by Mike Ripley
Mr Campion beamed affection across the table. ‘Good old Guffy, you keep clear of this mess, until you have to gather the hunt and ride to my rescue as you did forty years ago.’
Guffy’s ruddy face glowed even brighter at the memory, but the rekindled fires of youth were instantly damped by his long-suffering wife.
‘Augustus! You haven’t been on a horse for ten years on doctor’s orders and you haven’t ridden with the hunt for twenty on mine. You are too old and too … too … sedentary to go gallivanting after Albert on one of his adventures.’
‘No one has said anything about an adventure, Mary,’ Campion chided his sister-in-law. ‘I hold the position of university Visitor, which is in the gift of the bishop, who appears to think that a visit is required. I cannot refuse, but I have no intention of doing anything other than making soothing noises, offering platitudes and letting the police get on with their job.’
‘You make sure that’s all you do,’ said Lady Amanda, in a voice which brooked no argument.
‘Darling, the only function I will be performing is to make mugs of tea for the boys in blue, who will surely have the situation under control by now. I am sure I cannot be of any other possible use as I’d never seen the place until Thursday, or not since that previous reincarnation forty years ago, and I don’t even know who’s supposed to have been murdered.’
‘Neither did the bishop,’ said Guffy, ‘not that he was making much sense at that time of the morning. Said he’d been telephoned and told that a senior member of staff had been found murdered and the police had been called. He felt – he was quite insistent – that as Albert was still in the county, he should get back over there and act as the bishop’s eyes and ears at the scene of the crime.’
‘Could it be a student prank or a rag-week stunt?’ Amanda suggested suddenly.
‘The murder, the phone call to the bishop, or both? I doubt it. Term only starts in earnest today. The second- and third-years will only have come back over the weekend and will have had little time to organize anything for rag week; not that it sounds like an amusing fundraising scheme. It could be a prank phone call, I suppose, but it’s in very poor taste.’
Mary Randall began to gather up plates and cups. ‘Well, I for one don’t believe it,’ she said primly. ‘I mean, who would want to murder a university academic?’
Mr Campion allowed himself a reflective smile. ‘My own Sancho Panza, dear old Lugg, would have something to say about that.’
‘Lugg?’ exclaimed Amanda. ‘What in the name of sweet reason could he have to contribute?’
‘Given his innate distrust of higher education and all things academic, if you asked him who would want to murder a university academic, he would simply say: “Form a queue”.’
Mr Campion drove himself back to the university, Lady Amanda having given him an ultimatum: if he was not back in Monewdon by two p.m., then her sister would drive her to Darsham Halt where she could get a train back to London and he would have to fend for himself. She tactfully reminded him that while he might be considered to be retired, she was not, and she had a board meeting to attend in the City the next morning, plus they both had tickets to previews of Lie Down I Think I Love You, the new West End musical at The Strand which featured their thespian son Rupert and his wife Perdita, appearing on the same stage together, albeit in very minor parts.
Campion naturally felt guilty about disrupting his wife’s plans, but less so about the possibility of missing Lie Down I Think I Love You, which he had heard was an English version of the notorious show Hair and involved sex, drugs, nudity and a bomb at the BBC. While the latter plot point sounded quite interesting, Campion felt that, at his age, he could manage without the other ingredients.
He arrived at the campus to discover very little different, at least at first sight, even managing to park the Jaguar in almost exactly the same spot as five days previously. True, there were more cars in the car park now term was officially under way and, true, three of them were marked police cars.
It was only as he walked from the car park towards the piazzas, over grass which still had dew on it, that Campion noticed something rather incongruous. By the artificial lake between the concrete campus and Black Dudley, near the curved wooden bridge, had been erected a circle of brown and yellow striped material concocted from two beach windbreaks, the sort which could be hired for sixpence a day by families willing to suffer a British seaside summer holiday. Campion knew instantly what the windbreaks must be concealing, but could not resist wondering whether they had ‘Property of Great Yarmouth Town Council’ printed somewhere on the material.
