An Advancement of Learning

by Reginald Hill

  Pascoe was reading the sheet before the man had closed the door behind him.

  A car allowance had been paid based on the mileage between the college and Chester. He glanced at the copy of Fallowfield’s curriculum vitae which along with those of the rest of the staff he had obtained a couple of days before. Fallowfield had been the senior biology master at Coltsfoot College near Chester which Pascoe knew as one of the modern, reputedly progressive, public schools. The route to Chester would pass, or could be made to pass, conveniently close to south Manchester, to the airport. Somehow Alison Girling’s car had got there, had left the college that foggy night in December and made its way slowly, crawlingly, across the Pennines, while Miss Girling herself almost certainly lay in a thin cocoon of earth in the hole in the college garden.

  But if Fallowfield were at the wheel, then how did he get his own car to Chester? He couldn’t just have left it parked at the college. Even in the holidays there would be a sufficient number of staff, academic, administrative and maintenance, on the premises to notice it. Perhaps someone had. He hadn’t asked. But no; it would have been too wild a risk to take anyway.

  And above all, why should Fallowfield have wanted to kill this woman he had just met for the first time? As far as they knew.

  It’s all wrong, thought Pascoe gloomily, I’m like Dalziel. It would be pleasant for once to find everything nice and neat. Two murders, one killer, who commits suicide. Bingo! then we could get back to reality and start catching some thieves.

  He took the expense sheet out to show Dalziel who had abandoned the shade of the study and taken a couple of chairs and a small folding table out on to the lawn where he sat with deliberate irony about four feet from the hole, now boarded over, in which Miss Girling had been found.

  ‘Let the buggers see we’re still here,’ he had said.

  ‘I reckon there’s some here as are dying to see the back of us.’

  Now he looked at the expense sheet, shading his eyes from the sun.

  ‘That doesn’t help,’ he said as if it was Pascoe’s own personal fault.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘He stopped three nights?’

  ‘I noticed that.’

  ‘And he should only have stopped one.’

  Whoever it was who had checked the expense sheet had with exquisite parsimony deducted fifteen shillings from the total payable. This was itemized at two nights’ stay in the college, at seven and six per night, which were not chargeable to expenses.

  ‘Cheap,’ said Pascoe. ‘Is that what we pay?’

  Dalziel ignored him.

  ‘It means he came, unnecessarily in the eyes of the office staff, on the Friday. I wonder why?’

  ‘Is it important, without a motive?’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune, lad.’

  Pascoe shrugged.

  ‘I’ve given him up for Girling. But I think he’s a strong runner for Anita.’

  ‘And no connection between the two?’

  ‘No, sir.Coincidence. Or perhaps the connection is merely that the discovery of the body under the statue put the idea of murder before everybody. You could get away with it, well, nearly. The body had lain there all those years and might have lain there for ever if it hadn’t been for a turn of fate.’

  Dalziel yawned mightily, sunlight glistening off his fillings.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘You know, I’m sick of this place and most of the people in it. I don’t understand it, that’s my trouble. My generation, most of ‘em, worked bloody hard, and accepted deprivation, and fought a bloody war, and put our trust in politicians, so our kids could have the right to come to places like this. And after a few days here, I wonder if it was bloody well worth it.’

  He was silent. Pascoe felt obliged to say something.

  ‘These places don’t just train people, you know. They help them to grow up in the right kind of mental environment.’

  Dalziel looked at him more coldly than ever before.

  ‘I bet you grew up more in your first six months with the force than in the twenty years before.’

  Pascoe shrugged again. There were arguments, he knew; but he couldn’t be bothered, didn’t have the energy or inclination, to use them now.

  ‘To get back to the case,’ he said, ‘what now?’

  ‘Me,’ said Dalziel, ‘I’m going to sit here, and see who comes to talk to me. Then I’m going to drive into Headquarters just to liven things up there. As for you, well, there’re just two or three things that bother me still about Fallowfield. Why no note? Who had a go at his cottage before Disney? And why did he come all the way to college before killing himself? Let me know the answers before supper. And then I’ll tell you who killed everybody.’

