St. Just let himself into his flat, where the air was stale from his brief absence, and as he stood, taking in the uncluttered space, he felt himself begin to relax. The hallway of the flat led directly into the sitting area, a cozy spot that encouraged reading by the fireside, or gazing into space, and generally offloading the cares of the day. His sister had seen to all of it, employing a man named Jim and his entourage one year as a surprise birthday present. St. Just had endured a surreal four weeks of being grilled as to his preferences, quizzed about his tastes, and gently interrogated with regard to the colors to which he was drawn. It was as close to being professionally psychoanalyzed as he would ever come, St. Just imagined, and probably far more beneficial.
He flipped the switch that managed the room's recessed lighting. Deerstalker was still at the neighbors' being fed and worshipped while St. Just was away, a common arrangement given St. Just's erratic schedule. He'd have to collect the cat later; everyone, perhaps including Deerstalker, would be well asleep now.
He wondered anew why he kept a pet, although "kept" was never the operative word with cats. Nor was "pet." Often, days or even weeks would go by without his setting eyes on Deerstalker, only to be met on his return with that cat-patented You again? look, followed by a dismissive turn of that regal little skull. It wasn't as if Deerstalker were angry with him about these absences. That would imply a personal rather than a business relationship, and the business they were in together required simply that Deerstalker be housed and fed according to his own exacting standards.
Deerstalker was one of the few emissaries from the animal world that did not immediately fall under St. Just's spell, or at least, pretended not to. Although he would on occasion allow St. Just to pet him, their "together time" was strictly rationed. Apparently lulled to sleep, he would suddenly leap from St. Just's lap and run from the room as if remembering an urgent engagement, only to reappear when he chose, hours later, without apology or explanation, or even a passing glance.
Shrugging off his jacket, St. Just scanned the headlines in the days-old newspaper on the sofa. Another screed of paranoiac vitriol from the Middle East, and more double-speak from Russia. Another child gone missing-thank God, on someone else's watch, but weren't they all on our watch? Another august British institution gone bankrupt. The newspapers lately had been full of photos of stockbrokers shouting across trading room floors, or with eyes cast heavenward, hands clasped on foreheads. For all St. Just knew, these were old photos trotted out for every bounce in the markets, although recent news had been unusually bad.
His eyes retreated from these tales of mayhem and carnage to his artist's pad, opened to a half-finished pastel drawing of Portia. He couldn't quite capture the light in her blue eyes; he'd made a mess of it with repeated attempts and would have to start over. Something about being too close to one's subject, he thought, grinning. He was tied to her like a hawk tethered by mews jesses, a fact he accepted not with resentment but gratitude and not a little fear, for his love for Portia was bittersweet-to him, the risk of loss would always be the flip side of the happiness coin.
He started to tear up his poor effort, but found himself reluctant to actually destroy the page that held her image. He flipped instead to the page where a picture was emerging of the Chief Constable, who was a beautiful woman of strong facial structure, he had to admit, despite her off-puttingly trendy social beliefs. There, he felt he'd caught the light of fervor in her eyes, almost exactly. It was a look not unlike Hermione Jax's.
He stopped to reheat some soup and bread, and after this small meal, he poured out a brandy to sip while he worked. An hour later he started to pour out a second brandy, then decided that might be a brandy too far. Still wide awake, he picked up his copy of Baudolino from the side table. He was starting to believe the book was cursed. He could never get past chapter three because a case always interrupted him at right about that point, as Baudolino was telling his story to Niketas. By the time St. Just got back to the book, he'd have forgotten some of the salient details; he felt he had to take a good running start at it by beginning again at the first chapter. Maybe if he just kept reading… Dutifully, as clouds scudded by outside his window, he sat in his easy chair and began reading again. At chapter three, his mind began to wander, wishing himself with Portia. And his eyes closed in sleep. -- The next day, early, he returned to St. Michael's College and went up to Portia's rooms. She was in the second court where they kept the Fellows who chose to live in college (stored them, Portia insisted was a better term). But her set of rooms was large and featured an Oriel window. When away from her, he pictured her sitting there like a princess in a tower.
Ordinarily, she might have stayed with him in his flat the night before, but as she was involved in a murder investigation-again-there was no question of that: She was, in theory and officially, at least, a suspect. The few times he had stayed in her rooms in college had not been a success-she had a single bed, for a start. He had long before, and with unseemly haste, asked her to move in with him, but that trial balloon hadn't flown.
"We'll live together when we're married," she'd said.
"And when will that be?" he'd asked, suddenly stung with hope.
"I don't know. When I've finished my thesis?"
