by Roy Lewis
They parted to let him through.
For a moment Crow thought it was a trick to cut him off from his companions and evidently Wilson thought so too for he put one hand on Crow’s shoulder. But it was no trick; all four policemen were allowed to move relatively unimpeded, up the last few steps and across the strip of concrete at the top towards the doors and the students merely surged around them, quietly. The shouting had stopped.
A moment later Crow saw why.
He was standing in the doorway of the Administration block. He was tall, and dark-skinned, with an aquiline cast to his features. His hair was jet-black and worn long, swept back, shining, and tied at the nape of his neck. He wore pale blue jeans and a casual sweater, with rope sandals on his feet. He was lounging with one shoulder against the door and he was smiling, a white, gleaming smile below the heavy drooping moustache he wore. His dark eyes were hard, belying the smile, or perhaps qualifying it, Crow thought to himself. He was barring Crow’s path into the building. This was why the shouting had stopped.
Crow didn’t stop. He strode across the concrete straight towards the smiling man in the doorway, determinedly giving the impression that if the man didn’t move Crow would walk through and over him if necessary. There was to be no discussion.
The students were silent. Crow’s shoes echoed on the concrete, and were backed by the hurried sound of his colleagues’ steps. Only ten yards separated the silent, smiling figure from Crow. The young man eased himself from the doorpost with a lithe grace, Crow loomed up in front of him menacingly and then the man moved smoothly aside, bowing, extending his arm in an ironic sweeping gesture of welcome.
‘Inspector Crow, I presume!’
It was a deep voice, clipped in its tones.
The man was still smiling. Crow stopped and stared at him, hard.
‘What’s your name?’
The man shrugged, and the smile faded but his eyes mocked the policeman. Arrogantly, he turned his back on Crow and moved away from the doors, throwing an arm across the nearest student and waving to the others.
‘It’s off,’ he called in a high voice. ‘The demonstration’s off for the time being!’
A groan arose, and someone shouted.
‘To hell with the fuzz! We’re not scared of them! What’s protest for!’
The man in the pale blue jeans swivelled to look back at the motionless Chief Inspector. He was smiling again.
‘No, friends, the demonstration’s off. These slaves of the Establishment are not here to suppress the student body. They have other fish to fry, and like good citizens it’s our duty to disperse at this time.’
‘What the hell’s going on? Why are they here?’
Crow saw the television team scrambling forwards but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. It was far too late, the whole thing would blow, right now.
‘Why are they here? The ultimate, man! They’ve arrived to investigate, no less, a murder!’
* * *
‘It would seem you’ve had a brush with Sadruddin, Inspector.’
‘Sadruddin?’
Dr Peters nodded and walked uneasily across to the windows. His handsome face was pale, and his hands were unsteady. One of those hands stole up on occasion to the distinguished grey sideburns he wore; it was a gesture born of nervousness and insecurity in face of an unexpected, unprecedented situation.
‘Sadruddin Khan. He’s a student who has been here since we were established two years ago. He’s reading for a degree in Law, and he’s president of the Student Union this year. Extremely popular, an impassioned orator, a charming and gifted young man. And a Marxist, or so he says. I suspect that he’s really a Sadruddinist, if I may be excused such a remark. He’s from Iraq, I believe, and the “Khan” is an affectation, in my opinion. I have obtained the impression that he uses it to suggest perhaps a nobility of character and qualities of valour that may be lacking within him in reality.’
‘You don’t like him.’
‘He makes administration difficult.’
Crow considered. The last ten minutes with the rector had not been unproductive but there was work to be done. After a short silence he nodded and turned to walk to the door.
‘All right, Dr Peters, thank you. I’ll be back shortly to speak to you again. Sergeant Wilson will ask you for various details but I must first go along to take a look at the lift, and the body.’
The rector winced at the word and Crow was made aware that Peters could possibly be somewhat sensitive. But then, the girl had been his secretary. It was a natural reaction.
