Death of an Old Goat by Robert Barnard Page B

car. God damn these university people.

CHAPTER VIII
PROFESSOR WICKHAM
    L UCY W ICKHAM was a woman born to rise to occasions. Part of her frustration was due to the fact that the lethargic country town to which she found herself transported (due solely to the fact that there had been no other applicantfor the chair) offered her all too few occasions to rise to. Even the Queen had managed to avoid it on most of her visits to Australia, and there were few places in Australia of which that could be claimed. But whatever else might be said about a murder — and Lucy was torn between sheer animal excitement at the thought of it, and the feeling that it didn’t give the town tone — it was certainly an occasion, and it brought out all her latent energy and unreasonableness. At the very moment Inspector Royle was speeding along the dreary flat road to the University cursing his luck, Lucy was on the phone to her husband for the fourth time that day, broaching her latest demand, in her best public-school headmistress voice.
    â€˜All I ask,’ she said, ‘is that you don’t mention Peggy Lullham.’ The voice took on the tone of a veiled threat, that tone which Professor Wickham had such a healthy fear of. ‘Leave her out of it altogether.’
    â€˜We just can’t do that, dear,’ he said, patiently reasonable, and unreasonably patient. ‘You know what they say in detective stories. If you tell the whole truth, and don’t try to conceal anything, you have nothing to fear.’
    â€˜That’s fiction, this is fact,’ said Lucy. She thought for a moment, then added: ‘That’s England. This is Australia.’
    â€˜Anyway, what’s it all about?’ asked Wickham. ‘Why is she to be left out of things? Last time I heard from you all your friends were thrilled to bits at the whole business.’
    â€˜They were, at first,’ said Lucy. ‘But some of them have been thinking it over. It’s all very well to say “Back your local cop,” but you can’t slip them a fiver in a murder case. All the Press would be on to it in five minutes, you know what reporters are. Peggy didn’t say why she didn’t want her name mentioned. Or rather she said her husband wouldn’t like it. But I suppose it was that shop-lifting business last year that’s made her wary. She thought they might want to bring it up again.’
    â€˜Shoplifting! With all the money the Lullhams havegot? You’ve never mentioned that before.’
    â€˜Everyone knows. Oh, it was pure absent-mindedness. I’ve never forgiven Darcy’s for making all that fuss about it.’
    â€˜What was it she took?’
    â€˜A lamb’s-wool coat.’
    â€˜She must have an infinite capacity for absent-mindedness,’ said Profesor Wickham, impressed.
    â€˜It was a short coat,’ said Lucy.
    â€˜Anyway, it’s impossible, and you’ll just have to make her see that. Somebody’s bound to mention her before long. One of the people here will, obviously.’
    â€˜If you had any control over them — ’
    â€˜Or Doncaster. Or one of your friends. I can’t see them all magnanimously forgetting she was there.’
    The truth of this seemed to strike Lucy, and as he was letting it sink in, his secretary knocked on the door, and poked round it an excited middle-aged face. The English Department was quite the most boring department in the university to work for as a rule, since most of the members of it were too lethargic to play at University politics, and she was getting immense cachet from the secretarial sorority over this little business.
    â€˜Inspector Royle to see you, Professor Wickham,’ she said. ‘Shall I show him straight in?’
    â€˜The inspector is here, darling,’ said Wickham, putting down the phone.
    Royle was sweating in all the places a man does sweat in, and sweating obviously. He was drawing his