The constable relaxed slightly. “About ten years ago there was a bus went off the road. That was long before my time of course, but I’ve heard tell of it enough times. He was going too fast, the driver—that’s the reason for nine out of ten of the accidents I’ve seen, when you come down to it, sir—but it’s true the bend’s much sharper than it seems, more a corner than a bend, and the camber’s not good at all. So it seems like he just drifted into it gradually—went into the pond down there—“ he pointed towards the village.
“And that was when the council put up the fence and the reflectors—you can’t rightly miss ‘em as you come into the bend—and the Ministry put up the warning signs too. So there’s been nothing gone amiss since then. I wouldn’t say it was dangerous at all.”
That was the thing in a nutshell: the bend was at worst a minor hazard, but no killer. The moment a driver began to go into it at night those red reflectors would glare back warningly; even the ill-fated bus had almost managed the unexpected curve successfully.
“But young Smith found it dangerous, didn’t he?” murmured Butler.
“Sir?” The constable frowned.
“The motor-cyclist,” began Butler patiently. “If he came down the straight and went through the gap just there … it looks as though he never even started to turn into the bend … “
“Ah … well now … “ It was not so much a conjecture as a problem when put like that, and the constable’s reluctance to tackle it was weakening “ … it does look a bit like that when you think about it.”
And he was thinking about it now. He looked up the straight and then to the gap, eyes narrowed, and finally at the pond itself. Then back up the straight again. “You see, sir, there was no brake mark and no skid mark. Yet he came down fast—that’s sure enough, for the motor-bike was well out in the water. And—“ he paused “—and now I come to think of it, well, it wasn’t quite where I’d have expected it … “
“Indeed?”
The constable nodded judiciously. “If he was taking the corner, or just beginning to, it should have ended up further to the right—the right, that is, as we’re lookin’ at the pond from here. But it was two, maybe three yards to the left of that … So it’s like you said, sir—if you asked me I’d say he came directly down the road and straight across through the hedge like there was no corner at all—“
He stopped suddenly, glancing at Butler nervously again as though expecting a reprimand.
“I think you’re quite right, constable,” said Butler encouragingly, ignoring the glance. “We have the two fixed points—the gap in the hedge and the position of the machine in the pond—and if we imagine a back-bearing from them we ought to have his angle of approach. You’re absolutely right!” He paused to let his praise sink in. “But how would he come to do a thing like that?”
“That ‘ud be hard to say, sir. Even if he was riding dead straight his headlight ‘ud pick up the first of the reflectors. Even my bicycle light picks ‘em up.”
“Could he have mistaken it for the rear lights of a car?”
“Oh no, sir. There’s no mistaking them.”
“Then supposing a car came round the corner as he was approaching it—could it have cut off the reflectors and then blinded him?”
“Mmmm … it could have, I suppose—but it would have lit ‘em all up first and warned him there was a corner here.” Emphatic shake of the head. “I doubt it, sir. I doubt it very much.”
Butler doubted it too. But if a car was already waiting on the bend in the darkness, all its lights out—then all switched on suddenly, high beam, to dazzle the oncoming motorcyclist ? Or if there had been a prepared obstacle in the road?
Butler shook his head to himself just as emphatically. It was all too providential, too elaborate and too theatrical, and far too-clever, involving exact knowledge and preparations— a daunting risk of bringing down the wrong man anyway. Altogether not a bit like the Spetsburo Thirteen.
“Not unless he was riding like a maniac, anyway,” concluded the constable. “I heard tell he’d taken a drop too much—have you considered that, sir? Dr Fox ‘ud be able to tell you that for sure.”
Like a maniac who’d taken a drop too much: Neil Smith roaring through the night with the fear of the Spetsburo behind him—or maybe simply trying to shake Paul Zoshchenko from his tail! On a high-powered bike that was a better formula for disaster than any far-fetched plot.
In the last analysis the shorter, simpler answer always made the best sense, disappointing though it might be.
