Francis locked his fingers together, as if wringing his hands. He glanced back at the sheet-covered corpse. ‘And yet, the nature of the attack speaks more of a crime passionnelle than of some cold plot. I wonder.’ He gazed back at the students. ‘Mr Griffith we now know of. How do the rest of these bedraggled souls come to be here, Detective Pitchford?’
‘They’re Mr Raleigh’s closest friends. I believe Mr Griffith phoned one as soon as he’d called the lodgekeeper.’
‘That was me,’ the other young man said. He had his arm thrown protectively round the girl, who was sobbing wretchedly.
‘And you are?’ Francis asked.
‘Carter Osborne Kenyon. I was a good friend of Justin’s; we had dinner together tonight.’
‘I see. And so you phoned the young lady here?’
‘Yes. This is Bethany Maria Caesar, Justin’s girlfriend. I knew she’d be concerned about him, of course.’
‘Naturally. So do any of you recall threats being made against Mr Raleigh? Does he have an equivalent group of enemies, perhaps?’
‘Nobody’s ever threatened Justin. That’s preposterous. And what’s this to you, anyway? The police should be asking these questions.’
The change in Francis’s attitude was small but immediate, still calm but no longer so tolerant. And it showed. Even Carter Osborne Kenyon realized he’d made a big gaffe. It was the kind of switch that I knew I would have to perfect for myself if I ever hoped to advance through the family hierarchy.
‘I am the Raleigh family’s senior representative in Oxford,’ Francis said lightly. ‘Whilst that might seem like an enviable sinecure from your perspective, I can assure you it’s not all lunches and cocktail parties with my fellow fat old men doing deals that make sure the young work harder. I am here to observe the official investigation, and make available any resource our family might have that will enable the police to catch the murderer. But first, in order to offer that assistance I have to understand what happened, because we will never let this rest until that barbarian is brought to justice. And I promise that if it was you under that sheet, your family would have been equally swift in dispatching a representative. It’s the way the world works, and you’re old enough and educated enough to know that.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Carter Osborne Kenyon said sullenly.
‘You will catch them, won’t you?’ Bethany Maria Caesar asked urgently.
Francis became the perfect gentleman again. ‘Of course we will, my dear. If anything in this world is a certainty, it’s that. I will never rest until this is solved.’
‘Nor me,’ I assured her.
She gave both of us a small smile. A pretty girl, even through her tears and streaked make up; tall and lean, with blond hair falling just below her shoulders. Justin had been a lucky man. I could well imagine them hand in hand walking along some riverbank on a summer’s eve. It made me even more angry that so much decency had been lost to so many young lives by this vile act.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I really loved him. We’ve been talking about a long-term marriage after we left Oxford. I can’t believe this . . . any of this.’
Carter Osborne Kenyon hugged her tighter.
I made an effort to focus on the task in hand. ‘We’d like samples of every specimen the forensic team collects from here, fibres, hair, whatever,’ I told the detective. The basic procedures which had been reiterated time and again during my investigator courses at the family institute. Other strategies were invoked by what I saw. I lowered my voice, turning slightly away from the students so I could speak my mind freely, and spare them any further distress at this time. ‘And it might be a good idea to take blood samples from people in the immediate vicinity as well as any suspects you might determine. They should all be tested for alcohol or narcotics. Whoever did this was way off balance.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the detective said. ‘My team’s already on its way. They know what they’re doing.’
‘That’s fine,’ Francis said. His look rebuked me. ‘If we could also sit in on the interviews, please.’
‘Certainly.’
*
The Oxford City police station was less than a mile from Dunbar College. When Francis and I reached it at one o’clock there were few officers on duty. That changed over the next hour as Gareth Alan Pitchford assembled his investigator team with impressive competence. Officers and constables began to arrive, dressed in mussed uniforms, bleary-eyed, switching on the central heating in unused offices, calling down to stores for equipment. A couple of canteen staff came in and started brewing tea and coffee.
