by Mike Ripley
‘And you want to know which room she’s in?’ Marshall was torn between curiosity and suspicion.
‘Actually I’d like a list of the students who live on the floor below her; and would it be possible to identify which are second- or third-year students?’
‘I could do that,’ said Marshall hesitantly, ‘though I’m not sure if I should.’
‘I will take full responsibility,’ said Campion, ‘and I will make sure the bishop is aware of how helpful you’ve been.’
‘Oh please don’t do that. I’ll get your list; just promise me you won’t do that.’
The police presence was back in force in Black Dudley and Superintendent Appleyard once more camped in the vice chancellor’s office. Of Dr Downes there was no sign, and it seemed that Jack Szmodics had been left to represent the university authorities, or at least make sure the police did not steal the cutlery.
Surprisingly, Campion was invited into the superintendent’s sanctum for a private ‘chat’; surprising because Campion had spent the walk over from the Admin building trying to think of a way to negotiate such a meeting.
‘You’re up and about bright and early,’ said Appleyard, waving Campion to a chair, ‘considering your exertions last night.’
‘So you’ve heard?’
‘The night-shift porter logged an incident up at the old chapel just before midnight and Big Gerry brought it my attention as soon as he came on shift at eight o’clock. Care to enlighten me?’
‘If only I could, Superintendent.’ Campion removed his spectacles and began to polish the lenses lazily with his handkerchief. ‘Where is Mr Meade, by the way?’
‘He’s in the porters’ cubbyhole by the front door, having a bit of a lie-down, I reckon, judging by the state he was in first thing. It seems he had a bit of a night in the pub down in White Dudley last night, trying to keep up with that other visitor the bishop has wished on us.’
‘That would have been a serious mistake,’ Campion agreed, ‘but I can assure you that Mr Lugg, the gentleman in question with the hollow legs, was in fine form at midnight. He and the portering staff rode to my rescue, you might say.’
‘I might very well, if I knew what went on and what the devil you were doing up at that ruin in the first place.’
Mr Campion breathed on each large circular lens, rubbed them vigorously with a corner of handkerchief and slowly fitted them back on his face before he spoke.
‘You never searched the chapel, did you? And, incidentally, it’s not a ruin but perfectly weatherproof and watertight – though, I grant you, it is lacking in many a home comfort.’
‘Why should we search it? There was no reason to.’
‘You didn’t notice that Professor Perez-Catalan had a key to the chapel on his key ring? It was quite distinctive.’
Appleyard went on the defensive. ‘I had one of my lads go around with Meade and they checked all the keys on that ring to find out what they opened. There’s a report on them in the file.’
‘But you haven’t read it yet, have you? Hardly surprising, you have had a lot on your plate the last few days. Take it from me, one of those keys was to the chapel, and I suspect Pascual had a copy made some time ago after he borrowed the original from Edwina Meade. He was a regular visitor to St Jurmin’s, though I think more in the summer than the winter. Some on campus, such as Mr Tinkler, the chaplain, thought he went there for private contemplation, but others believed he rarely went there alone and was usually accompanied by a lady friend. Some cynics among the staff and the students referred to it as his “love shack”.’
The superintendent’s usually expressionless face struggled to contain both surprise and righteous indignation, eventually settling for a long, slow exhale through pursed lips and an angry flutter of his right eyelid.
‘I don’t have time to listen to idle gossip, I’ve been busy checking alibis and staff records, not to mention keeping the bishop and the chief constable and the press at bay. We’ve even checked all members of staff and students, and that’s damned near a thousand files, for connections to Chilean politics, foreign intelligence agencies, big business concerns with mining interests, and so on, in case it was the professor’s blasted secret formula they were after.’
‘Algorithm,’ said Campion patiently. ‘It’s an algorithm not a formula, and I believe it is perfectly safe and secure. In any case, if stealing his research was the object of the exercise, why kill him?’
‘You tell me. I can see you’re dying to.’
