James and India sat in the beer garden of the Green Dragon, having asked for and received police permission to leave the college grounds for a few hours. They had walked as close as possible to the river, having first debated whether they could somehow annex one of the college's double sculls to make their escape.
"It would be a neat way to dodge the media. We could just float right by them, traveling at great speed," James had said. "Imagine the publicity for the new book. At least Lexy wouldn't have died completely in vain."
"James!"
"Sorry." He had the grace to look abashed. "I suppose that was in rather bad taste."
"Rather. Besides, are old members allowed to take out a scull?" she asked.
"Are you joking? They have a murder investigation on their hands. Who is likely to care?" He laughed. "A couple of scofflaws, that we are."
But in the end James and India took their chances, leaving via a tradesmen's gate, judging correctly that the members of the media (who tended to travel in packs) would be gathered at the front gates, hoping for a sighting of any of the suspects. The removal of Lexy's body the night before had been all they could have hoped for in the way of drama. Perhaps lightning would strike twice.
Now James, his hands wrapped tightly around a pint as they sat at one of the pub's outdoor tables, looked across at his wife.
"Do you remember when we used to come here? It wasn't that long ago, was it, but it seems almost as if we were children then."
"We were children. Life is never again as simple. Just getting through exams was all that mattered. That, and having a dress for the May Ball."
They paused to watch a pair of ducks float by, male and female, the female gliding in the wake.
James said, "I've always wondered, do they mate for life? Or is that only true for mallards?"
India shrugged: Don't know. Don't care right now.
"I just don't see who could have done this," he said then, picking up on her distraction. It was the third time he'd spoken some version of those words that day.
"You must be joking, James. Surely the police are spoiled for choice. My money's on Geraldo, however."
James shook his head firmly. "There's not really a lot of choice, on the face of it. Lexy could be a pain, we all know that. But… it was as if I always knew that her anger was directed at me, not the world. I guess I'm trying to say, she wasn't really a pain in a generalized way. It was tightly focused, her anger, and I understood that. I treated her badly. Her feelings were justified."
"I think this is guilt talking again. It's time to let go of that, James. You can't help her now."
But he didn't seem to have heard.
"It's abominable. She simply did not deserve this."
India was silent, tilting her glass, watching the sunlight play along the rim. Her linen shirt, so full of starched promise an hour ago, now hung in limp, wrinkled folds. It was the kind of day so unseasonably hot people standing by the river no doubt thought lingeringly of throwing themselves in. She took a sip of her Orangina. Tempting as it had been to order a martini, it seemed a time to keep her wits about her.
She asked: "What did you talk about? In the garden with her?" she asked her husband.
"Oh, that."
She paused to look at him thoughtfully. That guilty look…
"Is there a subtext here?" she said at last. But she knew the answer already.
He remained silent, his features haggard and drawn, offering a preview of the man he would be at sixty.
"Yes, that," she prodded. "You spent most of your time dodging her up until that point, or so you say."
"Surely you're not jealous, India."
He smiled, the gentle, indulgent smile he reserved just for her. Some things, he thought, were better forgotten. Sunk to the bottom of the deep blue sea and forgotten. "Of all people," he said, "you know how I feel about you. It's as I told the police: I stepped out for a cigarette, and there she was. I couldn't exactly turn tail and run. And when I think that was my last memory of her… I'm glad I stayed. But, well… she had some idea I'd have tired of you by now-as if I could! As if any man ever could!-and she hoped there might be some way she and I could reconstruct the past. Resurrect it."
"I see," India said coldly. James looked at her, a plea for her understanding in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, darling. I never meant for you to hear of this. It was all nonsense. But now that this has happened… Anyway, the short story is, she had some idea we might start up again. I told her as gently as I could that it was impossible. The result was predictable. Tears and drama, muffled sobs, the whole bit. I left her, but as I walked away, heading for the corridor to the SCR, I saw her flounce away in the direction of the river. It was the last I saw of her. The last anyone saw of her, except her killer, of course." He sighed, and took a long pull on his drink, draining the glass. His hand trembled as he set it back down on the table. "She was always such a flighty sort, and too trusting at times. I still think it likely a tramp came upon her somehow, or she ran into some addict who thought she was carrying money… something… something purely evil-" He broke off.
