Mr Campion's Visit

by Mike Ripley

  ‘You are the professional here,’ Campion pressed. ‘I am only the amateur, albeit a gifted one. You will make the arrest, not I, but I will make sure the bishop knows where the plaudits should go. Plus, you would be in plenty of time for the evening edition of Look East.’

  ‘Very well, Campion, you seem to have played a straight bat so far. We’ll do it your way.’

  ‘Excellent! Now let’s gather all the suspects together in the library.’

  There was a moment of awful silence before the superintendent said, ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘Absolutely no reason at all, I’ve just always wanted to say that.’

  At Campion’s suggestion, the vice chancellor made the required telephone call and was then allowed to stay in what, after all, was his office. Superintendent Appleyard insisted on the token policewoman on his investigating team being present, with which Campion heartily agreed. No one objected to Lugg’s presence, though it did not go unnoticed, especially when his stomach began to rumble quite loudly.

  And then there was a knock on the door, which was opened by Dr Downes to allow Stephanie Silva to enter with the air of a model on a catwalk. She wore a white leather miniskirt, shorter even than her blue suit skirt of the day before, a white cashmere roll-neck sweater, dark tan-coloured tights and brown knee-high boots, the whole ensemble partly wrapped in a maxi-length white, grey and black rabbit skin ‘fun fur’ coat, which flowed, unbuttoned behind her, as she swept in. The immediate mental image which flashed into Mr Campion’s head was of something icy and Russian – a very modern noblewoman from the tsarist court dismounting from a sleigh, perhaps. No wonder they’d had a revolution.

  ‘What’s this, Vice Chancellor, another third degree or a kangaroo court? You said on the phone that we needed to talk about a career move,’ said Miss Silva, coolly surveying the four men and the policewoman in turn, her gaze pausing longer when it landed on Lugg. ‘Who’s that? My careers officer?’

  ‘Mr Lugg and Mr Campion represent the lay authorities of the university,’ Dr Downes said formally. ‘I, of course, represent the academic body and the university senate. Superintendent Appleyard and the constable represent the police, of course. Can we all sit down, please? There should be enough chairs.’

  They sat in a semi-circle around Miss Silva, who crossed her long legs and flounced the skirts of her long coat back off her thighs, linking her fingers and resting her hands on her knee as she leaned forward, a confident candidate at a job interview awaiting the first question.

  ‘This sounds like a hearing of some sort, if not a trial,’ she said, ‘so may I ask who is leading the prosecution?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am,’ said Mr Campion.

  Stephanie Silva laughed. It was a very relaxed laugh, a cocktail party laugh, as if someone was pressing her to another canapé, and though she really shouldn’t, she would indulge.

  ‘Of course it was going to be you, the country-house murder specialist, who else? When the police are stumped, who else do they call in but the gifted amateur detective with all the right social connections. God! It’s like being back in the nineteen thirties.’

  ‘You are assuming we have called you here to discuss the murder of Professor Perez-Catalan,’ said Campion before Appleyard could intervene.

  ‘Well, of course you have,’ said Miss Silva. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘You most certainly are not,’ said Campion. ‘You quoted Don Quixote to me, something along the lines of “Although I’m pretty clever, I’m also something of a rascal and keep it well hidden”. That was it, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The gist was that Quixote cleverly duped his opponents by acting the fool, and that reminded me of you.’

  Campion was conscious that all eyes in the room were now focused on the duel between himself and Miss Silva.

  ‘I’m not sure whether to be flattered or not. On reflection, I will take it as a compliment, but it was the first part of what you quoted, being a clever person but keeping it well hidden, that immediately reminded me of you.’

  Stephanie’s head tilted to one side as she observed Campion carefully, after slowly folding a tendril of blonde hair back into place behind her ear.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, her voice suddenly husky. ‘You know you want to. Want to show off, that is. You think you know something and you’re dying to tell me in front of your handpicked audience here, whom you regard as your inferiors. You feel you are cleverer than the vice chancellor and more efficient than Mr Policeman there, though that wouldn’t seem to be too difficult.’ She turned her head and glared at Lugg, who was straining to balance his bulk on a straight-backed chair. ‘As for him, whatever he is, I don’t think you need to impress him. I think he’s here for moral support. Yours, that is, not mine.’

