The Glass Ceiling

by Anabel Donald

  ‘This is great,’ I said, eating. It was good, too. ‘Very kind of you. What time did the . . . break-in happen?’

  ‘It must have been between three-thirty and four-thirty. When I went out everything was all right in – the kennels. Then when I came back I could hear the dogs howling, so I went in and found poor Gunny, and saw the writing on the wall. And then I was so – angry. Just so angry, and so sad, both at once, and I really hated Melanie, and I wanted to kill her.’ She stopped, and gave me the squirrel look. Perhaps it had been seductive once.

  ‘Do you keep the kennels locked?’

  ‘Of course. Apart from everything else, the insurance company insists on it. She broke in through the back door.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘With a chisel or a crowbar or something, the police said. She broke the lock.’

  ‘Did you tell the police you thought it was Melanie who’d done it?’

  ‘No. And I didn’t say anything about you and the warning you’d given me, because I didn’t want to confuse them, before I’d spoken to you. But I had to report it because of the insurance, of course. Gunny is – was – a valuable dog.’

  ‘Were the police helpful?’

  She shrugged.‘What could they do? They were quite sympathetic. Considering he was only a dog, to them.’

  ‘Did you have to give them pints of tea and have them hanging round the kitchen for hours?’ I wanted to clear up the question of the toilet seat.

  She looked at me blankly. ‘Tea? No. I suppose I should have . . . I was too upset. I didn’t want to leave Gunny.’

  ‘So the police didn’t come into the house?’ I plugged on.

  ‘No. Does it matter?’

  ‘Just trying to get the picture,’ I said. ‘Elspeth, I’m worried about leaving you alone, because I’ll have to go back to London tonight. Is there a neighbour or a friend we could ring, to keep you company?’ Surely, now, if she had a man staying she’d say so.

  ‘I prefer being alone,’ she said firmly. ‘Some more stew?’

  ‘Please.’

  She took the plates, ladled us both a massive second helping, and sat back down again, heavily. ‘I’ve decided what I think you should do. You absolutely must tell the police about the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet. About her threats. But I wonder if you should tell them about . . . us.’

  ‘About the Vestal Virgins?’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to explain why we’re the names on the list you got, I suppose. It was more that I didn’t know whether you should say about us having been the Womun.’

  I ate stew, and thought. ‘But you think Melanie Slater is doing this, don’t you? She’s the one who should be stopped. In which case it would be much easier for the police to narrow it down to her if they know the full story.’

  ‘I thought you could catch her yourself. Wouldn’t you prefer that?’

  ‘So why exactly do you want me to speak to the police?’

  She mopped gravy from her empty plate with a chunk of bread. ‘I’m not sure. I’m still upset. I’m very upset. And confused. I can’t see things clearly. Help me, Alex. What do you think?’

  ‘I think that if you really want the police to know that the break-in here was part of a sequence of threats, then you should tell them yourself,’ I said. ‘I’d like time to think it through, myself, and I’d like to speak to Melanie first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she has a busy life in London. The chances are that she has an alibi for this afternoon, backed up by witnesses.’ And I could find that out easily enough from Teddy, I thought.

  ‘She could have found someone else to do the work,’ said Elspeth.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, but I didn’t believe it. Hire a hitman for a dog? I could see Grace Macarthy doing it, using one of her hangers-on. ‘Tad, darling, just pop down to the country and top a dog for me.’ ‘Of course, Grace.’ But not Melanie. ‘Elspeth, do you really think Melanie’s a dog-killing kind of person? She seems very . . . prosaic, very practical, to me.’

  ‘I’ve known her longer than you have. And I know her better.’ She stared at me defiantly.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Elspeth, last time I was here and I told you about my client, you thought that it was Grace.’

  ‘Yes, I told you that earlier.’

  ‘I know you did. But then, today, you knew it wasn’t Grace because she’d never kill a dog?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But she’d have been happy to parcel up a dead hamster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because I thought you were upset about the hamster, when I mentioned it.’