The windbreaks may have been incongruous, situated well away from seashore or beach, but then so too were the pair of uniformed policemen standing guard over the gently flapping material. No doubt stranger things had graced modern university campuses, but here Campion observed a complete lack of interest on the part of the student body. Through the long line of windows bordering Piazza 3, he caught glimpses of figures moving in offices, seminar rooms and laboratories, proving that the university was in business and open for the pursuit of learning and the advancement of young minds even if, that early in the day, student minds tended to be rather sluggish.
As he approached the lake, Campion rehearsed what he would say to the brace of constables, who would surely challenge him once he got too close to whatever it was the windbreaks were hiding. He decided that ‘I’m here at the request of the bishop’ would make him sound like a minor character in a bad play in provincial rep; ‘I am the Visitor and I am just visiting’ sounded inane and assumed that the Suffolk constabulary knew what the role of a university Visitor was when he himself did not; and that old standby, ‘Hello, hello, what’s goin’ on ’ere?’ would earn him a well-deserved rap across the knuckles with a truncheon.
He was saved from any direct confrontation with the forces of law and order by a shout – ‘Campion! What are you doing back here?’ – from the doorway of Black Dudley, and he swerved smartly and strode towards the house.
Campion removed his fedora and held it to his chest, a standard mark of respect when bad news is about to be shared; but it wasn’t quite the bad news Campion was expecting as he greeted Dr Downes.
‘You sent for me, Vice Chancellor.’
‘I most certainly did not!’
‘Well, technically it was our mutual friend the bishop, who was on the telephone before dawn in quite a state. I presumed it was you who told him where to find me.’
‘I have not spoken to the bishop for several weeks, and I certainly did not pass on your whereabouts to anyone. To be perfectly blunt, I have not given you a single thought since you left on Friday.’
‘In a bizarre way, Vice Chancellor, I take that as a compliment. Sadly, I was clearly in the bishop’s thoughts in the watches of the night. He is under the misguided impression that I may be of some use in your hour of need. I take it this is an hour of need?’
‘You could say that, and it would be the understatement of the year, but I’m still not sure how the bishop knew anything about our … unless the police … but why should they?’ Dr Downes took a deep breath. ‘Look, Campion, I’m sorry you’re involved, but I am rather glad you are here, and you may be able to help out, even if it is only to keep the bishop off my back.’
‘That seems a noble cause,’ said Mr Campion, ‘but the last thing I want to do is interfere with a police investigation. I’m assuming we are in the middle of a police investigation?’
‘Indeed we are. A murder enquiry, and I don’t think you have much choice about being involved.’
‘Really, why ever not? I don’t even know who’s been murdered.’
‘The detective in charge of the case saw you walking down from the car park and muttered something about “Not him again”, and demanded that you report to him immediately. He’s taken over my office as his headquarters.’
‘Does our Suffolk Sherlock have a name?’
‘Detective Superin
tendent Appleyard, of Ipswich CID.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Mr Campion, following the vice chancellor into Black Dudley.
When Superintendent Appleyard had identified the tall, thin figure walking from the car park and seemingly on a collision course with the lake and its wooden bridge – which was now an official scene of a crime – he did so with an oath and the dismissive description: ‘He’s no more than a fribble!’
Gerontius Meade, who as head porter automatically assumed that the senior investigating officer would require him at his shoulder at all times, was one of the few people in Black Dudley that morning familiar with the word ‘fribble’ to describe a nonentity or unimportant person. This was sufficient justification, he felt, for offering advice even though it had not been asked for.
‘He was here the first time, sir,’ he said to the policeman, ‘at Black Dudley, when there was that other murder before the war. Name’s Campion, and now he’s the university’s Visitor. It’s an honorary post, I’m told.’
