Death of an Old Goat (14 page)

‘Oh, I don't think so, Inspector. No, I didn't get any feeling of that. And, of course, he would be well past it, even if he had once had that . . . interest, shall we say.'

‘Some people never get past it,' said Royle optimistically.

‘And, you know, when I said he didn't show special interest in any one part of the conversation, I should perhaps have added that he really didn't show much interest in anything at all. He was just making conversation, more or less automatically. He seemed to me terribly old and tired — one felt almost sorry for him, felt he must have undertaken something well beyond his strength.' Mr Doncaster's loquacity paused as he tried to find a way of summing it up. ‘Most of the evening he sort of flickered, you know, as if he was about to go out.'

‘He's certainly snuffed it now, anyway,' said Royle coarsely. Mr Doncaster, after a fraction of a second for consideration, allowed himself the luxury of a man-to-man laugh, though he carefully kept any suggestion of coarseness out of it.

‘You didn't see anything in his behaviour to the other guests that was in any way unusual, did you?' asked Royle,
wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, and fingering the sweaty arm-pits of his shirt.

‘Nothing, really; nothing at all. There
was
the little episode at the end of the evening — the one involving Professor Wickham. No doubt you have already been told about that?'

What had the Wickhams done to people that every one of their guests should remember this so clearly, and bring it up? Never had hospitality received such ill returns. Royle indicated that he had had several accounts of the episode already.

‘What did you make of it, sir?' he asked.

Mr Doncaster deprecated the ‘sir' with an elegant, almost Italianate gesture of the hands.

‘Personally, I wouldn't make too much of it. I doubt whether it had any importance. I'm not trying to teach you your job, of course, but I think on the whole that the incident only stands out because — well, frankly, it hadn't been a particularly bright evening all in all, and so one noticed this, and in a way welcomed it.'

‘You don't think there could have been any hostility between the two from way back, then?'

‘That I can't say, of course. But I don't remember anyone suggesting that they had met before — correct me if I'm wrong. And you know these old men
do
get a little cantankerous at times, especially when their comfort isn't being attended to.' He quickly amended this: ‘When they imagine that their comfort is not being attended to.' He had remembered that the Wickhams were, after all, parents. ‘It's not
all
that easy to keep people of that age happy. Personally I wouldn't pay overmuch attention to the matter — just a trivial incident.'

Royle had noticed, however, that he had thought it worth talking about at some length.

‘You yourself were at Oxford, I believe,' he said, conversationally. He had found out after struggling through
the school prospectus that Mr Doncaster was MA (Oxon), and had ascertained by telephoning the librarian at police headquarters in Sydney that this meant he had obtained his degree at Oxford. He had later confirmed this with Bill Bascomb, not trusting librarians.

‘That's true,' said Doncaster.

‘Did you know the old chap there then?' asked Royle.

‘No, I'm afraid our paths never crossed.'

Doncaster wasn't being very forthcoming, but Royle decided that with an old and valued client like him he could afford for once to betray his ignorance.

‘Can you tell me one thing?' he asked with an air of exasperation. ‘Practically everyone around here seems to have been to Oxford College, and yet not a soul seems to have clapped eyes on Belville-Smith while they were there. Seems bloody unlikely, if you'll pardon my saying so. Unless he was some kind of hermit.'

Mr Doncaster put on his kindest air, the one he used while attempting to explain the Wars of the Roses to the more backward classes, and tried to look as if he thought Royle's ignorance was not just natural but even in some way commendable.

‘I see it must be confusing for you,' he said, and went smoothly into a detailed account of the size of Oxford University, the large number of different colleges that made up the University, the independence of those same colleges, the organization of the tutorial system, and several other related points. He was so experienced at exposition of this kind — unlike Bill Bascomb, who always assumed that anything he knew was something any idiot ought to know — that Royle seemed to be taking some of it in.

‘I get you,' he said at the end. ‘So if you weren't in the same college as he was, the chances are you wouldn't clap eyes on him.'

‘Exactly,' said Doncaster.

