The Company of Fellows by Dan Holloway

wasn’t
the kind of person to leave work half done. All of which meant
there had to be some kind of order underlying the chaos. Either
that or he was murdered after all.
    She stood in
the doorway and tried to get a feel for the way he had used the
room. There were piles of papers on every surface – the coffee
tables, the desk, the sofa, most of the chairs. It was a fair bet
most of them had been there for months and were irrelevant. If she
could figure out which they were she could save herself hours. She
looked at his desk. There was a clearing for his iBook but no more,
and a couple of journals had spilled onto the white case. She made
a note to herself to take the computer with her.
    Rosie tried a
technique she often used. She walked out of the door and down the
corridor. She imagined herself tired from a day giving lectures,
seeing students, straining her eyes in the library. She thought of
the iBook, partially covered, and realised that Professor Shaw
didn’t use it to take his daily notes. She tried to feel a folder
under her arm, with its pages of scribblings.
    She headed
back to the study, yawning as she got into character. Without
thinking she found herself heading across the floor, stepping over
some heaps of journals, and sitting herself down in a Windsor chair
with arms worn smooth and dark, placing her imaginary folder on the
table to her left. The papers on it lay flat. Her folder wouldn’t
fall off. They were a little beyond her comfortable reach – perfect
for someone five or six inches taller than her, like the
Professor.
    The chair felt
good. God, she needed a drink. Instinctively she moved her hand to
the right, felt rounded glass, a bottle of Glengoyne and a tumbler
waiting on a mahogany tray. This was where he lived when he was in
this room, she thought.
    She scanned
her immediate surroundings. To her right was an ottoman, complete
with the tray of malt. To her left was the table with the
flat-topped stack of papers. They weren’t what he was working on.
He used them only as a flat surface to put things on. What did he
do when he’d finished whatever it was he did? She imagined him
sitting down with his whisky. He’d put everything on the table –
his notes from the day, his post, printouts of his e-mails. He
didn’t keep them on his lap as he looked through them. That’s where
he cradled his drink. He took them off the pile one by one, read
them over. What did he do with them? There was no sign of a diary
or a jotter. I bet you had a
notebook , she said to herself.
    Carefully she
retraced her steps to the door and repeated the routine. As she
stepped back inside it struck her. You’ve
had enough of this heavy tweed. You want to make yourself
comfortable. She took off her make-believe
jacket and hung it on the back of his door. Sure enough, there was
a tweed jacket on the back of the door, a fat mechanical pencil
sticking out of the top pocket. I bet you
used that pencil to take notes in the library . And, bingo! On the peg next to it was a fine silk smoking
jacket. She put it on and padded the pockets. She reached inside.
There was the notebook, a small Mont Blanc Mozart biro clipped over
its front cover.
    Rosie went
back to the chair and opened up the notebook. She was right. The
entries were all dated. She started from the most recent, September
3 rd ,
and worked back. Unfortunately it appeared to be nothing but a
series of references from books he’d been reading during the day.
Strange that he should have bothered taking notes the day before he
killed himself. Maybe he hadn’t been intending to kill himself at
the time; maybe something sudden happened. She put it on the arm of
the chair. It was small enough to balance. She went back to the
Professor’s routine. He’d read his papers, taken whatever notes he
needed and then put them down one by one. That was it.
    She looked
underneath the table. There was a sprawl of envelopes and letters a
foot or so back. Clearly once he’d dealt