  He closed his eyes and began snoring so realistically that it was hard to tell whether he was really asleep or not.

  Some hope, thought Pascoe. This is one that won’t be solved before Christmas. Girling’s perhaps never.

  One of Dalziel’s questions kept running through his head. Why did Fallowfield come all the way to college to kill himself? I know the answer to that, he thought. But if he did, he wasn’t telling himself.

  Stuff it, he thought and snatched half an hour to read the Sunday papers. There was nothing about the previous night’s events. Too late perhaps. The murders themselves got a bit of space though the dailies had picked most of the meat from the bones. Dalziel was mentioned. They made him sound quite good. I suppose he is quite good, thought Pascoe reluctantly.

  Out of the window he saw the fat man stir and stretch himself. It was time, he decided, that he should do the same.

  The rest of the afternoon he wasted, talking first to Disney, then to Sandra. Both denied absolutely removing any suicide note. Disney was back in her old form. A couple of hours’ meditation had rinsed any vestigial traces of guilt from her lily-white soul.

  Pascoe could have gladly pushed her teeth down her throat, but he had to admit he was convinced by the time he left her. An after-effect of the Disney treatment was that he was twice as rough with Sandra as he might else have been, bringing her close to tears, but again coming away convinced she had been telling the truth.

  He then spent more than an hour searching and researching the cottage and, after that, the laboratory. Both searches were doomed to failure, he knew before he started. But something in himself demanded that they should be done again.

  When he returned to the study, it was fast approaching dinner time and Dalziel, red as a Victoria plum, had just come back from town. He noted Pascoe’s frame of mind and for once exercised some tact. From somewhere he had obtained a jugful of ice-cubes and a soda syphon. He splashed an ounce of Glen Grant into a glass, followed it with a handful of ice and a jet of soda, and handed it silently to his sergeant.

  ‘No luck?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither. You’d think I had the plague. Every bugger at HQ thinks I’m having the time of my life.’

  He emptied his glass and said diffidently, ‘They’ll have looked in his clothes, of course.’

  ‘I should think so.’

  Pascoe too finished his drink, taking an ice-cube into his mouth and crushing it between his teeth.

  ‘But I’ll go and see.’

  ‘As you will. You could phone.’

  ‘No. I’ll look for myself. It’s absurd. There’s something, I’ll swear. Perhaps when I’ve cleared away all these impossible possibilities … And I’ll check with the ambulance men just in case.’

  ‘You think this note’s important.’

  Pascoe stared at his superior.

  ‘You said he seemed the kind of man who would want to explain himself.’

  ‘Did I? Then it must be true.’

  After Pascoe had left, the fat man hefted thoughtfully in his hand the set of master keys he had taken from Sandra Firth.

  ‘Me,’ he murmured to himself, ‘I’ll just have my dinner and do a bit of pedigree checking.’

  Di
nner was particularly good and he washed it down with the rest of his Glen Grant, which in its turn brought on the need to rest. It was almost nine o’clock when he finally let himself stealthily into the admin. block.

  After all, he told himself, as he gently eased open a filing cabinet drawer in the registrar’s office, half the bloody students in the place have seen them, so why not me?

  Them were the staff’s confidential files. He skipped lightly through them, pausing here and there, till he came to Fallowfield’s. Now he lit a cigarette, sat back at his ease and began to read slowly and thoroughly.

  His academic qualifications he had already seen on the curriculum vitae. They were excellent, a very good first degree and a couple of high post-graduate qualifications. But it was in the comments made by those who taught and employed him that Dalziel was most interested. He read the letter from the headmaster of Coltsfoot College twice. It was couched in terms of high praise. Great stress was laid on Fallowfield’s ability to influence thought, his progressive thinking and his pre-eminent suitability to work with older students. Almost too much stress, thought Dalziel. He had many years’ experience of reading and hearing between the lines.

