"That's right. You may well look shocked." India rearranged the diamond bracelets on each arm, creating a show of twinkling lights against the wall and ceiling as table lamps caught the sparkles and made them dance. Seeing she had the full attention of her audience, she went on:
"It was our first night here… just last night, in fact. The windows in my room were open, as they were in most rooms, I'd wager-apart from Mrs. Dunning's. She's done nothing but complain about the cold since she got here. Hermione, although rather mad in her way, is quite right about global warming, you know. The college used to be freezing year-round. It's been quite warm since we got here, even in the dungeon-like rooms along that corridor, and we've had to keep the windows open all night. No air conditioning in the old part of the college, of course, and-"
"Anyway," St. Just cut in. She smiled charmingly, not in the least offended.
"Sorry, I do go on. Anyway, I was unpacking-James was down the corridor, trying to coax hot water out of the college's rusty old pipes for a shower. This was before the big kerfuffle about Lexy's room being broken into, which was also impossible not to overhear. Oh, I see you do know about that? Well, I'll get back to that in a minute, shall I? Anyway, I was unpacking when Lexy and her friend started a real argy-bargy."
"What was said?"
"I could really only hear half the conversation without actually hanging out of the window, you know. Her little girl voice didn't carry, somehow, and it sounded anyway as if he were nearer the window, she on the other side of the room. I did hear her say-she got rather shrill at moments, which is when I could hear her well-I heard her say, 'I didn't bring you here to make a fool of me.' To which Geraldo replied, 'No, you don't need anyone's help for that.' I thought that was rather good, frankly. But he mainly kept saying, 'Don't be absurd!' or 'I did nothing of the sort!' and so on. Denials. I remember particularly when he said, 'You'll get your money back and more, don't worry.'"
"You're quite certain, money was mentioned?"
"Quite certain."
"Do you recall anything else you may have overheard?"
She shook her head. She wore a little diamante headband-not quite a tiara-and the movement dislodged it. Her hand flew up to catch it before it fell. She placed it in what looked like an antique jet-beaded handbag.
"I'll try to remember, but I think that was it."
"As to her room being broken into…?"
"Yes, wasn't that another tempest? Honestly, being next door to that room was like trying to fall asleep in King's Cross. Again, because it was so stuffy in the room, we heard more than perhaps we were meant to, through the open windows."
"Your husband was with you, then?"
"Yes."
"Go on."
"We heard Lexy raise the alarm. This was Saturday afternoon. Complaining that the lock on her room had been forced. I guess the Porter and several members of staff were called in to investigate-we could hear various voices, all talking at once, asking her if anything had been stolen. 'No, I don't think so'-I heard her say that plainly enough. 'That's what's so very odd,' she said. 'All my jewelry is right here'-presumably, still in her jewelry case or whatever she travels with."
St. Just sat for a moment, lost in thought. Sergeant Fear took advantage of the lull to extract another Biro from his pocket, having run the first one nearly dry. At last, St. Just said, "You are certain it was Geraldo Valentiano she quarreled with?"
"Positive. I mean, there can't be too many others running about the college with that Rubirosa-type accent."
"I'm sorry," put in Sergeant Fear. "Would you spell that, please?"
She spelled it out for him, and seeing the Sergeant's continued look of puzzlement, said kindly, "He was a bit before your time. Mine, too, come to that. He was a famously louche playboy of the '40s and '50s. Worked his way through the list of any heiress or actress of the day worth knowing. A legendary Lothario. I only know who he was because my mother used to speak of him with great fondness-she was suspiciously fond, if you know what I mean. Anyway, our Argentine is much the same type of egg. All melting glances under the moonlight. Then, poof! Next day, gone. Lexy was rather a fool, you know."
"Well, this has been most helpful, Lady Bassett," said St. Just.
"India, please! We shall all get to know each other rather well before this is over, I should imagine."
"I imagine so. Please let us know if you can add anything to what you've already told us."
She merely shook her head, looking, for the first time, rather helpless. When she had left, Sergeant Fear turned to St. Just and said, "Funny Geraldo didn't mention any quarrel over money while we had him in here."
"Yes," said St. Just faintly. "Of course, if Lady Bassett is the only one who overheard this altercation… "
"You think she was lying, Sir?"
"I think she might have a motive to protect her husband if she thinks he might be implicated. Not quite the same thing, is it, Sergeant, as proof she's lying?"
Sergeant Fear allowed that it was not.
"As to the break-in, if that's what it was, it sounds as if there were plenty of witnesses to the conversation about that. We'll have to talk to the Porter and find out what he knows about it. We'd better have a look in Lexy's room. Make sure Geraldo kips somewhere else tonight, if he thinks he's staying there." First pulling back his cuff to look at his watch, St. Just drew the list of names towards him again and said, "Who's next?… Mr. and Mrs. Dunning of New York, USA. We'll have the wife first, I think." -- Constance Dunning was a formidable-looking woman of militaristic bearing whose counterpart in Great Britain would no doubt be the mainstay of the Women's Institute; the heart and soul, not to mention the veritable backbone, of the village fete; the bastion of the Bring-and-Buy table. What equivalent role she might perform in the United States, St. Just could not imagine, but surely the entire world needed someone such as she to keep it whipped into shape. Stepping with thunderous intensity into the room, she seized the reins of the conversation immediately, settling into an armchair and proclaiming in ringing tones, "This is a shocking thing to have happened. Positively shocking. We come to England to get away from this kind of thing."
