An Advancement of Learning Read online

  Thereafter whenever his evening’s ornithological research was finished, Harold always cast around with his glasses for a few moments before heading for home.

  Tonight was different. It was far too late for any self-respecting birds to be on show. Harold was on his way home after a couple of pints of mild ale followed by two or three bottles of Guinness and the remnants of a cold pie at a friend’s house. It was close on midnight, but the sun’s light was not long out of the perfectly clear sky. He had turned off the road and cut across the golf course to the sea, more to prolong than shorten his journey home. The tide was half-way in, still a long way to go, and the surface of the sea was like cellophane, perfectly still. He could not recall a night so calm.

  Then his sharp old eyes caught a flicker of movement among the dunes a furlong ahead.

  Without thinking he halted and raised his glasses, without whose weight around his neck he would have felt only half-dressed.

  What he saw sent him scrambling up a heathery bank to his right to gain a better vantage point. Then his glasses were up again, swinging wildly round in his incredulity.

  In a hollow in the dunes ahead there were about twenty naked men and women dancing. At least that was the only name he could give to it. They were roughly in a circle, moving clockwise; generally in pairs, some facing each other, gripping each other’s arms, sinking to the ground together and leaping up again, their heads flung backwards, shaking in apparent frenzy. Others, arms linked behind, danced back to back, spinning round and round with increasing violence.

  He could only see two-thirds of the circle because of the fold of the ground, and even with the clearness of the night and the help of his glasses, detail was not all that clear. But it was obvious that all the men were in a state of great Sexual excitement.

  A girl appeared alone in the centre of the circle. She seemed to be facing something he could not see because it was on the nearer side of the hollow. She knelt down, her arms flung wide, just in his view. Something advanced towards her from the side of the hollow, blocking her from Harold’s view. Something difficult to make out, dark and shadowy, a strange animal-like silhouette, like the head of a bull.

  The dancing reached a new pitch of frenzy, the couples leaping high and shaking their bodies at each other with a wild abandon. Finally one pair collapsed in a tight embrace to the ground, another followed, then another, till in a few moments all lay there together, and a new dance began.

  But this had no chance to reach any conclusions. Something happened, Harold couldn’t tell what. But a man leapt up suddenly and looked around. He obviously said something to the others, seemed to shout it in fact, but the distance was too great for Harold to hear.

  Then they were all up on their feet and moving again. Not now in the convulsive provocative gyrations of sexual frenzy, but the uncertain changes of direction of fear and panic.

  The man who was first to his feet disappeared at a run out of the hollow towards the sea. Instantly the rest scattered and in seconds, as far as Harold could see, the hollow was empty. He followed one or two of the naked figures with his glasses for a few moments, but soon they had all passed completely from view.

  Still he swung his glasses to right and left hoping for a brief encore. A movement to the landward side caught his attention. He stopped and focused, but immediately snorted in disappointment. It was a figure all right, but obviously fully clothed. For a moment it stood silhouetted against the night sky, just a bulky shape topped absurdly by a pork pie hat. Then it moved forward down into a hollow among the dunes.

  After that all was still.

  Harold remained sitting on his vantage point for another fifteen minutes or so. Finally, ‘Now I’ve bloody well seen it all,’ he said to himself in gratulatory tones.

  And, rising, he made his way back to the road and thence home. Truly, so it seemed at the time, it had been Harold Lapping’s lucky night.

  Chapter 7

  It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest; and surely the fairer way is not much about?

  SIR FRANCIS BACON

  Op. Cit.

  The next day dawned as bright as those preceding it, but by breakfast a stiff breeze had sprung up from somewhere and students and staff alike began searching for the cardigans and pullovers they had so recently discarded.

  Dalziel set off early in the morning to confer with his superiors. Pascoe couldn’t imagine what such a conference would be like. Who could possibly be Dalziel’s superior without having dismissed him on sight? If you needed qualities of wisdom and tolerance like these to get to the very top, Pascoe despaired of his own prospects. On the other hand there was the example of Kent.

