‘Sounds like our canteen. Could we get back to the night you went to bed at ten-thirty, your normal time. What time do you normally get up?’
‘At six, as a matter of fact. I usually get a couple of hours’ work in before breakfast.’
‘So you got up at six,’ Salter said, writing laboriously in his notebook. ‘Carrier, too?’
‘No. I didn’t get up at six that morning. I had a very restless night, and I didn’t get to sleep until the small hours. We didn’t get up until after eight.’
Why is he lying, Salter wondered. Surely he and Carrier didn’t do a Burke and Hare on Summers?
‘I see,’ he said. ‘You won’t mind signing a statement to that effect will you, sir?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Thank you, Mr Dunkley. And I’ll tell you what. If you ever feel like telling me what you had against Summers, here’s my number. I’ll ask everybody else, anyway.’
Dunkley allowed the card to lie on his desk. He said nothing.
‘Don’t get up,’ Salter said, rising from his chair, ‘And don’t leave town.’
‘I am a suspect?’
‘Everyone is, Professor, until we find the killer.’
Marika Tils spoke English with a thick, north European accent. What was she doing in an English Department?
‘I am Dutch, Inspector. I learned my English as a second language, although I have an M.A. from the University of Toronto, which is the one they all bow down to here. I compared Paradise Lost with a Dutch poem of the same kind. Here I teach English to foreign students, mostly Chinese from Hong Kong, although we are getting them from everywhere.’ The syntax was impeccable, but the accent was so thick it sounded affected. Salter was reminded of a story he had heard once about a similar situation, and he tried to joke.
‘Isn’t there a danger of turning out a lot of Chinese students with Dutch accents, Miss Tils?’
She smiled. ‘Not much. But if the grammar were all right, it wouldn’t matter much, would it? Just an interesting problem for the local Professor Higgins.’
Good. A nice relief from Dunkley. She was a woman in her late thirties, just beginning to wrinkle slightly. Straight blonde hair, nice, slightly lumpy features and a good, if large, body. Graceful, feminine, she looked like an athlete, a swimmer or an equestrian. In the right dress, (or naked in the sun, thought Salter) she was probably breath-taking. Her one disturbing feature was that in colouring and in her carriage she seemed distantly related to Dunkley. Her complexion was splotchy, and her eyes looked sore. Someone,’ at last, was grieving for Summers.
I’ll come to the point, Miss Tils. Would you call yourself a friend of David Summers?’
‘Oh yes. I liked him very much.’
What did that mean, translated from the Dutch?
‘Does that mean you were lovers?’
‘Oh no. Not in that way. But I wish we had been, now. He was happily married, and I am also not free. No, I mean I liked him. He was wonderful.’
‘In what way?’
She shrugged. ‘I could talk to him. I could trust him. He liked me. What else?’
‘He doesn’t seem to have affected everybody that way.’
‘Of course not. He was my friend, very special to me, but I don’t mean he was Jesus Christ. Lots of people didn’t like him.’
‘But you weren’t lovers?’
‘I told you, no. But that was by the way. We didn’t lie down together, but I might have.’ She was annoyed at Salter’s interest.
‘Could I ask you about the Friday evening? First, do you know why he was so happy?’
‘No. But it wasn’t just a mood. Something had happened, but he never got a chance to tell me in front of the others. You know about him and Dunkley?’
‘I know something. What was the trouble between them?’
‘I don’t know. They were involved in a way that made them hate each other. Like old accomplices who were ashamed of the old days. If you want to know what I think, I think it was something stupid, like they bumped into each other in a body-rub parlour or something. Dunkley is a fanatic, of course, and he would hate anyone who caught him doing something wrong. Maybe it was politics. I don’t know. You can be sure it was something not very interesting.’
‘Your chairman said they were like two people in a Conrad story.’
‘Yes. I’ve heard him say that. But Conrad was another one who made mountains out of molehills.’
‘From what you and others have said, Dunkley and Summers were very different people.’
‘As chalk from cheese, Inspector.’
‘Does that mean you don’t like Dunkley?’
‘This is very—unorthodox, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. But I’m trying to find out what kind of man Summers was, and something about the people around him. You don’t have to tell me.’
‘All right. No, it doesn’t mean that, of course, but in answer to your real question, I don’t like Dunkley, but not for any reason connected with David.’
‘What then?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. I don’t like the way he eats. His breath is bad. I don’t know. Why don’t you like people? I just don’t like him.’
‘Sorry. Now, after dinner you went back to the hotel. Did you spend the rest of the night by yourself in your room?’
She blushed deeply. Embarrassment or anger?’
‘What does that question mean?’
‘I’m sorry. I put it badly. Did you leave your room for any purpose after you returned to the hotel.’
‘No. Oh, I see. You mean did I kill David.’ Her tone was disgusted. ‘No I did not leave my room and go to David’s hotel and kill him.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant, although you are strong enough, and you might have a motive I don’t know about. We found a glass with lipstick on it in his room.’
‘Ah, you think I might have gone to make love with him?’ She relaxed and shook her head. ‘I wish I had. He might be alive now.’
‘Somebody visited him, Miss Tils. A woman.’
‘Apparently, Inspector, but not me. I haven’t worn lipstick in ten years.’ She looked interested in spite of herself, ‘I wonder who David had tucked away in Montreal?’
‘I’ll find out. Miss Tils, as a friend of Professor Summers, do you know anything about his private life that might lead to someone killing him? Women, debts, anything like that?’
She shook her head. ‘It must be something like that, I know. But I don’t know of anyone. Certainly no one here, not even Dunkley.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘He’s got an alibi, hasn’t he? But call it my intuition. I know Dunkley. He wouldn’t do anything like that.’
Once again the hair prickled on Salter’s scalp as he felt her withholding something. What’s going on, he wondered.
On an impulse, instead of meeting his last appointment immediately, he returned to Carrier’s office and walked in without waiting for an invitation. As he appeared, Dunkley rose from his chair and walked past him, ignoring him. Carrier sat still, saying nothing, and Salter took the vacant chair.
‘Mr