Chapter Six Eagle Works Terrier 1500 #3
“No. His parents are alive. He sees a lot of them. No brothers or sisters.”
“Does he ever talk about his work?”
“Not to me.”
“What do you talk about, then?”
“College gossip, mainly.”
“What college is that?”
“His or mine?”
“You’re not a scholar, are you?”
“How d’you work that out?”
“You’re not bright enough.” The softness in his expression hadn’t hardened at all. “You don’t sound like a scholar, you don’t look like one. Why would a scholar like him waste his time with a servant? Unless there’s sex involved, which you haven’t denied.”
“I haven’t admitted it either. What law are you holding me under? What gives you the right to ask questions of any kind, never mind indecent personal ones?”
“Which college? You didn’t answer that one either.”
“He’s a scholar of Durham College.”
“Where’s that? In Durham?”
“In Oxford. You know all this—it must be in that file.”
“What college do you work at then?”
“Jordan.”
“What do they call you? What’s the title of your position?”
“Housekeeper.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Fifteen years, sixteen, I dunno.”
“Let me ask you again about Professor Polstead—”
“He en’t a professor. Dr. Polstead.”
“When he goes away digging up ruins, does he get in touch with you? Letters, postcards, anything like that?”
A movement outside the window caught Alice’s eye, and she turned her head slightly to see a pickup truck move slowly along the road beside the fence. She recognized the model: it was an old EW Terrier 1500. It slowed to a halt, and then moved on again.
She turned back to the inspector. “No. He’s usually in a jungle or a desert or something. Where’s he going to get postcards from?”
“Tell me about his friends. Do you know any of them?”
“A few, I suppose.”
“You ever go out together? Say, to a pub or something like that?”
“Not often.”
“When did you marry Roger Lonsdale?”
“Fifteen years ago.”
That was why she’d recognized the pickup truck. Rog had one just like it.
“You’re not together anymore?”
“He died a year after.”
“How? What of?”
“Building accident.”
“Children?”
“No.”
“What’s your relationship with a girl called Lyra Belacqua?”
“I used to look after her. She was an orphan.”
“And where is she now?”
“No idea.”
“There’s a rumor about her and Dr. Polstead. Any truth in that?”
Alice was genuinely startled. She composed herself calmly. “What sort of rumor? What you talking about?” she said.
“You haven’t heard?”
“No. You going to tell me?”
“Improper conduct between a teacher and a pupil.”
“I never heard anything so stupid in all my life.”
“Where is she now, then?”
“I told you. No idea.”
“She went away about the same time as him, didn’t she?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Two close friends of yours go away together and you can’t remember when?”
“Who said they went together?”
“Didn’t they?”
“No.”
“Who went first?”
“I think she did.”
“So he was following her?”
“No! You’re trying to make things look—”
“I’m not trying to make anything look anything. I’m just trying to establish the truth.”
“You want to tell a lot of lies.”
The inspector looked reproachful. The cat daemon, dozing on the desk beside her, half opened her eyes and looked at Alice directly.
The man licked a finger and turned over a few pages in his file. He read for a minute and turned another page.
“How long ago was it when he was teaching her privately?”
“I don’t remember. About four years ago.”
“So she would have been about fifteen?”
“Sixteen.”
“And you don’t remember anything about that time? Did she confide in you?”
Alice felt a low growl coming from Ben, who was lying at her feet. She reached down and laid her hand on his neck. He knew what she meant, and stopped growling, but of course the inspector had heard, and seen.
“There were things we talked about, and things we didn’t,” Alice said. She was pleased that her voice was steady. “She knew I couldn’t understand her schoolwork or what she learned at college, so we talked about other things.”
“Did she tell you about anything connected with Malcolm Polstead?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Not even why they suddenly stopped these private lessons she was having?”
“She’d probably learned all she needed to about that subject. I don’t know. You’re not getting anywhere with this, and you never will.”
“So you don’t know why she might have been crying on her own after one of these…teaching sessions?”
“What?”
“And why your friend Malcolm Polstead was seen adjusting his clothing after leaving the room that day?”
“Where’d you get this bloody rubbish from?”
“A member of the college staff.”
“Who?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose their name. You don’t know any more about that incident?”
“There never was any incident. You made it up. I wouldn’t like to have your mind.”
Another lick of the inspector’s finger; another few pages turned; another minute of silence as he read.
“Do you know a girl called Pauline Simms?” he said, looking directly at Alice.
“Yes.”
“Who is she?”
“She works at the Trout. That’s Mr. and Mrs. Polstead’s pub. Malcolm’s parents.”
“How old is she?”
“About seventeen, I suppose.”
“You aware of any connection between her and Dr. Polstead?”
“Well, they know each other, obviously. That’s his home.”
“I meant any sexual connection.”
Alice knew that Pauline had a crush on Malcolm. So did he.
“Ridiculous,” she said.
“You’re aware that she’s pregnant?”
