A Little Learning (7 page)

Claptrap Carter — Peach had already accepted his right to the epithet — had done himself well. This was a spacious room on the quiet side of the old mansion, with its 1840s stone-mullioned windows still intact. The view was over trees, with glimpses of clipped grass between and beyond them and not a building in sight. Oak and beech, still retaining most of their leaves, showed orange and yellow behind the more delicate tracery of silver birch; despite the frost of Sunday night, the leaves of two mature maples glowed brilliant crimson and amber within a few yards of the late Director’s big curved desk.

There was nothing on the desk, and little of interest in its drawers, save for a large, red-backed appointments diary on which Peach spent most of his time. You could find out quite a lot about a man from a diary, even when it was merely a record of work scheduled and completed, rather than the more personal and intimate daily chronicle of feelings and reactions which police people always preferred. Even a record of meetings attended and interviews conducted could give a picture of a working existence, which for all they knew at this stage could be just as important as Carter’s private life.

And there were odd snippets which were not concerned with the work of the UEL at all. Peach confirmed from the entry ‘Lodge Ladies’ Night’ in Carter’s neat, small hand that he was a Mason, and stored it away for future reference. He would have some fun with Tommy Bloody Tucker about his fellow Mason, with any luck. If they drew blanks elsewhere, they might even have to look into Claptrap’s Masonic connections, eventually.

Peach made a note of those appointments which related to individual tutors rather than more general meetings of committees and working parties. He had picked up a list of staff from the Bursar’s office, and he was able to identify the posts of various tutors on the list. Probably they all had some perfectly sound and perfectly innocent reason for seeing the late Director, but they would all have to be patiently checked out by members of his team.

The simple initials ‘S.T.’ occurred several times in the diary. Peach looked backwards over the year, as well as at the week ahead, and found no fewer than six recordings of these initials in the preceding three months, which included six weeks of the summer vacation. There was no one on his list of academic staff who matched the two initials.

He went back into the outer office, prepared to take his sword to the dragon once again, and found that the scaly fire-breather had become a pussy cat. Ms Burns was going through the correspondence file with the young woman DC at her side, explaining what the correspondence was about, searching hard for any mysterious elements in the letters Dr Carter had received and the replies she had typed. He smiled at the neat grey head and the younger, less disciplined brown one in such earnest conversation. Murder, the worst of crimes, had about it a charnel-house glamour; even people initially hostile to the inquiry often became quite excited by it, once they felt they had a part to play in unmasking a murderer.

Peach showed Ms Burns the diary, prepared for her to bridle at this interference with her late employer’s personal working record. Instead, she asked if she could be of help with any queries. ‘Can you tell me who “S.T.” might be?’ he asked. ‘He or she occurs several times in here, but there doesn’t seem to be any tutor or senior member of the administrative staff with those initials.’

She took the desk diary from him, flicked over the pages, scanning the entries he pointed out. She frowned a little, then her face cleared and she said, ‘Of course! Those aren’t a person’s initials at all. “S.T.” means Senior Tutor. The man you want is Walter Culpepper.’

Peach was deliberately noncommittal as he said casually, ‘Friendly with Dr Carter, was he? They seem to have met each other fairly often.’

Ms Burns became suddenly very formal again. ‘The Senior Tutor oversees all the student admissions to the university. It is inevitable that he and the Director will meet fairly frequently.’

Peach pretended to be more ignorant than he was, another tactic in which he was an expert. ‘Important figure in the place, is he, the Senior Tutor?’

Angela Burns looked at the bland, questioning face suspiciously for a moment. ‘The Senior Tutor is one of the key figures, especially in a new university like this, where we are not certain of the quality of intake we can expect in the different subject areas. He lives on the site and keeps a constant overview of the state of recruitment for the year ahead.’

‘So he and Dr Carter saw quite a lot of each other.’

She picked her words as carefully as a politician. ‘It was inevitable that in the course of their professional duties their paths would cross quite frequently. Essential, in fact, for the smooth running of the institution.’

