Death and the Visiting Fellow

by Tim Heald

  ‘I wish you could say something intelligent,’ Tudor said and couldn’t help smiling when the dog gave him the sort of glance which managed to imply that if it was intelligence that was in question he could give as good as he got. Speech, he seemed to be suggesting, was a much over-rated commodity.

  Outside, the sky was clear and the air bracing. Tudor identified Ursa Major, Orion and the Southern Cross, which was more or less the extent of his stellar capability. The Milky Way looked preternaturally, well, milky. The atmosphere was less polluted down here but they were right under a hole in the ozone layer. Win some, lose some. Cornwall didn’t spend a lot of time contemplating the future of the planet or of mankind. The study of crime was essentially the study of individuals, not Big Bangs. Therein, for Tudor, lay its fascination.

  They were just walking under the creeper-covered archway that led into the main quadrangle when Basil who had been lolloping around in a doggy fashion, sniffing at the odd bush, cocking his leg against trees and walls and generally doing the blokeish things one expected from a blue-heeler cross, suddenly stopped in his tracks and started to growl at a recessed doorway. Cornwall sensed the hackles rise on the dog’s back and felt a corresponding tickle in his own spine. The moon had gone behind a cloud and it was momentarily quite dark. Then the cloud passed, the dog growled with what sounded like real menace and a shaft of light illuminated the face of a figure in the doorway. Elizabeth Burney.

  ‘Hi, Doctor Cornwall,’ she called in a coquettish stage whisper. ‘Are you still looking after Professor Carpenter’s Basil? Cool. Hi, Basil!’

  Basil stopped growling, went up to her, tail wagging, and allowed his head to be patted.

  ‘That’s real cute,’ she said. ‘Professor Carpenter must be lost without him.’

  ‘With or without him Professor Carpenter seems to be hopelessly lost. What are you doing? Surely you should be in bed asleep? Or burning some midnight oil. Don’t students have essay crises any more?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. ‘What’s been going on? I saw Dr Simkiss and a police car and an ambulance. Someone was taken away on a stretcher. I’m frightened. What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s nothing whatever to do with you,’ said Cornwall, not believing a word he said. ‘And if I were you I’d cut along to bed and get a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she said, ‘I really am. I don’t like to be on my own. I don’t feel safe. First Professor Carpenter vanishes and now this.’

  ‘Now nothing,’ he said firmly, not believing what she said any more than he believed what he said himself. Elizabeth Burney wasn’t lurking in dark doorways late at night because she was frightened. If she was really frightened she’d be tucked up in bed with a good book and a hot drink. Or, given her reputation, with a protective male for company and safekeeping.

  ‘As soon as I’ve given Basil his exercise I’m going to bed myself and I strongly advise you to do the same.’

  ‘Can I come too?’ she giggled sexily, not sounding even remotely fearful. And before he could protect himself she had flung her arms round him and was hugging him in a tight embrace.

  Seconds after she had made this move there was a bellow from the shadows and Cornwall found himself transfixed in the glare of a bright spotlight. Basil gave out an angry yelp and bounded towards the source of light, clearly intent on defending his temporary master and the importunate college tart. Cornwall realized with a sinking heart that he had been set up.

  ‘Christ! You bastard mutt! Get that dog off me, Cornwall!’

  Basil was clearly doing a good job. Tudor thought he recognized the rambunctious voice of Tasman Penhaligon, the green axeman, and was not displeased to register the fact that he appeared to be experiencing pain.

  ‘He’s not my dog, Penhaligon,’ he called, ‘I’ve no control over him whatever.’

  ‘Bastard!’ hissed Penhaligon. ‘He’s bloody lucky not to be decapitated. You British shit! I’ll have your arse for after, guts for garters, brains for…’

  ‘Sounds as if Basil has your ankles for hors d’oeuvres,’ said Cornwall. ‘Why don’t you advance and be recognized and explain what the hell you’re playing at?’

