Free Wilt on High by Tom Sharpe

respond kindly to statements of the obvious. ‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps she just felt like going somewhere dark and warm.’
    ‘And perhaps she didn’t,’ said Flint. ‘Anyway, I’ll soon find out.’
    ‘I just hope you will be discreet,’ said the V-P, ‘I mean it’s a very sensitive …’
    ‘Bugger discretion,’ said Flint, ‘all I’m interested in is the truth.’
*
    Twenty minutes later, when the Principal arrived, it was all too obvious that the Inspector’s search for the truth had assumed quite alarming dimensions. The fact wasthat Mrs Ruckner, more accustomed to the niceties of ethnic needlework than resuscitation, had allowed the body to slip behind the boiler: that the boiler hadn’t been turned off added a macabre element to the scene. Flint had refused to allow it to be moved until it had been photographed from every possible angle, and he had summoned fingerprint and forensic experts from the Murder Squad along with the police surgeon. The Tech car park was lined with squad cars and an ambulance and the buildings themselves seemed to be infested with policemen. And all this in full view of students arriving for evening classes. To the Principal, it appeared as if the Inspector was intent on attracting the maximum adverse publicity.
    ‘Is the man mad?’ he demanded of the Vice-Principal, stepping over a white tape that had been laid on the ground outside the steps to the boiler-room.
    ‘He says he’s treating it as a murder case until he’s proved it isn’t,’ said the Vice-Principal weakly, ‘and I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.’
    ‘Why the hell not?’
    ‘Well, for one thing there’s a dead body and …’
    ‘Of course there’s a dead body,’ said the Principal, who had been in the War and frequently mentioned the fact. ‘Nothing to be squeamish about.’
    ‘If you say so. All the same …’
    But the Principal had already gone down the steps into the boiler-room. He was escorted out a moment later looking decidedly unwell. ‘Jesus wept! You couldhave told me they were holding an autopsy on the spot,’ he muttered. ‘How the hell did she get in that state?’
    ‘I rather think Mrs Ruckner …’
    ‘Mrs Ruckner? Mrs Ruckner?’ gurgled the Principal, trying to equate what he had just seen in some way with the tenuous figure of the part-time lecturer in ethnic needlework and finding it impossible. ‘What the hell has Mrs Ruckner got to do with that … that …’
    But before he could express himself at all clearly, they were joined by Inspector Flint. ‘Well, at least we’ve got a real dead corpse this time,’ he said, timing his cheerfulness nicely. ‘Makes a change for the Tech, doesn’t it?’
    The Principal eyed him with loathing. Whatever Flint might feel about the desirability of real dead corpses littering the Tech he didn’t share Flint’s opinions. ‘Now look here, Inspector …’ he began in an attempt to assert some authority.
    But Flint had opened a cardboard box. ‘I think you had better look in here first,’ he said. ‘Is this the sort of printed matter you encourage your students to read?’
    The Principal stared down into the box with a horrid fascination. If the cover of the top magazine was anything to go by – it depicted two women, a rack and a revoltingly androgynous man clad in chains and a … the Principal preferred not to think what it looked like – the entire box was filled with printed matter he wouldn’t have wanted his students to know about, let alone read.
    ‘Certainly not,’ he said, ‘that’s downright pornography.’
    ‘Hard core,’ said Flint, ‘and there’s more where this little lot came from. Puts a new complexion on things, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Dear God,’ muttered the Principal, as Flint trotted off across the quad, ‘are we to be spared nothing? That bloody man seems to find the whole horrible business positively enjoyable.’
    ‘It’s probably because of that terrible incident with Wilt some years