Peter Hamilton: Manhattan in Reverse

‘There would be a short interval,’ I said. ‘After the scream he’d spend some time calling the lodgekeepers — a minute or so.’

‘People must have been using the corridor at that time,’ the detective said. ‘And our murderer would have some blood on their clothes. He’d be running too.’

‘And looking panicked, I’ll warrant,’ Francis said. ‘Someone would have seen them and remembered.’

‘Unless it was the neighbour himself who is the killer,’ I observed.

‘Hey!’ one of the students barked. ‘Don’t talk about me as if I’m a piece of furniture. I called the lodgekeepers as soon as I heard the scream. I didn’t bloody well kill Justin. I liked him. He was a top chap.’

‘Peter Samuel Griffith,’ the detective said. ‘Mr Raleigh’s neighbour.’

‘I do apologize,’ Francis said smoothly. ‘My colleague and I were simply eliminating possibilities. This has left all of us rather flustered, I’m afraid.’

Peter Samuel Griffith grunted in acknowledgement.

I looked straight at the detective. ‘So if the murderer didn’t leave by the front door…’

Francis and I pulled the curtains back. Justin Ascham Raleigh’s rooms looked inward over the quad. They were in a corner, where little light ventured from the illuminated pathway crossing the snow-cloaked lawn. Mindful of possible evidence, I opened my case and took out a pair of tight-fitting rubber gloves. The latch on the window was open. When I gave the iron frame a tentative push it swung out easily. We poked our heads out like a pair of curious children at a fairground attraction. The wall directly outside was covered with wisteria creeper, its ancient gnarled branches twisted together underneath a thick layer of white ice crystals; it extended upwards for at least another two floors.

‘As good as any ladder,’ Francis said quietly. ‘And I’ll warrant there’s at least a dozen routes in and out of Dunbar that avoid the lodgekeepers.’

The detective took a look at the ancient creeper encircling the window. ‘I’ve heard that the gentlemen of Dunbar College do have several methods of allowing their lady friends to visit their rooms after the gates are locked.’

‘And as the gates weren’t locked at the time of the murder, no one would have been using those alternative routes. The murderer would have got out cleanly,’ Francis said.

‘If we’re right, then this was a well planned crime,’ I said. If anything, that made it worse.

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.