3

New Hall, with its Byzantine air, its sunken court and its shining domed hall like a peeled orange, reminded Cordelia of a harem; admittedly one owned by a sultan with liberal views and an odd predilection for clever girls, but a harem nonetheless. The college was surely too distractingly pretty to be conducive to serious study. She wasn’t sure, either, whether she approved of the obtrusive femininity of its white brick, the mannered prettiness of the shallow pools where the goldfish slipped like blood-red shadows between the water lilies, its artfully planted saplings. She concentrated on her criticism of the building; it helped to prevent her being intimidated.

She hadn’t called at the Lodge to ask for Miss Tilling, afraid that she might be asked her business or refused admission; it seemed prudent just to walk in and chance to luck. Luck was with her. After two fruitless enquiries for Sophia Tilling’s room, a hurrying student called back at her: “She doesn’t live in college but she’s sitting on the grass over there with her brother.”

Cordelia walked out of the shadow of the court into bright sunlight and over turf as soft as moss towards the little group. There were four of them, stretched out on the warm-smelling grass. The two Tillings were unmistakably brother and sister. Cordelia’s first thought was that they reminded her of a couple of Pre-Raphaelite portraits with their strong dark heads held high on unusually short necks, and their straight noses above curved, foreshortened upper lips. Beside their bony distinction, the second girl was all softness. If this were the girl who had visited Mark at the cottage, Miss Markland was right to call her beautiful. She had an oval face with a neat slender nose, a small but beautifully formed mouth, and slanted eyes of a strikingly deep blue which gave her whole face an oriental appearance at variance with the fairness of her skin and her long blond hair. She was wearing an ankle-length dress of fine mauve patterned cotton, buttoned high at the waist but with no other fastening. The gathered bodice cupped her full breasts and the skirt fell open to reveal a pair of tight-fitting shorts in the same material. As far as Cordelia could see, she wore nothing else. Her feet were bare and her long, shapely legs were untanned by the sun. Cordelia reflected that those white voluptuous thighs must be more erotic than a whole city of sunburnt limbs and that the girl knew it. Sophia Tilling’s dark good looks were only a foil to this gentler, more entrancing beauty.

At first sight the fourth member of the party was more ordinary. He was a stocky, bearded young man with russet curly hair and a spade-shaped face, and was lying on the grass by the side of Sophie Tilling.

All of them, except the blond girl, were wearing old jeans and open-necked cotton shirts.

Cordelia had come up to the group and had stood over them for a few seconds before they took any notice of her. She said: “I’m looking for Hugo and Sophia Tilling. My name is Cordelia Gray.”

Hugo Tilling looked up: “What shall Cordelia do, love and be silent.”

Cordelia said: “People who feel the need to joke about my name usually enquire after my sisters. It gets very boring.”

“It must do. I’m sorry. I’m Hugo Tilling, this is my sister, this is Isabelle de Lasterie and this is Davie Stevens.”

Davie Stevens sat up like a jack-in-the-box and said an amiable “Hi.” He looked at Cordelia with a quizzical intentness. She wondered about Davie. Her first impression of the little group, influenced perhaps by the college architecture, had been of a young sultan taking his ease with two of his favourites and attended by the captain of the guard. But, meeting Davie Stevens’ steady intelligent gaze, that impression faded. She suspected that, in this seraglio, it was the captain of the guard who was the dominant personality.

Sophia Tilling nodded and said, “Hullo.”

Isabelle did not speak but a smile beautiful and meaningless spread over her face.

Hugo said: “Won’t you sit down, Cordelia Gray, and explain the nature of your necessities?”

Cordelia knelt gingerly, wary of grass stains on the soft suede of her skirt. It was an odd way to interview suspects—only, of course, these people weren’t suspects—kneeling like a suppliant in front of them. She said: “I’m a private detective. Sir Ronald Callender has employed me to find out why his son died.”

The effect of her words was astonishing. The little group, which had been lolling at ease like exhausted warriors, stiffened with instantaneous shock into a rigid tableau as if struck to marble. Then, almost imperceptibly, they relaxed. Cordelia could hear the slow release of held breath. She watched their faces. Davie Stevens was the least concerned. He wore a half-rueful smile, interested but unworried, and gave a quick look at Sophie as if in complicity. The look was not returned; she and Hugo were staring rigidly ahead. Cordelia felt that the two Tillings were carefully avoiding each other’s eyes. But it was Isabelle who was the most shaken. She gave a gasp and her hand flew to her face like a second-rate actress simulating shock. Her eyes widened into fathomless depths of violet blue and she turned them on Hugo in desperate appeal. She looked so pale that Cordelia half expected her to faint. She thought: “If I’m in the middle of a conspiracy, then I know who is its weakest member.”

Hugo Tilling said: “You’re telling us that Ronald Callender has employed you to find out why Mark died?”

“Is that so extraordinary?”

“I find it incredible. He took no particular interest in his son when he was alive, why begin now he’s dead?”

“How do you know he took no particular interest?”

“It’s just an idea I had.”

Cordelia said: “Well, he’s interested now, even if it’s only the scientist’s urge to discover truth.”

“Then he’d better stick to his microbiology, discovering how to make plastic soluble in saltwater, or whatever. Human beings aren’t susceptible to his kind of treatment.”

Davie Stevens said with casual unconcern: “I wonder that you can stomach that arrogant fascist.”

The gibe plucked at too many chords of memory. Wilfully obtuse, Cordelia said: “I didn’t enquire what political party Sir Ronald favours.”

Hugo laughed. “Davie doesn’t mean that. By fascist Davie means that Ronald Callender holds certain untenable opinions. For example, that all men may not be created equal, that universal suffrage may not necessarily add to the general happiness of mankind, that the tyrannies of the left aren’t noticeably more liberal or supportable than the tyrannies of the right, that black men killing black men is small improvement on white men killing black men in so far as the victims are concerned and that capitalism may not be responsible for all the ills that flesh is heir to from drug addiction to poor syntax. I don’t suggest that Ronald Callender holds all or indeed any of these reprehensible opinions. But Davie thinks that he does.”

Davie threw a book at Hugo and said without rancour: “Shut up! You talk like the Daily Telegraph. And you’re boring our visitor.”

Sophie Tilling asked suddenly: “Was it Sir Ronald who suggested that you should question us?”

“He said that you were Mark’s friends, he saw you at the inquest and funeral.”

Hugo laughed: “For God’s sake, is that his idea of friendship?”

Cordelia said: “But you were there?”

“We went to the inquest—all of us except Isabelle, who, we thought, would have been decorative but unreliable. It was rather dull. There was a great deal of irrelevant medical evidence about the excellent state of Mark’s heart, lungs and digestive system. As far as I can see, he would have gone on living forever if he hadn’t put a belt round his neck.”

“And the funeral—were you there too?”

“We were, at the Cambridge Crematorium. A very subdued affair. There were only six of us present in addition to the undertaker’s men: we three, Ronald Callender, that secretary/housekeeper of his and an old nanny type dressed in black. She cast rather a gloom over the proceedings, I thought. Actually she looked so exactly like an old family retainer that I suspect she was a policewoman in disguise.”

“Why should she be? Did she look like one?”

“No, but then you don’t look like a private eye.”

“You’ve no idea who she was?”

“No, we weren’t introduced; it wasn’t a chummy kind of funeral. Now I recall it, not one of us spoke a single word to any of the others. Sir Ronald wore a mask of public grief, the King mourning the Crown Prince.”

“And Miss Leaming?”

“The Queen’s Consort; she should have had a black veil over her face.”

“I thought that her suffering was real enough,” said Sophie.

“You can’t tell. No one can. Define suffering. Define real.”

Suddenly Davie Stevens spoke, rolling over onto his stomach like a playful dog. “Miss Leaming looked pretty sick to me. Incidentally, the old lady was called Pilbeam; anyway, that was the name on the wreath.”

Sophie laughed: “That awful cross of roses with the black-edged card? I might have guessed it came from her; but how do you know?”

“I looked, honey. The undertaker’s men took the wreath off the coffin and propped it against the wall so I took a quick butcher’s. The card read ‘With sincere sympathy from Nanny Pilbeam.’ ”

Sophie said: “So you did, I remember now. How beautifully feudal! Poor old nanny, it must have cost her a packet.”

