by Tim Heald
She shook her head ruefully.
‘It’s not too late.’
‘I suppose not. But you, too, you have things you need to discuss with your old friend.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He had much more to discuss with Ashley than the old girl realized, ‘Later this morning. Shouldn’t you talk to Jazz?’
‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about. Not if I defer my retirement. Which I have to do.’
‘And the police. They have to be talked to.’
For a moment Cornwall was afraid Dame Edith was going to crumple. There was a momentary unstiffening of the lip, a moistness of the eye, but in seconds she pulled herself together.
‘The police,’ she said. ‘I detest having the police on campus. It’s an invasion, an intrusion. Our privacy is being violated.’
Cornwall felt obliged to venture a protest.
‘Dame Edith,’ he said, ‘there was a violent and unexplained death in the college less than twenty-four hours ago. That’s a police matter. You know that. You’d be much more concerned if the police weren’t here doing a difficult job to the best of their ability. I’m sure they appreciate your concerns. I think they’re well aware of the special nature of the college and all it stands for. Nevertheless in a well-ordered society we need a responsible police force. They’re here to enforce the law which is the difference between a civilized society and chaos.’
For a moment he was afraid he had jeopardized the cordiality built up over the last few moments, but to his relief, she laughed and said simply, ‘For a second I’d forgotten your calling in life, Dr Cornwall. You can keep that sort of lecture for your first-year criminal studies students.’ Then, growing serious, she looked at him pleadingly, and said, ‘You do think it was an accident, don’t you?’
Cornwall looked her in the eyes and knew she didn’t think it had been an accident either.
‘Murder,’ he said. ‘That’s what I think. Proving it will be something else again. But now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a class to teach.’
Oddly, she seemed reassured by this, and he left feeling he had done a good deed, though little clearer in his mind about what exactly his old friend Ashley Carpenter was playing at.
Chapter Twenty-Two
He read his class the first short story of G.K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown. There were a dozen students and they seemed pleasantly baffled. From time to time he stopped to ask them what the author meant by phrases such as ‘He was smoking a cigarette with the seriousness of an idler’ or a ‘celibate simpleton.’ The answers were fumbled but polite. He got the impression that they were enjoying the sound he was making and were indifferent to the meaning of the words he was using. The class had never heard of a Eucharistic Congress and were unfamiliar with Liverpool Street or Hampstead Heath. Cornwall, in this faraway place of which he knew less and less, was soothed by such references and by the gentle surreality of Chesterton’s conceits.
‘So,’ he said, when he had finished, ‘the myopic little priest from Essex has proved superior to Valentin, head of the Paris police, the most famous investigator in the world. What do you make of that?’
There was a silence. Elizabeth Burney was not in this class. Cornwall was not sure whether she should have been. In fact, he had a very imprecise idea of who should be there. Attendance at class seemed to be a more elastic concept than what he was used to. ‘What’s myopic mean?’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Short-sighted. Father Brown was short-sighted. At least he affected short-sight. Remember, Chesterton tells us that he can’t tell one end of a railway ticket from another. Personally I suspect that he wasn’t as short-sighted as he makes out. It’s a classic disguise, isn’t it? It makes us believe that he was a simpleton. Any physical disability has the same effect on the onlooker, wouldn’t you say? Despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, we equate physical inadequacies with mental ones.’
There was a certain amount of shuffling and staring at the floor. Every one of the students had a writing implement poised above a pad or notebook of some kind but very few had actually written anything.
‘You know,’ he tried again, ‘that if you’re confronted with someone in a wheelchair you’re inclined to talk very loudly or very slowly because you think their comprehension has been impaired just like their mobility.’
‘Stephen Hawking’s in a wheelchair and he’s just about the cleverest man in the world,’ said a boy in a vivid check shirt with a close-cropped head and rings through his nose.
‘Yeah,’ said a girl with thick glasses, ‘but Hawking admits that if you have slurred speech people think you’re mentally deficient. Which is why his speech synthesizer is so brilliant.’
‘Who’s Stephen Hawking?’ asked a blonde at the back.
‘He wrote A Brief History of Time, dumbo,’ said the youth with the ringed nose.
‘What does any of this have to do with the stuff Tudor’s been reading us?’
Cornwall seized his chance. Not patronizing students was a cardinal rule. They had a limitless capacity for surprise as well as disappointment. He thought of saying that this class looked so stupid that they couldn’t possibly have heard of Stephen Hawking but thought better of it.
‘Chesterton,’ he said, ‘created a detective with very short-sight, a vacuous expression and a clumsy manner. He also made him a Roman Catholic Priest. Then he christened him Brown, which is as ordinary and unremarkable a name as you can imagine. It’s such a good disguise that even Valentin, the world’s greatest policeman, and Flambeau, the world’s greatest criminal, are fooled. They don’t realize that Father Brown is actually a great detective.’
One or two of the class scribbled a sentence or so. Tudor wondered what.
‘At the time,’ said Cornwall, ‘purists complained that Father Brown flouted all the conventions and relied on something totally different – a combination of intuition and priestliness. How does he know in that story I just read you, that the priest isn’t really a priest?’