  ‘You should regard Mr Lugg,’ Campion continued, ‘as my Sancho Panza, although he has fewer of the qualities of the Everyman and more of a propensity towards violence than the original. He is in many ways like me, a man out of his time, just as that marvellous man of La Mancha was.’

  Stephanie Silva smiled at Mr Campion, but the smile was not mirrored in her eyes.

  ‘I suppose you cannot resist tilting at me.’

  ‘You could say that,’ said Campion quickly, having noticed that Superintendent Appleyard’s mouth was drooping open and forming the word tilting?, ‘but neither of us really believe I’m tilting at windmills, do we?’

  ‘Here it comes,’ said Miss Silva, looking, if anything, more relaxed and comfortable than ever, ‘the exposition; the solution to a mystery presented as a lecture based on supposition, conjecture, speculation and massive coincidences by the infallible detective. I’m surprised you didn’t gather all the suspects together in the library!’

  ‘I did suggest it,’ said Campion with an innocent grin, ‘but Dr Downes did not want me to disrupt the students studying there.’

  ‘Or disrupt the university with another demonstration if I was dragged out of there by the heavy mob. That wouldn’t have looked good in the papers, or on television.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Campion quietly.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That your first thought was about the press and public relations and the possibility of television cameras on campus. We can all see that you have dressed for them, but were not to know that Superintendent Appleyard – and, I suspect, my mentor the bishop – have done a splendid job of keeping the press at arms’ length. However, my point is that while you half expected all the suspects to be called together, whether in a library or a vice chancellor’s office being neither here nor there, you never questioned or objected to the fact that you seem to be the only suspect.’

  ‘And now you are going to tell me why I am the only suspect, using all your powers of observation and deduction and the cod psychology gleaned from a thousand country-house detective stories! Go ahead, the floor is yours.’

  Mr Campion produced his handkerchief, removed his spectacles and began to slowly polish the lenses.

  ‘I knew you would allow me to tread where angels should tread warily, and I thank you for that. It makes me feel as if I have earned my corn, so to speak, even though no payment in grain of any kind has been made, but I feel I must do something to justify the bishop’s faith in me.’

  Stephanie Silva looked decidedly unimpressed and her crossed leg began to bob impatiently.

  ‘It is ironic that this thoroughly modern institution, with its modern approach to teaching, cutting-edge architecture, newfangled computers and algorithms which could change the future of entire countries, should host a murder the motive for which is one of the oldest in the book: love.

  ‘Do they still sing “All You Need is Love”? I’m sure they do, and in my short time here I have seen lots of examples of it. Not just physical love between the sexes but love as passion for a field of research or academic study, admiration for a teacher or the simple joy of being young and the chance to be an irresponsible student. For the militant ones, the not-so-angry brigade
and the left-wing members of staff, their passion for politics is something akin to a love affair, and even the dear old Bishop of St Edmondsbury feels love for this place in his own peculiar way.’

  ‘That was better than your speech to the first-years.’ Stephanie Silva made a silent clapping motion with her hands. ‘Are you being paid by the word?’

  Dr Downes was the only one to react to her insolence and spluttered, ‘Estephanie, really …’ only to be silenced by a withering glance from Mr Campion as he replaced his spectacles on his face.

  ‘You are a good actress, Stephanie,’ he said, turning back to the woman. ‘I especially liked your performances in the piazza last week when you slapped Pascual in full public view, and then when you confronted Nigel Honeycutt in the refectory restaurant. The image you projected was that of a tough academic woman fighting her corner for her subject, a woman not given to hysterics or acts of sudden passion. When we stood on the bridge over the lake, on the exact spot where Pascual was stabbed, not a flicker of emotion crossed your face, reinforcing the pretence that there was iron in your heart.

