Death and the Visiting Fellow

by Tim Heald

  ‘Well.’ There didn’t seem any harm in spelling it out. ‘Suppose she did have an allergy. Suppose Ashley Carpenter knew what that allergy was. Suppose he persuaded you to persuade me to administer a substance to which she was fatally allergic.’

  ‘It’s a lot of “supposes”,’ said Brad. ‘But supposing the suppositions are correct then I guess it could make both of us murderers.’

  ‘I don’t know what local law says,’ Tudor looked thoughtful, ‘but I have a feeling we could both be in trouble unless we’re very careful. Is there anything else you haven’t told me? Because if there is then now’s your chance. Leave it any longer and there may not be another.’

  ‘I’m going to make more coffee,’ said Brad, ‘while I think about it.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dr Tudor Cornwall was blessed with an almost photographic memory for odd details. At school and university he had suffered in comparison with some rivals whose memory was perfect. In those days of learning by rote, the ability to spout great chunks of Othello or French irregular verbs after a single sighting was priceless. Tudor had never possessed this gift and though it paid handsome dividends in three-hour exams without source-books or other cribs, he had doubts about its efficacy in the longer game of life itself.

  He realized very early, however, that those blessed with this all-embracing blanket recall often had difficulty in distinguishing wood from trees. In fact not remembering everything could be turned to his advantage. If you only remembered a few things you had to be selective; you learned to prioritize. He also learned that when it came to the detection of crime and deduction in matters criminal, it was very often the tiny things that made the difference – the dog that did not bark in the night, the speck of mud on the trouser turn-up, the tell-tale give-away of a dropped aitch or glottal stop too far. Tudor therefore acquired the habit of memorizing what to others often seemed trivial but in his experience frequently proved crucial.

  And so it happened this time. It was the odd, quirky detail that he had noticed and squirelled away. At the time it had seemed a matter of no moment but with the passage of time, as so often happened, it was the one clue which might wrap the case up. ‘Ignore the obvious,’ he told his students, ‘and observe the igniter.’

  ‘Igniter’ was a technical term, he told them, but not being a scientist himself, he was content to know simply that it meant ‘a person or thing who ignites.’ He thought of the igniter as the unsuspected catalyst, the hidden key, the unexpected answer, the missing piece of the jigsaw. This time he had observed an igniter, filed it away and committed it to the memory.

  He did not want to run the risk of his telephone conversation being overheard. He was becoming paranoid about such things, his conspiracy theory working overtime. So he took his mobile into the nearby park and called international enquiries to ask for the number of Beaubridge Friary in Oxfordshire. A few minutes later he was talking to their Brother Barnabas. The community was, it turned out, fully computerized. All their records, including mail-order sales, were on file. If Dr Cornwall cared to call back in an hour’s time, Brother Barnabas would have been able to run a check and produce the information he wanted. Not a problem, and while he was on the phone might he say how much he admired Dr Cornwall’s essay on ‘Crime and the Clergy’ in the Tablet? Tudor effused in return. He never ceased to be amazed by crime fans.

  He went back to his room to collect his thoughts, but before he got there he had an idea, changed tack and went to see the Principal.

  Dame Edith was working on papers. Tudor gained the impression that it was therapy rather than real life, rather like her painting of the echidna. He had a sense of pieces of paper being shuffled from one pile to another in a sort of academic-bureaucratic game of patience or solitaire. After an hour or so, the papers would be in exactly the order in which they started out but the Principal’s nerves would have been soothed and her feathers unruffled.

  ‘I need your help,’ he said.

  ‘Such is life,’ she said, putting down her fountain pen and adjusting a green eyeshade like a golfer’s visor which, presumably, was protecting her eyes from the glare of the electric light.

  ‘I want an address for a student.’

  ‘Most students live on campus,’ she said.

  ‘This one is in digs. Or has an apartment. Something. It might be in addition to a room on campus. It might be illegal, but if Lorraine was as omniscient as I sense she was then it’ll show up in her files.’