“Yes, Colonel Butler—the powers-that-be warned me to be ready for you.”
Dr Fox examined Butler’s credentials suspiciously, and then measured Butler himself against them with equal distaste. “It seems I must answer every question you put to me to the best of my ability.”
Medium hostile, categorised Butler. Or if not actually hostile, then somewhat nettled at being leaned on by those powers-that-be to divulge information properly reserved for the coroner’s court. And of course no hardpressed general practitioner gladly suffered unscheduled calls on his time.
“I’d be grateful for any help you can give me, doctor.”
Nod. “I’ve no doubt. The trouble is, Colonel, that answers—medical answers—are not always amenable to words of command. You’ll be wanting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from me and I shall be giving you ‘maybe’ if you’re lucky—that’s my experience, anyway. But we shall see, shan’t we!”
Butler watched him without replying. Dr Fox was evidently used to opening the bowling, so bowl he must be allowed to do, at least for the time being.
Fox indicated the close-typed form on the desk between them. “I take it that you’ve seen a duplicate of this report, Colonel? What more do you require? Conjecture off the record?”
“I’ll settle for that, doctor.”
“Hmm! Well I can’t say it seems exceptionally complicated. To put it bluntly, he rode his motor-cycle under the influence of drink, did your Neil Smith—or as we have to say now, he exceeded the permitted level of alcohol in his bloodstream. No conjecture there, certainly—the actual figure was 230 millilitres—that’s about six and a half pints of beer, or 13 whiskies, as near as I can estimate. All on an empty stomach, and I wouldn’t have said he was a drinking man.”
So the false “Boozy” Smith had not been a drinking man, whatever the real one had been. But that was hardly surprising in his line of work.
“In fact he wasn’t fit to be on the road at all, and if it hadn’t happened at Pett’s Pond it would assuredly have happened somewhere else very soon,” went on Fox unemotionally. “It was just beginning to hit him hard. I suppose we should be thankful that he only killed himself.”
“Would you consider the Pond a dangerous spot?”
“Every inch of every road is a danger spot when there’s a drunk on it. The pond corner’s no worse than a dozen others within this parish. As a matter of fact it could have been the safest place for him to have gone off the road, seeing as he wasn’t wearing a crash helmet. The water could have saved him.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t. But there’s nothing very surprising in that.”
“You mean for a grown man to die in four feet of water doesn’t surprise you, doctor?”
“I mean exactly what I have said. Grown men have drowned in much less than four feet of water, Colonel. When it comes to drowning, some people find a few inches of bathwater quite sufficient.” Fox lifted his chin and gazed at Butler with a hint of scorn. “I don’t know what your experience of death is—I suppose you peacetime soldiers haven’t seen so much of it—but I have always found life much more surprising than death.”
Butler clenched his back teeth. “Is it of any significance that he was floating face downwards? Would you have expected him to float that way?”
The corner of Fox’s mouth twitched. “Oh, come now, Colonel—Butler was it?—if the object of this interview is to bandy old wives’ tales, then we
shall both be wasting our time. If you want to create a mystery where there is none, nothing I say is likely to prevent you doing so. But you must try not to ask stupid questions.”
Butler cursed Audley and his clever little bits of verse as he felt the situation slipping from his grasp. He had plainly bodged things to the point where they were doing little more than fence with each other. Only a flag of truce could save him now.
He bowed his head. “I’m sorry, doctor—you are the expert and I’m a pig-headed layman. The plain truth is that this man Smith died very inconveniently for us, and very conveniently for someone else, so we have to be sure about his death. We’re not looking for a mystery, but if there is one we daren’t overlook it. And—well, surely you must have had some reservations if you felt a post-mortem was necessary?”
Fox stared at Butler thoughtfully for a moment, and then nodded slowly. “Not quite a layman, colonel—it’s true that I considered a post-mortem necessary. But when there are none of the classical signs of drowning, and no visible injuries either, then it’s perfectly normal.”