  Detective-Inspector Kent, who had supervised the digging of the garden and the collection of the remains the previous day, now appeared in Landor’s office and gave himself a few airs for a while. But he was too nice a man to keep it up. Pascoe liked him, but, like everyone else, marvelled that he had reached his present eminence. He was married with three young children and his family were devoted to him. But the one real love of his life was golf. It was an obsession with him. A week in which he played less than four rounds was to him a wasted week, though other men found it difficult to fit in nine holes between the demands of the job and their domestic responsibilities.

  But Pascoe could feel almost sorry for the man now as he stared out of the window in the direction of the golf course. Dalziel distrusted him and though he’d left a whole list of instructions for Pascoe, Kent had nothing but a few reports to work on and Pascoe could almost feel him working himself up to take a stroll towards the links.

  Which would be foolish, but it wasn’t Pascoe’s business to say so. He had work enough to do.

  The first thing was to get as clear a picture as possible of Miss Girling’s movements on the day of her departure for Austria.

  It is remarkable how difficult it is to reconstruct one particular day after five years. Pascoe tried it for himself and found it impossible.

  The actual disaster had taken place in the early hours of December 20th. A Tuesday. Pascoe had arranged for copies of relevant press reports to be discreetly obtained for him. There was no point in provoking interest before they had to. The discovery of the bones had created a small stir, but generally speaking the public preferred fresh, warm blood.

  Examination of the relevant year book which had provided much help with his lists the day before revealed that term had ended on Friday December 16th.

  This seemed late to him. He consulted Landor who came in from time to time in search of files to take to his new office.

  ‘We are not a university, Sergeant,’ he answered drily. ‘I am realistic enough to fear that many of our students will not deign to open a book once away from us for the vacation. So we keep them here as long as we can. And in Miss Girling’s day, the place was very much a ladies’ seminary.’

  Pascoe was growing to like Landor. Before leaving, Dalziel had told him of the previous night’s discoveries. Landor was unamazed.

  ‘How clever of you, Superintendent,’ he had said. ‘May we expect an early solution? It has taken a mere five years to discover that poor Miss Girling was murdered.’

  Landor now suggested that Miss Scotby might have preserved some record of the sequence of end-of-term events. He himself was quite unable to help. Nothing in the registrar’s office was of any assistance either.

  But before he could even start another Scotby-hunt, there was an interruption.

  A small aggressive man with a Scottish accent burst in.

  ‘Where’s the other, the fat one?’ he demanded.

  ‘You mean Superintendent Dalziel?’

  ‘Dalziel? He’s a Scot?’

  ‘Only by birth. He’s not here at the moment. Can I help?’ The man looked doubtful, then nodded.

  ‘Why not? I’m Dunbar. Chemistry.’

  He said it as though he were the science’s personification.

  ‘Yes, Mr Dunbar?�
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  ‘What’s all this about Girling? That fool Disney’s been twittering about her all morning evidently. She’s a dreadful creature, dreadful. But they all are. It’s an occupational hazard. But what about Girling? The daft creature was hinting at a connection between our late lamented principal and those bones out there?’

  He pointed dramatically into the garden. His short arm didn’t seem to stretch as far as he would like.

  ‘We have reason to believe that the remains discovered yesterday are Miss Girling’s,’ said Pascoe officially.

  ‘There’s a thing,’ said Dunbar. ‘Well, now. I didn’t believe the others, but this is horse’s mouth stuff, eh?’

  ‘Others?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘Aye.Disney yesterday. I had to hold her up. “It’s Girling!” she cried. Man, I near ruptured myself. Then some students this morning. They were convinced. Said they had it from a weejy board or some such nonsense. You’re certain, it’s true?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pascoe in some exasperation. Dunbar nodded as if reluctantly convinced. He pulled a disproportionately large pipe from his pocket and began to shred what looked like brown paper into the bowl.

