‘What field is that?’
‘Romantic poetry. Wordsworth was all David cared about.’
‘He should have gone, then, to Dunkley’s paper?’
Usher looked unhappy at seeming to criticize a colleague. ‘Yes, he should have,’ he agreed.
‘Dunkley and Summers both taught Romantic poetry, did they?’
‘No. That was the trouble.’ Usher looked even more miserable. He consulted his watch. ‘Here. Inspector. What about a bite. Let’s go and have a sandwich and a bowl of suds and I will fill you in. It’s all bullshit, really, but you might as well know it.’
Salter agreed, and Usher loped around the room, collecting his jacket and tidying his papers. ‘I’ll take you to the Faculty Club,’ he said. ‘Give you an insight into life at Douglas College.’ Usher roared with laughter again.
‘You know the college, Inspector?’ he asked as they were descending in the elevator.
‘I’ve walked past it dozens of times and your chairman told me the history. Why?’
They left the building and paused on the steps. ‘We are now in the Arts Building,’ Usher began. ‘Over there is the Administration Building, the great big shiny one. That there is the library, and all those old houses contain the other departments. This is called the quad.’ Usher pointed to the square of grass in front of them. ‘We are going over there.’ He started off across the grass in an outdoor version of the giant steps he used in the office. Salter was hard put to keep up without trotting as they raced across the tiny quadrangle.
‘Here we are, then,’ Usher said, leading Salter into the front door of a renovated old brick house. ‘The Faculty Club—among other things.’
Inside a little hallway they hung their coats on a peg and moved into the dining-room, a pleasant, sunny little room furnished like a superior hotel coffee-shop.
‘Mr Usher!’ the waiter shouted, as soon as they were inside. ‘How did I do, sir?’
‘Bombed, laddie, bombed. Absolutely buggered,’ Usher shouted back, grinning at the student. ‘Good thing you’ve got a job here, but judging by your English exam, you must have trouble reading the menu. I have never come across such a load of unadulterated, illiterate twaddle in all my born days. And what did you use for a pen? Your handwriting, laddie, looks like the death-throes of a mad chicken who’s just run through a puddle of ink.’
The waiter accepted all this with a grin, and asked again, ‘How did I do?’
‘You passed, laddie, you passed. Now get us two draught and I’ll give you an “A”.’
To Salter’s relief, the horseplay now seemed at an end, and the waiter led them to a table. Usher looked round the room, waved at a couple of people, called greetings to another, and the beer arrived. Salter was beginning to be sorry he had accepted Usher’s invitation. How was he going to question the man with a dozen people listening? He hoped his host had a confidential voice, but as soon as they were settled Usher picked up the story again in the same penetrating tones. Most of the conversation in the dining-room stopped as the other diners listened.
‘The thing you’ve got to understand, Inspector,’ Usher said, causing Salter to hope the others would take him for an inspector of drains, ‘is that we all have a field. What we specialize in. My field is Lawrence. D.H. I come from Nottingham—did you realize I’m English?—and my grandfather knew Lawrence, or said he did, like most of the old codgers in Nottingham.’ Usher broke off again for a sustained maniacal laugh at the lies Nottingham codgers told about Lawrence. ‘Anyway, he had a lot of stories about Bert, so when I went into English, Lawrence seemed a natural to specialize in. Our chairman is a Conrad man, Carrier is working on Tennyson, and Dunkley and old Dave are Romantics. That’s the trouble. You see, we don’t have many students, only about twenty in Honours English, and we don’t have enough of any kind of students for two sections of anything—do you follow me?—and Dave taught our only Romantics course. He had seniority, and until he went on sabbatical, Dunkley wouldn’t get a look-in.’
‘When would that be? Summers’s sabbatical?’ Salter spoke so quietly that he could feel the other diners straining to hear.
‘Year after next, I think.’
‘I see. So, in a sense, Summers had Dunkley’s course, until then.’
‘I suppose so. But talking about “your” course or “my” course just leads to a lot of bad feeling, and there was enough of that.’
Their sandwiches arrived, and Salter took the opportunity to change the subject. He asked Usher questions about how hard he worked, how much professors were paid, and what the pressures were on a teacher of English at Douglas College, all designed to look like part of his investigation into the causes of Summers’s death, and he got for his pains a lengthy speech on the teacher’s life as Usher saw it, which ended with the information that Usher, personally, was delighted to be paid well for doing something he enjoyed and would do for much less if he had to.
‘But not everyone feels like you do, eh?’ Salter asked.
‘There are just as many teachers who shouldn’t be doing it as there are policemen, I expect,’ Usher said. And then, ‘Not us, though, by God. Not you and me, Inspector,’ and he roared with glee again.
They walked back to the Arts Building together. When they reached the door, Usher put out his hand. ‘I’ve got some errands to do, Inspector. I might see you later. I wasn’t all that pally with David. Didn’t know him well at all, but I was one of the last to see him alive.’ Usher for the first time was speaking quietly. ‘It’s like the Venerable Bede said—in one window and out the other—that’s life.’ He turned away and walked off down the street.
Back in the English Department, Salter had plenty of time before he was scheduled to meet Dunkley, the next on his list, and he got the secretary to let him into Summers’s office, which had been locked since his death.
A small room, furnished with two chairs and a desk, like all the others. On the wall, four or five mounted but unframed photographs, more artistic than realistic to Salter’s eye (one of them was so out of focus it must have been intentional). Four shelves of books: on one shelf the books were interleaved with notes; all the other books looked like old texts or publishers’ free samples. Salter opened a desk drawer; it was full of rubbish—overshoes, a coffee-pot, and a clock with a broken face. He opened the other drawers, and found a few personal-looking letters which he began to read. The door opened and a young man poked his head round it.
‘Dave in?’ he asked.
Salter shook his head.
‘Know when he’ll be back?’
Salter shrugged, dodging. ‘Why? Who wants him?’
‘I do. He’s got my essay.’
‘You a student?’
‘That’s right. Theatre Arts. Dave teaches us Modern Drama. Oh well.’ The head disappeared.
Dave? A palsy-walsy teacher? Or was that standard these days? Salter continued reading the dead man’s mail without much interest. A letter from a friend in England. Two others from former students.
The door opened again and another student stood in the doorway.
‘Professor Summers?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘You’re not Professor Summers?’
‘No. What do you want him for?’
‘I was told to see him. By my chairman. Professor Summers is my English teacher.’
‘And you don’t know what he looks like?’
‘I’m in Journalism.