A Little Learning Read online

  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, Inspec
tor? 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.’

  Peach was suddenly impatient with this intelligent elf who wished to dance his magic rings around them. He studied the animated, cheerful red face for a moment, then said quietly, ‘It is the enemies of Dr Carter who are bound to be of interest to us at present, of course.’

  Culpepper was delighted rather than abashed. ‘Better to be an honest enemy than a hypocrite, Inspector Peach. I have already decided that neither of you is stupid. I deduce therefore that you have probably done a certain amount of research before you came here. In my view, you probably already know that there was no love lost between my late Director and me. So why dissimulate?’

  Peach grinned back, his own face seeming for a moment to reflect the archness of this appealing imp with the quick and sinuous mind. ‘I know that you were interviewed with Dr Carter for the directorship of the new university.’

  Culpepper was careless of any personal danger in his delight that his surmise had been right. ‘There you are, then! A motive leaps out at us. Academic jealousy: the defeated candidate bides his time, watches the movements of the hated victor from his privileged position on the site, then kills him when the opportunity arises. The superior candidate driven beyond endurance by his rejection! Because I was superior, Inspector. If you’d known Claptrap Carter, you’d appreciate that that isn’t an extravagant claim!’

  Peach was not smiling now. He said quietly, ‘Why was he chosen, Dr Culpepper?’

  It seemed for a moment as if the Senior Tutor would go off into some farrago of obscure complaint about the academic pygmy who had been Carter. But perhaps he caught some of Peach’s sober realism, for he eventually said softly, ‘He was appointed by well-meaning local councillors, in the main. It was before we had university status that he got the post. We were merging three institutions into a college of higher education. Carter was the head of what was numerically the biggest one — what had been no more than the local college of further education a few years earlier. I had taught in universities and was running our degree programme in what was then a teacher-training institution. Probably neither of us would have got the job in open competition against outsiders. Carter certainly wouldn’t.’

  Peach nodded. It fitted the facts he knew. Carter was a political appointment by councillors who knew him and had never had to arbitrate on matters of academic distinction. He was a small man who had been in the right place at the right time, and who had been carried upwards with the institution. He said, ‘You’re telling me that he was a Philistine appointed by Philistines.’

  Culpepper was delighted with the phrase. ‘Yes. They were out of their depth, and it wasn’t all their fault. They should never have been called upon to make the appointment. But then I don’t suppose many people foresaw this place being a university at the time they made it.’

  Peach wondered how he could go on working for an institution which he obviously held in such contempt. But then he went on working for Tommy Bloody Tucker, didn’t he? You kept your own bit of the sty as clean as you could, brought your own integrity to what you were doing. He fancied Walter Culpepper might well be an able and conscientious tutor for the students he dealt with. He wouldn’t have minded being taught by this appealing, quick-wit
ted sprite of a man.

  But if he cared so much for what he did and his old-fashioned notion of academic excellence, he might also be the man who had dealt with the leader he held in such contempt. Peach said, ‘Had your recent disagreements with Dr Carter been more vehement than usual?’

  Culpepper smiled, leaned forward. Peach was astounded to see that he regarded him as a sympathetic audience. ‘You may well ask. We had a major row last week: it was over academic standards, as usual. He wanted to take students with the very minimum qualifications, in the areas where we were short: mainly the sciences and the social sciences, as usual. He wanted them to have unconditional acceptances, on the strength of two Es at A-level and without interview. I wanted us to be a little more selective, at least until later in the year, when we would have a clearer idea what our recruitment figures were. He gave his orders. I refused to take them. Said it would be over my dead body — you had to use a cliché, if you wanted Claptrap Carter to understand you. But in the end it was he who provided the dead body, wasn’t it?’ The Senior Tutor’s high-pitched giggle showed that he thought that a highly satisfactory outcome.

  Peach did not smile. ‘He would have won, in the end, wouldn’t he?’

  Culpepper’s mirth died abruptly. ‘I suppose he would. “Standards” is a dirty word, in a world of blood and iron.’

  ‘Dr Carter hardly strikes me as a Bismarck, but I agree.’ Percy found he was absurdly pleased to have picked up the reference again, to be able to bandy words with this frolicsome Feste. If his father had not died suddenly when he was about to go to university, he might have had the benefit of minds like this. English or history, it would have been. He had long since ceased to regret the omission, but moments like this brought shafts of regret. He pulled himself roughly back to the matter in hand. ‘Where were you on Saturday evening, Dr Culpepper?’