  Attack best form of defence; old British maxim. It seemed to work. Tasman Penhaligon lurched out of the shadows with the dog appended to his lower left leg like some grizzling, wriggling growth. Basil was clearly not going to let go in a hurry and it must have been a relief to Penhaligon to be wearing thick sensible trousers. He held a torch in his left hand and, true to form, a hatchet in his right.

  ‘What in heaven’s name are you doing with that axe?’ asked Cornwall, incredulous.

  Penhaligon did not seem abashed but shook his leg furiously in a vain attempt to dislodge the limpet-like hound. Basil hung on.

  ‘Get that dog off!’ Penhaligon was growling himself.

  ‘Drop, Basil! There’s a good boy.’ It was the girl who spoke. Basil, with Penhaligon’s leg still in his jaws, gave a valedictory flurry of shaking, making a defiant ‘wirra-wirra-wirra’ noise, and then backed off still glowering up at his quarry. Elizabeth Burney obviously had a way with dogs, or at least with Basil. Even in this curious and possibly tight spot Cornwall was impressed and also intrigued.

  There was a moment’s silence during which the collective collection of wits was almost tangible.

  Then all three spoke at once.

  Cornwall said, ‘What on earth are you doing wandering around college with that axe?’

  Penhaligon said, ‘What’s your game, pommy son-of-a-bitch bastard?’

  Elizabeth Burney said, Tm going to bed.’ There was another pause and then Penhaligon said, ‘I’m duty tutor which means I’m responsible for the college’s safety and security, which means I do the rounds to make sure everything’s properly safe and secure. Like in bed and asleep.’

  ‘With a bloody axe?’

  ‘I’m a bloody axeman. If I find someone here who shouldn’t be here I have to have a means of defence. We have a crime situation here in Tasmania. These guys carry knives and guns and believe me they aren’t afraid to use them. I have a right and you’re effing lucky not to feel the sharp end of it. Hadn’t been for the girl here there’s no telling what could have happened to you. And you’d have no one to blame but you. Horse-shit!’

  He had bent down to rub the leg from which Basil had just become detached and realized that his hand – the one holding the torch – was covered in blood.

  ‘That rabid beast of yours has drawn bloody blood.’ He aimed a kick at Basil which the dog easily evaded.

  ‘You shouldn’t be out and about with a weapon like that.’

  ‘Who the eff says? I’m on college property. The Principal knows I’m armed. Who the hell are you to tell me what I should be doing?’

  ‘You seem to forget that I’m a Reader in Criminal Studies. As such I’m required to know the law. If you hurt someone with that axe it’s anything from assault to grievous bodily harm. If you kill someone, it’s murder.’

  ‘Wanker! It’s self-defence. And you may be a Reader in Criminal Studies but you’re just like your friend Carpenter. Criminal studies, my arse! You’re only here for the sex. Well, those days have changed, my friend. We take a strong line on sexual harassment here in Tasmania. You may think we’re a load of primitive savages descended from people you transported out here a hundred and more years ago but I’m here to tell you that when it comes to civilized behaviour you’re the primitive savages and we’re the ones with the Nobel Prize for ethics and female emancipation. So what exactly were you doing trying to rape one of St Petroc’s girls in the middle of the night?’

  ‘He wasn’t trying to rape me, Dr Penhaligon,’ said Elizabeth Burney, slightly unexpectedly. ‘Now I really am going to bed. Alone. And I suggest you two do the same. Also alone. Jesus! Men!’

  And before either man could do anything to prevent her, she was striding defiantly away in the direction, presumably, of her room. After a moment of hesitat
ion, the dog followed her. Tudor thought of remonstrating but decided it would seem undignified, besides which he had no more claim on the dog than anyone else. Basil clearly had a mind of his own and he was exercising it. In any case, Basil was the least of his worries and could perfectly well be sorted out in the morning. If his real master never returned he was sure a dog of his character would have no shortage of offers. Still, it was interesting that he should have followed little Miss Burney without a murmur. She herself had made no discernible effort to suborn him. Basil had gone entirely of his own accord.

