An Advancement of Learning. Reginald Hill
might have been amusement or amazement. ‘It was rather bizarre when those bones started to fall from the base of the statue. Miss Disney let out a kind of shriek and screamed, “It’s Miss Girling!” A Gothic notion, don’t you think?’
‘Bizarre,’ echoed Dalziel, as though savouring the word. ‘Gothic. Get that, Sergeant? You mean she reacted as if it was Miss Girling’s tombstone rather than just a memorial? Where is Miss Girling buried, as a matter of interest?’
‘I’m not certain. Austria, I believe. That’s where she died. It was all several months before I first came to the place, of course.’
‘Of course. Were you here when the memorial was erected, Mr Landor?’
The question was dropped very casually. Landor answered it just as casually.
‘No. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t take up the post till the beginning of the following academic year, September that is. And now I come to think of it, I’m sure the statue was up when I came for an interview here the previous March.’
‘Good, good,’ said Dalziel, suddenly expansive. ‘Very good.’
He came to a halt before an oil painting of a large amiable woman with warm blue eyes and bright red hair.
‘Why, it’s Miss Girling,’ he said, peering closely at the frame. ‘She’s well remembered, isn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Landor drily. ‘She is.’
There was a perfunctory knock at the door and a large well-rounded woman burst in. She had a formidable chest development, but it looked quite solid with no hint of a central cleavage, and seemed the natural descendant of a series of fleshy outcrops which began with her lower lip and progressed downward and outward through three chins.
She looked indignant, but this meant nothing, Pascoe decided. Her features didn’t seem equipped to deal satisfactorily with any other expression.
It turned out, however, that she was indignant.
‘Good morning, Miss Disney,’ began Landor. ‘I’m rather busy …’
‘Principal!’ she interrupted, ‘I really cannot tolerate this. I am scheduled this afternoon to conduct an extremely important seminar on Isaiah. But there’s no one there. No one!’
She paused triumphantly.
Landor eyed her warily.
‘Where are they, you ask? I’ll tell you. I’ll show you. They are there.’
A dramatic arm was stretched out towards the window and the garden beyond.
‘Look at them! That boy Roote, he should have been reading a paper at my class. He has degenerated visibly since becoming President of the Union. I knew it was the beginning of the end when we admitted men in the first place. We never had this kind of trouble in Miss Girling’s day!’
Once again Landor showed his quality.
‘I’m glad you called, Miss Disney,’ he said blandly. ‘We were just talking about you, the superintendent and I. I know he wants to ask you a few questions. Please use my study for any interviews you care to make, Superintendent. I’ll be with the Registrar if needed.’
He was out of the room before anyone could reply. Miss Disney seemed ready to pursue him through the door, with or without opening it, but Dalziel stepped forward smartly.
‘Please sit down, Miss Disney. You have had a trying day. These things hit some of us more than others, I know. It’s a question of sensitivity.’
Oh Christ, scribbled Pascoe in his neat shorthand. Extreme Unction. Oily Dalziel oozing over stormy Disney.
Neatly he scratched it out and waited.
Miss Disney glared at Dalziel, decided here was a soulmate, and made her way round to Landor’s chair behind the large desk, which seemed to swell visibly as though to take on the proportions of its new incumbent.
‘Well?’
‘Mr Landor told us how distressed you were this morning.’
Miss Disney was obviously reluctant to agree with any diagnosis from the principal, but Dalziel pressed on.
‘I believe you were against the despoiling of the garden?’
It was a good word. Disney nodded emphatically, her chins and jowls tossing in sprightly dance.
‘Indeed I was. I am! For many reasons. It has always been a place of comfort and repose for those of us not utterly unresponsive to natural beauty. It is almost the only remaining link with the college as it was before all this. And if this were not enough, it is in its own way, which is a very real way, a shrine to the memory of dear Miss Girling.’
She sniffed and took an absurdly small lace handkerchief from her capacious sleeve. Pascoe would have been less surprised to see her pull out the flags of the nations of Europe all strung together.
Dalziel clucked sympathetically.
‘Forgive me for asking,’ he said in a low, vibrantly sincere voice television interviewers use when questioning the tragically bereaved, ‘but why did you say that it was Miss Girling when the – er – decedent’s remains came into view?’
‘It was silly, I know,’ said Miss Disney almost girlishly. ‘But dear Alison was so much in my mind, as you might imagine. And when I saw the bones and the hair …’
She broke off and looked up at the portrait on the wall.
‘She had such lovely red hair, you know. You can’t imagine how it used to be here in the old days. Just a handful of staff and a hundred or so girls. We knew them all by name. Al’s gals, we used to call them. Such nice, decent girls too. Whereas now …!’
‘So it was the hair …?’ prompted Dalziel.
‘Yes, Superintendent. It was as if Alison had risen from her distant grave to reproach me for permitting all this to happen.’
‘So you passed out?’ Dalziel’s tone was suddenly casually conversational again.
‘I fainted,’ said Miss Disney, moving just as rapidly from the submissive female to her previous role. ‘I must say, Inspector, that I cannot really see how this line of enquiry is relevant. It’s not the uncovering but the burying of these bones which is surely of interest. And that must have happened at least six years ago. Now I must go and teach the remnants of my class.’
She stalked to the door, but paused there a moment as if reluctant to exit on an altogether damnatory note.
‘I’ll tell you one thing, Superintendent,’ she said, reinstating him in his proper rank. ‘Those bones are not all that is buried here. This is no longer a happy place. There is godlessness at work in this college, on all levels. Good day to you.’
Pascoe managed to get the door open before she walked through it. He closed it gently behind her.
Dalziel had seated himself at the principal’s desk and was dialling a number on the internal phone.
‘Hello, love,’ he said. ‘Any chance of some tea for a thirsty policeman? In the principal’s study. Oh, he has, has he? That’s nice. For two? That’s right, tea for two.’
He put the phone down.
‘They’re making us welcome,’ he said. ‘Well now, Sergeant, this is more your kind of scene, as they say. I’m out of my depth here in all this academic intellectual stuff. So what do you make of it?’
Pascoe did not believe a word of this modest disclaimer, but he knew better than to say so. He had a degree in Social Sciences, a qualification Dalziel frequently treated with mock-deference. But when he asked you a question, he listened to what was said, despite all appearances to the contrary.
‘It’s not an unusual kind of situation here,’ he said.