Peach grinned. He was beginning to like the dragon, after all. He wished he had someone like her to look after his own interests back at the police station in Brunton. ‘They didn’t like each other, then.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to. I somehow divined it. That’s what comes of being a detective, I suppose. So Walter Culpepper and Dr Carter were at each other’s throats most of the time, and lived on the site together. Makes you think, doesn’t it, when you find one of them lying shot in his house?’

Ms Burns wasn’t used to meeting men like this strange little inspector, who seemed to be so adept at spotting the things you had meant to conceal. He was teasing her now, as no one in the UEL would have had the temerity to do: she realized that, but she found to her surprise that she was rather enjoying it.

She found it hard to prevent the corners of her mouth from wrinkling upwards as she said, ‘You’d better decide on that for yourself, Inspector. I’m sure you’ll find Dr Culpepper more than a match for you.’

Nine

Carmen Campbell stretched luxuriously in front of the full-length mirror, taking advantage of a facility she could never enjoy in her own tiny flat. She had bra and pants on now, after a leisurely shower. She ran a wide-toothed comb through her thick black hair and allowed herself to relish the beauty of her skin; it had that colour of rich milk chocolate which she revelled in and which men seemed to find so exciting.

She had not wasted her day off from the university: she would go back with her batteries refreshed, well prepared for the trials of the week to come. Strange how you could use such a lot of energy, could finish the afternoon exhausted, and yet feel regenerated. It depended on the activity, of course. A change is as good as a rest, they said in that part of Lancashire where she had now made her home. And this had certainly been a change: an afternoon in bed with your boyfriend was so very different from your normal working day that it was indeed as good as a holiday. An activity holiday, that would be.

Carmen enjoyed taking her time as she dressed; that was part of the luxury of the moment. She could hear the sounds of movement in the kitchen and sitting room downstairs. Keith was making her a meal. She thought fondly of his careful movements, of his face earnest with concentration as he studied the instructions on the packets and looked into the pans. Keith was as white as she was coffee-coloured, as English and careful as she was Caribbean and impulsive, and she liked that.

She liked the way his reserve broke down in bed, how he became wilder and louder than her, so that she and not he had eventually to control things. She smiled reminiscently as she sat on the edge of the bed and began to encase her long legs in jeans which would not obscure their shapeliness. She knew men found her exotic, though she felt herself quite ordinary, merely one high-spirited girl among many who had enjoyed the Barbadian beaches. Well, a little more intelligent than most of the others, she allowed. That was what had carried her across the seas and into a whole new range of challenges and problems.

She was almost dressed when Keith called urgently up the stairs, ‘Come down quickly! There’s going to be something about your place on the news.’

She slipped on her flat shoes, came lightly down the stairs, grinned at the vision of Keith in his pinafore, poised with wooden spoon in hand in front of the big television set in the corner of the room. He had called her when the news headlines were announced. They had to wait a few minutes for the item which had made him call so agitatedly up the stairs.

There were pictures of the UEL site from the air. After a generalized view of the campus, the camera zoomed in like a cinematic opening to an aerial view of the Director’s Residence, tucked away in the sylvan privacy of this idyllic greenfield site, while the newsreader gave the bald facts that had so far been released about the sensational murder of the Director of the newly established University of East Lancashire.

Then there were more pictures from television cameras at ground level, showing the police cars around the house, following an unmarked van as it first entered the drive, then shortly afterwards drove away from the site, the unstated but strong implication being that it carried the murdered body of Dr George Andrew Carter inside it. Keith sat on the edge of his armchair and watched fascinated, whilst Carmen Campbell stood motionless behind him, with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders.

They didn’t say anything until they were sitting opposite each other at the table. Keith wanted to discuss this murder, feeling the excitement of the link, however indirect, between this vital girl who sat quietly eating his food and the sensational happenings forty miles away. He wondered how upset she was by this death. ‘You knew him, didn’t you?’ he said tentatively.

‘Not intimately I didn’t, no.’ She giggled a little at the
News
of
the
World
meaning of that word, thinking of the tumbled sheets she had left upstairs when she had rushed down to see the television item. ‘He appointed me, so I met him then. But he was far too exalted for me to have much contact after that. Bit of a charlatan, they say. Not much of an academic at all, but a great bullshitter. The students called him Claptrap Carter.’

