Edwin Darslow looked to be about fifty, but he had that type of timeless face which is hard to date accurately. His hair was white but plentiful, and the lines that etched his features were more the furrows of concentration than the mark of passing years. He was thin to the point of gauntness, and his movements were jerky and hesitant. He perched rather than sat on his chair, and his eyes darted continually around the room as if he constantly expected to be surprised.
Denzil Rosco was a complete contrast. Dressed in comfortably rumpled slacks and a leather-patched tweed jacket, he lounged in his chair and seemed to regard both his colleagues and the Saint with a detached air of vague amusement. He was the youngest of the St. Enoch’s trio, probably in his thirties, and from his build and the slight misalignment of his nose it seemed likely that he had not long ago hung up his rugby shirt for the last time.
Nyall handed round the drinks and then sat in the chair facing the Saint.
“Professor Burridge, the dean, has been delayed, I’m afraid, but he should be here shortly,” Nyall informed him.
“Well, Mr. Templar, what do you make of it all?” asked Rosco with a smile. “How long before we catch this slaying Santa?”
Simon returned the grin. There was something immediately likeable about the man, perhaps because he appeared less dusty and formal than his colleagues.
“I don’t make anything of it — yet. And I haven’t got the faintest idea how long it will take to catch him,” Simon said truthfully.
Nyall looked slightly offended by the Saint’s bluntness.
“You mean they may never catch this madman?”
The Saint shook his head.
“Oh, he’ll probably get caught sometime, if he makes a mistake, and most murderers eventually do. But I wouldn’t dismiss him as a madman if I were you. He may be obsessed, he may even be slightly deranged, but he’s sane enough to know exactly what he’s doing and plan it well beforehand.”
“How do you mean, exactly?” Nyall asked.
“Madmen don’t time their murders so well. He knew when Sir Basil would be alone and where. He knew Wakeforth was visiting his Cambridge store, he knew how to get into the loading bay, use the internal telephone to contact him, and what excuse to use to put him on the spot. Not only that, he’s intelligent and cunning enough to work out a brilliant disguise. A Santa Claus costume is a practically total cover-up, and yet at this time of year it doesn’t arouse any suspicion. He could use it again and still get away with it, because nobody would expect him to make himself so conspicuous.”
“Do you think he will kill again?” Darslow asked.
“There’s an old superstition that things always go in threes.”
“So we just hang around until he decides to kill somebody else and hope he leaves a footprint or a cigarette butt or a trail of blood or some such clue so that the worthy Superintendent Nutkin can do his Sherlock Holmes act,” Rosco said cheerfully.
“We’re really interested to know — as, er, off-the-record fans of yours — what you’d be doing in the meantime, if you were in Nutkin’s place,” said Nyall.
“I’d be looking for a motive,” said the Saint, “and hoping that it would point me to a suspect. You knew Sir Basil, have you any idea why somebody should want to murder him?”
He looked at each of the three men in turn as he spoke. Both Nyall and Rosco returned his gaze negatively, but Darslow concentrated on the liquid in his glass and avoided a direct encounter. His nervousness was so apparent that the Saint warned himself against jumping to conclusions.
But before any of the three dons could answer his question, the door opened to admit a tall imperious individual who could only be the dean. A pace behind him trailed the less imposing figure of Superintendent Nutkin.
“Why, here’s the man himself!” Simon exclaimed joyfully. “How’ve you been getting on with your enquiries, Mr. Nutcase?”
The look on the detective’s face when he saw the Saint suggested a sudden violent attack of indigestion.
“What are you doing here, Templar?” he demanded in a strangled voice which indicated that his pains were getting worse.
“Nothing much, just passing the evening trying to solve a couple of homicides,” the Saint said breezily. “And you? Have you come to enrol for a degree in detection or did you just slip in before they shut the door?”
The dean, whose gaze had flittered between the two like an umpire at a tennis match, stepped into the breach of the peace.
“I ran into the superintendent on my way from the railway station,” he explained. “I thought it might be helpful if he joined us for an informal chat. I presume that you are Mr. Simon Templar. I am Dr. Burridge, the dean of St. Enoch’s.”
Burridge’s solemn monotone matched his sombre features. His handshake was strong and authoritative. Nutkin tried to ignore the Saint with the same dedication he might have used to try to forget an aching tooth. When he and the dean were seated, Nyall summarised the conversation they had missed, up to the Saint’s question.
“Can any of you gentlemen think of anyone who might have had a grudge against Sir Basil?”
Burridge slowly shook his head.
“You must remember, Mr. Templar, that Sir Basil had only been Master here for a few months. I don’t think any of us knew him before then, although naturally we knew of him because of his broadcasting activities. As far as I know, he made no enemies since he came here.”
Denzil Rosco’s mouth curved in a cynical smile.
“Only the spiders,” he drawled, with a mischievous sidelong glance at the bursar.
“I beg your pardon?” said Nutkin sharply.
“I meant that only spiders might take a dislike to people who brush away cobwebs.”
“What Professor Rosco may be trying to say,” Nyall explained, “is that some of us did not like a few of Sir Basil’s ideas for the future of the college.”
“And what where they?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Rosco said lightly. “He just wanted to bring St. Enoch’s into the twentieth century.”
“St. Enoch’s is not as old or as famous or as rich as many of the Cambridge colleges,” Nyall said starchily, sitting forward in his chair and glaring at Rosco. “But that doesn’t mean that we do not have our traditions and that we are not proud of them.”
“But you still haven’t told us what his plans were,” the Saint reminded them.
Again it was the dean who intervened like the chairman of an unruly committee. He spoke quickly to prevent either Nyall or Rosco from continuing their apparent feud.
“That is because we do not know. Sir Basil talked in generalisations — about getting new patrons to endow new fellowships in new and perhaps controversial subjects. He had not taken us into his confidence about anything specific. It was mainly his general attitude that may have struck some of us as a bit commercial and unacademic.”
“But not upset them enough to make anyone think of murdering him, I suppose?” Nutkin asked.
Edwin Darslow gave a short nervous laugh. It was the first sound he had made for such a long time that it drew all eyes to him. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he realised he had become the focus of attention.
“I hardly think anyone would take us for murderous types, Superintendent,” he said hastily, in a voice a tone higher than it should have been.
“You’d be surprised,” Nutkin said rather smugly, “if you met some of the murderers I’ve had to deal with.”
“All caught with your own bare hands?” said the Saint with mock admiration.
The summons of the telephone splintered the tension that was building again.
Nyall lifted the receiver and then handed it to Nutkin.