Death at the Alma Mater (17 page)

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With Hermione Jax, they were firmly back on British soil after their adventures in the Wild West. She proved to be a woman in her early fifties, with iron-gray spectacles and a steely spine to match, St. Just would warrant. Her thick gray hair was coiled atop her head like an intricately braided laundry basket.

Within a very few minutes, she impressed St. Just as being the rugged type of British intellectual of whom legends were repeated, by whom astonishing discoveries were made, and after whom girls’ schools and colleges were named.

She sat across from the policemen, her feet in their sturdy brogues planted squarely on the carpet, tweed skirt draped between her knees, and hands clasped firmly on top of her walking stick. Despite her apparent physical robustness, her camel-like visage held the gaunt, zealous imprint of the fanatic. It was the kind of face one would expect to have found amongst the crowd that stormed the Bastille. St. Just noticed she had a small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer looped over her belt. Her eyes drawn as if instinctively to the senior officer, she began by demanding to know what the police had learned so far.

“Early days yet. Is it Miss or Mrs. Jax?” asked St. Just.

She folded her lips into a straight, disapproving crease. “It is Ms. Jax, Inspector, and I am astonished that I should have to enlighten you on that score. Women fought and died for the respect signified by that title. They were force-fed in your prisons, and trampled by your horses. I insist upon its use.”

Whatever Lola wants. Sergeant Fear, flipping to a fresh page in his notebook, sat up a bit straighter in his chair. Ms. Jax had that effect. St. Just, meanwhile, wondered why the horses were suddenly his.

“I do apologize, Ms. Jax,” he said. “Now, I just have a few questions. I need you to tell me what you know of this matter.”

“Nothing whatsoever. I only wish I did. This sort of thing’s bad for the image of the college. Silly woman—and she was silly, I have to say—to bring herself here of all places to be killed. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“Inconsiderate, one could say.”

She pierced St. Just with a lancet glare.

“Don’t coddle me, Inspector. Of course I realize the poor girl can’t be blamed. But it’s nothing to do with the college, of that you can be certain. It is unfortunate it happened here and now, is all that I am saying. It could ruin the fund-raising drive. People don’t like it when other people are murdered. Puts them off.”

“Quite. Now, Ms. Jax, how well did you know the participants of this weekend?”

“Remember ’em all, of course,” she said gruffly. “Of course, I was older than most of them by about ten years, and I didn’t waste my time, like most of them did, on foolishness, but I remember them well enough. What do you want to know?”

As often with St. Just, what he wanted to know probably had nothing to do with the case, but he was curious to learn more about Ms. Hermione Jax.

“Why don’t you start by telling me how you came to be here at St. Mike’s? What made you choose this college? Choose Cambridge, for that matter?”

“You mean, what took me so long to get here?”

That hadn’t actually been the question, but he let her answer it anyway.

“Simply put: my father,” she went on. “I cared for him all his life, and throughout his final illness, which lasted all through my young adulthood. He was of the old school that didn’t believe in education for women—there was never any question of my going to any college, anywhere. He made his decision and I abided by it. At least, I pretended to. When he died, he left me his fortune—he’d never have done that if he knew how I’d spend it, you can be certain. Anyway, I had the freedom at last to do what I’d always most wanted, and I applied straightaway as a mature student. As to why St. Mike’s: In the day, they had a tutor here who was one of the world’s leading experts in botany, my chosen field.” As if to clarify an impenetrably dense point, she added, “That is the study of plants.”

St. Just nodded, not greatly offended. The Great British Public seemed to view policemen, despite having been entrusted with its own personal safety, as barbaric numbskulls. He was, to some extent, used to it.

“As a mature student,” he said, “perhaps you had a different vantage point that could be helpful. You say you remember them all, the people here this weekend. Tell me what you remember.”

“Strange to tell, what struck me right away was that nothing had changed. Lexy was always at the eye of some storm or other. Spoiled silly, of course. Wasted her time and opportunities here. When I think of the deserving girls who could have had her place! But Lexy—with her it was men, men, men. Man mad, she was. It always comes to a bad end, that kind of thing. You can’t hitch your wagon to some man’s star. A woman has to be independent.”

She stomped her cane on the carpet for emphasis and then sat, smoldering, awaiting the next question.

“Quite,” said St. Just again. It seemed the wiser, not to say, the safer course, to simply agree with her. She looked more than capable of wielding that stick to good effect if aroused. “And the others? What about them?”

“Well, of course, having snared James as quickly as possible—I blame the family; they have been allowed to breed too closely for generations; even Lexy and Sir James are cousins, you know, although quite distant ones—as I say, having made a career of snagging James and then succeeding in her neurotic fashion, well, we were all subjected to the absolutely shameful goings on when India next got her claws into him. It was a veritable soap opera, and of course it went on for months. Positive months. Now that I am being forced to relive it all, it puts me in mind of the Cambridge don who married his bedder some years ago. She managed it in the usual way. There’s nothing new under the sun, my good man.”

