by Tim Heald
‘I’m sorry,’ Ashley frowned at a piece of bacon rind which was refusing to be bisected by his blunt St Petroc’s knife, ‘that I wasn’t here to greet you. But I understand you’ve settled in satisfactorily.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Tudor, ‘quite satisfactorily. Everyone has been very kind.’ This is mad, he said to himself. Why are we mouthing platitudes at each other? Why are we being so polite? What is the point of these civilities?
‘I’m afraid I met with a slight accident,’ said Ashley. He had succeeded in cutting off the piece of bacon and put it in his mouth halfway through the sentence. ‘Some sort of muscle strain. Or pull. Hamstring. Much better now thanks.’ He swallowed, then took a mouthful of coffee from the mug and swallowed it rather too soon after the food to be aesthetically pleasing. Particularly at breakfast. The silent distance of the other Fellows became even more obvious. They were all clearly agog waiting for the Visiting Fellow’s reaction, but they were also, just as clearly, doing a sad ostrich impression. They were so many beaks stuck in the sand while their nether portions waggled, embarrassingly exposed to anyone who happened to be passing by.
‘Muscle strain,’ said Cornwall eventually. His voice sounded strangulated. He poured tea from the pot, added milk and sugar, stirred busily. ‘Hamstring. I’m sorry I don’t quite understand.’
‘Nothing to understand, old boy,’ said Ashley. ‘Went for the usual early morning constitutional. Strained something in the leg. Had gone further than realized. Unable to walk home. Holed up in mountain hut till the leg mended, then sauntered back and here I am. Welcome to St Petroc’s.’
‘It’s a bit late for a welcome to St Petroc’s,’ said Tudor, ‘but it’s good to see you. I’m sorry you’ve been in the wars. I was worried. I think we all were.’
‘No worries, Dr Cornwall!’ The Dame had removed her metaphorical beak from the metaphorical desert and was pushing her chair back preparatory to departure. She seemed satisfied that there was to be no unseemly row or unpleasantness, that the two old friends were going to accept Ashley Carpenter’s feeble explanation for absence without leave, and that college life could continue on a more or less even keel. She dabbed at her lips with her napkin, then rolled it up tidily and threaded it into the silver ring on her side-plate. ‘No worries, no trubs!’ She smiled. ‘Ashley’s far too experienced a bushman to cause us any anxiety even if he can be a little cavalier at times.’ She flashed a school-marmy frown of reproof. ‘Very naughty to run off without telling us, Ashley. Especially with your friend about to descend on us. Caused us all a great deal of inconvenience.’
And she stood up and waddled away, humming tunelessly like an ancient bee.
‘You could have sent a message.’ Cornwall spoke quietly, privately, though he was well aware that he was being listened to by everyone else at the table. Jazz Trethewey was pretending to do the quick crossword on the back page of the Hobart New Frontier. The Axeman was scowling at a half-eaten kiwi fruit. Cornwall himself, shaking slightly he realized to his embarrassment, succumbed to the stress of the moment by spreading a slice of cold toast with some vile but healthy butter substitute and topped it with a thick wodge of marmalade.
‘Message, old boy! I told you I was laid up in a mountain hut in the middle of nowhere. Lucky I knew it was there as a matter of fact. It’s tucked in behind Hop Pickers’ Gully where the college abseiling team train. Luckily they’d left behind about a hundredweight of tinned spam and beetroot so I wasn’t going to starve.’
‘Well I’m pleased you were able to eat,’ said Cornwall, crunching toast himself, ‘and I’m really sorry about the leg. But we, I, was worried. We could have come and rescued you. Air ambulance, dog and sleigh, eight wheel drive... whatever you have.’
His old friend regarded him levelly, appraisingly, and then, as if imparting a confidence, ‘Well, to be honest, old friend, I was grateful for a day or so of solitude. A wee bit of space didn’t exactly come amiss.’
‘But just a message to say where you were and that you were all right... that wouldn’t have been difficult.’
‘And how exactly would I have sent the good news from Hop Pickers’ Gully to St Petroc’s college? Native runner with cleft stick? Smoke signal? Semaphore?’