"James." India held out her hand, and grasped his arm tightly. "Don't. You must stop this. Please don't distress yourself. You're right, it was some freak… accident… She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And doesn't that sound just like her? Some people are born unlucky. I always thought she was one of them. Born under an unlucky star. Isn't that strange? When so many people thought of her as the golden girl. I never did. But then I had a closer view of her over the years." She sat quietly, following some related train of thought. After a while she said, "Sebastian… "
James looked up sharply. "We have to keep him well out of this."
"How can we? He discovered the body," she said. "Don't the police always think that makes you a suspect? I've never really understood why, but it's always that way on the telly."
"If that happens, if they start applying pressure, we'll get our solicitor-just like on the telly. I'll have a word with Sebastian, and with the solicitor. Just to make sure we're prepared for the worst."
She sighed, nodded.
"Now, don't you start worrying." He smiled. "One worrier in the family is bad enough."
"You don't think…"
Reading her thoughts, he said, "That Sebastian had anything to do with this?"
They looked at each other, neither willing to answer the question. -- St. Just felt as little like someone who might appear in a detective show on the telly as could be imagined. It was early days in the investigation yet, but it was right about now he always felt the first stirrings of a mild panic. No more than a fluttering at the edges of his heart, a small riot quickly quelled, but there nonetheless. The early hours were crucial to solving a crime, before evidence and memory faded, and he was never more aware of the swift passage of time than at the start of an investigation.
James and India's surmise was correct: Sebastian was a suspect in St. Just's mind, although an unlikely one, unless and until St. Just could establish some prior connection between Sebastian and Lexy. Sebastian's arrogance was not a point in his favor. And St. Just thought it likely that under pressure, Sebastian, for all his breeding and posh background, could snap, just like anyone else. Perhaps a pampered background had made him even more vulnerable. It was thinking these thoughts that found him heading down yet another interminable corridor in search of what he knew now from witnesses was Sebastian's girlfriend, the exotic young woman who had shown them the way to the Rupert Brooke wing. Sergeant Fear was away helping set up the library room the Master had lent the police to use as a temporary incident room.
The Porter had given St. Just directions to Saffron's room, but not a supply of breadcrumbs, which might have come in handy. Finally, rounding a corner, he recognized one of the exhibits he'd seen that morning-a buffalo or bison skull, at a guess-and knew he was in the area from which Saffron had come.
He came at last to a door labeled with her name; he imagined there couldn't be two people named Saffron Sellers in the college. She was sporting the oak: The massive, outer door to her room was closed, indicating she was not to be disturbed. Fat chance, he thought, pounding his fist against the wood.
"Open up! Police!" He felt foolish using the stock phrase, but she had to be made to know the rules had changed, and these charming college traditions could be damned. Her dissertation or whatever she was doing in there would have to wait.
He put his ear to the door. He could hear someone stirring. He pounded again, and was rewarded with the sound of the inner door being opened.
"All right. All right!" came an exasperated female voice. The same rainbow-colored hair he remembered appeared around the edge of the door. The hair was more disheveled than before, however, which he wouldn't have thought possible. She'd made some haphazard attempt to pin it back with jeweled barrettes in the shape of butterflies.
"Some people have to sleep, you know," she informed him. She pulled a quilted white robe tighter around her slim waist.
St. Just looked at his watch.
"It's nearly noon."
"Yes. I know that. I have to work tonight."
"On your studies. I understand."
"No, I mean work work. I pull pints in a pub in town. I'm at Cambridge on a bursary scheme. Unlike some. It includes a monthly stipend but you couldn't keep a small dog alive on what they give you. That's why I need my sleep. I'm working again tonight."
She pushed back her hair. He could see the exhaustion in her eyes, enhanced by her smudged black-and-blue makeup.
"Must be tough, to tend bar and try to keep up with your studies."