“Did Mark ever talk about a Nanny Pilbeam?” Cordelia asked.

They glanced at each other quickly. Isabelle shook her head. Sophie said, “Not to me.”

Hugo Tilling replied: “He never talked about her, but I think I did see her once before the funeral. She called at college about six weeks ago—on Mark’s twenty-first birthday actually, and asked to see him. I was in the Porter’s Lodge at the time and Robbins asked me if Mark was in college. She went up to his room and they were there together for about an hour. I saw her leaving, but he never mentioned her to me either then or later.”

And soon afterwards, thought Cordelia, he gave up university. Could there be a connection? It was only a tenuous lead, but she would have to follow it.

She asked out of a curiosity that seemed both perverse and irrelevant: “Were there any other flowers?”

It was Sophie who replied: “A simple bunch of unwired garden flowers on the coffin. No card. Miss Leaming, I suppose. It was hardly Sir Ronald’s style.”

Cordelia said: “You were his friends. Please tell me about him.”

They looked at each other as if deciding who should speak. Their embarrassment was almost palpable. Sophie Tilling was picking at small blades of grass and rolling them in her hands. Without looking up, she said: “Mark was a very private person. I’m not sure how far any of us knew him. He was quiet, gentle, self-contained, unambitious. He was intelligent without being clever. He was very kind; he cared about people, but without inflicting them with his concern. He had little self-esteem but it never seemed to worry him. I don’t think there is anything else we can say about him.”

Suddenly Isabelle spoke in a voice so low that Cordelia could hardly catch it. She said: “He was sweet.”

Hugo said with a sudden angry impatience: “He was sweet and he is dead. There you have it. We can’t tell you any more about Mark Callender than that. We none of us saw him after he chucked college. He didn’t consult us before he left, and he didn’t consult us before he killed himself. He was, as my sister has told you, a very private person. I suggest that you leave him his privacy.”

“Look,” said Cordelia, “you went to the inquest, you went to the funeral. If you had stopped seeing him, if you were so unconcerned about him, why did you bother?”

“Sophie went out of affection. Davie went because Sophie did. I went out of curiosity and respect; you mustn’t be seduced by my air of casual flippancy into thinking that I haven’t a heart.”

Cordelia said obstinately: “Someone visited him at the cottage on the evening he died. Someone had coffee with him. I intend to find out who that person was.”

Was it her fancy that this news surprised them? Sophie Tilling looked as if she were about to ask a question when her brother quickly broke in: “It wasn’t any of us. On the night Mark died we were all in the second row of the dress circle of the Arts Theatre watching Pinter. I don’t know that I can prove it. I doubt whether the booking clerk has kept the chart for that particular night, but I booked the seats and she may remember me. If you insist on being tediously meticulous, I can probably introduce you to a friend who knew of my intention to take a party to the play; to another who saw at least some of us in the bar in the interval; and to another with whom I subsequently discussed the performance. None of this will prove anything; my friends are an accommodating bunch. It would be simpler for you to accept that I am telling the truth. Why should I lie? We were all four at the Arts Theatre on the night of 26th May.”

Davie Stevens said gently: “Why not tell that arrogant bastard Pa Callender to go to hell and leave his son in peace, then find yourself a nice simple case of larceny?”

“Or murder,” said Hugo Tilling.

“Find yourself a nice simple case of murder.”

As if in obedience to some secret code, they began getting up, piling their books together, brushing the grass cuttings from their clothes. Cordelia followed them through the courts and out of college. Still in a silent group they made their way to a white Renault parked in the forecourt.

Cordelia came up to them and spoke directly to Isabelle. “Did you enjoy the Pinter? Weren’t you frightened by that dreadful last scene when Wyatt Gillman is gunned down by the natives?”

It was so easy that Cordelia almost despised herself.

The immense violet eyes grew puzzled. “Oh, no! I did not care about it, I was not frightened. I was with Hugo and the others, you see.”

Cordelia turned to Hugo Tilling. “Your friend doesn’t seem to know the difference between Pinter and Osborne.”

Hugo was settling himself into the driving seat of the car. He twisted round to open the back door for Sophie and Davie. He said calmly: “My friend, as you choose to call her, is living in Cambridge, inadequately chaperoned I’m happy to say, for the purpose of learning English. So far her progress has been erratic and in some respects disappointing. One can never be certain how much my friend has understood.”

The engine purred into life. The car began to move. It was then that Sophie Tilling thrust her head out of the window and said impulsively: “I don’t mind talking about Mark if you think it will help. It won’t, but you can come round to my house this afternoon if you like—57 Norwich Street. Don’t be late; Davie and I are going on the river. You can come too if you feel like it.”

The car accelerated. Cordelia watched it out of sight. Hugo raised his hand in ironic farewell but not one of them turned a head.

Cordelia muttered the address to herself until it was safely written down: 57 Norwich Street. Was that the address where Sophie lodged, a hostel perhaps, or did her family live in Cambridge? Well, she would find out soon enough. When ought she to arrive? Too early would look overeager; too late and they might have set out for the river. Whatever motive prompted Sophie Tilling to issue that belated invitation, she mustn’t lose touch with them now.

They had some guilty knowledge; that had been obvious. Why else had they reacted so strongly to her arrival? They wanted the facts of Mark Callender’s death to be left undisturbed. They would try to persuade, cajole, even to shame her into abandoning the case. Would they, she wondered, also threaten? But why? The most likely theory was that they were shielding someone. But again, why? Murder wasn’t a matter of climbing late into college, a venial infringement of rules which a friend would automatically condone and conceal. Mark Callender had been their friend. Someone whom he knew and trusted had pulled a strap tight round his neck, had watched and listened to his agonized choking, had strung his body on a hook like the carcass of an animal. How could one reconcile that appalling knowledge with Davie Stevens’ slightly amused and rueful glance at Sophie, with Hugo’s cynical calm, with Sophie’s friendly and interested eyes? If they were conspirators, then they were monsters. And Isabelle? If they were shielding anyone, it was most likely to be her. But Isabelle de Lasterie couldn’t have murdered Mark. Cordelia remembered those frail sloping shoulders, those ineffective hands almost transparent in the sun, the long nails painted like elegant pink talons. If Isabelle were guilty, she hadn’t acted alone. Only a tall and very strong woman could have heaved that inert body onto the chair and up to the hook.

Norwich Street was a one-way thoroughfare and, initially, Cordelia approached it from the wrong direction. It took her some time to find her way back to Hills Road, past the Roman Catholic church and down the fourth turning to the right. The street was terraced with small brick houses, obviously early Victorian. Equally obviously, the road was on its way up. Most of the houses looked well cared for; the paint on the identical front doors was fresh and bright; lined curtains had replaced the draped lace at the single ground-floor windows; and the bases of the walls were scarred where a damp course had been installed. Number fifty-seven had a black front door with the house number painted in white behind the glass panel above. Cordelia was relieved to see that there was space to park the Mini. There was no sign of the Renault among the almost continuous row of old cars and battered bicycles which lined the edge of the pavement.

The front door was wide open. Cordelia pressed the bell and stepped tentatively into a narrow white hall. The exterior of the house was immediately familiar to her. From her sixth birthday she had lived for two years in just such a Victorian terraced cottage with Mrs. Gibson on the outskirts of Romford. She recognized the steep and narrow staircase immediately ahead, the door on the right leading to the front parlour, the second door set aslant which led to the back parlour and through it to the kitchen and yard. She knew that there would be cupboards and a curved alcove on each side of the fireplace; she knew where to find the door under the stairs. Memory was so sharp that it imposed on this clean, sun-scented interior the strong odour of unwashed napkins, cabbage and grease which had permeated the Romford house. She could almost hear the children’s voices calling her outlandish name across the rookery of the primary school playground across the road, stamping the asphalt with the ubiquitous Wellington boots which they wore in all seasons, flailing their thin jerseyed arms: “Cor, Cor, Cor!”

The furthest door was ajar and she could glimpse a room painted bright yellow and spilling over with sunlight. Sophie’s head appeared.

“Oh, it’s you! Come in. Davie has gone to collect some books from college and to buy food for the picnic. Would you like tea now or shall we wait? I’m just finishing the ironing.”

“I’d rather wait, thank you.”