"Yes, I do realize-"
"First, we endure the most endless flight from New York, during which we are served five small, broken pretzels as an appetizer-five-only to arrive at Heathrow, which is an absolute madhouse-a madhouse, I tell you. Talk about your melting pots! Where are they all going? Where can they be traveling to? And the whole time we're being gouged left and right, nickled and dimed to death, the exchange rate being what it is. I bought a T-shirt yesterday-a T-shirt, mind, and not of a very good quality cotton-that must have set us back thirty-five dollars. Highway robbery, I told the clerk. I lay the blame at the door of the European Union-such a bad idea that was. And then to come here and suffer the outrage of a police investigation, well, I never-"
Sergeant Fear wondered when St. Just was going to make Constance Dunning put a sock in it. He looked over to his superior, who seemed to be listening with every sign of attention and sympathy. Fear had to hand it to him. They'd interviewed witnesses together that Fear would cheerfully have shot, given a gun, while St. Just managed, for the most part, to maintain an interested and encouraging air about him. Most suspects loved him, and if the feeling weren't reciprocated, they seldom came to know of it.
"-and her so young. What is the country coming to?"
She was giving little signs of slowing down, of exhausting her little store of cliches if not her enormous backlog of grievances. St. Just skillfully made his move.
"I ask myself that twice a day, Mrs. Dunning. The police, well, we have our work cut out for us, what? Now, you can be of the most enormous assistance to us, a woman of your caliber-"
And what would that be? A twenty-two? wondered Sergeant Fear.
"-and obvious gift of insight into the human condition. We need to know exactly where everyone was this evening, and what you observed. Your observations could be absolutely crucial to the success of our investigation."
Mrs. Dunning visibly expanded under this treatment. She wore a purple dress of a shiny fabric stretched taut as shrinkwrap across a massive chest. The serried strands of a pearl necklace nearly disappeared into her thick, fleshy neck; ankles bulged from the tops of black court shoes.
It didn't hurt that St. Just was handsome as the devil, but the sergeant had met many good-looking policeman who seemed to spend all day running about poking sticks in people's eyes. Now he watched as Constance Dunning, tittering slightly, patted her dark hair against her round head and said, "Of course, I'd do anything to help the British bobbies." And then, miraculously, she shut it and waited for St. Just's first question. Sergeant Fear drew a little smiley face in his policeman's notebook and then took down her particulars as they were offered.
"Now, Mrs. Dunning," said St. Just. "Let us start with why you came on this trip. As you say, it is frightfully expensive, and air travel is not the pleasure it once was."
"Well, my husband was keen to see the old place after so many years. We keep getting these things in the mail from the college, these brochures, and this year was our year, you know. Twenty-two years since Karl matriculated here. I said to him, 'It won't come around twice, this anniversary, and we may not be here for the thirty-year mark.' You never know, do you? So I said, 'Let's go.' And we did. Went."
She seemed to want to expand on the theme of the shortness of life and the fleetingness of time but, making a super-human effort, she subsided, again waiting expectantly to see how next she could help her British Bobby.
"And how did things, well, strike you once you were here? Any nuances or frictions, open quarrels? Especially any surrounding the person of Lexy Laurant?"
Sergeant Fear felt his superior was making a huge mistake here, asking such open-ended questions. Constance Dunning was the type of witness who could easily keep them here until doomsday talking about rubbishy nuances rather than cold hard facts. But she surprised him again by coming in at under sixty seconds.
"She had eyes only for that ex-husband of hers. The wife didn't like it much, but was trying not to let it show. The Argentine fellow didn't give a tinker's damn what she did-Lexy, I mean. But as to open quarrels, no. They're all British, except for that Cramb fellow and the Argentine, who lives here. That kind of thing rubs off. Stiff upper lip and tally ho, you know what I mean?"
"Yes, indeed I do. Would you mind telling us about your own movements, and what you know of your husband's, from the time you came downstairs this evening for dinner?" In case she might cut up at this suspect-type questioning-generally a signal for any red-blooded American to call the nearest embassy-St. Just added smoothly, "It's essential that we know where everyone was, at exactly what times, and an impartial witness such as yourself is always used as the benchmark in a police investigation on British soil. It's SOP at Interpol, too, of course. We'll issue countrywide bulletins, should that become necessary. BOLOs and so on. You do understand how crucial your testimony might become."
"BOLOs," she repeated breathlessly.
"Yes."
She lifted her large head, which sat like a bison's atop her bulky shoulders, without apparent recourse to the intervention of a neck, with keen interest. Sergeant Fear, who had never heard such a load of codswallop in all his years, did not dare meet St. Just's eyes, but desperately fixed his own eyes on his notebook, fighting back the maniacal laugh threatening to erupt.
