13.

MELCHESTER UNIVERSITY

Go to, go to—You have known what you should not.

MACBETH

THE porter at the entrance to Melchester University studied Littlejohn’s card with lofty surprise. The thought of that austere seat of learning being in any way connected with crime seemed to appal him.

The lodge was at the base of one of the twin towers which formed the main portals, like a miniature Tower Bridge. A hideous erection!

Melchester University had started ages ago as a sort of mechanics’ institute and swollen to a conglomeration of buildings of diverse shapes and architecture. As each new professor of architecture took over his chair, he swore to do something about improving the rabbit warren, but soon, becoming assimilated, despairingly added his own quota to the heterogeneous mass. The current occupant of the chair was, at the time, absorbed in the erection of a new swimming-bath, housed in an edifice like a large, white, concrete box, within the shade of the huge gothic medical school.

The porter, who persisted in looking at Littlejohn as though he might have been an interloper trying to steal an honorary degree, at last condescended to see if Professor Lever would see him.

“He’s a busy man,” added the flunkey.

“So am I,” retorted Littlejohn.

“No doubt you are. We all are,” came the unabashed answer. Whereat the man commanded an underling to go to the psychology department and ask if the professor could see an Inspector from the police.

Finally, Littlejohn found himself being led across the quadrangle and down several long, echoing corridors bristling with marble busts of physicists, chemists, anatomists and physiologists. Somebody had irreverently put a shapeless felt hat on the head of one of them, and this the porter removed with a gasp of horror and placed in a window-bottom.

A crowd of young men and girls trooped out of a room smelling strongly of formalin and other noisome chemicals. Some of them were fixing up an evening’s fun at the Palais de Danse, and one girl was loudly complaining that the “stiff” she had been dissecting was a poor one. She caught Littlejohn’s eye as he passed and gave him a look which suggested that he might have been the body-snatcher who supplied it!

“Old Bernard vomited again this morning,” a pretty girl was shouting.” He’ll never go on with it. Hasn’t the stomach. Ought to take a shot of seasick remedy before he goes in.”

Littlejohn was used to corpses, mostly violently created, but this beat the band!

“The Professor’s lecturing at present. He’ll be free in a quarter of an hour.”

They passed through swing doors into a vestibule, whence more doors radiated. The porter was hunting for somewhere to dump Littlejohn until the great man deigned to see him, when a small chap in flannel trousers and a shabby tweed coat entered.

“What is it, Smithson?”

The little man grew quite animated when he heard the reason for Littlejohn’s visit.

“Come in. I’m just going to have some tea. Join me?”

They entered a small, untidy room constructed of glass partitions and with the occupant’s name on the door.

DR. FASTNETT, READER IN PSYCHOLOGY.

Over teacups the pair of them got on quite well. Fastnett wanted to talk about the crime and didn’t seem to have much respect for Professor Lever.

“I’m very interested in criminology. Especially in this case, which involves one of our students. Not that crime is my particular branch. I’m more for animal psychology when I’ve the time.”

Littlejohn didn’t know it, but the little man with the grey hair parted in the middle and blue pop-eyes was an international celebrity on the subject of conditioned reflexes in the higher anthropoids. His books were hailed as revolutionary masterpieces by all except the keepers of the monkey-houses at a number of zoos.

“Free used to be a student in the department. His girl was here, too. There’s a rumour that it might be a crime of jealousy.”

“So I believe, sir, although so far I’ve not come across confirmation of the theory.”

“Perhaps not. The girl, Laura Cruft, was a bit of a disturbing influence here, I must confess. Sex appeal by the bucketful and always with a trail of admirers on her heels.”

The Reader smiled, baring his teeth copiously and revealing gold and silver stoppings by the dozen. His small, straight nose screwed up when he grinned, resulting in a grimace like that of one of his baboons trying to scare off a rival.

“Miss Cruft almost stayed on in the department after she’d graduated. The Professor took a liking to her and there was some talk of her becoming his secretary. But it fell through.”

“I wonder why?”

Dr. Fastnett looked round as though suspecting an eavesdropper might be concealed in a cupboard or listening at the keyhole.

“Well—in confidence, Inspector, I think Mrs. Professor put her foot down. She’s on the staff here. Very clever woman. Matter of fact, better than her husband. She’s made him what he is.”

Professional jealousy, thought Littlejohn. Now we’re going to hear something.

“Is that so? Interesting.”

“Yes. You see she was the daughter of old Lightfoot, former professor of Mind and Method, as the chair was then called. The old man was in the first rank and his daughter followed in father’s footsteps. Lever, who was a lecturer at the time, married Clarice Lightfoot with an eye to the main chance. She’s made up for any deficiencies he might have.”

