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at the time, with the family, but I left most of it to Davies. Family is from Rickmansworth, as I recall. His sister is married to a vicar. I suppose we should inform them. Is it my job to call?”
    â€œNo, sir. My assistant, DC Swedenbank, is taking care of that. He will have got the particulars from Mr. Beecroft. We never call. Always send a constable around from the local force. That way there’s always someone there, in case of an extreme reaction. You understand.”
    Like hell he does, thought Smailes.
    Hawken turned to face him directly through a cloud of blue smoke.
    â€œSo anyway, he missed the Finals, obviously, and the committee gave him an aegrotat , no problem about that. But then they decided that he had been so certain to score the highest in his exams that they gave him the research fellowship after all. There were two or three other chaps in the running, too.
    â€œI said nothing at the time, but I wondered if the committee wasn’t backing a bit of a game horse. Wasn’t sure he’d take the pace, you know.”
    Smailes wanted to get the details straight, so he made Hawken go back over them.
    â€œSo, the first suicide attempt was two years ago. He jumped out of a window. The window of the same room he killed himself in?”
    â€œYes, I’m fairly sure,” said Hawken.
    â€œThen he was hospitalized for a time, then returned to the college as a graduate fellow. How had his progress been since then?”
    â€œWell, I hadn’t heard any more about him, so I assumed he was doing all right. Davies was out of the country most of last year, but he took him on again as a tutorial student when he came back. I asked him to let me know if he heard he was having problems.”
    Hawken seemed to find the subject of Bowles unusually irritating. Smailes wondered if it was Hawken’s obvious military training that engendered this attitude towards self-inflicted death, or whether it was really the prospective publicity that was annoying him. He passed by the detective on his way back to the cocktail cabinet, and Smailes could see the fine web of burst capillaries in his cheeks that gave his complexion its unnatural glow. Such faces were usually the product of healthy outdoor pursuits or less healthy indoor ones. Hawken looked the Labrador-and-shooting-stick type, but the way he was waving his decanter around at this time of the morning made Smailes wonder.
    â€œDid he continue to see a doctor, the people out at Myrtlefields?” he continued.
    â€œI’m afraid you’ll have to ask Davies—I’m really not sure.” He held up the sherry decanter and raised his eyebrows. Smailes declined.
    â€œYou know nothing that might have precipitated this act—trouble with money, girlfriends, drugs? Was Professor Davies involved in any special surveillance on this man?”
    Again, Hawken appeared to take offense.
    â€œCertainly not. The college recognizes the privacy of its members—junior and senior—to a very fine degree. If Mr. Bowles was in some kind of difficulty, it would have been up to him to initiate a discussion of the matter with his tutor.
    â€œI had heard nothing which might suggest Mr. Bowles might be about to make an attempt on his life again. But it does seem to bear out my concerns that he was inappropriate material for a fellowship.”
    You bastard, thought Smailes. What if young Bowles didn’t like this bloke Davies. Where did he go then? What role did the tutor play, anyway?
    â€œPerhaps you could explain a little further to me the relationship between the student and the tutor. It might be helpful when I see Dr. Davies.”
    Hawken assumed an attitude of amused tolerance. “Well, it’s a bit old-fashioned, I suppose, but all the men at Cambridge have both a director of studies and a moral tutor. It’s a very long tradition. The director of studies concerns himself with the academic affairs of the student,