Cordelia sat down and watched while Sophie wound the flex around the iron and folded the cloth. She glanced around the room. It was welcoming and attractive, furnished in no particular style or period, a cosy hotchpotch of the cheap and the valuable, unpretentious and pleasing. There was a sturdy oak table against the wall; four rather ugly dining chairs; a Windsor chair with a plump yellow cushion; an elegant Victorian sofa covered with brown velvet and set under the window; three good Staffordshire figures on the mantelshelf above the hooded wrought-iron grate. One of the walls was almost covered with a noticeboard in dark cork which displayed posters, cards, aides-mémoires, and pictures cut from magazines. Two, Cordelia saw, were beautifully photographed and attractive nudes.

Outside the yellow-curtained window the small walled garden was a riot of greenery. An immense and multi-flowered hollyhock burgeoned against a tatty-looking trellis; there were roses planted in Ali Baba jars and a row of pots of bright-red geraniums lined the top of the wall.

Cordelia said: “I like this house. Is it yours?”

“Yes, I own it. Our grandmother died two years ago and left Hugo and me a small legacy. I used mine for the down payment on this house and got a local authority grant towards the cost of conversion. Hugo spent all of his laying down wine. He was ensuring a happy middle age; I was ensuring a happy present. I suppose that’s the difference between us.”

She folded the ironing cloth on the end of the table and stowed it away in one of the cupboards. Sitting opposite to Cordelia, she asked abruptly: “Do you like my brother?”

“Not very much. I thought he was rather rude to me.”

“He didn’t mean to be.”

“I think that’s rather worse. Rudeness should always be intentional, otherwise it’s insensitivity.”

“Hugo isn’t at his most agreeable when he’s with Isabelle. She has that effect on him.”

“Was she in love with Mark Callender?”

“You’ll have to ask her, Cordelia, but I shouldn’t think so. They hardly knew each other. Mark was my lover, not hers. I thought I’d better get you here to tell you myself since someone’s bound to sooner or later if you go around Cambridge ferreting out facts about him. He didn’t live here with me, of course. He had rooms in college. But we were lovers for almost the whole of last year. It ended just after Christmas when I met Davie.”

“Were you in love?”

“I’m not sure. All sex is a kind of exploitation, isn’t it? If you mean, did we explore our own identities through the personality of the other, then I suppose we were in love or thought that we were. Mark needed to believe himself in love. I’m not sure I know what the word means.”

Cordelia felt a surge of sympathy. She wasn’t sure either. She thought of her own two lovers: Georges, whom she had slept with because he was gentle and unhappy and called her Cordelia, a real name, her name, not Delia, Daddy’s little fascist; and Carl, who was young and angry and whom she had liked so much that it seemed churlish not to show it in the only way which seemed to him important. She had never thought of virginity as other than a temporary and inconvenient state, part of the general insecurity and vulnerability of being young. Before Georges and Carl she had been lonely and inexperienced. Afterwards she had been lonely and a little less inexperienced. Neither affair had given her the longed-for assurance in dealing with Daddy or the landladies, neither had inconveniently touched her heart. But for Carl she had felt tenderness. It was just as well that he had left Rome before his lovemaking had become too pleasurable and he too important to her. It was intolerable to think that those strange gymnastics might one day become necessary. Lovemaking, she had decided, was overrated, not painful but surprising. The alienation between thought and action was so complete. She said: “I suppose I only meant were you fond of each other, and did you like going to bed together?”

“Both of those things.”

“Why did it end? Did you quarrel?”

“Nothing so natural or uncivilized. One didn’t quarrel with Mark. That was one of the troubles about him. I told him that I didn’t want to go on with the affair and he accepted my decision as calmly as if I were just breaking a date for a play at the Arts. He didn’t try to argue or dissuade me. And if you’re wondering whether the break had anything to do with his death, well you’re wrong. I wouldn’t rank that high with anyone, particularly not Mark. I was probably fonder of him than he was of me.”

“So why did it end?”

“I felt that I was under moral scrutiny. It wasn’t true; Mark wasn’t a prig. But that’s how I felt, or pretended to myself that I felt. I couldn’t live up to him and I didn’t even want to. There was Gary Webber, for example. I’d better tell you about him; it explains a lot about Mark. He’s an autistic child, one of the uncontrollable, violent ones. Mark met him with his parents and their other two children on Jesus Green about a year ago; the children were playing on the swings there. Mark spoke to Gary and the boy responded to him. Children always did. He took to visiting the family and looking after Gary one evening a week so that the Webbers could get out to the pictures. During his last two vacs he stayed in the house and looked after Gary completely while the whole family went off for a holiday. The Webbers couldn’t bear the boy to go to hospital; they’d tried it once and he didn’t settle. But they were perfectly happy to leave him with Mark. I used to call in some evenings and see them together. Mark would hold the boy on his lap and rock him backwards and forwards for hours at a time. It was the one way to quieten him. We disagreed about Gary. I thought he would be better dead and I said so. I still think it would be better if he died, better for his parents, better for the rest of the family, better for him. Mark didn’t agree. I remember saying: ‘Oh well, if you think it reasonable that children should suffer so that you can enjoy the emotional kick of relieving them—’ After that the conversation became boringly metaphysical. Mark said: ‘Neither you nor I would be willing to kill Gary. He exists. His family exists. They need help which we can give. It doesn’t matter what we feel. Actions are important, feelings aren’t.’ ”

Cordelia said: “But actions arise out of feelings.”

“Oh, Cordelia, don’t you start! I’ve had this particular conversation too many times before. Of course they do!”

They were silent for a moment. Then Cordelia, reluctant to shatter the tenuous confidence and friendship which she sensed was growing between them, made herself ask: “Why did he kill himself—if he did kill himself?”

Sophie’s reply was as emphatic as a slammed door. “He left a note.”

“A note perhaps. But, as his father pointed out, not an explanation. It’s a lovely passage of prose—at least I think so—but as a justification for suicide it just isn’t convincing.”

“It convinced the jury.”

“It doesn’t convince me. Think, Sophie! Surely there are only two reasons for killing oneself. One is either escaping from something or to something. The first is rational. If one is in intolerable pain, despair or mental anguish and there is no reasonable chance of a cure, then it’s probably sensible to prefer oblivion. But it isn’t sensible to kill oneself in the hope of gaining some better existence or to extend one’s sensibilities to include the experience of death. It isn’t possible to experience death. I’m not even sure it’s possible to experience dying. One can only experience the preparations for death, and even that seems pointless since one can’t make use of the experience afterwards. If there’s any sort of existence after death we shall all know soon enough. If there isn’t, we shan’t exist to complain that we’ve been cheated. People who believe in an afterlife are perfectly reasonable. They’re the only ones who are safe from ultimate disillusionment.”

“You’ve thought it all out, haven’t you? I’m not sure that suicides do. The act is probably both impulsive and irrational.”

“Was Mark impulsive and irrational?”

“I didn’t know Mark.”

“But you were lovers! You slept with him!”

Sophie looked at her and cried out in angry pain. “I didn’t know him! I thought I did, but I didn’t know the first thing about him!”

They sat without speaking for almost two minutes. Then Cordelia asked: “You went to dinner at Garforth House, didn’t you? What was it like?”

“The food and the wine were surprisingly good, but I don’t suppose that’s what you had in mind. The dinner party wasn’t otherwise memorable. Sir Ronald was amiable enough when he noticed I was there. Miss Leaming, when she could tear her obsessive attention from the presiding genius, looked me over like a prospective mother-in-law. Mark was rather silent. I think he’d taken me there to prove something to me, or perhaps to himself; I’m not sure what. He never talked about the evening or asked me what I thought. A month later Hugo and I both went to dinner. It was then I met Davie. He was the guest of one of the research biologists and Ronald Callender was angling to get him. Davie did a vac job there in his final year. If you want the inside dope on Garforth House, you should ask him.”

Five minutes later Hugo, Isabelle and Davie arrived. Cordelia had gone upstairs to the bathroom and heard the car stop and the jabber of voices in the hall. Footsteps passed beneath her towards the back parlour. She turned on the hot water. The gas boiler in the kitchen immediately gave forth a roar as if the little house were powered by a dynamo. Cordelia let the tap run, then stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door gently behind her. She stole to the top of the stairs. It was hard luck on Sophie to waste her hot water, she thought guiltily; but worse was the sense of treachery and shabby opportunism as she crept down the first three stairs and listened. The front door had been closed but the door to the back parlour was open. She heard Isabelle’s high, unemphatic voice: “But if this man Sir Ronald is paying her to find out about Mark, why cannot I pay her to stop finding out?”