  ‘Yet it was well known that you had had an affair with Pascual – you were not reluctant to mention it yourself – but you were keen to present the façade that his death meant little or nothing. You even dressed to impress, as I believe the phrase is, in a most fashionable and stylish way, but I think your feelings for Pascual were far from dormant.

  ‘You were certainly a visitor to Pascual’s little love nest at St Jurmin’s; you told me, in passing, that sleeping bags and oil lamps were not exactly your idea of home comforts, and you would be familiar with the system of torch signals to the professor’s office; it seems to have been the worst-kept secret on campus.

  ‘What convinced me that it was you who signalled Pascual on Sunday night was when I showed you the copy of Don Quixote, that expensive edition which you had given to Pascual and in which he’d carved out a little hidey-hole. His desecration of the book didn’t seem to bother you, but the hidey-hole contained his key to the chapel, which you recognized, and you said: “That’s not right”.

  ‘It was I who put the key there and you knew it wasn’t right that it was in the book because it had been on Pascual’s key ring when you killed him. You had seen him use it when he left the chapel that night with Dr Woodford. He walked her to the residences then called in at his office, as was his habit, before going home. There was no way in which that key could have got into the book which was on a shelf in his house in White Dudley.

  ‘You were probably planning on confronting him as he went to his car, but when you saw the lights on in the Earth Sciences department, you tempted him out to the bridge with your torch signal. He would have been curious, having just left one lover, but from the little I know of Pascual, he would not have been able to resist a signal from another.’

  Mr Campion looked at Miss Silva and Miss Silva looked at Mr Campion. The rest of the room did not breathe.

  ‘Wonderful! Brilliant!’ Stephanie showed a perfect set of teeth as she laughed. ‘An elegant summation by the prosecution, but not one which would stand up in any court outside of the fantasy land you inhabit. You have absolutely no proof or concrete evidence at all, do you?’

  ‘None at all,’ said Mr Campion calmly, then he pointed a finger at Superintendent Appleyard, ‘but he does.’

  The superintendent was not slow to react to his cue. He nodded at the uniformed policewoman, who stood and walked to the office door, then cleared his throat and looked squarely at Miss Silva.

  ‘Stephanie Silva, acting on information received’ – his eyes flicked towards Campion – ‘my officers searched your house in Saxmundham earlier this morning.’

  ‘When I was not present? Is that legal?’

  ‘According to the Estates Office, your house is leased to the university, and we therefore class it as university premises, for which I have a warrant to search for a murder weapon.’

  ‘But you didn’t find one.’ Miss Silva’s voice was rock steady.

  ‘No we did not,’ said Appleyard equally coolly. ‘The murder weapon was in fact recovered with the professor’s body; we were searching for the absence of a long-bladed kitchen knife.’

  ‘A negative which proves nothing.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Four pairs of male eyes turned to the office door, which was being held open by the WPC to allow Constable Peters to enter, carrying a catering tray on which was a heap of blue and black material interlaced with charred foliage and burnt twigs, accompanied by the distinct smell of damp smoke. Peters placed the tray on the desk in front of his superior officer, as if presenting the main dish at a banquet, and then he and the WPC moved to stand behind Stephanie Silva’s chair.

  ‘We believe these were the clothes you were wearing on Sunday night,’ said Appleyard, peering at the pile with distaste. ‘Jeans, a denim jacket and a cotton blouse, all with considerable traces of bloodstaining. They were recovered from a compost heap in the garden of your rented property when a clear attempt had been made to destroy them by burning.’

  The superintendent cleared his throat again. ‘Estephanie Margaret Silva, I have to caution you that anything you say …’

  Miss Silva ignored him and swung around on her chair to glare at Campion.

  ‘It seems, after all, that hell really doesn’t have a fury like a woman …’ he said calmly.

  ‘It wasn’t love, it was jealousy; pure, uncontrollable jealousy.’ Miss Silva’s voice was the growl of a cornered big cat. ‘If I couldn’t have him, I wasn’t going to let that dowdy bitch of a goody two-shoes doctor have him. How did you figure it out?’