  She looked uncomfortable. ‘I was,’ she said. ‘It seemed such an . . . odd thing to do. Almost insane. And now I see it was. But you can never tell what Grace will do, except she’d never do something cruel. She’d never have killed Gunny.’ She began to cry again.

  ‘Was Gunny your favourite dog?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he was. That’s what makes it so – brutal.’

  ‘Could Melanie have known that? How much contact do you have with her, now? Has she ever been down to stay here, for instance?’

  ‘Oh yes. We see each other quite a lot. We’ve been friends for a very long time.’

  ‘And do you like her?’

  ‘I thought I did. I do, but not if she killed Gunny.’

  ‘But why should she?’

  Elspeth had no sensible answer to that question, either then or in the rest of the hour I spent with her. I suggested that the Womun needn’t be one of the Vestal Virgins, could be someone who’d known them since Oxford and had known the alias, but she wouldn’t even consider it. She insisted it was Melanie, but she couldn’t or wouldn’t suggest why.

  And I still didn’t know why she’d sent for me. Despite her obvious (and I thought genuine) distress over the dog, she didn’t want my comfort. I didn’t know what she did want, or what she could possibly gain from my presence. The one thing she’d asked me to do – tell the police – I wasn’t going to do in a hurry, if at all, and I certainly wasn’t going to name Melanie on Elspeth’s say-so.

  I pulled out of her gate at ten-thirty, drove back to Leadington, and parked by the village shop. It was closed, of course. What on earth did you do in the country if you ran out of groceries in the middle of the night? My local corner shop was open all night, selling my staples like bottom-range takeaway curries and instant coffee, and running a minicab service on the side.

  I looked across to Nelson Mandela Cottage. If there’d been a light on I’d have dropped in to ask Thong what he’d meant when he said Elspeth’s household was ‘barking’ – whether he meant Elspeth herself or her friends – but the cottage was in darkness, so I looked at my map instead.

  I needed to know more about the Vestal Virgins, long ago and now. I needed input from an outsider, urgently. One of the pieces of information Nick had quarried from the library for me was the name of the Oxford college which Grace, Melanie and Leona had attended. I assumed it was also Elspeth’s, although she hadn’t earned an entry in Who’s Who.

  A tutor of theirs would do nicely, if I could find one still in Oxford, still with all his/her marbles. It could be done on the telephone, but it would be easier, and more productive, in person. I’d stay the night at a hotel near Oxford and zap the college first thing in the morning.

  It only took a minute to work out the route: Tewkesbury/Stow on the Wold/Chipping Norton. Good. It would take me an hour and a half, max. Three cassette tapes and seventy miles of unfamiliar roads later, I’d be presenting one of Barty’s credit cards (serve him right) at an Oxford hotel. Heaven.

  Thursday, 30 September

  Chapter Seventeen

  I woke at seven. My hotel room faced south and the sun streamed through the streaky windows and picked out the stains on the bedcover and the chips and burns on the cheapish furniture. I felt impermanent, and at home. Before I got out of bed I reached for the phone and dialled Barty’s number, just in case he’d sacked the an
swering service overnight.

  He hadn’t.

  I rang off without leaving a message, put on my running gear and headed out through the deserted lobby and across the half-full car park into the crisp morning. The hotel was on the Oxford ring road, and as I jogged along the rough grass towards the city the commuter traffic was already building up.

  It was ideal running weather: clear, sunny and spirit-lifting, but cool enough to go a distance. Five miles, I decide, and I’d aim for eleven-minute miles. Still not quite running, but not bad over five. I can manage eight minutes over three miles, but that is running, and leaves me knackered and wobbly-legged. My leg was broken last November and it’s still not quite right. It will be, though. I’m working on it, because I don’t like damage.

