor Wylie up there?'

'Don't know. Don't think so. Haven't heard a sound.
But I've only just come in.'

'Was he around this morning, do you know?'

'Didn't see him. Sorry.'

Imogen led the way up to Professor Wylie's floor. The
usual chaos. But alarm bells began ringing for Imogen at
once when she saw the bed neatly made.

'I don't think he slept here last night. I made the bed
for him yesterday, before going out to dinner. He never
makes it himself.'

'I can see that the hand that arranged these books and
the hand that neatened the bed were not the same,' said
Lady B. drily. 'So you haven't seen him since yesterday,
and he certainly isn't here. It looks as if they can whistle
for their lecture.'

'He was very distracted. Perhaps he'll remember, and
turn up. Didn't you say he had come back from Italy to
give it?'

'Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, next stop,' said Lady B.

But at the lecture rooms the panic was unabated. The
Professor had not turned up. A few disgruntled members
of the audience were beginning to leave.

'You don't know what he was doing yesterday, by any
chance?' Lady B. asked as they returned to her car,
parked on double yellow lines in Mill Lane.

'I think he was touring book dealers, to report the loss
of his book.'

'Could have been in London; could have been here;
could have been anywhere in the nation.'

'Well, there wouldn't have been much point in


106




confining the news to Cambridge. But he didn't actually
say where he was going. To tell the truth I was in a
hurry, and I just walked out on him. I hope he's all
right.'

'Well, the thought that he might not be all right has
occurred to me, I won't deny. The Banks Lecture is quite
something, Imogen. People only give it once. It crowns
careers. Now, I'd love to take you back to the Lodge with
me, and make you some coffee, and mother you a bit.
You look in need of it. But when I left him, William was
overcome with irritation and rage at the irresponsibility
and criminal negligence of the missing guru; it hadn't yet
occurred to him to wonder if the man was all right. And
I don't want to cross that bridge before I have to, so...'

'I'd love a quiet coffee, but I'm going to report this to
our very own college police force, first.'

'It's that bad, is it?'

'It might be,' said Imogen, unhappily.

'I'll come with you,' said Lady B.

Inspector Balderton rocked back on his chair as they
laid the situation before him. At a trestle table to his
right, Mike Parsons looked up from his reading and
listened to every word.

'Well, I won't conceal from you, ladies,' said the
Inspector, 'that in the normal course of events I wouldn't
put a missing person enquiry in hand for an absentminded
academic gentleman until he had been gone for
some days. All sorts of things might have happened. He
might have forgotten the date. He might have missed a
train. He might have gone back to Italy...'

'Without telling his landlady?' said Lady B.

'...He might have rushed to the bedside of his ancient
mother or his dearest friend.'

'But...'

'But I admit to being uncommonly nervous just now


107




about anyone having any connection with St Agatha's.
So if you would like to make statements to my sergeant
here, we'll see if we can find him for you. Dead or alive,'
he added, and then, seeing both his visitors visibly
blanch, he said hastily, 'I'm sorry. That last remark was
in poor taste. It was meant facetiously. You must forgive
us, Lady Buckmote, Miss Quy. We have to get through
the nasty details of nasty doings every working day, so
we do tend to be a bit flippant between ourselves. If we
took it as seriously as it merits, we couldn't do our job.'

'You are forgiven, Inspector,' said Lady B. They sat
down in the battered armchairs from the common room
that had been provided for the police, and made their
statements to Mike.

'Do we have a file on this theft, then?' the Inspector
put in, when Imogen's explanations reached the scene
over the missing book. 'Get it over here, Mike. Send
Mason to fetch it pronto.'

The statements made - Lady Buckmote's being of
nothing but the raising of the alarm about the lecture,
Imogen's being of all she could remember about
Professor Wylie's proposed course of action yesterday
morning - they were leaving when the Inspector said,
'Miss Quy!'

She stopped.

'We thought you were in college. Sitting peacefully,
and safely, in your office, fixing ingrowing toenails or
whatever it is you do. When in fact you were haring
round the town, popping home, inspecting the state of
the audience for a public lecture... We'd like to be kept
appraised of your movements for the next few days. If
you wouldn't mind.'

'Well, for the next hour she will be having coffee in the
Master's Lodge,' said Lady B.

'Then I'll be in my office till five.'


108




'And then my sergeant will escort you home. That will
do for today.'

Imogen sank gratefully into the deep cushions of one
of the huge armchairs in Lady B.'s little sitting-room, and
stretched out her feet to the glowing coals of the fire. The
coffee tables were laden with gardening catalogues, rosegrowers'
lists, plant dictionaries and garden plans.

'Are we having something nice?' Imogen asked.

'They won't let me touch a daffodil here!' said Lady B.
'I'm thinking of replanting a rather tired border in the
garden of our cottage in Norfolk. Now, tell me, do you
know a rose called "The Old Glory Rose"? Someone
recommended it, and I can't find it.'

'It's a nickname for "Gloire de Dijon", I think,' said
Imogen.

'Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Do you want a
choc, Imogen?' She produced from under her knitting a
huge box of Belgian chocolates. 'I find these a comfort in
troubled times. Have as many as you like,' she said. With
talk of roses and of needlework they soothed each other's
nerves, and kept the devils at bay.

'Do you ever remember snow before Christmas?'
Imogen enquired by and by, an idle curiosity stimulated
by the peaceful crackle of the fire, the furry cling of
chocolate on her tongue.

'Snow at Christmas? Once in the last ten years or so.
Well, everything is longer ago than I think these days once
in the last twenty years. Just a dusting. But Cambridge
looked so pretty as we went to the midnight
service.'

'Not at Christmas; before. I thought, as a keen gardener,
you might remember.'

Lady B. considered. 'Frost often; very severe frost. But
snow? Now you come to mention it, no. Can't remember
any. Frost is much harder on plants of course.'


109




Neither of them mentioned the troubles of the times.
Only when Imogen reluctantly rose to leave did Lady B.
allude to it.

'It's an ill wind,' she said. 'Nothing harasses William as
much as Lord Goldhooper did; and we shall surely have
lost all hope of Lord Goldhooper's largesse over all this!
William can have some peace again on that front.'


no




n


Mike duly saw Imogen home. 'I'll be all right,' she told
him chirpily. 'One thing about having lodgers is there's
nearly always somebody around.'


She was hoping - she was more than half expecting
- that Professor Wylie would be around, lamenting
a forgotten lecture as well as a lost book. But the house
was empty. Usually, on those few occasions when she
had her house to herself, Imogen felt a wonderful, cosy
relief. But today it felt bleak and chill. She made herself
a mug of instant coffee, and began to prepare her modest
supper and reason with her inner qualms. Was there any
risk to her? To suppose there was, one would need to
imagine that her modest role in helping Mike by gently
persuading people to come clean with the police had
made her a threat, or an object of hatred, to a murderer.
Honestly, that seemed preposterous, not to say paranoid.
But something had made Felicity Marshall a threat; and
heaven only knew what - something about seals?
Imogen's tired mind threw up an image of a seal with a
large ball on its nose, and she shook her head and tried
to think of something else.

She was sitting with the Cambridge Evening News
propped on the mango chutney jar, reading about the
design of a new building on the Science Park, when a
little sound in the kitchen caught her attention. She
froze. Someone trying the back door. She could hear the


111




little knock of the lever - the door, thank God!, was
locked. But the person neither knocked nor went away.
Imogen heard soft footfalls moving past the breakfastroom
window, and the sound of someone trying the
handle of the french windows. Her heart pounding,
Imogen stood up and went quietly through to the sittingroom.
She stood in the doorway, without turning on the
lights. Her curtains were undrawn, and she could just
see a shadowy figure outside the window. She stepped
back into the hall, heart pounding. Should she call the
police? But it was probably only one of Simon's friends,
or Liz's, coming to see them. How stupid she would look
if it was a false alarm! And wasn't there supposed to be
a policeman somewhere nearby?

Then she had an idea. She turned up the volume on
her phone and pressed the Answerphone button. That
would produce the sound of voices in the hall. The hall
duly filled with voices urgent and increasingly frantic
messages about Professor Wylie, and two softly spoken
calls from Fran, asking to see Imogen at home some time,
as soon as possible. Suddenly fearless, Imogen marched
through the house to the kitchen, opened the window a
crack, and called 'Who is that?' into the darkened garden.

TheI' said Fran's voice. Imogen let her in. 'What are
you doing creeping about like that, Fran?' she asked
crossly. 'You gave me quite a fright. I almost called the
police!'

'I'm sorry,' said Fran, automatically. She looked at
Imogen, wide-eyed. 'You're frightened, too,' she said.

'Sit down by the fire, Fran. You look freezing. How
long were you lurking in the garden?'

'It seemed ages. I had to talk to you. But I didn't want
anyone to see me. Not even that policeman out at the
front.'

'Is there really a policeman out at the front?'


112




'There's someone reading a newspaper sitting at the
wheel of a car parked opposite,' said Fran.

'God, he must be cold; shall we invite him in for
coffee?' said Imogen, grinning.

'Please don't. I want to talk to you alone.'

'Well, surely it can't do any damage for the police to
know something, Fran?'

'Oh, yes it could! There are lots of us in trouble
because of what they know. They're like leaky sieves;
they keep telling people things! They give away as much
as they find out, if you ask me!'

'What do you mean, lots of you in trouble, Fran?'
Imogen was making black coffee and lacing it with
whisky. Fran burst into tears.

Imogen comforted her as best she could. Remembering
the calming effect of Lady B.'s chocolates she raided the
biscuit tin, and offered it. When Fran seemed recovered
she said gently to her, Time to betray your friends, my
dear, before anyone else is hurt?'

Fran nodded. 'I can't tell you how i hate this. But poor
Felicity... You remember how you asked me to try to get
people to come clean and help the police?'

Imogen remembered only too well.

'Well, it wasn't easy, because they had all promised not
to.'

'Good God! To whom had they promised not to?'

'Someone. Each other. About eleven o'clock the morning
after Philip... after Philip was killed. I was in a
lecture, so they couldn't find me, but they found as many
as they could of Jack's friends, and they had a little
confab together. The someone told them that there had
been a bust-up of some kind between Jack and Philip
after the party the night before, and when Jack
heard - someone ran into the dining hall and told everyone
there that Philip had been murdered in the library,


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and the police were there when Jack heard that, he had
decided to do a bunk.'

'He had gone when this conference was held?' asked
Imogen.

'Yes.'

'He did a bunk but only when someone told him
Philip had been murdered? He didn't already know that,
having done it himself?' Imogen was thinking aloud. 'But
if he hadn't done it, why run away?'

'I think the idea was to lie low for a bit, and let his
Dad get lawyers ready, and make sure the police couldn't
frame him up and pin a duff confession on him.'

'So he hadn't murdered Philip, but he had done
something?'

'He thought Philip's death would get pinned on him.
I honestly don't know why, but several of his friends
thought so too. They called another confab, and they
made everyone promise to keep mum. When I appeared,
asking them to let you, or the police, know things, they
all told me about it. About having promised not to, I
mean.'

'But why would people promise such a thing?'

'To help Jack. Everyone liked Jack. Nobody thought he
would kill anyone; they thought he might get framed. I
know that's going to sound potty to you, Miss Quy, but
people did think it.'

'So they all swore not to tell the police what time
Philip left the party?'

'That's the trouble. They swore not to tell about the
joke someone was going to play. They swore not to tell
anything that could possibly matter in any way, or
implicate Jack in any way. And they swore not to tell that
they had sworn. But of course, we all got pressed very
hard to tell things. Lots of people decided that what time
Philip left the party wasn't something that mattered, so


114




they could tell that. And Nick decided that since the joke
never happened that didn't matter, and he could tell that.
He's in dead trouble over that; there are people who will
bloody kill him if that turns out to be something you can
blame Jack for...' She stopped, realising what she had
just said. 'I'm frightened,' she said; and then went on,
'and someone, nobody knows who, seems to have thought
that Philip losing his prescription wasn't something that
mattered, and they told the police that. Right now there's
a witch hunt going on to find out who told them that!'

'How does the protect-Jack committee know that
anyone knows about lost prescriptions?' asked Imogen.

'The police began asking about it. So somebody told
them.'

'I know who told them,' said Imogen, 'and it wasn't
anyone in Jack Taverham's circle; it wasn't any of you.'

'But it must have been,' said Fran. Imogen didn't
volunteer any more information.

'Fran, do you think that the somebody you keep
mentioning might have killed Felicity Marshall?'

'Killed her?' said Fran. 'But I thought... I assumed...'

'That it was an accident?'

'No; too silly, too much a coincidence. But I did think
she had killed herself. She was very upset. Very worried.'

'Do you know why?'

'Not really. Not except that we were all worried. But
Miss Quy, if she didn't do it herself...'

Then someone on the protect-Jack committee did it to
shut her up?'

Fran dropped her head in her hands. 'I don't think so.
I can't believe it. I mean, it's one thing to keep quiet and
not get a friend into worse hot water... to keep quiet and
give them a bit of time to get sorted out... it's quite
another thing to kill someone. Isn't it? Wouldn't you
have thought?'


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'Yes, I would. But Fran, dear, this is looking very ugly,
isn't it?'

'I know. You can't believe how nasty. Everyone accusing
everyone, and getting upset. I don't want anyone to
know I've seen you, I can tell you; they're all going to
think that everything the police know has come from me
to you!'

'But you have taken the risk, and here you are talking
to me. I'll do my very best to cover your back for you.
But Fran, having gone so far, you might as well tell me
one more thing. There must be a ringleader of some kind
in this pro-Jack brigade. If people are being threatened
there must be a threatener. Shouldn't you tell me who it
is?'

There was a long silence while Fran considered. 'There
are several people,' she said at last. 'But it's mostly Emily.
She's desperately in love with Jack. Frantically. The rest
of us don't like it much; it's a bit sleazy. She was playing
up to Philip to get invited back to his and Jack's rooms at
first. Then the moment she had got to know Jack she
dropped Philip and joined the what-a-wimp campaign
about him. And the funny thing is, you know, she hasn't
a hope. Jack doesn't give a damn about her except to
annoy Philip. And everyone could see that except her.'

Imogen thought for a while. Emily's all too visible
emotions, then, were about Jack. Well, that made sense.
What had she said? If she knew where Jack was, she
wouldn't be hanging around here? Something like that.
However, she had more urgent matters to think about
than Emily. 'Fran, love, mightn't you be in danger?
Believe me, when I asked for your help it hadn't occurred
to me there was any risk in it; but if Felicity could be
attacked, mightn't you be? Shall we ask for protection for
you?'

Fran considered. 'There's two things. One is I'll be


116




safest if I don't get any special protection. Above all if
nobody sees me anywhere near you. They all know I
didn't promise anything, but I said very loud and clear
that I didn't know anything to promise about, and I
think they believed me. Why wouldn't they? It's true. I've
stopped suggesting that anyone else comes and talks to
you. I think the safest thing is for me to creep out of here
unseen and lie low. And that way I might get to hear
something; I might be more use to you.'

'Fran, the last thing I was suggesting was that you
should continue to take risks in order to help the police...'

'Fuck the police!' said Fran. There's two people I knew
and liked lying in the morgue, Imogen. If I got my hands
on whoever hurt Felicity you wouldn't need to bring
back capital punishment! There wasn't a gentler, kinder
person... she'd do anything for anyone, and she never
hurt a fly! I'd love to help get the bastard that went for
her!'

'I'm afraid for you, Fran,' said Imogen. 'I feel
responsible. I'd like to ask the police to keep an eye on
you, too.'

'And keep me safe from prowlers, like they are you?'
said Fran, grinning. 'Well, they didn't stop me from
practically breaking in, did they? And if I had been a
murderer, you'd be dead and cold by now, and your
minder would be doing the crossword outside at the
front!'

'So he would,' said Imogen, and the two of them
began to giggle helplessly.

'It isn't funny,' said Fran, and that set them off again.

'You'll have missed hall dinner,' said Imogen at last,
looking at the clock. 'Have some supper, won't you?'

'Is there enough for two? I thought you always had a
chop with your vegetables.'

'It's natural self-defence, when dealing with hungry


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lodgers,' said Imogen. 'We could phone for a takeaway.'

'Oh, yes, please,' said Fran. 'And if I've got to avoid
you, I'd like to make the most of this time.'

'It won't be for ever,' said Imogen. 'We'll have a public
feast at the Chato Singapore to celebrate when this is
over!'

But just for then they ordered a modest Chinese
dinner, with prawn crackers for Fran, and ate it quietly
by the fire, interrupted only by a phone call for Professor
Wylie. The caller wanted to know why he had not
turned up for lunch as arranged, and hoped he was all
right. Imogen, of course, couldn't say on either count.

Just after Fran left, a soft tapping on the front door
alerted Imogen. A policeman was standing on the
doorstep. 'I have a message for you, Miss Quy,' he said.

'At this time of night? How did you know I wouldn't
be in bed?'

'Your guest has only just left,' he said.

'You knew she was here?'

'We're keeping an eye on her. You didn't think we
hadn't noticed her prowling in the back garden?' He
smiled slightly.

'I'm glad you've got an eye on her,' said Imogen.
'What's the message?'

'The Inspector is getting a whole lot of people together
in the morning and giving them a lecture. Mostly on the
subject of the whereabouts of Taverham. He thinks it
might help if he read them the Riot Act. He would like
you to be there, if you would be so kind.'

Imogen agreed, and said goodnight. She was very
tired, but she was even more uneasy. She could see
various possible trails of significance in what had been
happening, and she didn't like the look of them at all.


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23


Inspector Balderton's 'Riot Act' was a quiet one. It was
deliberate and emphatic. He was addressing all the
undergraduates who had attended the notorious party,
several of their tutors, Imogen, the Wyndham Librarian
and the Dean, all assembled in the small lecture-room.


'I want everyone present to consider this,' he said,
starting in without preliminaries. 'In this college, in the
course of the current term, there have been two violent
deaths and two unexplained disappearances.' A little
murmur answered him.

'Two disappearances?' said someone behind Imogen.
'Who...?'

'One of the disappearances may be coincidental; that
of Mr Jack Taverham certainly seems to be connected to
the first death. We are increasingly interested in
interviewing Mr Taverham. He may be able to help us in
connection with the death of Mr Skellow. And in the
light of the death of Miss Marshall...'

He was interrupted by Emily Stody, shouting at him.
'Well, at least that lets Jack out! Jack wasn't here when
that happened! Was he?'

'I don't know where he was,' replied the Inspector.
'And if you do know, I think you should tell us immediately.
Well?'

Emily scowled at him. 'I don't happen to know,' she
said. 'But if I did I wouldn't tell you to save my life!'


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The chief regarded her steadily for a few moments.
Then he said, 'You illustrate our problem rather well, I
think. Of course, if Mr Taverham was nowhere near the
college the night before last, then, as you put it, that lets
him out of the death of Miss Marshall. But because we
don't know where he was, or is, we don't know that he
was nowhere near the college at the material time. He
has disappeared; he might be hiding in the nearest cellar,
or lying low in a friend's lodging in the next street, or he
might have fled to Timbuctoo. Has anyone here seen him
since the morning of the sixteenth?'

Silence.

'Until he appears and explains himself he cannot be
ruled out of the enquiry into either death. However, I
will not conceal from you a nastier possibility. It is that
he is another victim of the same murderer. Very possibly
he is himself in danger; perhaps in serious danger.
Whoever killed Miss Marshall is very ruthless and
dangerous; if it is the same person who killed Mr
Skellow, then we have to face the fact that a person who
has killed twice is well capable of killing a third time.
Miss Stody has told us all that she would not divulge the
whereabouts of Mr Taverham if she knew them to
save her life. I am asking her in front of all of you if she
would divulge them to save his life. Or perhaps the life
of some other person present in this room now, or going
unsuspecting about innocent business elsewhere.'

He paused, but Emily did not respond.