‘E-mail I would assume,’ said Cornwall, frostily, beginning to add that he’d been busy enough sending e-mail instructions about mulled wine when he was silenced by Ashley butting in with, ‘E-mail old boy? And what makes you think the college abseiling team keep a computer in their hut?’
And when Tudor said, equally icily, ‘Your laptop’, he was met with a glare of disbelief and the words, ‘What on earth makes you think I’d take my laptop for an early morning walk up the Wurlitzer?’
It was a perfectly fair question and one which Dr Cornwall had been asking himself ever since he fielded the first of his recent messages from way out in the ether.
This was not the answer he had been expecting.
Chapter Eighteen
Cornwall was at sea. The rest of breakfast continued in a fashion as resolutely stilted as the initial exchanges between himself and Ashley. Perhaps, he told himself, that was inevitable, given the fact that they were playing to such an attentive audience.
He remembered the British Prime Minister, ‘Sunny Jim’ Callaghan, blowing his re-election chances in the 1970s by responding to an almost complete breakdown of all public services and utilities in his country with the breezy dismissal, ‘Crisis?! What crisis?!’
Disappearance? he said to himself. Death? Wine-tasting? No, no, he must be in dreamtime. Here was his old friend and colleague scoffing an old-fashioned breakfast, cheerily chatting about a country ramble curtailed by an irksome tweak to the hamstring. Meanwhile, the college secretary, his alleged mistress, was lying dead in a down-town morgue.
Cornwall raised the matter albeit tentatively and was rebuffed.
‘Not now, old boy,’ said Ashley. ‘Dame Edith told me but she also told me that the CID were adamant about no-speaks on the subject until further notice. Desolated, naturally, but these things happen and, well, what can one say? Would you mind passing the marmalade?’
Tudor passed the marmalade which was Frank Cooper’s Oxford, complete with a coat of arms indicating that its manufacturers were suppliers of the stuff to Her Majesty the Queen.
‘You and I have to talk,’ said Tudor. His teeth when he said this were not exactly gritted but there was precious little space between the upper and lower sets.
‘We are talking.’ Ashley grinned wolfishly and spooned a large gob of chunky orange preserve on to his plate. ‘Rather iron rations these last few days, I’m afraid. I could eat the proverbial horse.’
Tudor couldn’t for the life of him see what Ashley had to be so cheerful about.
‘I mean talk as in talk.’ Tudor was still on the verge of gnashing his teeth. ‘Meaningful exchange of words. There are things that need explaining.’
‘Oh. If you say so. Never apologize, never explain.’
‘That was George Bernard Shaw in Arms and the Man,’ said Tudor evenly. ‘I’ve always thought it was arrogant rubbish. Like a lot of Shaw.’
‘If you say so. We colonials don’t have the advantage of your erudition. Even if we did attend one of your universities.’
‘I only mean,’ Tudor tried to sound placatory, ‘that we have some catching up to do. I’d like to talk even if it’s only about my classes. The students. The syllabus.’
Ashley crunched on his toast, brushed crumbs from his lips.
‘Not a problem,’ he said. ‘Come to my rooms before lunch. I’m a little behind with several things but then we can catch up. Sure. Fine.’
He took a slurp of coffee, dabbed again at his lips with his napkin, and hurried out, leaving Tudor uncharacteristically slack-jawed.
The whirring of cogs in Tudor’s brain was so deafening that he did not realize that Sammy was trying to attract his attention until the college servant actually tapped him on the shoulder. The room was virtu
ally empty now. Sammy flashed very white teeth, though Tudor was not sure the smile carried any warmth or sincerity. ‘Steady! Paranoia!’ he found himself muttering. You could be over-suspicious in this line of work. Sometimes things actually were what they seemed. Sometimes some people were just trying to be friendly. There was no particular reason to think that Sammy was not on-side.
‘I’m sorry.’ Tudor smiled wearily. ‘I was thinking.’
Sammy smiled more broadly, as much as to say that the condition was endemic to college life and responsible for many of the place’s misfortunes.
