Death and the Visiting Fellow

by Tim Heald

  ‘What I don’t know, and nor does little Brad, is that your mistress has this fatal allergy to one of the ingredients you’ve carefully stored in the drawer of your desk at St Petroc’s. Which means that the Royal Jelly seems no more sinister to me than the wattle berry or kangaroo dung, or any of the other Waltzing Matilda bush tucker ingredients you’ve dreamed up. Nor to Brad.’

  Ashley and the girl stayed silent. Ashley was looking at the floor, truculence suddenly evaporated. Elizabeth Burney stared at him with dawning horror.

  ‘So come the fatal evening,’ said Tudor, ‘I’ve mixed my evil potion; taken it to the refectory; handed it over to Sammy who sets the whole thing in motion. Then, hey presto, Lorraine takes a mouthful, fails to detect the Royal Jelly whose flavour, such as it is, has been crowded out by all the exotic spices of the outback, and has departed this life in a matter of moments. And Ashley is far from the scene of the crime, innocent as the day is long.’

  Ashley spoke. His voice had shrunk and gone strangely tinny.

  ‘Even if any of this were true,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t prove a word.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tudor, ‘because the instructions came from Brad and the mixing was done by me, and you’d deny all knowledge of everything. I wonder if you were going to claim that the whole business was a miserable accident, or whether you were going to try to pin a murder rap on me.’ Tudor sighed. ‘We’ll never know, will we?’

  ‘It’s complete rubbish,’ said Ashley. ‘The sort of thing only a tenth-rate British academic could dream up.’

  ‘It’s not, is it, Ashley?’ The girl looked at him piercingly. ‘He’s telling the truth. It’s crazy but it’s true.’

  ‘Even if...’ said Ashley. ‘Even if there was a scintilla, an iota of truth in this whole idiotic concoction there is absolutely no way in the world that you could possibly prove a thing. A thing. Not a thing.’ He shook his head with manic certainty.

  ‘Now.’ Tudor looked at his mobile as if it were the key which was about to unlock a wardrobe of skeletons and a cupboard of clues. ‘That phone call,’ he said. ‘Time I rang the friary.’ And he jabbed at the buttons, memorized like other apparent trivia by his eccentric brain.

  ‘Brother Barnabas please,’ he said, registering his audience’s incomprehension, and then, after a momentary wait, ‘Brother Barnabas. Tudor Cornwall again... you were going to check the records to see whether... yes, that’s right, Tasmania... yes... oh, good... how very efficient... the 7th of last month... six weeks ago... and you sent them by courier... paid by Mastercard... uh huh... just one packet... I agree, it does seem a small order considering the delivery charges but I dare say he didn’t need, well, never mind... and you can supply all the documentation?... Excellent... A favour?... The annual Friary dinner... St Francis’s day next year... I’m sure that would be wonderful but could you possibly send me a formal letter at the university?... Yes, Casterbridge and the zip... oh, OK. Thank you, you’ve been most helpful. And good morning to you too!’

  He put the mobile back in his pocket and smiled wolfishly at Ashley.

  ‘Charming fellow,’ he said. ‘Had you neatly logged into his system. Funny, isn’t it? I was lecturing on Chesterton and Father Brown; talking about deceptive appearances; how Brown got away with murder – well, the antithesis of murder I suppose – by wearing a dog collar and looking simple. It’s part of “Crime and the Clergy”. Well... I could go on but let’s just say that Brother Barnabas is absolutely up to speed and he has your purchase of a small packet of Royal Jelly capsules meticulously logged and catalogued. No room for doubt. Chapter and verse all there.’

  Tudor smiled at them both.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what about that then?’

  ‘Well what about it?’ Ashley sounded belligerent but uncertain. ‘So someone claiming to be me ordered a packet of Royal Jelly capsules from some dinky monastery in Mother England. So bloody what?’

  ‘So Lorraine Montagu was killed by ingesting Royal Jelly at a wine-tasting at St Petroc’s college, Hobart, Tasmania. And a month or so earlier, her lover, Professor Ashley Carpenter, has ordered a small packet of Royal Jelly capsules. He is a Fellow of St Petroc’s college, Hobart, Tasmania. I could go on. Need I?’

  ‘Circumstantial,’ said Ashley. ‘You’d never stand it up in court.’