‘I think we should be looking for a much more basic, more emotional motive.’
‘Don’t tell me, you’ve got a theory.’
‘As a matter of fact I have.’
‘And I said don’t tell me.’ Campion realized that the policeman was not making a joke. ‘I know your reputation, Mr Gifted Amateur, and this isn’t one where you help out the plodding coppers. So don’t come to me with theories unless you have proof or at least solid evidence. Do you have any evidence?’
‘Not just at the moment.’
‘Thought not.’
‘I have an idea where you might find some, but it would require an official police search, not an accidental find by a bumbling amateur. If it produces a result, all the credit goes to the police; if it turns up nothing, no one’s the wiser.’
‘I’m listening,’ said the superintendent.
Campion found Dr Szmodics holding the university fort from a small makeshift office between the kitchen and the hall, occupied by police detectives, and he found the office by following the sound of two constantly ringing telephones. Szmodics was crammed behind a small table, juggling the two phones and attempting to take notes on a thick pad of ruled A4 paper.
‘Busy?’ Campion set his face with his most vacant grin and pushed it around the door.
Dr Szmodics, relieved at the interruption, snapped a curt goodbye into each receiver, replaced them in their respective cradles, then picked them up again and laid them on the table, the hum of their dialling tones filling the room with a soporific buzz.
‘It’s a madhouse, Campion, the switchboard must be near meltdown. I’m fielding calls from newspapers, scientific journals, the Chilean embassy, even the BBC television studio in Norwich. I can’t tell them anything the police haven’t, can I?’
‘Of course you can’t, nor should you,’ said Campion, ‘and I will try not to add to your woes. I need to find the vice chancellor.’
‘Roger is upstairs in his apartments, handling the calls from the University Grants Committee, the county council, even the new secretary of state at the Department of Education, who sounds quite a difficult woman. Then there’s the parents, all wanting to know if their offspring are at risk from some homicidal maniac.’
‘Could you do me a big favour, Jack?’
‘That depends. You have the air of a man who is plotting something.’
‘Which is unusual, as most people say I look as if I’m not following the plot. What I need you to do is get the vice chancellor out of the way for ten minutes. I need to speak to Mrs Downes in private.’
‘Dolores isn’t in the best of health,’ said Szmodics firmly. ‘She’s suffering from stress and nervous tension; even had the doctor out to her last night.’
‘Really?’ said Campion. ‘That’s very interesting, but I promise not to distress her further. In fact, I may be able to cheer her up. Please, Jack, it’s important.’
Dr Szmodics exhaled slowly through his nose and reached for one of his purring phones. ‘I suppose you’d prefer Roger not to know of your visit?’
‘If possible.’
‘Then go up the stairs to the first landing and hide in the Gents lavatory until Roger comes down. I’ll find something to keep him occupied down here, but I don’t promise more than ten minutes.’
Campion thanked him and hurried to the staircase and up to his designated hiding place, an action which brought back sudden memories of the harum-scarum of forty years before when the candlelit Black D
udley was a dark maze with frightened guests tearing hither and thither.
With the timing of an Aldwych farce, he watched Roger Downes leave his private quarters and pass the crack in the lavatory door to which he had his eye pressed. As he heard footsteps descending the stairs, Campion emerged from his hideout, strode over to the door of the Downes’s flat, knocked twice and entered without waiting for an answer.
Dolores Downes was wearing a long woollen dressing gown, almost certainly her husband’s, and was sitting in an armchair by the large sash window which looked northward over the park to the chapel of St Jurmin and the sea beyond. She turned her head as Campion appeared in the room but expressed neither surprise nor alarm.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said weakly, then turned her head back to the window.
She was either clinically depressed, Campion decided, or a good actress playing the part of a dowdy heroine fatally afflicted by a terminal disease or a broken heart in a Victorian melodrama. Possibly a mixture of both, and for a very attractive woman, she did dowdy very well.