Then Hugo’s voice, amused, a little contemptuous: “Darling Isabelle, when will you learn that not everyone can be bought?”

“She can’t, anyway. I like her.”

It was Sophie speaking. Her brother replied: “We all like her. The question is, how do we get rid of her?”

Then for a few minutes there was a murmur of voices, words undistinguishable, broken by Isabelle.

“It is not, I think, a suitable job for a woman.”

There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor, a shuffle of feet. Cordelia darted guiltily back into the bathroom and turned off the tap. She recalled Bernie’s complacent admonition when she had asked whether they needed accept a divorce case.

“You can’t do our job, partner, and be a gentleman.”

She stood watching at the half-open door. Hugo and Isabelle were leaving. She waited until she heard the front door close and the car drive away. Then she went down to the parlour. Sophie and Davie were together, unpacking a large carrier bag of groceries. Sophie smiled and said: “Isabelle has a party tonight. She has a house quite close to here in Panton Street. Mark’s tutor, Edward Horsfall, will probably be there and we thought it might be useful for you to talk to him about Mark. The party’s at eight o’clock but you can call for us here. Just now we’re packing a picnic; we thought we’d take a punt on the river for an hour or so. Do come if you’d like to. It’s really much the pleasantest way of seeing Cambridge.”

Afterwards, Cordelia remembered the river picnic as a series of brief but intensely clear pictures, moments in which sight and sense fused and time seemed momentarily arrested while the sunlit image was impressed on her mind. Sunlight sparkling on the river and gilding the hairs of Davie’s chest and forearms; the flesh of his strong upper arms speckled like an egg; Sophie lifting her arm to wipe the sweat from her brow as she rested between thrusts of the punt pole; green-black weeds dragged by the pole from mysterious depths to writhe sinuously below the surface; a bright duck cocking its white tail before disappearing in a flurry of green water. When they had rocked under Silver Street Bridge a friend of Sophie swam alongside, sleek and snout-nosed like an otter, his black hair lying like blades across his cheeks. He rested his hands on the punt and opened his mouth to be fed chunks of sandwiches by a protesting Sophie. The punts and canoes scraped and jostled each other in the turbulence of white water racing under the bridge. The air rang with laughing voices and the green banks were peopled with half-naked bodies lying supine with their faces to the sun.

Davie punted until they reached the higher level of the river and Cordelia and Sophie stretched out on the cushions at opposite ends of the punt. Thus distanced it was impossible to carry on a private conversation; Cordelia guessed that this was precisely what Sophie had planned. From time to time, she would call out snatches of information as if to emphasize that the outing was strictly educational.

“That wedding cake is John’s—we’re just passing under Clare Bridge, one of the prettiest, I think. Thomas Grumbald built it in 1639. They say he was only paid three shillings for the design. You know that view, of course; it’s a good view of Queen’s, though.”

Cordelia’s courage failed her at the thought of interrupting this desultory tourist’s chat with the brutal demand: “Did you and your brother kill your lover?”

Here, rocking gently on the sunlit river, the question seemed both indecent and absurd. She was in danger of being lulled into a gentle acceptance of defeat; viewing all her suspicions as a neurotic hankering after drama and notoriety, a need to justify her fee to Sir Ronald. She believed that Mark Callender had been murdered because she wanted to believe it. She had identified with him, with his solitariness, his self-sufficiency, his alienation from his father, his lonely childhood. She had even—most dangerous presumption of all—come to see herself as his avenger. When Sophie took over the pole, just past the Garden House Hotel, and Davie edged his way along the gently rocking punt and stretched himself out beside her, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to mention Mark’s name. It was out of no more than a vague, unintrusive curiosity that she found herself asking: “Is Sir Ronald Callender a good scientist?”

Davie took up a short paddle and began lazily to stir the shining water. “His science is perfectly respectable, as my dear colleagues would say. Rather more than respectable, in fact. At present the lab is working on ways of expanding the use of biological monitors to assess pollution of the sea and estuaries; that means routine surveys of plants and animals which might serve as indicators. And they did some very useful preliminary work last year on the degradation of plastics. R.C. isn’t so hot himself, but then you can’t expect much original science from the over fifties. But he’s a great spotter of talent and he certainly knows how to run a team if you fancy that dedicated, one for all, band of brothers approach. I don’t. They even publish their papers as the Callender Research Laboratory, not under individual names. That wouldn’t do for me. When I publish, it’s strictly for the glory of David Forbes Stevens and, incidentally, for the gratification of Sophie. The Tillings like success.”

“Was that why you didn’t want to stay on when he offered you a job?”

“That among other reasons. He pays too generously and he asks too much. I don’t like being bought and I’ve a strong objection to dressing up every night in a dinner jacket like a performing monkey in a zoo. I’m a molecular biologist. I’m not looking for the Holy Grail. Dad and Mum brought me up as a Methodist and I don’t see why I should chuck a perfectly good religion which served me very well for twelve years just to put the great scientific principle of Ronald Callender in its place. I distrust these sacerdotal scientists. It’s a bloody wonder that little lot at Garforth House aren’t genuflecting three times a day in the direction of the Cavendish.”

“And what about Lunn? How does he fit in?”

“Oh, that boy’s a bloody wonder! Ronald Callender found him in a children’s home when he was fifteen—don’t ask me how—and trained him to be a lab assistant. You couldn’t find a better. There isn’t an instrument made which Chris Lunn can’t learn to understand and care for. He’s developed one or two himself and Callender has had them patented. If anyone in that lab is indispensable it’s probably Lunn. Certainly Ronald Callender cares a damn sight more for him than he did for his son. And Lunn, as you might guess, regards R.C. as God Almighty, which is very gratifying for them both. It’s extraordinary really, all that violence which used to be expressed in street fights and coshing old ladies, harnessed to the service of science. You’ve got to hand it to Callender. He certainly knows how to pick his slaves.”

“And is Miss Leaming a slave?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know just what Eliza Leaming is. She’s responsible for the business management and, like Lunn, she’s probably indispensable. Lunn and she seem to have a love-hate relationship, or, perhaps, a hate-hate relationship. I’m not very clever at detecting these psychological nuances.”

“But how on earth does Sir Ronald pay for it all?”

“Well that’s the thousand-dollar question, isn’t it? It’s rumoured that most of the money came from his wife and that he and Elizabeth Leaming between them invested it rather cleverly. They certainly needed to. And then he gets a certain amount from contract work. Even so, it’s an expensive hobby. While I was there they were saying that the Wolvington Trust were getting interested. If they come up with something big—and I gather it’s below their dignity to come up with something small—then most of Ronald Callender’s troubles should be over. Mark’s death must have hit him. Mark was due to come into a pretty substantial fortune in four years’ time and he told Sophie that he intended to hand most of it over to Dad.”

“Why on earth should he do that?”

“God knows. Conscience money, perhaps. Anyway, he obviously thought it was something that Sophie ought to know.”

Conscience money for what, Cordelia wondered sleepily. For not loving his father enough? For rejecting his enthusiasms? For being less than the son he had hoped for? And what would happen to Mark’s fortune now? Who stood to gain by Mark’s death? She supposed that she ought to consult his grandfather’s will and find out. But that would mean a trip to London. Was it really worth it?

She stretched back her face to the sun and trailed one hand in the river. A splash of water from the punt pole stung her eyes. She opened them and saw that the punt was gliding close to the bank and under the shade of overhanging trees. Immediately in front of her a torn branch, cleft at the end and thick as a man’s body, hung by a thread of bark and turned gently as the punt passed beneath it. She was aware of Davie’s voice; he must have been talking for a long time. How odd that she couldn’t remember what he’d been saying!

“You don’t need reasons for killing yourself; you need reasons for not killing yourself. It was suicide, Cordelia. I should let it go at that.”

Cordelia thought that she must have briefly slept, since he seemed to be answering a question she couldn’t remember having asked. But now there were other voices, louder and more insistent. Sir Ronald Callender’s: “My son is dead. My son. If I am in some way responsible, I’d prefer to know. If anyone else is responsible, I want to know that too.” Sergeant Maskell’s: “How would you use this to hang yourself, Miss Gray?” The feel of the belt, smooth and sinuous, slipping like a live thing through her fingers.

