Injury Time by Catherine Aird

character destroyed by the time you got there?’
    â€˜None, sir. On the contrary. He wouldn’t let anyone at all into the bell-chamber until our people arrived.’
    â€˜That’s something, I suppose,’ said Leeyes grudgingly. ‘Then what?’
    â€˜He said we should treat it as a case of murder and then he went off to talk to the Rector.’
    â€˜Leaving us to hold the baby …’
    â€˜Not quite, sir. He came back about ten minutes later with the reverend gentleman and said we should arrest the man going under the name of Wilderspin. Seems as if in real life he’s a carpenter.’
    â€˜That doesn’t make him a murderer.’
    â€˜No, sir, but he’s the one among them who best knows about wood.’
    â€˜What about it?’
    â€˜This friend of the Rector’s said that all the wood in the church tower was chestnut except for the bell-stay. Chestnut doesn’t rot—or at least hardly at all—especially in the dry.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜This bell stay was pitchpine.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜Bell stays are always made of ash.’
    â€˜Are you going to come to the point while I’m still on duty, Sloan?’
    â€˜Pitchpine, which is highly subject to woodworm into the bargain, wouldn’t hold. It hasn’t got the spring of ash. This chap—the visitor—said it must have been put there with malice aforethought and was there any reason for anyone wanting to kill Donnington.’
    â€˜And was there?’
    â€˜Oh, yes. He’d been carrying on with Wilderspin’s wife.’
    â€˜Sloan, what did the Rector call this friend of his?’
    â€˜Sui generis.’

MEMORY CORNER
    â€˜He said what?’ echoed Detective Inspector Sloan in disbelief.
    â€˜Would we kindly step round,’ repeated Detective Constable Crosby, ‘when we had a moment, because he’d just killed a man.’
    Sloan groaned. ‘A nutter?’
    â€˜To Almstone College at the University.’
    â€˜An academic nutter, then?’
    â€˜I don’t know, sir,’ said Detective Constable Crosby. ‘That’s all he said.’
    â€˜And who, might I ask, is he?’
    Detective Constable Crosby glanced down at his notebook. ‘Edward Francis Mainprice Linthwaite. He made me write it all down and read it back to him. Very particular about it, he was.’
    â€˜H’m.’
    â€˜Most murderers don’t bother about the spelling of their names, do they, sir? And the exact time,’ said Crosby. ‘He made me write that down, too, sir. He said he always understood that in these matters time was’—the Constable frowned at the effort of recollection—‘time was of the essence.’
    â€˜Sounds to me,’ said Sloan resignedly, ‘as if what he needs are two little men in white coats, not a pair of heavily overworked detectives. All right, Crosby. Let’s go.’
    This baleful view was reinforced by the total calm prevailing in the Porter’s Lodge at Almstone College. Enquiries for an Edward Linthwaite produced a response in which lay the gentlest of reproofs. ‘The Professor of Twentieth-Century English Literature, gentlemen,’ said the porter, ‘has his rooms in the main quadrangle.’
    Sloan, who at another time might have wondered aloud whether there was any such thing at all as a literature of the twentieth century, followed the porter’s pointing finger with his eye.
    â€˜See—over there on your right—the first-floor rooms with the bay window,’ said the porter, who, having no great faith in the Force, added: ‘You can’t miss the quadrangle archway.’
    â€˜On your mark, Crosby,’ said Sloan in quite a different tone of voice. ‘Get set. Go.’
    The door to Professor Linthwaite’s rooms was opened to them by a short spare man, who looked worried.
    â€˜If that’s the police, Arthur,’