  ‘I have a copy of most of her electronic material,’ said the Dame. ‘Don’t be fooled into thinking that my extreme age is any sort of barrier to my technological competence.’

  She smiled. Her computer was on a side table.

  ‘Who do you want?’

  ‘Elizabeth Burney.’

  ‘Oh dear. She’s in college though, surely?’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  The Dame pressed some buttons, moved her mouse around a foam rubber map of Australia and frowned.

  ‘There’s an address downtown. Very irregular but everything about that girl is irregular.

  ‘Why do you need to know?’

  Tudor swallowed hard. Keeping secrets hadn’t done him much good so far.

  ‘When Ashley disappeared he’s supposed to have sheltered in some mountain hut. I don’t think he did.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Various reasons,’ said Tudor, ‘including not least what I’ve sensed are Ashley’s increasingly sybaritic tastes and inclinations. I don’t see him chilling out in some primitive shack with no central heating, hot shower, breakfast in bed and all that. But the clincher’s Basil.’

  ‘Ashley’s dog?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Perhaps you could explain?’

  ‘Ashley was devoted to the dog. If he’d been in some rural fastness he’d have kept the dog for company and no reason why not. If he abandoned the dog he did it because whatever retreat he had actually found wasn’t dog-friendly. Like a small apartment in a high-rise building downtown.

  ‘Does Elizabeth Burney’s downtown address fit that description?’

  ‘It could,’ said the Dame wearily. She read it out and Tudor made a note.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked, sounding plaintive and tired.

  ‘I think little Miss Burney is a manipulative little minx and that Ashley is going through a particularly traumatic male menopause. Beyond that I’m not sure.’

  ‘So what exactly are you going to do?’

  ‘Something,’ said Tudor. ‘I’ve spent too long in not very masterly inactivity. Actually I’m going to phone a cab, go round and have a word with little Miss Burney.’

  The Dame sighed.

  ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘My understanding was that you were an academic not action man. Academics are supposed to spend their time in quiet and serene contemplation.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Tudor. ‘But needs must.’

  She rang for a cab and the company switchboard said a car would be at the front gate in five minutes. Tudor thanked the old girl. He felt sorry for her. She obviously craved serenity and quiet. Jobs like hers were supposed to be gentle retirement posts, and while the modern world imposed innovative burdens to do with red tape and fund-raising there was nothing which said that the heads of university colleges had to deal with sudden death and professors who staged fake disappearances, tried to bamboozle Visiting Fellows and generally cause confusion and dissent.

  The cab driver was inclined to be talkative, but Tudor’s grunts and monosyllables seemed to shut him up. He wondered if it was time to ring Brother Barnabas, his new friend at Beaubridge Friary, but he decided not to chance it but leave it till after he had investigated Miss Burney’s town residence.

  The building was high rise by Hobart standards which Tudor put at around fifteen storeys max. The front doors were locked but unattended. This was not the sort of building which boasted a uniformed concierge or even a
surly porter you could rouse from sleep. The individual apartments had entry-phones and 8b, presumably on the eighth floor, indicated that the occupant was E. Burney. He hesitated about buzzing, but reckoned he had no alternative. If she didn’t let him in he’d talk to DCI Sanders and come back with a search warrant. Well, that was the theory. Back home in Casterbridge he knew the police well enough to be able to stretch a point on the few occasions he had cause to ask. He wasn’t sure about Tasmania but he had hopes of Sanders.

  He buzzed. There was a longish pause. Then a girl’s voice came crackling down.

  ‘Christ, you’re late and now you’ve forgotten your key. God you’re useless.’

  Tudor smiled. It was time his luck turned. He said nothing but pushed the door open as Elizabeth Burney unlocked it from her eighth floor eyrie.

  The hall was drab, featureless. A chained bicycle was propped against a wall. The paint was pale green and peeling. The floor was lino and curling at the corners like an old ham sandwich. A police poster appealed for help in finding a missing person, female, seventeen years old. The elevator was basic but gave every evidence of functioning so Tudor got in and pressed eight.

  She was standing in the doorway of her flat wearing a man’s shirt several sizes too large which came down to her knees and a pair of plastic flip-flops.