The policeman snorted and turned on his enthusiastic assistant. ‘I know who he is; I’ve read the file. Used to go by the name of Mornington Dodd. Ridiculous fellow.’ Having vented his spleen, Appleyard relented somewhat and tossed his faithful hound a bone. ‘Not that Campion’s his real name either, though it was when he crossed my path and that was more than once. Only a couple of years ago he got in the way of some enquiries I was making down at Gapton. Turns out he has friends in high places, so high even a detective superintendent needs an oxygen mask. He’s a meddler by both trade and inclination, a born interferer, a nosey parker who always likes to put his thumb on the scale, and we don’t need his sort here muddying the waters.’
As if on cue, Mr Campion was shown into the vice chancellor’s office by the vice chancellor, whose desk had been commandeered by the senior policeman while a uniformed, very junior one perched on a chair nearby, notebook resting on a blue serge knee, pencil poised. Behind Appleyard’s left shoulder, Gerry Meade stood to attention, his arms clasped behind his back and a fourth man also wearing a grey porter’s uniform occupied another chair and attempted to stop the cup and saucer he was holding from rattling in his nervous grip.
‘So, it’s Campion, isn’t it?’
‘Good morning, Superintendent, I do hope I am not intruding.’
‘I’m sure you will.’
Appleyard was a large man with a featureless face, apart from thick, slug-like black eyebrows. Sitting down with his shoulders hunched and his elbows skewering the surface of the vice chancellor’s desk, he made no move to stand when Campion entered, but gave the impression that he could, animal-like, spring over the desk in a blur. It was a pose he had practised and one designed to frighten criminals and children alike, especially when he smiled.
‘I am here merely as an observer, Mr Appleyard. Not through idle curiosity or a ghoulish taste for murder, but because I was requested to act in that capacity by the Bishop of St Edmondsbury, one of the guiding lights behind this fine university and its self-appointed moral guardian.’
Campion noted the strangled cough which convulsed Dr Downes. ‘If you wish to confirm my credentials, I am sure the university switchboard knows the bishop’s number by heart.’
‘There’ll be no need for that,’ said the policeman in a tone which suggested that he had crossed swords with the bishop before. ‘Just make sure you keep out of my way.’
Appleyard’s caterpillar eyebrows crawled into a chevron shape on his forehead, a sure sign that a thought had just occurred to him.
‘But for form’s sake, I would have to officially eliminate you from our enquiries before I let you stay on the premises,’ he said with relish.
‘I expect no preferential treatment, so eliminate away,’ Campion replied. ‘I take it you have questions for me?’
‘I do.’ Appleyard raised a finger; the signal for his constable to begin taking notes. ‘Where were you around midnight?’
‘Safely tucked up in a comfortable bed with my wife, at Monewdon Hall about ten miles away, where I have been since Friday afternoon. At the hall, of course, not in bed.’
‘Did you know the deceased?’
‘My dear Mr Appleyard, I don’t even know who the deceased is, so how do I know if I know him? Or her. Who is supposed to have been murdered?’
‘The most unpopular man on campus,’ said Gerry Meade unbidden, which drew a severe glance from Appleyard and another choking cough from Downes.
‘Professor Thurible?’ Campion hoped he had put the right amount of surprise in his voice, but in Appleyard’s reply the surprise was genuine.
‘Who’s he? The chap fished out of the lake is a foreigner, Professor Perez-something-or-other. A South American gent by all accounts, which means we could have a diplomatic incident on our hands.’
Mr Campion removed his spectacles and with practised sleight of hand produced a clean white handkerchief to polish the lenses with slow, circular motions.
‘That is terribly sad news,’ he said. ‘Are we sure it is Perez-Catalan?’
‘Formally identified by the vice chancellor here at—’
‘Oh-six-fifteen hours, sir,’ supplied the constable, consulting his notebook.
‘And we are sure it was murder? He didn’t fall in the lake and drown perhaps?’
‘We are certainly sure, Mr Campion. Given the amount of blood on that fancy wooden bridge out there, he was dead when he went into the water.’
‘Any ideas on a murder weapon?’
‘Oh yes, it was a knife. He was stabbed in the back. That’s how they do things at Black Dudley, isn’t it?’