  On an impulse he picked up the phone and when he got the operator, gave her the number of Coltsfoot College. You never knew your luck.

  While she was trying to establish a connection, he helped himself to a few select student files and began to read them. He didn’t know his luck.

  Pascoe knew his luck. It was rotten. The clothes had contained nothing helpful, the doctor who had examined Fallowfield could offer no useful contribution other than reiterating the cause and probable time of death; and the ambulance men, who were off-duty and had to be tracked to their homes, were no help either and in fact took umbrage at the suggestion that something other than the body might have been removed from the lab.

  Pascoe realized he had not been as diplomatic as was his wont and after looking in at Headquarters where the heavy ironies of his mock-envious colleagues did not help, he went round to his flat for a change of clothing and a bite to eat. There was a stack of mail, mostly circulars, and he tossed them on the table beside the telephone. He made himself a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich and sat down in the ancient but extremely comfortable armchair which stood beneath the open window.

  An hour later he woke with the cup of cold tea miraculously unspilt on the arm of the chair and the sandwich, one bite missing, still clutched in his right hand. He saw the time, groaned and pushed himself unsteadily out of the chair, knocking the teacup on to the floor. Cursing now he mopped up the mess with an antimacassar and pulled the phone towards him. This time it was his mail which fell to the carpet.

  He swore again, looking down at the colourful display. Threepence off this; half-price subscription to that; win half a million for a farthing. (Could you legally wager a non-legal coin?) It wouldn’t be so bad if he ever got any of the sexy stuff people were always complaining about. Still, he supposed it all brought revenue to the Post Office.

  It was time he reported in. Not that he had anything to report. He might as well send a letter.

  It came to him as he lifted the phone. He had known the answer all along. The mail! Fallowfield had gone to the college to post his note. Not for him the last letter confiscated by the police and read by the coroner. No, this was one note which was going to reach the addressee.

  And with the thought came another, almost instantaneously. Someone else had been a lot cleverer than he was. A lot cleverer and a lot quicker. Someone had broken into the college posting boxes last night. But whoever it was wasn’t just quick. Breaking into the boxes, looking for a letter in Fallowfield’s hand (he’d bet that all the letters opened had typed envelopes), this meant, could mean, probably meant, he knew that there was no letter in the cottage and no letter in the lab. How? The first was easy; the person who wrecked the house before Disney would have known, been fairly sure. But the lab? Sandra - it had to be Sandra. She must have gone through the sequence of events with any number of people, students and staff, before going to bed. Damn!

  So much for the letter then. If it had been in one of the boxes, then it was gone for ever. Anyone who was so keen to get it would surely have destroyed it instantly.

  ‘But was it in one of the boxes?’ asked Pascoe aloud. Three had been opened. Fallowfield would certainly have used the one nearest the lab block which was the one outside the bar. Or if not wishing to be seen, and it must have been after opening hours when he arrived at college, he would use the one by the side of the Old House. But he would never have bothered to walk over to the Students’ Union. So why all three? A blind perhaps. Or perhaps desperation; it wasn’t in the first, or the second; could it be in the third? And if it wasn’t, then perhaps there was no need to wish it goodbye. Perhaps it still did lie somewhere, waiting to be picked up … waiting …

  ‘It might just be!’ said Pascoe and dialled the telephone so rapidly he made a mistake and had to do it again.

  If he wanted Superintendent Dalziel, the college switchboard girl told him, he wasn’t in the study, he was in the registrar’s office (though what he was doing there, she didn’t know, the voice implied) and she would put him through there.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ snarled Dalziel.

  Pascoe didn’t waste time on apologies but tumbled out his theory as rapidly as he could.

  ‘And,’ he concluded, ‘I reckon it might still be there somewhere. It’s so obvious, perhaps he missed it. The staff must have somewhere they collect mail, pigeon-holes or something.’