  ‘She had it coming to her, y’know,’ he said. ‘I thought it was the hand of God, but this …’

  He struck three unsuccessful matches.

  ‘You knew Miss Girling then?’ asked Pascoe. He knew full well that Dunbar’s name was on the list of staff surviving from six years before.

  ‘Aye. Well. Too bloody well. Me and Saltecombe - you’ve met him? Fat chap in charge of history - we were the first men ever appointed here, you know. 1965. Must have been mad. She didn’t want us, I’m pretty sure. But there were pressures. Others could see the way things were going, so we were a kind of concession. Reckoned we were pretty harmless. Mind, I think Disney would have had us operated on if she could. There was a girl got pregnant that year. She didn’t speak to us for days.’

  He laughed loudly and his breath scattered charred shavings from his pipe.

  ‘I don’t know how I’ve stuck it all this time.’

  ‘But now … ?’

  ‘Now? We exchanged one old woman for another.

  ‘You speak very frankly, Mr Dunbar.’

  ‘It’s my nature, laddie. Look, how the hell did it happen? I mean, what’s she doing here when she should be feeding the edelweiss in Austria?’

  ‘That’s what we wish to find out. Tell me,’ said Pascoe, ‘when did you last see Miss Girling alive?’

  ‘Man, that’s a hard one! Let’s see. That morning. The last day of term.’

  ‘December 16th?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Friday.’

  Dunbar looked at him puzzled.

  ‘Ah, no!’ he said. ‘That would be when the students went off. But not us. Oh no. We used to hang around over the weekend so we could have a cosy little postmortem at a staff meeting on the Monday morning. The 16th, you said? Then it would be Monday 19th.’

  ‘I see. So all the academic staff were there on Monday 19th. Have you any idea when Miss Girling would have set off on her holiday? She was flying to Austria, you’ll recall.’

  ‘No recollection at all. The day is dead to me. I’d be off myself as soon as I humanly could.’

  ‘A pity. Perhaps Miss Disney, or someone on more friendly terms

  Dunbar stood up, letting loose his unpleasant laugh once more.

  ‘Disney! Friendly! Man, you’ve been propagandized!’

  ‘But I understood …’

  ‘It’s a myth. She’s got no friends among the living, that one, so she appropriates the dead. One of the few things in Al’s favour was that she couldn’t stomach Disney. Good day to you!’

  ‘Goodbye. I’m sure the superintendent would like to talk …’

  But the door was already slamming shut.

  ‘Not a very nice kind of man,’ said Kent from the window-seat. Pascoe had forgotten he was there.

  ‘You handled him well, Sergeant. I think I’ll take a little stroll around the estate and soak up a bit of atmosphere. Back in half an hour if I’m wanted.’

  Pascoe watched him stride purposefully out of the room. Perhaps I’ll be like him with a year to go to retirement, he thought wryly.

  He turned back to his work. Dunbar had been interesting. But first things first. At what stage did Miss Girling cease to be Miss Girling on her way to a winter holiday and become a corpse ready for its grotesque interment beneath her own memorial? Any point you cared to choose on the road from the college to Osterwald seemed as impossible as any other. Only the reasons changed.

  At least this wasn’t one where time was of the essence. There was no freshly killed corpse to be examined, no relatives to be informed (perhaps there were? but it wasn’t the same), no frantic rush to track down a killer, while the traces were still fresh. There was no need to browbeat witnesses, to cut corners.

  This one could be taken leisurely, almost academically (not that Dalziel would approve of either of those words!).

  But it was true. Pascoe felt almost happy as he went about his work. There was a feeling of cosiness in the old panelled room with the wind outside pushing vainly against the window-pane.

  Perhaps he should have gone in for the life scholastic after all. These boys knew what they were at, arriving at their (qualified) conclusions after taking the long way round,.

  Welcome aboard! he told himself.

  Down near the shore the wind was stronger than ever, gusting with violence off the land.

  Captain Jessup was having difficulty in coping with it. It blew his drives into the rough, his approach shots into bunkers and even his putts he was willing to swear were being steered inches off course by the malevolent blasts.