There was a police constable waiting outside the rector’s room and he was quick to direct Crow towards the business block. A commotion near the enquiries desk drew Crow’s attention — two students were arguing with the girl at the desk.
‘What are they doing here?’
The constable jumped and quivered at the tone Crow employed.
‘I’ll get them out at once, sir!’
‘Do that. And keep these corridors and the rest of the building cleared.’
Crow stumped off up the stairs and made his way across the bridge to the business block. He passed two constables at the head of the stairs and they pointed out the huddle of men near the student lifts as the scene-of-crime unit. Crow joined them. A fresh-faced young CID man made way for him to thrust past into the lift itself. A flash bulb exploded and Crow turned his head aside with an exclamation. The others moved aside for Crow to take a look at the girl.
Death had been cruel to her. She wouldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty and she’d been fairly pretty before the blood had trickled down into her right eye and her face had assumed that loose, slack-jawed expression. She was fully clothed apart from a missing shoe; her clothing was disarranged, but seemed not to be torn in any way.
‘Her other shoe?’
Young Kennedy, the officer who was in charge of the unit, shuffled uncomfortably, and held out the object. Crow stared at it, then shifted his glance towards the disconcerted policeman.
‘Where was it?’
‘I’m sorry, sir, it was found down on the stairs on the floor below. A lab steward called Johnson saw it and picked it up. He brought it to us before anyone could warn him that it should have been left where it was.’
This was going to be a mess, Crow knew it in his bones. It had started badly with his mood and it was continuing the same way. He was having difficulty in controlling his temper and this was uncharacteristic. Martha knew how to soothe him when he was in a mood but this time he’d have to control himself.
‘Statement taken from this man Johnson?’
‘It’s being done now, sir. He brought this up only a few minutes ago.’
‘Why wasn’t the whole area sealed off in the first place, as soon as the unit arrived?’
‘Well, we sealed off this floor sir, and we thought—’
‘You thought!’ Crow fixed the wriggling young man with a cold eye. ‘Where did this girl die?’
‘Well, we don’t know yet, sir. We—’
‘Exactly. You don’t know. You found her in this lift. So you seal off this floor. But you don’t seal off the floors below. The whole of the college should have been sealed off. How long have you been on this unit? Never mind, don’t tell me, I might be inclined to allow it to prejudice me.’
In a stiff, formal tone Kennedy replied: ‘The whole of this block has been cleared now, sir, and I have three men searching the corridors below.’
Crow noted the formality and the veiled reproof. He took a deep breath; nothing was to be gained by losing his temper with these officers.
‘Who found the body?’
‘A man called Fanshaw, sir.’
‘College staff?’
‘No, sir. A civil servant.’
A civil servant — Crow had had more than enough to do with such men already. Oxbridge-trained, as often as not, red tape-tied, stuffy, inhibited, superior — and this one boasted the name of Fanshaw to boot!
‘He’s one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools—’
‘Schools?’
‘That’s the official designation, sir, but I understand he works in the Further Education sector which includes the polytechnics. I gather the polytechnics are still local authority colleges, unlike universities, which are independent. So he tells me.’
‘I’ll want to see him.’
‘He’s in the staff room, at the end of the corridor, sir.’
Crow nodded, took another slow look at the dead girl with the feeling that there was something missing, glanced around at the silent men in the lift, then turned to leave them to their job. This was the part of the investigation he hated. In a matter of days things would begin to appear a little more logical: names, places, events, times would begin to settle, to form an overall impression. People would begin to fit into a picture, sequences would start to form a pattern. But now it was all a mess, an untidy shuffling of cards in an unfamiliar pack; officers drifting around the building, asking, watching, searching and not quite knowing what they were doing. Bewildering names and faces, strangers, inexplicable actions, short tempers and refusals or inability to answer the simplest questions, all of these contributed to making the investigating officer’s task an unenviable one. And over all the situation hung the inevitable reaction of the man who was questioned: what does this have to do with me, he’d be asking himself; why are the police questioning me, how dare they infer that I’m in any way connected with the death; wait till I tell the kids about this! Irrational fears, stupid pride, inconsequential excitement, unpleasant and prurient curiosity. Crow grunted his displeasure to an echoing empty corridor and it grunted back. The staff room lay at the end of the corridor.