“Such as?”

“Well, he’s unprogressive. Not abreast of the times. Look at me. I’m leaving here next month. Matter of fact, going as assistant professor at an American university. As I said, my line’s animal psychology, but the old boy won’t have any vivisection in his department. Well … I ask you … I want to carry on the experiments Pavlov did on dogs with the higher apes. I’m stumped here, though.”

“What was that about Laura and the Professor? How came it that he wanted her for his secretary?”

“Got fond of her, I guess. Said she was a fine student. Nobody else saw anything extraordinary about her in the scholastic line, although in many other ways … well …”

Another display of metallic stoppings and grimaces.

“Was she a typist, then?”

“Started to learn, I believe, with a view to taking the job. She’d have had a soft time, I’ll bet.”

“And Mrs. Lever put a spoke in the wheel?”

“Nobody knows anything definite, but one day it was almost a fait accompli, the next it was all off. The old boy’s sixty next birthday, twenty years older than his wife, but forty older than Laura. It’s not likely that Clarice would stand for that, even if they didn’t marry for love. She’s jealous for the Professor’s reputation, you know. Her own life work’s bound up in it. There was some talking in the common-room and Clarice probably overheard it.”

“H’m.”

It was as bad in this exalted place as in the women’s sewing meeting at Ravelstone. Gossip, spite, rumour, jealousy. The same tune beaten out by different bands!

The little man was looking uneasily at Littlejohn, as though realising that perhaps he’d said too much and that the Inspector was judging him unfavourably.

“I oughtn’t to be talking like this, Inspector. May sound disloyal to the Chief. But, after all, you’re here to find out all you can bearing on the case and you might as well have it from me plain and unvarnished as from the students or others less reliable with undesirable trimmings, mightn’t you?”

“Of course, doctor. Of course.”

They didn’t get any farther. There was a tap on the door and Professor D’Arcy Lever entered. He gave Fastnett a curt nod, and stared hard at him as though questioning what he’d been up to.

Fastnett got quickly to his feet. If he didn’t think much of Lever academically, he evidently believed in keeping on the right side of him.

The Professor’s tall, loose frame seemed to fill the room. His shock of grey hair was ruffled and on end, for he had, when lecturing, a habit of passing his hand through it. His dishevelment or otherwise proclaimed the extent of the abstruseness of the lecture he had given.

“You wanted to see me, Inspector Littlejohn?”

“Yes, sir, if you please.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, but I see Fastnett’s been entertaining you.”

The last sentence was loaded with scorn. No love lost between the pair of them apparently.

They swept from the room, leaving the Reader high and dry and wondering what he’d done wrong.

The Professor’s den was another glass pen at the far end of the laboratory, a large, airy room in which students were hard at work. In one corner a number of young men and girls were filing past a long-haired youth in corduroy trousers, red pullover and check jacket who seemed to be testing them for something. He shone a green light at them one by one and they pressed a key which rang a bell. Then he shone a red light at them and they did the same. All very puzzling!

At a secluded table in one corner a middle-aged man was busy doing something with a contraption like a roulette wheel. Littlejohn caught his eye as he passed him. He looked at the same time feverish and triumphant. It might have been something psycho-mathematical, or again, the man might have been ambitious to stroll down the Bois de Boulogne with an independent air!

“That is an experiment in the theory of chance,” elucidated Lever as they passed. “Nothing to do with my department. A little hospitality to the mathematics side, which is short of space.”

Littlejohn had never regretted becoming a detective. Now he thanked God for the job he’d chosen! If this was the pursuit of learning, he preferred chasing criminals!

“What did you want of me, Inspector?”

D’Arcy Lever’s long, bony face never relaxed. It was like a pale mask, cold, bloodless, inscrutable.

“Ronald Free used to be a student of yours, sir, and I wondered if you could throw any light on past incidents which might be connected with the crime I’m investigating. I mean, perhaps something occurred whilst he was here.”

“I can’t help you, Inspector. I don’t enjoy the confidences of my students. I’m here to direct their studies, not to probe into the secrets of their private lives.”

“I thought that as a psychologist …”

“Tut, tut. Everybody seems to think that. Because my subject happens to be human behaviour, that’s no reason why people should endow me with abnormal powers of divination. I don’t know what’s going on in other people’s hearts any more than any other Tom, Dick or Harry. So, if you expect some startling revelations, you’ve come to the wrong man.”

“No, no. Don’t misunderstand me, sir. Surely you must, during their time under your wing, be able to judge and sum up most of your students.”