'Now I imagine I and my team are the only people
present in this room who know anything at all about
murder. Murder in general, I mean; I have every reason
to think that somebody present here knows something
about these particular ones. Murder is very nearly always
a private matter; it is as domestic as a pet cat, generally
speaking. Once they have rid themselves of a wife, or


120




son, or husband, or lover, or blackmailer, the average
murderer is no more dangerous to the general public
than the average cyclist, and much less dangerous than
the average motorist. The average murderer has no
stomach for further killing. But just occasionally a very
unusually wicked person kills, and then kills again,
perhaps to cover their tracks; and such a person is
spectacularly dangerous. They don't think like you and
me; it is easily possible to think of them when all is
discovered as more crazy than wicked, precisely because
we realise that no ordinary person would ever do what
they have done, and because their motives seem very
insufficient for the havoc they have caused. It is very
urgent to find and stop such murderers, because they are
unlikely to stop until prevented by main force; that is, by
discovery. It is very difficult, however, to find and stop
somebody whose thought processes and reasoning are
unlike those of ordinary people; ordinary logic doesn't
help us. Now I think you will all understand that it looks
as if this latter kind of murderer is at work in St Agatha's
College. We need to stitch together every scrap of
information we can get. In particular we need to find and
interview Mr Taverham.

'Now, make no mistake. We will find him. The killer
will be stopped. But if another death takes place before
we have succeeded in our task, then a very heavy
responsibility will rest on the people in this room who
have information which they are withholding from the
police. Now you know where you can find us. Or
perhaps you would prefer to phone us, and arrange to
talk where nobody can see you coming and going. We
will respect confidentiality, as far as the law allows us.
Think over what I have been saying to you.'

With that the Inspector left. A glum silence hung over
the company as they dispersed. Emily Stody stood up in


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her place and glared at her friends as they passed her
towards the door. Imogen watched. She felt deeply
oppressed. Somehow she didn't think the Inspector's
approach, dignified and reasonable as it was, would bring
results. There was, after all, that promise these young
people had made to each other not to tell anything that
could be used against jack. Perhaps the police should be
talking to whoever had organised that? But she herself
had become chary of innocently helping; she had still not
forgotten the terrible moments when she had thought it
was Fran lying dead beside the fountain pool, killed for
helping her, Imogen, to help Mike.

She left almost last, and walked across the court with
Dr Bent, the Dean, beside her.

'How distressing,' he said to her. 'Surely our young
people cannot be assisting in the concealment of murder?
Haven't the police got it wrong, Miss Quy?'

"I think there has been some reluctance to speak to the
police,' she said. 'They are very suspicious of the police.
Not like our generation.'

'I fear that none of those present would be among
those I might hope to influence myself,' he said. 'Except
Miss Bullion. She sings in the choir. She has a lovely
voice.'

'Has she?' said Imogen. She herself did not often
attend college services, preferring St Benet's. 'I don't
think she is being recalcitrant, though.'

'No; I wouldn't have expected that. I'll do what I can,
of course... but you know, Miss Quy, the ascendancy of
religion in directing people's conduct is a thing of the
past. Medicine is the new fount of authority. Now if
people would regard a risk, however slight, that sin put
you in danger of hell, as they do a risk, however slight,
that eating butter puts you in danger of heart attack...'

'When it comes to students, pretty well all authority is


122




counter-productive,' she said. 'I'm afraid the Inspector's
pep talk has been in vain.'

'What can one do?' he asked, taking leave of her at the
foot of his staircase.

But Imogen didn't have very long to reflect on the
question. She had only been in her office a short while
when Mike appeared.

'News,' he said. 'We think we have found your Professor
Wylie. Can you come and identify him?'

Imogen sat down abruptly. 'Oh, no!' she said.

'Sorry,' said Mike. 'Shouldn't have put it like that. He's
not dead; or not if he's him, if you see what I mean. He's
in Addenbrooke's, rambling away. Seems to have lost his
memory. But neither dead nor dying. Answers the
description we put out, but obviously you could confirm
or deny at a glance. Can you come?'

'Coming,' she said, putting on her coat, and hanging
her 'Unavoidably called away: please leave note in my
box' sign on her door. She felt weak with relief.

As Mike drove her out through the leafy prosperous
southern suburbs, he modified the relief somewhat. 'I
ought to fill you in,' he said. 'The loss of memory and
rambling and such seem to have been caused by a bump
on the head. They expect him to recover, but...'

'A fall?'

'Quite a fall; concussion from behind and above. Looks
much more like assault. Possible failed attempt at
murder.'

'When and where?'

'Search me. He doesn't make sense, unless he does to
you.'

'Where did they find him?'

'Drummer Street. The bus station.'

'Where was he going?'

'He didn't know.'


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'But, Mike, he's been missing for three whole days. He
can't have been sitting in Drummer Street all that time...'

'Indeed not. A taxi driver saw him alighting from a
bus, but can't remember which one. Then he just sat
around for a while. Eventually somebody asked him
where he wanted to go, and he didn't seem to know.
They called the ambulance.'

'And the hospital called you?'

'Not at first. But one of our men calls regularly to chat
to the admissions desk. There are always missing people,
and anonymous people in the hospital, whose kin can't
be found. The constable this morning noticed that the
age and hair/eye colour description of one of the anons
matched Professor Wylie. They had him down as a Mr
Bartholomew.'

'Oh, it's him all right,' said Imogen. 'That's the name
of his missing book, though, not his name.'

They had a distance to go within the building. Lifts,
corridors. The Professor was in a side-room, with a
woman police constable sitting, hands folded, in the corner
of the room. His head was bandaged, and a drip was
being administered. The Professor looked grey and
drawn. Oddly, he looked younger - the slackness and
stillness of his sleeping face smoothing away the familiar
deep crinkles. Imogen and Mike moved quietly, but the
slight stir their arrival made caused him to open his eyes.

'Have you brought my book?' he asked Imogen.

'I'm sorry, Professor. No. It hasn't been found. How
are you feeling?'

'Terrible. What a terrible place this is. Not only is one
robbed, one is incarcerated for mentioning the fact.'

'I expect they're doing their best for you,' said Imogen,
'and you can leave as soon as you're well enough.' But
most people hate hospitals, even while their lives are
being saved, she thought.


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'I'm all right here,' he said. 'It's that bloody dungeon
I'm complaining about. Like the hellish Middle Ages. And
if I've been robbed, why shouldn't I say so? I used to
think Cambridge was a civilised place: rather fine, in fact.
But it's terrible now. Back to Tuscany for me. I think I'll
take my books away with me. Any I have left after the
thieves have finished with me, that is!'

Imogen and Mike stared at each other. A male nurse
arrived, and took the patient's pulse. 'Not too much
talking, Mr Bartholomew,' he said, looking sternly at
Mike and Imogen. 'You mustn't get excited.'

'Why do they keep talking about my book, if they
haven't found it?' the Professor said plaintively to
Imogen.

'We will find it for you, sir,' said Mike. That's a
promise.'

Everyone retreated at once into the corridor, and
thence into the ward office.

'That was a rash promise, surely,' said Imogen to Mike,
sotto voce, as they followed the nurse out of earshot.

'It's what the poor beggar needs to believe till he gets
over the shock of a bashed skull,' said Mike. 'If we can't
do it, he can be cross with me when he's better.'

Turning to the policewoman once they were all behind
a closed door, he asked, 'Has he remembered his
assailant?'

'No, Sarge. I have asked him every two hours, as
instructed. I have listened to every word he has spoken.
Nothing yet.'

'Has he made any sense at all yet?'

'No, Sarge,' she said. 'That is...' She stopped.

'That's what?' he prompted. The young woman
blushed. She had a plain, sharp face, Imogen noticed,
with an expression of puzzlement.

'Sarge, he has been talking about being locked up


125




somewhere. It sounds like a nightmare of some kind. Like
a horror movie; you know the sort of thing, underground,
dripping sounds, mildewed walls, iron bars,
dreadful stuff to eat... but... '

'But?'

'Well, last time I had to sit and listen when someone
was rambling it wasn't like him. This one says all these
preposterous things, but he doesn't wander, exactly.'

"I don't think I understand you.'

'Whatever has disturbed his imagination hasn't
disturbed his sentences. What he is saying doesn't make
sense, but the way he says it does.'

'Who did you sit with last time?'

'Road accident victim, Sarge. A Mr Moduli.'

'Not an educated person?'

'I don't think so, Sarge.'

'Well, that's the explanation of the difference, don't
you think?'

'Perhaps, Sarge.'

'Go back to your post, constable, and keep up the good
work,' said Mike.

Imogen said to the nurse, 'How badly is he hurt?'

'Skull fracture. No impaction of the bones. A good deal
of loss of blood from superficial scalp wound. He will
recover fully, we believe. In fact the most disturbing
symptom is the unexplained memory loss. The psychologist
suggests perhaps he wasn't fully compos mentis
when attacked. Can you cast any light?'

'He was very eccentric. Rather an obsessive. And when
he went missing he was deeply upset over the loss of his
book. It's the book that is called Bartholomew, not the
owner. It might help a lot if you made sure people
stopped calling him Bartholomew. It will be reminding
him of his troubles every time.'

'We can do that,' said the nurse. 'But I'm not surprised


126




we got it wrong. He really was very incoherent when
first admitted.'

'Did you say there had been bleeding?' asked Mike.

'Substantial. He was very weak.'

'So he was covered with blood in Drummer Street bus
station, and nobody mentioned that to us?'

'No; he must have cleaned up somewhere. There
wasn't any blood on his clothes.'

'How very odd,' said Mike. 'Can we see the clothes?'

The clothes were produced after an interval during
which everyone drank hospital tea. At a glance it was
apparent they were the clothes of a taller and larger man
than the Professor. And they were rather curious clothes,
too, or rather, they made a rather curious assemblage.
There was a pair of very old velvet trousers, rolled up at
the bottoms Prufrock style. Those came with a leather
belt, without which, clearly, the trousers would not have
stayed up on the Professor's wiry form. Then a shirt,
rather a fancy shirt, with a pattern of blurry flower
shapes on a buff background. No tie. Ordinary underwear.
A carmine velvet jacket, worn bald of pile at cuffs,
pocket tops and lapel edges, and with the elbows
repaired with leather patches of the kind used to prolong
the life of very different jackets - like Harris tweed. The
whole had a faintly dandyish air.

'These his?' Mike asked Imogen.

'No.'

'Odder and odder. I wonder where he got them from?'
Mike turned to the nurse. 'No mistake? You are sure
these are the right clothes?'

'Pretty sure. We have a labelling system when we have
to take the patient's clothes off immediately. It causes
endless trouble and unpleasantness if things get lost. I've
never known the labelling system to let us down, though
perhaps it could. Would you like me to talk to the nurses


127




in casualty and confirm? I might have to wait until their
duty rota brings them on again.'

'Thank you,' said Mike. 'If you would. They might
remember, because this lot is fairly distinctive, don't you
think?'

'Yes,' said Imogen. 'In fact...'

'You couldn't possibly not remember them if they
belonged to your lodger?'

'I'm sure I couldn't,' she said, 'but I had a faint
impression I had seen that shirt somewhere before. Not
recently. I must be wrong, I think.'

'Anyway, the main thing is there isn't a spot of blood
on any of these things. We'd better take them for the lab
to have a look. I'll drive you back to St Agatha's, Miss
Quy.'

Imogen was slightly startled by his relapse into
formality, and then realised he was on duty. She asked
the nurse about visiting hours; about whether there was
anything she could bring. They agreed it might jog the
Professor's memory if she brought something from his
room to put on the bedside cabinet, and if she brought
him his own pyjamas.

'Mike,' she said, as they crawled into town again in a
long incursive queue of cars, 'why would anyone attack
a harmless old fellow like that?'

'Robbery?' he said. 'Did he carry money around? It's
usually robbery when the elderly are attacked, and he is
talking about being robbed.'

'But I think he only means about that blasted missing
book.'

'Which has probably been stolen.'

'Well, I wouldn't be infinitely surprised if it turned up
somewhere, having just been mislaid.'

'But it has been searched for, hasn't it?'

'Well, yes. But Mike, when he's in his right mind he's


128




about as absent-minded as any sane person ever is.'
'So I gather. How do you put up with it?'
As she got out of the police car at the college gate, he

leaned round and picked up off the back seat a brown

paper envelope.

'Some reading matter for you, m'dear,' he said. 'Philip

Skellow. Remember him? That's the path, report.

Thought you'd like to see it.'
And the moment she took it he drove off.


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14


Imogen settled down after supper to read the long-
awaited report. She felt a curious reluctance to open it,
and was surprised at herself. Surely it wouldn't be more
gruesome than many medical notes? Surely it couldn't be
more upsetting than the notes she had seen portending
certain death with concomitant suffering for people still
living and in her care? And yet she did feel reluctant.
Inflicted death being more terrible by far than natural
death. Was that it? Religious people, of course, might
think of all death as inflicted. Imogen was not steadily
sure of her own position towards religious faith, except
that, certainly, she was not a simple believer. Death
inflicted by a human hand, with no power to give it
meaning - was that the ultimate horror? Imogen shook
off metaphysical unease, and opened the buff folder.


Fascinating - and not what she expected. She had
expected a fractured skull, and hoped for something
unusual - a very thin cranium, or suchlike, - which
might exonerate, or partly exonerate, Philip's assailant, by
producing unforeseeable dire consequences from an
otherwise-less-than-lethal blow to the head... No such
thing. Philip had not died from a fractured skull; there
was none. He had not died from any of the consequences
of profuse bleeding from the surface cut to his
head; he had died from sub-cranial haemorrhaging at the
site of the concussion. He had most probably been


130




unconscious within some twenty minutes of the blow,
and dead within an hour and a half. The blow was double consistent
with a fall, first against a hard object, and then
on the floor. He had not moved after the blow. Blindness
had probably occurred during the period of consciousness.

Imogen flinched. People in her profession were often
thought to be case-hardened; she sometimes thought
they were case-softened, more like. Certainly she had no
defence against the heart-sickening thought of a young
man lying helpless, slowly dying, and alone... What had
happened to make him fall? If he had really been pushed
by someone who then left him to die, that person was
indeed a murderer; one against whom the natural reaction
was horror and detestation. A phrase came into Imogen's
head from one of her father's books: 'Such a one hath a
wolf's head, whom any man may cut down!' Not now,
of course, when a police force forestalled the need for
outlawry or revenge.

Why had a blow to the head, not sufficient to fracture
the skull, produced a lethal haemorrhage? From the
moment when Imogen had lifted Philip's head, found the
neck stiffening, stared puzzled at the wet blood on the
floor, on her own hands, remembered from his medical
notes that he was not haemophiliac, she had expected
this report to find warfarin, an anticoagulant in widespread
use and available as rat-poison. She had expected
the pathologist to look for any heart condition which
could have required it to be prescribed, although she
knew his notes did not reveal any such, and it would be
unusual in so young a man.

She turned the page. No warfarin. He had been
drugged, though. With heparin. She put the folder down,
and went to her medical dictionary. Heparin. Rapid in
action and of short duration. Often used to bridge the


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gap before warfarin becomes effective. Administered
intravenously. Commonly used to treat transient
ischaemic attack... bruising at injection site... dangerous
in combination with aspirin... She set the book aside.
Normally, of course, poison is administered by mouth,
tampering with someone's food and drink being infinitely
the easiest form of wickedness to organise. People don't
willingly allow themselves to be injected with stuff,
unless they are druggies, except by doctors. She checked
rapidly with the folder lying on her knees. Recent injection
site in right elbow, two punctures, heavy ambient
bruising, no other punctures...

Philip was not a druggy. He had been given his travel
inoculations by Felicity Marshall, because he had missed
his appointment with her, Imogen. But he had missed the
appointment because the inoculations had gone missing,
and had not been found until late in the afternoon.
Felicity, poor girl, a kind person, Fran had said, who
would do anything for anyone, and wouldn't have hurt
a fly, had not checked the seals on the ampules; so the
medication had been tampered with while the chemist's
envelope containing it was missing. Felicity had realised
what had happened; she had dropped a note through
Imogen's door; if she had not been killed she would have
come and told Imogen all about it. Somebody had killed
her to cover their tracks. That somebody knew nothing
about Tracy, and could not know that the story of the
missing prescription, and the news that the injections
had been given to Philip by a fellow student, was already
known to the police. Far from covering anyone's tracks,
killing Felicity merely drew attention to the significance
of Philip's inoculation.

Imogen frowned at the comfortably burning fire in her
grate. How had anyone realised that the inoculations
were a serious matter? The path, report was only now


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available, and surely not being shown to all and sundry.
Apart from the police she herself, the Master and Crispin
Mountnessing were the only people who had seen the
body, and certainly she was the only one of the three
who could have realised the medical oddity of the
situation. But Fran had said the police could not be
trusted, that they leaked information and gave away as
much as they found out when they asked questions. If
that were true... Imogen got up and looked up Mike in
the telephone book. There were rather too many M.
Parsons in the list to conduct a ring-around at this time
of night.

Then, as she picked the folder off her chair to sit down
again, a slip of paper fell out of it. 'Home number,' it
said, and gave the six digits. Imogen phoned Mike.

'Hope you don't mind being phoned so late,' she said.

'I was expecting you,' he said. 'When you add it all up
it doesn't look too good for our missing Jack Thingummy,
does it?'

'For Jack? It was Felicity I was wondering about.'

'Well, recollect young Tracy's story. Jack was usually
beastly to Philip. Then he was unexpectedly helpful about
the missing inoculation, and helped look for it. When it
was found he talked someone - we now know that
someone was Felicity Marshall - into giving Philip the
jabs. Frankly, if there was anything in those jabs that
ought not to have been there, like a massive dose of
heparin, Mr Taverham has yet more questions to answer.
Unless, of course, he was merely a pawn in someone
else's game, in which case we may well find him conveniently
silenced.'

'He was a bit dominant to be a pawn, Mike.'

'But not all that bright, I have the impression. And
there are some high-powered brains around your place
of work, you know.'


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'Well, yes. Mike, it's another aspect I wanted to talk to
you about. I don't see why anyone wanted to silence
Felicity Marshall, unless they had got to know about the
time-of-death problem, about rigor and wet blood... how
could any of them have realised?'

'From us, I'm afraid. We've been asking people where
they were at various times... well, no, perhaps one
couldn't conclude anything from the fact that the fuzz
are vague about the time of death unless one already
knew something about it. I see what you mean.'

'Mike, do you think Tracy is in danger?'

"I think her best safety is nobody knowing she ever
even existed.'

'Yes, I expect you're right.'

'Lock your own doors, Imogen.'

'Will do. Good night.'

Imogen went through to the kitchen to make some
cocoa and heat her hot water bottle. Liz was there,
bound on a similar errand.

'Hullo, Liz,' said Imogen, trying to sound cheerful.
'What's new? Settled the snow-before-Christmas controversy?'

'Oh, that,' said Liz. 'Rather lost interest, I'm afraid. But
I wanted a word with you, Imogen. I thought I heard
someone prowling around at the back earlier on.'

Imogen considered. The police were watching the
house, surely; but she didn't want to tell Liz that. 'It's
probably nothing,' she said, calmly.

Liz looked at her oddly. 'Only you were so cross about
the back door,' she said.

'Yes!' said Imogen. 'And I would be even crosser if I
found it unlocked again, make no mistake.'

'Promise, promise,' said Liz hastily. 'Has Professor
Wylie turned up yet?'

'Oh, I'm sorry, Liz, I should have told you. He's in


134




hospital. He'll be all right, but he's had a nasty bang on
the head.'

'How did that happen?'

'He can't recall.'

'Calm recollection isn't his strong suit, is it?' said Liz,
callously. 'But you know, Imogen, every time I say to
myself that that blasted book will turn up in one of the
piles, I remember the unlocked back door. I feel terrible
about it, although I'm sure it wasn't me. That left it open,
I mean.'

'Don't worry about it, Liz,' said Imogen, sitting down
and sipping her cocoa. 'It doesn't make sense. A thief
who takes advantage of an unlocked door is a casual
thief, right? And why would such a thief ignore
everything in the house except one book, and that one
not the most valuable? But just the fact that it is
worrying you illustrates why we should try to remember
to lock it.'

'Yes,' said Liz. 'I do see.'

'Liz,' said Imogen, on sudden impulse. 'Do you know
anything about murder? Have you met it in your studies,
I mean?'

'It's come up,' said Liz. 'Criminal law is supposed to be
the easy bit; if you can't get that right you won't get
anything right. What do you want to know?'