  Maybe the girl just had that sort of effect on people. On animals. Maybe she was not the scheming, manipulative little vixen which Cornwall assumed she was. Perhaps she just had personal magnetism.

  ‘That seems an entirely sensible suggestion to me,’ said Cornwall. ‘It’s well past all our bedtimes.’

  The words could not have been better calculated to annoy an already infuriated not to mention wounded Tasmanian academic with an axe in his hand. Words, however, failed the green doctor.

  It was also evident that this altercation, brief though it was, and conducted throughout in histrionic stage whispers had the inevitable effect of waking one or two people up. Lights were flicking on all over the place. Curtains and blinds were being drawn and raised. At one window the stout, squat and unmistakable figure of the Principal herself could be seen blinking out into the darkness of the quadrangle.

  ‘Is that you, Tasman? Is there any problem?’ she called.

  ‘All well, Dame Edith. Just fell over a possum trying to get into the pantry.’

  Despite himself, Tudor Cornwall was impressed by Penhaligon’s self-control and powers of invention.

  ‘See me in the morning,’ called the Dame imperiously, ‘and don’t make such a din. Possum or no possum.’

  Cornwall used this intervention to slip away quietly. He had no wish to prolong the discussion, much less to end up on the wrong end of the axeman’s axe. He doubted whether even an uncouth ape like Penhaligon would have risked wounding him with what was almost certainly a well-honed blade, but he certainly wouldn’t have been surprised by a blow with the blunt end. Or even just a kick or punch where it would hurt most. If he really was the duty tutor it would presumably be easy for Penhaligon to manufacture excuses.

  So Tudor Cornwall returned dogless to his room with much to ponder. He would like to have slept but found it impossible, at least at first. Instead, he poured himself a stiff duty-free Famous Grouse and sipped it while he stared thoughtfully at the ceiling of his impersonal guest room and pondered the events of the last few hours, wondering whether he might take the first available plane home but realizing gloomily that he would almost certainly not be allowed.

  That baby-faced Chief Inspector would refuse him permission to leave – in the nicest possible way, of course, and making it clear that he was entirely at liberty to do as he pleased. That might have been true when there was only a disappearance to investigate but now there was a death and Doctor Cornwall was a witness.

  He was experienced and alarmed enough to realize that he might also, even, absurd though it might seem, be a suspect.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tudor Cornwall was not a breakfaster. His constitution was such that he preferred to stick to liquids – sweet Indian tea with milk, followed around mid-morning by black coffee, preferably not instant – until other people’s lunch. That was his breakfast. Sometimes orange juice came into the equation but not often.

  At home where he lived off-campus, on his own, in a penthouse flat, overlooking the West River, this was perfectly possible. Here, in Hobart, as a guest in college, he felt obliged to at least go through the motions of conventional breakfast which was taken in Hall along with the rest of the college. This, in a ritual piece of lip-service to democracy, included students but the Fellows took their meal at High Table where they were waited on by a couple of regular maids under the beady supervision of Sammy. They ate the same food and drank the same drink as the students but they did not have to help themselves. In a perverse way this emphasized the inequality of college life far more than if, as in the old days, they had taken their breakfast in the privacy of the senior common room. Then they were merely unequal. Now they were seen to be unequal. Far worse.

  Tudor did not want breakfast. He had gone to sleep late and slept fitfully. He had allowed himself a second scotch which he now regretted. All he wanted now was a strong mug of milky Twining’s Darjeeling with two or three lumps and the Times crossword. What he emphatically did not want was Dame Edith, the Mad Axeman, the febrile Professeuse du Vin or even the lugubrious Brad. He did not relish the thought of tables full of young men with baseball caps turned back to front and nubile Elizabeth Burneys in over-tight vests. Nor did he fancy yoghurt, prunes, rubbery fried eggs and frazzled bacon. Not even toast and marmalade. At least, however, there would be tea.

