sympathize,’ said Landor, smiling. ‘I feel much the same when I see the way you go about your work, Superintendent.’
‘Sorry?’ said Dalziel turning. ‘What’s that you said?’
He cupped a large hand to a proportionally large ear.
If the buggers get clever, he had once told Pascoe, pretend you can’t hear. Then pretend you can’t understand. Nothing’s funny if it’s repeated and explained.
Landor shook his head, still smiling.
‘Now, Superintendent,’ he said. ‘We want to help your enquiries in every possible way, of course. So just fire away with any questions you like.’
Oh God, groaned Pascoe. Honours even, so he extends the hand of friendship. Give the bull a scratch!
‘What was going on out there?’ asked Dalziel, pointing to the staff garden which the room overlooked. The mechanical digger had gone now but the deep furrows of its progress were still clearly visible. Over the cavity left by the removal of the concrete base a canvas shelter had been erected. Men were moving slowly, efficiently around, watched by a silent crowd of students on the edge.
‘We’re extending on all sides as you can see,’ said Landor. ‘A new biology lab is planned there, so naturally we had to move the statue.’
‘Who was out there watching?’
‘The principal was good enough to make out a list, sir,’ said Pascoe smartly in his best young executive manner, making a feint towards his brass-bound genuine-leather document case, an object of some derision from Dalziel when it first appeared.
‘Of course, it’s almost certainly incomplete,’ began Landor, but Dalziel waved aside his apologies along with Pascoe’s contribution and, by implication, any further interest in the list.
‘Why were they watching?’ he asked, scratching his inner left thigh voluptuously.
‘I’m sure I don’t know, Superintendent,’ laughed Landor, still pursuing his sweetness-and-light policy. ‘In most cases it would merely be the old hole-in-the-road syndrome …’
‘What?’
Landor was wise enough not to explain. Pascoe gave him a mental tick.
‘Was that all?’ asked Dalziel as if an explanation had been given.
‘Well, no. There were emotions other than mere curiosity on display, though I don’t see what they can have to do …’ He tailed off thoughtfully, then started again with renewed vigour.
‘Miss Cargo of our Art Department was there for a special reason. Concern, I suppose you’d call it. You see, she had designed the statue and was naturally concerned to see it suffered no damage.’
Pascoe was taking shorthand notes, a skill Dalziel mocked as feminine.
‘Then there were some older members of staff who were there to express their disapproval, I felt.’
‘Disapproval? Because their garden was being dug up?’
‘Partly that. But partly also because the statue was a memorial. They felt it smacked of sacrilege to pull it up.’
‘A memorial? Who to?’
In answer Landor picked up the bronze plaque from his desk and handed it over. Dalziel read it carefully with an expression of grotesque devoutness. Like a close-up in Songs of Praise on the telly, thought Pascoe.
‘Alison Girling,’ he said, enunciating each syllable with great care like a child reading.
‘My predecessor,’ explained Landor.
‘She wasn’t old,’ observed Dalziel. ‘What happened to her?’
‘A tragic accident,’ said Landor, doing with his voice what Dalziel had done with his face. ‘On holiday abroad at Christmas. She was a close friend of some of the senior staff here. They felt it deeply when the statue had to be moved.’
‘Who are they, Mr Landor?’ asked Dalziel. ‘And how deeply did they feel it?’
‘Well, Miss Scotby, she’s my Senior Tutor, and Miss Disney, who’s in charge of our divinity department, and very much the moral conscience of the college.’ He gave a snort which might have been amusement or amazement. ‘It was rather bizarre when those bones started to fall from the base of the statue. Miss Disney let out a kind of shriek and screamed, “It’s Miss Girling!” A Gothic notion, don’t you think?’
‘Bizarre,’ echoed Dalziel, as though savouring the word. ‘Gothic. Get that, Sergeant? You mean she reacted as if it was Miss Girling’s tombstone rather than just a memorial? Where is Miss Girling buried, as a matter of interest?’
‘I’m not certain. Austria, I believe. That’s where she died. It was all several months before I first came to the place, of course.’
‘Of course. Were you here when the memorial was erected, Mr Landor?’
The question was dropped very casually. Landor answered it just as casually.
‘No. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t take up the post till the beginning of the following academic year, September that is. And now I come to think of it, I’m sure the statue was up when I came for an interview here the previous March.’
‘Good, good,’ said Dalziel, suddenly expansive. ‘Very good.’
He came to a halt before an oil painting of a large amiable woman with warm blue eyes and bright red hair.
‘Why, it’s Miss Girling,’ he said, peering closely at the frame. ‘She’s well remembered, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Landor drily. ‘She is.’
There was a perfunctory knock at the door and a large well-rounded woman burst in. She had a formidable chest development, but it looked quite solid with no hint of a central cleavage, and seemed the natural descendant of a series of fleshy outcrops which began with her lower lip and progressed downward and outward through three chins.
She looked indignant, but this meant nothing, Pascoe decided. Her features didn’t seem equipped to deal satisfactorily with any other expression.
It turned out, however, that she was indignant.
‘Good morning, Miss Disney,’ began Landor. ‘I’m rather busy …’
‘Principal!’ she interrupted, ‘I really cannot tolerate this. I am scheduled this afternoon to conduct an extremely important seminar on Isaiah. But there’s no one there. No one!’
She paused triumphantly.
Landor eyed her warily.
‘Where are they, you ask? I’ll tell you. I’ll show you. They are there.’
A dramatic arm was stretched out towards the window and the garden beyond.
‘Look