'What counts? As murder, I mean.'

'There are variations. Murder, manslaughter, selfdefence...'

'Supposing
you did something to someone intending
to harm them slightly, and then other things happened
so that the end result was their death; would that be
murder?'

'I think it would depend on how slight the intended
harm was,' said Liz. 'If you just gave someone a little
push, just to make them step back, for example, if they


135




were shouting in your face, and if they actually fell over,
and by horrible accident had a paper-thin skull, so that
falling over killed them when it wouldn't kill a normal
person, then I think you could argue that you hadn't
intended the death, because you couldn't possibly have
foreseen it. It wasn't the obvious consequence of pushing
someone. But if you intend to harm someone gravely, if
you shot them, for example, intending to maim them for
life, but not to kill them, and they actually died, you can't
argue that you are not guilty of murder, but only of
grievous bodily harm because that is all you intended.
Rather obvious, really.'

'Obvious?'

'Well, if the law were otherwise there would be no
convictions for murder. Every assailant, however violent,
would always say they had intended to hurt but not to
kill. There was actually a man who stabbed a woman in
the stomach twenty times, and the doctors managed to
save her at first; they sewed her all up, anyway, and she
lived a few days. Then she died from a blood clot moving
from one of the wounds. I think that is a risk with any
very gruesome surgery, isn't it? Anyway, he pleaded not
guilty to murder. He said she died from the surgery, not
from the stabbing, but of course the surgery was a
consequence of the stabbing. And he actually argued that
he hadn't intended to kill her. The judge found that he
must have done. You can't stab someone twenty times
without intending very grievous bodily harm. The point
is, I think, that you are not allowed not to intend the
obvious foreseeable consequences of your actions, unless
you are so loopy you really might not understand them.
Does that help?'

'I think so. If you do something intended to hurt
someone badly, badly enough to amount to grievous
bodily harm, and what you do causes them to die, that


136




is murder. What if you did something that actually killed
a person, but you hadn't intended to hurt them at all?'

'Sounds unlikely, doesn't it? But it does happen, in the
case-books. That's what makes law interesting, really, the
incredible things that happen. If it was self-defence, you
would probably get off entirely.'

'If it wasn't?'

'Imogen, if this conversation is seriously about somebody,
then they need very expert advice, not just the
impressions of a rather idle second-year law student'

'I'm just wondering. Idly.'

'Well, for example, a tiler who sat on a roof stripping
tiles and lobbing them over the ridge to fall in the street
below, and who more or less sliced the head off a passerby,
got done for manslaughter. Reckless disregard of
foreseeable consequences, I think.'

'But not murder?'

'For murder you need two things - a line of causation
between what you did and the victim's death, and a line
of intent. If the causation is there, but not the full intent,
it would be manslaughter. The full intent involves mens
rea. A guilty mind. For murder you need the specific
intent to hurt very seriously, or to kill.'

'Can you imagine it?'

'Mens rea for murder? Certainly,' said Liz cheerfully. 'I
could murder Simon at least once a week!'

'Oh go along with you!' said Imogen, laughing. But
her question stayed with her till she fell asleep.


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15


It was Nick Sanderson who broke the wall of silence. He
came to see Imogen with an entirely imaginary sprained
wrist. The moment he had the door to her office firmly
shut he dropped the pretence.


'I've come to talk about Jack,' he said.

'Not to me, Nick,' she said, firmly. 'Go and tell the
police.'

'Would you just listen?' he said. His face was troubled.
He looked as though he had been going short on sleep,
and a baffled, rather pained expression clouded his
handsome, uneventful young face. 'I'm worried about
him,' he said.

'We all are. Nick, if you know something...'

'I don't,' he said promptly. 'I don't know anything.
That is... look, Miss Quy, he phoned me last night.'

'Phoned you? Here?'

'No; he knew I would probably be playing darts in the
Pickerel, and he phoned there. He was upset.'

'Go on.'

'He was fearfully upset about Felicity. He had read it
in the papers.'

'And it upset him enough for him to break cover, so to
speak? Did he specially like her?'

'We all liked her. Partly that; partly it makes the corner
he is in even tighter. Partly he is scared more than ever.'

'Why is he scared, Nick? Is he in hiding?'


138



'He had some kind of set-to with Philip that night. He
didn't think it was anything much. Then when Philip
was found murdered, he was afraid it would all be
pinned on him...'

'Yes, we understood that much.'

'He obviously hoped that it would be cleared up, and
then he could turn up again. Someone killing Felicity
makes it much worse. He doesn't know what to do. It
ought to put him in the clear, if it's the same person, that
is, who killed both of them, because he wasn't anywhere
near. But that policeman said, since they didn't know
where he was they didn't know he couldn't have done
Felicity; and he wasn't in Cambridge, but because he was
hiding, he obviously can't prove it...'

'Nick, where is he?'

She got no answer. He simply stared at his clenched
hands.

'He has loyal friends,' she said.

Nick looked up at her. 'He isn't a murderer, he
couldn't be,' he said. 'I know him very well, I've known
him since prep school. He's a great big baby really, in
spite of the macho pose. I sometimes think that's what
the posing and swaggering and bullying people is really
about covering the fact that he's as soft as a kitten.'

'You don't make him sound very attractive, for a
friend,' she said.

'He's terrific, though,' Nick answered her. 'He's fun;
he's so alive things always seem to be happening
where he is.' He stopped, biting his lip. Perhaps, she
thought, he had realised that not everything that seemed
to be happening near Jack was fun.

'Nick, what precisely do you want to tell me? Or is
there something you want me to do?'

'I really don't know where he is; but I could hazard a
guess. I wouldn't be saying anything if I was sure he was


139




going to show up in Cambridge and face the music, like
I told him to. But he might be going to try to get out of
the country, and that would make it much worse. You
wouldn't like to come with me, and help me find him?'

'Where? And why, Nick?'

'Felixstowe. At a guess. And because I think he might
talk to someone who wasn't the police. And then there
would be a witness...'

'There would still have to be a long and detailed
statement to the police.'

'The thing is,' Nick said, 'the police verbal people. They
put any old thing they like into their notebooks. They
make it up. People deny that they ever said anything like
it, and nobody believes them. They can go down for
years... they won't let you see a lawyer till the
statements are made, so nobody ever knows what the
hell you said or didn't say.'

'Nick, are you sure you haven't been watching too
much television?'

He looked genuinely surprised. 'Television? I can read
the papers. I can read what happened to the Guildford
four and the Birmingham six. Anyway, everybody knows
someone to whom it happened.'

'Well, let's not argue about it. The point is you think
Jack might tell his story to someone who wasn't a
policeman, and you think he might be found at Felixstowe.
When were you thinking of going?'

'This afternoon? And if you can come, of course. I've
got a car.'

'I can come,' she said, 'if I can get a friend to take my
surgery hours here. Wait a minute, will you?'

She phoned Alison, who often stood in for one of the
college nurses when she was needed. Alison was free.
Turning to Nick, Imogen said, 'Meet me at the gate at
two. OK?'


140




When he had gone she reflected. Anyone might think
it very stupid of her to go to meet a possible murderer
alone, or with only his loyal friend for company. Anyone,
that is, who didn't know she would be tailed by the
Cambridgeshire police. On reflecting further, she picked
up the phone, and asked to speak to Sergeant Parsons.

'Mike,' she said, 'I'm going somewhere interesting this
afternoon. No, I'm not telling the police where. Citizen's
rights; I don't have to. But is there any chance my
minder this afternoon might be you?'

Although she knew she was taking risks, they were
more immediate than she had expected. Nick got them to
Felixstowe, taking the A45 at ninety, in just over the
hour. Imogen gave up all hope of Mike; unless the police
could ignore the speed limit, he would have been left far
behind, and would be bound to lose them.

Felixstowe out of season had a mournfully tacky
appearance. The puddles of rainwater on the promenade
reflected wind-torn scraps of cloud, and the sea heaved
itself into grey bolsters and broke into off-white spray
with a listless regularity, like a half-hearted performance
to an audience that barely amounted to a quorum. The
amusement arcade had the same down-at-heel feel to it.
It was nearly deserted except for a few teenagers playing
the fruit machines and a bundled up toddler looking like
the Michelin man, riding a mechanical dolphin. Nick
parked at the northern end of the sea-front, behind rows
of beach huts, and turned off the engine.

'What now?' asked Imogen.

'Jack's parents have a beach hut here somewhere,' he
said. 'They live in a huge old rectory and it's a bit far
inland, so they rent this hut for the tiny tots in the
family. I've been here on a picnic once, and I know Jack
has a key. We've done a bit of midnight drinking here
once or twice.'


141




'Wouldn't his parents know about it if he were here?'

'Nope. Not right out of season.'

'Can you remember which hut?'

'This end somewhere,' said Nick. 'Let's have a look.'

They tramped along the shingle together, while the
wind from the Urals tore up the beach and put chilly
fingers down their necks. 'This is it, I think,' said Nick,
by and by. 'It's the right colour anyway, and about the
right place.'

He tried the door in vain, and they peered through the
window. A curtain completely masked the hut interior.

'What now?' asked Imogen.

'Walk around and look for him, I suppose,' said Nick.

They retraced their steps, and made for the arcades
again. It was a nice enough little town, perched on its
sandy cliffs; the tacky 'attractions' were the only blot on
the landscape, as the dirty high tide mark of black weed
and plastic bottles and lumps of tar were the only blot on
the beach. Imogen had a curious impression that town
and sea were exchanging insults at the margins, like rival
gangs. For an hour they wandered around together,
looking in cafes and pubs, with no result.

'I might be wrong,' said Nick despondently.

'Wrong about him being in Felixstowe? We can't tell.
He could be anywhere in the town, and we could walk
round for hours and not see him. It's needle-in-ahaystack
stuff; but let's not give up at once.'

'Aren't you getting a bit cold?'

'We could go and find a coffee somewhere to warm
up, and then give it another hour.'

Nick agreed. Over coffee in an unassuming cafe he
confessed it wasn't so much that he thought he might
have guessed wrong about Felixstowe; he was afraid the
bird had flown.

The thing about Felixstowe is, it's a port. He might


142




have got on a boat. Then nobody will ever believe him
that he didn't kill anyone. It will wreck his life.'

'I believe the ports are being watched, Nick,' said
Imogen. 'He won't necessarily find it easy to get on a
boat.'

'He won't be trying to go as a passenger,' said Nick.
'He'll enlist as crew on some shacky vessel. I don't know
how closely they check. Well, I do. They don't, much.'

'That seems rather strange,' she said, disbelieving.

'Well, picture it. Some seaman goes missing from a ship
from a god-forsaken dump in the Third World. The captain
doesn't report it, probably sympathises, but he's a
hand short. Then someone presents himself, looking
tough enough to be useful... what is it they used to say?
No questions, no pack drill.'

'You appal me,' said Imogen. 'But you convince me.
How does a respectable young man like you know all
that?'

'My mother says there's a National Union of Women,'
he said, grinning ruefully. 'I wouldn't know; but there's
certainly a National Union of the Young.'

They tramped the streets of Felixstowe for another
hour, and returned twice to the beach hut, in vain, and
then gave up. Imogen, reluctant to face the hair-raising
drive back up the A45, suddenly suggested that they
walked to the end of the little pier and filled their lungs
with sea air before returning to the Cambridge townscape.

Beyond
the underpopulated funfair arcade the pier was
deserted except for a cluster of fishermen, minding their
rods, discussing the prospects in a little cluster of footstamping,
frozen-looking men. Funny how it isn't called
gossip when men stand around talking. Just one or two
were simply leaning aimlessly over the rail. When Nick
suddenly sprinted forward, calling 'Jack!' it was one of


143




the solitary leaners who turned round. He looked beyond
Nick, at Imogen, approaching along the left-hand boardwalk.
She thought for a moment he was going to run
away, to charge off along the other board-walk, but the
movement that gave that fleeting impression was abandoned.
As Imogen emerged on to the space at the end of
the pier, Mike Parsons, in mufti-jeans and a leather
jacket - came level with her and stood quietly, arms
folded, at the end of the other boardwalk.

Nick said, 'It'll be much better to come and talk, Jack.
Trust me.'

And Jack said, 'Thank God you came, Nick. I haven't
got the fare back to Cambridge, and I haven't got the
price of a cup of tea left. Dad has frozen my account. I
was going to have to throw myself on the mercy of the
police station here in an hour or two. Tomorrow
morning, maybe.'

'This will be better,' said Nick. 'You're going to talk to
Miss Quy here, and she will witness what you said
before anyone got at you.'

'You can do better than that,' said Mike, quietly. 'You
can make a full and formal statement, to a policeman, in
a public place, with Miss Quy and your friend here as
witnesses. And we promise not to get at you with
anything worse than a promise of fish and chips. How's
that?'

Nothing is ever simple. Nick exploded with rage
against Imogen for cheating him by bringing the police.
Mike robustly defended her. She hadn't said where she
was going; she didn't know, he asserted, as robustly as
if it had been true, that she was being tailed; it was for
her protection.

'Against me?' said Jack, looking genuinely horrified.

'Against whomever,' said Mike. 'Now, for Christ's sake
can we got off this bloody arctic pier, and go and sit


144




somewhere warm, and get you something to eat before
you pass out and we have to carry you?'

'Can I ring my solicitor?' said Jack.

An hour later they were all four sitting in the lounge
of the Geranium Hotel. A fake log fire was dispensing
synthetic cheer and palpable warmth, Jack Taverham had
wolfed a huge plate of steak and chips, and communicated
with the family solicitor, who had apparently given
his blessing. Mike had his notebook ready. He appeared
untroubled by the appearance of Nick's tape recorder.

Imogen observed Jack with some considerable interest.
He was generously built - a large, but lean, young man.
He had heavy features of almost classical set. He was
wearing expensive, crumpled clothes. He had managed to
keep his shave up to standard, even in the discomfort of
the beach hut. Imogen gathered there was a primus stove
and a kettle, and the kind of lounging deck chair that
one could just about stretch full length on, and he had
bought himself a sleeping bag. That personal magnetism
which Nick had assured her explained people's attachment
to him was visible even through the dejected and
shabby surface that his ordeal had overlaid on him; like
a tiger in a zoo cage, miserable and moping but with its
native magnificence showing unmistakably.

Jack said he had not noticed Philip leaving the party.
He didn't, frankly, care what Philip did. But when
eventually everyone left, the rooms were full of the stale
smell of spilt wine and tobacco smoke.

'Or other kinds of smoke?' enquired Mike. Jack did not
answer that. He had opened the windows, and then
walked out into the court to get a lungful or two of fresh
air, and give the open windows time to work. It was
about one in the morning, he supposed; he hadn't looked
at his watch. Late, anyway. He was standing at the foot
of his staircase, and he saw someone else moving.


145




Someone entered the college gate. Jack heard the porter
call goodnight, locking up behind the newcomer. As the
newcomer moved across the far side of the court, Jack
recognised Philip. But instead of approaching to return to
their rooms, Philip went to the opposite side of the court
and stood in the shadows, with his back to Jack, facing
the door of the Wyndham Library. Jack had frowned at
him. He assumed Philip was taking a leak, and he
disapproved of doing so in a doorway, when there were
flowerbeds easily available. Then Philip disappeared, and
in the dim light of the only lamp burning in the
court - over the main gate - Jack just saw the library
door close behind him.

'I'll catch the bastard at it! I thought,' Jack told his
audience.

'Catch him at what, sir?' said Mike.

'Well, theft, of course,' said Jack.

'You jumped to the conclusion that Skellow was bent
on theft,' said Mike, slowly, writing it down.

'Yes, I did. He had been standing at the door long
enough to pick the lock. Nobody could have legitimate
business in there at that time of night - nobody uses the
books in there anyway and besides...'

'Besides what?'

'Well, I had already been wondering about Philip about
where he was getting money from.'

'I think you'd better explain that, sir.'

'Well, when you share rooms you get to know things.
Last term Philip was very hard up. That was part of the
trouble we had rubbing along; you know, I thought we
should share expenses, and he couldn't pay his whack.
He had to keep counting himself out of things and leave
them to me.'

'What sort of things?'

'Drink, mostly. And hospitality. I didn't mind, once I


146




cottoned on to it-you know, coming from a state
school, having poor parents, of course he couldn't keep
stumping up for bottles of gin. But he didn't like it much.
So including him in was difficult. He couldn't share and
he got touchy if I just paid for things. We got on each
other's wick, really. Well, then, suddenly this term he has
plenty of money. No more bothers about bottles, and
some rather nice new clothes, and I couldn't work out
where he got it. Not from his parents, unless they had
just won it at the races or something; well, it would be
the pools, I suppose. And not from a job, or not one in
term. I suppose he could have worked in the Christmas
vac, but then, you see, I saw his bank statement, and he
had well over a thousand in it. All right, I can see you
don't approve, but it was an accident. He banks at the
same bank as me. They give new student accountholders
those snazzy red files for statements, all the same, and I
picked up Philip's thinking it was mine when I was
trying to tidy the room a bit. Well, it was a whole lot
healthier than mine, I can tell you. So that set me
thinking a bit.'

'Surely there could have been other explanations than
theft?' said Imogen.

'Well, I didn't think of theft until I saw him doing a
spot of breaking and entering the library; then I put two
and two together. It isn't that I blame him exactly; he
hasn't had my advantages.'

'What advantages would those be, then?' said Mike
coldly.

'A decent school; a character-building education. One
that inculcates high standards. That's all I meant.'

'I see. What did you do next?'

'I walked as quietly as I could across the court, and
followed him into the Wyndham Case. The door was
unlocked of course. It was very dark in there - he hadn't


147




put any lights on, and I was afraid of making a sound, so
I moved very slowly. I was feeling my way with my
hands. Once I was in the room, I could see him. He was
using a torch. He was running it along the shelves,
looking for something. I just watched him from below.'

'From below? Then he had climbed to the gallery?'

'Yes, he was looking at the top row of books. Then he
stopped. He stopped for a long time, and I couldn't see
what he was doing. He was directly above me and the
beam from his torch didn't show me much. Then he
came down the stair with a book. He put it on one of the
tables, and switched on a reading light. He was looking
at the book so intently he didn't spot me. I just stood in
the shadows. He was looking at the book, and at a
notebook, and he seemed puzzled. So I just said, "Hullo,
Philip." Well he jumped out of his skin, and then he
shone the torch at me, and said, "What the hell are you
doing here? Get out of it!"'

Mike said, ballpoint poised, 'Those were his exact
words? Are you sure of them, sir?'

'Yes, yes I am.'

'They don't sound like a thief detected in flagrante.'

'No, they don't, do they?' said Jack, with a look of
puzzlement on his handsome face. 'Just the same, that is
what he said. So ,' said, "Put that book back at once. And
the fat's in the fire now, you know; by tomorrow the
whole college will know you're a thief." And he said,
"Push off, thicko, and leave me alone; you'll spoil
everything." So I said, "You bet I will; give me that book
at once!" And he said, "Jack, just get out of here, will
you; you're pissed." So I reached out to take the book,
and he snatched it up from the table, and I tried to get it
from him. There was a bit of a heave-ho.'

'You were fighting over the book?'

'Well, I don't know about fighting. We were tugging at


148




it. It had one of those hard shiny leather bindings, and I
couldn't get a grip. So I got hold of it as hard as I could,
and I shoved Philip as hard as I could, and he fell over.
He fell over very hard, and he cracked his head on the
corner of the next reading table as he went over. And
again on the marble floor, of course. So then I said, "Are
you all right, Philip, are you all right?" and he didn't
answer.

'After a bit I put on some more lights, and then I could
see he was bleeding. He was lying there with his eyes
open and bleeding. I knelt down beside him, and I tried
to stop the bleeding by putting my handkerchief against
the side of his head. I kept saying, "Are you all right?"
It sounds silly now - of course he wasn't all right - but
then he said, "I'm dizzy. I don't think I can get up."

'So I said, "Don't try. Stay where you are and I'll go
and get some help." So I ran out of the library. I thought
for a moment about going for the night porter, and then
I thought I wouldn't. I went to get Felicity; I thought
she'd know what to do.'

'What happened to the book, sir?' asked Mike.