The building’s Major Crime Operations Centre swung into action as Gareth Alan Pitchford made near-continuous briefings to each new batch of his recruits. Secretaries began clacking away on typewriters; detectives pinned large-scale maps of Oxford on the wall; names were hurriedly chalked up on the blackboard, a confusing trail of lines linking them in various ways; and telephones built to a perpetual chorus of whistles.
People were brought in and asked to wait in holding rooms. The chief suspects, though no one was impolite enough to say it to their faces. Gareth Alan Pitchford soon had over thirty young men and women worrying away in isolation.
‘I’ve divided them into two categories,’ he told the Operations Centre. ‘Dunbar students sharing the same accommodation wing; physically close enough to have killed Raleigh, but for whom there is no known motive, just opportunity. And a batch of his closest friends. We’re still waiting for the last one of them to arrive, but I gather the uniform division has now located him. First off, I want the doctor to collect blood samples from all of them before the interviews start; if this is a drug- or alcohol-induced crime we’ll need to be quick to catch the evidence.’
Standing discreetly at the back of the room, I watched the rest of the officers acknowledge this. It was as though they were willing that to be the solution. Like me, they didn’t want a world where one normal, unaffected person could do this to another.
‘Wrong approach,’ Francis muttered quietly to me.
‘In what way?’ I muttered back.
‘This slaying was planned; methodically and cleverly. Drugs or alcohol implies spur-of-the-moment madness. An irrational act to which there would have been witnesses. You mark my words: there won’t be a fingerprint on either the knife or the window.’
‘You may be right.’
‘When Pitchford starts the interviews, I want us to attend those with Justin’s friends. Do I need to tell you why?’
‘No.’ It was at a time like this I both appreciated and resented the old man’s testing. It was an oblique compliment that he thought I had the potential to succeed him eventually; but it was irritating in equal proportion that I was treated as the office junior. ‘Whoever did this had to know Justin, which means the friends are the only genuine suspects.’
‘Glad to see all those expensive courses we sent you on haven’t been totally wasted,’ Francis said. I heard a reluctant note of approval in his voice. ‘The only other suspect I can think of is a Short. They don’t value life as much as we do.’
I kept my face composed even though I could not help but regard him as an old bigot at heart. Blaming the Shorts for everything from poor harvests to a tyre puncture was a prejudice harking back to the start of the Second Imperial Era, when the roots of today’s families were grown amid the Sport of Emperors. Our march through history, it would seem, isn’t entirely noble.
The interview room was illuminated by a pair of hundred-watt bulbs in white ceramic shades. A stark light in a small box of a room. Glazed amber tiles decorated the lower half of the walls, adding to the chill atmosphere. The only door was a sturdy metal affair with a slatted grate halfway up.
Peter Samuel Griffith sat behind the table in a wooden chair, visibly discomfited by the surroundings. He was holding a small sterile gauze patch to the needle puncture in his arm where the police doctor had taken a sample of his blood. I used my pencil to make a swift note remindin
g myself to collect such samples for our family institute to review.
Detective Gareth Alan Pitchford and a female stenographer sat opposite Mr Griffith whilst Francis and myself stood beside the door, trying to appear inconspicuous.
‘The first thing which concerns me, obviously, is the timing of events,’ the detective said. ‘Why don’t you run through them again for me, please?’
‘You’ve heard it all before,’ Peter Samuel Griffith said. ‘I was working on an essay when I heard what sounded like an argument next door.’
‘In what way? Was there shouting, anything knocked about?’
‘No. Just voices. They were muffled, but whoever was in there with Justin was disagreeing with him. You can tell, you know.’
‘Did you recognize the other voice?’
‘No. I didn’t really hear it. Whoever they were, they spoke pretty quietly. It was Justin who was doing the yelling. Then he screamed. That was about half past eleven. I phoned the lodgekeepers.’
‘Immediately?’
‘More or less, yes.’
