Death at the Alma Mater by G. M. Malliet Page B

would travel forty miles to meet the North Sea.
    A low, light mist was caught in a glimmering haze by the lamps, and lay like a light scarf on the river; no moon was visible in the night sky. As St. Just and his sergeant approached, the air was rent like intermittent lightning by the flash from the stills photographer’s camera. Spectators—the staff and visiting members of the college—had long been herded back inside the college by one of the local constables sent to help secure the scene.
    St. Just greeted Dr. Malenfant as he emerged from the tent and asked, “Time of death?”
    Malenfant gazed laconically at his old friend for a long moment before speaking.
    “Always the same with you, isn’t it,” he said, removing his latex gloves with a fastidious Snap! Snap! “No matter how long since we’ve seen each other. Just, ‘Time of death?’ he wants to know.” Malenfant, despite his years in England, remained thoroughly French in manner and habit, the more so when agitated. “You may have observed,” he continued, “that my holiday at present lacks certain…amenities. For one thing, it is not taking place in France. Puzzlingly, I remain here, in my summer holiday costume, miles from any beach.”
    St. Just imagined Malenfant, under his protective clothing, was wearing one of those blousy shirts the French seemed to go in for—those shirts that always made him think of old men playing a game of boules—and striped espadrilles on his feet.
    “Why, you may ask?” Malenfant was now in full flow. He wore the kind of old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses that have to be looped to one’s ears. He unlooped them now, and paused to slick back his dark hair. “I appreciate your asking. My estimable colleague—my so-called replacement—has been struck down by a summer cold. I am told it is of amazing intensity, this grippe. He would have me believe it borders on pneumonia leading to an early, painful, and slow death. Pah. Between nine-sixteen and nine-fifty.”
    St. Just judged, correctly, that Malenfant had at last arrived at the answer to the original question.
    “That’s remarkable precise, even for someone of your gifts,” said St. Just mildly.
    “She was seen alive at around nine-fifteen. They had a formal dinner and it adjourned then. She was found at nine-fifty by some kid in a boat, so I am told.” Malenfant rendered the word as keed. It was a true barometer of his distress when he allowed his flawless English to slip. He pointed to where Sebastian had abandoned the scull. “So you see, you don’t really need me at all for time of death. I won’t be able to get you a better estimate even after the autopsy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. You’ll have some preliminary results tomorrow and unless my colleague experiences a miraculous recovery, I will be around to answer your questions. She’s been manually strangled, to answer your next question, by a right-handed killer. Stunned first, by someone wielding the scull found by her body, no doubt. No rope, no rape. Bonne nuit.”
    Poor Malenfant, thought St. Just. The man was a genius, but seldom was anyone so little suited by temperament to the unpredictable demands of his job. Meals, holidays, family occasions—all were sacrificed, routinely but unpredictably, on the altar of the homicide investigation. From no one else would St. Just have tolerated such curtness with equanimity, but Malenfant’s written report would, he knew, be a model of over-compensating thoroughness and accuracy—once the man had gotten a grip on himself.
    He also knew Malenfant had what he called a mistress in France to whom he longed to return. She would more rightly be called a girlfriend, as Malenfant was not married, but he clung to the fifties noir term as much more seductive, as having that certain je ne sais quoi with which “girlfriend” could not begin to compete. In his own way, the otherwise gloomy Malenfant was a bon vivant who happened to be a top-flight