“Would you have expected such signs?”
“Not at all. Minor injuries or the absence of them aren’t significant. In a case like this it’s merely a question of drawing deductions—a process of exclusion, really.”
“And you concluded—?”
Fox shrugged. “Vagal inhibition is my guess—sudden shock mediated through the vagus nerve, the ‘wanderer’. I won’t bore you with technicalities, but it’s a very expeditious way of dying. Sir Bernard Spilsbury proved that, when he damn near killed a nurse by way of demonstrating it in a murder case.”
“Spilsbury?” Butler frowned. “Would that have been the brides-in-the-bath case?”
“That’s right.” Fox smiled grimly. “Up with their heels— and it was all over!” He paused. “And now I take it you’d like to know whether somebody upped with Smith’s heels and then dumped him in the pond?”
“That would be helpful, doctor.”
“I’m sure it would be! But I’m afraid I can’t help you that way at all.” He leant forward, elbows comfortably on the table. “You see, the difficulty with most drownings is that the actual process is the same whether it’s accident or suicide —or murder. And that’s why I keep all my wits about me when I meet this sort of case. And why I do a p.m. so often.”
“In this instance there was very little water in the lungs, which is what I’d expect. But it was definitely pond water, with enough weed fragments to prove it. No doubt at all. In fact there was nothing there incapable of rational explanation; add the alcohol and you can call it either accident or involuntary suicide. Myself I’d prefer to call it waste and stupidity, whatever he’d done that brings you here.”
“Except, of course, I can only tell you what the state of his body tells me. What you want—and what I can’t give you, colonel—is the state of his mind.”
VIII
BY THE TIME the train reached the outskirts of Oxford Butler had worked himself into a fairly irascible frame of mind.
Having to abandon his comfortable, convenient Rover at Reading and surrender himself to British Rail had not helped, even though he had seen the force of Audley’s argument that the false Colonel Butler ought not to launch himself in the real Colonel Butler’s car.
Yet he recognised that the true cause of his disquiet was the outcome of the Pett’s Pond visit. For Dr Fox’s conclusions fitted his own instinct far too well to be ignored: all the evidence pointed to the purely accidental nature of Smith’s death. And although there was no consequential reason to doubt his Zoshchenko identity, his connection with the KGB or any other of the Soviet overseas agencies now seemed to rest solely on a chance word embedded in the memory of an aged don who had wined and dined well before he put his ear to the phone.
True, that was exactly the sort of intelligence fragment that Audley relished—and in fairness to Audley (however much it hurt) it had to be admitted that the blighter had a nose for such things.
Also, the fact that Smith’s parents were conveniently dead and all those who knew him conveniently far off in New Zealand certainly made him a likely candidate for such a substitution. So the pros and cons seemed to balance in an annoyingly inconclusive fashion, and there weren’t really very many solid facts either.
He glared down at the printed page on his lap : there was no shortage of facts there. Oldchesters fort—Ortolanacum according to the Notitia Dignitatum, or Ortoligium if one preferred the later Ravenna Cosmography—measured 200 metres by 130, enclosing rather more than five acres, and had variously housed 500 mounted men or a thousand infantry. In the reign of Severus it had housed the 1st Lusitanians for a time and had then been the undoubted home of the 7th Dacians, a crack cavalry regiment drawn from one of the great horse tribes the Romans had conquered.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to be transplanted from the plains of the Danube to the wild north-west frontier of the Empire.
It was not really so far from his imagination at all: in their day the East Lancashire Rifles, drawn from the smoggy cities of industrial England, had frozen on the rim of the world above the Khyber Pass on another north-west frontier. That was fifteen hundred years later, but the price and obligation of empire, no matter whose empire, was still the same: some men must live and die far from home without questioning their fate. Indeed, it was the natural order of things, natural for the Dacians as it had been for the East Lanes.