‘Ah, now you see, Peter, that’s my problem. I’m investigating a murder, for which I need hard facts; and you’re giving me more or less. Did you phone them immediately? It’s not a crime that you didn’t. You’ve done the right thing, but I must have the correct details.’
‘Well, yeah . . . I waited a bit. Just to hear if anything else happened. That scream was pretty severe. When I couldn’t hear anything else, I got really worried and phoned down.’
‘Thank you, Peter. So how long do you think you waited?’
‘Probably a minute, or so. I . . . I didn’t know what to do at first; phoning the lodgekeepers seemed a bit drastic. I mean, it could just have been a bit of horsing around that had gone wrong. Justin wouldn’t have wanted to land a chum in any trouble. He was a solid kind of chap, you know.’
‘I’m sure he was. So that would have been about, when . . . ?’
‘Eleven thirty-two. I know it was. I looked at the clock while I was calling the lodgekeepers.’
‘Then you phoned Mr Kenyon straight away?’
‘Absolutely. I did have to make two calls, though. He wasn’t at his college, his room-mate gave me a number. Couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds to get hold of him.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Just that there was some sort of trouble in Justin’s room, and the lodgekeepers were coming. Justin and Carter are good friends, best friends. I thought he’d want to know what was going on. I’d realized by then that it was serious.’
‘Most commendable. So after you’d made the phone call to Mr Kenyon you went out into the corridor and waited, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long would you say it was between the scream and the lodgekeepers arriving?’
‘Probably three or four minutes. I’m not sure exactly, they arrived pretty quick once I got out into the corridor.’
The detective turned round to myself and Francis. ‘Anything you want to ask?’
‘No, thank you,’ Francis said before I could answer.
I have to say it annoyed me. The detective had missed points – like had there been previous arguments, how was he sure it was Justin who screamed, was there anything valuable in the room, which other students had been using the corridor and could confirm his whole story? I kept my silence, assuming Francis had good reason.
Next in was Carter Osborne Kenyon, who was clearly suffering from some kind of delayed shock. The police provided him with a mug of tea, which he clamped his hands around for warmth, or comfort. I never saw him drink any of it at any time during the interview.
His tale started with the dinner at the Orange Grove that evening, where Justin’s other closest friends had gathered: Antony Caesar Pitt, Christine Jayne Lockett, and Alexander Stephan Maloney. ‘We did a lot of things together,’ Carter said. ‘Trips to the opera, restaurants, theatre, games . . . we even had a couple of holidays in France in the summer – hired a villa in the south. We had good times.’ He screwed his eyes shut, almost in tears. ‘Dear Mary!’
‘So you’d known each other as a group for some time?’ Gareth Alan Pitchford asked.
‘Yes. You know how friendships are in college; people cluster together around interests, and class too, I suppose. Our families tend to have status. The six of us were a solid group, have been for a couple of years.’
‘Isn’t that a bit awkward?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Two girls, four men.’
Carter gave a bitter laugh. ‘We don’t have formal membership to the exclusion of everyone else. Girlfriends and boyfriends come and go, as do other friends and acquaintances; the six of us were a core if you like. Some nights there could be over twenty of us going out together.’
‘So you’d known Justin for some time; if he could confide in anyone it would be you or one of the others?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And there was no hint given, to any of you, that he might have been in trouble with somebody, or had a quarrel?’
‘No, none.’
‘What about amongst yourselves – there must have been some disagreements?’
‘Well, yes.’ Carter gave his tea a sullen glare, not meeting the detective’s look. ‘But nothing to kill for. It was stupid stuff . . . who liked what play and why, books, family politics, restaurant bills, sports results, philosophy, science – we chewed it all over; that’s the kind of thing which keeps every group alive and interesting.’
‘Name the worst disagreement Justin was currently involved in.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Was it with you?’
‘No!’
‘Who then?’
Carter’s hands tightened round the mug, his knuckles whitening. ‘Look, it’s nothing really. It’s always happening.’