Sergeant Fear, curiosity piqued, asked, “And what way is that, ma’am?”

Hermione turned her head and, aiming more or less in Fear’s direction, replied, “She ignored him. Treated him like dirt under her feet.” Thump. “Men can never resist that.”

“I see. Right you are,” Sergeant Fear said, thinking: If she thumps that cane of hers again I may have to go over there and snap it in two for her.

“Fortunately, Lexy moved out of college completely once the divorce was underway, and James and India set up housekeeping elsewhere, so we were spared much of what went on when Sebastian was discovered.”

He might have been found under a tree. “So James wasn’t aware of his existence, this stepson?”

“Course he was. And any man worth his salt would have dropped India on the spot once she turned up pregnant, but not James. Poor chump. He had it bad.”

“Please. Let’s back up a bit. You’re saying James and India were together when Sebastian was born but that James was not the father?”

“Didn’t I just say that? And, it nearly sent Lexy over the edge. She always was unstable, but for James to leave her for a woman who was pregnant by another man—well, you can imagine. Can’t say I blame her entirely. Rumor was she couldn’t have children of her own. A rum situation all ’round. Well, at least, as I say, we were spared much of that. The situation got so complicated, not to say noisy, that the Master and Bursar stepped in, had a word, and everyone was found other accommodation.”

St. Just had to admit it had to have been a delicate situation for all.

“Do you have some theory of your own as to why Lexy was killed, Ms. Jax?” he asked.

“I should have thought that was your job, Chief Inspector.”

Clearly, the kind of flattery that worked a treat on Mrs. Dunning was going to cut no ice here.

“What was the state of her relationship with Sir James and Lady Bassett?”

“I don’t know. I paid no attention.”

“Lexy’s relationship with Geraldo—was it serious, would you say?”

“I would say a relationship with that bullfighter or whatever he is would be as enriching as a relationship with a peacock. As to serious, I couldn’t say. He’s not quite one of us, is he? NOC, most definitely. Not Our Class—no indeed. I felt altogether that he was here for show. Lexy was up to her usual tricks—trying to ignite the jealousy of Sir James.”

“Did she succeed?”

An eloquent shrug.

“No idea.”

“And your own movements during and after dinner, Ms. Jax? Did you notice, for example, when Lexy left the table?”

“Same time as we all did. Quarter past the hour. She may have been first out—she was near one end of the table and didn’t have to crawl out from the bench as the rest of us did.”

“And that’s the last you saw of her?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t notice her in the Fellows’ Garden?”

“I’ve just said, haven’t I? I was busy having a word with the Reverend Otis. Well, I may have just noticed her in conversation with Sir James. She seemed to be trembling, upset, so I looked away. It doesn’t do, that kind of thing. Then I went up to my rooms to throw some water on my face—it’s been devilishly hot, as you know. Then I went down to the SCR.”

“At what time?”

“I’ve no idea. There was nothing special about my going there. I do so most evenings when I’m in college.”

“Who was there?”

“I didn’t notice,” she said, her voice tinged with exasperation. “It was getting crowded. I headed straight for the drinks tray. Then I engaged the Bursar in conversation.”

Ignoring the guests, it sounded like. She would be like that, St. Just thought. Insular, regarding the college as “hers,” fiercely protective, a self-appointed guardian of St. Michael’s past and future. A guardian of morals as well, no doubt. He felt he’d met the type before. The extreme of her type could be quite, quite potty. And dangerous, given the right circumstances. He dared a direct look into her eyes. She glared back, pop-eyed—outraged, perhaps, by his insolence. He was strongly reminded of Winston Churchill in the later years, when he had grown to resemble a cigar-chomping bulldog.

“Will that be all, Chief Inspector?” she said at last, rising to her feet as she said it. The cane seemed to be only for appearance’s sake, as she rose with great alacrity, not putting any weight on the prop. She probably kept it to hand as a weapon, ready to incapacitate any thief foolhardy enough to think of having a grab at her purse or her bicycle. She would remain independent and eccentric to her dying day, frugal (her clothes showed no signs of the wealth she had inherited, but looked like Oxfam finds), fiercely dedicated to her chosen field of study, and a slave to the college where she had first tasted freedom. Both physically and psychologically suited to the crime, then.

But that description fit most of the others, of course.

“Good night, Chief Inspector,” she said, and sturdily marched out of the room as if to engage the hidden enemy. Sergeant Fear might not even have been there.

“She’s a right old trout,” he told St. Just. “And batting for the other side, I’d wager.”

“If you mean gay, Sergeant: No, I think you’re mistaken there. But I would wager that wherever she loved, she’d love with a fierce devotion, regardless of whether the devotion were returned or even deserved.”