  Mr Campion exhaled slowly and showed the palms of his hands in supplication. ‘Like the best amateur detectives in the best country-house mysteries, it was all down to one thing – pure guesswork.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Knight to Bishop

  The vice chancellor, Mr Campion and Lugg stood at the entrance to Black Dudley and watched as a haughty and proud Stephanie Silva was escorted towards the car park and the awaiting police cars by Superintendent Appleyard and his minions. No one else on campus seemed to notice her going, to the relief of Dr Downes.

  ‘Well, we seem to have got away with that without the students rioting and storming the ramparts.’

  ‘It’s coming up to lunchtime,’ said Campion, ‘and the bar will be open soon: that should distract their attention. In fact, I advised Dr Szmodics that it should be university policy to extend the licensing hours on campus whenever student rebellion festers.’

  From a deep grunt next to him, Campion was assured that Lugg agreed with his proposal.

  ‘I doubt the university council, and the bishop, would thank you for that suggestion, Campion, but I certainly thank you personally for what you did in there.’

  ‘I did very little, Vice Chancellor; the police did all the real work.’

  ‘You kept my wife’s name out of it,’ Dr Downes said quietly.

  ‘You knew of Dolores’s indiscretion?’

  ‘I do now. She has told me everything. It was over, and she was sorry. You finding those cheques brought back unpleasant memories, but I have forgiven her. Indeed, I could understand why she did it; I was incredibly busy getting the university up and running and Perez-Catalan cut a dashing figure and was willing to pay her the attention I wasn’t giving her. To err is only human.’

  ‘And to forgive really rather rare,’ said Campion, ‘but I hope things continue to work in your favour. There will be a trial, of course, but I see no reason why Dolores needs to be mentioned. She was not the object of Miss Silva’s jealousy, and in any case I have a feeling that Stephanie will plead guilty and claim a crime of passion after being used and abused by a swarthy lothario. She might even pull off such an act.’

  ‘She will be a hard act to follow in the department, that’s for sure. She was a very bright young woman and a good teacher.’

  ‘Just unfortunately homicidal, but I’m sure you will
attract a replacement. This is a fine place to work and study.’

  ‘It won’t be easy now that term has started,’ said Dr Downes, ‘and I may have to go back to the seminar room and do some teaching myself. I might have to brush up on my Don Quixote, but it’s you who deserves to be called the university’s knight-errant. Can I at least offer you lunch?’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Campion saw Lugg girding his ample loins.

  ‘Thank you, Vice Chancellor, but no, we must be on our way. I will get my traps from my room in Durkheim and hand in the key to Mr Marshall, then I will drive Lugg down to White Dudley to pick up his things from Mrs Meade’s house. While we’re there, I’ll take the liberty of telling her the latest gossip and how the police are investigating the suggestion that Professor Perez-Catalan was being blackmailed.’

  ‘Oddly enough,’ said Downes with a wry smile, ‘I was thinking of talking to Mister Meade and explaining the university’s very generous early retirement scheme.’

  ‘You know,’ said Campion, ‘I think Edwina Meade might just encourage her husband to jump at such an offer.’

  Campion and Lugg took the path over the arched bridge and down into Piazza 1 where students and staff bustled about their business and the removal of Stephanie Silva seemed to have gone unnoticed. There was even a chess game in progress in the corner.

  ‘What put you on to her?’ Lugg asked as they walked towards the outdoor chessboard.

  ‘It really clicked when Tabitha King said something. She’s the geologist working on the professor’s algorithm in there.’ He indicated the entrance to the Computing Centre.

  ‘The one with the little Kiwi friend.’

  ‘That’s her. She told me there were at least two women who lived on campus who wanted Perez-Catalan dead. She was wrong about that, but it made me think that there could be a female who lived off-campus who might have a motive. A silly little thing but it got the old brain working in mysterious ways. I was wondering whether I should pop in and say goodbye if they’re in there. I took quite a shine to young Beverley Gunn-Lewis; I think she’ll do well in life.’