'It went flying when Philip fell. I never gave it another
thought.'

'You went to find Miss Marshall?'

'She's a third-year medic. I thought she'd know. Anyway,
it took quite a long time to get to her room and
wake her. Girls have to keep their rooms locked at night,
so I couldn't get in. I had to stand there knocking and
whispering urgently at her. I didn't want to wake anyone
else. She took ages to come to her door.'

'So it would have been quite a bit quicker to get the
college porter?'

'Yes it would, as it happened.'

'But you decided against that, you said?'

'Well, if the authorities got called, Philip would be in


149




dead trouble. I thought we could probably sort him out
ourselves.'

'By concealing the fact that a theft had occurred?'

'Well, yes, I suppose so. Well, after all, a theft hadn't
actually occurred. The book was still there somewhere.
Unless it wasn't the first time he had done it... couldn't
have been, could it, if his bank account was already
stuffed with money? I suppose I wasn't thinking very
clearly. Anyway, Felicity got up and came with me. We
went back to the Wyndham Library. And when we got
there we couldn't get in. The door was locked. So I
hammered on it a bit, softly - well, as loudly as you can
bang a door softly - and I called through the keyhole to
him.

'Nothing. So Flick and I conferred. He must have
either got up and gone away, and locked the door the
same way he had unlocked it, or he must have got up
and bolted it to stop me coming back, and gone on
raiding the shelves. Either way, he can't have been badly
hurt, we thought. So we went back to bed. When we got
to my side of the court, I said to her, "Come and have a
whisky. I need one and I expect you do too." So we went
up to my room, and she looked at me in the light, and
said, "Never mind you hurting him, hasn't he hurt you?"
There was blood all over the front of my shirt, and I
hadn't noticed. I said, "No, I'm all right, it's Philip's
blood," and I pulled the handkerchief out of my front
pocket, all sopping wet.

'Flick looked at it, and she went a bit pale, and she
said, "How long did you take to wake me?" but I didn't
know exactly. She said, "He must be hurt," and I said,
"Well, but he got up and locked or bolted that door." But
she made me go back and try again. We knocked and
called again, but the door really was locked, and we still
couldn't get an answer, and we couldn't think what to


150




do. So we had a quick drink, and then we went to bed.'

'Didn't you wonder why Philip didn't come in?'

'He often didn't. And I thought he probably didn't
want a showdown about stealing college books in the
middle of the night.'

'And then?'

'Well, nothing much. Until the college started buzzing
with the news that Philip had been murdered. Then I
could see I was in dead trouble. Who was going to
believe me that he was pottering around locking doors
after I pushed him? I was going to be the last person to
have seen him, as far as anyone knew, and I had pushed
him... Well, I told a few friends who were in my room
talking about it that I was going to make myself scarce,
and I did.'

'That was very foolish of you, sir,' said Mike, quietly.

'I thought I couldn't be in a worse mess than I was
already. But now Felicity...'

'Cannot confirm or deny your story,' said Mike.

'Oh, no, I suppose not. I wasn't thinking of that. I
mean, I didn't mean to kill Philip; if it was me it was an
accident. But they tell me somebody seriously meant to
kill poor Felicity.'

'That cannot have been an accident, no,' said Mike.

'I'd like to kill whoever did that!' said Jack. He was
almost in tears.

Imogen was still quietly studying him. He was a very
dislikeable young man: one might almost say a nasty
piece of work. Snobbish, dominant, self-righteous, selfpreserving,
stupid - all those things. But not, she
thought, an expert liar. He would normally naively
put forward his view of things and expect everyone
to sympathise. Anyway he was not, she felt sure, lying
now.

'Don't write down that last remark,' she said to Mike.


151




'I haven't,' he said, showing her his written page.

'What now?' said Nick.

'I'm going to ask Mr Taverham one or two simple
auxiliary questions, and put the answers in my notes,'
said Mike. Then everybody present is going to read the
notes, and sign them at the bottom as a true account of
what was said. If you agree, that is, with what is written.
Then we are taking both the statement and Mr Taverham
back to Cambridge, where we will lock him up and telephone
his father to arrange bail. On the bail being
arranged, we will release him.'

'Are you going to charge me with murder?' asked Jack.

'Not up to me. But I shouldn't think so. On that story
an inquest jury would find accidental death. Wait and
see, sir, with as much patience as you can muster. Now
those auxiliaries. The path, report allows us to say with
certainty that Skellow never got up after the blow to the
skull that killed him. He lived for some time after the
blow, but he did not move from the spot. He cannot
have got up and locked the door. Do you want to alter
your statement in any particular?'

'No,' said Taverham. 'The door was locked. We tried
the handle, we knocked, I pushed against it; it was solid.
Locked or bolted.'

'Very well, sir. Where have you been since your
disappearance?'

'Here.'

'All the time?'

'Yes.'

'You didn't return to Cambridge on the night of the
first of March?'

'No.'

'You didn't murder Felicity Marshall?'

'No!'

'Very well, sir. Now what do you know about the loss


152




and recovery of a chemist's prescription belonging to Mr

SkelJow on the afternoon preceding his death?'

'What? Oh, yes, he lost his jabs. We found them, and

took them to Felicity to give them to him. Miss Quy had

gone home by the time we found them.'
'Did you take them and tamper with them?'
'Certainly not! What do you mean, tamper with them?'
'When they were found, where did you find them?'
'Someone had taken them by mistake. Chemists' bags

all look the same. We just asked around till we found

them.'

'Who had taken them by mistake?'

'I can't remember,' Jack said, suddenly morose.

'Try to remember. It might be important,' said Mike

easily. 'Perhaps you will come up with it on the drive

back to Cambridge.'


153




16


Back in Cambridge, Imogen asked some auxiliary
questions of her own. She could see now fairly clearly
what had happened to poor Philip Skellow. And it
depressed her utterly. Everybody concerned could say
truthfully they hadn't really intended any harm; and yet
they had persecuted the poor fellow, and done him to
death with their supercilious snap judgments. Not sporty,
therefore 'a wimp'; not public school, therefore probably
dishonest; not Jack's chosen buddy, therefore beyond the
pale... The outlines of what had happened were clear,
but the details were not. Jack had not come up with the
name of the person who had taken the prescription by
mistake; either he couldn't or he wouldn't remember.


Imogen went to see the research fellow in medicine at
St Agatha's, a sensible woman called Angelica Wend.
Angelica didn't think that Felicity's courses would have
got round to teaching her about anti-coagulants, medicine
being slow and deliberate, and pharmacology not
being an early part of the course. 'You want to know
who would know about anti-coagulants?' she added. 'Try
the vet school. They've got some kind of an investigation
going, I believe.'

Imogen rode her bike out to the Department of
Veterinary Science, where David Banks, a school friend
of hers, now worked. The vets did indeed have an
experiment going. Rat control. As everyone knew,


154




warfarin was becoming unreliable, because resistant rats
were emerging. A range of other anti-coagulants was
being tested, to see if the resistance was general, or
specific to warfarin. The project was being used as a
teaching platform to demonstrate important lessons in
the application of veterinary drugs to the control of
animal populations. A large number of fourth-year vet
students were working on it. And yes, heparin was
among the substances being tested. Could the students
take samples of it home with them? They were not, of
course, supposed to.

Imogen rode back into town, thinking as she rode, and
risking her life absent-mindedly at every road hazard.
She was remembering with a chilling sensation what
Emily Stody had said to her about Philip - he was a rat;
and you know what happens to rats, Miss Quy, don't you?
The pieces fitted neatly together in Imogen's head. Only
as she got off her bike in her front garden did Imogen
remember the locked door. Clearly, if an explanation
didn't explain that, it wouldn't work.

As she made herself a pot of tea in the kitchen, Imogen
was surprised to see Roger Rumbold looking round the
back garden gate. She waved to him, and he came up the
path. She let him in and put a second mug on the
counter, saying, 'Funny way to come.'

'Been visiting a friend in Owlstone Road,' he said. 'The
back path is the shortest route. Am driven to desperate
measures, because you are never in your office these
days. I suspect that I have a rival in your scruffy police
officer friend, though I am loath to think so because it
reflects rather badly on your taste, and so diminishes the
compliment you confer by liking me.'

'What's wrong with Mike Parsons?' Imogen enquired.
'Think carefully before you answer.'

'In that case I plead the Fifth Amendment,' he said,


155




amiably. 'Do I get a biscuit as well as tea?'

Imogen found him one. She was glad enough to see
him, glad to sit comfortably gossiping by the breakfastroom
gas fire, glad to forget any troubles worse than
insufficient library funds and a leaking roof in the
almshouses. The college had agreed to carry out repairs
to Mrs Rumbold's flat, and she had been having a fine
old time exchanging talk about old times with a plasterer,
who must have been challenging Methuselah if he could
really remember what he claimed to be able to remember.
Lord Goldhooper had cancelled a meeting with the
college council. One of the younger dons had been found
in bed with his bedder, and opinions were divided about
whether in the modern .world this was a crime or only a
misdemeanour.

'Well, what would you think should be done about it?'
asked Imogen. 'After all, if he were a student these days
you wouldn't do anything about it, would you?'

'Oh no. Students have civil rights, which nobody
asserts ought to be shared by senior members. What I
would do is install proper locks on the doors, so that no
bedder can be discovered by another bedder making a
bed and then lying in it.'

'Roger, you're making the whole thing up!'

'Well, you're looking more cheerful, aren't you?' he
said. 'Come out to dinner?'

'I'd love to. Where?'

'What about that nice pub at Barrington? Can't afford
the Garden House on the emolument of a merely real
librarian. Flirt with Mountnessing if you fancy the high
life.'

'Barrington would be very nice,' said Imogen, fetching
her coat.

They had a pleasant evening. The barmaid in the
Barrington pub was an amazing sight. She wore black


156




lipstick and eye shadow, and her dark hair was
highlighted with spray-on highlights in shining gold.
One almost expected her to burst into song at any
moment, doing the Queen of the Night from The Magic
Flute. And the food was good. And Roger was good
company. The thing about Roger, Imogen mused later,
smiling to herself on her way to bed, was that he was
always so light-hearted. Insouciance and laughter
accompanied his every step. And first thing in the
morning she had to talk seriously to Mike Parsons.

As it turned out, he came to see her. 'We're just
putting finishing touches to this case,' he told her,
settling down in the chair beside her desk.

'Heavens! I didn't think you could have...'

'Well, to the theory, I mean. First we construct a
careful theory of what happened and how, then we put
it to the guilty parties, then they confess. Theory stage
nearly complete. Thought I would just come and synchronise
watches with you in case you had anything to
add. Or subtract, of course. You've been a great help,
you know. Wasted on nursing.'

'Have you arrested Emily Stody?' Imogen asked.

Mike's eyebrows shot up. 'Yes, as it happens. Or, well,
no; not arrested, just escorted to the incident room for
questioning. Now, how did you get on to that?'

'How did you?'

'Easy. Handsome Jack, under some pressure, at last
admitted that when the missing prescription was found,
it was Emily who had it. Now what put you on to her?'

'Access to heparin. She's a vet; I asked a pal in the vet
school. They've got a project going on anticoagulants.'

'Wonderful!' he said grinning at her. 'You're good at
lucky deduction, aren't you? Now let's tell each other the
story of this nasty business, and we'll see if we've got the
same idea.'


157




'Well,' said Imogen, 'Emily Stody had an unrequited
passion for Jack Taverham. jack set up a "joke": a plan
to tap Philip on the nose and have him faint at the sight
of his own blood. Emily thought to curry favour by
improving on it heparin in Philip's bloodstream would
make the nosebleed spectacular, but not actually
dangerous; heparin delays the onset of coagulation, but
does not prolong the bleeding of surface wounds. Its
dangers are internal, and more sinister. No doubt the
phial of heparin was in Emily's cupboard, among the
mess of stuff of which her bedder complained. She
probably dreamed up the whole thing on the spur of the
moment when she found Philip's jabs in the chemist's
bag lying around. And then it went wrong. Instead of
"improving" a joke, Emily had got her hero into an
appalling scrape; she had led to his having killed
someone. Jack and Felicity might not have been able to
think why Philip had died from a simple fall; but Emily
knew. No wonder she was hysterical the next day!'

'Was she?' asked Mike.

'Yes. I had to sweet-talk her out of the loos, and give
her a tranquilliser. Of course I thought it was grief for
Philip; and she wasn't in a confiding mood.'

But Felicity could only too easily guess. No doubt
somebody told her, after the event, about the planned
joke. And as Imogen now knew, she had seen that bloodsoaked
handkerchief, and at once asked Jack how long it
had taken for him to wake her.

'I'll confess I'm very glad we've worked out a way that
poor young woman knew what was afoot that lets out
me and my colleagues,' said Mike.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, for a while it seemed as though if she realised
that the jabs had been tampered with, and if she knew
time of death was a problem, then she must have learned


158




that from a leaky interrogation. In which case, you see,
Imogen, whoever leaked the crucial knowledge to her
would in a way be responsible for her death.'

'It might not have been leaked to her,' Imogen pointed
out. 'Once it was known to any of them, Felicity was in
danger. Felicity had a conscience, and was about to tell
everyone all about it; in silencing her, Emily would be
protecting both jack and herself. Chiefly herself. And
what was she doing, anyway, washing clothes so early in
the morning? Were they muddy clothes, wet and muddy
from a struggle in the lily pool?'

'You've lost me,' said Mike. 'Is this another little bit of
lucky deduction going out without my knowledge and
permission?'

'Just that I met her in the launderette, washing clothes
early in the morning, the morning after Felicity died.'

'Did you, now? We'll ask her about it.'

'Aren't you going to ask me?'

'You were at a posh dinner all evening. Unless you
have the knack of being in two places at once it wasn't
you who tripped Felicity, pushed her into the pool and
held her under.'

'No. I confess it wasn't me.'

'It baffles me somewhat that nobody heard anything.
Two people thrashing around in a fountain ought to
make some sort of noise,' said Mike.

'Over the sound of the jets?' said Imogen. 'There's a
huge tower of falling water, designed to fan out all over
the pool and make waterfall noises. It's on a time clock,
switching off at midnight.'

'So from dusk onwards the court would be rather dark,
and full of splashing sounds already?'

'Yes. But aren't you going to tell me a bit of this story?'

'Are you sitting comfortably? Philip got fed up with the
party, and went off to see Tracy in the town. He came


159




back to college late the porter remembers letting him in
at about one-thirty and he went straight to the
Wyndham Library. He didn't see Jack, who by that time
had come outside for a breather, and was standing
watching him. He picked the lock: a difficult lock, so it
took him some time. Then he went in and looked for a
particular book.'

'Why, Mike? What book?'

'The one his contact wanted. It was you who pointed
out, Imogen, that fine books, like Impressionist paintings,
would be hard to dispose of. One could hardly just take
them round to the local Jimmy-the-fence and expect a
few quid for them. Well, you're dead right; they are like
Impressionist paintings; they get stolen to order. And
there's quite a little racket going, or so the booksellers tell
us. Very fine rare books going missing at the rate of
dozens a year.'

'But wouldn't there be an uproar? A major search?'

'Well, missing property doesn't catch the public
imagination like missing persons. It would have to be the
Crown Jewels to get headlines in the papers.'

'Round here fine books are the Crown Jewels.'

'But most of the public thinks a book is a copy of
Woman's Weekly.'

'I suppose you're right.'

'And there are other things. People who have had fine
books stolen are usually in a position of trust. They
aren't as eager as they might be to tell the whole world
that they went for a coffee with the library full of
strangers, or that their security systems aren't up to
scratch. Shocking, isn't it? Anyway, the fact is there's a
constant trickle of missing books. They don't get found.
They don't turn up in book auctions; they've just gone.
So most people think the thefts are commissioned by
collectors who want particular volumes.'


160




'For libraries in South America?'

'Or Milton Keynes; just somewhere private.'

'Is this what happened to Professor Wylie's Bartholomew?'

'Could be. I'm not in charge of that case. Anyway, it
seems that young Skellow was in the money because he
was nicking books for someone, and that someone
wanted something from the Wyndham Case.'

'I just don't want to believe that, Mike.'

'Imogen, just because young Taverham is a nauseating
yobbo of the Hooray Henry kind...'

'Who leaps to the conclusion that a grammar school
boy isn't honest...'

'Doesn't mean he has leapt to the wrong conclusion.
Anyway, you are interrupting my story. Jack follows
Philip into the library, and pushes him over, as recounted...'

'Have you got a theory as to how the door was locked
against Jack when he came back with help?'

'Has it occurred to you that Jack might be lying?'

'Why?'

'Well, perhaps he didn't go to fetch help, he just went
back to bed, not caring a damn. And now he sees that
will look very bad, and might even hike the charge
against him to something very serious. So he tells us that
he went back, with help. But his only witness to that part
of the story is conveniently dead.'

'Is he cold-blooded enough for that?' Imogen wondered
aloud.

'Maybe not. Anyway, one thing one routinely does,
faced with a problem about a door locked when it ought
to be open, or open when it ought to be locked, is to ask
the key-holder. Do you want to come?'

'Wouldn't that break the rules?'

'Might help. Might make it look less like a serious
police enquiry, and more like a little matter of one's idle


161




curiosity. Might throw the suspect off guard. Might
interest you?'

'Yes, it might,' Imogen admitted. She put a little notice
on her door saying 'Please come in and wait. Back
shortly', and went with Mike.


162




17


Imogen hadn't been in the Wyndham Library since the
morning when Philip was found. It was in many ways a
magnificent, but not a cheerful room. The books dominated
it, towering two storeys high up one of the walls.
Blinds over handsome windows filtered the light. It was
furnished with large heavy reading-tables and leather-
covered chairs, and two enormous globes - terrestrial
and celestial - in mahogany mounts stood in the central
space.


Crispin Mountnessing was sitting at the far end of the
library, writing. He looked deeply careworn. Imogen's
first impression, before he looked up, was of a man much
older than he had been only a week ago. He also looked
slightly dishevelled, for one who was usually garnished
in immaculate taste. His deep red flannel waistcoat
clashed slightly with deep red velvet trousers, rather
worn; his magenta and white striped shirt looked
unhappy with both. CertainJy he was thinking of other
things when he got dressed that morning.

'Can I have a word with you, sir?' asked Mike.

'I'm very busy,' said Mountnessing, looking apprehensive.

'This won't take a moment,' said Mike. 'It's just that
we have a little problem. We have a statement...' He
recounted, very carefully, what Jack Taverham had told
them. 'You will see at once, sir, that Mr Taverham thinks


163




that the door was relocked from the inside. But the path,
report leads us to believe that the dead man could not
have got up, walked to the door, returned to the spot.
Now can you cast your mind back, sir, to the moments
before the discovery of the body. When you arrived at
the library, you found the door locked as usual, I take it?
And you opened it with your key, which we are correct
in saying was the only key?'

Mountnessing looked distraught. He got up and
walked to the window, and stood staring into the court.
'I am extremely sorry,' he said. 'I didn't think it could do
any harm; I didn't see how it could matter one way or
the other. Except of course, to me. It mattered to me, and
so I didn't say anything about it. I am truly sorry.'

'Please sit down, sir, and tell us what you are talking
about,' said Mike.

Mountnessing returned to his chair. He appeared to
collect himself, though he was clutching the edge of the
table very hard. 'The night of the... calamity,' he said, 'I
was up very late. I was discussing a point of Christian
theology with the Dean. He had some rather good
brandy. We were up very late. When I finally left him...'

'At about what time, sir?' said Mike, who had taken
out his notebook and was writing.

'It must have been almost two o'clock. I had to pass
the library door on my way to my rooms, and as I
passed, I tried the door - a sort of nervous reflex - and
I found it open. So I locked it.'

'You just stood there and locked it? You didn't go in?
You didn't raise the alarm?' Mike sounded politely
incredulous.

'I did not go in. I opened the door only a crack. Then
I closed and locked it. I assumed that it was my fault;
that it was open because I had forgotten to lock it on
leaving the evening before. In fact... the fact is... it has


164




happened before, Sergeant, that I have forgotten to lock
up. More than once, I am afraid, the cleaners have found
the door open, through my oversight, and then they
have needed to find me to lock up when their work is
done. Of course such a thing should never happen. It is
a breach of the terms of the bequest. It is a dereliction of
duty on my part.'