“Do you think she could have done it?”

“Oh, certainly. Without turning a hair. The way she waited out her father so she could get her way in the end speaks of rather a cunning if not a devious nature, does it not? And she doesn’t really account for her time well. But as to motive … if she had some noble cause driving her, I guarantee it will be something that would strike any modern juror as preposterous. I thought her kind had long since died out, and she’s not really that old. Who’s next?”

THIS JUST IN

Gwennap Pengelly breezed in,
introduced herself—“Puh-leeze call me Gwenn, not Gwennap”—shook hands with both men, sat down, and gave them her London home and office addresses and no fewer than three phone numbers where she could be reached—all without being asked.

St. Just sized her up as she chirped on. She had a broad, angled face with an almost Asiatic cast to the eyes, and a head that appeared to be too large for her body. But that may have been an illusion caused by her fashionably emaciated frame. Her hair was parted in the center and fell to her shoulders in artfully cascading curves and twists. She had freshened her makeup: the lips of her pouty mouth glistened pinkly, and her eyes were heavily ringed in black. These enhancements didn’t appear to be repairs to hide her grief, for the whites of her panda eyes shone with health and vitality. Rather, so might an actress prepare for her debut performance. In common with other media personalities he had met, and in the course of his career he had necessarily met a few, she was shorter than she appeared on television.

“My mobile is best, of course,” she was saying now. “It’s never turned off and I travel with three spare batteries. ‘Breaking News Never Sleeps.’ That’s our motto at the station. Complete marketing bollocks, of course, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?” She beamed brightly at both men in turn then, seeming to remember the gravity of the situation at hand, composed her features into a scowl of concern. It was a trick she’d picked up as a broadcaster, no doubt—that ability to organize facial features and tone of voice to suit the story. Much like an actress, thought St. Just. She wasn’t particularly good at it but then, given her nightly recital of atrocities around the globe, she didn’t have to be. The words spoke for themselves … so to speak.

“You’ll want to know where I was—where everyone was, of course—and anything that happened leading up to the crime, especially anything of a suspicious nature. We-l-l-l, I spent the day mostly on my computer researching a story. I took a break for lunch at Fitzbillies. Then I came back and worked until six. Took a shower in one of those ghastly, germ-breeding, mold-infested stalls they subject us to here—I suppose to show the dire need for donations to renovate. The Master is no one’s fool, let me tell you, and his sidekick the Bursar is twice as cunning. Anyway, down to dinner. The Master rolled out, I swear, the same speech he gave years ago in welcoming us to the college, only this time with a thicker overlay of the sense of the History of it all. And how we must preserve our great traditions, whatever the cost. Honestly, he might have lifted the whole thing from the Queen’s Speech. Hermione Jax sat there lapping it up, of course. She’s had a pash for the Master for years. Unrequited, needless to say. But that hasn’t stopped him from cashing her cheques left and right. Fortunately, she’s rolling in it, so little harm done, I would imagine. Her father was one of the Hanover-Forspeths, you know, on his mother’s side. They’re all barking, of course. Old Hermie escaped from a dreadful, doomed existence when her father died. Oh, I see you know about that?

“Anyway, we got through the dinner somehow—I think the main course was yak, I swear it, and a very elderly yak, at that. Some things never change—and the Master instructed us to reconvene in the SCR, where no doubt we were to be treated to yet more toasts and speeches and heavy-handed hints about the need for more funding. Imagine the crush to get in first—not! Anyway, I went to my room and fixed my face and wandered ever so slowly down. I wasn’t in the room a minute when that tall young blonde came roaring in, blubbering.”

Here, much to St. Just’s relief, and Fear’s, who was getting writer’s cramp, she paused to draw breath and beam at them again. Before she could resume, St. Just cut in:

“Tell us about your time at St. Michael’s, when you were a student here.”

“Certainly. Well, to be frank, I loathed the place when I was here. Talk about a hotbed of misogyny. Any reasonably attractive woman”—and here she paused, eyelashes fluttering, clearly waiting for the requisite protest as to her remarkable beauty. None forthcoming, she went on rather sulkily, “Well, any attractive woman simply was not taken seriously. And even the Ms. Jaxes of this world had a difficult row to hoe. I just kept my head down and got through it, somehow. Finished with a decent second, before you ask. I never claimed to be a genius.”

“Did you know Lexy at all well from that time?”

“I did at first—we hung about a bit together. We were much the same age, with some interests in common. We played tennis a few times, doubles. But she quickly took up with James and it was the usual story—no time for old girlfriends when a man comes on the scene. And I—well, I had my own fish to fry about then. Rather a dashing young man reading Renaissance Lit. He broke my heart, of course, but at least he did it poetically.” She grinned again, that famous grin admired by viewers the width and breadth of Great Britain. She really was a good-looking woman, thought St. Just. Perhaps there had been some rivalry between Gwenn and Lexy?

