An Advancement of Learning
All is not well at Holm Coultram College.All is not well at Holm Coultram College: lecturers having affairs with students, witches’ sabbaths, a body buried under a statue.Detective Superintendent Dalziel, despite his cynical view of academics, doesn’t feel murder fits in here – let alone a rash of killings. But when he and DS Pascoe are sent to investigate a disinterred corpse at Holm Coultram College, that’s exactly what they find…
Читать An Advancement of Learning онлайн беплатно
REGINALD HILL
AN ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1971
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN 9780586072592
Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN 9780007373987 Version 2015-06-18
Contents
⦠to have the true testimonies of learning to be better heard, without the interruption of tacit objections, I think good to deliver it from the discredits and disgraces it hath received, all from ignorance; but ignorance severally disguised; appearing sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines; sometimes in the severity and arrogance of politiques; and sometimes in the errors and imperfections of learned men themselves.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
There had been a great deal of snow that December, followed by hard frost. A few days before Christmas a thaw set in, temperatures rose steeply, the snow became slush. The sun greedily sucked up the moisture till it saturated the air and impinged on all the senses.
Fog.
You could smell it in the great industrial towns, its edge of carbon and sulphur biting into the windpipe.
You could see it clearly wherever you looked. But it was all you could see.
You could taste it if you walked out in it without a scarf or kerchief wrapped round your mouth.
You could feel it, damp and greasy, on your skin. Almost under your skin.
And you could hear it. No sound passed through it that it did not muffle and crush and make its own.
It made driving difficult but not impossible. If you drove with care, if your motivation was strong and impelling, it was possible to get to your destination.
Flying was impossible.
Airport lounges filled. And overfilled. And over-spilled. Till the atmosphere of damp and smoke and noise and frustration was almost as bad as the fog outside.
Occasionally it raised itself off the ground. Sometimes long enough for a plane to taxi out on the runway. Sometimes long enough for a plane to get away, which made the waiting even more unbearable for those still crammed in the restaurants, bars and lounges.
Confusion breeds confusion. People found themselves separated from their baggage, their tickets, their passports and sometimes even other people. Some went home and bought a frozen turkey the next day. Some cancelled their flights at the airport, some claimed refunds later. Passenger lists became as scrappy as leaves from the Delphic oracle.
Finally a light wind breathed out of the southwest a couple of times and brought back the reassuring stars.
It was a warm wind. It blew gently over half of Europe, melting what remained of the great snows at sea-level.
Higher up, however, it proved more difficult. Which was good, for it was the snow that most of the thousands marching in still dubious queues across black, wet runways were seeking.
But sometimes the windâs breath blew long enough and hot enough to loosen the grip which the long, frozen fingers of snow had fastened on the side of steep and deep.
Which was bad.
