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then either she should give it to the Brontë Parsonage Museum or to some library. The British Library would be an obvious choice, or maybe the Brotherton in Leeds.’
    â€˜I wonder if that’s what Mr Scott-Windlesham recommended,’ I said.
    â€˜Timothy? Timothy’s first thought would be: what’s in it for me? That you can be quite sure of. I can’t quite see what there could be in it for him, though.’
    â€˜Unless,’ said Beard, ‘he did her in, and kept the manuscript for himself. Supposing he had the nerve.’
    â€˜Why all the questions, anyway?’ asked Languid, languidly.
    â€˜I’m Police. The lady was savagely beaten around the head and the manuscript taken. Dear me. Twenty minutes is up. Thanks for the instant. I’d better get along to see Mr Scott-Windlesham.’

CHAPTER 6
EXPERT ADVISER
    I trusted my last words had left them goggling in there. Or perhaps Beard had meant the suggestion perfectly seriously anyway. It is not only in academic circles that people will habitually believe the worst of a colleague. Policemen are always being accused of brutality, and I remember only once totally and entirely refusing to entertain an allegation against one of my mates. And he turned out to have beaten a left-wing demonstrator to pulp with a lead-weighted truncheon.
    Anyway, I needn’t have worried that I had missed my appointment with Timothy Scott-Windlesham. When I came out into the corridor his door was just opening. As I walked towards his office the door was shut firmly again, for the conversation to be concluded. I loitered around, pretending to an inexhaustible interest in the names of the staff-members on the various doors. I had heard ofnone of them. Milltown, it seemed, did not produce telly luminaries, quiz-show panellists, part-time novelists or Parliamentary candidates. Vegetation was sparse in Milltown as a whole, but it looked as if that was what was going on in its English Department.
    Eventually the conversation was concluded, and two large fair men emerged from Scott-Windlesham’s office and, without words of farewell, marched away down the corridor. Remembering the wounding conjecture of Moustache, I wondered if they were adult students, the only breed of student that seemed to flourish in Milltown. Training themselves for a more cultured form of unemployment, probably. I let a moment or two elapse, and then went and knocked on the door.
    â€˜Oh — come in,’ said an irritable thin voice.
    Timothy Scott-Windlesham was sitting at his desk, but he swung his chair round to face the door as I entered, presumably so as to look like a writer interrupted in mid-œuvre. He was middling in height, but thin and hollow-chested. He was pasty in complexion, or at any rate he was pasty now, as if he had just been sick: the general effect was of an uncooked dumpling. His hair was long and straight and lank, and had been finger-combed across his head, no doubt in a moment of stress. His tie was askew, his shirt unironed, and he grabbed a packet from his desk and stuck a filter-tip in his mouth.
    â€˜Oh, you. You were here before, weren’t you? What is it?’
    Gracious little twit. Them idea that manners maketh man clearly went out of the educational system before he went into it. I suited my behaviour to his, and took the one easy chair in his office, without being asked.
    â€˜Mr Scott-Windlesham? I’m sorry to trouble you, since it’s clear you’re busy. I came because I believe you’re an expert on Victorian literature.’
    â€˜Ye-e-es.’
    â€˜Isn’t Meredith your speciality?’
    â€˜Ye-e-e-es’ (still more doubtfully).
    Experimentally I said: ‘I’ve only read The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.’
    With push-button precision, Scott-Windlesham replied: ‘Oh, that’s the popular Meredith. I can’t say I find that very interesting myself.’
    Well, Moustache certainly