At eleven o’clock, the vice chancellor’s wife and several of the university’s senior secretaries produced coffee and biscuits for the growing number of people gathered, some willing and curious, others nervous and sullen, in Black Dudley. The reason they were there – the body taken from the artificial lake – had been quietly removed by two policemen who had covered it with blankets and carried it on a stretcher to an ambulance waiting in the car park. The professor’s final exit from the university was watched, no doubt, by dozens of pairs of eyes from behind windows in the library, the Administration block and the pyramids beyond, but the scene of the crime was clearly regarded as a quarantine zone. The two uniformed constables, now guarding a pair of redundant windbreaks, remained on duty to deter the inquisitive, while a police photographer took photographs and a forensic science officer scraped shavings from the wooden bridge into a series of envelopes and filled a flask with water from the lake.
In effect the university was cut in two, those isolated in Black Dudley living under a police regime, while in the academic buildings the teaching timetable was being adhered to, at least as far as the vice chancellor could tell from the frequent reports he received from departmental secretaries on the internal telephone system.
Superintendent Appleyard demanded to interview anyone who had contact with the late Professor Perez-Catalan, and Meade’s faithful porters were sent scurrying to fetch them, escorting them back to the house via the library and the car park rather than the direct approach over the off-limits bridge across the lake.
As staff arrived in an irregular procession, once their official interrogations were over, Campion tempted them into the committee room that had once been the Great Hall with the lure of coffee and biscuits and the promise of an opportunity, free of policemen, to exchange gossip to which Campion hoped to act like a charming magnet.
If Appleyard had turned the vice chancellor’s office into a police incident room, Mr Campion preferred to think of the Great Hall as a salon which offered refreshment and wide-ranging discussion, hopefully indiscreet.
Very quickly he began to learn things.
The porter who had been sitting nervously in Appleyard’s presence was called Bill Warren and he had the unwanted distinction of being the person who had found the body. He did not revel in that distinction and, given that he was of an age where a pension was rushing over the ho
rizon to embrace him, Bill Warren would have much preferred a quiet life.
He was a Suffolk man; a White Dudley man, and had got the job at the university thanks to his old darts-playing partner Gerry Meade, and a character reference from the formidable Daisey May Meade, God rest her soul. Being one of the older members of the portering staff, and having done a fair bit of both gamekeeping and poaching in his time (a big conspiratorial wink to Campion here), Warren had been happy to take on more than his fair share of the night-duty roster. In practice that meant a couple of tours of the campus making sure that doors which should be locked were locked; that fire escapes could be escaped from (and that there were no obvious fires anywhere); that there were no drunken students wandering loosely around the place (not that they could fall in the fountain any more – those were the good old days); and that young tearaways from White Dudley (and there were a few of those) had not attempted to steal a car from the car park and go joy-riding.
Warren had been on patrol in Piazza 3 at midnight, torch in one hand and walkie-talkie in the other. (Connected to whom? Campion wondered.) He knew it was midnight because there was that blasted Phantom Trumpeter belting out the ‘Last Post’ and given that Mr Meade had offered a gallon of cider down at The Plough in White Dudley for anyone who could catch the little beggar red-handed, he headed for the pyramid residences from where the bell-like notes had echoed out. But yet again, the Scarlet Pimpernel of the B-flat trumpet (or perhaps cornet) had escaped the authorities.
With no other emergency requiring his immediate attention, Bill Warren meandered around the refectory Circus to make sure no after-hours drinking was going on (it wasn’t) and then the Threepenny Bit lecture-theatre complex, which was an important stop on the regular round during term time as students attending the last lectures of the day had been known to nod off and get locked in. From there, Bill Warren’s route took him across Piazza 1, which involved a quick count of the oversize chess pieces on the outdoor chessboard, popular targets for kidnapping and ransom during rag weeks. All pieces being present and correct, he took the footpath, illuminated by yellow sodium lights set into the edging bricks every ten yards, towards Black Dudley, where the porters’ lodge – a small anteroom off the entrance hall – was fully equipped with the necessities of life: to whit, a kettle and a goodly stock of tea bags and sugar.