  The captain’s lips pressed together in a tighter and thinner line beneath his sadly ruffled white moustaches.

  Douglas Pearl on the other hand had discovered the secret of the perfect golf swing.

  Again.

  It was a cyclical business this, like the old religions. An endless circle of discovery and loss, death and resurrection. And to be conscious of the gift was often the prelude to losing it. So he viewed the fourteenth fairway uneasily. It ran along the sea shore, separated from the beach by a range of steep-sided dunes, vicious with tangled heather and gorse. The fairway ran round inland in a wide arc; the wise man followed it. The brave and the stupid attempted to carry the broad peninsula of dunes which lay between the tee and the hole.

  Pearl stood uncertain. The wind galed forth in new fury. The captain sniffed impatiently. He made his mind a blank, and swung.

  It looked good for the first hundred yards. Then like a Spitfire in a dog-fight, it seemed to accelerate upwards and banked violently to the right, finally crashing out of sight beyond the dunes.

  ‘Oh, bother!’ said Douglas, much distressed. But his careful solicitor’s mind took close note of the last-known position of the ball.

  The captain sent his shot on a flat trajectory one- hundred-and-seventy-five yards down the fairway. It ran on another thirty.

  He spoke for the first time since losing two balls at the fifth.

  ‘This letter you’ve sent me. You know it can’t be done?’

  ‘It’s not asking much, I feel,’ replied Douglas. ‘An early decision, certainly before the end of the month, is necessary if my client is going to have a chance of finishing her course this year.’

  ‘Naturally we’ll come to a decision before the exams,’ said the captain. ‘She can still carry on with her private work now, can’t she?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be absurd!’ said Douglas excitedly.

  Think of the strain she’s under. In any case, while under suspension, she can’t attend lectures, as you well know.’

  ‘Well, these students spend most of their time saying they’re a lot of bloody nonsense anyway, as far as I can see,’ said Jessup unrepentantly. ‘And you know what’s holding things up as well as I do. Fallowfield’s protests have brought up a prett
y complicated constitutional position. It’s not at all clear whether “college representatives” means the student members of the governing body as well as the staff. They’ve taken advice, I believe. I thought they might have come to you.’

  ‘They did,’ said Douglas. ‘I couldn’t help them. It might have conflicted with my client’s interests.’

  Jessup pondered the implications of this as they trudged up the fairway together.

  ‘I can understand Fallowfield though. It’s like a court-martial with midshipmen sitting in judgment,’ he said finally.

  ‘It’s a college, not one of Her Majesty’s ships,’ observed Douglas ironically. ‘I think he’s deliberately delaying things. The longer he spins things out, the more likely it is the girl will jack everything in.’

  ‘But he’s admitted he slept with her!’

  ‘He’s not a doctor, Captain. She’s over age. No, the real thing here is this question of maliciously trying to get her out of the college. If that’s proved, then he’s had it. Perhaps he’s hoping she’ll have a change of heart,’

  ‘And will she?’ asked the captain. ‘I’m not prejudging, mark you. Nothing’s proved. She may yet turn out a liar. But could she have a change of heart?’

  Douglas considered, then shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven’t really been able to make her out yet. She’s a very reserved girl in many ways. But, true or not, something very powerful drove her to make these accusations in the first place. And it’s my reckoning that it would take something even more powerful to stop her now. I can’t imagine what. But certainly more powerful than any blandishments of Fallowfield. I reckon it was just about here.’

  He turned off at right-angles and began to climb through the heather up the dune.

  ‘Give us a hail if you don’t spot it,’ said the captain. ‘I’ll save my old legs an unnecessary walk.’

  ‘Right,’ said Douglas.

  At the top of the dune, he paused. There was a narrow parapet of scant, wiry sea-grass, then the dune fell steeply away in a bank of fine white sand. He stood staring out across the white-flecked sea for a moment. A few gulls wheeled and hung in the turbulent air.