‘The police, sir,’ said Sammy, in a stage whisper delivered into Tudor’s right ear at point-blank range. ‘The Chief Inspector is in the porter’s lodge.’ There was no porter’s lodge as such, there being no college porter and no lodge either. It was a conceit of the Dame’s. What Sammy meant was that the Chief Inspector was at the front gate.
When Tudor got to the front gate he found DCI Sanders looking even more absurdly young than he had done the night before. He had obviously slept better than Tudor and had less on his mind. He was wearing jeans and a leather bomber jacket.
‘Do you remember,’ he began without preamble, ‘Violet Kray, the twins’ mum, telling Lord Longford that she knew from the bottom of her heart that her sons, Ron and Reg, would never mix with bad people again?’
‘I’d forgotten,’ said Tudor, ‘but it sounds in character all round. I suppose Lord Longford believed her.’
Sanders laughed. ‘Self-delusion’s fascinating,’ he said. ‘Gullibility in any shape or form. You’d have to be a shrewd old bird to serve in a British cabinet and yet... and what about Violet Kray? Did she believe Ron and Reg would never mix with bad people again?’
Tudor shrugged. ‘Mothers don’t often believe ill of their offspring. Or rather they don’t admit to it.’
‘Mmmm. People are always reluctant to believe bad things about people they love. Is that a truism, or a cliché, or even a misconception?’
Tudor looked at the policeman quizzically. ‘That’s a rather philosophical question for a copper.’
‘Do you think so? That’s sad. Shall we walk?’
They walked.
A few hundred yards down the road, past a corner shop that reminded Tudor of his childhood – all liquorice allsorts and jars of pear drops and barley sugar – there was a small municipal park dedicated to the memory of the Duke of Edinburgh – the Victorian version who had planted the first gum tree here with a silver-bladed spade in 1867. The gum tree had flourished along with a myriad of native and imported species, some determinedly homesick for Old England and others aggressively Antipodean, sui generis, owing nothing to anyone. The garden was neat in the manner of council-controlled open space and yet with a New Frontier element which lifted the dispiriting damper of order, conformity and local politics.
‘He’s back,’ said Tudor, as they passed under the wrought-iron portals and past the statue of the Duke, second son of Queen Victoria who, according to the inscription had not only laid the foundations of this pretty park but had also, in 1862, been elected to the throne of Greece. He ‘declined the dignity.’
‘Declined the dignity,’ murmured Sanders. ‘I wish a few more people declined dignity. Life’s too full of dignity. It interferes with common sense. Who’s back? You mean your friend Professor Carpenter?’
Tudor nodded.
‘You surprised?’ asked the policeman.
‘Not really. But not unsurprised either. Mine is a broadly neutral reaction.’
‘Spoken like a professional,’ said Sanders. ‘Neutrality of reaction is crucial to forensic impartiality. But you’re curious?’
‘Mildly. Not as curious as I would have been. Or as, perhaps, I should be.’
‘Mmmm.’ Sanders was chewing something. Gum, presumably, though Tudor would not have been altogether surprised if it turned out to be a wad of tobacco. He had the look of a baseball pitcher with strong biceps – someone perfectly capable of launching a gob of well-aimed brown spittle at an innocent floribunda in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Memorial Garden.
T really wanted to talk some more about what happened last night. To be honest the disappearance and re-emergence of Professor Carpenter is no big deal. Not at the moment anyway. I’m more concerned that we have a sudden unexplained death.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘Do you want to sit?’ There were park benches all along the paths. Standard issue.
‘I’m happy to walk.’
‘The forensic tests will take time,’ said Sanders, ‘but it seems she choked.’
Tudor agreed.
‘And my experience is that most people don’t just choke. They choke on something. Fishbones, vomit, whatever.’
‘I’d prefer to wait for the lab reports but that’s my experience certainly.’
‘Well,’ said Sanders, slowly, seeming to choose his words one by one like a cautious contestant in some TV quiz game, ‘the tasting had barely started and Sammy was keeping a pretty close eye on everything. He says that Lorraine only had time to taste one sample. And that sample was yours.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Tudor, ‘but I’ve no reason to dispute it.’
‘Hmm.’ The two men walked on in silence. The breeze blew chill off the jagged slopes of the Wurlitzer.
