Death and the Visiting Fellow

by Tim Heald

  Tudor was about to say ‘I wouldn’t say that’ but thought better of it. She might be old and batty but she had a keen eye and ear for humbug and hypocrisy. So instead, he asked, ‘Lorraine? Tell me more. I don’t know about her.’

  ‘Lorraine Montagu,’ she replied. ‘My ears and eyes. Lorraine is called “the college secretary” but that does her infinitely less than justice. She is the one who really runs this place. Without her it would all grind to a halt. She is the most efficient person I’ve ever met. And one of the most sympathetically observant. She says very little but she misses absolutely nothing.’

  ‘And she and Ashley...?’

  She sighed. ‘I’m too old to know or care about that kind of thing,’ she said, ‘I can only surmise... Oh, please, I’m tired... go and organize that wretched dog and I’ll talk to Lorraine.’

  Organizing the dog was a problematic task. However, despite his snarling disregard for the college Principal, Basil seemed, as far as Dr Cornwall was concerned, eminently biddable. The only real problem was that from somewhere among the shrubs beyond the rosebed he had retrieved a mouldy old lawn tennis ball which he was treating like a cross between a bone and a boomerang, alternately worrying it with a growly wagging of the head and laying it at Tudor’s feet, and then retreating so that the Visiting Fellow could throw it away for him to retrieve.

  Ashley must be a softer touch than I thought,’ said Tudor. Considering that he had spent a whole night on the chilly Wurlitzer the dog seemed remarkably sprightly. Tudor supposed he had better feed him. The college kitchen would presumably have some scraps. He decided to wander across and see what he could rustle up. Dame Edith had told him he could come and go as he wished and that the catering manager or one of his staff would let him have any basics he wanted such as tea bags, instant coffee, bread or marmalade. There was a modest kitchenette in his quarters and although he was expected to eat lunch and dinner, especially dinner, in college at High Table there was a dispensation over breakfast. Tudor was grateful for this. He was not at his best at breakfast.

  The college kitchen was preparing lunch when he got there. A Chinese chef was stir-frying rice dextrously in an industrial-sized wok and sundry students were earning much needed pocket money slicing salad vegetables. One of them looked up and smiled flirtatiously. It was Elizabeth Burney.

  ‘Why, hi!’ she said. ‘It’s Doctor Cornwall. And you’ve got Basil with you! What have you done with his master?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything with his master,’ said Tudor, grumpily, irritated to find himself attracted by the girl’s slightly brazen sexuality. He liked to think of himself as discreet and sophisticated when it came to women. He wasn’t supposed to be turned on by a tarty little number like this. It was like being found ogling a page three girl when he was claiming to be fascinated only by the mature charms and sophisticated conversation of university professeuses.

  ‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘Basil and Professor Carpenter are usually inseparable. Still, Basil seems to have taken to you all right.’

  This was true. The dog had brought the tennis ball with him and kept dropping it between Tudor’s toes and backing off in an anticipatory crouching position hoping that he would kick it away so that he could run it to earth and bring it back for a repeat. The ball was already sodden with saliva and almost certainly broke all known health and safety regulations here in the gratifyingly sterile-seeming kitchen.

  ‘I’m looking after him till Professor Carpenter gets back,’ he said, ‘I think he could use some food and drink. I’ll lay in some supplies but I must confess this wasn’t something I was expecting.’

  ‘What do you think Basil would like?’

  ‘Meat and biscuits. Water. Maybe a bone.’ He smiled despite himself. ‘Dogs are pretty basic animals and Basil gives me the impression of being a pretty doggy sort of dog. I’d say he’s a meat and biscuit bloke. Bones too. I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t pretty heavily into bones.’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘Nothing fancy,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask Stephen. I don’t think he’s going to offer us any of his special fried rice but I’m sure we can manage a basic Basil lunch. Will he eat here or do you want a take-away?’

  ‘I’ll need a couple of bowls,’ he said. ‘So if you can manage a take-away I guess that would be good.’