“Never heard of it, and I don’t believe it.”
“Course there’s nothing illegal about that, she’s above the age of consent. But what with that and the business with Lyra—”
“There wasn’t any ‘business with Lyra.’ How can you sit there lying like this? Have you spoken to Pauline?”
“Indeed we have.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said the father of her child was Malcolm Polstead.”
Alice took a deep breath. “I’ve known Pauline since she was a kid,” she said. “I can’t imagine why she’d say that, because it isn’t true. So you must have made it up, you bastards, you and your squalid lying colleagues. You’ll never get me to incriminate Pauline, or Lyra, or Malcolm Polstead.”
“I can see it’s difficult for you to admit you might be wrong. But there are witnesses. And what with Lyra and now with Pauline, you see, it does say something about his taste for girls much younger than he is.”
“Bloody garbage.”
“How did Pauline come to get a job at the Trout?”
“I got her the job.”
“You introduced her to him?”
“No,” and Alice put as much contempt into the single syllable as she could. “I introduced her to Mrs. Polstead. Malcolm’s mother. She’s the cook and she needed help in the kitchen, and I told her about Pauline, and she got the job. That’s it. That’s all.”
The inspector made a note, and then closed the file and looked up. His expression was calm, even a little satisfied, but his pale eyes were bright. He ran the little pink point of his tongue around his lips.
“You finished?” said Alice. “Can I go now?”
“In a minute. You know, you’re in a difficult position, Alice.”
“Mrs. Lonsdale to you.”
“I haven’t even begun asking about your own…irregularities.”
“Nothing’s stopping you.”
“Apart from taste.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My appetite for the sordid is limited, and so is my time. But we’ll have another talk before long, Alice, me and you—”
“What’s Brytsec?”
“Brytish Security. As you can see from this uniform.”
“I thought you were ORD. Why don’t you make your mind up?”
“The ORD is a division of Brytsec.”
“What’s it stand for anyway?”
“The Office of Right Duty.”
He gestured towards the epaulettes on his shoulders and the badge on his lapel. He was leaning back in his chair, trying to give an impression of effortless domination.
Alice said, “Well, first I can’t read those things from here, and second you must be some new gang, because I never heard the name before.”
“We used to be known as the Consistorial Court of Discipline. I expect you’ve heard of that.”
“Bunch of swaggering bullies. That explains it. If these questions you’ve been asking are the best you can do, you need someone a lot brighter in charge. You finished with me now? Can I go back to my nice warm cell?”
The inspector’s cat daemon rose to her feet and stretched her back languorously. Ben, lying at Alice’s feet, growled in response, and the cat glared at him and hissed.
Instantly Ben sprang at her. Alice knew that would happen, and was ready: as the cat leapt away she reached forward, seized the front of the desk, and flung it upwards with all her strength.
The inspector was too slow to pull himself upright, and he fell back with the desk on top of him and the chair in pieces underneath.
Before he could even cry out in surprise, Alice and Ben were in the corridor and running for the stairs.
Those wooden handrails: there were some just like them in her school, and she knew how to descend in a hurry, diving forward while sliding her hands halfway down and then gripping tight and swinging her legs onto the floor at the foot of the flight.
She’d got detention for doing that at school, and here she was in detention again, but not for long.
She swung down the lower flight in the same way and ran for the door.
Somewhere behind them a bell began to ring. Someone was shouting, but no one on the ground floor seemed to be responding, and then they reached the door and—
Yes! It was still unlocked.
They hurled themselves outside. Only a few yards away the pickup truck stood, with two men unloading paving stones from the back, and Alice didn’t hesitate.
She knew how to drive these things: Roger had taught her, and she’d delivered building materials for him many times during their short marriage, pretending to grumble, secretly happy.
She wrenched open the driver’s door. Ben sprang in and scrambled out of the way for her to follow, and she slammed the door shut before the men behind could even begin to protest. She flicked the little truck into gear, and the anbaric motor responded at once and shot away from the workmen, with paving stones tumbling from the back.
“Hey!” came a shout.
“Where we going?” said Ben, lurching from side to side as Alice slewed around a bend in the road.
“Out, soon as we see a gate,” she said.
“There’s one!”
“Where?”
“In the fence. There on the right—into the woods.”
“Get down on the floor,” she said, and swung the truck off the road and over the grass verge directly towards the metal gate across the path.
She held the wheel in her left hand and flung her right arm up over her face.
The tough little truck smashed into the gate with a scream of metal and a crash of glass, and stopped suddenly as the engine whined and the wheels spun.
Alice was propelled forward onto the steering wheel, but her arm took most of the force, and she threw the truck into reverse, backed away from the obstruction, and slammed it forward again. This time it burst through.
A muddy, overgrown path stretched ahead. She pressed her foot down hard, and with Ben gripping the seat in his teeth to avoid being tossed out, the Terrier 1500 bashed its way through the branches and the brambles, swaying and jolting and bumping, deeper and deeper into the wood.