  He caught the World Service news on his ancient much loved Roberts transistor and was at once homesick yet thankful not to be home with its doleful mixture of Irish bombs, railway disasters, Manchester United victories, gales, floods and a government ban on a new magazine which was expressing a point of view with which the government did not agree and was therefore categorized as inciting people to something illegal. Tudor was British to his fingertips and yet he despaired of the place. Even crime seemed to have gone downmarket. It was not just that nobody had butlers and libraries any longer nor that hereditary peers had been more or less expelled from the House of Lords. In fact he was ambivalent about domestic servants and the hereditary peerage and although passionate on behalf of libraries he believed in books for all. Despite all this he liked an elegance or originality in crime. He was not snobbish in the way that Dorothy L. Sayers had been, but he shared the belief of P.D. James (who had been wilfully misunderstood) that common or garden crimes committed by habitual and petty criminals were, on the whole, uninteresting. Interesting crime was crime committed by people who were not habitual criminals. On the whole this did not include the senior common rooms of even dim universities. This meant, as far as he was concerned, that common room crime was, ipso facto, more interesting than crime in the Crumlin Road or crime in Kinshasa. He was well aware that this attitude infuriated soi-disant radicals and bien-penseurs. This didn’t bother him. Part of being a proper academic or intellectual was the ability to think in a way untrammelled by fashion. He was not so bigoted that he dismissed all political correctness out of hand, but he most certainly did not accept it because it was deemed correct by some mythical majority. It was his job to think the unthinkable and the trouble with his home country was that it seemed to be having increasing trouble in accommodating people like himself. It was becoming a country of over-zealous bigotry cloaked in bogus moderation. The result seemed to be increasing violence and philistinism.

  The morning’s World Service therefore compounded the dissatisfaction and unease left over from the events of the previous night. He nicked himself shaving which made him even tetchier, especially as he didn’t notice a second cut on his neck till too late and got blood on his collar which meant discarding an otherwise pristine shirt. He also had a hole in his right sock which made him ponder the wife question as he did so often. Wives took care of socks and shirts, didn’t they? If so, shouldn’t he have one? No, he was too set in his ways to live with anyone again. Bad enough to have to share breakfast with his fellow Fellows. To have to share it with the same person day in, day out for the rest of his life... He shuddered, tightened his tie, ran his comb through his obstinate hair for a third time, dusted non-existent dandruff from his jacket shoulders and lapels and set off to face the world.

  Don’t be so bloody negative, he said to himself as he descended the stairs. Whistle a happy tune. One more step along the way we go.

  As the result of which he entered Hall with a light tread and the suspicion of a smile on his face. No sooner had he entered the college’s glorified works canteen than the first turned to lead and the
second was wiped off his face before it had properly emerged. The students were all in place and as expected with the baseball caps and the vests deployed in the prescribed manner. At High Table the Principal and the Fellows were all sitting in their usual places consuming their usual breakfasts in their more or less usual way, though even a casual observer might have observed a certain tension in the air. No one spoke. The atmosphere was conveyed entirely by a stiff apprehension in the body language.

  The cause of this departure from normality was sitting at one end of the High Table laying in to a plate of fried eggs and bacon. As Tudor entered he looked up, grinned as if he had not a care in the world, wiped a smudge of yolk from his upper lip with a damask SCR napkin and said, ‘Tudor, my dear fellow! How good to see you!’

  It was Ashley Carpenter.

  The rest of High Table stared at their plates with rapt concentration. This was bogus, of course. The St Petroc Fellows were mesmerized by the meeting of the two old criminologist friends but they were determined not to be involved. They were spectators, but in order to be effective spectators they had to keep their heads down and out of the line of eye contact. Tudor recognized this. He also realized that if his old friend was halfway through his bacon and eggs he must have been at table for some little time. It looked as if everyone else had been there for a while too. Sammy was always there well before the meal began. In other words there must have been some form of confabulation. Not for the first time Tudor felt the victim of a conspiracy, but the nature of the conspiracy still eluded him.

  ‘Ashley!’ he said, and then, fatuously perhaps, but unable for the moment to think of anything more imaginative or profound, he said, ‘Good to see you too.’

  He wasn’t sure that he meant it.