“Then the last time you saw her was ...”

“The Sunday before she dis-disappeared.”

“Why didn’t you simply tell me this on Saturday when Claire James said Athena had an attachment to you?”

“Because I didn’t h-have an attachment to her and it was m-most embarrassing.”

“I’m afraid embarrassment is not the issue in a murder case. Professor, if you can try to remember even one of your conversations with Athena Popolous in which she mentioned a name or plans she may have had, I’d be most grateful. Ah, here is Miss Twyler and Miss Home with the tea. I’m afraid I really can’t stay after all.”

Livingston gave his regrets to Val, aware that apologies were totally unnecessary. In the car he hesitated at the end of the driveway as he weighed his options. He was anxious to see if the lab had any further results of forensic tests performed on Athena’s body. He also wanted to pay a visit to the headmaster of St. Polycarp’s. The headmaster won.

Livingston had always felt that Reginald Crane was a man supremely equipped for his job. St. Polycarp’s, after all, was a one-year or even one-term school. Students came and went, some soaking in the cultural experience of studying in the Oxford community. Others, like Athena Popolous, were sent there under protest and never participated in the town life around them. Reginald Crane was aware of the student jokes about the narrow beds, threadbare blankets, and antiquated furniture. He serenely dismissed the complaints. ’Toughen up the spoiled kids,” he had once confided to Livingston. “Budget’s small enough. I’d rather spend it on offering them a wider variety of courses.”

A different man might have chafed under the endless change in the student body and the impossibility of creating any real esprit de corps such as a four-year college engendered. And yet many former students did show up for their ten-year reunion, however informal it really was. When they came they still joked about the facilities yet seemed to be aware that their stay at St. Polycarp’s had been, after all, a broadening experience. Crane had managed to gather together a superior staff of teachers, despite the relatively low pay.

Livingston was ushered into Crane’s private office, a wood-paneled room covered with bookshelves whose volumes testified to the scholarly mind of the headmaster. In his early sixties, Crane looked like a human thermometer, with his pencil-thin body, ruddy complexion and generous head of silver hair.

Livingston apologized for the intrusion. “Don’t like to simply burst in,” he explained as he sat down in a reasonably comfortable chair near Crane’s desk. In Livingston’s eight years in Oxford, he and Crane had become close friends.