  I was in North Oxford when I turned back: Morse country. That’s how I know Oxford, through watching the Inspector Morse television series. Me and how many million others. I wondered, as I glanced in to the windows of the Victorian villas, which of them the production company had used for the exteriors of his flat. Cushy job, researching locations in Oxford. Every shot picturesque: can’t miss. Plus the town’s far enough from London to charge overnight expenses, pocket them and hop back to the smoke.

  All the houses looked like Morse’s. Street upon street upon street, all the same, smaller as you got farther away from the city centre. Cost a bomb. Nice life, being a teacher here. Short hours, bright students, and one of the best libraries in the world. Paid to read. All right for some teachers.

  Sorry, dons. Don was what they were called. I wondered what it meant. Latin, I supposed. I don’t know any Latin, though I’m teaching myself Greek, on and off. It’s a great language: makes a good sound, has terrific poetry. They say Latin’s easier. Might try it some time.

  The last half-mile back was a killer. Five miles is. I’ve never tried to go further. Maybe I should aim for eight.

  Back to my room. Collapse. Then bath and dress, feeling strong. While the feeling lasted, I rang my answering machine and left a message for Nick. I’d already briefed her to follow Arabella Trigg’s shopping expedition that morning. I needed to update her that I was in Oxford and would be back some time in the afternoon, and leave a call-back number at the hotel in case of emergency.

  After I’d finished eating (full English breakfast, courtesy of Barty’s credit card) it was still before nine. Too early to ring Protheroe’s office and wrestle in mental mud with Jacqui. Time to visit the Vestal Virgins’ dreaming spire.

  St Scholastica’s College was a massive red-brick building – no sign of a spire – on the border of North Oxford and Oxford proper, near the University Parks, at the far end of a wide tree-lined street now beginning to be scattered with rich red leaves. Although I couldn’t see the river as I approached I guessed the grounds bordered it. Originally, I supposed, it had been an all-girls’ college, but now the students coming out of the main entrance and disentangling their bikes from the long rows were about half male. Young, spotty, cheerful, on the whole. I’d be cheerful in their shoes.

  I try not to waste energy on regrets. You can spend your whole life on ‘what-if’ and I can think of better ways of spending it. But some of the teachers at my school, particularly the headteacher, had banged on at me about going to university. ‘Possibly even’ (awed emphasis) ‘Oxford or Cambridge, Alex.’ And I reckon I could have got in, even though the school had done its best to teach me the square root of sod-all.

  But I couldn’t afford it. I needed to work. It was a bad time for my mother; my last ‘uncle’ had just dumped her, she was in and out of the bin, and she needed me in London to look after her. On the other hand, I needed to be able to pay for a room of my own, otherwise I’d have been in the bin too. I couldn’t just swan off and read. I had to have a marketable skill.

  So I’d never gone to Oxford or Cambridge, and maybe it was a fantasy that I ever could have. How do you know how bright you are if you never run the intellectual hurdle race? OK, I thought I was cleverer than most people I met, but maybe that was just a sign of my stupidity. Maybe Barty’s description was right; I was just a smartass.

  I took my smart ass through the open gates and looked for the porter’s lodge. The porter, a middle-aged woman (why not? they couldn’t all be ancient male retainers) was helpful, and she didn’t see a difficulty, even though I was asking about twenty-odd years ago. ‘Now then,’ she said, ‘it’s an English don you want?’

  ‘I don’t mind a foreigner,’ I said.

  ‘I mean, I think Grace Macarthy read English Literature. So you want a long-serving English don . . . Try Dame Janet Wilson first, I would. And you’re lucky, she’s in college already.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  ‘Quite. It’s not term-time yet, of course. We’re not even in noughth week yet.’ (I didn’t ask.) ‘Go through the first quadrangle, as soon as you’re in the second turn left, up the first set of stairs, and her rooms are on the first floor. You’ll see her name on the door.’

  ‘Come in,’ said the voice. I came in, to my dream room. Long, high, with wide windows overlooking the leafy quadrangle and the river beyond, plenty of low sofas and chairs, a long mahogany table, a desk, and every inch of wall that wasn’t window covered with books.

