‘These gentlemen are from the Metropolitan Police, Maureen.’
‘I know. I told them you wouldn’t be able to see them. You were supposed to be at that committee meeting five minutes ago.’
Dr Endicott cleared his throat. ‘Yes, well, they need some assistance regarding that Canadian girl who was here last year. Do you remember?’
Maureen ignored his question and turned on Brock. ‘Are you the same lot that have been searching Felix Kowalski’s office?’
‘Searching?’ Endicott looked startled.
‘We have a search warrant, sir. Look, if you want to go to your meeting now, that will be fine. You’ve been most helpful. If we can just have a few moments of Maureen’s time.’
Maureen rolled her eyes and broke off to give instructions to the photocopier repair man who had just appeared. Dr Endicott hesitated, then regretfully sighed and turned back to his room to collect his papers.
‘Well?’ Maureen returned her attention to Brock and Gurney.
‘Do you recall the Canadian student Dr Endicott mentioned, Maureen?’ Brock asked amiably.
She looked suspiciously at him for a moment. ‘What is this all about?’
‘We’re conducting a murder investigation. We’d appreciate your co-operation.’
Maureen’s eyes lit up with curiosity. ‘You think Felix has murdered someone?’
‘He’s helping us with our inquiries,’ Brock said. ‘Do you remember her?’
‘Of course I do. She’s been writing to him every week since she went back.’
‘To him here?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose he wants her to write to him at home!’ She smiled grimly.
‘Did you know he went over there last September?’
‘No, I didn’t know that.’ She shook her head. ‘But, I do remember a call from a travel agent for him, which I thought was a bit funny. Sometime in the middle of last year.’ Her eyes wandered away in the direction of the corridor leading to Felix’s room. ‘What exactly are you looking for?’
‘Some old books. Are there other places we should look?’
‘Only…’ She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘He left a box in my store cupboard last year. Just before Christmas term started. I told him to move it somewhere else because I’ve got little enough space as it is to keep the stationery and departmental records and so on, but he never did.’
She showed him a door in the corner of the office, opening into a small storeroom with shelves crammed with boxes, files and papers. On the floor at the back they found an old box for photocopy paper, sealed with brown plastic tape. Bren lifted it out on to Maureen’s table and took the scissors she offered him. From the look of the tape the box had been opened and resealed several times. He folded back the flaps of the box and brought out a wad of Canadian airmail envelopes held together with a rubber band. Then he began carefully to pull out the books. Brock reached for one with a frayed black leather spine. ‘Proudhon’s Confessions,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘We seem to have found our dealer, Bren.’
‘Will he be away long?’ Maureen called after them as they left, Bren carrying the box under his arm. ‘Only we’ll have to rearrange his classes.’
They called in at the hospital on the way back. Kathy was conscious, gazing through half-open, bruised eyelids at the snow falling past the window against the grey of the morning sky. A tube was in her nose. She creased her eyes in a smile, the unbruised parts of her face as pale as the pillow and the bandages around her head.
‘A little better?’
She nodded and wiggled the fingers of her left hand, which Brock, sitting beside her, took in his own. Bren remained standing at the end of the bed, unable to keep the concern out of his eyes. She looked towards the plaster cast on her right arm.
‘Haven’t told me,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘What’s the damage?’
Brock cleared his throat. ‘Three fingers of your right hand are broken,’ he said.
‘Anything else?’ she asked faintly.
‘One of the reinforcing bars went through your right side. Hell of a job to get you out of there. You’d appreciate it, having been in Traffic. Seems some of the bars down there were high tensile steel, and the steel cutters couldn’t get through them without making too much of a mess of you. Eventually had to lift you straight off. Lost a lot of blood. Missed the vital organs, though. They operated and stitched you up. It’ll be all right.’
She drifted away for a while, then suddenly lurched back into consciousness. ‘And?’
‘Another bar scraped your left knee. No great problem, but it’ll be sore for a while. You were very lucky.’
‘How?’ she whispered.
‘Lucky you weren’t a man, that is. The middle bar, in between those two, would have been very unpleasant.’
‘Ugh.’
‘Your left shoulder was dislocated and badly bruised.’
‘Oh.’
‘And you banged your head. Possible concussion.’
‘Mmm.’
‘That’s about it, really. Pretty good under the circumstances. You could have been killed.’
She closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness.
Felix Kowalski did not seem to have benefited by the break and a hot breakfast. On the contrary, he crouched in his seat with the air of someone suffering from a very bad hangover. He eyed them truculently as they took their seats, Brock in front of him, Gurney to the side.
‘You must release my mother,’ he said, before they could speak. ‘At once. She is not in any way responsible for the death of Meredith Winterbottom. She has only confessed in order to protect me.’
‘Really?’ Brock said noncommittally, turning the pages of one of the two files he had brought in with him. ‘Are you confessing to that murder, then?’
‘No, of course not. But my mother obviously thinks I had something to do with it. Her confession, as you call it, is absurd.’ He was struggling with impatience and seemed slightly feverish.
Brock flicked the file shut and sat back. He stared at Kowalski and then nodded. ‘Go on, then.’
‘When…’ Kowalski hesitated and gave a little groan.
‘Are you all right? Would you like a doctor to have another look at you?’
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘When my father and I returned from delivering the last of his books to Notting Hill, my mother was waiting for us in the shop. It was about 2.30. She was upset. She told us what that old crone Mrs Rosenfeldt had said to her, and said she’d gone round to see Meredith Winterbottom. She was on her bed asleep, she said, and the thought had gone through my mother’s head, upset as she was, to strangle the woman. She even imagined putting on the rubber washing-up gloves she saw in the kitchen, so she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. That’s what she told us. Of course she did no such thing. My father was shocked at the idea, and we calmed her down and gave her a cup of tea from the flask we’d brought. Then I left to return the van. When she heard later that someone had killed Mrs Winterbottom, she must have naturally been worried that I might have done it while I was away, to save them further distress. Of course I didn’t, but the idea will have been preying on her mind. She’s not been well lately. Neither of them have.’
By the time he got to the end of this his voice had sunk to a monotone. There was silence.
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
Gurney snorted contemptuously from across the room. Kowalski looked from one man to the other. ‘What else should there be?’
‘What about the books, Felix?’ Brock spoke very quietly.
Kowalski kept his face blank, his eyes unblinking.
‘Books?’
‘Mmm, books. Your mother had quite a bit to say about books.’
He appeared to rack his brains, then said slowly, ‘I think… she did mention something about some books. Under Mrs Winterbottom’s bed, I think it was, in a plastic carrier bag. My mother looked inside and saw that it contained some old books. When she mentioned them, I seem to remember that my father said something about them probably being ones that he had valued for her.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about all I can remember.’