'So you decided to say nothing about it?'

'Sergeant, although you might think it is a small thing
to forget to lock a door once or twice, the fact is that I
have enemies in the college. Enemies who would make
the most of any such matter if they ever got to hear of it.
I did not see how it could have any bearing... and I was
very surprised that I had left it open. On the last occasion
when the cleaners found it unlocked, I had made a very
solemn resolution that it should never happen again, and
I thought I had kept it; I really thought I could remember
locking up the evening before. Then I thought I must
have been wrong, and I locked the door as I passed.
Then of course, in the morning, when I found the body' he
shuddered visibly - 'I realised that perhaps I had not
forgotten, after all: the intruder had picked the lock.'

'Then it would seem, sir,' said Mike, 'that when you
locked the door Skellow was lying in the library, bleeding
to death. When his assailant returned with help he found
the door locked, and was unable to render assistance.'

'I did not know that. I could not have known anything
about it. Of course, I bitterly regret...'

'I need to get this absolutely clear, sir,' said Mike. 'If
there had been lights on in the library, would you have
seen them when you opened the door a crack?'

'Well, I didn't see them, so the answer must be no.
There is a sort of draught box round the door, Sergeant,
you can see, which would have concealed all but the
brightest lighting.'


165




All three of them inspected the baffle round the door.
A construction like the sides of a box, with a second door
a yard and a half within: a miniature version of the kind
of thing often put inside church doors, and for the same
reason a person entering lets the outer door close
before opening the inner one, and so keeps out draughts.
Certainly it seemed pretty Light-proof. Imogen wandered
back towards the table below which Philip had been
lying, and considered.

At first Philip had been working by torchlight. Then he
brought a book down and put it on this table - and
switched on a reading light. Later, Jack switched on more
lights. The reading lights were old-fashioned library lights
with solid brass stands, heavily shaded with green glass
shades which cast the light downwards to the table tops.
If the two young men had switched on only the reading
lights, then it seemed perfectly plausible that someone
standing outside could fail to notice. The switches for the
reading lights were easily found; they were little chains
below each light.

'Where do the main lights switch on?' she asked.

'Over there - a bank of switches on the wall by the door,'
Mountnessing said. From where she was standing
Imogen couldn't see them; they were concealed by the
jut of the baffle round the door. So when Jack panicked
and put on more lights, he probably just put on the
reading lights, whose switches he could see from where
he stood. Imogen was satisfied.

She replayed the scene in her head: Jack leans over the
table, grabs the book. They pull it to and fro across the
table, move into the aisle, Jack shoves, Philip falls, the
book goes flying... she remembered the Inspector picking
it up from over there; and the floor was certainly
polished enough for it to slide. She had a sudden
thought.


166



'What happened to the notebook?' she asked.

'The book?' said Mountnessing. 'It's back in its proper
place. The police having finished with it.'

Mike referred to his notes. 'Nova et Antiqua Cosrnologia:
where would that place be, sir?'

'Towards the top of the left-hand bay on the balcony,'
said Mountnessing, pointing. 'Do you want to see it?'

'Wouldn't mean anything to me, thank you, sir,' said
Mike. But that was, of course, the point in the room
where Jack said he had seen Philip searching for and
finding the book.

'I didn't mean that book - I meant the notebook,' said
Imogen. 'Didn't Jack say Philip was looking at the book,
and a notebook?'

'Point,' said Mike. 'Nobody mentions a notebook. You
didn't find a notebook lying around somewhere, sir?'

'I didn't find anything that ought not to be here,' said
Mountnessing stiffly.

'Except a corpse, when you turned up the next morning,'
said Mike brutally.

'Oh, don't remind me,' said Mountnessing, turning
pale.

'One last thing,' said Mike, 'then you can get on with
your work in peace. That key: where is it usually kept?'

'Upon my person,' said Mountnessing.

'You carry it always with you? Pardon my asking you,
sir, but isn't it a massive great thing?'

'Inconveniently so,' said Mountnessing. 'I have a
specially deep narrow pocket constructed for the purpose
in my trousers.' He reached down the right-hand pocket
of his trousers as he spoke, and produced eight inches of
heavy iron key.

'Glory!' said Mike.

'There are disadvantages to most callings in life,' said
Mountnessing lugubriously.


167




As they crossed the court again, Mike going towards
the incident room and Imogen returning to her office, she
said, 'Mike, shouldn't we just check with Jack Taverham
about that notebook?'

'It was sharp of you to pick up on that,' he said. 'More
trouble than it's worth, I think. We have to handle the
young upper crust with kid gloves. He's made his
statement; been bailed; promised to be a good boy and
keep within the college; made it up with his dad; got
himself an excellent lawyer. If we keep firing off
auxiliaries at him we'll be accused of harassment.'

'But that must make enquiries rather difficult? In fact
I've been thinking very ruefully, Mike, about how much
more difficult life is as a result of the raging suspicion of
the police that all these youngsters feel. They haven't any
justification for it, as far as I know.'

'I wouldn't go so far as that,' said Mike. 'Depends
where they come from and who their associates are. The
fact is, Imogen, the odds against the police are always
very long. Policemen do what they can to shorten them.
They always believe that it's in the public good. It all
depends which part of the odds one tries to shorten. In
some police forces they like to shorten the odds against
guilty people saving their skins by keeping their mouths
shut. In others they may like to shorten the odds against
the guilty getting away with what they clearly did
because of a nasty little chink in the evidence, that could
easily be fixed up. Round here we like to shorten the
odds against having true confessions doubted in
court; against any case we bring getting into trouble as
a result of criticisms of police procedure. So we keep the
rules, and try to win by diligence and superior brainpower.'

'And thus attract into the Cambridge force the kind of
officer who likes to win by brains rather than brawn?'


168




she said, smiling at him affectionately. 'What if I asked
Jack?'

'Couldn't stop you,' he said. 'Citizen's rights.'

And it wasn't, of course, difficult for Imogen. Jack was
confined to his rooms, very bored and not ill-disposed
towards her, since he felt grateful, really, for having been
rescued from Felixstowe.

'I've come to see how you are getting along,' she
opened.

'Not too good, really,' he said, offering her the
dazzling smile that endeared him to his cronies. 'Nothing
you can help with, I'm afraid. I'm not ill.'

'Worried?'

'Worried sick. Miss Quy, what is all this about that
damn prescription? I was only trying to help, and...'

'Didn't anyone explain?'

'No.'

'Philip had been given a drug which impedes blood
clotting. That was why a blow to the head...'

'He wasn't bleeding enough for that, surely?'

'Internally. Haemorrhaging into the brain.'

'Oh, my God,' said Jack.

'The drug is one that has to be administered by
injection. And Philip did have an injection, you see. You
took him to Felicity, and she gave it to him. She didn't
check the seals.'

'And it had been tampered with?'

'Probably. Well, what other explanation?'

'Then it wasn't my fault! It wasn't me, it was whoever
spiked Philip's jabs! It lets me out, doesn't it?'

'I'm not a lawyer, Jack. Morally speaking, I would say
that organising vicious practical jokes...'

'It wasn't me, it was...' he stopped short. 'Nobody
meant to kill anybody,' he said.

'Not then, perhaps. Look, Jack, I wanted your help


169




about something. Did you say that Philip was looking at
a book from the shelves, and a notebook? What sort of
notebook? An ordinary jarrold's sort of thing?'

'Oh, no,' he said, frowning. 'It was big; leather-bound.
It might have been one of the books from the case.'

'Then why did you say it was a notebook?'

'It was the wrong word. Just that it was handwritten.
I only saw it for a split second. It was lying open on the
table, beside the one Philip had carried down from the
gallery. It was upside down, to me, but the reading light
was on it. It was ruled in columns with entries in violet
ink. Handwriting, not print.'

'Violet ink? One can get brown ink, red ink, green ink,
I think, but usually the choice is blue or blue-black.'

'I've even known purple ink,' he said. 'But perhaps I
just mean faded. I honestly can't be sure, Miss Quy; I
was looking at the other book, and shouting at Philip,
and he was shouting at me, and... Sorry. Hang about, I
do remember one thing. The pages had gold edges - you
know, like posh prayer-books. Might this help?'

'Anything might. Only the book wasn't found.'

He looked puzzled. 'Well I didn't move it,' he said.
'And it was too big to get thrown away by an oversight
or something.' He lapsed into silence. Then: 'Oh, it's such
a mess!' he said. Tin in such a mess! And it all looked so
good; I was going to get a first and a blue, and go into
Dad's business, and stand for Parliament... and now I
might easily go to prison, and my reputation is wrecked
for life. And it's not fair, Miss Quy! Really, it's not fair! It
was Philip who was stealing things! And I'm the one
who's wrecked. It doesn't matter what I do, now.'

Imogen said quietly, 'It always matters what people do,
Jack.'

'Do you mean there's always somebody who cares? I
won't have a friend left in the world.'


170




'What about Nick? What about Terry? Catherine? Lots
of people have been standing by you, as they saw it, at
some risk to themselves. But actually I meant that it
always matters to yourself, what you do. You can't help
standing by yourself.'

'I suppose not,' he said. Thanks.'

'Would you like to come across to the office with me
now, and offer an auxiliary description of that notebook?'

'OK,' he said. 'Haven't anything better to do.'

But when they got there, there was nobody sitting at
the desk; the door to the interview room was shut, and
a murmur of voices reached them. Jack and Imogen sat
down to wait. By and by Mike emerged from the interview
room.

'You want to hear what's going on in there!' he said,
sitting down in his chief's chair.

'I think perhaps I don't, though,' said Imogen.

'She's singing loud and clear,' said Mike.

'Who is?' asked Jack.

'Your beloved Emily. You were right, Imogen - she
thought Jack would love her better if she made a fool of
Philip. Then she was desperate when it turned out she
might have got wonderful Jack into terrible trouble - she
threatened Felicity with murder if she told anyone about
the jabs, and then she saw her chance... She isn't sorry,
you know. She just reckons that anyone who casts a
shadow on Mr Taverham's golden path deserves to die.
What a termagant!'

Jack had sunk his head in his hands. 'Did she kill
Felicity?' he asked.

'She seems to have seen Miss Marshall coming through
Fountain Court alone, in the dark. She spotted that the
fountain was throwing a screen of water between Miss
Marshall's course to her room and the porter's lodge, and
realised that nobody was likely to be looking from the


171




chapel and dining-hall side of the court. She seized her
chance. She ran at Miss Marshall hard, knocked her off
her feet and into the pool, and held her under.'

The door to the interview room was opened, and a
woman police constable emerged, with Emily behind her,
followed by the Inspector. Emily saw Jack, and her face
lit up. She reached a hand towards him.

'You vicious little cow,' he said. 'You stupid bitch!'

At that Emily's face crumpled into an expression of
such distress that Imogen was almost sorry for her.

'I only did it for you, Jack,' she said.

'What's he doing here?' said the Inspector. 'Get him
out of here!'

So Jack's curious report of the size and weight of the
missing notebook would have to wait.

Imogen returned to her room, very shaken. She had so
disliked Emily she hadn't thought much about her. But
she should have done. A little more thinking about
Emily - who after all made a lousy job of concealing her
feelings and she might have been stopped before she
got to Felicity. And even if you have disliked them, the
thought that someone you know is a murderer is enough
to give anyone pause.


172




18


Imogen saw the two students who were waiting for her
on her return to her room, dealt as best she could with
their problems, and went home. The curious news about
the nature of the missing notebook could wait, she
thought, till morning. She had a busy afternoon in
prospect. First she was going to show Tracy round some
Cambridge colleges, buy her tea in Auntie's, and take her
to choral evensong at King's. Tracy needed cheering up;
but Imogen was looking forward to it, too. And then she
had to get to New Addenbrooke's to see Professor Wylie
before the end of visiting time.


'I really hadn't a clue!' said Tracy, leaning with Imogen
over the wall of Trinity Hall's riverside garden, looking
at the frost-proof ducks on the wintry river flowing
below them, and watching the cyclists spinning over the
humpbacked arch of the Garret Hostel Bridge.

'A clue about what?' said Imogen, apprehensively.

'All this,' said Tracy. 'I thought the centre of
Cambridge was the Grafton Centre, and this bit was
where all the grey buildings are. I didn't know what they
were for, or that they had gardens in them, or anything.
You're ever so kind to show me.'

'It's a pleasure,' said Imogen. 'A pleasure to be
reminded how lucky I am to live here. I just go walking
or biking through, thinking about work, and I don't
notice, as often as not.'


173




"I bet you do, though,' said Tracy.

'Which did you like best?' asked Imogen, who was
keeping King's College Chapel in reserve.

'That lovely pale one like a wedding cake!' said Tracy,
without hesitation, selecting St John's New Court, 'with
the pretty bridge to it. That's got to be the best, hasn't it?'

'Well, I've always liked it,' said Imogen.

In Auntie's, they settled down with a pot of tea. They
ordered chocolate fudge cake for Tracy, and hot
gingerbread with maple syrup for Imogen, and while
they were waiting, sitting comfortably at a table in the
window, Fran came past, wheeling her bike. She saw
Imogen and came bouncing in. 'You promised me dinner
at the Chato Singapore,' she said cheerfully, pulling out
the third chair and sitting down. 'But tea and a bun will
do for now.'

Imogen introduced Fran and Tracy, and explained the
afternoon's mission. Fran immediately attached herself to
them, confessing that she had not yet heard evensong at
King's. 'It's the sort of thing you keep thinking you can
do any time, and then you go down without having
done it, like as not,' she said. 'And right now I'd do
anything that took my mind off the uproar in college.'

'About Emily?' Imogen asked.

Fran nodded. 'Where are you?' she asked Tracy.

'Romeo's,' said Tracy. 'And you?'

'I'm at St Agatha's,' said Fran.

'I didn't think you could be anywhere respectable, with
hair like that,' said Tracy, coldly.

'Ouch!' said Fran, cheerfully. 'Did I say something
wrong? Anyway, what's wrong with my hair? Bearing in
mind that I'm not trying to look like an air hostess.'

'You don't look as if you was trying to look like anything,'
said Tracy. 'You look as though it just grew like
that.'


174




'Well, it did,' said Fran, refusing to take offence, 'What
do you think I should do with it?'

'It'd look good if you took about three inches off the
ends, and put it up in a bun,' said Tracy, considering.
'Perhaps with Edwardian sides.'

'What's an Edwardian side, Tracy?' Imogen asked.

'Those little curly dangling bits in front of the ears,'
said Tracy. 'What do you think, Imogen?'

'Pass,' said Imogen. 'And time we were moving if we
want to get seats in the choir for evensong.'

Evensong put a quietness on both her companions.
She left them talking together in King's Parade
afterwards, and biked off on the long haul towards
Addenbrooke's.

Professor Wylie was in a poor way. He had caught
bronchitis, and to her alarm was on oxygen and not in
any condition to talk to her. He had to be feeling
dreadful if he couldn't even rise to an elegy for his book.
Imogen went to see the ward nurse. Everything possible
was being done. The Professor was 'poorly' but not in
danger. He would come off oxygen some time tomorrow
in all probability. No doubt he would, thought Imogen.
But just the same, when she got home at last she phoned
the Professor's sister in Italy.

While she was watching Newsnight a knock on the
door announced Fran, hair rolled up and sporting
'Edwardian sides', looking perfectly charming.

'What do you think, Imogen?' she asked.

'It's lovely. Mind you, it doesn't look authentically
studently.'

'That's the fun; it can be let down and left hanging for
everyday.'

'I approve, then. I wouldn't have thought you'd had
time.'

'Tracy opened up and did it for me after hours. And I


175




took her to a disco for a bit. Know what, Imogen? There
was more to Philip than met the eye, wasn't there?'

Imogen gave Fran a cup of chocolate, and saw her out.
Then she went to bed feeling obscurely pleased. Unlikely
friendships are like trees in flower, or sightings of
kingfishers: they make one wonder whether after all the
world is a hospitable place.

Next morning, as she entered St Agatha's, she was met
by a brigade of policemen, marching out. A police van
was parked, with hazard lights flashing, outside the gate,
and the files and phones and impedimenta from the
incident room were being packed away in it. As she hung
up her coat in her office, Mike appeared.

'We're shutting up shop,' he said.

'So I see. Moving to the main base?'

'Moving to other things. Case closed. Well, solved
anyway. The law will still have its wayward way with
things.'

'Solved?' she said.

'Yup. We won't get anyone for Skellow's murder.
Taverham will get off, or get only a technical conviction.
Clot didn't mean it. But we'll get Stody for killing Felicity
Marshall: she's the one really responsible for Skellow's
death, but there's no point in going after her for that in
the circumstances. I mean, she will be charged under the
Offences Against the Person Act with "administering a
noxious substance to injure or annoy", but the judge will
pass a minor sentence to run concurrently with life for
killing Felicity Marshall. She'll get life anyway.'

'But don't you have to know what Philip was doing in
the library?'

'Nicking books.'

'There's no proof of that.'

'What the hell else can he have been doing?'

'But you can't convict someone on the basis that you


176




can't think what the hell else they were doing.'

'We aren't going to convict him. Remember? He's
dead.'

'And therefore can't defend himself. Don't you have to
prove it? Find the fence who was putting him up to it,
check where that money came from? Find out what
happened to the notebook?'

'Nope. There's nothing in that for us. No theft from
the Wyndham Case, and if there was we'd know who
did it, and he's dead.'

'Don't you need to know how he got in?'

'Well, either he picked the lock or our ineffable friend
forgot to lock it the night before. It doesn't in the least
matter. When you find a body dead in a library, the one
thing you can be sure of is that the fellow did get in, one
way or another.'

'But doesn't it worry you?' Imogen was deeply upset.
'Don't you want to tie up all the loose ends?'

'Crime writers have a lot to answer for,' said Mike.
'Look, Imogen, we've got two dead bodies and two true
confessions. Jack says he pushed Skellow, in circumstances
which are explained by the context; Emily Stody
says she drowned Felicity to stop her telling the world
that she had administered jabs to Skellow without
checking the seals. Emily seems to have thought that
Taverham would be in worse trouble if that were known.
She seems to have been willing to spike someone's
medicine, lie, terrorise and kill for Taverham, who
rewards her devotion by calling her a stupid and vicious
bitch. Seems a bit of an understatement. Her lawyer will
argue that it was a crime passionnel. The jury will be
unimpressed. These various confessions are all witnessed,
signed, taped, have not been withdrawn as soon as the
villains saw their lawyers. What is there left to prove?'

'It's just that...'


177




'You don't like the thought that the boy was a thief.
Well, I don't care whether he was a thief or not. I don't
like the thought that he's dead. It wasn't murder in the
eyes of the law, I'll grant. But what I think about it isn't
printable. Capital punishment for theft was abolished
years ago.'

'I'm sorry, Mike. Perhaps I'm just bitching because the
college will be dull without you here.'

'Well, I shan't be any further away than Parkside.
Should be possible to have a pub lunch occasionally.
And, Imogen, you've been a great help. Mostly when the
public help us it takes twice as long and gets more
confused than ever; you've given really useful help. I
expect you'll get a letter from the Chief Inspector, but
this is thanks from me. Tara, then.'

'Tara,' she said. He went; and then moments later put
his head back round the door, said, 'See you soon,' and
was gone.

Before the morning was out Imogen was longing for
fresh air. It's a strange thing about institutions that the
heating can never be got right: it's always far too hot or
non-existent. A dismal bleak March it might be, and grey
and chill outside they had been lucky with the weather
on the Cambridge walk yesterday - but there was no
need to heat the building as though it contained a rare
collection of tropical plants. Desert palms, more like; it
was dry, scratchy air. So the moment her hours were up
Imogen charged out into the garden, and climbed the
Castle Mound. Great drifts of crocuses were in bloom on
the grassy sides of the mound. The beloved view of
Cambridge cheered Imogen a little. The departure of the
police from the college should have been a relief, and she
wondered why it was not. The whole affair had left her
feeling bruised, and, on reflection, she supposed it was
because of the eruption through the tranquil and


178




beautiful surface of Cambridge of the ugly and
depressing aspects of life. No, surely; surely, she, Imogen,
saw enough of the downside of Cambridge life in the
woes and fears of the young people who consulted her
each day. Many members of St Agatha's might live in
effect, on another planet, or in another century, perhaps,
but surely she, Imogen, had always had her feet on the
ground.