‘Mrs Downes – Dolores – forgive the intrusion, but I need to talk to you about those cheques you signed to Edwina Meade. May I ask what you have done with them?’
‘I burned them.’ She raised her face towards her intruder, her eyes moist and languid, as the stage directions would have said.
‘Good show! That’s exactly what I was going to suggest. I’m assuming you did not show them to your husband?’ The woman, visibly brightening, shook her head. ‘Excellent, then there’s no reason for him to ever know. I doubt if Edwina Meade will mention the matter. How long was she blackmailing you for?’
‘Just over a year,’ said Mrs Downes, after clearing her throat and finding her voice, ‘long after things had finished between Pascual and me. She’s an evil bitch, once she got her claws in.’
‘And Pascual was buying your cheques off her, to protect you.’
Mrs Downes shrugged her shoulders, but not in despair, rather in the way a weight-lifter prepares for a lift.
‘Our infatuation ended some time ago, when Pascual met someone else; several someone-elses, I suspect. He was determined not to give Edwina any more scope for blackmail down in White Dudley.’
‘Hence the love nest in St Jurmin’s,’ said Campion, noting that Dolores turned her head automatically back to the view out of the window as he said it.
‘That was not a very well-kept secret, and then Pascual met someone really special.’
‘Heather Woodford.’
‘I never said that.’
Mrs Downes got to her feet, her strength returning, Victorian gloom slipping from her.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Campion, his right hand involuntarily rubbing the back of his neck. ‘She was here last night, wasn’t she?’
‘I needed something to help me sleep, but in many ways, Heather was in a worst state than I was. She took Pascual’s death very badly, though she doesn’t show it. They were going to be married, you know; that’s why she’d given in her notice, as she couldn’t really marry one of her patients. She’s got a new job lined up at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.’
‘Did their relationship make you jealous?’
‘Not at all. For me, Pascual was a stupid infatuation; a fling, a dalliance to relieve boredom. I now fully accept that my future is with Roger. Heather knew about me, and it was she who told me that Pascual had bought those cheques from Edwina, to protect me.’
‘You did not know he was buying the cheques off Edwina Meade?’
‘Edwina Meade had her claws into me. I had no idea she would try and blackmail Pascual as well. When it was over between us, I was paying that wicked woman to protect Roger, not Pascual.’
‘Did you not notice that your cheques had not been cashed?’
‘Of course, but I put it down to Edwina not wanting to leave a trail which could be followed. She wasn’t after the money, she just liked having a hold over people.’
‘I wonder why he kept the cheques?’ Campion asked without expecting an answer. ‘Sentiment?’
‘Pascual was not sentimental with his women,’ said Dolores, staring vacantly out of the window, then her tone changed. ‘Except perhaps with Heather. He had real feelings for her. Heather was the only woman, and he had many, to whom he proposed marriage.’
‘Can you trust Dr Woodford to keep your secret?’
‘I’m sure of it. She has no need to leave the university now and, if she stays, she has no reason to antagonize its vice chancellor.’
‘And there is nothing Dr Woodford might have discovered about Pascual which might have suddenly turned her against him?’
Dolores Downes stiffened her spine and jutted her chin. The depressed invalid had gone, replaced by a strong-willed woman defending a fellow female.
‘Are you suggesting …? Don’t be ridiculous, Heather Woodford wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
Mr Campion felt a twinge in the back of his neck.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that.’
With good theatrical timing, Campion made it down to the lobby and was hovering outside Appleyard’s appropriated office as Dr Downes emerged from Jack Szmodics’s temporary base of operations.
‘I’m sure I can leave such matters in your hands, Jack,’ he was saying over his shoulder with thinly disguised irritation. ‘You are the dean of students; deal with the students. I’m busy dealing with everybody else. Oh, good morning, Campion, you’re not after me as well, are you?’
‘No, no, you’re quite safe from me, Vice Chancellor; just checking in with my earthly masters.’
Campion jerked his head in the general direction of the policemen milling around.
