G Malliet - Death at the Alma Mater

"-and her so young. What is the country coming to?"

She was giving little signs of slowing down, of exhausting her little store of cliches if not her enormous backlog of grievances. St. Just skillfully made his move.

"I ask myself that twice a day, Mrs. Dunning. The police, well, we have our work cut out for us, what? Now, you can be of the most enormous assistance to us, a woman of your caliber-"

And what would that be? A twenty-two? wondered Sergeant Fear.

"-and obvious gift of insight into the human condition. We need to know exactly where everyone was this evening, and what you observed. Your observations could be absolutely crucial to the success of our investigation."

Mrs. Dunning visibly expanded under this treatment. She wore a purple dress of a shiny fabric stretched taut as shrinkwrap across a massive chest. The serried strands of a pearl necklace nearly disappeared into her thick, fleshy neck; ankles bulged from the tops of black court shoes.

It didn't hurt that St. Just was handsome as the devil, but the sergeant had met many good-looking policeman who seemed to spend all day running about poking sticks in people's eyes. Now he watched as Constance Dunning, tittering slightly, patted her dark hair against her round head and said, "Of course, I'd do anything to help the British bobbies." And then, miraculously, she shut it and waited for St. Just's first question. Sergeant Fear drew a little smiley face in his policeman's notebook and then took down her particulars as they were offered.

"Now, Mrs. Dunning," said St. Just. "Let us start with why you came on this trip. As you say, it is frightfully expensive, and air travel is not the pleasure it once was."

"Well, my husband was keen to see the old place after so many years. We keep getting these things in the mail from the college, these brochures, and this year was our year, you know. Twenty-two years since Karl matriculated here. I said to him, 'It won't come around twice, this anniversary, and we may not be here for the thirty-year mark.' You never know, do you? So I said, 'Let's go.' And we did. Went."

She seemed to want to expand on the theme of the shortness of life and the fleetingness of time but, making a super-human effort, she subsided, again waiting expectantly to see how next she could help her British Bobby.

"And how did things, well, strike you once you were here? Any nuances or frictions, open quarrels? Especially any surrounding the person of Lexy Laurant?"

Sergeant Fear felt his superior was making a huge mistake here, asking such open-ended questions. Constance Dunning was the type of witness who could easily keep them here until doomsday talking about rubbishy nuances rather than cold hard facts. But she surprised him again by coming in at under sixty seconds.

"She had eyes only for that ex-husband of hers. The wife didn't like it much, but was trying not to let it show. The Argentine fellow didn't give a tinker's damn what she did-Lexy, I mean. But as to open quarrels, no. They're all British, except for that Cramb fellow and the Argentine, who lives here. That kind of thing rubs off. Stiff upper lip and tally ho, you know what I mean?"

"Yes, indeed I do. Would you mind telling us about your own movements, and what you know of your husband's, from the time you came downstairs this evening for dinner?" In case she might cut up at this suspect-type questioning-generally a signal for any red-blooded American to call the nearest embassy-St. Just added smoothly, "It's essential that we know where everyone was, at exactly what times, and an impartial witness such as yourself is always used as the benchmark in a police investigation on British soil. It's SOP at Interpol, too, of course. We'll issue countrywide bulletins, should that become necessary. BOLOs and so on. You do understand how crucial your testimony might become."

"BOLOs," she repeated breathlessly.

"Yes."

She lifted her large head, which sat like a bison's atop her bulky shoulders, without apparent recourse to the intervention of a neck, with keen interest. Sergeant Fear, who had never heard such a load of codswallop in all his years, did not dare meet St. Just's eyes, but desperately fixed his own eyes on his notebook, fighting back the maniacal laugh threatening to erupt.

"Of course, Chief Inspector," she said. "I quite understand." Another pat of her hair, and she leaned in conspiratorially-in case MI5 were listening in, presumably-before launching into a more or less cogent summary of her evening. Down to drinks at seven-thirty on the dot. Dinner at eight. Dinner finished at nine-fifteen or maybe a little later, she wasn't sure. She headed straight for the SCR. Her husband used the facilities and joined her shortly thereafter.

"And you, Mrs. Dunning," St. Just asked delicately. "You yourself had no need of, erm, the facilities?"

"I have the constitution of an ox, and I don't see any point in layering on powder and lipstick like some I could mention here-that television woman for a start. No. I came straight in."

"Did you see anything unusual, anything at all that might help us?"

"No. Coming out of Hall, through that overhead passage window, I saw Lexy talking with James in the Fellows' Garden. It was the last time I saw her-alive." She allowed herself a little waver of melodrama on the last word, then sank back in her chair, her mental survey of the hollowness and futility of all life's endeavors reflected sadly on her face. Apparently satisfied with her performance, she added, "That strapping young yellow-haired fellow came dashing in at five minutes before ten o'clock. I know. I checked my watch."

St. Just beamed at her. It was apparently all and more than she could have hoped for in the way of reward. They talked a few more minutes to no further purpose and then she left the room, meek as a lamb.

"A police investigation on British soil, Sir?" said Sergeant Fear as soon as the door had safely shut behind her broad back. "Interpol? Benchmarking? And, BOLOs? Be on the lookout for what?" St. Just was, Fear supposed, his mentor. But St. Just's quick ability to read a person's character and play to it… Fear suspected St. Just possessed a gift that couldn't be taught. "Why didn't you mention the Flying Squad while you were about it?"

St. Just grinned widely. "The Chief Constable would be pleased," he said. "You see, I have picked up some of her jargon, after all. I guess we'll have the husband next, God bless him." -- Mr. Dunning looked to be a pleasant man in his mid-forties. He was nearly bald, with just a small fringe of salt-and-pepper hair left to encircle his head. He sported gold-rimmed glasses and a little goatee that brought his round face to a Lenin-like point. This all contributed to his looking rather older than his true age, which he stated for the record to be forty.

"Your wife has given us a summary of your movements this evening, but of course we have to verify-and sometimes, re-verify-every statement for accuracy. You do understand. So if you wouldn't mind, Sir… "

And Mr. Dunning proceeded to give them a summary that matched his wife's, although his grasp of exact times seemed to be more tenuous than hers.

"I think everyone was back in the SCR by half past. Maybe sooner," he told them.

"I see. That's all fairly clear. Now, I would like your impressions of the atmosphere this weekend."

"Oh, my," said Mr. Dunning mildly. "My wife is much better at this sort of thing-atmospherics, you know-but I'll do my best." His eyes blinked thoughtfully for several seconds behind the glasses. At last he said, "Well, she wasn't happy, anyone could see that. The victim, I mean. Lexy. It was a shame, really. She was just as pretty as a peach, that girl. Woman, really, of course, but she had a girlish quality to her."

"But you knew her when she was a girl, isn't that correct? When you were here at St. Michael's as students together?"