She went on, “The whole place was a petri dish for this type of love affair thing, come to think of it.”

“How did anyone get enough work done to finish their degree?” wondered St. Just.

“That’s quite a good question, actually.”

“You say Lexy quickly got caught up with James. Was it your impression she was the pursuer, then, and not the pursued?”

She laughed. It was a squeaky laugh, like a pencil eraser rubbed across a glass window. Coquettishly, she gave her head what St. Just was certain she thought of as a saucy toss, setting the curls abounce. Twinkle. Smile. “Golly, yes,” she said.

St. Just felt he’d had quite enough of this sort of thing. He was reminded why he seldom watched the news on telly. He preferred to get his information from people who had not first been coiffed and shellacked to within an inch of their lives, as if they were going to a dinner party. Radio had much to recommend it; print still more.

“Are you all right, Ms. Pengelly?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Toss, bounce. Smile. “Of course I’m all right.”

“Sometimes neck pain can take people that way. A sharp spasm, following by twitching.”

Coldly. “I said I’m all right.”

“Good. Then, you were saying … ”

“Yes. Well. James couldn’t make a move, inside or outside the college, where he didn’t run into Lexy, ‘by accident.’ She positively threw herself at him.” Gwenn flexed her wrist in a dismissive motion. “He joined the chess club; she joined the chess club—just try to imagine Lexy, of all people, in a chess club. But of course, I’m forgetting, you didn’t know her. Anyway, he joined the Student Union; she joined the Student Union. It’s a wonder she didn’t follow him into the men’s loo. Lexy lived in a positive bubble of denial, you see—he was never all that keen, I don’t think. Of course, he had reasonable looks and some old family money. One couldn’t blame her. Is there a Type A–B personality? Then Lexy was it. All over the place. She still lives—lived—a somewhat rackety life in London, so I’ve heard. Never quite settled down.”

“Did you? Blame her, I mean. Feel any resentment?”

The automatic smile froze, although the eyelashes continued to flutter.

“How do you mean?” she said at last.

“I mean, did you feel any resentment at their relationship?”

“Over a dried-up stick like James? Certainly not. James was an old man before he turned six years of age. Far too serious for my taste. Besides, as I told you, I had other fish to fry. Lexy was—I’ve just realized, I made her sound like some kind of man-eater. It wasn’t like that at all. She was insecure, is all—one of the most insecure women I’ve met in my life. She loved James; rather, she seemed to need him rather desperately, which can be the same thing, can’t it? Thank God, or maybe not, he reciprocated, at least for awhile. Then he met India and—pow.

“India had—what was it? A life force that Lexy lacked somehow. Like Lexy, if India wanted something, India went after it. But there was more—” and here, the eyelashes went into overdrive, “and it was this: India’s presence somehow held the promise of unbridled sexuality, no strings attached. Have you ever met anyone like that?”

The two policemen, wide-eyed, remained diplomatically silent.

“But there are always strings—strings that entangle not one or two but several lives, even threatening to destroy everyone caught in the net. Still, what man could resist India, or even want to? Lexy, by way of contrast, was an ice princess. Lovely, seemingly untouchable.”

Again she tossed her head in the coquettish manner that was apparently hard-wired into her character.

“There was a time I worried about Lexy’s stability, during all that,” she said. “We all did. She seemed headed for the loony bin. Then the Master got them all separated and that seemed to help. She was seeing a rower by the time we graduated. But she never gave up her pash for James.”

“Even as late as this weekend?”

She nodded. “You only had to see her—her eyes, following him wherever he walked. That dishy Argentine was—what do you call it? A beard? Anyway, he was here just for show. That much was obvious.”

“They seemed to get along, did they? Lexy and Geraldo?”

“Yes, I suppose. But again, it was all for show. He certainly wasn’t along to provide thought-provoking commentary on the global economy, that’s for certain. Now, Chief Inspector, you will be giving me an exclusive on this story, won’t you?” She flashed her best, professionally whitened smile. Through some trick of genetic inheritance each of her front teeth was slightly and evenly gapped, in a not unattractive way, like a row of vertical fence slats.

“There will of course be a statement issued from communications at some point,” he told her, knowing full well that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Too bad. “One further question: Did you see much of Lexy once both of you had left University?”

A shrug. “Here and there. She held down a few Sloane-y jobs, wrote a society column for a while. Our professional paths sometimes intersected over that—she had fantastic access to after-party tidbits of gossip. You know: who went home with whom, who was leaving whom. Then she retired from working to become, well, Lexy Laurant.”

There seeming to be little more she could tell them, he bid her a good night. Sulkily, cheated of her “scoop,” and leaving her audience less than dazzled, she left the room.

And DCI St. Just and Sergeant Fear called it a night soon after that.