The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

CHAPTER FOUR

ON FRIDAY, 21ST NOVEMBER, a man in his early thirties caught the train from Faddington back to Oxford. He found an empty first-class compartment with little difficulty, leaned back in his seat, and lit a cigarette. From his briefcase he took-out a fairly bulky envelope addressed to himself ('If undelivered please return to the Foreign Examinations Syndicate'), and extracted several lengthy reports. He unclipped his ballpoint pen from an inside pocket, and began to make sporadic notes. But he was left-handed, and with an ungenerous margin, and that only on the right of the closely-typed documents, the task was awkward; and progressively so, as the Inter-City train gathered full speed through the northern suburbs. The rain splashed in slanting parallel streaks across the dirty carriage window, and the telegraph poles snatched up the wires ever faster as he found himself staring out abstractedly at the thinning autumn landscape; and even when he managed to drag his attention back to the tedious documents he found it difficult to concentrate. Just before Reading he walked along to the buffet car and bought a Scotch; then another. He felt better.

At four o'clock he put the papers back into their envelope, crossed out his own name, C. A. Roope, and wrote 'T. G. Bartlett on the cover. Bartlett, as a man, he disliked (he could not disguise that), but he was honest enough to respect the man's experience, and his flair for administration; and he had promised to leave the papers at the Syndicate that afternoon. Bartlett would never allow a single phrase in the minutes of a Syndicate Council meeting to go forward before the relevant draft had been circulated to every member who had attended. And (Roope had to admit) this meticulous minuting had frequently proved extremely wise. Anyway, the wretched papers were done now, and Roope snapped his briefcase to, and looked out at the rain again. The journey had passed more quickly than he could have hoped, and within a few minutes the drenched grey spires of Oxford came into view on his right, and the train drew into the station.

Roope walked through the subway, waited patiently behind the queue at the ticket barrier, and debated for a second or two whether he should bother. But he knew he would. He took the second-class day-return from his wallet and passed it to the ticket collector. 'I'm afraid I owe you some excess fare. I travelled back first.'

'Didn't the ticket inspector come round?'

'No.'

'We-ll. Doesn't really matter then, does it?'

'You sure?'

'Wish everybody was as honest as you, sir.'

'OK then, if you say so.'

Roope took a taxi and after alighting at the Syndicate tipped the driver liberally. Rectangles of pale-yellow light shone in the upper storeys of nearby office blocks, and the giant shapes of the trees outside the Syndicate building loomed black against the darkening sky. The rain poured down.

Charles Noakes, present incumbent in the key post of caretaker to the Syndicate, was (for the breed) a comparatively young and helpful man, whose soul was yet to be soured by years of cumulative concern about the shutting of windows, the polishing of floors, the management of the boiler, and the setting of the burglar alarm. He was replacing a fluorescent tube in the downstairs corridor when Roope entered the building.

'Hello, Noakes. The Secretary in?'

'No, sir. He's been out all the afternoon.'

'Oh.' Roope knocked on Harriett's door and looked in. The light was on; but then Roope knew that the lights would be on in every room. Bartlett always claimed that the mere switching-on of a fluorescent tube used as much electricity as leaving it on for about four hours, and consequently the lights were left on all day throughout the office—'for reasons of economy'. For a brief second Roope thought he heard a noise inside the room, but there was nothing. Only a note on the desk which read: 'Friday pm. Off to Banbury. May be back about five.'

'Not there, is he, sir?' Noakes had descended the small ladder and was standing outside.

'No. But never mind. I'll have a word with one of the others.'

'Not many of 'em here, I don't think, sir. Shall I see for you?'

'No. Don't worry. I'll do it myself.'

He knocked and put his head round Ogleby's door. No Ogleby.

He tried Martin's room. No Martin.

He was knocking quietly on Monica Height's door, and leaning forward to catch any response from within, when the caretaker reappeared in the well-lit, well-polished corridor. 'Looks as if Mr. Quinn's the only graduate here, sir. His car's still out the back, anyway. I think the others must have gone.'

When the cat's away, thought Roope. He opened Monica's door and looked inside. The room was tidiness itself, the desk clear, the leather chair neatly pushed beneath it.

It was the caretaker who tried Quinn's room, and Roope came up behind him as he looked in. A green anorak was draped over one of the chairs, and the top drawer of the nearest cabinet gaped open to reveal a row of buff-coloured file cases. On the desk, placed under a cheap paperweight, was a note from Quinn for his typist's attention. But Quinn himself was nowhere to be seen.

Roope had often heard tell of Bartlett's meticulous instructions to his staff not only about their paramount duty for ensuring the strictest security on all matters concerning question papers, but also about the importance of leaving some notification of their whereabouts. 'At least he's left a note for us, Noakes. More than some of the others have.'

'I don't think the Secretary would be very happy about this, though.' Noakes gravely closed the top drawer of the cabinet and pushed in the lock.

'Bit of a stickler about that sort of thing, isn't he, old Bartlett?'