She sat bolt upright, hands clasped around her knees, with such suddenness that the punt rocked violently and Sophie had to clutch at an overhanging branch to keep her balance. Her dark face, intriguingly fore-shortened and patterned with the shadow of leaves, looked down at Cordelia from what seemed an immense height. Their eyes met. In that moment Cordelia knew how close she had come to giving up the case. She had been suborned by the beauty of the day, by sunshine, indolence, the promise of comradeship, even friendship, into forgetting why she was here. The realization horrified her. Davie had said that Sir Ronald was a good picker. Well, he had picked her. This was her first case and nothing and no one was going to hinder her from solving it.

She said formally: “It was good of you to let me join you, but I don’t want to miss the party tonight. I ought to talk to Mark’s tutor and there may be other people there who could tell me something. Isn’t it time that we thought about turning back?”

Sophie turned her glance on Davie. He gave an almost imperceptible shrug. Without speaking, Sophie drove the pole hard against the bank. The punt began slowly to turn.

Isabelle’s party was due to begin at eight o’clock but it was nearly nine when Sophie, Davie and Cordelia arrived. They walked to the house, which was only five minutes from Norwich Street; Cordelia never discovered the exact address. She liked the look of the house and wondered how much it was costing Isabelle’s father in rent. It was a long, white, two-storey villa with tall curved windows and green shutters, set well back from the street, with a semi-basement and a flight of steps to the front door. A similar flight led down from the sitting room to the long garden.

The sitting room was already fairly full. Looking at her fellow guests, Cordelia was glad that she had bought the kaftan. Most people seemed to have changed although not necessarily, she thought, into something more attractive. What was aimed at was originality; it was preferable to look spectacular, even bizarre, than to appear nondescript.

The sitting room was elegantly but insubstantially furnished and Isabelle had impressed on it her own untidy, impractical and iconoclastic femininity. Cordelia doubted whether the owners had provided the ornate crystal chandelier, far too heavy and large for the room, which hung like a sunburst from the middle of the ceiling, or the many silken cushions and curtains which gave the room’s austere proportions something of the ostentatious opulence of a courtesan’s boudoir. The pictures, too, must surely be Isabelle’s. No house owner letting his property would leave pictures of this quality on the walls. One, hanging above the fireplace, was of a young girl hugging a puppy. Cordelia gazed at it in excited pleasure. Surely she couldn’t mistake that individual blue of the girl’s dress, that marvellous painting of the cheeks and plump young arms, which simultaneously absorbed and reflected light—lovely, tangible flesh. She cried out involuntarily so that people turned to look at her: “But that’s a Renoir!”

Hugo was at her elbow. He laughed. “Yes; but don’t sound so shocked, Cordelia. It’s only a small Renoir. Isabelle asked Papa for a picture for her sitting room. You didn’t expect him to provide a print of the Haywain or one of those cheap reproductions of Van Gogh’s boring old chair.”

“Would Isabelle have known the difference?”

“Oh, yes. Isabelle knows an expensive object when she sees one.”

Cordelia wondered whether the bitterness, the hard edge of contempt in his voice, was for Isabelle or for himself. They looked across the room to where she stood, smiling at them. Hugo moved towards her like a man in a dream and took her hand. Cordelia watched. Isabelle had dressed her hair in a high cluster of curls, Grecian style. She was wearing an ankle-length dress of cream matte silk, with a very low square neckline and small intricately tucked sleeves. It was obviously a model and should, Cordelia felt, have looked out of place at an informal party. But it didn’t. It merely made every other woman’s dress look like an improvisation and reduced her own, whose colours had seemed muted and subtle when she bought it, to the status of a gaudy rag.

Cordelia was determined to get Isabelle alone sometime during the evening but could see that it wasn’t going to be easy. Hugo stuck tenaciously to her side, steering her among her guests with one proprietorial hand on her waist. He seemed to be drinking steadily and Isabelle’s glass was always filled. Perhaps as the evening wore on they would get careless and there would be a chance to separate them. In the meantime, Cordelia decided to explore the house, and a more practical matter, to find out before she needed it where the lavatory was. It was the kind of party where guests were left to find out these things for themselves.

She went up to the first floor and making her way down the passage pushed gently open the door of the far room. The smell of whisky met her immediately; it was overpowering and Cordelia instinctively slipped into the room and closed the door behind her, afraid that it might permeate the house. The room, which was in an indescribable state of disarray, wasn’t empty. On the bed and half covered by the counterpane a woman was lying; a woman with bright ginger hair splayed over the pillow and wearing a pink silk dressing gown. Cordelia walked up to the bed and looked down at her. She was insensible with drink. She lay there emitting puffs of foul, whisky-laden breath which rose like invisible balls of smoke from the half-open mouth. Her lower lip and jaw were tense and creased, giving the face a look of stern censoriousness as if she disapproved strongly of her own condition. Her thin lips were thickly painted, the strong purple stain had seeped into the cracks around the mouth so that the body looked parched in an extremity of cold. Her hands, the gnarled fingers brown with nicotine and laden with rings, lay quietly on the counterpane. Two of the talon-like nails were broken and the brick-red varnish on the others was cracked or peeled away.

The window was obstructed by a heavy dressing table. Averting her eyes from the mess of crumpled tissues, open bottles of face cream, spilt powder and half-drunk cups of what looked like black coffee, Cordelia squeezed behind it and pushed open the window. She gulped in lungfuls of fresh, cleansing air. Below her in the garden pale shapes moved silently over the grass and between the trees like the ghosts of long-dead revellers. She left the window open and went back to the bed. There was nothing here that she could do but she placed the cold hands under the counterpane and, taking a second and warmer gown from the hook on the door, tucked it around the woman’s body. That, at least, would compensate for the fresh air blowing across the bed.

That done, Cordelia slipped back into the passage, just in time to see Isabelle coming out of the room next door. She shot out an arm and half dragged the girl back into the bedroom. Isabelle gave a little cry, but Cordelia planted her back firmly against the door and said in a low, urgent whisper: “Tell me what you know about Mark Callender.”

The violet eyes slewed from door to window as if desperate for escape. “I wasn’t there when he did it.”

“When who did what?”

Isabelle retreated towards the bed as if the inert figure, who was now groaning stertorously, could offer support. Suddenly the woman turned on her side and gave a long snort like an animal in pain. Both girls glanced at her in startled alarm. Cordelia reiterated: “When who did what?”

“When Mark killed himself; I wasn’t there.”

The woman on the bed gave a little sigh. Cordelia lowered her voice: “But you were there some days earlier, weren’t you? You called at the house and enquired for him. Miss Markland saw you. Afterwards you sat in the garden and waited until he’d finished work.”

Was it Cordelia’s imagination that the girl suddenly seemed more relaxed, that she was relieved at the innocuousness of the question?

“I just called to see Mark. They gave me his address at the College Lodge. I went to visit him.”

“Why?”

The harsh question seemed to puzzle her. She replied simply: “I wanted to be with him. He was my friend.”

“Was he your lover too?” asked Cordelia. This brutal frankness was surely better than asking whether they had slept together, or gone to bed together—stupid euphemisms which Isabelle might not even understand; it was hard to tell from those beautiful but frightened eyes just how much she did understand.

“No, Mark was never my lover. He was working in the garden and I had to wait for him at the cottage. He gave me a chair in the sun and a book until he was free.”

“What book?”

“I don’t remember, it was very dull. I was dull too until Mark came. Then we had tea with funny mugs that had a blue band, and after tea we went for a walk and then we had supper. Mark made a salad.”

“And then?”

“I drove home.”

She was perfectly calm now. Cordelia pressed on, aware of the sound of footsteps passing up and down the stairs, of the ring of voices. “And the time before that? When did you see him before that tea party?”

“It was a few days before Mark left college. We went for a picnic in my car to the seaside. But first we stopped at a town—St. Edmunds town, is it?—and Mark saw a doctor.”

“Why? Was he ill?”

“Oh no, he was not ill, and he did not stay long enough for what you call it—an examination. He was in the house a few minutes only. It was a very poor house. I waited for him in the car, but not just outside the house, you understand.”

“Did he say why he went there?”