Seeing the look on his face, she'd quickly and penitently added, "I'm going to be married to you for the rest of my life. Since I plan to live a very, very long time, I want to enjoy, to savor, if you will, my last time as a single woman. I've been single for thirty-five years, you know. Hard to give that up. Not that I'm planning any wild adventures. But if I want to stay in bed 'til noon writing my novel, that's what I'll do. If I want to go up to London on the spur of the moment, I will do that. I may have a private film festival one weekend, watching old movies like Rebecca, and weeping over How Green Was My Valley, and analyzing old episodes of Inspector Morse. All of that will change once we're married"-and here she held up a hand to still his protest-"no, it's changed already, and you know it has. I can't make a move but that I want you in my plans, as a key part of my plans. Once I'm one half of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur St. Just, it will be 'worse.' Wonderful, but worse. This is nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the fact that we met and my world changed overnight. Give me time. Just a little."
It wasn't that he didn't understand-he understood too well, and so reluctantly accepted what she told him. They'd be together soon enough. This day he drank her excellent coffee and, after a brief chat, left her to resume the investigation. Sergeant Fear was waiting for him downstairs.
"We've told them to stay clear of their rooms so we can have a proper search," he informed St. Just. "And the Master's given us a diagram of who was in what room. Shall we start with the victim's room?"
But they soon found themselves lost in one of the labyrinthine passages of the college. After ten fruitless minutes, they were forced to ask the way of one of the few students they came upon. She introduced herself as Saffron.
Even though it was edging on High Summer, Saffron wore large, suede, fur-lined boots, suitable for competing in the Iditarod, offset by a pair of shorts so tiny St. Just had to closely husband his eyes, fixing them firmly on her face as he asked her the way back to the rooms being used by the guests. Fear blushed a deep red and stared at the ceiling.
She'd done something strange to her hair, which, fortunately, gave St. Just something to stare at. It was pinned, twisted, and spun into random coils, finally falling down about her neck in pink-and-blue-tipped tendrils that matched her eye shadow. Her lips were painted a matching blue.
She nodded. "They'll be in the Rupert Brooke."
"Interesting choice of name. Had he some connection with the college?"
"None whatsoever. A former Master was an admirer: 'The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick / My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew / I must think hard of something, or be sick… ' From 'A Channel Passage.' Quite the worst subject for a poem one can imagine, is it not? We had it in the sixth form. It was the boys' favorite."
She led them through a corridor of Harry-Potterish aspect, past strange and fusty exhibits of rocks and shells and stuffed creatures-likely donated cast-offs of former members-to what had been Lexy's room during her short stay at the college. The multi-colored young woman named Saffron left them there.
Lexy's room was much as St. Just had expected, an explosion of frilly, expensive clothing, including no fewer than five pairs of shoes. The room itself featured a large bay window overlooking First Court, with a view across the court to the staircases leading up to the sets of rooms opposite.
"Five pairs of shoes for a weekend visit?" asked Sergeant Fear.
"Either she liked to be prepared for anything or she couldn't make up her mind."
The air in the room held the smell of her flowery perfume mixed with the lighter scent of her cosmetics-the face powders and rouges and the various unguents no doubt meant to keep her forever young. Death had beat these elixirs to it: She would forever be thirty-eight; she would forever escape the dreaded Four-Oh birthday.
St. Just turned to face the mystifying display of containers and jars on top of a makeshift dressing-table-it appeared she had commandeered the nighttable for this purpose, propping up a handheld mirror to apply her makeup. The two policemen stood stolidly surveying the wide-ranging tools of artifice. St. Just crossed the room to open the door of the cupboard. It seemed she had only bothered to hang one or two items; the rest spilled in ripples and foams of satin and lace from an expensive set of luggage left open in the middle of the room. A magazine of the glossy gossip-and-fashion variety lay open to an advertisement for shoes-someone, presumably Lexy, had used an eye crayon to circle three styles of interest. On the page opposite the ad was a photo of a young blonde woman, evidently inebriated, being lifted out of the gutter outside a London nightclub. Today's role model.
"SOCO's been through all this, of course, but I wanted a look for myself," St. Just told Fear. "They found traces of drugs in her suitcase, were you aware? Traces, but no drugs. They think prescription, not street, but we'll know more later. Let's have a closer look at that door."
The door into the corridor bore the clear marks of having been jimmied from the outside. The lock still functioned, but barely.
"So she was telling the truth about that, unless for some unfathomable reason she staged the break-in herself," said St. Just.
He turned and stared about him at the room, willing it to give up its secrets. But it seemed to be no more than what it was: a room temporarily and briefly occupied by a woman whose real life was lived elsewhere. He remarked as much to Sergeant Fear.