'Bit of a stickler about everything, sir.' Yet somehow Noakes managed to convey the impression that if he were on anyone's side, it would be Bartlett's.

'You don't think he's too much of a fusspot?'

'No, sir. I mean, all sorts of people come into the office, don't they? You can't be too careful in a place like this.'

'No. You're absolutely right.'

Noakes felt pleasantly appeased, and having made his point he conceded a little to Roope's suspicions. 'Mind you, sir, I reckon he might have picked a warmer week for practising the fire drill.'

'Gives you those, does he?' Roope grinned. He hadn't been on a fire drill since he was at school.

'We had one today, sir. Twelve o'clock. He had us all there, standing in the cold for something like a quarter of an hour. Freezing, it was. I know it's a bit too hot in here but. ' Noakes was about to embark on an account of his unequal struggle with the Syndicate's antiquated heating system, but Roope was far more interested in Bartlett, it seemed.

'Quarter of an hour? In this weather?'

Noakes nodded. 'Mind you, he'd warned us all about it earlier in the week, so we had our coats and everything, and it wasn't raining then, thank goodness, but—'

'Why as long as that, though?'

"Well, there's quite a lot of permanent staff now and we had to tick our names off a list. Huh! Just like we was at school. And the Secretary gave us a little talk. '

But Roope was no longer listening; he couldn't stand there talking to the caretaker all night, and he began walking slowly up the corridor. 'Bit odd, isn't it? Everybody here this morning and nobody here this afternoon!'

'You're right, sir. Are you sure I can't help you?'

'No, no. It doesn't matter. I only came to give this envelope to Bartlett. I'll leave it on his desk.'

'I'm going upstairs for a cup o' tea in a minute, sir, when I've fixed this light. Would you like one?'

'No, I've got to be off. Thanks all the same, though.'

Roope took advantage of the Gentlemen's lavatory by the entrance and realized just how hot it was in the building: like walking into a Turkish bath.

Bartlett himself had been addressing a group of Banbury headmasters and headmistresses on the changing pattern of public examinations; and the last question had been authoritatively (and humorously) dispatched at almost exactly the same time that Roope had caught his taxi to the Syndicate. He was soon driving his pride and joy, a dark-brown Vanden Plas, at a steady sixty down the twenty-odd-mile stretch to Oxford. He lived out at Botley, on the western side of the city, and as he drove he debated whether to call in at the office or to go straight home. But at Kidlington he found himself beginning to get caught up in the regular evening paralysis, and as he negotiated the roundabouts on Oxford's northern perimeter he decided to turn off right along the ring-road instead of carrying straight over towards the city centre. He would call in the office a bit later, perhaps, when the evening rush-hour had abated.

When he arrived home, at just gone five his wife informed him that there had been several phone calls; and even as she was giving him the details the wretched thing rang again. How she wished they had a number ex-directory.

On Saturday, 22nd November (as on most Saturdays), the burglar alarm system was switched off at 8.30 a.m., one hour later than on weekdays. During the winter months there were only occasional Saturday workings, and on this particular morning the building was, from all appearances, utterly deserted. Ogleby was on foot, and let himself in quietly. The smell of floor polish, like the smell of cinema seats and old library books, took him back tantalizingly to his early schooldays, but his mind was on other things. Successively he looked into each room on the ground floor in order to satisfy himself that no one was around. But he was aware of this instinctively: there was an eerie, echoing emptiness about the building which the quiet clickings-to of the doors served merely to re-emphasize. He went into his own room and rang a number.

'Morning, Secretary. Hope I didn't get you out of bed? No? Ah, good. Look, I know it sounds a bit silly, but can you remind me when the alarm's turned off on Saturday mornings? I've got to. 8.30? Yes, I thought so, but I just wanted to make sure. I didn't want. No. Funny, really. I'd somehow got it into my head that there'd been some change. No, I see. Well, sorry to trouble you. By the way, did the Banbury meeting go off all right?. Good. Well, I'll be off.'

Ogleby walked into Bartlett's room. He looked around quickly and then took out his keys. Botley was at least twenty minutes' drive away: he could probably allow himself at least half an hour. But Ogleby was a cautious soul, and he allowed himself only twenty minutes.

Twenty-five minutes later, as he was sitting at his own desk, he heard someone enter the building, and almost immediately, it seemed, his door was opened.

'You got in all right then, Philip?'

'Yes thanks. No bells ringing in the police station this morning.'

'Good.' Bartlett blinked behind his spectacles. 'I've er got a few things I want to clear up myself.' He closed the door and walked into his own office. He knew what had been happening, of course. For a clever man, Ogleby's excuse about the burglar alarm had been desperately thin. But what had he been looking for? Bartlett opened his cabinets and opened his drawers; but everything was in order. Nothing seemed to have been taken. What was there to take? He sat back and frowned deeply: the whole thing was strangely disturbing. He walked up the corridor to Ogleby's room, but Ogleby had gone.