‘Even if you were studying English.'

‘Even so. Though you might attend some of his lectures in that case, that is if he gave any.'

‘None of that lot out there did, or so they say.'

‘Well, of course, they
could
be telling the truth,' said Mr Doncaster. ‘People go to fewer lectures there than they would here. And I must say my impression was that he was not the most cogent or inspiring of speakers — whatever he may have been in his younger days.'

‘And you weren't studying English . . .' said Royle.

‘History,' said Doncaster.

‘And you weren't in his college?'

‘That's right, I was at St Catherine's.'

Doncaster noticed that — as with most Australians — saying ‘St Catherine's' meant no more than if he had said ‘St John's' or ‘St Edmund Hall'. All equally conjured up a picture of lawned quadrangles, jovial porters and ivy-cluttered walls. Except, of course, that for Royle, judged by his face, no image was conjured up at all. He might just as well have said ‘St Francis of Assisi's.'

‘When were you studying at Uni?' asked Royle, begining to make I-might-as-well-be-getting-along motions in his chair.

‘Just before the war,' said Doncaster. ‘I was lucky, I got my study in before I did my bit. Oxford wasn't quite the same afterwards, I'm told, with all those ex-servicemen around.'

‘Ex-servicemen?' said Royle incredulously. ‘You mean people actually came out of the forces and went up to Uni?'

‘Yes indeed. And it made things enormously crowded there. Most of the lectures were full, and libraries too. It wasn't like that in pre-war days. I suppose it has gone back to normal now. I certainly hope so.'

‘I bet it's not like in your day,' said Royle, edging forward in his seat. ‘Lots of bloody long-haired layabouts if the lot we get here is anything to go on. Wasn't Professor Wickham there after the war, by the by — about 1947 or
1948? He said something about ex-servicemen, I recall, though I didn't get his point at the time.'

‘I believe he was, but I've never discussed Oxford with him. He's younger than I, so I doubt if he can have been there in my time. And of course I had no thought of coming to Australia at that stage, so I didn't go out of my way to mix with the Australian groups there.'

Royle thought he detected a note of pommie-bastardry there, but he let it pass.

‘I believe his wife followed him to Oxford later, didn't she?'

‘I believe so. As I say, I was not there myself, but I
do
seem to remember some talk about her from friends. You know the sort of story that goes round . . .'

‘I do,' said Royle emphatically, getting interested at last. ‘That's something that could be important. What kind of talk was this?'

‘No, it wouldn't be fair to say anything, Inspector. After all, the memory is very vague, it was entirely second-hand, and it could have been a quite different girl. Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything at all.'

Royle felt like telling him to give him the story, whatever girl it was about, but he left the subject regretfully.

‘Now, after the party, sir, you came back here, I suppose?'

‘Yes, indeed; I left immediately after the Professor, and I suppose I'd be back here five minutes later.'

‘Is there anyone who can testify to that?'

‘I'm afraid not, Inspector. You'll just have to take my word.' He gave Royle a straight, piercing look which was meant to convince him that a schoolmaster's word was as good as a parson's any day. Royle had his own opinion of schoolmasters, however. And of parsons.

‘It would help if anyone saw you arrive home,' he said. ‘You don't have a gate-keeper, for instance.'

‘Alas, no. I let myself in. We do have a night porter, but
I'm quite sure he didn't see me. He is inclined to doze. I believe he is a postman in the daylight hours — he's saving up for his passage home, poor man.'

‘And you live alone, do you, like Miss Tambly?'

‘
Not
like Miss Tambly,' said Doncaster, ‘but, yes, I am a bachelor, if that's what you mean, Inspector.'

‘Well,' said Royle, ‘I think that will probably be all — at least for the moment, sir,' and he heaved his bulk into the air. A moment later he wished he hadn't.

‘Have a small drink, Inspector,' said Mr Doncaster as he usually did after his interviews with the police. He waited till they were over so there could be no question of corrupting the force. His scruples were quite lost on Inspector Royle, who merely cursed him mentally for not asking before he had made the effort of getting himself up. The thought crossed his mind that not one of the academics had offered him a drop, though he was pretty sure most of them kept stacks of it in their rooms and he'd actually seen yards of it in Alice O'Brien's. He thanked his God for the Australian private schools.