Butler sighed. The Ala Daciana was certainly not to be pitied, serving its years on the Great Wall, but rather to be envied for drawing such clear-cut and honourable duty. There would be precious little call for “aid to the civil power” on the Wall.
The train gave a sudden convulsive jerk and then stopped again. For some reason that escaped Butler it had stalled just short of the Oxford platform, alongside a somewhat tatty cemetery—obviously not the last resting place of the Hobsons —as though to remind him and the other passengers of the final destination of all journeys.
The real Oxford would be on the other side, of course. His gaze followed his thought across the carriage.
The clutter of the railway sidings along the main line was dominated by a pair of enormous cranes. But beyond them he could see the famous vista of towers and spires, clustered like so many rockets on their launching pads.
Butler frowned and shook his head. The image was altogether too fanciful for his liking: it reminded him that this was a dangerous territory for simple men, with too many private lines linking it with the centres of power and influence. Sir Frederick and Stocker had both warned him to tread carefully in it, and even Audley himself, who was a product of such a place and at home in it, had treated it with uncharacteristic respect.
But there was still no reason why he should let it throw him off balance before he had even set foot in it. Caution and respect were one thing, but superstitious fear was another.
I can be dangerous too, in my fashion, thought Butler, tightening his regimental tie.
All the same he watched warily through the windows of the taxi which bore him towards the King’s College, as though the nature of the hazards would be immediately apparent.
But at first it seemed a dull, provincial town like any other —if anything even duller, with its dingy, lavatorial station, jammed car parks and anonymous shops stacked with electrical goods and soft furnishings. Nor did the inhabitants seem any different—no flowing gowns or flowing student hair —from those of any other provincial city.
The only distinctive thing was the number of chalked slogans, which ranged from somewhat banal appeals for action against Greece and South Africa, and support for the NLF, Women’s Lib and Black Power, to the rather more intriguing contentions that Proctors are Paper Tigers and Hitler is Alive and Living in—the traffic surged forward just too quickly for him to discover where the Führer had been hiding all those years.
Then abruptly brick and plate glass gave way to mellow stone an
d towers and crenellations and pinacles and porticoes. Butler craned his neck and twisted in his seat like any tourist to catch the famous views, absurdly pleased that the place wasn’t going to let him down after all, that the distant glimpse of spires had not been a mirage.
“Dick’s, sir,” said the taxi-driver.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The King’s College, sir—you’re looking at it.”
It looked like a king’s college, certainly—the richly painted escutcheons over the gatehouse gave it a properly royal appearance, and one of the shields bore the golden leopards and lilies he had seen on the Master’s notepaper.
Butler fumbled for the fare—Dick’s?—damned little newfangled coins already losing their freshly minted shine—had the fellow really said “Dick’s”?
He stepped out on to the pavement, squared his shoulders —only a yokel would be overawed by huge, iron-bound gates and gold leaf—and strode under the archway.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The voice issued confidently from what looked like a booking-office window beside a thickly papered notice-board: the Porter’s Lodge—even a yokel knew that every college had a Porter.
“My name’s Butler. I believe the Master is expecting me.”
The Porter lowered his eyes for a moment to a pad in front of him. “Colonel Butler, sir—yes, sir—Sir Geoffrey is expecting you, sir—he said for you to go straight to his lodging, but I don’t believe he’s there at the moment, sir—“
“Saw ‘im go into the Chapel coupla minutes ago,” another voice sounded from the bowels of the lodge.
“I think he’s in the Chapel, sir,” continued the Porter unfalteringly. “I’ll have him told of your arrival, sir.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” replied Butler quickly. All this was the Master’s territory, but the Chapel had a neutral sound to it. Besides, in his own lodging the Master would probably want to ply him with sherry or madeira, neither of which he could abide at any time. “If you can just direct me to the Chapel—“ he stopped as it occurred to him suddenly that the Master might be attending some obscure late-morning devotions “—unless, that is—“
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