reason why she should not comment on the second.
She said: “Mark Callender must have been an experienced typist. This was done by an expert.”
“I didn’t think so. If you look carefully you’ll see that one or two of the letters are fainter than the rest. That’s always the sign of an amateur.”
“But the faint letters aren’t always the same ones. It’s usually the keys on the edges of the keyboard which the inexperienced typist hits more lightly. And the spacing here is good until nearly the end of the passage. It looks as if the typist suddenly realized that he ought to disguise his competence but hadn’t time to retype the whole passage. And it’s strange that the punctuation is so accurate.”
“It was probably copied direct from the printed page. There was a copy of Blake in the boy’s bedroom. The quotation isfrom Blake, you know, the Tyger tyger burning bright poet.”
“I know. But if he typed it from the book, why bother to return the Blake to his bedroom?”
“He was a tidy lad.”
“But not tidy enough to wash up his coffee mug or clean his garden fork.”
“That proves nothing. As I said, people do behave oddly when they’re planning to kill themselves. We know that the typewriter was his and that he’d had it for a year. But we couldn’t compare the typing with his work. All his papers had been burnt.”
He glanced at his watch and got to his feet. Cordelia saw that the interview was over. She signed a chit for the suicide note and the leather belt, then shook hands and thanked him formally for his help. As he opened the door for her he said, as if on impulse: “There’s one intriguing detail you may care to know. It looks as if he was with a woman sometime during the day on which he died. The pathologist found the merest trace—a thin line only—of purple-red lipstick on his upper lip.”
3
New Hall, with its Byzantine air, its sunken court and its shining domed hall like a peeled orange, reminded Cordelia of a harem; admittedly one owned by a sultan with liberal views and an odd predilection for clever girls, but a harem nonetheless. The college was surely too distractingly pretty to be conducive to serious study. She wasn’t sure, either, whether she approved of the obtrusive femininity of its white brick, the mannered prettiness of the shallow pools where the goldfish slipped like blood-red shadows between the water lilies, its artfully planted saplings. She concentrated on her criticism of the building; it helped to prevent her being intimidated.
She hadn’t called at the Lodge to ask for Miss Tilling, afraid that she might be asked her business or refused admission; it seemed prudent just to walk in and chance to luck. Luck was with her. After two fruitless enquiries for Sophia Tilling’s room, a hurrying student called back at her: “She doesn’t live in college but she’s sitting on the grass over there with her brother.”
Cordelia walked out of the shadow of the court into brightsunlight and over turf as soft as moss towards the little group. There were four of them, stretched out on the warm-smelling grass. The two Tillings were unmistakably brother and sister. Cordelia’s first thought was that they reminded her of a couple of Pre-Raphaelite portraits with their strong dark heads held high on unusually short necks, and their straight noses above curved, foreshortened upper lips. Beside their bony distinction, the second girl was all softness. If this were the girl who had visited Mark at the cottage, Miss Markland was right to call her beautiful. She had an oval face with a neat slender nose, a small but beautifully formed mouth, and slanted eyes of a strikingly deep blue which gave her whole face an oriental appearance at variance with the fairness of her skin and her long blond hair. She was wearing an ankle-length dress of fine mauve patterned cotton, buttoned high at the waist but with no other fastening. The gathered bodice cupped her full breasts
She said: “Mark Callender must have been an experienced typist. This was done by an expert.”
“I didn’t think so. If you look carefully you’ll see that one or two of the letters are fainter than the rest. That’s always the sign of an amateur.”
“But the faint letters aren’t always the same ones. It’s usually the keys on the edges of the keyboard which the inexperienced typist hits more lightly. And the spacing here is good until nearly the end of the passage. It looks as if the typist suddenly realized that he ought to disguise his competence but hadn’t time to retype the whole passage. And it’s strange that the punctuation is so accurate.”
“It was probably copied direct from the printed page. There was a copy of Blake in the boy’s bedroom. The quotation isfrom Blake, you know, the Tyger tyger burning bright poet.”
“I know. But if he typed it from the book, why bother to return the Blake to his bedroom?”
“He was a tidy lad.”
“But not tidy enough to wash up his coffee mug or clean his garden fork.”
“That proves nothing. As I said, people do behave oddly when they’re planning to kill themselves. We know that the typewriter was his and that he’d had it for a year. But we couldn’t compare the typing with his work. All his papers had been burnt.”
He glanced at his watch and got to his feet. Cordelia saw that the interview was over. She signed a chit for the suicide note and the leather belt, then shook hands and thanked him formally for his help. As he opened the door for her he said, as if on impulse: “There’s one intriguing detail you may care to know. It looks as if he was with a woman sometime during the day on which he died. The pathologist found the merest trace—a thin line only—of purple-red lipstick on his upper lip.”
3
New Hall, with its Byzantine air, its sunken court and its shining domed hall like a peeled orange, reminded Cordelia of a harem; admittedly one owned by a sultan with liberal views and an odd predilection for clever girls, but a harem nonetheless. The college was surely too distractingly pretty to be conducive to serious study. She wasn’t sure, either, whether she approved of the obtrusive femininity of its white brick, the mannered prettiness of the shallow pools where the goldfish slipped like blood-red shadows between the water lilies, its artfully planted saplings. She concentrated on her criticism of the building; it helped to prevent her being intimidated.
She hadn’t called at the Lodge to ask for Miss Tilling, afraid that she might be asked her business or refused admission; it seemed prudent just to walk in and chance to luck. Luck was with her. After two fruitless enquiries for Sophia Tilling’s room, a hurrying student called back at her: “She doesn’t live in college but she’s sitting on the grass over there with her brother.”
Cordelia walked out of the shadow of the court into brightsunlight and over turf as soft as moss towards the little group. There were four of them, stretched out on the warm-smelling grass. The two Tillings were unmistakably brother and sister. Cordelia’s first thought was that they reminded her of a couple of Pre-Raphaelite portraits with their strong dark heads held high on unusually short necks, and their straight noses above curved, foreshortened upper lips. Beside their bony distinction, the second girl was all softness. If this were the girl who had visited Mark at the cottage, Miss Markland was right to call her beautiful. She had an oval face with a neat slender nose, a small but beautifully formed mouth, and slanted eyes of a strikingly deep blue which gave her whole face an oriental appearance at variance with the fairness of her skin and her long blond hair. She was wearing an ankle-length dress of fine mauve patterned cotton, buttoned high at the waist but with no other fastening. The gathered bodice cupped her full breasts
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