“No, but I do not think he got what he wanted. Afterwards he was sad for a little time, but then we went to the sea and he was happy again.”

She, too, seemed happy now. She smiled at Cordelia, her sweet, unmeaning smile. Cordelia thought: it’s just the cottage that terrifies her. She doesn’t mind talking about the living Mark. It’s his death she can’t bear to think about. And yet, this repugnance wasn’t born of personal grief. He had been her friend; he was sweet; she liked him. But she was getting on very well without him.

There was a knock at the door. Cordelia stood aside and Hugo came in. He lifted an eyebrow at Isabelle and, ignoring Cordelia, said: “It’s your party, ducky; coming down?”

“Cordelia wanted to talk to me about Mark.”

“No doubt. You told her, I hope, that you spent one day with him motoring to the sea and one afternoon and evening at Summertrees and that you haven’t seen him since.”

“She told me,” said Cordelia. “She was practically word perfect. I think she’s safe to be let out on her own now.”

He said easily: “You shouldn’t be sarcastic, Cordelia, it doesn’t suit you. Sarcasm is all right for some women, but not for women who are beautiful in the way that you are beautiful.”

They were passing down the stairs together to meet the hubbub in the hall. The compliment irritated Cordelia. She said: “I suppose that woman on the bed is Isabelle’s chaperone. Is she often drunk?”

“Mademoiselle de Congé? Not often as drunk as that, but I admit that she is seldom absolutely sober.”

“Then oughtn’t you to do something about it?”

“What should I do? Hand her over to the twentieth-century Inquisition—a psychiatrist like my father? What has she done to us to deserve that? Besides, she is tediously conscientious on the few occasions when she’s sober. It happens that her compulsions and my interest coincide.”

Cordelia said severely: “That may be expedient but I don’t think it very responsible and it isn’t kind.”

He stopped in his tracks and turned towards her, smiling directly into her eyes. “Oh, Cordelia, you talk like the child of progressive parents who has been reared by a nonconformist nanny and educated at a convent school. I do like you!”

He was still smiling as Cordelia slipped away from them and infiltrated the party. She reflected that his diagnosis hadn’t been so very far wrong.

She helped herself to a glass of wine, then moved slowly round the room listening unashamedly to scraps of conversation, hoping to hear Mark’s name mentioned. She heard it only once. Two girls and a very fair, rather insipid young man were standing behind her. One of the girls said: “Sophie Tilling seems to have recovered remarkably quickly from Mark Callender’s suicide. She and Davie went to the cremation, did you know? Typical of Sophie to take her current lover to see the previous one incinerated. I suppose it gave her some kind of a kick.”

Her companion laughed.

“And little brother takes over Mark’s girl. If you can’t get beauty, money and brains, settle for the first two. Poor Hugo! He suffers from a sense of inferiority. Not quite handsome enough; not quite clever enough—Sophie’s First must have shaken him; not quite rich enough. No wonder he has to rely on sex to give him confidence.”

“And, even there, not quite …”

“Darling, you should know.”

They laughed and moved away. Cordelia felt her face burning. Her hand shook, almost spilling her wine. She was surprised to find how much she cared, how much she had come to like Sophie. But that, of course, was part of the plan, that was Tilling strategy. If you can’t shame her into giving up the case, suborn her; take her on the river; be nice to her; get her on our side. And it was true, she was on their side, at least against malicious detractors. She comforted herself with the censorious reflection that they were as bitchy as guests at a suburban cocktail party. She had never in her life attended one of those innocuous if boring gatherings for the routine consumption of gossip, gin and canapés but, like her father who had never attended one either, she found no difficulty in believing that they were hot beds of snobbery, spite and sexual innuendo.

A warm body was pressing against her. She turned and saw Davie. He was carrying three bottles of wine. He had obviously heard at least part of the conversation, as the girls had no doubt intended, but he grinned amiably.

“Funny how Hugo’s discarded women always hate him so much. It’s quite different with Sophie. Her ex-lovers clutter up Norwich Street with their beastly bicycles and broken-down cars. I’m always finding them in the sitting room drinking my beer and confiding to her the awful trouble they’re having with their present girls.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not if they don’t get any further than the sitting room. Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Not very much.”

“Come and meet a friend of mine. He’s been asking who you are.”

“No thank you, Davie. I must keep myself free for Mr. Horsfall. I don’t want to miss him.”

He smiled at her, rather pityingly she thought, and seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind and moved away, clutching the bottles to his chest and shouting a cheerful warning as he edged himself through the throng.

Cordelia worked her way around the room, watching and listening. She was intrigued by the overt sexuality; she had thought that intellectuals breathed too-rarified air to be much interested in the flesh. Obviously this was a misapprehension. Come to think of it, the comrades, who might have been supposed to live in randy promiscuity, had been remarkably staid. She had sometimes felt that their sexual activities were prompted more by duty than instinct, more a weapon of revolution or a gesture against the bourgeois mores they despised than a response to human need. Their basic energies were all devoted to politics. It was not difficult to see where most of the energies of those present were directed.

She needn’t have worried about the success of the kaftan. A number of men showed themselves willing or even eager to detach themselves from their partners for the pleasure of talking to her. With one particularly, a decorative and ironically amusing young historian, Cordelia felt that she could have spent an entertaining evening. To enjoy the sole attention of one agreeable man and no attention at all from anyone else was all she ever hoped from a party. She wasn’t naturally gregarious and, alienated by the last six years from her own generation, found herself intimidated by the noise, the underlying ruthlessness and the half-understood conventions of these tribal matings. And she told herself firmly that she wasn’t here to enjoy herself at Sir Ronald’s expense. None of her prospective partners knew Mark Callender or showed any interest in him, dead or alive. She mustn’t get herself tied for the evening to people who had no information to give. When this seemed a danger and the talk became too beguiling, she would murmur her excuses and slip away to the bathroom or into the shadows of the garden where little groups were sitting on the grass smoking pot. Cordelia couldn’t be mistaken in that evocative smell. They showed no disposition to chat and here, at least, she could stroll in privacy gaining courage for the next foray, for the next artfully casual question, the next inevitable response.

“Mark Callender? Sorry—we never met. Didn’t he go off to sample the simple life and end by hanging himself or something?”

Once she took refuge in Mademoiselle de Congé’s room, but she saw that the inert figure had been unceremoniously dumped on a cushion of pillows on the carpet and that the bed was being occupied for quite another purpose.

She wondered when Edward Horsfall would arrive or whether he would arrive at all. And if he did, would Hugo remember or bother to introduce her? She couldn’t see either of the Tillings in the hot crush of gesticulating bodies which by now had crammed the sitting room and spilled into the hall and halfway up the stairs. She was beginning to feel that this would be a wasted evening when Hugo’s hand fell on her arm. He said: “Come and meet Edward Horsfall. Edward, this is Cordelia Gray; she wants to talk about Mark Callender.”

Edward Horsfall was another surprise. Cordelia had subconsciously conjured up the picture of an elderly don, a little distrait with the weight of his learning, a benevolent if detached mentor of the young. Horsfall could not have been much over thirty. He was very tall, his hair falling long over one eye, his lean body curved as a melon rind, a comparison reinforced by the pleated yellow shirtfront under a jutting bow tie.

Any half-acknowledged, half-shameful hope which Cordelia may have nourished that he would immediately take to her and be happily ungrudging of his time so long as they were together was quickly dispersed. His eyes were restless, flicking obsessively back to the door. She suspected that he was alone by choice, deliberately keeping himself free from encumbrances until the hoped-for companion arrived. He was so fidgety that it was difficult not to be fretted by his anxiety. She said: “You don’t have to stay with me all the evening you know, I only want some information.”

Her voice recalled him to an awareness of her and to some attempt at civility. “That wouldn’t exactly be a penance. I’m sorry. What do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell me about Mark. You taught him history, didn’t you? Was he good at it?”

It wasn’t a particularly relevant question but one which she felt all teachers might respond to as a start.

“He was more rewarding to teach than some students I’m afflicted with. I don’t know why he chose history. He could very well have read one of the sciences. He had a lively curiosity about physical phenomenon. But he decided to read history.”

“Do you think that was to disoblige his father?”

“To disoblige Sir Ronald?” He turned and stretched out an arm for a bottle. “What are you drinking? There’s one thing about Isabelle de Lasterie’s parties, the drink is excellent, presumably because Hugo orders it. There’s an admirable absence of beer.”