  I want it, I thought. Then I took it back. That was disloyal to my flat. I love my flat. Plus I didn’t know how St Scholastica’s was fixed for all-night corner shops.

  ‘Who are you?’ said the owner of the voice. She turned out to be an assortment of clothing apparently chosen, in a poor light, from a Laura Ashley catalogue, and she was sitting in an armchair at the far end of the room. The chair had also been covered by Laura Ashley, which was why I hadn’t noticed its occupant, at first.

  ‘Who are you?’ she repeated.

  ‘Dame Janet Wilson?’ I said.

  ‘No. You are not Janet Wilson. I am. Who are you?’

  ‘Alex Tanner, Private Investigator.’ I walked the length of the room and offered her one of my cards, which she peered at and then gave back to me. She was in her sixties. Even sitting down she looked tall. She was very wide, and seemed wider because she sat with her legs planted firmly apart. She had a big, bony face, a slight moustache and a bun of long straight grey hair tinged with natural yellow streaks, probably nicotine, judging from the cigarette between her fingers and the overflowing ashtray on a table by her side.

  ‘What do you want, Alex Tanner?’ she said, putting a pencil as a marker into the book she was reading, shutting it and putting it down on the table beside the ashtray. I looked to see what it was. If I read it perhaps I’d get her room.

  No clues there. It was a John Grisham thriller I’d gulped weeks ago. She noticed me looking and said, ‘Why do you suppose the Americans are so keen on books about lawyers?’

  ‘Probably because they’re obsessed with process,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said consideringly. ‘And why do you suppose that is?’

  ‘Because they lack traditions?’ I suggested.

  ‘Again, perhaps you’re right,’ she murmured. ‘I had wondered if it were because the entire nation feels obliged to engage in continuous self-improvement, and the highest ideals they aspire to are professional. Perhaps, by “obsessed with process”, you mean the same thing. But I digress, and we are getting into deep water . . . Sit down.’ She pointed out a chair to her right. ‘I am somewhat deaf in the left ear. Now tell me, what can I do for you?’

  As concisely as I could, I told her the story of the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet. She listened without interrupting, until I described the break-in at Melanie Slater’s. Then she said, ‘Repeat, please, what was written on the walls.’

  I repeated what Teddy had told me. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Go on, please.’

  When I finished, she said, ‘Extraordinary. How can I help you?’

  ‘Do you remember the Vestal Virgins? It was a long time ago.’

  ‘I recall the group’s activities vaguely, and some of the pr
anks of the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet,’ she said dismissively. Then her voice warmed. ‘I remember Grace Macarthy very clearly, and I still see her quite often today. She has one of the most remarkable intellects I have ever taught.’

  I wondered if you could separate an intellect from a person. Handy if you could. Send your intellect in to work, and go back to sleep. ‘Remarkable in what way?’

  She thought, then said: ‘Clear. Quick. Original. Flexible. Wide-ranging. Imaginative. Sensitive. Perverse.’

  ‘Perverse?’

  ‘Not in any sexual sense, of course, although by all accounts she is sexually adventurous. Perverse in that she has an argumentative nature and will adopt any intellectual position in order to tease.’ She sighed. ‘Grace is a waste. She could have been a scholar. She chose merely to be a – a gadfly.’

  ‘But she holds a lectureship, at an Oxford college,’ I protested, informed by Nick’s notes on Grace’s Who’s Who entry.

  ‘Indeed,’ Janet Wilson agreed drily.

  ‘Do you think she could be my Womun in the Balaclava Helmet?’

  ‘Yes. Grace could be and do anything. If she chose to. However . . .’ She hesitated.

  ‘However?’

  ‘However, she has never been, to my knowledge, of course, deliberately cruel, although she has probably caused a great deal of pain by accident, as she tramples through the lives of lesser beings. If, as you say, Elspeth Driberg—’