Crow pushed past the broad back of the constable guarding the door and entered the room. It was a long, pleasant room, with light-coloured wallpaper, small, plain tables and comfortable easy chairs in strong primary colours, red, green, blue. It was quite empty but for one dark-suited man sitting at the far end. He made no attempt to look up as Crow entered. He affected a massive lack of interest, and he sipped quietly at his cup of tea. He had flowing, carefully groomed white hair and an Honours Tripos face, lean and sharp and administrative.
‘You must be Fanshaw,’ Crow said as he approached the quiet man in the corner. The head came up, and then was inclined elegantly. One inch of white shirt-cuff was displayed as Fanshaw replaced the cup on the table in front of him. He stood up. He was almost as tall as Crow.
‘I see you managed to find some refreshment.’
Crow’s tone caused Fanshaw to blink behind his rimless glasses, but there was no change in his expression. Quietly, the man said: ‘The rector was kind enough to ask the office staff to bring a cup of tea up to me. I thought it best not to return downstairs: I understood that the police would want to speak to me. But the rector realised that I would be . . . ah . . . somewhat shocked, so . . .’
‘Sit down, Mr Fanshaw. I gather from your shock you must have known the girl?’
‘I would have been shocked to discover any person like this, Inspector . . . er . . .’
‘Crow.’
‘But you’re right, I did know Rosemary. I had met her upon several occasions, whenever I came to the college in fact. She was the rector’s secretary.’
‘Did you visit regularly?’
‘Irregularly. But on each occasion I pay my respects to Dr Peters, and always reach him through his secretary first — she would tell me whether Dr Peters was available. It’s a matter of form, you understand.’
Crow nodded. He understood. Red tape again.
‘How did you come to find her on this floor?’
He listened carefully while Fanshaw explained. There wasn’t much that the man could tell him, but Crow listened to his smooth elegant tones and recognized the easy self-confidence in the man. Fanshaw was not of his world. He was of the Establishment — and as those students down below had shouted, what were the police but the servants of the Establishment? Crow had had dealings with the Home Office in the past and found himself wishing that these civil servants would show their easy superiority in less obvious ways than dress, and speech, and social ease. Particularly when they found a corpse. Not a grey hair had been turned on the elegant Fanshaw head by the discovery of a dead Rosemary Harland.
‘Have you made a statement yet?’
‘I’ve not been asked for one up till now, Inspector Crow.’
Crow called to the police constable at the door.
‘Take Mr Fanshaw downstairs now, and take his statement. I’ll be seeing you again, sir, and I’ll probably have some more questions to ask. But that’ll do for the time being.’
Crow watched Fanshaw stroll elegantly out after the constable and then he sat down in the chair vacated by the HMI. Civil servant! He stared at the ceiling. Collect thoughts, forget irrelevancies.
What did he have? . . . a dead girl, the HMI who had found her, the rector who had employed her, the office staff who worked with her . . . Sadruddin. How had Sadruddin known Crow’s name?
Ten minutes later a frightened girl in the office gave him the answer.
‘I was standing out near the main entrance, and he — Sadruddin, that is, came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and asked what all the excitement was about. So I told him that Rosemary had been killed and he asked me what was going to happen. I said that the police had been called and that an Inspector Crow was expected any minute. A few minutes later you arrived, sir . . .’
Crow told the office staff that he would want to see all of them, individually, during the course of the day and asked them to hold themselves in readiness. One girl, with long dark hair and a frightened mouth, put up a hand as though she were back at school again. Crow stared at her, saw what she held in her other hand and knew what it was that had been missing from Rosemary Harland’s body in the lift. Her handbag.
