the first place. We never had this kind of trouble in Miss Girling’s day!’
Once again Landor showed his quality.
‘I’m glad you called, Miss Disney,’ he said blandly. ‘We were just talking about you, the superintendent and I. I know he wants to ask you a few questions. Please use my study for any interviews you care to make, Superintendent. I’ll be with the Registrar if needed.’
He was out of the room before anyone could reply. Miss Disney seemed ready to pursue him through the door, with or without opening it, but Dalziel stepped forward smartly.
‘Please sit down, Miss Disney. You have had a trying day. These things hit some of us more than others, I know. It’s a question of sensitivity.’
Oh Christ, scribbled Pascoe in his neat shorthand. Extreme Unction. Oily Dalziel oozing over stormy Disney.
Neatly he scratched it out and waited.
Miss Disney glared at Dalziel, decided here was a soulmate, and made her way round to Landor’s chair behind the large desk, which seemed to swell visibly as though to take on the proportions of its new incumbent.
‘Well?’
‘Mr Landor told us how distressed you were this morning.’
Miss Disney was obviously reluctant to agree with any diagnosis from the principal, but Dalziel pressed on.
‘I believe you were against the despoiling of the garden?’
It was a good word. Disney nodded emphatically, her chins and jowls tossing in sprightly dance.
‘Indeed I was. I am! For many reasons. It has always been a place of comfort and repose for those of us not utterly unresponsive to natural beauty. It is almost the only remaining link with the college as it was before all this. And if this were not enough, it is in its own way, which is a very real way, a shrine to the memory of dear Miss Girling.’
She sniffed and took an absurdly small lace handkerchief from her capacious sleeve. Pascoe would have been less surprised to see her pull out the flags of the nations of Europe all strung together.
Dalziel clucked sympathetically.
‘Forgive me for asking,’ he said in a low, vibrantly sincere voice television interviewers use when questioning the tragically bereaved, ‘but why did you say that it was Miss Girling when the – er – decedent’s remains came into view?’
‘It was silly, I know,’ said Miss Disney almost girlishly. ‘But dear Alison was so much in my mind, as you might imagine. And when I saw the bones and the hair …’
She broke off and looked up at the portrait on the wall.
‘She had such lovely red hair, you know. You can’t imagine how it used to be here in the old days. Just a handful of staff and a hundred or so girls. We knew them all by name. Al’s gals, we used to call them. Such nice, decent girls too. Whereas now …!’
‘So it was the hair …?’ prompted Dalziel.
‘Yes, Superintendent. It was as if Alison had risen from her distant grave to reproach me for permitting all this to happen.’
‘So you passed out?’ Dalziel’s tone was suddenly casually conversational again.
‘I fainted,’ said Miss Disney, moving just as rapidly from the submissive female to her previous role. ‘I must say, Inspector, that I cannot really see how this line of enquiry is relevant. It’s not the uncovering but the burying of these bones which is surely of interest. And that must have happened at least six years ago. Now I must go and teach the remnants of my class.’
She stalked to the door, but paused there a moment as if reluctant to exit on an altogether damnatory note.
‘I’ll tell you one thing, Superintendent,’ she said, reinstating him in his proper rank. ‘Those bones are not all that is buried here. This is no longer a happy place. There is godlessness at work in this college, on all levels. Good day to you.’
Pascoe managed to get the door open before she walked through it. He closed it gently behind her.
Dalziel had seated himself at the principal’s desk and was dialling a number on the internal phone.
‘Hello, love,’ he said. ‘Any chance of some tea for a thirsty policeman? In the principal’s study. Oh, he has, has he? That’s nice. For two? That’s right, tea for two.’
He put the phone down.
‘They’re making us welcome,’ he said. ‘Well now, Sergeant, this is more your kind of scene, as they say. I’m out of my depth here in all this academic intellectual stuff. So what do you make of it?’
Pascoe did not believe a word of this modest disclaimer, but he knew better than to say so. He had a degree in Social Sciences, a qualification Dalziel frequently treated with mock-deference. But when he asked you a question, he listened to what was said, despite all appearances to the contrary.
‘It’s not an unusual kind of situation here,’ he said. ‘The educational expansion programme of the sixties took places like this used to be by the neck and shook them up a bit. Government started thinking industrially about education, that is in terms of plant efficiency, productivity, quotas, etc. Small colleges such as this was could become four or five times larger in as many years.’
‘Could? You mean there was a choice?’ Dalziel sounded faintly incredulous.
‘To some extent. You can’t be too autocratic with an educational system based on liberal principles. Really what it boiled down to was the willingness of those in charge to co-operate. If you dug your heels in, progress was slow. If you went out after money and expansion, it could be relatively rapid. Landor’s obviously an expansionist.’
‘And her?’ Dalziel nodded at the portrait.
‘It sounds as if she was the other kind. A digger-in of heels.’
Dalziel suddenly seemed to lose interest.
‘What do you think Disney meant by “godlessness”? Are they groping each other during her lectures, or something?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pascoe thoughtfully. ‘Probably just that. Your modern students have come a long way from “Al’s gals” I should imagine. But I can probably find out. I’ve been looking at the staff-list. There’s someone here I was at university with. She’s a lecturer in the Social Sciences department.’
He kept his tone casual but Dalziel, as always, was on to him in a flash.
‘She?’
‘Yes. She. It was a mixed university.’
‘She,’ said Dalziel again, nodding as if some dreadful fear about his sergeant had been confirmed. ‘A close friend?’
‘Close enough. What’s next on the agenda, sir?’
‘Still close?’
‘Hardly. It’s
