Murder Is Academic (19 page)

‘Well…' I hesitated and glanced at Stephen.

‘You'd better tell him about Merfyn,' he said.

When I'd finished, Jim sat back and roared with laughter. I thought then that he really was an extremely attractive man.

‘I can quite understand that your boss wouldn't want
that
to come out!' he said.

‘I haven't told him,' I had to admit. ‘It would make him even more determined to ditch Merfyn. And talking of things that Lawrence doesn't know, I'd really much rather he didn't get to hear of this conversation.'

‘If it all does turn out to have anything to do with Rebecca's death, there won't be any possibility of keeping quiet about it,' Jim said.

‘Of course, I know that, but if there isn't a connection?'

‘I'll do my best. I'll have a quiet word with the bloke who's in charge of the case. No doubt he'll want to stir things up a bit at the college, but I'll ask him to be discreet when he interviews your boss. It's a good job you did speak to me. Lucy's death was dealt with by Derbyshire police, so there's no reason why anyone would have connected it with the two Cambridge deaths.' He glanced at his watch. ‘My God, is that the time? I promised my wife that I'd be home before nine for once.'

He looked at me and I knew then what it was that had struck me earlier on. He was very highly sexed. He had it firmly under control, but there was an intensity that was quite different from Aiden's flirtatious manner. I guessed he couldn't look at a woman without wondering what she would be like in bed, and as soon as you realize that about a man, you can't help wondering yourself … I pulled myself up short. Was this any way for a pregnant woman to be behaving?

‘One last thing, Cassandra,' Jim said. ‘This house. It's great, but it's a bit isolated, isn't it? I don't want to make you nervous, but until we've looked into this, it would be better perhaps if you weren't alone here too much.'

I saw him out and came back shivering in the current of cold air that came in when I opened the door.

‘I told you he's a good bloke,' Stephen said.

I nodded. ‘I'm glad I told him. It's a weight off my mind.'

But it was disturbing, too. Up until now, I had been able to tell myself that I was letting my imagination run away with me. Thoughts that had been only in my own head and in Stephen's had now been let loose into the wider world. They might shape the future in ways I had not foreseen. Perhaps I had set in motion something that I would regret?

‘You look a bit pale. Are you OK?' Stephen asked me.

‘Yes, I think so. I hope all these shocks and upsets aren't bothering the baby too much.'

‘I expect pregnant women have always…' Stephen began.

‘Oh!' I cried.

I could see my own surprise reflected on Stephen's face.

‘What's the matter?'

‘She kicked me! She really kicked me! It was as if she was answering my question.'

‘You've felt her move before, haven't you?'

‘Not like that, it was a definite thump.'

I walked round to where he was sitting and took his hand. I placed it on my belly. ‘Here. Feel this.'

I watched his face. As the baby kicked again, I saw his frown of concentration give way to a smile. He glanced up at me and shook his head, lost for words.

‘I suppose we'd better eat,' I said. ‘It'll have to be something out of the freezer.'

I got out some chicken breasts.

‘I'll be glad when you're up to cooking again,' I said.

Stephen didn't seem to hear me. ‘Cass?'

‘Mmm?'

‘I think it would be best if I stayed on here. I don't feel I can let you live alone while all this is going on.'

The chicken breasts landed on the work surface with a little thud. ‘Can't
let
me?'

‘Don't jump down my throat. As Jim pointed out, it's very isolated here.'

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘What did you say to him before I got here? Did you put him up to warning me?'

‘It wasn't like that! But if it had been, could you really blame me? If you're right about Rebecca's death, then there's someone out there who is prepared to walk into a busy hospital and murder someone in their bed.'

I leaned over the table and took hold of his hand.

‘O?, sorry I snapped, but surely you don't want to drive in and out of Cambridge during the rush hour every day?'

‘All right: why don't you move in with me, then?'

‘Oh, sweetie, I can't do that. I need my study and all my books. And what about Bill Bailey? He'd be miserable in your flat. We mustn't feel stampeded into a decision we might regret.'