‘Just a quick one, then,' he said.

• • •

When he got back to the station, in moderately mellow mood, Royle put through a call to Bill Bascomb at Menzies College. It was just before lunch time, so he knew he would find him at home.

‘Anything your end?' he asked.

‘Give us a chance, Inspector,' said Bill. ‘I've only been on it a few hours. I'm not used to the game.'

‘Have you had any ideas about how to set about it, then?'

‘Well, I've sent a telegram to a friend at Oxford. He's working on the
Oxford Mail
— that's the local paper — and I thought he might be able to look in his files for anything interesting about the people who were up there — Wickham and the rest.'

‘Criminal things, you mean?'

‘Well, not necessarily. I presume you'll have been in touch with the Oxford police over that.' (Bloody young twit, trying to teach me my job, thought Royle. He hadn't.) ‘It just occurred to me that there might be something not criminal, but which would give us a link between Belville-Smith and someone here. College gossip, some old scandal or other. Then we could follow it up — you know, try to trip them up, or accuse them of covering up and get them confused.'

‘Good idea,' said Royle heartily. ‘None of them will admit to having set eyes on him before, so if we get a lead like that we might be able to twist the knife a bit.'

‘Exactly,' said Bill, sounding as if he didn't quite like the imagine. ‘Then I'm going to try a bit of probing at coffee-time tomorrow.'

‘OK,' said Royle, ‘but don't make it too obvious. The last thing we want is for anyone to think you're in this with me.'

‘I'll be as crafty as I know how,' said Bill, ‘but I don't think anyone will twig. After all, we're pretty unlikely bedfellows.'

‘Too bloody right,' said Inspector Royle.

W
HEN HE ARRIVED
at work the next morning, at his usual time of ten to ten-thirty, Bill Bascomb was surprised by the look of vindictive hatred which he received from Professor Wickham as they passed in the corridor. It was a why-do-I-engage-these-Oxford-adolescents look, and it boded little good for Bill's future. Deciding that extreme measures were
warranted by his new status as Watson to Royle's Sherlock (or possibly vice versa) he did what he would have done in any case — listened outside the Professor's door. Owing to the ‘temporary', jerry-built nature of the sprawling hut in which the English Department was accommodated, he soon found out the cause of his unpopularity.

‘Do you know what that fool Bascomb has done?' Professor Wickham nearly shouted down the phone, for once forgetting to address his wife with his usual wheedling ceremoniousness. ‘He's sent a telegram to some idiot friend at Oxford, someone on the
Mail
, asking him for anything he could dig up on any of the Oxford people around here. I've never heard of such bloody cheek.'

There was a long pause. Clearly Lucy had never heard of such bloody cheek either. It was one of those rare occasions on which they were completely at one. The honeymoon period between Mrs Wickham and the latest young recruit from Oxford was obviously destined to be even shorter than usual.

‘Me, and Day, and Doncaster,' went on Wickham. ‘But he's also put the other names in, just in case. Except the O'Brien, of course . . . Well, they're in this together, that's obvious — some childish nonsense they've thought up . . . No, I couldn't get the thing suppressed. It's already sent. Wylie the post-master up here said it was more than his job was worth, but he thought I ought to know . . . Yes, of course I gave him something . . . How could it be much when I never have much?'

Bill Bascomb went busily into the secretary's office as someone came along the corridor. Coming out a minute later with some unnecessary stationery, he heard Wickham say: ‘I don't see how he could be on to that. There was never anything in the papers. It's just black ingratitude, and that's what really gets me: you give a chap a job, only just down, nothing in writing except this supposed article which will never see the light of day I'm willing to bet, and
when you expect an ounce of loyalty, this is your reward . . . I imagine it's just some childish itch to play detective . . . Why I let him go on to the permanent staff I'll never know. I must have been off my head.'