"We'll need someone in London to have a look at her home, talk to her neighbors."
"On it," said Sergeant Fear.
Geraldo's room, next door, was the masculine equivalent to Lexy's-the yang to her yin: flashy, expensive clothing tossed casually about, as if a manservant would appear any moment to deal with it all. Similar to Lexy's room, there was no reading material to speak of, not even a men's fashion magazine. The room itself was smaller, but otherwise identical. Geraldo possessed, if anything, more jars and bottles of unguents than Lexy. Sergeant Fear picked up a jar, read the label, and snorted.
"It's a 'facial regenerator,'" he reported. "That's aftershave, to you and me. Complete with Vitamin B5 and antioxidants. Whatever next?"
"I wouldn't scoff too quickly, Sergeant. What you're holding there may be the very secret to his reported success with the ladies."
They tackled India's room-Lady Bassett's-next. While as messy as Lexy's and Geraldo's, the frilly, lacy, demimonde aspect was missing. Here were sensible clothes, tweedily expensive and made to last, whereas Lexy's had every appearance of being expensive and made to be replaced each season. The few pieces of jewelry in a small travel case were of heirloom quality. Here a magazine was left open to an article on gardening, much marked and annotated by the reader. A tennis racket, perhaps forgotten by the room's usual occupant, leaned against the back of the wardrobe. She was evidently a diabetic; a packet of low-dosage insulin and needles were tucked hidden in the wardrobe.
"It's a much larger room than Lexy's or Geraldo's," noted St. Just. "You can see where the college was hoping most of the money was going to come from."
"Sir James' title probably helped turn the Master's head."
Their survey of the next rooms produced nothing of interest, at least from a police standpoint. Gwennap Pengelly's room, in addition to being surprisingly neat, was a fortress of IT equipment and wires. Augie Cramb's room also reflected a passion for gadgets, camera equipment, and the like. Hermione Jax's room was as sparse as a nun's, explainable perhaps in part by the fact she had had less far to travel than the others. The separate rooms of the Dunnings reflected the differences in their characters: his toiletries and clothing were laid out neatly, while hers had been flung about with abandon. Her room was saturated by a perfume St. Just didn't recognize, but found profoundly disagreeable in such large doses.
"Phew," said Sergeant Fear.
On the desk by the window, a stack of postcards lay ready for mailing. St. Just picked one up at random-a beautiful scene of the Backs-and turning it over read the commentary. It was, as he expected, a litany of complaints to someone back home, a litany that ignored the beauty of both the card and her surroundings. Again he remarked at the attraction that could hold together two people of seemingly polar-opposite temperaments and inclinations like Karl and Constance Dunning. He didn't think he himself could stand to have Constance Dunning in his house.
Sergeant Fear looked up from the Master's diagram and said, "Only Sir James' room to go."
St. Just, recalled from his reflections, said something that sounded like, "Humph?" Then he said, "Go ahead and have a look 'round, will you? I doubt you'll find anything."
"What exactly is it we're looking for, Sir?"
St. Just shrugged.
"The personality of the occupant. They've all left us some clues, even in the short time they've been here."
Sergeant Fear returned in a few minutes.
"Neat as a pin, everything he owns is hand-tailored, expensive looking. You know," and here he adopted a fruitily upper-class voice: "'Spare no expense, my good man! And don't spare the horses!' He's reading," and here the sergeant referred to his notes, "something called Baudolino."
St. Just barked out a laugh. "Please tell me you're joking. How far along is he in it?"
Puzzled, Sergeant Fear replied, "He's bookmarked it about halfway through."
"He must have more leisure time than I." St. Just carefully replaced the postcard on the desk. "Anyway, I think it's time we sloped off for a word with the Porter and a few others. Come along."
They got no further than the foot of the main staircase before running into Hermione Jax. St. Just had the distinct impression that, like Portia the night before, she had positioned herself there to wait for them. It turned out he was right.
"There you are at last," she said accusingly, as if they had missed a pre-arranged appointment. She gave a resounding thump! with her walking stick. "I have something to tell you. Something I've just remembered. It's about the Master."
"Really?" St. Just arranged his expression into one of polite attention.
"Yes. You see, I had completely forgotten this in all the excitement. I didn't go straight into the SCR from my room but I decided to pop in on the Master in his study. This was right after dinner-immediately after. There was something I forgot to tell him, you see."
"And what was that?"
"Hmm?"
"What was it you had forgotten to tell the Master?"
She continued to stare blankly at him for a moment, then said testily, "You can't expect me to remember that, not after all that's happened."
"Well, then, perhaps you can tell us how you knew where to find him. Wouldn't the SCR have been a more likely place to look?"