He took it from the dark-haired girl as she stammered that she’d found it in the general office and looked quickly through it. It contained the usual paraphernalia of things useful and useless, decorative and functional. No letters. A bunch of household keys. And one big key. He saw the stamp on it — it was the key she would have used to get in and out of the Polytechnic. She hadn’t used it to get out last night. He walked back into the rector’s office. Peters, his face still pale, sat behind his desk. Wilson looked up and rose as Crow entered. The notebook he held was covered with pencilled notes of his conversation with the rector.
‘Dr Peters has let me have all the personal details concerning the murdered girl,’ Wilson said. ‘There wasn’t a great deal in her file, really, since this was her first job.’
And her last, Crow thought grimly.
* * *
The day dragged on. Crow and Wilson went through the dreary motions of interviewing all the people on the college staff who had had contact with Rosemary Harland. They asked what sort of a girl she was, who her friends were, when she had last been seen by the person questioned, what their relationships had been. Finally, Crow came back to the rector.
‘From what I gather,’ he said, consulting his notebook, ‘Rosemary Harland was a friendly, but fairly quiet girl. She was educated at Sedleigh Grammar School, took a Private Secretarial course at Sedleigh Branch College of Further Education and then took up her first appointment in the office here.’
‘She was recommended to me personally by the Head of Department at the Branch College; I took her out of the general office after two weeks and she became my secretary.’
‘She was only twenty when she died. Isn’t it usual to have an older woman for a job such as personal secretary to the rector of a polytechnic?’
‘She was a remarkably efficient girl.’
‘And a pretty one.’
There was a moment’s silence. Crow’s remark had been delivered in a flat, expressionless tone and Peters now stared at him, obviously undecided whether Crow had me
ant to be offensive or not. Crow waited, watching for reaction from Peters; in the event, Peters remained silent. A point to consider: his silence could mean that he felt himself upon sufficiently insecure ground to remain quiet in ace of such provocation.
‘Boy-friends?’
‘I don’t think so. But really, I wouldn’t know. I had a very pleasant working relationship with Miss Harland, but it did not extend to discussing her private affairs with her.’
‘Is that being evasive, Dr Peters?’
The lean face of the rector tightened and he drew his eyebrows together in a frown.
‘I don’t know what you’re implying, Inspector Crow.’
‘I’m not suggesting you discussed private matters with her. But you’re rector of the Polytechnic; you know what goes on in this college. You would know, for instance, if your secretary had admirers — in the office, perhaps, or on the staff.’
‘There are other duties incumbent upon the rector,’ Peters said in a cold stiff voice, ‘which would preclude his descending to gossip about his office staff.’
‘Perhaps the Academic Registrar would know more about it?’
‘Perhaps he would. I wouldn’t know.’ Antony Peters wasn’t easy to ruffle; he had control of his emotions. Yet Crow felt there was something about his attitudes which suggested he was too prepared to accept innuendo, too prepared to accept professional slurs. It was curious. It could be that he was a timid man, but this Crow doubted. It was more likely that he wanted to avoid a fuss — and if that were the case, he would have a good reason for wanting to avoid it. In Crow’s experience, the man who refused to take a baited insult already had another hook in his gullet and was too conscious of its bite to accept another. Crow wondered just what barb was inhibiting Peters’s freedom of expression. He closed his notebook.
‘I’ll have a word with the registrar, then, see what he’s got to say. I’ve now spoken to the office staff but there’s the academic people too. Have you drawn up a list of the staff who most came into contact with the dead girl?’
An anxious finger stole up to his sideburn as Peters hesitated.
‘It’s a bit difficult, really. Rosemary was my secretary, and as such would come into contact with the academic staff only rarely, in the formal completion of her duties. But almost all will have met her. Anyone who came to see me — and I make. a point of seeing every member of staff on appointment — would first be dealt with by Rosemary. So, in a sense, everyone on the staff would have had contact with her.’