“Haven’t I said I know nothing that would help you in the case you’re investigating. I’m afraid we’re both wasting our time.”

It was like trying to get blood out of a stone. If the old boy knew anything, he was certainly not going to disclose it.

Well, there was nothing else for it. Lever would have to have it.

“I’ve been told that at one time you offered Free’s fiancée a post as secretary on your staff, sir.”

The mask-like face with its loose skin turned from parchment to pale pink. With all his psychology, Lever hadn’t quite got a grip on his emotions. The heavy lips fell apart for a second. Then he was himself again.

“Who’s told you that tale?”

“Quite a number of people. It’s common property.”

“It is, is it? Well, there was a time when I thought Miss Cruft would suit me as a typist and helper, but I changed my mind. She wasn’t sufficiently trained technically. I mean, as typist and filing clerk.”

Lever looked hard at Littlejohn to see how he accepted the story.

Littlejohn maintained a poker face.

“You were a friend of Miss Cruft I hear, sir.”

More signs of pinkness appeared among the parchment.

“And what if I was? She was a student of mine. I knew her late father. I’m old enough to be her grandfather. If giving Miss Cruft a lift home in my car when we both live in the same village is to be a cause for local scandal, then it’s time people had something better to do.”

The Professor was getting quite heated. It didn’t need a psycho-analyst to guess why, and Littlejohn decided to pursue the matter no further.

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I quite agree there’s been far too much gossip circulating since the crime. It’s very difficult sorting out the wheat from the chaff.”

“I’m sure it is, Inspector.”

Lever was himself again.

“Forgive the heated protest. Really, the amount of silly talk and surmise created by this crime, which is probably just a vulgar murder by a tramp or somebody …”

“I don’t think that, sir. I think it’s a premeditated crime, deliberately planned and executed in cold blood …”

“Do you really? How extraordinary!”

“… And purely as a matter of routine, sir, may I ask you if you yourself were out in the village at the time of the murder? Say between nine-thirty and ten.”

This time D’Arcy Lever went purple. The veins of his forehead bulged, his long, heavy lips writhed and he drew in his large nose with wrinkles of distaste.

“How dare you! How dare you try to link me with the crime! If this is all you’ve called for, Inspector, I wish you a very good afternoon. Close the door behind you.”

But the professor wasn’t getting away with it as easily as that.

Another door behind D’Arcy Lever’s chair had opened and there stood a tall, buxom woman with greying fair hair, a heavy, clever face and calm, hazel eyes. She wore a blue jumper and a grey tweed skirt and looked as though she’d dressed and done her hair in a hurry.

“Whatever’s the matter here, my dear? You know you shouldn’t get so excited. You’ve been warned.”

“I’ll trouble you not to interfere, Clarice. This is a private discussion between Inspector Littlejohn here and myself, and as he’s chosen to be offensive I’ve shown him the door.”

The calm, hazel eyes met Littlejohn’s and twinkled.

“Offensive? Surely not! What have you been doing to him, Inspector?”

“I’ll trouble you not to meddle, Clarice. I’ve just refused to answer some of his silly questions and told him to go. I’ll be much obliged if you will do as I wish, Littlejohn. I’ve work to do. Good day.”

Clarice D’Arcy Lever continued as though her husband had not spoken.

“What do you want to know, Inspector?”

Her voice had taken on a harsh edge.

“I’m trying to find out who was about the village at the time of the crime, which was between nine-thirty and ten.”

“The Free murder, you mean?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“I want to interview all who might have been near the spot. I asked your husband if he was out in the village. I wasn’t seeking an alibi; merely possible information. Professor Lever chose to get annoyed with me.”

“No point in being obstructive, my dear,” said Mrs. Lever incisively. “You know you were out in the village. You left me with the galleys to read and went off …”

The professor thumped his table in temper.

“I will not suffer this inquisition! I’ll speak to the Chief Constable. As if I’d murdered the man myself! I admit I went out for a walk, but I didn’t go near Gallows Hill. I went the other way.”

“Did anybody see you, sir?”

“No. They didn’t. And I don’t want to see any more of you.”

With that, the professor stumped off and joined the crowds of students still busy with their red and green lamps and time-clock.

“So that’s that. Sorry, I can’t help you at all. So I’ll wish you good day and good luck, Inspector.”

Clarice D’Arcy Lever therupon made off with great dignity and left Littlejohn in full possession.

Leaving the clock merchants and the man who was trying to break the bank at Monte Carlo hard at it, Littlejohn found his way out, past all the marble busts, past the scornful academic lackeys, under Tower Bridge, and into the fresh air again.

He was glad that was over!