"Not at all. He's always in his study."
"I see."
She seemed to change subjects, although later St. Just wondered if her thoughts weren't all on the same train. The mess must be cleaned up quickly, and the college, in the form of the Master, must not be dragged through any mud.
"Really, Inspector, this kind of thing can't be allowed, you know," she said. "Murder is of course a shocking thing, but in this case we must take the long view."
"How so?"
"We moderns like to think of ourselves as superior but if I could do away with my enemies as tidily as did Henry VIII, would I not? Of course I would. So would you-I dare say it. No doubt something of the kind has transpired here."
St. Just struggled to keep up with her reasoning. She seemed to be saying there was no need for this fuss-murder was a commonplace of the human condition. "You mean," he said, "like that tedious person at the next carrel in the library, snapping away at his chewing gum? If only we could just get out a writ or whatever they had in those days and have him done away with?"
"Precisely. Especially people who snap their chewing gum."
"It is a tempting thought, I must say."
"There you are. I rest my case."
"But one leading to civil chaos," he concluded.
Her umbrage wrapped around her like a cloak, Hermione Jax, with a valedictory thump of her cane, turned and stalked out of the main hall. She disappeared into one of the doorways leading into the bowels of the college. St. Just remarked to Sergeant Fear, "Is she covering for the Master, or is she trying to shorten the length of time she was away from the group, and thus without an alibi? And I wonder: Does her dog-like devotion to the Master cut both ways?"
She had left open the door through which she had disappeared, allowing in a distant gush of baroque organ music. The two men peered through the opening. A sign pointed them the way to the college chapel, where the service had evidently just ended. St. Just had forgotten it was Sunday. The Master had petitioned to allow the service to go on as planned, with the choir singing a much-rehearsed "Coronation Mass" by Mozart. St. Just had seen no reason to refuse, although he sent in a team to search the chapel before he released it to college use once more. A grateful Master was overheard to say later, "So reasonable. It's hard to believe he's a policeman. Peterhouse man, though. Pity, that."
A figure robed in vestments-almost certainly the Reverend Otis-stood talking, his back to them, with Sir James and Lady Bassett, their tones low and sorrowful. The policemen saw the back of what looked like a tonsured head, the hairstyle owing to genetics rather than religious practice. The Dean's shiny skull had an unusually pronounced ridge of bones. St. Just, always captivated by the variety of the human form, realized that the prominent bones formed an upside-down "Y"-precisely like a peace symbol. It reminded him of T. S. Eliot's "skull beneath the skin," and of Sebastian in his scull, and from there led him to thinking how inconvenient for the murderer had been Sebastian's slavish devotion to his schedule. The finding of the body might otherwise have happened hours later than it had.
Sergeant Fear raised his eyebrows inquiringly-Should we interrupt?-and St. Just shook his head. Time enough to talk with the Reverend Otis, and given the Master's anxiety on the subject, St. Just felt it might be more useful to catch the man when he was quite alone.
With the Master they were in luck-and the Bursar, with whom they'd not yet spoken, was with him. Both men looked up rather guiltily as Sergeant Fear knocked on the door and immediately pulled it open for St. Just.
The Master made the introductions. It transpired that the Bursar's "civilian" name was Mr. Bowles, and he seemed to have joined the Master in a state of shock.
"The press have got wind of this, you see," the Bursar explained. In fact, the press could be heard faintly beyond the crinkle-crankle college wall, yipping like starving sans culottes in search of a bread line.
To St. Just, the Bursar looked like a particularly alert, newly hatched bird, his eyes large behind his glasses, his beak sharp, his attention avid. "Well, we knew it couldn't be kept from them forever, but you'd think they'd have the decency to wait."
"Not high on their list of priorities, I'm afraid, at the best of times. Decency. Nor patience," said St. Just. "In fairness, it is going to be a big story for them. None of them will want to miss out. They have editors to answer to."
"Fairness," said the Master, scoffing at the word. "It's that Gwenn Pengelly behind this, you mark my words. She had the absolute gall to ask if I would allow her television crew in so she could interview the guests for her show. Just imagine!"
"That would probably be accurate, Sir-the story would have leaked through Ms. Pengelly almost immediately. Can't be helped." St. Just added, "Now, we'll eventually have to question all the staff who were on duty last night."
The Master puffed out his thin cheeks in a blustery outrage, "Oh, surely not. There are no windows in the kitchen overlooking the grounds. It's highly doubtful any of them saw anything, let alone did anything."
"But during dinner, they were best placed of all to observe," countered St. Just. "No one, in my experience, really notices the staff. Which leaves them a world of time to notice the guests."