  She nodded and went over to the Chinese chef who paused from his wokmanship, looked over at Tudor and Basil, grinned and nodded, then said something to the girl who nodded and grinned back.

  ‘He says he’s got tons of tinned Spam which he keeps for emergencies like nuclear holocausts and stray dogs,’ she said. ‘The biscuit will have to be cheese crackers. The water’s no problem. Tasmanian tap water’s high grade stuff. And there are beef bones in the fridge. He’s making stock later.’

  ‘Serious chef,’ said Tudor approvingly. ‘Please thank him and say I’ll introduce myself properly when he’s not stir-frying.’

  A few minutes later Elizabeth came back with a large plastic carrier bag. ‘Two bowls,’ she said, ‘two cans of Spam, one packet of water biscuits and a dirty great beef-bone. I assume you have access to a tap so you can provide your own water.’

  He thanked her in a politely formal way which he hoped would make her think he was probably gay. Basil wagged his tail.

  ‘See you later,’ said the girl, and Tudor wondered whether it was just a figure of speech. He had a nasty feeling she might have something definite in mind. She was trouble, no mistaking the fact. Bloody Ashley! He could kill him.

  Always supposing he wasn’t already dead.

  Chapter Nine

  Basil enjoyed his Spam and water biscuits, slurped down some water and then took his bone into a corner where he gnawed it noisily.

  Tudor looked on approvingly. He liked his dogs doggy.

  A note had been pushed under the door. It was from Dame Edith.

  Lorraine Montagu says she could see you at noon. Please could you be good enough to phone her on 0012. Edith.

  He looked at his watch. It was ten to twelve already. Oh well, why not? If she was or had been having a relationship with Ashley she might be able to shed a little light where at the moment he saw nothing but gloom. And if the Dame was right she might be able to give him a better crash course on college life, criminal or otherwise, than he had had so far. Too much shade and not enough light.

  He debated whether or not to take Basil along on his piece of rope but the dog looked perfectly content with his bone.

  ‘Stay there and mind the shop,’ he said, ‘and no crapping on the carpet.’

  Basil glanced up and continued chewing.

  ‘Wish he could talk,’ murmured Tudor to himself, slamming the door behind him and taking the stairs two at a time. But even if the dog could go into the witness box what could he say? He would have been bundled into the Land Rover for a morning walk from Parsnip Field Road to High Falls. Perfectly conventional morning constitutional. Then at the Falls Carpenter tethered him to that tree up on the plateau. Basil obviously trusted his master completely so he wouldn’t have complained. But if Ashley was continuing on his walk why would he abandon the dog? Basil was a muscular Aussie blue heeler in the prime of life. He would have coped with a strenuous bush walk at least as well as the professor.

  In any case, Tudor wasn’t convinced that the dog had spent the night on the mountainside. Had he done so he would have been in a much worse state than he actually was. Wouldn’t he? And wouldn’t he have been found earlier? The track to the Falls was a popular walk and even during the week there would be reasonably large numbers of people.

  Surely someone would have heard the dog’s barks or whimpering. After all he and Karen White had heard him easily enough. So if this line of thought was correct the dog wouldn’t have been tethered to his tree until twenty-four hours after Ashley went missing.

  And why would Ashley go missing just as his old friend and colleague was arriving from England? It didn’t make sense.

  The harmle
ss, workaday explanation was that Ashley had driven up the mountain one morning and simply decided on the spur of the moment to carry on walking. But that didn’t explain the dog. Nor, really, the mobile phone and the laptop. You wouldn’t encumber yourself like that on a spur-of-the-minute bush-walk, would you? No, it seemed more and more probable to the Visiting Fellow that his friend had been abducted against his will. His captors had clearly got the laptop and the phone but there was no way of telling whether they or Ashley were sending the e-mails. He sighed. Oh well, early days. He just wished his friend and host would reappear. Quickly.