‘You don’t usually get bumped off for being a bit pompous, though. A bullet through the head seems rather extreme, even for the most annoying bullshitter.’ Keith worked in advertising and was something of an expert on bullshit.

‘I expect there’s more to it than that. There would be a lot more killings in educational institutions, if people took to shooting people for a bit of pretentious twittering.’

Keith wanted to speculate more about this particular death, but she stilled him when they had finished eating by a swift, valedictory smooch, and pointed out that she must catch her train back to Brunton. She rode the few miles to the small Cheshire station on the back of his motorbike, swaying expertly with every turn of the big Honda Fireblade, making him feel that even her necessary clutching of his waist was personal and sexy.

Carmen grinned at him as he took her helmet and stowed it in his pannier, bought herself an evening paper, leaned from the train window, and kissed him briefly but expertly, rolling her tongue around the inside of his teeth in a way which recalled past joys and promised future pleasures. She waved and smiled as the diesel pulled smoothly away, the bright glitter of her eyes still visible an instant after he had lost the movement of her dark hand. It was a moment which made Keith feel very special.

The Monday evening train was not crowded as it sped north; Carmen had a compartment to herself. She sat very still for a couple of minutes, reviewing the events of the last two days. Then she read the newspaper story of the murder of Claptrap Carter back in Lancashire. It added very little to the account they had watched on Keith’s television set. It gave a few more details about the time of the discovery and carried one or two conventional reactions of shock from the staff and students of the institution. Everyone was baffled by this awful happening. No one had any clue as to a possible motive.

Carmen Campbell settled back into her seat and closed her eyes, swaying gently with the movement of the speeding train. She would be home within the hour. Her long weekend had been very satisfactory.

*

A steeply sloping roof, with just enough irregularity in the red tiles to suggest the age of the place. Clematis and climbing roses on either side of the front door, the last crimson roses still singing a brave November swansong against the mellow brick. A hedge of fuchsias behind the wall at the front of the house, flanking the wrought-iron gate. A building dating from the nineteenth century, when this place had been a stately home, with its own small village of workers on the estate. The Senior Tutor’s cottage was a less impressive building than the Director’s house, but it had a charm which that more modern building could never have aspired to.

Peach’s first reaction to Walter Culpepper was that he was a perfect match for the building in which the accident of his career had placed him. He opened the door a fraction as they shut the gate behind them and his swift glance took in Peach from head to foot, then transferred itself to a slower and more appreciative survey of Lucy Blake. With his red face behind his thick glasses, his prominent ears, his receding hair, his mobile mouth, and the impish mischief in his watery blue eyes, he looked like a garden gnome upon whom you would not care to turn your back.

‘You must be the fuzz.’ He held out a bony hand to each of them in turn as Peach introduced them. ‘Walter Culpepper. I prefer to get the name in early, in case people giggle. They do sometimes.’ He threw a startling high-pitched laugh over his shoulder as he led them into a high-ceilinged sitting room and gestured towards an elegant chaise longue. ‘The Culpeppers were big in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Too big, in certain areas. Thomas Culpepper was put to death in 1542 for bedding Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Bluff King Hal. One “p” in those days, but then you didn’t live long enough for the dreaded prostate, if you went about rogering queens.’ He grinned a puckish grin, then glanced at his watch. ‘You come most carefully upon your hour.’

Peach nodded. ‘And something is almost certainly rotten in the state of Denmark, Dr Culpepper.’

The Senior Tutor’s eyebrows lifted a fraction as his
Hamlet
allusion was returned to him. Flatfoots weren’t supposed to be able to exchange literary references. That oaf Carter certainly hadn’t been able to. This might be an opponent worthy of his steel. —O cursed sprite, that ever I was born to set it right.” Except that I’m not, am I, Inspector? That’s your job.’ He beamed his delight in the thought.

‘That’s true. With your able assistance, of course.’