  For a moment Tudor thought she was going to try slamming the door in his face.

  ‘Shit!’ she said, flatly. ‘It’s not you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, not meaning it. ‘Your man’s obviously been detained. I’d say he had an increasing amount on his plate. May I come in?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

  She stood aside and shut the door behind him.

  The place was small and had a transient feel.

  ‘Mind if I use the loo?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she said again, robotically. ‘Why not?’ Tudor wondered if she were high. She had a druggy look to her and at their previous encounters she had seemed positively sparky. Now she seemed spaced out.

  The toilet was in the same room as the shower and wash basin and he found what he was looking for: a chunky male razor, shaving soap, two toothbrushes. Was it jumping to conclusions to guess that they belonged to Ashley? He supposed so. The place had the feel of a seedy hotel room, the sort of accommodation in which men might pitch up at short notice for short stays and where the provision of basic shaving and toothbrushing kit was a sensible precaution. They could be anybody’s. Was Elizabeth Burney on the game? Just throwing the occasional trick? It was how some girls paid their way through college, especially if they had expensive habits. Tudor was only too well aware of this from his experiences back home at the good old Wessex Uni. No reason why things should be drastically different out here, down under. How on earth could someone like Ashley have got mixed up with a girl like Elizabeth? Don’t ask. Happened all the time. It was a sad cliché.

  All this clattered through his brain in the time it took to have a quick pee, take in his surroundings and flush the loo.

  She was smoking a cigarette when he came out.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked. ‘Or a glass of red?’

  He was coffeed out.

  ‘Glass of red,’ he said, ‘provided it’s not sparkling.’

  She produced a half-empty bottle of something basic and poured two glasses.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘You tell me what’s going on,’ he said. ‘I know nothing. Nobody tells me anything at all. Worse than that there’s been a deliberate attempt to make an idiot of me ever since I arrived here. Maybe before. And it’s all orchestrated by your beloved Ashley Carpenter.’

  She took a gulp of wine and made a derisive, dismissive noise which was half cough, half snort.

  ‘Ashley is not beloved but he’s a pushover and he could be useful. A girl needs all the help she can get in my situation. As a matter of fact, your friend Ashley is pretty disgusting. But that’s a condition of most men at his time of life. You should know.’

  She gave him a lip-curling look and blew cigarette smoke down her nose.

  ‘He stayed here when he was staging his brilliantly amusing “disappearance?”’ said Ashley.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, disdainfully. ‘He really did fool himself he was going to rough it up on the mountain. In some ski-hut or other. No way. He made it as far as the building, took one look and got me to pick him up. Tough luck on Basil. He can’t stay here. No pets allowed. And look at it. You couldn’t have a dog in here. Especially a Basil!’

  She sniggered.

  ‘So Ashley was shacked up here with you all the time he was supposed to have vanished.’

  ‘There’s no law against it,’ she said. ‘And if you think he’s making you look stupid, look at what I’m doing to him. He doesn’t know where he is. One minute he’s having sex with the Lolita of St Petroc’s and the next he’s being reported for harassment. Cool.’

  Tudor almost felt sorry for his old friend.

  ‘But what happened to Lorraine’s not cool,’ she said sharply. ‘That’s gross. Was it an accident? I don’t like it. If it wasn’t an accident I want out. I’ll do most things but not if means someone getting hurt. Much less killed. That’s not so funny. So I need to know: was it an accident? Or what?’

  There was a noise off. Key in door. They both turned, Tudor stepping back out of sight so that when the newcomer entered he saw only Elizabeth.

  ‘Hi, sweetie!’ said Professor Carpenter. ‘Sorry I’m late. Hard day at the office.’

  Then as Tudor stepped out of the shadows he managed, with a barely perceptible pause to articulate a credibly unsurprised, ‘Oh Tudor, old bean. Fancy seeing you here. I’d no idea you and Lizzie had become so intimate so quickly. You always were a fast worker, you old dog. Eh?! I take off more than my hat!’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There was another bottle of vinegary red in the cupboard and presently all three had a glass in hand. Ashley and the girl were smoking.

