Free An Advancement of Learning by Reginald Hill Page A

might have conflicted with my client's interests."
    Jessup pondered the implications of this as they trudged up the fairway together.
    "I can understand Fallowfield though. It's like a court martial with midshipmen sitting in judgment,' he said finally.
    "It's a college, not one of Her Majesty's ships,' observed Douglas ironically. ' think he's deliberately delaying things. The longer he spins things out, the more likely it is the girl will jack everything in."
    "But he's admitted he slept with her!"
    "He's not a doctor, Captain. She's over age. No, the real thing here is this question of maliciously trying to get her out of the college. If that's proved, then he's had it. Perhaps he's hoping she'll have a change of heart." "And will she?' asked the captain. ''m not prejudging, mark you.
    Nothing's proved. She may yet turn out a liar. But could she have a change of heart?"
    Douglas considered, then shook his head.
    "No,' he said. ' haven't really been able to make her out yet. She's a very reserved girl in many ways. But, true or not, something very powerful drove her to make these accusations in the first place. And it's my reckoning that it would take something even more powerful to stop her now. I can't imagine what. But certainly more powerful than any blandishments of Fallowfield. I reckon it was just about here."
    He turned off at right-angles and began to climb through the heather up the dune.
    "Give us a hail if you don't spot it,' said the captain. I'll save my old legs an unnecessary walk."
    "Right,' said Douglas.
    At the top of the dune, he paused. There was a narrow parapet of scant, wiry sea-grass, then the dune fell steeply away in a bank of fine white sand. He stood staring out across the white-flecked sea for a moment. A few gulls wheeled and hung in the turbulent air.
    "Any luck?' shouted the captain.
    "Not yet,' said Douglas. ' might be a bit farther. It wasn't a bad hit."
    On the seaward side of the dunes, wind and waves had scooped out a series of semicircular bays which provided ideal situations for bathing parties. Usually in the summer there were some students around, but the chill edge of the wind seemed to have kept them all away today.
    Or nearly all. Douglas walked a little farther along and looked down into the next bay. He drew in his breath sharply. Lying on her side in the white sand was a girl. She had her back to him and seemed to be asleep. She was also naked.
    His ball lay gleaming, challenging, a few inches from the smooth curve of her young buttocks.
    Absurdly his mind began wrestling with the difficulty his next shot presented. Should he awaken her and ask her to move? Or perhaps he could claim a drop without penalty.
    But the non-golfing part of his mind was beginning to notice other things. There was no pile of clothes nearby, for one thing. And there was an awkwardness about the sprawl of her limbs and a strange stillness about the whole body which he did not like.
    "Shall I come up and help?' called the captain.
    Douglas did not reply but, laying down his golf-bag, he jumped into the bay, half-falling, and reaching the bottom in a slither of sand. Down here out of the cut of the wind, it was quite warm.
    But the coldness of the girl's skin as he gently touched her shoulder told him she felt nothing of this. He knew at once she was dead.
    And as he turned her over and looked down into her stiff contorted face, he knew he had been right.
    It had taken something very powerful indeed to stop Anita Sewell from carrying on along her chosen course.
    Chapter 8.
    The parts of fifteen are not the parts of twenty; for the parts of fifteen are three and five; the parts of twenty are two, four, five and ten. So as these things are without contradiction and could not otherwise be.
    SIR FRANCIS BACON Op. Cit.
    Now there was twice as much work and more than twice as much activity.
    Pascoe had visible evidence that he had been right to feel that old bones didn't produce the same sense of urgency as a