She shrugged. "I try to be philosophical about it."
"What subject are you reading?"
"Philosophy." A small grin. "Now, if there's nothing else?"
Oh, my. And probably reading Nietzsche. Weren't they all? Cambridge was rife with students embracing nihilism and the death of God, if only to annoy the hell out of their parents. Did they really believe what they spouted? Despite the evidence St. Just witnessed daily in his job (a clear rebuttal, if ever there were one, to the idea of a superman), the stark aloneness of such a philosophy had never held any appeal. The thought that existence was pointless both repelled and frightened him. There must be a point.
"This won't take long," he assured her. "If you'd like to put on some clothes, I'll wait outside."
She looked down at her robe. It was frayed around the hem. Signs of a long-ago spill of coffee or tea, unsuccessfully washed, splattered the front. But with it all, the wild hair and makeup and the cheap polyester robe, Saffron didn't look slatternly. She looked poor.
"These are clothes, aren't they?" she asked. "If it will get this over sooner, come on in."
It wasn't the most encouraging invitation, but she did step back and allow him to pass through. She headed for the single bed in the room and wrapped herself in the white duvet before sitting on the edge of the bed. Like her robe, the duvet was threadbare, but it was spotless.
"You'll want to know what I know about Seb, is that right?"
"Oh, I suppose I'd like to know more about you and Seb. Like, how long you've been dating."
"Dating?" She emitted a little snort. "Dating. How quaint. Well, we've been dating since I got here. A little more than a year now."
"Sorry, I'm not up on the expressions young people might use these days. I should say, you've been in an exclusive relationship-for one year, is that right?"
She shrugged, an attempt at insouciance that did not quite come off. St. Just, watching the slow creep of blush onto her already English-rose complexion, realized he'd accidentally hit bone. "Exclusive on my side," she said. "I don't have time to play around. I don't know about Seb, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of free time, either."
Tempted as he was to ask, he didn't see how Seb's fidelity or lack of it could play into the investigation. Instead he asked, "Give me an idea of what you did, where you were, last night. From about six on."
"I was with Seb. Here, in my room. He left about eight to work out. He did that most nights-spend a little time in the gym, then he'd take the scull out until Lighting Up."
"This was his set routine?"
She nodded. "Almost invariable. He wants to get in the Blue Boat. If not this year, next. Eventually. Seb can be a bit driven, but that's the only way you win. So he tells me."
Actually, he was right, as St. Just remembered from his own time spent around rowers set on competing one day against Oxford. For months on end, rowing would come first in Seb's priorities, behind his degree, behind Saffron.
"So, he left you about eight. Is that the last you saw of him, until perhaps after we questioned him last night?"
"Ye-e-e-s. Yes."
"You don't seem sure."
She drew the duvet tighter around her, only her face and feet protruding. Even on a summer morning, it was cold in the room, the damp kind of cold that could seep into Cambridge stone and lodge there for centuries.
On the wall behind her bed, she'd nailed several dozen necklaces and bracelets-bright, gaudy beads in reds and blues and yellows that caught the light, and ropes of plastic pearls. She looked like part of an exhibit of religious artifacts, or a fortune teller. Perhaps a fertility goddess from an ancient Northern tribe.
He thought the display of costume jewelry a resourceful, not to say colorful, solution to the lack of storage space in the room, which was sparsely furnished with fittings that were antique without being valuable. He wondered if Seb's room would be this threadbare, or if the stepson of Sir James rated better lodgings? He thought he knew the answer to that.
"We-e-ll… " said the duvet.
"What is it?" asked St. Just, treading softly.
"It depends on what you mean by 'saw.'"
St. Just folded his hands and looked at her, hoping this was not going to devolve into one of those "what is the meaning of 'is'?" discussions.
She sighed, and allowed her head to emerge slightly from its duvet shell. "I saw him from the window of my room. Just there"-she indicated the large mullioned window above her desk, which stood next to the bed. St. Just walked over. Her room overlooked the back of the college, and she had a view, slightly distorted by the old glass, between the branches of a tree near the window-a view to the boathouse and the path that ran towards it.