She had intended to descend the slope of the mound
and walk back through the little cluster of tombstones
that gave the little church on Chesterton Road below her
such an air of rural charm; but on second thoughts she
decided that reading tombstones was not an activity for
today, and she returned the way she had come.

As she re-entered Fountain Court she saw Lady
Buckmote coming towards her. 'Just the woman I was
looking for,' Lady B. said. 'Can you spare a moment?'

'Gladly,' said Imogen.

Minutes later they were comfortably occupying
armchairs in Lady B.'s pretty little drawing-room in the
Master's Lodge. Tea and biscuits were ordered up from
the buttery.

'Guess what,' said Lady B. 'Lord Goldhooper is back.'

'I thought we had scandalised him away.'

'Evidently not. Evidently the old reprobate regards
bodies in the fountains as part of the antique charm,
rather in the light in which one regards college silver, or
an academic prize or two. Anyway, he's back. William
doesn't know whether to be pleased or appalled.'

'He hasn't needed sleeping pills for some time,' said
Imogen. 'I was hoping he might have broken the habit.'

'He has, he tells me. He tells me he is not going to
resort to them. But it will be rough going, I think, unless
Lord Goldhooper decides quickly. However, Imogen,
there is something else on my mind.'


179




'Something that I can help with?'

'I do hope so. Imogen, the college council has met, and
decided not to send anyone to young Skellow's funeral.
You know, someone usually goes to represent the college
when any member of the college, however junior, dies.
They are sending the Dean to attend Felicity Marshall's
funeral tomorrow. There's an inquest on Skellow
tomorrow also; we gather the fact that he was engaged
in theft is likely to emerge, and several of the fellows are
inclined to think that theft of college books needs public
disapproval. William thought that in view of the tragic
nature of the death it was unsympathetic of them not to
send somebody, but it went to a vote and he was voted
down.'

'And you don't approve of the majority line?'

'I feel very uneasy about it. After all, the college has
allowed Taverham to be bailed and to continue in residence
I know he's under strict supervision, but still and
what is that going to look like to Philip's family, do
you think?'

'Terrible,' Imogen agreed. 'They will hate us, I should
think. But I don't see what you could do about it; it isn't
your responsibility.'

'The reputation of St Agatha's is my responsibility
while William is Master,' said Lady B. 'I'm the academic
equivalent of the vicar's wife. And you see, Imogen,
while William couldn't defy the college council without
stirring up mayhem, I could. I'm not bound by their
resolutions. I thought I would go. It's not at all likely that
the difference between me in a private capacity and a
proper college representative will be immediately clear to
the outside world.'

'Brilliant idea,' said Imogen.

'So I was hoping you would share the driving,' said
Lady Buckmote. 'It's nowhere near as far as Skye, but I


180




need to be back the same night if William is not to ask
questions until too late, and that makes a very heavy
day.'

'Do we know when it is?'

'Next Wednesday.'

'I'll arrange to be free,' Imogen promised.


181




19


It was dark when Imogen and Lady Buckmote left
Cambridge. A lightening sky had weakened to deep
violet, against which the street lights, and the lemon and
amber rectangles of the few lit windows, lingered
uncertainly, soon to be redundant. As they drove
towards Huntingdon the sun came up, dazzling in the
right side mirror like an undipped following car, and
helpfully blazing in the cats' eyes down the middle of the
road. By the time they reached the Al a light mist was
dispersing into the chill brightness of a fine early spring
day.


The church was full of flowers. It was half-full of
mourners it was a big church, though, built for the
prosperity of the past, so half-full was a respectable
number of people. There were reporters with cameras at
the churchyard gate. Philip seemed to have had a small
family - mother, father, an aunt and uncle perhaps?
Probably: one could see the family resemblance to his
father. Imogen looked round discreetly, from the position
Lady Buckmote had chosen, three rows back. Some local
people, brought by sympathy or curiosity; a large number
of young men Philip's classmates at the grammar
school? That must be it. Among the youngsters several
older people two men and a woman; Imogen guessed
they were school teachers. Just before the coffin was
carried up the aisle a latecomer arrived: Dr Bent from St


182




Agatha's. He and Lady Buckmote looked at each other
with mutual surprise, and rueful approval.

The service began. How oddly life-enhancing funerals
are! Only for those closest to the dead is grief strong
enough to blot out entirely the renewed zest for life, for
the daylight, for continuance, however deeply one regrets
continuing without the dear departed. No doubt these
mixed feelings account for the excellence of the parties
that often follow. Imogen's train of thought was suspended
as the vicar ascended the pulpit.

'Our dear son, our dear friend, our brightest and most
promising pupil, a valued member of our congregation,
one of whom much was hoped and expected, has been
brought to burial in this church, fifty years before his
expected span, as a result of a violent act. How can such
a calamity be reconciled, you may ask yourselves, with
the image of God as the Good Shepherd, with the
promise that no sparrow falls without the Father? Such
questions have troubled believers since before the time of
Christ... '

Imogen's attention wandered. Not that she didn't
appreciate the importance of the question being
discussed. Just that, like so many others, she had ceased
to expect a brave profundity in tackling it from the
mouth of an Anglican vicar. And like many another good
parish church, this one was full of distractions. It had a
little fine old glass in the chancel and a magnificent brass
rescued from the floor and mounted on the wall of the
aisle, within Imogen's view. From every century since the
fourteenth, monuments and the familiar patterns of
armorial bearings and elaborate citations asserted the
passing glories of the worldly great.

The sermon rolled on. 'God answered Job then, that
his knowledge was not deep enough to justify him in
questioning his God. That must be enough for us also.


183




However, though we may not question God, we have
every right to question our fellow men. We may demand
an answer from the killer to the question, "Why did you
do this deed?" and here it is my painful duty to allude to
a second attack upon Philip Skellow, not capable of doing
him bodily harm, but most hurtful to the feelings of all
who knew and loved him; I mean of course the allegation
which we have all heard, against his honesty. Now
it may seem to some of us here present that to justify an
unlawful attack by piling false accusation upon the victim
is conduct so contemptible that it is literally unforgivable.
I must remind you that we may, indeed we must,
preserve Christian charity towards all. It is our duty to
forgive Philip's killer, both the lethal action, which only
the perpetrator can know if it was deliberate, and the
deliberate attack upon the honesty of the dead man. We
shall forgive; but we shall also answer the attack. We
may not know, any more than Job did, enough to
question the judgment of our Maker; but we know
enough to question the judgment of those who have
labelled Philip a thief. Those of us who knew him, know
it cannot be so. I urge you, with all the authority vested
in me by my office, to beware against feelings of hatred
or of contempt for any human creature, however deep
the offence they have given. But I also urge you to
preserve in your memories the Philip that we all knew;
to remember that it is not in this world that the secrets
of all hearts shall be made plain, and to trust that Philip
is vindicated and accepted by Christ in that other world
to which we are all bound, soon or late...'

'Those were strong words,' said Dr Bent, quietly, to
Lady Buckmote as, later, they watched the coffin being
lowered into the ground. 'Strongly felt.'

'Yes, very. Very strikingly so. I am surprised to see you
here,' she added.


184




'I am in a purely private capacity,' he said. 'I taught
Philip last term.'

'I am purely in a private capacity myself,' she said, 'but
perhaps we need not say so.'

'No indeed,' he replied.

And it was just as well this mild conspiracy had been
agreed, for the presence of strangers had of course been
noticed; they had to give their names, to say they were
from the college. They were invited to go back to the
house for a light lunch and a drink.

A rather difficult social occasion, Imogen thought. But
not as bad as she might have feared. Dr Bent was quickly
in conversation with the teachers, including Philip's
headmaster, on the subject of entrance requirements, and
later could be seen talking paternally with some of
Philip's friends. Lady Buckmote's social skills had been
honed razor-sharp in a hard school; she sallied into the
middle of the crowd and asked questions: 'Are you a
relative? Have you come far?' and so on. Imogen took
her glass of sherry to a window seat, overlooking the
back garden, and watched. The house was one of those
modest thirties semis with curved bay windows. It was
light and pleasant inside, but the narrow garden was
beautiful; a curved path led the eye through pergolas and
serpentine herbaceous borders to a rustic seat at the far
end. Hundreds of crocuses were in flower; the beds were
neat, the roses well pruned and budding.

'Are you the gardener?' Imogen asked Mr Skellow,
who approached offering to refill her glass.

'What is he like?' he asked her, speaking harshly.

'Who?'

'The man who killed my son. I take it you know him?'

'A blunderer,' she said, choosing the word carefully.

'A bully,' he said. 'We told Philip to stick up for
himself, but he said we didn't understand. No; it's my


185




wife who does the garden,' and he moved on.

Imogen looked around for Mrs Skellow. She saw her
standing in the kitchen doorway, looking distraught.
Imogen made a bee-line through the packed room to her.
'Are you all right?' she said. The woman was trembling.

'I just felt dizzy for a moment.' There were tears in her
eyes.

'Come and show me the garden,' said Imogen.

'I can't leave things...'

'Yes you can. I think you might be going to faint if you
don't get some fresh air.'

Imogen steered her through the kitchen, where two
young women from a caterer were coping with everything,
and out of the back door. Mrs Skellow took several
deep breaths of the fresh chill outside air.

'You're right,' she said. 'Thank you for rescuing me.'

'Let's go and sit down on that bench for a bit,' Imogen
suggested.

'They'll think I'm neglecting them.'

'They'll think you are obviously looking after me,' said
Imogen. They moved down the garden, and sat down.

Mrs Skellow wept quietly for a few moments. Then she
said, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'll stop in a minute.'

'Cry if you want to,' said Imogen. 'Why shouldn't you
cry? You have every reason.'

That produced a flood of tears. Then Mrs Skellow
stopped, suddenly, and said, 'It makes Frank so cross...'

'Well, that's not very understanding of him,' said
Imogen. 'I expect he's having trouble with his own
feelings.'

'I suppose he is, Miss...?'

'Quy. Imogen Quy. Just Imogen.'

'He says I'm wicked.'

'Wicked? Whyever that?'

'I told him I was grieving about a daughter-in-law.


186




Somehow he thought I meant I wasn't heartbroken about
Philip for himself. I didn't mean...'

'Tell me about it,' said Imogen.

'I did so want a daughter. I couldn't have any more
after Philip. Frank never did understand. He said he
didn't care; a son is as good as a daughter, and a
daughter would have been as good as a son. The thing
is, you see, he got a son. He doesn't realise. I loved Philip
more than anything else in the world, but a son still isn't
a daughter. I used to think, well, never mind, I'll have a
daughter-in-law. I told my friend Molly that once. She's
got two and she doesn't get on with either of them, and
she told me I was maundering. But I thought, well I'm
not like Molly. I won't boss her about; I won't mind what
she's like, posh and grand or plain and common, or
anywhere in between. I thought, we'll have fun together.
We'll go shopping. We'll talk about clothes. I'll help if I'm
asked and sit on my hands if I'm not, and she'll like me...
and by and by there'll be grandchildren - a granddaughter,
maybe.'

Mrs Skellow was crying again, silently. 'I've been
looking forward to it for years. And now... Frank thinks
its wicked to be grieving for such moonshine along with
one's own flesh and blood.'

'Well, I don't,' said Imogen. 'I think it's very natural.
But you must try to be gentle with your Frank. People all
react differently.'

'Oh, I can't tell you how good it is to talk to a sensible
woman!' Mrs Skellow said. 'Frank's all cut up about this
stealing business. And that's what seems wrong to me. I
don't think our Philip was a thief, I think there's some
misunderstanding there somewhere. But if he was I
wouldn't really care; I'd gladly have him serving twenty
years for nicking the Crown Jewels if that meant he was
still alive! We were so proud of him when he got into


187




Cambridge! Frank was walking on air for weeks, and
telling everybody, even the milkman. I wish we'd made
him leave school and go down a coal mine now!'

'No, you don't,' said Imogen. 'Not really.'

'No,' said Mrs Skellow. 'I suppose not. I would have
thought it was a waste of all those brains. Well, now, I'd
better go back to the company before they all go home.
But I can't tell you how much it means to me, and to
Frank, that people came from the college. That helps a
lot, truly. And you don't think I'm wicked?'

'Not a bit,' said Imogen.

Later, as she drove Lady Buckmote down the Al
homewards in deepening dusk, she said, 'There was a lot
of strong feeling washing around up there, wasn't there?'

'Are you surprised? While you were up the garden
with Mrs, Mr was showing me a cuttings book, which
went from "Local boy wins place at Cambridge" to
"Scholarship boy a thief, says coroner". Gruesome for
them.'

'And every one of them seems sure it must be wrong,'
said Imogen. 'I've never heard a sermon like that one.'

'So what's your conclusion?' asked Lady B.

'Perhaps it's wrong,' said Imogen.

'Perhaps it is,' said Lady B.


188




20


Wrong or not, there didn't at first seem to Imogen to be
anything she could do about it. Life went back to normal.
Which was, after all, what she had been longing for it to
do. Being in the middle of a murder enquiry had not
been comfortable. But now that she no longer was, life
seemed bland and boring. She was grateful for Roger's
attention. He took her to a concert performance of Figaro

in the Corn Exchange, and to a production of Le Medecin
Malgre Lui in the little theatre in Bury St Edmunds, and
even began to mention villas in Tuscany and ask if she
had her summer holidays fixed yet. Imogen accepted
most of his invitations, and stalled about the summer.
She couldn't go away with Roger until she knew more
clearly what she felt about him. He was funny, and
affectionate, and she was very fond of him; but a nurse
has to be careful. The image of a nurse evokes subliminally
in too many men's minds the image of themselves
as patient - tenderly ministered to, their every need preemptive,
however slight. Or, worse, even, they see
themselves deliciously bossed about by a uniformed and
capable nanny, whose only concern is their own good.
Roger was an entrenched bachelor, devoted to a demanding
and bossy mother. And Imogen had learned the hard
way to be self-preserving.


In any case, she was still deeply concerned about the
Skellow case. Obsessed, Roger said. He didn't share her


189




worries. Indeed, he seemed almost snappish with her
when she mentioned the nub of the matter in her own
mind - was Philip really engaged in theft that night? Not
that he himself was immune from obsession, or seemed
any less obsessed by the Wyndham Case than before. He
was furiously indignant with a newspaper article which
compared the Wyndham Case at St Agatha's with the
Pepys Library at Magdalene College, and brought it to
Imogen to show it to her.

'But what's making you so cross, Roger?' she asked
him. 'Is it wrong?'

'Wrong?' he exploded at her. 'Wyndham was no Pepys!
Pepys made a magnificent collection of books on a
multitude of subjects. On literature, on the changeover
from manuscript to print, on the history of handwriting,
on architecture, on shipbuilding, on navigation, on natural
history, on music: the whole conspectus of a cultivated
seventeenth-century mind. All intricately arranged
and referenced into a catalogue; all still fascinating, still
useful, still consulted; whereas our own beloved
Wyndham of pestiferous memory deliberately collected
discredited volumes expounding disproved astronomy.
Utterly useless. There really is no comparison. The man
and the books are well matched, I suppose,' he added
darkly.

Imogen couldn't resist egging Roger on. 'What do you
mean?' she asked.

'You should hear what the Pepys Librarian has to say
about our own dear Mouritnessing! And, hell, Imogen,
there's all that money attached to Wyndham's. The Pepys
Librarian has to work for a living.'

'Yes,' said Imogen. 'Calm down, Roger. You sound like
a cross child.'

And he did calm down. But Imogen was uneasy.
Roger's sardonic sense of humour was one thing; but


190




there was a vitriolic streak in the way he talked about
the Wyndham Librarian which felt like hatred. And
hatred is a rampant weed, she thought. She decided not
to mention her unallayed bafflement over the death of
Skellow to Roger any more. Well, that was all right. One
has many friends to whom one doesn't talk about certain
things.

But how odd to be talking to Mick O'Brien about
something that seemed untalkable about with Roger! To
find Mick, she got up very early in the morning and
walked up to the Lammas Land, where on a garden seat
she expected to find him sleeping. He was there, under
a heavy mulch of cardboard and newspaper, surrounded
by empty bottles and black plastic dustbin liners. The
black plastic, she knew from of old, would contain mostly
books, including the Greek New Testament which he had
been clutching when he collapsed from cold and hunger
outside her house some years ago. Trying to house Mick
was like trying to cage a wild bird: he pined or escaped
every time. Feeding him was easier, and she had brought
a bacon butty with her. He was in a sardonic frame of
mind.

'Well, and isn't it me very own ministering angel,
now!' he cried, striking a raw nerve in Imogen. 'Come
bearing nourishment, and bent on helping the old rascal
meself, whether I want it or not!' Just the same he took,
unwrapped and guzzled the bacon butty.

'I haven't come to help you, Mick,' she said, 'I've come
to ask you to help me.'

He bent a beady eye on her, suddenly interested. 'Is it
somebody you want taught a lesson?' he asked.

'Good heavens, no!' she said. 'Not that! Whatever do
you take me for?'

'Well, I only thought you might be wanting a black eye
and broken nose job,' he said, 'not a dead-ina-ditcher.


191




Not you. I've got more savvy than thinking that.'

'It isn't a black eye job at all,' she said. 'It's about
picking a lock.'

'Is it now?' he said. 'Well, that depends. Depends what
you want to lift. There's none of my friends wanting any
trouble at all with the law that they haven't got already.
Now if it's something of your own that you want back,
maybe...'

'I don't want anything; I just want to know if a certain
lock can be picked.'

'Out of pure Protestant curiosity?'

'Yes.'

'Ah, aren't the English wonderful!' he said. 'The poor
bloody Irish never had a chance in the world. I'll find
you someone.'

'It's at St Agatha's: can you bring your friend there?'

'They'll not let us in,' he said, looking doubtful.

'Ask for me. There'll be a bag of groceries waiting.'

'Cheese,' he said. 'And chocolate Brazils. None of that
healthy stuff.'

'Right,' she said. 'Everything in the bag will be bad for
you. Promise.'

'Ah, you're a wonderful woman,' he said.

He didn't produce his friend till after dark, so that she
was working late, waiting for them. That did her no
harm: there was lots of note-making, filing, clerical work
to be done to catch up on the lacunae produced by the
upheavals of the past few weeks. Mick had been right to
think the porter would look askance at him, too. Imogen
had to reassure him that the two 'gentlemen' were
indeed expected, and under his polite insistence she said
she would walk across to the porter's lodge and meet
them. They were not taking a single step on St Agatha's
hallowed ground without an escort - not on the porter's
responsibility.


192




When she was there she saw why. Improbable though
it was, Mick's friend looked even less respectable than
Mick himself. His upper half was clad in an amazingly
dirty anorak, ripped into shreds, with the padding
hanging out; his lower in a pair of filthy red trousers,
rolled up at the hems. She avoided meeting the porter's
eye, and led them round to the door of the Wyndham
Library. There was no light on as far as she could see,
but she took the precaution of knocking on the door first.
There was no answer.

Mick's friend whipped out a bunch of skeleton keys - or
at least she assumed that was what they were - a
collection of wires, hooks, bent metal bands and keys. He
inserted something in the lock and bent down, applying
his right ear closely to the lock as he gently, and then
fiercely, twiddled the projecting end of his gadget. He
tried several; then he stood up and shook his head.
'That's a powder job,' he declared.

'You're out of luck,' said Mick. 'If Joseph can't do it,
nobody can.'

'Would a different sort of key...?'

'Not a chance,' said Joseph. He had an educated,
upper-class voice. 'That's a primitive lock, Miss Quy. I can
do any modern lock, with one or other of these. But
you'd have to get a key made to fit that one.' He smiled
at her. 'We could blow the lock, but that would be a dead
of night job; it would make a hefty thump.'

'A sound that could be heard by someone standing at
the other side of the court?'

'Yes indeed.'

'And it would leave a smashed lock?'

'Yes.'

She shook her head. 'That's no good, then,' she said.

