Read Online Parting Breath by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online Page B

too, but he was out.’
    â€˜They always are,’ said Sloan, nodding a greeting. His own doctor hadn’t better be, though, not if – when – Margaret, his wife, needed him.…
    He brought his mind back to where he was and peered forward, suppressing an irreverent desire to quote some cynic of the past whose memorabile dictum had been ‘After death, the doctor.’ Instead he pulled out a really powerful torch and shone it on the body on the floor. The cold light served only to emphasise the waxen appearance of the dead face. He shifted the beam about until he had had a good look at the immediate scene.
    At that moment Sloan became aware of noises off.
    â€˜I can hear music,’ announced Crosby upon the instant.
    â€˜The University Madrigal Club,’ said the Bursar.
    â€˜I think it’s “Take Time While Time Doth Last,”’ said the Chaplain, cocking his head slightly, glad to be looking away. ‘By John Farmer. For four voices. An old favourite.’
    â€˜They meet in there,’ said the Bursar, indicating a door half-way down the quadrangle in the direction of the sound.
    â€˜When?’ enquired the Detective Inspector, wondering if many clergymen came up actually unmusical.
    â€˜Thursday evenings,’ said John Hardiman.
    â€˜When on Thursday evenings?’ Patiently.
    â€˜Oh … oh, I see … Quite … quite …’ The Bursar’s voice trailed away. ‘Seven-thirty I think; I could check.’
    â€˜Please do,’ rejoined Sloan crisply. ‘And would you find out if Henry Moleyns was a member of the Madrigal Club.’ He suppressed a stirring of pity for the dead student, who was now a member of quite a different club.…’
    The Chaplain shook his head. ‘He wasn’t on his way there, Inspector, if that’s what you mean. I can tell you where he was going. He was coming to see me.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜He left me a note asking for an appointment. I said I’d see him at half past seven this evening.’
    â€˜Said?’
    â€˜Well, no. Not exactly said literally, in that sense, seeing that you put it that way. Actually I put a note in his pigeonhole at the lodge.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜So I was expecting him at my office at seven-thirty. I was waiting there for him when … when …’
    â€˜Quite so.’ Sloan nodded and continued to swing his torch about. There were no obvious signs of Henry Moleyns’ having been involved in a struggle with anyone and what Sloan could see of his clothing was undisturbed. He let the torchlight dwell on the dead boy’s fingers. There was no visible evidence of bruising or bleeding there.
    â€˜Perhaps he was just taken ill,’ suggested the Chaplain, looking unhappily about him. This was a far cry from dialetics over coffee.
    Crosby, torch in hand, dashed his sentiment to the dust in an instant. ‘Could you just look this way a moment, sir, please?’ he said.
    Sloan swung his torch round in a wide arc until it shone where the constable was pointing. There was a patch of something on the stone floor of the quadrangle that could only be blood.
    â€˜Not a heart attack, then,’ faltered the Bursar, his last chance of considering the matter routine quite gone.
    â€˜More like an attack on the heart,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan soberly.
    Several hundred undergraduate members of the University of Calleshire, each of whom had vociferously applauded speakers who had declared that neither wild horses nor armed force nor even sweet reason – least of all, sweet reason – would persuade them to leave the Almstone administration block until Malcolm Humbert had been reinstated in statu pupillari , took a totally illogical view of Alfred Palfreyman’s locking them in there.
    This, it seemed, interfered with their right to leave if they wanted to, which was different.
    â€˜Is it?’ said the Head