‘I hardly think there are unisex dormitories, though,’ said Lucius Trickett. ‘Anyway, you have it right with regard to our present predicament. Except for Patsy and Coral, the women had never been on the premises before. There is a strict rule against parties at the halls of residence. The dances are always held at the poly itself. That’s why everything is so sickening, because I had a hell of a job to get the warden to agree to the Highland Way party and now, although it was no fault of mine, I feel I’ve let him down. If the party had been only for poly people, he would never have given permission, but it was for the Highland lot and now an outsider has to go and get himself murdered. It really is too bad.’
I sympathised, but could offer no help. I had learned something, however, which had changed my views more than a little. Had it not been for the corpse in the ruins on Rannoch Moor, I would have thought that the stab in the back which had killed poor Carbridge was more of a woman’s than a man’s crime, but even though the Rannoch murder was known to have been committed by a man, that man was an habitual criminal and, to such, the ordinary rules of fair play do not apply. More than once, when I thought about the poly murder — and it was seldom out of my mind — I had considered the possibility of its having been committed by a woman. Now, however, Trickett appeared to have made that idea improbable. It seemed that only the men would have known where that dark passage was. The women concerned were likely to have been ignorant of the layout of the building.
I re-visualised what I myself knew of it. We had been admitted at the front door by Trickett himself and had been led straight past the main staircase to the common-room where the orchestra, consisting of several young men and three girls, was already assembled. We had been greeted by Patsy in all the erotic splendour of her Turkish get-up. The room had three doors, the one by which we had entered, the one I had opened to get out and smoke my cigarette and by which Coral and Freddie had brought in the relays of food, and a third door which I had been told led only to a small wing which housed the sick-bay and which was always kept locked unless one of the students was ill.
Bull, it was clear, had been stationed where I saw him so that he could answer any telephone calls, since the telephone would hardly have been audible anywhere else with so much noise going on in the common-room. There was bound to be a telephone in the warden’s quarters, I assumed, but, at the time, the warden was not in residence.
So much for Bull’s having been stationed where I found him and for Trickett’s having opened the front door to the guests. It followed that the only woman who might know of the passage in which I had stumbled upon the body was Coral, who would have passed Bull’s end of the passage when she and Freddie were rushing down Bull’s corridor with the trays of food. It was in the highest degree unlikely, however, that she had enquired where the little passage led or even noticed it particularly, and equally unlikely that Freddie would have mentioned it to her considering that it led straight to the men’s cloakroom.
I thought of the electric lightbulb which was missing. Bull had put off replacing it because to put in another one meant going and getting a ladder. I did not know where the ladder was kept, but I assumed that Detective-Inspector Bingley had long ago dealt with this point. Bull had been lax, of course, but that, in itself, was not a criminal offence.
Bull himself was certainly too short to have been able to remove or replace the bulb without a ladder, but he had been seated on an ordinary kitchen chair, so I wondered why it had not occurred to him to use that to stand on.
I considered the other men. Todd and Trickett were both tall enough to have reached the bulb without the aid of a ladder, and, although they both topped me, I too was tall enough to have reached it, and so, come to that, was Carbridge himself, who was just about my own height. The puzzle which nobody had solved was how and why Carbridge had been in the house before the party was due to begin. He was not an ex-poly man, so would not have known automatically of the basement entrance left open for the students. I wondered who had put him wise or had brought him there so early.
I wondered how much strength it took to plunge a knife into a man’s heart. Todd, I assumed, would have had no difficulty and, although Trickett was a string-bean of a fellow, he was wiry and tough and might have put on a lot of muscle by dint of his delving and chipping on the tour in Scotland. This might even apply to the female geologists, too. They had appeared to be working even harder than the men when Hera and I saw them at it.
There remained Andrew Perth, but by that time there was little doubt that Bingley and the Glasgow police could account for his movements during the period under review. There was the question of alibis for the rest of us. On the day of the party, provided that the doctors had estimated the time of death more or less correctly, Hera and I were able to provide alibis for one another irrespective of shop girls, cinema attendants and all the rest of it, so long as the police were prepared to take the word of an engaged couple. All the same, I still hoped that nobody had mentioned to Bingley the punch-up I had had with Carbridge at Crianlarich.
It was at this point in my meditations that our unexpected client arrived and was announced by the hierarchy in ascending order of importance thus:
Briggs to Polly: ‘Little old geezer stinking of mothballs in his best suit wants to see Mr Melrose.’
Polly to Elsa: ‘Something off the shop floor called Bull is asking for Mr Melrose and won’t be happy till he gets him.’
Elsa to me: ‘There’s a Mr Bull, Comrie. Seems harmless, but may have a bomb concealed on his person.’
Trickett: ‘Oh, well, I’ll be going. Do what you can for Bull, won’t you?’)
Me: ‘Show the visitor in. Goodbye, then, Lucius.’
Elsa (when Trickett had gone): ‘I don’t know where you pick them up, but it’s your choice.’
Our visitor was Bull. He was impressed by his reception, it appeared, but slightly morose about it.
‘It’s as bad as tryin’ to get into Buck’nam Palace without an invite,’ he said, ‘though that’s been done, too, I berlieve.’
‘I know. Never mind. Take a seat. Any news?’
‘Not of the kind you means. That dick is still measurin’ out my footprints, so to say. I can’t get him off my back no-how. But that’s not what I come about.’
‘I can’t give you a job here, I’m afraid.’
‘You can and you can’t. Any road, young Trickett said come to you, so I’ve come.’
‘Trickett? So that’s what he came about! Say on!’
‘I wants to write me life story.’
‘That sounds a tall order.’
‘So it would be if I was to do your actual writin’, but that ’ud be beyond me. I’ve forgot most of the schoolin’ I ever had. So I goes to the Citizens’ Advice, see, and puts it to ’em and there was a young feller there seemed interested and he says, quite serious-like, “What you need is a ghost,” he says. I thinks he’s havin’ me on, but no.’
‘No, he wasn’t having you on,’ I agreed. ‘It’s often done. One party supplies the information and the other party — usually a trained journalist —writes it up and takes a share of the proceeds or else is paid for his work by the principal in the undertaking.’
‘Right. So, not knowin’ no one, I asks young Trickett and he advises me to come to you to see what chance I got and to pave the way, like.’
‘Not a lot of chance of publication, I’m afraid,’ I said regretfully. ‘You see, Bull, autobiographies and biographies have to be about well-known people whom other people are interested in.’