Free The Weight of the Evidence by Michael Innes

respect – even the two young men behind Appleby who had been inclined to chatter to each other under their breath. The room was subterraneous and full of tobacco smoke, and the place names of Provence went on and on, and Appleby was sorry he had come.
    Prisk was a little, stout, aggressive man who lived in a world of words. His room was next to Pluckrose’s. There was something about a telephone…
    From the corridor outside a chink of china suggested that the place names of Provence might not go on for ever after all. The young men behind were whispering again. Appleby shifted on a rather hard chair. There was a telephone locked up in a box outside Prisk’s and Pluckrose’s rooms. They had to share the telephone because the university was hard up. Just the sort of malicious economy you could trust Sir David Evans to think of.
    Somebody had interrupted with a question. Prisk earnestly explained himself, his hand held suspended over the invisible bag. Several people emitted helpful noises, working on one of Prisk’s words like children. There was animated discussion. Then Prisk was off again, word after word. The whole place was a world of words – which was what made it so difficult for a policeman to get up any steam in. An unsatisfactory day. That odd affair of the Duke of Nesfield – Appleby frowned, very much as if he had detected a possible flaw in the philological reasonings of the laborious Prisk. The telephone! Perhaps that was why the Duke –
    Appleby took paper and pencil from his pocket. Several people were making notes. I am a policeman , he wrote. How does Prisk know a telephone call is for him . When Appleby had written this he handed it to one of the young men behind him, continuing to give every appearance of serious attention to Prisk the while. At his back there was a mild sensation. And then the paper came back. Thrilled , it read. One ring for Pluckrose, two for Prisk.
    So there might be something in that. Appleby stuffed the paper in his pocket, aware that the place names of Provence had come to an end. They had come to an end disconcertingly because wholly without peroration or climax. It was just like the turning off of a tap. Only turn again the other way and there would be plenty more to come. But now there would be coffee and then somebody else would start. Pluckrose by this time was in the city mortuary, lying on a slab of marble like a fish in a shop… An open cigarette-case curved round Appleby’s right shoulder and hovered before his chest. It belonged to one of the whispering young men. And at the same moment both young men made a flanking movement and appeared before him. ‘Cigarette?’ said one. ‘Coffee?’ said the other, and darted away. In a moment Appleby found himself edged into an empty alcove, with the two young men staring at him with frank curiosity. It was like having confessed at a children’s party that one had an uncle who had been in prison or in the secret service or quite near the South Pole.
    ‘My name is Marlow,’ said the first young man. ‘This is the first time we’ve ever met the power behind the village copper. Do you wear a sort of badge behind the lapel of your coat?’
    ‘Marlow has no manners.’ The second young man spoke in accents of mild apology. ‘We ask no questions. And we are secret as the grave. But we give our modest advice. Cherchez la femme .’
    ‘The mind of Pinnegar’, said Marlow, ‘runs on sex and expresses itself in vuglar clichés . Trace the meteorite.’
    ‘Question his landlady. A sinister gentlewoman called Dearlove.’
    ‘Subject Prisk to a grilling examination.’
    ‘Arrest the Vice-Chancellor.’
    ‘Have you met old Murn? Have him shadowed.’
    ‘Discover who hung the skeleton in the maze.’
    ‘Drag the river for Lasscock.’
    ‘Inquire into the curious affair of Mrs Tavender’s tea-party.’
    ‘What’s happened to Timmy Church’s girl?’
    There was a pause. But they looked as if they might begin again.