  These thoughts occupied Tudor’s mind all the way across to the college office. Inside, a female receptionist in a maroon blazer with a white shirt and a maroon tie that matched the blazer, flashed a dazzling set of teeth and told him that Mrs Montagu was expecting him. He frowned. He didn’t know why but he hadn’t been expecting a ‘Mrs’. The girl motioned him towards a closed door on which he knocked. The answering ‘come in’ came almost at once and he walked into a large, light, airy office with some well-stocked bookcases, some passable watercolours of eucalyptus landscapes with big sky and far horizons, and a big uncluttered desk with a bowl of mainly red roses that looked freshly cut.

  She stood to greet him and Tudor immediately recognised her as ‘Ashley’s type’. His too, of course. They had always shared similar tastes in women, ever since Miranda all those years ago at Oxford. She was a big-boned athletic type just the attractive side of horsy. Tudor put her in her late thirties, though she could just as well be a mid-forties person who took good care of herself. Her smile was relaxed and natural enough but something about her expression and a slight puffiness made him wonder if she had been crying.

  ‘Doctor Cornwall,’ she said. ‘How nice. Ashley told me so much about you.’

  Tudor smiled. He was on the point of saying something to the effect that Ashley hadn’t told him anything at all about her but he didn’t. Instead he muttered something mildly fatuous about hoping that Ashley hadn’t told the truth. She didn’t give the impression of listening, though this wasn’t, he thought, through lack of interest. She was clearly sizing him up, but some sort of flak detector had obviously seen an empty pleasantry coming and told her to pay no attention.

  She motioned him to one of two capacious armchairs and sat down in the other crossing her legs which were long and agreeably shaped though sensibly surmounted by a tartan kiltish skirt and terminated in stylish but equally sensible black patent leather shoes.

  ‘Dame Edith seemed to think that I could help,’ she said.

  ‘She seems to think you have your finger on the pulse of the place,’ he said.

  She gave a little laugh.

  ‘I used to think that was true,’ she said, ‘but I’m not so sure any longer. Especially since Ashley... since Ashley went off.’ Her composure was teetering on the brink. The lips quivered a little and she definitely dabbed at an eye as if wiping away an unwanted teardrop.

  Tudor said nothing and a slightly embarrassing silence ensued. Eventually she broke it.

  ‘You know about me and Ashley?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know anything about Ashley and you,’ he said, ‘but I’m beginning to guess.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s just the sort of thing he would say,’ she said.

  ‘So are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to go on guessing?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve been very discreet,’ she said. ‘In fact I don’t think anyone in the college even suspected. But, well, we’re engaged to be married. Just as soon as my divorce comes through. It hasn’t been easy I can tell you. Dame Edith is eagle-eyed and she’s also a tad censorious. This is a religious foundation as she never tires of telling me. She doesn’t approve of relationships between unmarried members of staff and even less when one of them is married to someone else. Which is what I am. I mean, I’ve been separated for years but technically speaking I’m still, well, married to someone else. So Ashley and I had to keep a low profile.’

  Privately, Tudor couldn’t help thinking that his old friend would have much preferred it that way. Ashley was, on the whole, a low– profile man. Especially when it came to sex. He guarded his privacy.

  ‘Ashley and I are going to get married,’ she said, blushing like a young girl, and Tudor felt like blushing for her. Ashley was even less likely to get married than he himself. Ashley simply wasn’t husband material. The phrase ‘confirmed bachelor’ had acquired a mildly pejorative homophobic connotation which certainly didn’t fit Ashley. But in its old-fashioned sense that was exactly what he was. It would have to have been a guileful and single-minded woman who would persuade Ashley Carpenter down the aisle. And he didn’t think that was Lorraine Montagu. She seemed too uncomplicated which, he guessed would have been one reason Ashley would have been smitten with her.

  “Forgive me,’ he said, ‘but I understand that Ashley was the subject of sexual allegations made by a number of students.’

  She seemed disconcerted though only for a moment. ‘Dame Edith told you?’

  ‘Only that. She didn’t seem to believe it.’