  ‘Right,’ said Tudor. ‘Payback time.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand what’s going on,’ said Ashley.

  ‘Do shut up,’ said Elizabeth, ‘and grow up. You’re old enough to know when you’ve been found out.’

  ‘Shut up yourself,’ said Ashley petulantly. ‘I’m telling you, I don’t know what this is all about.’

  Tudor pulled out his mobile.

  ‘In a minute,’ he said, ‘I’m going to make a phone call which may just provide the missing link in this peculiar chain of events. The igniter. But first let me recap.’

  He had their attention. The impending unexplained phone call intrigued both of them. Ashley seemed truculent. The girl subdued.

  ‘I don’t pretend to be happy about any of this,’ said Tudor. ‘I thought you asked me here because it would be enjoyable and relaxing and academically stimulating.’

  ‘Oh do cut all that old boy Oxford crap,’ said Ashley, nastily.

  ‘You used to be an absolute sucker for old boy Oxford crap,’ Tudor reminded him. With justice.

  ‘Sucker’s the mot juste, old bean,’ said Ashley.

  The girl gave Tudor a look which said that she’d had her doubts but that the Professor of Criminology had finally flipped.

  ‘OK,’ said Tudor. ‘You set me up. I still don’t properly understand why but you asked me out here in order to humiliate me. You staged a vanishing trick and challenged me to solve the problem. When I couldn’t, you thought you’d use it as a stick to beat me with and demonstrate that I was no good at my job, couldn’t tell a motive from an alibi, didn’t know my Holmes from my Watson, thought DNA was the same as DIY and was just a bogus academic. Or words to that effect.’

  ‘Very good, old boy,’ said Ashley. ‘Very good. First class in fact.’

  ‘The trouble was,’ Tudor ploughed on, ‘that you weren’t content with your rather feeble practical joke. You decided to dabble in a more serious sort of crime. You’d b
een having an affair with Lorraine Montagu and she was becoming more and more possessive and more and more demanding, wanted to settle down, wanted to marry, and then God help her, got pregnant.’

  This looked like news to Elizabeth Burney. She stared at Ashley and shook her head. ‘Arsehole,’ she said.

  ‘So,’ continued Tudor, ‘you decide that your mistress and your unborn child are better off out of the way, particularly as you have now embarked on a sordid little relationship with one of your students. A relationship which seems to have turned your head somewhat, just as relationships like this so often do when they concern dirty old men.’

  He wished he didn’t so often catch himself sounding prissy. The girl was right. He had a strong element of potential dirty-old-mannism himself. Just because he managed to keep it in check didn’t give him a licence to sermonize sanctimoniously making himself out holier-than-Ashley.

  ‘Now,’ he continued, trying to push his voice into a neutral gear which wasn’t what he felt, ‘because of your intimacy with Lorraine Montagu you knew about her medical condition; you knew that she was mildly asthmatic; but you also knew that she suffered from an extremely rare allergy which meant she couldn’t touch honey. Honey was bad enough, but in a concentrated form such as Royal Jelly it would be lethal. If Lorraine ingested even a small quantity of Royal Jelly she’d choke to death in a matter of seconds and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. No known antidote.

  ‘But you can’t take the risk of administering a fatal dose yourself so what do you do?’

  He had their attention now all right. Much of this was obviously news to the girl. What was news to Ashley, however, was that the game was, if not over or up, at least tilting dangerously away from his initiative.

  Neither of them said anything, so Tudor continued.

  ‘So you persuade wretched little Brad Davey to send me some e-mails telling me to concoct your special recipe for mulled wine to enter in the annual St Petroc wassailling competition. Or whatever. They appear to be signed by you and they have enough message ID, content-transfer-encoding and other easily arranged electronic sender guff to persuade me that the message does indeed come from my old friend and that in the present admittedly perplexing circumstances, I might as well do as I’m being asked. After all, you are my friend, and what you ask seems, though mildly farcical, to be perfectly harmless.