‘I really would feel happier if I was out here with you, Cass. It needn't be permanent, if you don't want it to be.'

He had a point. I thought of the long dark evenings, and the night when I had been so startled by Bill Bailey – and that had been before Rebecca's death. True, there were new security lights on the house and by the gate. I'd had to take out a bank loan to buy them. But how much protection did they really give? The Old Granary was half a mile away from the nearest farm, and there was the baby to consider now. I was slower, more vulnerable. I was carrying a heavy cargo and sailing lower in the water.

Stephen squeezed my hand. I looked into his face. The bandage around his head had gone, but there were still scratches on his cheek and a bruise on his forehead. I thought of that moment on the side of the cliff when Stephen had snatched his hand away from mine so as not to imperil our unborn child.

‘O?,' I said. ‘Let's give it a try. At least until Rebecca's murderer has been found.'

Chapter Fifteen

That was Friday evening. When I arrived in college on Monday morning, the police were already there. I was impressed and rather taken aback by the speed of this reaction. The college was buzzing with activity. I had instigated all this disruption. It was as thought I had poked an ants' nest with a stick.

By the porter's lodge, students were hanging about in little groups speaking
sotto voce.
I looked at their serious young faces and felt sorry that this shadow had fallen upon them. For all their bravado and adoption of streetwise manners, they weren't much more than children who were upset by Rebecca's death and disturbed by this disruption of the everyday. I didn't really think that they had much to fear from the police enquiries. Their defiance of the law wasn't likely to go much further than breaking the speed limit or smoking the occasional joint, but I could understand their unease. I had that familiar feeling that the presence of authority always arouses in me, that somehow without knowing it, or perhaps without remembering it, I had transgressed, and now I was going to be found out.

At the lodge, John was busy with the switchboard and his usual place by the counter had been taken over by a police constable who was ticking off names on a list and arranging interviews. It was as if the college had been taken over by an alien occupying force.

The constable knew immediately who I was. ‘Oh, yes, Dr James, you're the girl's tutor, aren't you? Chief Inspector Hutchinson would like to see you as soon as possible. I wonder if you could go along to the interview room right away?'

When I was ushered in, I saw two men sitting at the big central table. One was a burly man, probably in his forties and completely bald, the other was dark and cadaverous and much younger.,

The burly man got heavily to his feet and extended a hand. He had the yellow fingers of a heavy smoker.

‘Dr James?' he said. ‘I'm Chief Inspector Hutchinson.'

He introduced his sergeant and waved me to a seat opposite the two of them.

The interview room was actually the teaching room where I held my seminars on Victorian poetry. Usually I was the one asking the questions in here. Today there were butterflies in my stomach and my mouth was dry. I could smell the stale cigarette smoke coming off Inspector Hutchinson's clothes even from the other side of the table. There was a packet of Silk Cut lying in front of him like a mascot.

‘A bad business this,' he said. ‘Let me begin by thanking you for coming forward. Inspector Ferguson has passed on what you told him. Now let me see…' He turned over one of the papers on the table. ‘I've got a summary of it here.'

He read it out. I was impressed by its concision. My opinion of Jim rose even higher.

‘Anything to add to that?' he said.

I shook my head. ‘Not really.'

‘Right then. So, we need to know where you were yourself on the evening of Saturday 14 October, and also last Wednesday afternoon.'

‘On 14 October I was with my boyfriend. We spent the night together.'

He glanced down at his summary. ‘That would be Mr Stephen Newley?'

I nodded. ‘And last week I was actually at the hospital.'

‘That's right. We've got a statement from Rebecca's mother saying that she was with you from the moment you arrived in the ward until you both returned to the hospital after the fire alarm. And the security guard gave us a good description of you.' He smiled. ‘Everyone remembers a pregnant woman.'

Emboldened by this pleasantry – though also resenting it somewhat – I asked him if there really had been a fire.

