Free Death of a God by S. T. Haymon Page B

–?’
    â€˜Nothing like that.’ Jurnet added, despising his own hypocrisy, ‘He looks very peaceful.’
    â€˜I’ll get my coat.’ Gently she disentangled her fingers from those of her husband, and stood up.
    Jack Ellers said, ‘I’ll keep Mr Felsenstein company till you get back.’
    â€˜No!’ Leo Felsenstein struggled to his feet, and stood swaying. ‘I’m coming with you!’
    His wife answered with loving but dismissive kindness, ‘No, my darling. Not this time. This time is my business, my son. I bore him live and now I must see him dead, or I shall never truly believe it has happened.’ She kissed the thin, trembling figure full on the lips with an unselfconscious passion that made Jurnet draw in his breath sharply. ‘Besides, what will the milkman say if he doesn’t get his coffee?’

Chapter Eleven
    In daylight, the foyer of the Middlemass Auditorium, lit from above by vast areas of glass which let in the frigid skyscape of an East Anglian March day, had quite lost its air of mystery. Warm as it was within doors, Sir Cedric Middlemass’s gods and goddesses had a pinched and diminished look. For all their brash coloration they stood, in that English light, revealed as what they were – refugees admitted on sufferance to massage the vanity of their self-proclaimed cultural betters. Winding his way between them to the little group forlornly awaiting his arrival, the detective felt closer to being a Jew than he had ever felt before.
    The three people who awaited him stood up as he approached, and drew together defensively.
    â€˜Is that the policeman you phoned for?’ demanded a voice which came from none of them. From behind a tumescent hunk of tree topped with a head-dress of parrot feathers emerged a grey-haired man with metal-rimmed half-spectacles and a bad temper. He was followed by the man Jurnet had noticed onstage the night before telling the technicians how to do their job, the man with his vanished youth squeezed into clothes a size too small. Today he had exchanged his jackets and slacks for jeans and a denim blouson which, unbuttoned, disguised his waxing paunch with more success than he had any right to hope for.
    Despite this sartorial coup, the man didn’t appear to feel good. He stood glowering at Jurnet and the grey-haired man impartially.
    â€˜Detective-Inspector Jurnet, Angleby CID.’ Jurnet announced himself in the tones of clipped reassurance television had taught the public to expect of its guardians of the law. Phonies always brought out the phony in himself. ‘Did you say ‘‘telephoned’’, sir?’
    The grey-haired man returned waspishly, ‘We certainly didn’t send a carrier pigeon!’ Peering over his glasses with eyes narrowed: ‘I suppose you have a warrant card?’
    Jurnet produced the evidence, then said pleasantly, ‘Matter of fact, sir, I’m here on another matter altogether, one of some importance. Still, if there’s any urgency, perhaps you could let me know briefly what the trouble is. No doubt another officer will be along directly in response to your call –’
    â€˜In other words, tell it twice over! Typical! What makes you think, Inspector, that this, too, is not a matter of some importance?’ The grey-haired man directed a look of loathing at his denimed colleague. Effecting the introductions without grace: ‘I am Professor Whinglass, head of the Department of Archaeology. And this, as you may or may not be aware, according to whether you do or do not watch the quizzes and chat shows which abound on television –’ he made them sound like some new pond weed which had got out of hand – ‘is Professor Culliver, who occupies the Chair of Contemporary Institutions in this University.’
    There was no mistaking the contempt in the voice, or so the detective would have thought. Professor Culliver,