“Doesn’t Hugo drink beer then?” asked Cordelia.

“He claims not to. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, disobliging Sir Ronald. Mark said that he chose history because we have no chance of understanding the present without understanding the past. That’s the sort of irritating cliché people come out with at interviews, but he may have believed it. Actually, of course, the reverse is true: we interpret the past through our knowledge of the present.”

“Was he any good?” asked Cordelia. “I mean, would he have got a First?”

A First, she naïvely believed, was the ultimate in scholastic achievement, the certificate of pronounced intelligence that the recipient carried unchallenged through life. She wanted to hear that Mark was safe for a First.

“Those are two separate and distinct questions. You seem to be confusing merit with achievement. Impossible to predict his class, hardly a First. Mark was capable of extraordinarily good and original work but he limited his material to the number of his original ideas. The result tended to be rather thin. Examiners like originality but you’ve got to spew up the accepted facts and orthodox opinions first if only to show that you’ve learnt them. An exceptional memory and fast, legible handwriting; that’s the secret of a First. Where are you, incidentally?” He noticed Cordelia’s brief look of incomprehension. “At what college?”

“None; I work. I’m a private detective.”

He took this information in his stride. “My uncle employed one of those once to find out if my aunt was being screwed by their dentist. She was, but he could have found out more easily by the simple expedient of asking them. His way, he lost the services of a wife and of a dentist simultaneously and paid through the nose for information he could have got for nothing. It made quite a stir in the family at the time. I should have thought that the job was—”

Cordelia finished the sentence for him.

“An unsuitable job for a woman?”

“Not at all. Entirely suitable I should have thought, requiring, I imagine, infinite curiosity, infinite pains and a penchant for interfering with other people.” His attention was wandering again. A group near to them were talking and snatches of the conversation came to them.

“—typical of the worst kind of academic writing. Contempt for logic; a generous sprinkling of vogue names; spurious profundity and bloody awful grammar.”

The tutor gave the speakers a second’s attention, dismissed their academic chat as beneath his notice and condescended to transfer his attention but not his regard back to Cordelia. “Why are you so interested in Mark Callender?”

“His father has employed me to find out why he died. I was hoping that you might be able to help. I mean, did he ever give you a hint that he might be unhappy, unhappy enough to kill himself? Did he explain why he gave up college?”

“Not to me. I never felt that I got near him. He made a formal goodbye, thanked me for what he chose to describe as my help, and left. I made the usual noises of regret. We shook hands. I was embarrassed, but not Mark. He wasn’t, I think, a young man susceptible to embarrassment.”

There was a small commotion at the door and a group of new arrivals pushed themselves noisily into the throng. Among them was a tall, dark girl in a flame-coloured frock, open almost to the waist. Cordelia felt the tutor stiffen, saw his eyes fixed on the new arrival with an intense, half-anxious, half-supplicating look, which she had seen before. Her heart sank. She would be lucky now to get any more information. Desperately trying to recapture his attention, she said: “I’m not sure that Mark did kill himself. I think it could have been murder.”

He spoke inattentively, his eyes on the newcomers. “Unlikely, surely. By whom? For what reason? He was a negligible personality. He didn’t even provoke a vague dislike except possibly from his father. But Ronald Callender couldn’t have done it if that’s what you’re hoping. He was dining in Hall at High Table on the night Mark died. It was a College Feast night. I sat next to him. His son telephoned him.”

Cordelia said eagerly, almost tugging at his sleeve: “At what time?”

“Soon after the meal started, I suppose. Benskin, he’s one of the College servants, came in and gave him the message. It must have been between eight and eight-fifteen. Callender disappeared for about ten minutes then returned and got on with his soup. The rest of us still hadn’t reached the second course.”

“Did he say what Mark wanted? Did he seem disturbed?”

“Neither. We hardly spoke through the meal. Sir Ronald doesn’t waste his conversational gifts on non-scientists. Excuse me, will you?”

He was gone, threading his way through the throng towards his prey. Cordelia put down her glass and went in search of Hugo.

“Look,” she said, “I want to talk to Benskin, a servant at your college. Would he be there tonight?”

Hugo put down the bottle he was holding.

“He may be. He’s one of the few who live in college. But I doubt whether you would winkle him out of his lair on your own. If it’s all that urgent, I’d better come with you.”

The college porter ascertained with curiosity that Benskin was in the college, and Benskin was summoned. He arrived after a wait of five minutes during which Hugo chatted to the porter and Cordelia walked outside the Lodge to amuse herself reading the college notices. Benskin arrived, unhurrying, imperturbable. He was a silver-haired, formally dressed old man, his face creased and thick skinned as an anaemic blood orange, and would, Cordelia thought, have looked like an advertisement for the ideal butler, were it not for an expression of lugubrious and sly disdain.

Cordelia gave him sight of Sir Ronald’s note of authority and plunged straight into her questions. There was nothing to be gained by subtlety and since she had enlisted Hugo’s help, she had little hope of shaking him off. She said: “Sir Ronald has asked me to enquire into the circumstances of his son’s death.”

“So I see, Miss.”

“I am told that Mr. Mark Callender telephoned his father while Sir Ronald was dining at High Table on the night his son died and that you passed the message to Sir Ronald shortly after dinner began.”

“I was under the impression at the time that it was Mr. Callender who was ringing, Miss, but I was mistaken.”

“How can you be sure of that, Mr. Benskin?”

“Sir Ronald himself told me, Miss, when I saw him in college some few days after his son’s death. I’ve known Sir Ronald since he was an undergraduate and I made bold to express my condolences. During our brief conversation I made reference to the telephone call of 26th May and Sir Ronald told me that I was mistaken, that it was not Mr. Callender who had called.”

“Did he say who it was?”

“Sir Ronald informed me that it was his laboratory assistant, Mr. Chris Lunn.”

“Did that surprise you—that you were wrong, I mean?”

“I confess that I was somewhat surprised, Miss, but the mistake was perhaps excusable. My subsequent reference to the incident was fortuitous and in the circumstances regrettable.”

“Do you really believe that you misheard the name?”

The obstinate old face did not relax. “Sir Ronald could have been in no doubt about the person who telephoned him.”

“Was it usual for Mr. Callender to ring his father while he was dining in College?”

“I had never previously taken a call from him, but then answering the telephone is not part of my normal duties. It is possible that some of the other college servants may be able to help but I hardly think that an enquiry would be productive or that the news that college servants had been questioned would be gratifying to Sir Ronald.”

“Any enquiry which can help ascertain the truth is likely to be gratifying to Sir Ronald,” said Cordelia. Really, she thought, Benskin’s prose style is becoming infectious. She added more naturally: “Sir Ronald is very anxious to find out everything possible about his son’s death. Is there anything that you can tell me, any help that you can give me, Mr. Benskin?”

This was perilously close to an appeal but it met with little response. “Nothing, Miss. Mr. Callender was a quiet and pleasant young gentleman who seemed, as far as I was able to observe him, to be in good health and spirits up to the time he left us. His death has been very much felt in the college. Is there anything else, Miss?”

He stood patiently waiting to be dismissed and Cordelia let him go. As she and Hugo left college together and walked back into Trumpington Street she said bitterly: “He doesn’t care, does he?”

“Why should he? Benskin’s an old phoney but he’s been at college for seventy years and he’s seen it all before. A thousand ages in his sight are but an evening gone. I’ve only known Benskin distressed once over the suicide of an undergraduate and that was a Duke’s son. Benskin thought that there were some things that college shouldn’t permit to happen.”

“But he wasn’t mistaken about Mark’s call. You could tell that from his whole manner, at least I could. He knows what he heard. He isn’t going to admit it, of course, but he knows in his heart he wasn’t mistaken.”

Hugo said lightly: “He was being the old college servant, very correct, very proper; that’s Benskin all over. ‘The young gentlemen aren’t what they were when I first came to college.’ I should bloody well hope not! They wore side whiskers then and noblemen sported fancy gowns to distinguish them from the plebs. Benskin would bring all that back if he could. He’s an anachronism, pottering through the court hand in hand with a statelier past.”

“But he isn’t deaf. I deliberately spoke in a soft voice and he heard me perfectly. Do you really believe that he was mistaken?”

“ ‘Chris Lunn’ and ‘his son’ are very similar sounds.”