'You wouldn't be going to change your mind about
the groceries?' said Mick, mournfully, in the tone of one


193




who expects treachery, and is resigned to it.

'Certainly not,' said Imogen. 'Come up to my office
and you can collect them. I'll make you a flask of coffee
to go with them.'

'We won't sit down,' said Mick, as they went through
Imogen's door. But Joseph had immediately done so, and
stretched out his legs. Imogen stared at his trousers. They
were stained and filthy, deep red velvet.

'Will you get out of the lady's nice clean chair!' said
Mick.

'I'm wearing my new trousers,' said Joseph, staying
put.

'Where did you get them from?' Imogen asked.

'We totted them from the rags skip at the dump,' said
Mick. 'And you know, they belonged to a thief already!
There's a lovely deep pocket for the skeletons. It's a
shocking thing, isn't it, Miss Quy, how many villains
there are in the poor world?'

Imogen filled the flask for them, and put the two
loaded plastic shoppers on her desk.

'Explain to me about the lock, Joseph,' she said. 'Why
can't you do it?'

'Old lock,' he said. 'Blacksmith's work. The key has
large heavy wards, and all the tumblers are made of iron.
You might get a skeleton that fitted the matrix, though
most would be too small. But the skeleton won't lift the
weight of the moving parts, even if it was oiled and worn
smooth.'

'I see,' said Imogen. 'So it isn't just that you didn't
have the right gizmo? You mean nobody could do it?'

'I don't know anyone who could. A pro would just put
a little charge in and blow it.'

'Thank you,' Imogen told him. 'That's a great help.'

'Can't think how,' he said. 'But ours not to question
why.'


194




Imogen walked the two of them across to the lodge,
seeing them safely off the premises. They avenged the
suspicions of the porter by loudly and affably taking
leave of Imogen under his beady eyes, shaking her hand
and hoping to see her again very soon.

'Oh, Joseph,' she said at the last minute, 'ivhen did you
tot those trousers?'

'Yesterday,' he said. 'They're as new as the morning!'

Riding home Imogen thought, 'Oh, but what's the
matter with me? It isn't a crime to throw away a pair of
old trousers!'

When she got home a surprise was waiting. Liz and
Simon had set the table with candles and flowers, and
had supper ready cooked for her. Simon took her coat
and hung it up; Liz put a glass of sherry in her hand.

'What's all this in aid of?' she asked, amazed.

'We thought you were looking very gloomy and sad,
landlady mine,' said Simon. 'Not your usual self at all.
You haven't told us off in weeks.'

'Cheeky monkey!' said Imogen, laughing. 'How kind of
you both! Just what I needed. And what a heavenly
smell!' A fragrance of garlic and herbs was wafting from
the kitchen.

'Bourguignon,' said Liz, proudly. 'Sort of. With
variations.'

'Boeuf a la mode Elizabeth,' suggested Simon.

'Who's the fourth place for?' she asked, glancing at the
table.

'Fran's coming, and bringing the salad,' said Liz.

'There's a very good bottle of red in the cellar that's
been waiting for a special occasion,' Imogen said. 'Let's
crack it now.' She hadn't intended to drink it with her
tenants, but she was touched by their concern and
kindness. She vowed to remember this next time she
yearned for an empty house!


195




Gratefully, she sat down as instructed, sipped her
sherry, and listened to the chatter in the kitchen.

'Oh, do you remember that palaver we were having
about snow before Christmas?' Liz asked. 'I've thought
of something. Those eleven days. That'd explain it, don't
you think?'

'What?' said Simon. 'Do we have a decanter, Imogen?
Don't get up, just tell me where.'

'Eleven days. They chopped eleven days out of the
calendar, because it had gradually got skewiff. There was
uproar. People rioted in the street, demanding their days
back.'

'What's that got to do with snow?' demanded Simon.

'Well, we both agreed there's often snow in January.
And the day they were keeping as Christmas before the
reform is the day we now call January the fifth. So they
had snow at Christmas as often as we have snow by Jan
fifth. Got it?'

'When?' called Imogen. 'When did they change it?'

'Oh, I don't know exactly. Some time when the
populace was thick enough to think their lives had been
shortened.'

Imogen jumped up, heart beating, and tore into her
living-room. She looked up 'Eleven Days' in Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable:


'When ENGLAND adopted the GREGORIAN Calendar
(by Chesterfield's Act of 1751) in place of the JULIAN
calendar, eleven days were dropped, 2 September
1752 being followed by 14 September. Many people
thought they were being cheated out of eleven days,
and also out of eleven days' pay...'



The change had been made after Wyndham's death. So
each century after his death ran not to the anniversary
of his death, but to eleven days after the anniversary. She



196




seized her notebook and turned to the note she had
made herself it seemed an age ago - about the
Wyndham Bequest. She had noted Wyndham's date of
death - January 8. So the true centenary of that death fell
on January 19. Any rejoicing or relief that the Wyndham
audit was out of time should have been postponed till
January 20. That was very clear. But equally clearly it
didn't help over Philip; he had died on February 15.
There was no doubt; the audit was really out of time;
Wyndham's crazy codicils had nothing to do with it. She
was staring, baffled and disappointed, at her notes when
the doorbell announced Fran.

Imogen managed to behave herself. To eat her delicious
dinner, and not raise the question of calendar
reform. To smile, to talk about the concert in the West
Road Music Room everyone proposed to go to the following
week, to compare P. D. James with Ruth Rendell
mysteries, to enjoy her surprise party. But all the while
in the back of her mind, subliminally, the question of coincidence
sounded an insistent note.

She was almost relieved when the party broke up. She
wasn't allowed even to clear the dishes into the
dishwasher, so determined were Simon and Liz to treat
her. Just as she was on her way to bed, Simon remembered
there was a message for her. The Professor's sister
had turned up, wanting Imogen, and would call again in
the morning.

Imogen lay awake for some time before sleep laid
thoughts to rest. When she was a child she had holidayed
on Romney Marsh. It was a bleak and windswept
beach, with gravel piled in unstable cliffs against the
curving sea-wall, and sand lower down, covered at high
tide, and so always hard and clean. There was a foghorn
that boomed lugubriously. It could sound from dawn to
sunset, bemoaning a worthless day, one when the nature


197




of the world would be occluded, veiled from view, with
familiar things lost, or looming abruptly over her just
before she collided with them. She had hated the
foghorn; but it had given fair warning that you couldn't
see what was there, that you might lose your way in the
most obvious excursions.

And now, as clearly as though she could hear it, she
had that foghorn feeling booming in the bottom of her
mind. She couldn't see something that was there. Those
eleven days - they really, really ought to have been the
answer. And yet they weren't.


198




21


The Professor's sister was Mrs Barclay, a brisk elderly
woman, very smartly dressed in dark colours, with
elegantly cut grey hair, and a martyred expression that
no doubt she had earned. Showing her the Professor's
flat, Imogen felt obliged to explain that she was forbidden
to dust the books. Just the same, Mrs Barclay, looking
round with an exasperated expression, declared that her
brother could not possibly be discharged from Addenbrooke's
to live in it. 'He'll have to stay with me for a
while, she said.


'I would do my best to keep an eye on him,' said
Imogen, 'if he came home.'

'But you have a job to do. He's my flesh and blood. I'll
have to cope,' said Mrs Barclay. She had the tone of
voice of one who was used to coping and did it well.
'Now, this missing book. It would be a great help if I
could find it.'

'We have all looked. Thoroughly.'

'With Edward wailing and wringing his hands while
you did so, no doubt, hindered by him helping you? I am
going to look again. Frankly, with Edward a simple
misplacement seems far more likely than theft, don't you
agree?'

'Well...' Imogen remembered that, disorderly though
the toppling piles of books seemed to an outsider, the
Professor had seemed to know exactly what was where.


199




'I'll make us some coffee and come and help,' she offered.

'Bring a duster, would you?' said Mrs Barclay. 'Now,
let me see...' She reached into her handbag and
produced a scrap of paper. 'This is what we're looking
for.' She handed Imogen the paper. Imogen glanced at it.
She knew it would say 'My Bartholomew'. It said: 'Nova
et Antiqua Cosmologia, Aldus Bartholomeus. Quarto vol. in
brown calf.' Imogen stood looking at it, thunderstruck.
There are limits to coincidence.

They did not find the book.

Later that morning Imogen found Professor Wylie
ensconced in one of Addenbrooke's day rooms. Off
oxygen, and out of bed. He had been done good to,
whatever he himself thought of an institution with no
serious books and no television-free zone. He was
looking kempt and rosy. The doctors attributed his
absent-mindedness not to scholarship, nor to old age, but
to insufficient vitamins in a disorganised diet, and were
administering supplements.

Imogen asked, 'Professor, how many copies of that
book of yours are there in England? Can you say?'

'Only one. Mine.'

'But there's one in the Wyndham Case, isn't there?'

'No, no, no, woman! Couldn't be.'

Imogen unwrapped the grapes she had brought, and
put them on the table between them. The foghorn
atmosphere swirled in her mind. 'That young man who
was killed in the Wyndham Library...'

'What young man?'

How had he managed not to hear of it, amid all the
publicity, all the fuss?

'A young man who was found dead in the Wyndham
Library...'

'It will have happened during the period of my
incarceration, no doubt. What an extraordinary thing!'


200




'He had displaced a book, which was lying on the floor
near the body. I thought it was Nova et Antiqua
Cosmologia.'

'Must have been the other one,' said the Professor
obscurely. He filled his mouth with grapes. 'There
couldn't be a copy of mine in there. Wasn't published till
1708. After Wyndham's death, don't you see?'

Imogen took the point about the date. 'Even that clot
Mountnessing would know that,' added the Professor,
contemptuously.

'The other one?' Imogen asked, having left him time to
eat another handful of grapes. 'The other what?'

'The other Bartholomew. There were two of them,
father and son. Ricardo and Aldus. Father's book a load
of old cods - that might be in Wyndham's. Think it is,
now you come to mention it. Published 1688. Twenty
years later son tried to salvage the family name. Published
a revision. Quite a sensible book, really. Bloody
rare. Couldn't be in Wyndham's though, could it?' he
smiled at Imogen seraphically. 'Old fool forbade anyone
to add to his list.'

'Two different books, with the same title...' Imogen
was thinking aloud. 'Could the same title, just by coincidence,
be involved...?'

'Wyndham's Bartholomew isn't rare, you know,' the
Professor offered, finishing the grapes. The later book is
the rare one. Mine.'

'But there are lots of copies of Ricardo's Nova
Cosmologia?'

'Yes. There must be ten or twelve of those. Worldwide,
of course.'

Shapes loomed in Imogen's mind, through the fog. She
had that terrible sensation of panic which she remembered
feeling when you kneiv there was something which
you couldn't see.


201




'Incidentally,' the Professor said, as she got up to leave,
'should he be allowed to lock one up for days? Shouldn't
somebody be after him for it? It was devilish damp and
cold down there, and it was taking a liberty, wasn't it?'

He startled her, suddenly switching from the books to
the rambling like that. 'Is he wandering again?' asked a
ward nurse, appearing at her side. 'He gets very excited;
we have to try to keep him calm.'

'Professor Wylie,' she asked, nevertheless, 'who hit
you? Can you tell us who hit you?'

'Came from behind. Didn't see,' he said. She caught
the nurse's eye and they shrugged at each other.

'Habeas corpus!' shouted the Professor after her as she
left. 'What happened to habeas corpus?'

Spring had reached Cambridge at last. It was a
beautiful clear day, crisp as a new apple, with a tender,
relenting warmth in the air. The Fellows' Garden was full
of windflowers, and a thrush sang ecstatically on a
branch of the Magnolia Stellata that filled the island
flower-bed with a constellation of fragrant white flowers.
Imogen was walking, walking to breathe, to clear her
mind, to think.

She ascended the castle mound, taking the turns of the
zigzag path at a stride, paid the view its due of a
moment's lingering on the summit, and then descended
again, to walk in the churchyard of St Giles. She went
right to the far end of the churchyard, where a drift of
little daffodils grew wild in the grasses - the ones she
knew as 'Lent lilies'.

The wall which divided the churchyard from the
Chesterton Road sheltered her from the wind and made
a pleasant warmth there, and she slowed down and read
the inscriptions on the headstones '...and Martha, his
wife...' 'beloved son..."... erected by their one surviving
son, Thomas Martin, Gent., of blessed memory...'


202




The lapidary affections, however flowery their expression,
were touching. Sad. The children's graves the saddest.
Who could fail to be sympathetically appalled by Sarah,
wife of the above, of whose thirteen children none
survived infancy, and all died before her? Sometimes a
child had a doll's-house memorial, a miniature headstone
hardly showing above the deep grass and rampant
daffodils. Like this one Imogen bent and brushed aside
the herbage to read the words beneath the carved angel,
wings curved round the hemispherical top of the stone,
hand holding a monitory skull.


'Our heav'n-sent babe, again to heaven returned,
His parents' joys extinct, and hopes now spurned
Not e'en one year in this drear world did stay
He who now wakens to th'unending day;
His time how short, his life was scarce begun
And now for him eternity is won.'



How touching the verse was - she looked at the details
above it, and then frowned deeply.


The child was Samuel Fennichurch, born February I,
1751; died January 3, 1753.

Imogen took out her notebook and carefully copied
every word on the little stone. With the foghorns of
confusion blaring in her head she went to look for
someone who could explain.

She had an odd impression that Roger turned white
when she asked him; but perhaps it was just the
cadaverous glare of the neon reading-light in the
basement of the library, which he turned on to look at
her note of the words on the stone. 'I expect they just got
muddled,' he said.

'Muddled? About the age of a child? Surely not, Roger!'

'Well, you have to remember people didn't feel about
children then the way we do now. They didn't get


203




attached to them. Couldn't afford to; they lost so
many - they died off like flies to a dozen diseases.
Women farmed out babes to wet nurses and got on with
their lives.'

'Are you telling me people didn't love their children in
the early eighteenth century?'

'Well, not much. There's a book by Philippe Aries that
proves it; I'll find it and lend it to you if you like.'

'Let me get this clear: you are saying there is a book
which proves that in early modern times people didn't
love their children. They put up grieving inscriptions
about them, but really they cared so little they could
have been unclear about whether an infant was less than
a year old or nearly two. Is that what you're saying?'

'Well, there could be other explanations.'

'Like?'

'Like a mason's book. You find the same verses on
tombstones in widely dispersed places. There's a good
one for a blacksmith, for example - "My forge and anvil
lie declined, my bellows now have lost their wind" which
is used on a tomb at Houghton, just up the road
from here, and another in Oxfordshire, and no doubt
many more. There must have been books of suitable
inscriptions for the masons to use. So perhaps someone
just used a verse for a dead infant, without alteration,
even though it didn't quite fit.'

'Wouldn't the parents have objected?' she asked.

'Might have been illiterate. Or didn't care about the
details,' he said.

She left him without another word, and went to find
Lady B. 'How very curious,' said Lady B., putting on her
spectacles, and studying the inscription. 'What did Roger
Rumbold say?'

Imogen told her. 'Oh, rubbish!' said Lady B. 'I know
the Aries book. I always think one look at Ben Jonson


204




collapses his thesis. Do you know the epitaph on his
son?' She fetched a book from her shelves.


'Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy...
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lye
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetrie...'



'Yes! I would have thought that in any century, parents
who had lost a child would know its life span to the
nearest minute, to the exact day,' said Imogen.


'So would I.'

'To suggest otherwise is an outrage on one's common
sense, I think,' said Lady B. 'But I can't unscramble your
conundrum.'

Imogen went back to her office and propped the words
up on her desk. She stared at them from time to time.
Like staring at something in the fog.

At three o'clock Fran came by, with her right hand
wrapped in paper tissues. 'Can I have some tender loving
care getting a splinter out?' she asked, showing Imogen
a sore and oozing finger-tip. 'It's in my right hand, and
I can't manipulate a needle well enough with my left. It
doesn't half hurt, too!'

'Sit down, Fran,' Imogen said, getting a bowl of water
with TCP, and a needle.

'What's that?' asked Fran, looking at the propped-up
note.

'A deeply puzzling epitaph,' Imogen told her.

'Deeply touching, yes,' said Fran, wincing as Imogen
inserted a needle next to the sliver of wood. 'Where's the
puzzle?'

'The dates. Was the child less than one, or nearly two?'

'Oh, less than one. The birth date is written old style.
Before calendar reform in 1752,' said Fran learnedly.

'Calendar reform? The missing eleven days?'


205




'Same reform, different bit of it. They moved New Year
from March twenty-sixth to January first. We have to
remember to keep track of it doing eighteenth-century
history.'

'Got it,' said Imogen, expertly removing the splinter.
'Now tell me again, carefully.'

'They moved New Year. The year used to run to the
end of March. So that what we call January, 1752, they
called January, 1751. They changed the year end to
December, so next time January came round it was 1753.'

'Got it!' said Imogen. The fog had lifted off at least part
of the landscape, and she could clearly see. She rinsed
the bowl, put the needle in the sharps disposal tin, and
took her coat off the hook.

'Where are you going?' asked Fran.

'Yorkshire,' said Imogen.


206




22


When the fog rolls back it's hard to remember why one
didn't see things. Things very clear and sharp. Christopher
Wyndham had estates near Helmsley. Philip Skellow
came from near Helmsley. Those oddly familiar armorial
bearings in the parish church - Wyndham's, no doubt.
And after all, by common agreement there were two keys
to the Wyndham Case. Imogen spent the night in a pub
in Wetherby, and reached her destination just after
breakfast the following day.


Mrs Skellow was surprised to see her and, Imogen
thought, glad. Mr Skellow was off for the day, fishing.
The two women opened the box of Philip's papers that
the college had sent home, along with his clothes and
books. It was untouched in his room, likewise untouched.
Imogen winced slightly at the little desk, used by a
studious boy; at the pinboard with snapshots, with a
school cricket team, with a picture of his mother and
father. A poster above the bed showed not the usual popstar,
but Simon Rattle conducting. It felt wrong to be
riffling through the box of papers. They found his bank
statements, in a nice new plastic folder provided by the
bank for new student accounts. It showed a deposit of
1000, pounds made on 2 January.

'Lord help us, where did he get that from?' said Mrs
Skellow. 'We haven't got that kind of money... this'll just
about kill Frank! Oh, I shouldn't have let you look!'


207




'Hush now,' said Imogen softly. 'I think he came by it
perfectly honestly. I think I know what it was for, and
what he was doing in the Wyndham Library; but we
need to find who paid him the money, if we can. Help
me look for the paying-in book.'

It was quickly found. Philip had been methodical; he
had scrawled on the stubs the names of the payers.
There weren't many: mostly the Education Committee for
his grant cheques, and presents from relatives. And a
thousand pounds, from 'Fanfare & Bratt'.

'That's the one,' said Imogen. 'Who or what are
Fanfare and Bratt?'

'Lawyers,' said Mrs Skellow. 'Very stiff old-fashioned
lot. We've never had anything to do with them; well, we
don't have to do with lawyers at all, really, except for
making our wills, and we had those done by Shanklins.'

'Where are the offices of Fanfare and Bratt?' Imogen
asked.

'In the High Street, opposite the school gate. What are
we going to do?'

'Leave it to me,' said Imogen.

Fanfare and Bratt occupied a delectable late Georgian
house in what was clearly the posh end of the little
town. She had to insist to get to see a partner, a Mr
Bratt, and he denied all knowledge of any client called
Skellow. His assistant went off to check the files, and
confirmed it. They did not have, and never had had, a
client called Skellow.

'Then why did you pay him a thousand pounds?'
Imogen asked.

'All our clients' affairs are confidential,' he said.

'I will level with you,' said Imogen. 'This is a matter of
concern to St Agatha's College, Cambridge, where I work.
We would rather sort it out privately; but if that is not
possible we shall have to inform the police. It is likely


208




that they would then get a warrant.'

'Look up Skellow on the computer, will you, Miss
Bates?' said Mr Bratt.

'I find two entries, Mr Bratt,' the girl said, an
impressively short time later. 'A Mr P. Skellow had an
appointment with Mr Bratt senior on the eighteenth of
December last. And we paid a Mr P. Skellow a thousand
pounds on the twentieth of December last. Mr Bratt
senior signed the cheque. It doesn't say what the cheque
was for.'

