Reginald Hill

He had not yet recovered from Pascoe’s news about the dead girl. That had come dangerously close to being a blunder. He didn’t normally make blunders. He prided himself on being able to extract from all the usual scientific twaddle in these reports the few important facts. These generally confirmed his own observations and deductions. Or often there were none at all.

Pascoe would have noticed and subtly drawn his attention to it. But stuff Pascoe! He didn’t want a kind of constabulary Jeeves hanging around all the time. Yet if poor Pascoe were to be stuffed, then what of Kent? Lash him naked in a deckchair with his back to the eighteenth green at St. Andrews during the Open? It would bear further thought.

As for the information itself, that the accusation made against Fallowfield by Anita Sewell could not possibly have been true, the implications were far from clear. Fallowfield’s reason for admitting the truth of the accusations, or at least that part of them which said he had been knocking the girl off for a couple of years, would bear investigation. But he had no intention of rushing in like the bear he was popularly reputed to be. With a bit of luck he’d run into Fallowfield during the course of the afternoon, though there was no sign of him yet.

But this old goon on his right had to be kept happy for a while. He had been quite unable to remember a single thing about the meeting at which Miss. Girling had made her last public appearance. He probably had difficulty remembering the way home, thought Dalziel savagely and quite unjustly. But he had agreed to telephone the clerk to the governors who had promised to dig through the records and send any pertinent information to the college that afternoon.

Meanwhile an hour and a half, two wickets, and thirty eight runs had trickled away with agonizing slowness. But despite his discomfort and his boredom, Dalziel had felt curiously enervated and quite unable to rise from his chair to do something useful. In any case everyone was here, everyone that mattered. Nearly everyone. Big < wheels were moving elsewhere, and all those who had left the college since Girling’s death were being traced and interviewed. But Dalziel was somehow certain the solution was here somewhere.

“Well hit, sir!’ boomed Jessup. ‘ think that’s our man, Superintendent.” “Oh, yes, indeed. Very promising,’ said Dalziel.

“By the pavilion. The man with the minutes,’ said Jessup patiently.

“Let’s go and see.”

The shade of the pavilion was a relief. Dalziel realized his shirt was wringing with sweat; Jessup on the other hand in his absurd hat looked quite cool as he glanced through the papers he had been given.

“No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘ doesn’t bring anything back at all, except very vaguely. Certainly nothing which might help you, Superintendent.

Though I see now why it was so late in the term. It was an appointments meeting and obviously we hadn’t been able to convene the full interviewing panel earlier in the term. Miss. Girling would be eager to get things like this done as soon as possible, before the good candidates got offers elsewhere, you understand.” “Interviewing?’ said Dalziel sharply. ‘ what?”

“A post, of course. It was a short list, only three. For a lectureship in the Biology Department.” “Let me see,’ said Dalziel, unceremoniously removing the papers from Jessup’s hand.

Quickly he flicked through them till he found what he wanted. A list of three names. One stood out as though embossed on the paper.

Samuel Fallowfield.

“Excuse me,’ he said, moving quickly out of the pavilion leaving Jessup tugging his moustache in exasperation.

Dalziel’s cry of ‘!’ as he strode round the outer oval of spectators almost certainly caused the fall of the third wicket. But by the time the angry batsman had returned to the pavilion, Dalziel had disappeared in the direction of the sea and only Pascoe’s head was visible as he went in hot pursuit.

Chapter 12.

For many are wise in their own ways that are weak for government or counsel; like ants, which is a wise creature for itself, but very hurtful for the garden.

SIR FRANCIS BACON Op. Cit.

The dismissed batsman was not the only one who noticed Dalziel’s sudden departure. Halfdane and his two female consorts did.

“Perhaps he’s off for a swim,’ he suggested.

That’s not a bad idea,’ said Ellie, watching Pascoe picking himself up from among the daisies.

She stretched herself voluptuously, back arched, breasts at maximum projection, legs at maximum exposure.

“I wouldn’t mind myself,’ she added, watching Halfdane carefully. She saw she had his interest.