‘Of course! But not very able, I’m afraid. This is a new experience for me. Murder of roguish Director in the halls of academe at dead of night. Dorothy L. Sayers and all that. Not that the UEL has much in common with the ancient halls of Oxford, eh?’ Again that unexpectedly high-pitched chuckle came across the room at them, emphasizing the preposterous nature of the comparison.

But rather than taking up the contrast, as Culpepper had hoped, Peach seized on a particular word. ‘Roguish, Dr Culpepper? Am I to assume that you held a low opinion of your Director?’

The Senior Tutor looked to either side, as if checking that no one was eavesdropping in the empty house, then leaned forward confidentially. ‘I had certainly no very high opinion of Carter. Claptrap Carter, the students called him, you know!’ He clasped both hands across his thin knees for a moment, and laughed as heartily as any schoolboy at that welcome thought.

‘You didn’t like him.’ Peach issued the words as a statement, not a question, but his eyes twinkled almost conspiratorially, encouraging this sixty-year-old juvenile towards further indiscretions.

‘I thought he was a complete charlatan.’ He turned his attention to Lucy Blake, who had begun to take notes with her small, gold-cased ball-pen. ‘A wanker and a tosser, in police-speak.’

She smiled: the sprite’s amusement was infectious. ‘Charlatan will do, I think, for the moment.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. This dumbing down which is everywhere around us hasn’t spread to the CID, it seems. Unless you two aren’t typical?’

It was an invitation to be indiscreet about their own environment, but he was disappointed. Peach said, ‘You can probably help us a lot more than you think, Dr Culpepper. In Dr Carter, we have a murder victim we have never met; who can obviously not speak for himself about whatever enemies he may have had; who is yet dependent upon us to find his killers. We are dependent in turn upon the assistance of those who were closest to him as we try to build up a picture of the sort of man he was. People like you, who met him frequently in the course of their work.’

‘In the course of my work, yes. Socially, no. I kept as far away from Claptrap Carter as it was possible for a man to keep while still fulfilling the functions of a Senior Tutor.’

‘Which are?’

Culpepper pursed his lips, looking for a succinct way to sum up his multiple functions. ‘To oversee the intake of students. To arrange student interviews with a view to admission in the following October, as necessary. My role really dates from the days when we were a college of education — a teacher-training institution. It was then possible to maintain a clear picture of admissions in all areas, to see where we were short of students and where we had a superfluity, and could thus afford to be choosy. I have maintained that function in the new and enlarged institution. But it is now too big an area for one man to keep a detailed picture. The job will be divided and devolved among our new faculties, probably from next year.’

When he was serious, thought Peach, you got a glimpse of the fierce pride this man took in the efficiency with which he conducted his work, which Angela Burns had hinted at when he pressed her. The Senior Tutor slipped back into his mischievous mode as he said, ‘I used to take the responsibility for maintaining certain academic standards among our student intake, but that function has passed, sadly. Now that every tinpot institution can call itself a university, it is obvious that the ones which find themselves at the bottom of the pile, like the UEL, will be scraping the bottom of the barrel, if you will allow such a profusion of metaphors.’ His smooth, small red nose wrinkled in distaste, whether at the standard of student they admitted or at his own clumsy phrasing it was not clear.

‘And you didn’t always see eye to eye with your Director?’

The red face twisted again into a smile. ‘You express it with a restraint I had not expected in a policeman. We hated each other’s guts, to be frank. But we were locked together in our jobs, rather as people used to be trapped in unsuitable marriages. Divorce wasn’t possible for us.’

‘Surely one of you could have taken another job.’

‘I suppose we could. You do right to remind me of the realities of the world outside this particular ivory tower, Inspector Peach. But we were the victims of our own success. Or rather of the expansion of higher education. I doubt whether I could have got another job with the same pay and stature. And I’m quite sure Claptrap Carter would have been laughed out of court if he’d tried for the vice-chancellorship of one of our existing universities. He was a little man, with a little mind, Inspector Peach.’ He turned with a happy smile to the woman beside him with her notepad. ‘You can record that, if you like.’