Free The Age of Treachery by Gavin Scott

suspected they were… close.”
    Forrester thought about this. If even Harrison had been aware of something going on between Margaret and Lyall, it wasn’t going to be long before the police found out.
    “So why should she kill him?” he temporised.
    “Lovers’ quarrel? Crime of passion? I don’t know but that’s the sort of thing that has to be considered, isn’t it?”
    Forrester thought about this – and realised it gave him an opportunity to get something out into the open without breaking a confidence.
    “Surely if they were having an affair,” he said, “the person who’s most likely to have done the killing would be Clark himself?”
    “But you don’t think he did, so I’m discounting that,” replied Harrison. That didn’t get them much further, but Forrester felt obscurely gratified by Harrison’s confidence.
    “And there’s another thing,” said Harrison. “You’ve told me the police have witnesses proving she wasn’t at home when she said she was. Could
she
have been up at the college?”
    Forrester felt a cold shiver as Harrison spoke; it was an image he didn’t want to contemplate. Had Margaret been there, waiting for Lyall with a knife, in Clark’s own rooms?
    “Well, I don’t know where the witnesses who said she wasn’t at home actually said she was,” he replied carefully. “But if she killed Lyall in Gordon’s college rooms she was deliberately setting him up as the guilty party. Are you saying she’d let her husband hang for a murder she’d committed?”
    “I don’t know how she felt about her husband,” replied Harrison reasonably. “If she was having an affair with Lyall I’m guessing that there were at least some problems with the marriage.”
    Forrester thought about this. “She tried to give him an alibi,” he said.
    “It was an alibi for her too.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Forrester, because he hadn’t. He got up and began to walk about the room. “Alright, let’s note that possibility. I’m not discounting it, we shouldn’t discount it, but I somehow don’t believe it. Knowing both of them, I can’t really give it credence. Let’s talk about some other options.”
    “Well, what about Dr. Norton? According to you, Lyall was fairly beastly to him at High Table and Norton wasn’t at the saga reading. He had motive and opportunity. Why haven’t the police arrested him?”
    “I don’t know. I’m assuming he has an alibi.”
    “We should check that out.”
    “How do you mean, ‘check it out’?”
    “Get him into conversation, find out what he told the police about where he was. Would that be practical for you? Just in casual conversation? I could try but it might seem a bit awkward coming from an undergraduate as opposed to one of his colleagues.”
    “No, it’s a good idea. And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask him.”
    “There were an awful lot of people in the Lodge that night,” said Harrison regretfully. “But if I understand you rightly it wasn’t physically possible for any of them to have done it, right?”
    “Not really,” said Forrester. “And as I was in the same room with them I’m afraid I’m part of their alibi.”
    “What about this chap Haraldson? The one you found knocked out in Lyall’s rooms? Do you think he told the police the truth? About going up there because he saw somebody poking about? I mean, there’s no proof of that, is there? Barber only has his word for it.”
    “True,” said Forrester. “And in fact I’m somewhat doubtful about his story.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because he was lying on top of the torch.”
    “The torch that was supposed to have hit him?”
    “Exactly. It doesn’t prove he wasn’t hit with the torch, but it seems odd.”
    “But Haraldson was definitely in the Master’s Lodge with you when Lyall was killed?”
    “He was up in the minstrels’ gallery, reading an Icelandic saga.”
    “And there were a couple of Icelanders there too?”
    “Yes.