Caroline Minuscule by Andrew Taylor Read Free Book Online

nothing he could do – or wanted to do.
    He closed Pooterkin’s book and persuaded Amanda to come down to the Crown & Anchor instead.
    On the Thursday after the weekend the police interviewed him. A notice at the Department had requested those who had been in the building on Tuesday afternoon and those who were students of Dr Gumper (an unfortunate phrase, Dougal thought) to arrange with the secretary a time to see the police. The mobile police headquarters and the paraphernalia of a murder investigation had been withdrawn from the college by now, but a room had been set aside for police use. Dougal qualified for interview on both counts and thought he might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.
    In the event, it didn’t take long. A bored, plainclothes sergeant sat behind the desk, with a constable on his right taking notes. Within three minutes it had been established that Dougal knew nothing of any use to them. The sergeant, however, was mechanically affable:
    â€˜Well, that’s all most useful. Helps us eliminate some points in the afternoon and corroborates what we already know.’ Dougal watched the constable with fascination: he had found an unexpectedly satisfying treasure trove picking his nose, and was rolling it to and fro between the index finger and thumb of his left hand.
    â€˜Now. Just one thing more, Mr . . . um Dougal. You last saw the late Dr Gumper the Thursday before he died. Did he seem at all odd then? Anything unusual? What sort of mood was he in?’
    They must be baffled to be asking such vague questions as these. He wondered momentarily whether to introduce an appetizing red herring, as much for their sakes as his, but decided to stick to the truth. The constable carefully deposited his bogey under the seat of his chair.
    â€˜He was normal.’ It sounded unhelpful, so he expanded it. ‘He was a little flushed, I think – looked as though he’d had a good lunch. But that was fairly common.’ He had also been pompous and had tried to bully Dougal into producing some work – the Augustine transcription, ironically enough. That too had been normal.
    The sergeant thanked him and asked him to send the next one in. Dougal felt oddly disgusted with the police. The last vestige of his childhood belief in their infallibility had vanished. There was no rational basis for this, he knew: merely an infantile disappointment at the absence of a hawk-faced officer who by intuition and deduction should have known precisely what he, Dougal, had left out. Which would have been extraordinarily inconvenient.
    He walked up the corridor before going home – he hadn’t checked his pigeonhole for a few days and had forgotten, earlier this afternoon, to find out if a substitute for Gumper had been arranged.
    There was no notice, but there were several things for him in the pigeonhole he shared with the rest of the Ds. The society circulars went straight in the wastepaper bin which the authorities had thoughtfully placed nearby, together with an invitation to become a Friend of the College in return for arranging an annual payment by banker’s order. As an afterthought he threw in the envelope as well, since it was marked PLEASE REUSE . Lastly, there was a note from the secretary: would he please collect a package which had arrived for him by registered post.
    Dougal found this puzzling. Had he ordered a photostat of something? But in that case, why registered post? He went to the office. The secretary, a large, rabbit-faced woman in her mid-thirties, who radiated surly inefficiency, broke off a description of her boyfriend which she was transmitting telephonically to an unknown destination and gave Dougal a large envelope. It was buff-coloured and bulky, firmly secured with Sellotape and string. Dougal thanked her, to which she replied with a sniff; he correctly interpreted this as a reproof, in a language which transcended mere words, such as