'My father was not always methodical, Miss Quy,' said
Mr Bratt there present. 'He kept confidential business in
his head. I'm afraid I can't help you; we do seem to have
had dealings with P. Skellow, but I haven't an earthly
what they were about.'

'But we could ask your father?'

'You could ask him, certainly. But whether he would
remember... My father had a stroke at the end of
January, Miss Quy, and is making a slow, and I'm afraid
very partial, recovery. A good deal that was filed in his
once encyclopedic memory is gone for good.'

'But I may visit him, and ask?'

'Certainly. Visits do him good. He is in the Forget-menot
Home.' Mr Bratt winced slightly, speaking the name.
'Most embarrassingly titled, but the care there is of the
best. I will tell the staff to expect you.'

Forget-me-not Home was a hideous Victorian mansion
on the outskirts of the town, in spacious grounds which
would have been agreeable enough if not disfigured by
the presence of a house which looked like George Gilbert
Scott powering up for St Pancras, but on an off day. Mr
Bratt Senior was in a pleasant room overlooking the
garden. He was sitting in a chair in the window bay,
with a rug over his knees. Conversation with him was
certainly difficult; rather more, Imogen thought, because


209




he had difficulty speaking than because he had difficulty
remembering. A newspaper lay on the coffee-table beside
him, unopened. Imogen wondered if he was able to read.
Did he know what had happened to Philip?

'I want to ask you about Philip Skellow,' she said.

He reacted at once. 'Poor boy... my flaw...' he seemed
to say. Then he shook his head, miserably aware that he
hadn't got it right. He took a deep breath and said, 'I
can't talk, you know,' quite clearly.

'I'll talk,' said Imogen. 'I'll tell you what I think
happened, and you can say no if I've got it wrong. OK?'

'Yes,' he said.

'Your firm is supposed to do the Wyndham audit.
There's some kind of trust. It got forgotten; you left it
very late, almost too late. When you woke up about it,
you had a good idea. You had read in the papers about
a boy from the school here winning a scholarship to St
Agatha's.'

'Yes.' He spoke hoarsely, but his eyes were bright and
clear, fixed on her face.

'You thought it would be easy for such a boy to do the
audit for you, if you gave him the auditor's key.'

'Great thing...'

'You paid him. Perhaps you wanted to help him;
perhaps you thought it would be no fun being hard up
at Cambridge...'

Mr Bratt nodded vigorously.

'But you swore him to secrecy. The whole matter was
secret. I don't know how your firm came by the
Wyndham audit; it can't be that old. Did you inherit it
from somebody?'

'Yes.'

'And there's some money along with the obligation, so
you were anxious to carry it out and retain the retainer?'

'Useful sum.'


210




'And it was very clever of you to realise that the audit
still had a year to run, after the apparent centenary. I
suppose lawyers know that kind of thing?'

'Fellow reminded me,' he said.

'Who?' asked Imogen. An icy fear rolled over her.

But Mr Bratt smiled at her very sweetly, and shook his
head.

'Mr Bratt, did you know that Philip Skellow is being
branded a thief?' she asked.

'Poor dead;' he said, still smiling.

It was little less than a miracle that Imogen didn't crash
on the drive down the Al back to Cambridge. She drove
like the wind, with her mind nagging and teasing at the
loose ends. Perhaps avenging angels have the special care
of guardian angels, for she didn't crash; she didn't even
get stopped for speeding. She got back to the college at
just after seven, and went in search of Wyndham's
librarian. He was not in his room; he was working in the
Wyndham Case, his papers spread out over one of the
tables.

'Mr Mountnessing,' she said to him sternly, 'where is
the second key?'

He froze for a second. Then, 'I don't have to answer
questions from the college nurse,' he said, coldly.

'Of course not,' she said. She turned to go.

'Where are you going?' he asked.

She told the truth. 'To my room. I am going to sit and
think seriously about whether it is my duty to persuade
the police to ask you about the other key.'

He reached into his pocket and produced his key. Then
he went to a cabinet at the far end of the room. He
unlocked it. He removed four books. He reached round
behind the row of volumes, scrabbling at something. She
heard a click, as of a safety lock opening. He produced
another key, brought it and laid it beside the first. Two


211




heavy, ancient, iron keys, with elaborate wards. He sat
down heavily and said, 'I'm not cut out for deception.'

'You found the key on Philip's body and removed it.'

'Not on the body. It was on the table.'

'But why did you remove it?'

'I had a lot to lose. I stood to lose my job.'

'Because an auditor would find something amiss?'

'He had found something amiss. The book which the
Inspector found on the floor should never have been
there.'

'It was the Aldus Bartholomew, not the Ricardo
Bartholomew?'

'You know!' he said, dropping his head flamboyantly
in his hands.

'I've guessed a lot. Tell me what happened. It might
help me decide what to do.'

'That morning when I came in to work. There was a
body on the floor; lights on. The incredible key was lying
on the table, beside the handbook - that's the definitive
booklist for the Wyndham Case. I realised the auditor
had come, and come to grief somehow. It looked like foul
play to me. I had a quick look at the bookcases, starting
with A, up there on the right. The books are packed
closely; if one is removed it leaves a gap. Well, there was
a gap where the handlist would have been; I replaced the
handlist. There was another gap, right beside the
Bartholomew. I couldn't think what was missing. I looked
around for the missing book, and I found it on the floor,
under the table. I picked it up. I realised at once that it
was the wrong Bartholomew. I was afraid, Miss Quy,
please believe me. I might have been seen trying the door
late the night before. And if there was a wrong book in
the Wyndham Case, and the auditor was lying dead on
the floor, then I was the obvious suspect. I didn't know
what to do. And anyone might wander in, wanting to


212




look at the library; it was already opening hours. I
removed the later Bartholomew and the second key, and
hid them. Then I put the legitimate copy of Bartholomew
on the floor where the wrong one had been lying. Then
I raised the alarm.'

'The book you hid was Professor Wylie's copy?'

'It must have been. I have no idea how it got into the
Wyndham Case. I have enemies.'

'How often do you check the books?'

'I see what you mean. It could have been there for
weeks, or months, I'm afraid.'

'And what did you do to Professor Wylie?' she asked.

'It's been a nightmare!' he said. 'I was beside myself.
How could I have known he was going to turn up and
set all Cambridge by the ears, carrying on about his
book? I was afraid someone would make the connection.
He wouldn't listen to reason. So I did lock him up; I
admit that. I made sure he had food and blankets... it all
went wrong.'

'I don't think I understand this bit,' said Imogen.

'I was going to lock him up, before he had the whole
country looking for the blasted book; I was going to find
a way of slipping it back to his lodging. Then I could
release him; he would find the book, everyone would put
the whole thing down to his absence of mind... it all
went wrong.'

'Was it you who hit him?' she asked, appalled.

'It was only to shut him up. He wouldn't stop
shouting and banging down there; I was afraid someone
would hear him. He made a terrible fuss.'

'Well, wouldn't you make a fuss if someone locked you
up?' she said indignantly.

'I suppose so. Then when I had to knock him out he
took ages to come round, and then he was rambling. He
was in and out of consciousness... I hadn't meant to hit


213




him hard enough to do any damage. His clothes were
covered in blood. I cleaned him up a bit and lent him
some of mine, and I drove him to Wisbech, and...'

'Why ever Wisbech?'

'I thought he would get put in a hospital safely out of
Cambridge somewhere, for some time. I didn't think he
would just get on a bus.'

'What a performance! Couldn't you just have left the
book somewhere for someone to find and return to him?'

It was his turn now to look horrified. 'A book like
that?' he said. 'It's fragile, and it's valuable; it's totally
irreplaceable...'

'So is Professor Wylie,' she said.

'What are you going to do?' he asked her.

'If you will kindly give me that book, I am going to
return it to its owner,' she said, 'and ask him if he wants
to do anything.'

Mountnessing picked up a volume loosely wrapped in
newspaper that was lying in full view on his desk, and
handed it to her without a word.


214




23


The Professor was sitting fully dressed beside his bed,
waiting for his sister to come and fetch him away to
convalesce. Imogen put the parcel gently on his lap. She
saw the expression of joy on his face as he opened it, and
the tenderness with which he inspected it, delicately
turning the pages with his clumsy arthritic hands.
'Unharmed!' he said at last. 'A miracle! It has come to no
harm. Where did you get it, woman?' and he turned a
stern gaze at her. It came to Imogen that if she were to
say, 'It was in my kitchen all the time,' he would simply
scold her, and that would be that. But why should she?


'Mr Mountnessing had it,' she said.

'The beggar stole my book?' said the Professor,
breaking into a ferocious grin. 'No wonder he locked me
up!'

'No, he didn't steal it,' she said. It was one thing to let
Mountnessing take the blame for what he had done,
quite another to let him carry the can for Roger. 'He
simply secreted it, for reasons of his own. He would have
given it back later, he says.'

'And do you believe he would?'

'Oh yes,' said Imogen, 'I do. Why didn't you say it was
Mountnessing who had locked you up?'

'Make a nasty stink,' he said. 'College scandal. Don't
want that.'

'Will you go to the police about it?'


215




The police? Why should I? I've got my book back,
unharmed. A fellow of the college can borrow a book of
mine if he wants. Should have told me, of course, but...'

'Perhaps about being locked up and hit over the head?
Weren't you on about habeas corpus?'

'I hadn't got my book back, then,' the Professor said,
serenely. 'Naturally I was upset.'

'But a fellow of the college can incarcerate you and
assault you if he likes?' said Imogen. 'I mean, what's a
spot of CBH between friends?'

'That's the trouble with women,' he said. 'Tongues so
sharp it's a wonder they don't cut their mouths. Thank
you for bringing it back.' He was clutching the volume to
his chest like a long-lost child.

Imogen left him, and went home to think it over.

Her thoughts were distressing to her. No doubt the
police would be interested in prosecuting a man who
locked up a colleague for three days and inflicted GBH.
But clearly Professor Wylie would not be likely to cooperate.
After due consideration Imogen decided that
what she had discovered was not a matter for the police
so much as a matter for the Master. Let him recall the
police if he thought best.

And so she found herself once more sitting in a fireside
chair in the living room of the Master's Lodge, with a
glass of sherry in her hand.

'Can I stay and listen, William?' asked Lady B.,
assuming the answer and sitting down beside Imogen.

'It begins when you all began to rejoice that the audit
was out of time,' Imogen told the Master. 'Because it
wasn't. The change in the way dates are written between
Wyndham's time and ours means that his date of death
falls a year later in our chronology than it seems to.
Someone knew that, and decided to play a trick on Mr
Mountnessing. This someone stole -I expect he would


216




say, borrowed a book: an edition of Nova et Antiqua
Cosmologia, by Aldus Bartholomew, which couldn't have
been in Wyndham's, because it wasn't published till after
Wyndham's death. The someone put the book in the
Wyndham Case, alongside the legitimate one, the Ricardo
Bartholomew, feeling pretty sure that Mr Mountnessing
wouldn't notice it. And he didn't. Then this somebody
did a little historical research, and tracked the trust
Wyndham set up to carry out the audits in perpetuity.
He jogged the memory of the partner in the firm, a
certain Mr Bratt. Master, all this is guesswork, you
understand.'

'But we guess the mysterious perpetrator to have been
Roger Rumbold?'

'I think it must have been,' she admitted sadly. 'He
had the know-how, and, I'm afraid, the motive. Well, Mr
Bratt didn't know how to go about the audit. But he
remembered having seen in the local papers that Philip
Skellow had won a place here. So he paid Skellow to do
the audit, and gave him the auditor's key to the Library.
Philip went about the job the night he had been doped
with heparin, though of course, he didn't know that. He
put the handlist on the library table, and began to check.
He didn't get far-just through the A's - and there in
the B's were two copies of Bartholomew when the list
said only one. He took the suspect book down the stairs
and laid it on the table to look at it more closely. Jack
Taverham burst in on him, accusing him of theft. No
wonder that he didn't react like someone caught in
flagrante, but just told Jack to push off. We all know what
happened next.'

'They struggled over the book and he fell and banged
his head.'

'Mountnessing came by and locked the unlocked door
again, using his own key. Then in the morning, when he


217




returned, he found the dead body...'

'And called me, and I fetched you.'

'Not quite. He found a dead body, and he found the
second key on the table, and he found a book lying on
the floor that shouldn't have been there. The wrong
Bartholomew. So he put the right Bartholomew on the
floor - he tossed it as though it had fallen when Philip
fell. Then he hid the key and the interpolated book. Then
he called you.'

'But didn't the police find Philip's fingerprints on the
book that was on the floor?' said Lady B.

'He must have handled both volumes when he was
checking them on the shelves, I think,' said Imogen.

'The terms of the bequest had been broken, and
Mountnessing was protecting his job,' said the Master.
'But then why didn't our original mischief-maker blow
the whistle?'

'And own up to having precipitated murder? Besides,
I think he was having fun at Mountnessing's discomfiture.
And you realise, the dates are out by a year; he
can still pull the plug on Mountnessing at any time.'

'And the supernumerary book is the one that Professor
Wylie lost?' said Lady B.

'Of course. We should have realised; Roger Rumbold
knows the set-up in my house, I'm afraid, and can drop
in there without anyone raising eyebrows. He knew the
Professor was away indefinitely. And when the Professor
turned up and began asking for his book, and trying to
report the loss everywhere, it was Mountnessing who
was terrified. Mountnessing who by then had the book,
and had everything to lose should anyone make the
connection with the book in the other incident. He tried
to talk the Professor out of putting around that the book
was missing; when that failed he locked him up
somewhere. Somewhere damp and dark and nasty, so


218




that when the unfortunate man described it to us we
thought he was raving.'

'There is a disused undercroft in the Wyndham wing,'
said the Master. 'We used to store things there, but it's
too damp.'

'I expect it was there, then. Eventually Mountnessing
clobbered the Professor over the head to stop him
making a noise and getting rescued. Then he abandoned
him in Wisbech. I was very slow; I thought I had seen
somewhere before the curious clothes the Professor was
wearing when they found him. They belonged to
Mountnessing and I had seen them, but I couldn't place
them. And the poor wretched Professor has been in
hospital all this time because they think he is still
hallucinating when he talks about being locked in a
dungeon, when it's actually the literal truth!'

'Who knows about all this?' said the Master.

'I confronted Moutnessing, and he owned up at once.
Otherwise, only we three. I thought it should be up to
you, Master, whether to call the police.'

'What does Rumbold say? You didn't confront him?'

'No,' said Imogen. 'I didn't feel like doing that. I
suppose I might be wrong.'

'I'm afraid it sounds very much as if you are right, my
dear,' said Lady B., looking at Imogen with concern.
'Well, William, are you going to call the police?'

'No, I'm not,' said the Master. 'But I'm going to call an
emergency meeting of the college council. I rather think
we shall have to dispense with the services of both our
librarians. And we shall refuse the Goldhooper endowment.
If the council want to accept it against my advice,
I shall reluctantly use my power of veto.'

'That's your mind made up very suddenly after all
these months of agonizing!' said Lady B.

'It's not unconnected. All this terrible trouble, and both


219




those two young people's deaths have happened,
fundamentally, because Christopher Wyndham wanted
to ossify knowledge. He wanted to limit science. So he
burdened his successors with all this ridiculous apparatus
for preventing accessions to his books. FINIS EST SAPIENTIA
over the door, indeed! "The End is Wisdom". When I
was an undergraduate here we used to translate it
"Wisdom is at an End". And that is nearer the mark!
Time has moved on, and the real library is full of things
Wyndham rejected. Well, you get the point. And now
Goldhooper wants to do the same kind of thing. In three
hundred years, shall we have the college torn by
dissenting bands, administering fossilised science to keep
the money intact, and acting as an impediment to the
progress of reason? We should refuse; we will refuse.'

'And today, William?' said Lady B.

'We shall thank Imogen for her services to the college.
And we shall dismiss our librarians. And I shall write to
Skellow's parents, telling them that it has emerged that
Philip was engaged on highly confidential college
business, and that the imputation of dishonesty made
against him is without foundation.'

'Does that leave the odd loose end for you, Imogen?'
asked Lady B.

Where the devil had Lady B. got an inkling that
Imogen might have a soft spot for Roger? Imogen
couldn't imagine. Wincing, she said, 'I'll live.'


220




24


Both the St Agatha's librarians found new jobs. Mount-
nessing went to catalogue the library of an ancient family
in Umbria, whose present head was a friend of his sister,
the Contessa Amandola di Tramontana. Roger was
furious. 'Trust him to fall on his feet!' he said, though it
wasn't clear, really, whether Mountnessing was falling
on his feet or into a lioness's den. He certainly wasn't
going to be as rich as he had been. Roger himself, on the
other hand, was going to be richer, setting up a new
library for the outpost of a Middle Western American
university in a stately home in the Midlands. Richer, but
sadder. He kept pointing out to Imogen that he would be
only two hours' drive away; that there were bound to be
good pubs for lunching somewhere around half way,
that he would have to be in Cambridge often to visit his
mother... When he understood that Imogen would
always be otherwise engaged, that no invitation would
henceforward be accepted, he was angry.


'But what have I done?' he demanded. 'What are you
holding against me? ,' haven't murdered anyone! All I
have done is play a little prank on a colleague, and richly
deserved! Think, Imogen; if he had known the first thing
about dates; if he had checked his books - his only
duty - do you know how long that book was there?
Three months! Three months] If he could tell one edition
of Nova Whatsit from another, none of this would have


221




happened to him! You can't tell me he doesn't deserve it!
Why does it cast a chill between us?'

'Not a chill. An ice age. You let that young man be
branded as a thief.'

'Oh, that. What did it matter, once he was dead?'

'It most dreadfully hurt the feelings of his family and
friends.'

'Naughty of me. But keep a sense of proportion,
Imogen, love. Not important enough to freeze out a
friend, surely?'

'Deeply dislikeable, Roger.'

'Well, even ice ages have an end,' he said. 'I'll try
again from time to time.'

Curiously, the Master's brave refusal to accept the
Goldhooper endowment ended happily. Lord Goldhooper,
receiving a long-faced delegation from the college
- the Master, the Bursar, the Dean - to thank him
with dignity and refuse him, met them with hearty
laughter. 'Of course you're quite right,' he said. 'I like
men of principle. Have it your own way.'

'Have it?' the Bursar said, stunned.

'Have the money, and I withdraw any conditions you
don't like,' said Lord Goldhooper. 'Spend it on astrology
for all I shall care! I leave the administration of it to the
good sense of the future members of college. There's not
a lot any of us can do about the future.'

There was one last consequence to the whole affair of
the Wyndham Case. Some time in June,Tracy came to see
Imogen. She sat in Imogen's breakfast-room looking tense
and pale. 'I want some advice,' she said. 'I need it bad.'

'What's the trouble, Tracy love?' asked Imogen.

'I'm pregnant,' Tracy said. 'They keep telling me at the
clinic to get an abortion. But...'

'But?'

'It's Philip's. Got to be.'


222




'So you'd like to have it?'

'Oh, I don't know, Imogen. I just don't know. I've been
the child of a single mother, and it wasn't any fun. I
know what it's like when someone is looking after you
all alone, and they nearly can't cope, and all the time
they wish they didn't have to. And I know what it's like
when they really can't cope any more and you get
dumped into care. And there's never any money for
things. It isn't fair. I don't want to do that to the poor
little bleeder. And it would be just me looking after it; I
haven't got anyone except one auntie that's beaten into
the ground herself by her own problems. It wouldn't
have a nan, it wouldn't have cousins and aunties, it
wouldn't have a dad. I just can't face it.' She was near to
tears. 'They're telling me it would be wicked to have it,
the social worker would take it off me anyway.'

'So you're thinking of having an abortion?'

'Only it's all there is left of Philip, isn't it? All there'll
ever be. They keep saying, to wait for better circumstances;
but he isn't going to get any more circumstances,
better or worse. And I did love him; really I did!'

Imogen left her in the breakfast-room, went to the
phone in the hall, and dialled a number. 'Mrs Skellow?
It's Imogen. This might be a bit of a shock; are you
alone? There's someone I want to tell you about.'


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