‘What is?’
‘Okay, you didn’t hear this from me, but Antony likes to gamble. I mean, we all do occasionally – a day at the races, or an evening at a casino – just harmless fun, no big money involved. But with Antony, it’s getting to be a problem. He plays cards with Justin. He’s been losing quite heavily recently. Justin said it served him right, that Antony should pay more attention to statistics. He was a legal student, he should know better, that there is no such thing as chance.’
‘How much money?’
Carter shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. You’ll have to ask Antony. But listen, Antony isn’t about to kill for it. I know Justin, he’d never allow it to get that far out of control.’
‘Fair enough,’ the detective said. ‘Do you know if Justin had anything worth stealing?’
‘Something valuable?’ Carter appeared quite perplexed by the idea. ‘No. We’re all students. We’re all broke. Oh, don’t get me wrong, our families support us here; the allowance is adequate for the kind of life we pursue, but nothing more. Ask Antony,’ he added sourly.
‘I wasn’t thinking in terms of cash, possibly an heirloom he kept in his room?’
‘Nothing that I ever saw, and I’ve been in there a thousand times. I promise you, we’re here only for our minds. Thoughts are our wealth. Which admittedly made Justin the richest of us all – his mind was absolutely chocka with innovative concepts. But nothing a thief could bung in his swag bag.’ He pantomimed catching a thought, his beefy hands flapping round his head.
‘I thought Justin was an astrophysicist,’ Francis said.
‘He was.’
‘So what ideas could he have that were valuable?’
‘Dear Mary.’ Carter shot Francis a pitying look. ‘Not industrial ideas, machinery and trinkets for your factories. Original thoughts. Pure science, that was his playground. He was hinting that he’d come up with one fairly radical notion. His guaranteed professorship, he called it.’
‘Which was?’
‘I haven’t got a clue. He never really explained any of his projects to us. Justin could be very conservative, in both senses. The only thing
I know is, it involved spectography . . . you know, picking out the signature of specific elements by their emission spectrum. He was running through a collection of photographs from the observatory archives. I could help him a little with that – spectography is simple physics. We were speculating on how to improve the process, speed it up with automation, some kind of electromechanical contraption. But we never got past a few talks in the bar.’
‘Did he write any of this project down?’ the detective asked. ‘Keep notes, a file?’
‘Not as far as I know. As I said, a fanciful speculation in its early stages. Talk to any science stream student and you’ll get something similar; we all have our pet theories that will rock the universe if they’re proven.’
‘I see.’ The detective dabbed the tip of his pencil on his lips. ‘How long had Mr Raleigh and Miss Caesar been an item?’
‘Oh, for at least a year. ’Bout time too, they’d been flirting ever since I knew them. Bit of a relief when they finally got it together, know what I mean? And they were so well suited. It often helps when you’re friends for a while first. And they’re both bright sparks.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘There. If you want a qualifier for our group, I suppose that’s it. We’re all top of the league in what we do. Except for dear old Chris, of course. But she’s still got the intellect. Gives as good as she gets every time.’
Gareth Alan Pitchford rifled through his notes. ‘That’ll be Christine Jayne Lockett?’
‘Yeah. She’s our token artist. The rest of us are science stream, apart from Antony; he’s law. Chris dropped out of the formal route after she got pregnant. Loves life in the garret. Thinks it’s romantic. Her family don’t share the opinion, but she gets by.’
‘What is your field of study?’ Francis asked.
Carter glanced up, surprised, as if he’d forgotten the two of us were there. ‘Nuclear engineering. And a hell of a field it is, too. Do you know the Madison team in Germany is only a few years from building a working atomic reactor? Once that happens and we build commercial reactors to generate electricity, the world will never burn another lump of coal ever again. Isn’t that fantastic! It’s the science of the future.’ He stopped, apparently in pain. ‘That’s what Justin and I always argued about. Damn!’