“But Lunn doesn’t announce himself that way. All the time I was with Sir Ronald and Miss Leaming they just called him Lunn.”

“Look, Cordelia, you can’t possibly suspect Ronald Callender of having a hand in his son’s death! Be logical. You accept, I suppose, that a rational murderer hopes not to be found out. You admit, no doubt, that Ronald Callender, although a disagreeable bastard, is a rational being. Mark is dead and his body cremated. No one except you has mentioned murder. Then Sir Ronald employs you to stir things up. Why should he if he’s got something to hide? He doesn’t even need to divert suspicion; there is no suspicion.”

“Of course I don’t suspect him of killing his son. He doesn’t know how Mark died and he desperately needs to know. That’s why he’s taken me on. I could tell that at our interview; I couldn’t be wrong about that. But I don’t understand why he should have lied about the telephone call.”

“If he is lying there could be half a dozen innocent explanations. If Mark did ring the college it must have been something pretty urgent, perhaps something which his father didn’t want to make public, something which gives a clue to his son’s suicide.”

“Then why employ me to find out why he killed himself?”

“True, wise Cordelia; I’ll try again. Mark asked for help, perhaps an urgent visit which Dad refused. You can imagine his reaction. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mark, I’m dining at High Table with the Master. Obviously I can’t leave the cutlets and claret just because you telephone me in this hysterical way and demand to see me. Pull yourself together.’ That sort of thing wouldn’t sound so good in open court; coroners are notoriously censorious.” Hugo’s voice took on a deep magisterial tone. “ ‘It is not for me to add to Sir Ronald’s distress, but it is, perhaps, unfortunate that he chose to ignore what was obviously a cry for help. Had he left his meal immediately and gone to his son’s side this brilliant young student might have been saved.’ Cambridge suicides, so I’ve noticed, are always brilliant; I’m still waiting to read the report of an inquest where the college authorities testify that the student only just killed himself in time before they kicked him out.”

“But Mark died between seven and nine p.m. That telephone call is Sir Ronald’s alibi!”

“He wouldn’t see it like that. He doesn’t need an alibi. If you know you’re not involved and the question of foul play never arises, you don’t think in terms of alibis. It’s only the guilty who do that.”

“But how did Mark know where to find his father? In his evidence Sir Ronald said that he hadn’t spoken to his son for over two weeks.”

“I can see you have a point there. Ask Miss Leaming. Better still, ask Lunn if it was, in fact, he who rang the college. If you’re looking for a villain Lunn should suit admirably. I find him absolutely sinister.”

“I didn’t know that you knew him.”

“Oh, he’s pretty well known in Cambridge. He drives that horrid little closed van around with ferocious dedication as if he were transporting recalcitrant students to the gas chambers. Everyone knows Lunn. Seldom he smiles and smiles in such a way as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything. I should concentrate on Lunn.”

They walked on in silence through the warm scented night while the waters sang in the tunnels of Trumpington Street. Lights were shining now in college doorways and in porters’ lodges and the far gardens and interconnecting courts, glimpsed as they passed, looked remote and ethereal as in a dream. Cordelia was suddenly oppressed with loneliness and melancholy. If Bernie were alive they would be discussing the case, cosily ensconced in the furthest corner of some Cambridge pub, insulated by noise and smoke and anonymity from the curiosity of their neighbours; talking low voiced in their own particular jargon. They would be speculating on the personality of a young man who slept under that gentle and intellectual painting, yet who had bought a vulgar magazine of salacious nudes. Or had he? And if not, how had it come to be in the cottage garden? They would be discussing a father who lied about his son’s last telephone call, speculating in happy complicity about an uncleaned garden fork, a row of earth half dug, an unwashed coffee mug, a quotation from Blake meticulously typed. They would be talking about Isabelle who was terrified and Sophie who was surely honest and Hugo who certainly knew something about Mark’s death and who was clever but not as clever as he needed to be. For the first time since the case began Cordelia doubted her ability to solve it alone. If only there were someone reliable in whom she could confide, someone who would reinforce her confidence. She thought again of Sophie, but Sophie had been Mark’s mistress and was Hugo’s sister. They were both involved. She was on her own and that, when she came to think about it, was no different from how essentially it had always been. Ironically, the realization brought her comfort and a return of hope.

At the corner of Panton Street they paused and he said: “You’re coming back to the party?”

“No, thank you, Hugo; I’ve got work to do.”

“Are you staying in Cambridge?”

Cordelia wondered whether the question was prompted by more than polite interest. Suddenly cautious, she said: “Only for the next day or two. I’ve found a very dull but cheap bed-and-breakfast place near the station.”

He accepted the lie without comment and they said goodnight. She made her way back to Norwich Street. The little car was still outside number fifty-seven, but the house was dark and quiet as if to emphasize her exclusion, and the three windows were as blank as dead, rejecting eyes.

She was tired by the time she got back to the cottage and had parked the Mini on the edge of the copse. The garden gate creaked at her hand. The night was dark and she felt in her bag for her torch and followed its bright pool round the side of the cottage and to the back door. By its light she fitted the key into the lock. She turned it and, dazed with tiredness, stepped into the sitting room. The torch, still switched on, hung loosely from her hand, making erratic patterns of light on the tiled floor. Then in one involuntary movement it jerked upwards and shone full on the thing that hung from the centre hook of the ceiling. Cordelia gave a cry and clutched at the table. It was the bolster from her bed, the bolster with a cord drawn tight about one end making a grotesque and bulbous head, and the other end stuffed into a pair of Mark’s trousers. The legs hung pathetically flat and empty, one lower than the other. As she stared at it in fascinated horror, her heart hammering, a slight breeze wafted in from the open door and the figure swung slowly round as if twisted by a living hand.

She must have stood there rooted with fear and staring wild-eyed at the bolster for seconds only, yet it seemed minutes before she found the strength to pull out a chair from the table and take the thing down. Even in the moment of repulsion and terror she remembered to look closely at the knot. The cord was attached to the hook by a simple loop and two half hitches. So, either her secret visitor had chosen not to repeat his former tactics, or he hadn’t known how the first knot had been tied. She laid the bolster on the chair and went outside for the gun. In her tiredness she had forgotten it, but now she longed for the reassurance of the hard cold metal in her hand. She stood at the back door and listened. The garden seemed suddenly full of noises, mysterious rustlings, leaves moving in the slight breeze like human sighs, furtive scurryings in the undergrowth, the bat-like squeak of an animal disconcertingly close at hand. The night seemed to be holding its breath as she crept out towards the elder bush. She waited, listening to her own heart, before she found courage to turn her back and stretch up her hand to feel for the gun. It was still there. She sighed audibly with relief and immediately felt better. The gun wasn’t loaded but that hardly seemed to matter. She hurried back to the cottage, her terror assuaged.

It was nearly an hour before she finally went to bed. She lit the lamp and, gun in hand, made a search of the whole cottage. Next she examined the window. It was obvious enough how he had got in. The window had no catch and was easy to push open from outside. Cordelia fetched a roll of Scotch tape from her scene-of-crime kit and, as Bernie had shown her, cut two very narrow strips and pasted them across the base of the pane and the wooden frame. She doubted whether the front windows could be opened but she took no chances and sealed them in the same way. It wouldn’t stop an intruder but at least she would know next morning that he had gained access. Finally, having washed in the kitchen, she went upstairs to bed. There was no lock on her door but she wedged it slightly open and balanced a saucepan lid on the top of the frame. If anyone did succeed in getting in, he wouldn’t take her by surprise. She loaded the gun and placed it on her bedside table, remembering that she was dealing with a killer. She examined the cord. It was a four-foot length of ordinary strong string, obviously not new and frayed at one end. Her heart sank at the hopelessness of trying to identify it. But she labelled it carefully, as Bernie had taught her, and packed it in her scene-of-crime kit. She did the same with the curled strap and the typed passage of Blake, transferring them from the bottom of her shoulder bag to plastic exhibit envelopes. She was so weary that even this routine chore cost her an effort of will. Then she placed the bolster back on the bed, resisting an impulse to sling it on the floor and sleep without it. But, by then, nothing—neither fear nor discomfort—could have kept her awake. She lay for only a few minutes listening to the ticking of her watch before tiredness overcame her and bore her unresisting down the dark tide of sleep.