  ‘I should think not. It’s all been got up by that little slut Elizabeth Burney. It’s her pathetic attempt to discredit Ashley’s investigation of the college thefts. She knew the game was up and this is the only way she can save her skin.’

  ‘Not very nice.’

  ‘She’s not very nice.’

  ‘You don’t think there’s anything in it?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know Ashley. Quite apart from the fact that molesting students simply isn’t Ashley’s style, there was no conceivable reason for it. He’s being well looked after in that department.’

  ‘Sex?’

  She flushed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sex.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tudor, ‘I’m not being prurient. It’s just that I’m concerned. In fact I think we’re all concerned.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Am I right in thinking that Ashley was often used by the Dame and the college as a sort of unofficial police force? As a sort of academic investigating authority?’

  ‘You could put it like that. We much prefer to deal with disciplinary matters internally. The last thing we want is the police coming in and–’

  ‘Nasty, boorish, incompetent reactionaries trampling on academic and intellectual sensitivities?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You implied it.’ He raised his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘I’m not criticizing: it’s the way we try to do things at Wessex. Most institutions would like to do the same, don’t you think?’

  ‘I think we understand our problems better than any outsider possibly could.’

  ‘We all think that. But you have a particular understanding. One that is denied to others.’

  She looked reproving.

  ‘I’m not claiming special powers or abilities,’ she said, ‘but the nature of my job means I know a great deal about the individual circumstances of our students. If I’m correct my duties are a combination of what in the UK would be performed by the dean and the domestic bursar. I do discipline and I do money.’

  ‘As well as counselling, care in the community, therapy.’

  ‘That’s for individual tutors. We have a system of “moral tutors” so each student has his own personal friend in the teaching body. I’m responsible for some people’s moral welfare. So is Ashley and Jazz and Brad and Tasman and everyone. It’s divided up.’

  ‘But you do everyone’s money and everyone’s discipline?’

  ‘Subject to council’s agreement. We’re very democratic.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said, and when she gave him another of her hurt, ‘you don’t believe what I’m telling you’ looks, he repeated what he’d said earlier, that he wasn’t being hostile, just trying to find out as much as possible in as short a time as he could.

  ‘What strikes me,’ he said, following on this emollience, ‘is that if you and Ashley were
an item in a personal sense, you must have been a powerful force in the life of the college. You have the knowledge and the executive powers to discipline. Ashley, in effect, has the powers of a private police force with none of the restraints that a real police force operates under in a democratic society.’

  ‘We are a democratic society,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Tudor, beginning to lose patience. ‘Of course you’re not. It’s not a criticism, just a statement of fact. What makes you and Ashley unusual is that between you, you really have the place sewn up. Getting on the wrong side of you is worse than getting on the wrong side of the law. It’s like getting on the wrong side of the Gestapo.’

  ‘That is offensive,’ she said, ‘and unfair.’

  ‘Put it another way,’ he said. ‘You and Ashley are powerful figures in your own right but as a team you’re more than powerful. And that sort of power breeds resentment.’

  ‘No one knows we are a team.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Tudor, almost adding ‘if it’s true that you’re a team.’ Of course he had his doubts. Ashley simply wasn’t a team player.

  ‘Was Ashley unpopular?’

  She considered this for a while. ‘On a personal basis, yes, I’d say very. But you’re right. His position did make people suspicious of him. And the new generation don’t seem to be as law-abiding as they used to be. And Ashley sets a lot of store by being law-abiding. You have to in a small community like this.’ Tudor smiled to himself. Ashley hadn’t been like that when he was a student himself. Age played discomfiting tricks. He wasn’t at all sure that young Ashley would have cared for old or middle-aged Ashley. Or vice versa.

  ‘Putting it bluntly,’ he said, ‘do you think anyone could have disliked Ashley enough to kidnap him or even to kill him?’

  She sniffed.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose I do.’

  Chapter Ten

  Basil was still at his bone when Tudor returned.

  ‘Knick knack, paddywhack!’ said the Visiting Fellow.