The boy with the rings stuck up a hand and when Tudor nodded he said, ‘Because he attacked reason and he said that was bad theology.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Cornwall, pleased. ‘Only someone who knew their theology would have spotted that. And how many real-life police detectives know anything about theology? Or modern fictional ones come to that?’
A slim, sexy figure slipped into a seat at the back of the room and put up a hand. Elizabeth Burney.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I was working the breakfast shift. Are you saying you solve mysteries by guesswork?’
‘I’m saying,’ Tudor spoke deliberately, choosing his words carefully, ‘that a hundred or so years ago, G.K. Chesterton could invent a more or less plausible detective who solved many of his crimes by what modern professional detectives would describe as guesswork. But we have to remember that Chesterton’s generation didn’t have the scientific apparatus available to us in the twenty-first century.’
‘So,’ smiled little Miss Burney, ‘there’s no room for hunches and guesswork any longer?’
‘I didn’t quite say that,’ he said. ‘You’re putting words into my mouth. What I am saying is that the successful detective in this or any other age is like the creative artist. He has to be capable of leaps of the imagination which even he or she may not fully understand.’
‘So who killed Mrs Montagu is down to guesswork?’
She smiled, a picture of innocence.
Cornwall was determined not to be fazed.
‘We shouldn’t be talking about the tragic death of Miss Montagu so soon after the event. However, since you raised the matter, I’ll make one point and one point only: the modern, real-life, professional detective will determine the cause and circumstances of death according to scientific evidence. Chesterton’s Father Brown would have come to his conclusion in a quite different, almost spiritual manner.’ He looked at the girl meaningfully. ‘But I’m quite sure they would both have got there in
the end.’
She simpered but said nothing.
‘I’d like you all to have read at least half-a-dozen Father Brown short stories by the time we next meet,’ he said, ‘and I’ll expect you to be able to produce a convincing critique of his methodology. If that’s what it is.’
He snapped his book shut.
‘And now, I’m sorry, but I have an appointment,’ he said.
Actually he had ten minutes or so before he was due to meet Ashley but he needed to collect his thoughts by pacing about in the quad. Reading Chesterton and Father Brown reminded him, inevitably, of the words of Monsignor Ronald Knox.
There once was a man who said God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.
Knox, he recalled, had propounded the Decalogue, that famous and witty set of ten commandments for those who wrote detective fiction. Unlike Father Brown he was a real-life Roman Catholic priest. Also unlike Father Brown, he wore his cleverness on his sleeve, flaunting it for all to see. Ashley, he remembered, always disliked Roman Catholics, having been brought up a Methodist. He also affected a disdain for fictional crime, much preferring the real thing, whereas Cornwall tried to keep the two in balance. It was this compound of fact and fiction which made his criminal studies course so unusual if not unique.
How odd of God, he thought to himself, gazing up at a huge eucalyptus in the centre of the quadrangle. Gum trees were so profoundly un-English. Why had God put them on this side of the globe and not the other? Why had God put him into this situation? Had God put him into this situation? If he were Father Brown or Ronnie Knox he would have sought Divine inspiration but, in truth, his religious tendencies were agnostic. ‘Sorry God!’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I believe in you. Particularly now. You’ve sent me halfway round the world in order to fall out with my oldest friend... no, that was an exaggeration. Maybe it is too early to tell but it is not looking good.’
He tried rehearsing the impending interview.
‘Now look here, Ashley, there’s no one else to hear, so you can be absolutely frank. If there’s something on your mind you can tell me. After all, we’ve known each other long enough. No secrets between friends as old as us, surely?’
That wouldn’t quite do.
He tried again.
‘Ashley, I haven’t told a soul about those peculiar e-mails you sent when you were missing. Don’t ask me why not but I felt I owed you something. I’m not so sure now. Explain, please. Surely you owe me that.’
That wasn’t right either.
Ashley, you were having an affair with Lorraine Montagu. You instruct me to mix a mulled wine brew. She takes a gulp and drops down dead. The following morning you reappear as suddenly as you vanished. I think you’ve got some explaining to do.’
That was nearer the nub of the matter.
He could add in some stuff about Elizabeth Burney.
‘And the college has one girl who seems to be the ultimate kleptomaniac, nymphomaniac and heaven knows what else. Who seems to have got himself entangled with her but you? What do you mean by it?’
While he was at it he could take the offensive over the vanishing trick as well.
‘You invite me all this way and do a bunk leaving me to be met by this kid called Brad Davey who hasn’t a clue what’s going on any more than I have. So what in God’s name is this all about?’
Tudor smiled to himself. There was God, creeping unbidden into his thoughts again. There was no keeping the Almighty at bay sometimes. But whatever else He might be He was not one of the Great Detectives. Part of Great Detection was trying to discern God’s purpose. Indeed, you could argue, could you not, that in that sense God was on the opposite side to the detective. He had all the answers, yet concealed them from sleuths amateur and professional. Tudor would have liked the sort of hotline to God enjoyed by Fathers Knox and Brown, but this was not vouchsafed him, precluded by his innate scepticism.
‘Oh God!’ he said, out loud, and laughed.