  ‘Yes, they do. In the Senior Common Room. I remember seeing them.’

  ‘Well, perhaps that’s what Fallowfield did. Put it straight into someone’s pigeon-hole. It could still be there.’

  ‘Right. I’ll look. You get yourself back over here as quickly as possible. And here’s something to chew on while you’re coming.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Franny Roote is an old boy of guess where? Coltsfoot College. And he was interviewed for entry to this college on the Friday before the Monday when Girling died.’

  The phone went dead. It was nearly thirty miles to the college but Pascoe did it in just over twenty minutes. Even then he was nearly too late.

  Chapter 16

  …as the fable goeth of the basilisk, that if he see you first, you die for it; but if you see him first, he dieth …

  SIR FRANCIS BACON

  Op. Cit.

  The headmaster of Coltsfoot College had been most helpful once he had made clear his displeasure at being removed from a bid of seven diamonds at the bridge table.

  He had been very cautious at first until Dalziel had told him of Fallowfield’s death.

  ‘The poor man! Why did he -? I never thought - he seemed stable enough, very much so, but in that kind of person -‘

  ‘What kind of person?’ Dalziel had asked.

  ‘He was a giver, involved, you know. Dedicated to teaching and to learning. And not just his subject.’

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel drily. ‘He seems to have had very wide interests. We found books on witchcraft, magic

  ‘Oh yes. Of course, he didn’t believe, you understand. But he saw all these things as explorations of the human spirit, its heights, its depths, its potentials. Anything which extended the boundaries of our self-knowledge caught his interest.’

  ‘Like taking drugs?’

  ‘I have often heard him put a case for the licit use of certain drugs,’ said the headmaster cautiously. ‘But as for taking them himself, I have no reason to suspect -‘

  ‘No,’ said Dalziel. ‘Why did he leave you?’

  ‘For a new post.Career advancement. You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Was that all? Nothing more?’

  There was a moment’s pause as though the man at the other end of the line was balancing conflicting ideas in his mind.

  ‘This is a serious matter,’ reminded Dalziel in his best conscientious official voice.
<
br />   ‘Of course. There was no real reason for Fallowfield to leave us. No quarrel or anything like that. We’re a progressive school and the freedom we try to give the boys extends as far as the staff-room. Which is not always the case in modern education. But the situation did have its tensions. It’s like in politics, or even in your line of country, Superintendent, I dare say; what really irritates the radical is not the reactionary; no, it’s the man who is still more radical and insists on treating the first radical as a conservative stick-in-the-mud.’

  ‘And that’s how Fallowfield reacted on your staff.’

  ‘To some extent. I’ve oversimplified, of course. A school like mine requires a unified team to run it, with no sacrifice of individuality, of course. But Fallowfield was a loner. And …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I felt that many of our boys, even the eldest, were still too young, too naive if you like, properly to assimilate all the ideas that Fallowfield loved to play with. He was a stimulating man, a man gifted in dealing with the young. But I did begin to feel that the young had to be specially gifted to deal with him. I felt that the older young, if you take my meaning, students rather than pupils, would provide him with something more - er - suitable to get his teeth into.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dalziel, noting the turn of phrase. ‘Was he homosexual?’

  The progressive headmaster answered very quickly so that there would be no pause to be mistaken for shocked silence. At least, so Dalziel read the situation.

  ‘No more so than the rest of us in the profession. We’re all a bit queer I suppose,’ he said with an arch chuckle as though to prove the point. ‘I suppose all policemen in the same way are just a bit criminal. But whether he was a practising homosexual, I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘He didn’t practise with any of the boys then?’ said Dalziel, still hoping to pierce the man’s liberal carapace.

  ‘No! Of course not.’ Very emphatic.

  ‘I see. What can you tell me about a boy called Roote?’

  ‘Francis Roote? Of course! He’s up there as well. A charming boy, but a real individual, an all-rounder. I think we achieved our aim of educating the whole man there.’