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creeper outside, but they don’t believe it to be very promising.’
    ‘What about footprints in the snow directly underneath the window?’
    ‘The students have been larking about in the quad for days. They even had a small football game during that afternoon, until the lodgekeepers broke it up. The whole area has been well trampled down.’
    ‘What about someone going in to the room?’ Francis asked. ‘Did the students see that?’
    ‘Even more peculiar,’ the detective admitted. ‘We have no witness of anyone other than Mr Raleigh going in.’
    ‘He was definitely seen going in, then?’ I asked.
    ‘Oh yes. He chatted to a few people in the college on his way up to his room. As far as we can determine, he went inside at about ten past ten. That was the last anyone saw him alive.’
    ‘Did he say anything significant to any of those people he talked to? Was he expecting a guest?’
    ‘No. It was just a few simple greetings to his college mates, nothing more. Presumably the murderer was waiting for him.’
    ‘Justin would have kept those windows closed yesterday,’ I said. ‘It was freezing all day. And if the latch was down, they’d be very difficult to open from the outside, especially by anyone clinging to the creeper. I’m sure a professional criminal could have done it, but not many others.’
    ‘I concur,’ Francis said. ‘It all points to someone he knew. And knew well enough to open a window for them to get in.’
    ‘That’s a very wild assumption,’ Neill Heller Caesar said. ‘Someone could simply have gone to his room hours earlier and waited for him. There would have been several opportunities during the day when there was nobody in that corridor outside. I for one refuse to believe it was in use for every second of every minute during the entire afternoon and evening.’
    ‘The method of entry isn’t too relevant at this time,’ the detective said. ‘We still have absolutely no motive for the crime.’
    I resisted giving Francis a glance. I have to say I considered the method of entry to be extremely relevant. A professional break-in opened up all sorts of avenues. As did Justin opening the window for a friend.
    ‘Very well,’ Francis said levelly. ‘What is your next step?’
    ‘Validating the alibis of his closest friends. Once I’m satisfied that they are all telling the truth, then we’ll get them back in for more extensive interviews. They knew him best, and one of them may know something without realising it. We need to review Mr Raleigh’s past week, then month. Six months if that’s what it takes. The motive will be there somewhere. Once we have that, we have the murderer. How they got in and out ceases to be an issue.’
    ‘I thought all the alibis were secure, apart from Maloney’s,’ Neill Heller Caesar said.
    ‘Maloney’s can probably be confirmed by his professor,’ the detective said. ‘One of my senior detectives is going out to the chemistry laboratory right away. Which leaves Antony Caesar Pitt with the alibi most difficult to confirm. I’m going to the Westhay Club myself to see if it can be corroborated.’
    ‘I’d like to come with you,’ I said.
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I’ll go to the chemistry laboratory, if you don’t mind,’ Neill Heller Caesar said.
    Touché, I thought. We swapped the briefest of grins.
    *
     
    Unless you knew exactly where to go, you’d never be able to locate the Westhay. Norfolk Street was an older part of Oxford, with buildings no more than three or four storeys. Its streetlights were still gas, rather than the sharp electric bulbs prevalent through most of the city. The shops and businesses catered for the lower end of the market, while most of the houses had been split into multiple apartments, shared by students from minor families, and young manual workers. I could see that it would be redeveloped within fifty years. The area’s relative lack of wealth combined with the ever-rising urban density pressure made that