‘So,’ said Sanders, ‘she takes one sip of your concoction, goes into spasms and drops down dead in a matter of seconds.’
‘If Sammy’s right, then yes.’ There was no point in arguing with the obvious.
‘Cause and effect?’
‘Looks awfully like it.’
Sanders hunched his shoulders, the collar of his jacket turned up against the morning cold. A jogger puffed past flat-footed, plugged into a Walkman. His breathing was heavy and a tinny toccata whispered out of his earphones. It could have been anything from Bach to Beatles, Stockhausen to Spice Girls. The man was a disruption to thought and Sanders and Cornwall covered thirty odd yards before either spoke. This time it was Cornwall.
‘If it was my mulled wine that killed Lorraine it must have contained something that was fatal for her but not for anyone else.’
‘That’s a strange remark,’ said Sanders, turning to look at the Visiting Fellow. ‘It was only fatal for Lorraine because she was the only person to drink that particular brew. Everyone else sampled something different.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘That’s what Sammy says.’
‘And you trust Sammy?’ Tudor wasn’t trusting anyone at the moment. He saw conspiracy everywhere. He was feeling persecuted and oppressed, perceived no one as being friend, ally or even moderately well-disposed. Not Sammy; not even Greg Sanders, the bright policeman.
‘No reason not to,’ said Sanders. And if it were accidental death then there was something lethal in your concoction which would have affected everyone in the same way. It was just bad luck for Lorraine that she got there first. Could have been any of you.’
‘But there wasn’t anything universally lethal in my concoction. For God’s sake, I mixed it. I know what went into it.’
‘Not so fast,’ said Sanders. ‘You just said that there must have been something in your drink which would only affect Lorraine. Whatever it was wouldn’t have killed anyone else.’
‘That’s not exactly what I said.’
‘Let’s not quibble.’ Was it Tudor’s imagination or was the Tasmanian policeman becoming hostile? A new sharpness seemed to have entered his voice. ‘If you’re right,’ Sanders continued, ‘then it’s a pretty bizarre coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Well, just for the moment, I do say so.’ They had stopped under a weeping gum. The jogger had disappeared over a herbaceous horizon.
Sanders sniffed the scent of the tree, rapt in thought.
‘Bizarre coincidences happen. Of course they do. But people in our line of work tend to discount them, don’t they?’
‘Professional inclina
tion, certainly. But an academic like myself is more inclined to accept the possibility of chance. Life’s a pretty random business.’
‘Well, I’m a policeman not an academic and just for the moment I’m discounting chance, just as I think you did when you said that whatever it was that killed Lorraine wouldn’t have killed anyone else. I think you meant that whatever the substance was, it was introduced deliberately.’
‘Not an accident?’
‘Not an accident.’
There was a long pause. A magpie warbled. A clock struck the half-hour.
‘So,’ said Tudor, ‘you’re suggesting that it was murder.’
Another pause.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sanders. ‘I’m suggesting that when you just said that your mulled wine contained a substance that would kill Lorraine and only Lorraine, then you were suggesting that the substance was introduced deliberately, with the clear intention of inducing a fatal reaction. Making her choke in fact. That’s not what I said, it was what you were saying.’
Tudor smiled.
‘If you were one of my pupils I’d say you were putting words into my mouth. That may have been what you inferred. That’s not what I implied.’
‘Let’s not split hairs.’ The inspector’s tone was definitely not as friendly as it had been. ‘Forget what you said. Pretend it was a slip of the tongue. Now try this for size.’
Suddenly he had slipped back into the voice of one professional discussing a problem with another.
‘If someone wanted to kill Lorraine then poison is one of the options.’
‘Rare,’ interrupted Tudor. ‘Poisoning’s almost unknown these days. In real life. In real death.’
‘All the more reason for a sophisticated murderer adopting that method,’ said Sanders, ‘and after all, we’re talking university here. If this is a crime it’s not just any old crime. Not even white collar crime. We’re talking high table crime here. Hot stuff. A smart university professor is just the type of person who could come up with a poison that could kill his intended victim but no one else.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Tudor. ‘A Monsignor Knox rule. No one is allowed to introduce a poison unknown to medical science. It’s against reason.’