Usher was a shouter. His voice was as noisy as a television set tuned for the deaf. His accent was English working class, not quite cockney, for all his aitches were stressed heavily, but otherwise it was classically what the English call ‘common’. As he made Salter comfortable, he moved about the office in giant loping strides that kept him close to the ground; he put a chair in place, settled an ashtray, cleared a space for Salter to write on, and finally seated himself behind his desk, all the while shouting and smiling through his beard, an enormous crescent of yellow teeth splitting his face like a half-moon.
‘You all right now, Inspector? That sun bother you? Move your chair a bit over there. Go on. That’s it. You want something to write on? Take my statement? Har, har. No. You all right, really? Off we go, then.’
When he had subsided, Salter asked, ‘Professor Usher?’
‘Yes, that’s right. The name’s on the door. Smoke? Don’t mind me. I don’t. My kids won’t let me. Har, har. Terrible’n’t? I don’t mind if you do, though. It won’t come this way. No. I suppose you chaps are givin’ it up like everybody else. Funny how it’s changed. I used to smoke forty a day once.’
Usher did a comic cough, and Salter shot through the tiny gap. ‘I wonder if you would corroborate your colleagues’ story of the events of Friday night.’
‘Glad to. Glad to. We met in the bar about half past five, had a drink and left about a quarter past six. P’raps twenty past. No. I’m tellin’ a lie. It was half past six ‘cause they were closing the bar up, you see.’
‘I’ve got the main story, I think,’ Salter shouted. ‘Just one or two details. First of all, would you say Summers was drunk?’
‘Drunk as a fart, Inspector. I’ve seen some people lap it up, but him! I thought we’d have to put him to bed. You think that’s what did it? Someone saw him, followed him home? Seems likely, doesn’t it? Rotten, really. He was having such a good time, too. I must say . . .’
Salter attacked again. ‘Why?’ he bellowed. ‘Why was he having such a good time. Did he say?’
‘No. He went on all night about the gods smilin’, but he never told us why.’
‘After he left you, you and Dunkley and Carrier stayed in the area for a while and had a few more drinks, right?’
‘Old Carrier tell you that? You could call it that. Not quite true, though. He’s a bit shy, is Carrier. No, we went back to one place and had a nightcap, if you like. More of an eye-opener, really.’ Usher imitated a man looking through binoculars, and waited to be asked what he was up to. Salter waited in turn. Usher continued.
‘Place called “Les Jardins du Paradis” — French place. More like the Black Hole.’
‘A bar?’
‘Yerss. A bar. With gels. Strippers. Continuous live performance. Take it off, take it off, all the customers cried, and they did, right on the table.’ Usher roared with laughter.
‘You went back to this place. You had already gone there with Summers.’
‘Yerss. Soon as Marika went home, old Dave started talking about finding the action. So he asked a policeman—that’s what you do in Montreal—and he told us about these two bars. One of them wasn’t much, but this second one, the Jardins place, was full of lovely crumpet. We had a real basinful.’
‘A basinful wasn’t enough, though. After Summers left, you went back.’
‘That’s right. Soldiers on leave, we were.’
‘Then you all went back to the hotel. Did you stay in your room that night? I have to ask that.’
‘ ’Course you do. No. I didn’t sneak out and do in old Dave. You can check up with my mate from New Brunswick, if you like. He was in the room when I got back and we were up half the night, talking.’
‘You stayed with a friend from New Brunswick?’
‘That’s right, Inspector. That’s the nice thing about these conferences. You get a chance to meet old pals.’
‘Is that the main purpose, Professor?’
‘Now, now, now, Inspector. Don’t you start. A little conference once a year is the only perks we get. No. It’s not the main purpose. The main purpose is to refresh us academically.’ Usher gave a low-comedy wink. ‘But it’s one of the nice things about them. We all move around a bit in this game, first in graduate school, then usually a couple of jobs while we’re finishing the thesis, and these conferences bring together everybody you’ve met. Actually it is a little outing for us. You see a different place every year. Last year we all went to Moncton—smashing lobsters there—and the year before that was Saskatoon. Only a couple of us went there.’ Usher roared with laughter. ‘Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,’ he said derisively. ‘The year before that it was Edmonton. That turned out all right because of the Hot Springs at Jasper. Lovely, they are. Next year we go to Halifax. There will be a line-up for that one, I can tell you. The maritimes conferences are always popular. Except Newfoundland.’
‘Kind of a convention, is it? Like the Kiwanis?’
‘Now you’re being a bit sarcastic, I can tell. Still, fair’s fair. We do some work, of course, but the main thing is getting away in a gang.’
‘And is that how you go? All of you, in a gang?’
‘If we can. Of course, we’re not all as thick as thieves when we are at home, but at the conferences we do stick together, yes.’
‘You travel down and back together?’
‘We did this time. Marika and John Carrier and me. We went down in my car. Dunkley always goes on his own.’
‘Why?’
‘Who knows? He just does. But so did old Dave. He always went on his own, too.’
‘Why?’
‘Search me. There was room in my car, but he went down by train. Did the same thing last year. And he always stays in a different hotel from the rest of us. I used to think it was just chance, but I watched him this year, out of curiosity. Sure enough, he dawdled about when we were trying to make our arrangements, putting us off when we were trying to double up in rooms, to cut down the cost; then, when we’d all booked, he reserved at another hotel. I realized then that he always does that. I still don’t think there’s anything in it, though. I’ll tell you why. When we were in Moncton last year, he always turned up late at the parties they have in the evenings. A bit mysterious, you’d think? So would I. But you know where he’d been? At the races. They have harness-racing at Moncton, and he snuck off every night to play the gee-gees. Someone saw him there. Sly bugger. But I think he was just shy about telling us. Not very academic, is it?’
Usher had quietened down slightly as he grew reflective, and showed signs of stopping altogether. Salter thought he would never have a chance to hear about Summers from someone with as little bias as Usher, and he prodded him on.
‘So you don’t think it was unusual for Summers to be in a room to himself in another hotel from the rest of you?’
‘As I say, I did once. But he always stayed on his own,’ didn’t he? Every year.’
‘So. At night he went to the races. What about during the day?’
‘He heard a few papers, like the rest of us. Not all day, of course, and not the same ones.’
‘There are different discussions going on at the same time?’
‘Oh yes. There were four sessions a day, and five or six different papers at each session. In different rooms, of course. There are always a couple of important sessions, given by the big-wigs, and everyone goes to them, but generally, for the small ones, we all go to different