‘I wish you were as conscientious when it comes to liaising with your spiritual boss in St Edmondsbury.’
Doing his best to look crestfallen and perhaps just a little ashamed, Campion mumbled a schoolboy apology.
‘Ah yes, the bishop. I have been remiss on that score, but I intend to placate him later this afternoon.’
‘I’ll be happy if you simply telephoned him,’ said Roger Downes. ‘Placating the bishop is probably beyond you; beyond all of us, for that matter.’
On his way out of the house, Mr Campion paused to peep into the porters’ lodge where he caught a surreptitious glance of Big Gerry Meade slumped in a chair, the peaked cap pulled down over his eyes and moving up and down in time to his snoring. He did not disturb Mr Meade, for whom he felt a certain amount of sympathy, as having Lugg as a house guest was one of the tasks Hercules wisely avoided, though he would have liked to check with Meade that the old reprobate had made it back to White Dudley without incident.
As he emerged from Black Dudley, he realized his fears on that score – which were more curious whimsy than genuine worry – were unfounded, for there was Mr Lugg striding across the grass from the car park. He had dressed down into what he referred to as his ‘country casuals’ of dark gabardine trousers, a white roll-neck fisherman’s pullover and, adding to the nautical theme, no doubt due to the proximity of the North Sea, a navy blue pea-coat.
Campion raised his hat in salute and pointed to the bridge over the lake. Lugg altered course diagonally with the speed if not the grace of an oil tanker, so that their paths converged just before the bridge.
‘A good night well spent in White Dudley?’ Campion enquired.
‘Don’t know about that,’ grumbled Lugg. ‘Bill Warren drove me back there after I’d tucked you in and made sure the bed bugs weren’t biting, and Big Gerry was sitting up waiting for me blowing the dust off a bottle of whisky he must have had for two Christmases.’
‘I thought you said last night that he had a thin skull when it came to alcohol.’
‘I did, and he does, but his liver just hasn’t told his brain yet. I more or less had to put him to bed as well, but fair dos, he was up and out of the house by seven o’clock, though I bet his head was pounding something awful. That left yours truly with Mrs M. insisting I get a good break
fast inside of me, what with me being a “hemissary” from her beloved bishop. Know what she gave me? Fried Spam and baked beans. Spam! I ask you! Not even with an egg! To this day I can’t eat Spam fritters without hearing Hancock’s Half Hour on the radio. The walk up from the village has just about settled my stomach.’
They were halfway across the curved bridge before Campion thought it best to interrupt.
‘Did you learn anything at all useful?’
‘Only what you asked me to. I bent over backwards, offering to pay my way for bed-and-breakfast at her delightful hostelry, especially as it offered the delights of Spam for breakfast …’
‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’
‘But, anyway, she wouldn’t take a cheque. Couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t. Simple reason being she don’t have a bank account, never ’as, never seen the need. So you might as well have this back.’
Lugg handed back Campion’s chequebook. Campion paused, made a careful count of the number of cheques still in the book then, satisfied, tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
‘That all seems to be in order,’ he said primly. ‘Now let’s crack on.’
‘Where’re we going?’
‘To the rude awakening of a sleepy student.’
According to the list given to him by Gregor Marshall, there were only two third-years among the male students on the fourth floor of the Babbage residency hall, and only one of them lived on the same side of the pyramid as Beverley Gunn-Lewis’s fifth-floor room. The inhabitant of Room 4, Floor 4 (Babbage 4:4 in university shorthand) was, according to the Estates Office, a certain Anthony Judson, an undergraduate in the School of Arts and Humanities.
After climbing four flights up the central stairwell, Campion and Lugg took the left-hand corridor and examined the handwritten cards in the doorplates, until they stopped at the fourth door along. Underneath the name ‘Tony Judson’, written in red ink, was a line of tiny, but precise, musical notation, which Campion followed with a silent whistle through puckered lips.
‘Clever,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s Louis Armstrong’s opening cadenza to “West End Blues”. This is definitely our boy.’