But it wasn’t a laughing matter. His best friendship was in jeopardy. A woman had died suddenly. He was implicated, was withholding information, possibly vital. In a few minutes he had to get the truth out of Ashley and he didn’t know how.
Ashley, old friend, you’re not yourself. Tell me what’s wrong. I want to help. I’m your friend. Tell me, Ashley.’
Could Jazz Trethewey’s truncated allegation in the greasy spoon be true? That Ashley had lured him here in order to make fun of him, to ridicule him for his Pommish pomposity? That wasn’t much of a joke. Maybe Tudor had lost his sense of humour. He had to concede that it had never been at its strongest when he himself was the butt of the joke. But who in the world really was good at laughing at themselves? And what was the nature of the joke? OK, Tudor, here’s a real-life mystery, get off your academic high horse and solve something real for once. Maybe. But Ashley was a crime academic too. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw bricks. If he was making a point about ivory tower dwelling, dreaming-spired university professors being out of touch with the real world, then he was the wrong person to make it. He was as much of a dreamer as the rest of his profession.
He tried once more.
‘The truth, Ashley. Just tell me the truth.’
All those years ago when they had been undergraduates together they had been honest with each other, never told lies, never kept secrets. They had known each other inside out and that had formed the basis for a life-long friendship.
Hadn’t it? Well, hadn’t it?
Chapter Twenty-Three
His plans proved futile as, on reflection, they usually did where Ashley was concerned. However well laid they might be – and these weren’t – Ashley always seemed to take the initiative. It had been ever thus. Tudor had never noticed this before but now for the first time in their long relationship he was suspicious and questioning. Suddenly everything that he had taken for granted seemed disturbing and odd. Rightly or wrongly the trust was gone. Even a smile or a handshake was a cause for concern. He didn’t like it.
‘Tudor, old bean!’ said Ashley, standing in his open doorway with Basil wagging his tail at his feet. He had always called Tudor ‘old bean’ at university though neither man could remember exactly how or why. Something to do with having read Frank Richards’ Greyfriars stories as boys.
‘Ashley, old fruit!’ said Tudor, through force of habit rather than conviction. This too had been his greeting to his friend when they were students and they had gone on like it ever since, though not, for preference, in front of other people.
‘Come in, come in.’ Ashley was warm as an open fire though Tudor, in his new mood of wariness, wondered if he wasn’t one of the modem generation of gas jobs, the ones with the movable lumps of uninflammable coals that looked just like the real McCoy until you threw a cigarette end or sweet paper on to it. Warm but artifically so. More light than heat.
‘I’ve got a bottle on ice,’ said Ashley. ‘A sparkling red infuriator. All the rage in these parts.’
Tudor recognized the prancing stallion logo of the Rymill winery. Their fizzy Shiraz was becoming as ubiquitous as the spooky Elizabeth Burney.
‘Ah,’ he said.
Basil jumped up at him, tail wagging ferociously.
Tudor bent down and scratched behind the dog’s ears.
‘G’day Bazza!’ he said. ‘Who’s a good boy?’
‘Basil seems to have taken a shine to you,’ said Ashley. He didn’t sound very amused about it.
‘He’s been a good friend right from the moment we met. Gave me a really warm welcome. Which is more than can be said for one or two others.’
Tudor could hardly have been more pointed but Ashley did not acknowledge the rebuke. Instead he said, ‘Take a pew. Have a drink. Relax. Put your feet up.’ He cleared a pile of papers from the sofa and gestured at the vacated space. ‘Make yourself at home.’
&
nbsp; ‘Thanks.’
Having surrendered the initiative, Tudor reckoned the best stance was the staccato or even the silent. If he said nothing or as little as possible there was a greater chance of Ashley saying something which with luck would turn into more than he intended. Particularly if he were feeling guilty.
Ashley proffered a glass of sparkling red. They both said ‘Cheers’ and sipped. Tudor stayed stumm and after a pause Ashley said, ‘I suppose I owe you an apology.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Tudor, wishing he hadn’t. It sounded sarcastic. Silence would have been better. He kicked himself metaphorically.
‘Well, I’m sorry. Though it seems you’ve been well looked after.’ Tudor obeyed his own instructions to himself, had another sip and frowned into his glass.
‘The fact is that I needed some time and space.’
A long and awkward silence which gave them both time and space.
Basil whimpered.
Ashley filled the gap.
‘I’ve been having a difficult time.’
Tudor had no immediate wish to make it easier.
‘Women for one thing.’ Ashley looked sheepish. ‘Never a very strong point with me, as you know.’
Tudor said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. The matter of Ashley and women was not something that had ever caused him loss of sleep or even an idle moment. Not that he was a prey to many idle moments.
‘You had it off with Miranda didn’t you?’
This did demand some sort of response, a question coming from a long way left of centre and a generation too late.
‘You what?’ he said, idiotically.
Ashley stared at his glass and reddened as if in sympathy.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said.
‘Well it obviously does.’ Tudor frowned. This was ancient history, another world, another life. Sex had barely been invented and neither had experienced any with Miranda. That was the point. It was this shared failure which had spawned their relationship. But it no longer had anything to do with anything. At least not as far as Tudor was concerned.