"What exactly did you see?"
"I saw him setting out in the scull. Before you ask, I don't know the exact time. But it's about when I expected to see him setting out, if you follow. He hardly deviates from the program he's set for himself."
"You saw nothing else?"
Again, the hesitation.
"I was reading quite a good book, and I just happened to glance up. I went back to the book and thought no more about it."
He picked up a book that lay open on the desk.
"Insanity and Criminal Responsibility?"
"Yeah. You should read it. Fascinating stuff."
Leafing through the pages, he felt he could read it, but understanding it would be another thing.
"And this held you spellbound, did it?" he asked. "For how long?"
Again that hesitation.
"Actually, if you really have to know, I was reading P. D. James." She indicated a shelf next to the desk. Most of the books there were crime novels. "I needed a rest from all the rubbishy academic papers. Next thing I knew, I heard all the hullaballoo, I don't know, around ten."
He looked at her closely. Her small face again retreated into the duvet.
"If there's anything you know you aren't telling me"-and he was sure there was-"now would be a good time, Miss Sellers."
"I've told you." Again the small, muffled voice.
He made as if to leave, then turned and said:
"I'd take care if I were you. I can protect you if I have all the facts. Without them, you're on your own in what has already proven to be a deadly game. Do you understand me?"
The duvet nodded. -- "The girl's lying, of course," St. Just told Sergeant Fear. "But I don't know that it has anything to do with the murder."
They were in a reference room just off the main library. It was a handsome, closed area stacked high with what looked to be old ledgers, some dating back to the eighteenth century, and with two oriel windows looking out either side to the grounds of the college. The Master had emphasized to Sergeant Fear that these treasures-both windows and ledgers-were not to be touched. Fear gathered they could use the table and chairs, and that was the limit of the Master's munificence.
"About seeing Seb? Providing him with an alibi?"
"Possibly. Very likely, in fact. Still, there's something else. She has that view… but she claims to have been reading."
"What was she reading, Sir?"
"Hmm? Oh, it was a P. D. James. That newest one of hers-the one about the plastic surgeon."
"That's suggestive, isn't it? Maybe she likes playing detective, if she's a crime novel fan."
"That occurred to me, too. Damned silly game to play, if so. Silly, and dangerous." Fleetingly, he thought of Portia. "I warned her, but people her age, they always know so much more than the previous generation, have you noticed?"
"Trouble is, I think my Emma and Devin will know more than me. I'm certain of it. Anyway, Sir, maybe this Saffron, maybe she was just embarrassed to be caught spying on her boyfriend. Pride, you know."
"I had thought of that, too. You're right, that's probably it. I'll work on her a bit more later, and make it safe for her to tell me somehow."
"By the way, Sir. As I passed by Geraldo Valentiano's room, it looked to me as if he might be packing."
St. Just heaved a great, somewhat theatrical sigh, his head and shoulders dropping in an attitude of despair. Then he looked up at his sergeant and said:
"All right. Time for another little chat with him. He needs to know that simian charm of his has already worn thin. Then let's see who's in the SCR, shall we?"
As they were leaving, passing through the main library to reach the corridor to the stairs, they passed a Japanese student at work at one of the library's computers. He wore a Burberry scarf, tattered jeans, and an expression of the most intense concentration.
St. Just had earlier asked Portia about him when he'd met her in passing. He seemed ever-present.
"He's always there," she'd confirmed. "Always. He's been around ten years and apparently he just won't leave. We don't think he eats or sleeps, except perhaps for brief moments at the computer. Pay him no mind; no one else does."
"What's he doing?"
"We think he's either inventing a new video game or remapping the double helix. No one really knows, and everyone is afraid to approach him. He thinks one is trying to steal his thesis if one does, you see. As if anyone could understand his thesis, including his tutor, who professes himself baffled. Kurokawa Masaki is his name, and he's either a genius or a maniac. The tutor thinks he might be set to crack the code of the Universe, so he leaves him alone. Either way, it's best to not disturb him."