"Of course, Chief Inspector," she said. "I quite understand." Another pat of her hair, and she leaned in conspiratorially-in case MI5 were listening in, presumably-before launching into a more or less cogent summary of her evening. Down to drinks at seven-thirty on the dot. Dinner at eight. Dinner finished at nine-fifteen or maybe a little later, she wasn't sure. She headed straight for the SCR. Her husband used the facilities and joined her shortly thereafter.
"And you, Mrs. Dunning," St. Just asked delicately. "You yourself had no need of, erm, the facilities?"
"I have the constitution of an ox, and I don't see any point in layering on powder and lipstick like some I could mention here-that television woman for a start. No. I came straight in."
"Did you see anything unusual, anything at all that might help us?"
"No. Coming out of Hall, through that overhead passage window, I saw Lexy talking with James in the Fellows' Garden. It was the last time I saw her-alive." She allowed herself a little waver of melodrama on the last word, then sank back in her chair, her mental survey of the hollowness and futility of all life's endeavors reflected sadly on her face. Apparently satisfied with her performance, she added, "That strapping young yellow-haired fellow came dashing in at five minutes before ten o'clock. I know. I checked my watch."
St. Just beamed at her. It was apparently all and more than she could have hoped for in the way of reward. They talked a few more minutes to no further purpose and then she left the room, meek as a lamb.
"A police investigation on British soil, Sir?" said Sergeant Fear as soon as the door had safely shut behind her broad back. "Interpol? Benchmarking? And, BOLOs? Be on the lookout for what?" St. Just was, Fear supposed, his mentor. But St. Just's quick ability to read a person's character and play to it… Fear suspected St. Just possessed a gift that couldn't be taught. "Why didn't you mention the Flying Squad while you were about it?"
St. Just grinned widely. "The Chief Constable would be pleased," he said. "You see, I have picked up some of her jargon, after all. I guess we'll have the husband next, God bless him." -- Mr. Dunning looked to be a pleasant man in his mid-forties. He was nearly bald, with just a small fringe of salt-and-pepper hair left to encircle his head. He sported gold-rimmed glasses and a little goatee that brought his round face to a Lenin-like point. This all contributed to his looking rather older than his true age, which he stated for the record to be forty.
"Your wife has given us a summary of your movements this evening, but of course we have to verify-and sometimes, re-verify-every statement for accuracy. You do understand. So if you wouldn't mind, Sir… "
And Mr. Dunning proceeded to give them a summary that matched his wife's, although his grasp of exact times seemed to be more tenuous than hers.
"I think everyone was back in the SCR by half past. Maybe sooner," he told them.
"I see. That's all fairly clear. Now, I would like your impressions of the atmosphere this weekend."
"Oh, my," said Mr. Dunning mildly. "My wife is much better at this sort of thing-atmospherics, you know-but I'll do my best." His eyes blinked thoughtfully for several seconds behind the glasses. At last he said, "Well, she wasn't happy, anyone could see that. The victim, I mean. Lexy. It was a shame, really. She was just as pretty as a peach, that girl. Woman, really, of course, but she had a girlish quality to her."
"But you knew her when she was a girl, isn't that correct? When you were here at St. Michael's as students together?"
"Well. Hmm. No. No, that wouldn't be accurate to say we were together, and I certainly wouldn't want Constance-Mrs. Dunning-to get any ideas in her head like that. Lexy was, if you want to know the truth, simply not in my league. I doubt she even noticed I was alive. She pretended to recognize me this weekend but I could tell she really didn't. You have to realize, there were hundreds of kids running around back then-you're not getting a true picture of the college out of term, as you must be aware. Those of us here this weekend-well, little pretense is made that we've not been cherry-picked because we've reached a certain, shall we say, financial threshold in our lives. That's why there are so few of us here. I don't mind. I love St. Mike's and they'll get plenty of moola out of me before all's said and done."
"What was Lexy like at that age?"
"Oh, I don't know. An angel with a temper? But that makes her sound angry, or violent. Not that. Just very emotional. Very fragile. Prone to scenes."
"Rather a difficult person to have around?"
"Oh, I don't know," he said again. "It never bothered me. But as I've said, our paths didn't cross much."
Anyone married to Constance Dunning might require or acquire the ability to let things slide off his back, reflected St. Just. The thought gave birth to his next question.
"Did you meet your wife here at St. Mike's?"
"No, indeed. We met on my return to the States, a few years later. Been married ever since."
"Did you notice anything unusual about this weekend? Any unusual alliances or feuds forming, perhaps?"
"You want to hear anything, however minor, I take it? Well, Augie Cramb is here this weekend, as I suppose you know or will learn. He comes across as buffoonish, but I wouldn't be too taken in by that if I were you. He comes from oil money and made more of his own in the tech world. We were in the same boat together, literally, back in the day. Rowing, that is. He seemed to go out of his way this weekend to befriend Sebastian, the boy who found the body. I saw them talking together on several occasions-probably about his rowing. I did tell you it was a minor thing. Just something I noticed."
St. Just could think of no further questions to ask him. With the traditional request that he make himself available for further questioning by himself or one of his men, he told Karl Dunning he could leave. He left.