pleasant detached house on a modern estate about eight miles down the coast. It overflowed with four children, a dog, a cat, and his wife. He loved them all dearly but was rarely in a hurry to return home to them. He had married late when the habit of peace and solitude had long since moulded itself comfortably around his shoulders, and it was not easily to be torn away.
‘What happened to you then?’ Henry asked after he had opened a can of light ale and jetted it expertly into the O of his mouth. ‘I noticed you disappeared when all the excitement started. The Law has arrived in all its majesty, controlled by a corpulence in excess even of mine. There have been comings and I have no doubt there will be goings. I have even seen one or two students with facial expressions distantly related to alert, intelligent interest. Simeon suspects it’s an act of Walt, and Walt firmly believes it’s an act of God.’
‘And the police?’
‘The police are less public about their suspicions. But it is exciting. At first I thought it was merely some animal remains. But it appears to be certainly human. I myself think the solution is simple.’
‘How?’
‘I have no doubt it will turn out to be a student jape. They knew all about the garden controversy. It was no secret and even if it had been, they have a supremely efficient intelligence system, if only in the military sense. So they get some bones, an anatomical specimen perhaps, and they bury them beneath the statue. What fun! Something to enliven a long, dull, very hot term.’
Fallowfield grinned wryly.
‘I should have thought the term had been sufficiently enlivened already.’
Henry was immediately apologetic.
‘My dear fellow, I never thought … that business is far too serious for anyone to be entertained by it.’
Fallowfield twisted in his chair so that he could see the other’s face. Its rotundities were set in a pattern of sympathetic seriousness.
‘Come off it, Henry. It’s the most entertaining thing that’s happened here in years. One of the few consolations I have in it all is the pleasure I know I am giving my colleagues.’
Henry shook his head in protest, then began laughing. Fallowfield joined in.
‘You see,’ he said.
‘No, Sam,’ said Henry. ‘It’s you. You just don’t strike one as a career man, so how can I worry about your career being ruined? It’s the effect on you personally that matters and you give a damn good impression of not giving a damn. Which makes it easier to spectate.’
‘Enjoy yourself as much as you can,’ said Fallowfield. ‘Who knows whose turn it’ll be next?’
He said it lightly, but it stopped the conversation for a minute.
‘You did bed the girl, didn’t you, Sam?’ asked Henry finally.
‘I’ve never denied it,’ replied the other.
‘Here?’ He indicated the cottage.
Fallowfield shrugged.
‘Up against a tree. Out among the dunes. In the principal’s study. What difference does it make where?’
‘She always struck me as a nice sort of girl.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘Every detail makes some difference, Sam,’ said Henry earnestly. ‘There’s a difference between casual promiscuity and a real love affair. And between malevolence and malleability. She says you conspired to get rid of her. I know this couldn’t be true. Now, does she really believe it, or is she merely being used?’
‘Used? How?’ Fallowfield’s tone was sharp.
‘Politically, I mean. Things have been quiet here for a while. They seem to have got all they wanted. But people like that youth Cockshut are never satisfied. And there’s something about Roote I don’t like either. They could be looking for another excuse to start trouble again.’
‘Is that all?’ Fallowfield laughed. ‘I suppose it might be something like that.’
‘You don’t seem much concerned.’
‘Why should I be? It’s all a game, isn’t it? It’s about as real as that.’
He pointed towards the distant flag which was being held now by one unidentifiable figure while another tried to strike an invisible ball into the hole. From his demeanour it seemed likely he had missed.
‘You’re talking of the game I love,’ said Henry, glad to be able to shift from the seriousness of the past couple of minutes.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fallowfield with a smile. ‘I try never to be frivolous about other people’s games, then they won’t be amused or offended by mine. Games are all metaphors after all, and often euphemistic at that. Ah, here comes happiness.’
A large shooting brake was jolting down the track which curved for a couple of furlongs from the metalled road down to the cottages. Even at a distance the car windows seemed incredibly crowded with faces.
‘Four adults, seven children,’ observed Fallowfield, ‘I still don’t know who belongs to whom. Adults or children. They go soon, thank God.’
‘I must be off this minute,’ said Henry, rising. ‘Thanks for the beer. Oh, by the way, I brought you some mail from your pigeon-hole. I didn’t know whether you would be in tomorrow. Not much. And one looks like your luncheon bill. You must come and have a bit of supper with us one night next week. Let me know when’ll suit you. ’Bye.’
‘I will. ‘Bye.’
They both knew he wouldn’t. He never did.
Henry made his way back through the cottage and out into the courtyard, waving his walking-stick with mock ferocity at the tidal race of small bodies which poured out of the now arrived car.
Behind him on the other side of the house, Fallowfield’s face had once more lost all trace of the animation it had held during Henry’s visit.
He was staring down at the single sheet of paper he had taken from the first envelope he had opened.
It was headed by that day’s date. The message was simple.
‘I must see you tonight.’
It was signed ‘Anita’.
Dalziel did not receive the report on the bones until after 7 P.M. Pascoe, anticipating fall-out from his superior’s wrath, had rung the lab at 5.30 to discover the report had been sent to the superintendent’s office. He re-routed it before reporting to Dalziel, who was much less condemnatory than might have been expected.
‘Limited minds,’ he said. ‘Specialization means you can only think about one thing in one way. I’m not specialized.’
‘No, sir,’ said Pascoe.
‘Traffic problems to pornographic films at Buckingham Palace. I’ll