‘A small one. In the staff toilets on the fifth floor, in a wastebin. Could have been caused by someone having a sneaky fag and being careless. It's strictly no smoking everywhere in the hospital. It's going the same way everywhere. Even down at the station,' he added sourly.

‘And Rebecca? Do you know what it was? What happened at the post-mortem?'

He picked up the packet of cigarettes, examined it, and put it back on the table. For a moment I thought he wasn't going to reply. Then he raised his head. Two shrewd, rather bloodshot brown eyes met mine.

‘Not as yet.'

I wasn't sure that I believed him.

‘I don't think we need detain you any longer, Dr James.'

As I closed the door behind me, I heard him say to his sergeant, ‘For pity's sake, find me an ashtray, would you?'

*   *   *

The Senior Common Room was crowded and buzzing with conversation. Over by one of the big sash windows, Aiden, Alison, Merfyn and Cathy were sitting on two sofas on either side of a low coffee table. As I threaded my way through the little groups of people and shabby overstuffed sofas, Aiden saw me coming and moved over to make room for me. I sank down onto the sofa beside him. It was a tight squeeze.

Merfyn was looking gloomy.

‘It's a bloody nuisance to have to postpone my seminar on “Literature and Imperialism”,' he was saying. ‘I don't know if I'll be able to find another slot for it so near the end of term. If you ask me, the police are being over-zealous. They can't seriously think anyone here is responsible for the attack on Rebecca. They're clutching at straws.'

For once Aiden seemed to agree with him. ‘Trying to deflect attention from their complete lack of progress,' he said, nodding.

‘Perhaps they know something that we don't,' Cathy said.

Silence followed this remark.

Alison said. ‘You've already had your interview, haven't you, Cass? What did they ask you?'

I hesitated, although Inspector Hutchinson hadn't actually asked me
not
to say anything. I looked at the four people whose faces were turned expectantly towards me. They looked just as they always did. Merfyn, sitting opposite, was wearing a tweed suit complete with waistcoat, watch chain and red silk handkerchief overflowing from his breast pocket. He was leaning forward with his clasped hands dangling between his knees. Aiden, lounging beside me, was wearing a black leather jacket, a black T-shirt, black jeans and Doc Martens. Beyond him was Cathy in her favourite red sweater with a cup of coffee in her hand: as usual her reading glasses were on top of her head, nestling in dark hair that was as springy as heather. Alison was sitting next to Merfyn, the review section of the
Guardian
open on the lap of her blue woollen dress. It seemed ludicrous to imagine that one of them might be a cold-blooded killer. ‘A cold-blooded killer'! With what readiness that cliché of tabloid journalism had sprung into my mind! What was happening to me? I was letting my imagination run away with me, that was what.

I said, ‘They wanted to know what I was doing on the day that Rebecca was attacked, and between two o'clock and five o'clock on the afternoon that she died.'

Cathy and Aiden both spoke at once.

‘Last Wednesday?'

‘But surely—?'

Cathy gestured to Aiden to continue. ‘Surely,' he said, ‘that can't be important.' Understanding dawned. ‘Unless…'

The same thought appeared to be registering on the faces of the others. No-one wanted to complete the sentence.

Merfyn said, ‘They're going to be asking us all where we were last Wednesday afternoon?'

‘I'm sure it's just routine,' I said.

‘It's a bit awkward all the same.'

‘Why, where were you?' Aiden asked.

Merfyn said nothing, but he gave me a glance that was clearly intended to be full of significance; I had no idea what it meant.

Aiden laughed. ‘Man of mystery.'

‘I suppose you can account for your own whereabouts?' Merfyn said coldly.

‘I spent the afternoon in the university library.'

‘See anyone you know?'

‘Oh, stop it, you two,' Alison snapped. ‘You're like rutting stags, always trying to score points off each other.'

Merfyn looked indignant. Aiden grinned. He sat back and crossed his legs. He was wearing his sardonic Jack Nicholson look, but he wasn't as relaxed as he pretended to be. He was tapping his foot rapidly on the floor. Where his leg was touching mine on the sofa I could feel the vibration.