  ‘I think most juries would convict,’ said Tudor. ‘I’d call Brother Barnabas. He’d make an excellent impression in the witness box. The forensics by which you set such store would be unassailable. Brad Davey–’

  ‘Brad Davey would be in shreds,’ said Ashley. ‘Counsel for the Defence would have him for breakfast. Spit him out into the public gallery.’

  It’s not a game,’ said the girl, staring from one to another in disbelief.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Ashley looked thoughtful. ‘Do you remember an essay you wrote called “Would Lady Macbeth have got life?”’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That always got up my nose,’ said Ashley. ‘Professor Bingham was completely taken in by it.’

  ‘Professor Brooke said the evidence of the Thane of Cawdor was tainted.’

  They both smiled. The years rolled back. ‘You’re mad,’ said Elizabeth Burney. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Ashley, ‘that you expect me to say that it’s a fair cop.’

  ‘No.’ Tudor thought for a moment. ‘I’d never expect you to say anything like that. But I think you murdered Lorraine Montagu. And I think we’ve got the proof.’

  ‘An awful lot hinges on your mad monk.’

  ‘He’s not mad and he’s not a monk. He’s a Franciscan friar. In any case you did it. You’re admitting it. In front of a witness.’

  Ashley poured them all another glass of rotgut.

  ‘Even if I were to admit it I don’t think Elizabeth would testify. Would you darling?’

  The girl stared at the ceiling and pouted. ‘I might,’ she said, ‘I might not. It would depend.’

  ‘On what?’ Tudor was genuinely intrigued. ‘It would depend,’ she said, ‘on all kinds of things. The highest bid I suppose. But I don’t have to decide in a hurry, do I?’

  The two men looked at her. She seemed devastatingly old for her age.

  ‘Now who’s playing games?’ asked Tudor.

  She smirked.

  ‘We’re all playing games,’ said Ashley. ‘That’s what this is all about. You, Tudor, you’ve been playing games ever since we first met. And you’re good at it. Brilliant in fact. You’ve made a whole life out of death but you’ve never had a serious thought in your entire existence. People like you make a mockery of reality. Pain, grief, misery... they’re all a joke as far as you’re concerned. Human beings are just playing cards or counters on a board. Mister Bun the Baker. Professor Plum with the lead piping in the library.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ said Tudor. ‘You’ve just killed a woman you loved and you accuse me of playing games.’

  Ashley exhaled. ‘I remember P.D. James saying the perfect murder was pushing your husband over a cliff on a Sunday morning walk. Maybe she was right. Simple is best. I was too byzantine to use your sort of smart-arse word. Too baroque. I should just have pushed Lorraine through a window or under a car.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Tudor. ‘Have you always hated me? Underneath all that bonhomie and affability? Have you always seethed?’

  Ashley smiled. ‘No, no, dear boy. It’s only a game.’

  Tudor did not smile.

  He let himself out.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The police received Dr Cornwall’s report with only moderate enthusiasm. At university a favourite mark of Cornwall’s had been alpha gamma on the grounds that it was as far removed from dull competence as it was possible to be. He encouraged his own students to aspire to something similar but he was careful to advise them that most employers much preferred pure beta. As far as he was concerned the average policeman came into the pure beta category. Its defenders wou
ld say that the mark suggested competence. Tudor preferred second-rate.

  The forensic evidence is clear,’ said Sanders sitting at his soulless desk in his soulless office looking out on a view which had changed from monochrome to technicolour.

  The sun was shining. The sky was blue.

  ‘She was killed by an intake of Royal Jelly which was contained in the drink you mixed,’ continued the DCI. ‘You’re telling me that you introduced the killing agent on instructions which purported to come from Professor Carpenter but actually emanated from Bradley Davey.’

  Tudor had written a summary of what he had to say but Karen White was still doing her pert stenographer’s act.

  That’s about it,’ he said.

  ‘Sounds pretty thin when you express it like that,’ said Sanders.

  ‘You mean implausible,’ said Tudor.

  ‘I said thin,’ said Sanders, ‘and thin is what I mean.’

  ‘I beg to differ.’

  Sanders shrugged.

  ‘I have to ask myself two questions,’ he said. ‘The first is do I believe your explanation? And the second is will a jury believe it? What do you think, Karen?’

  The girl echoed her boss’s gesture of defeat.

  ‘I guess I believe Dr Cornwall because he’s like, well, believable.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s pleased to hear it,’ said Sanders drily.

  He turned back to Cornwall. ‘There’s a lot going on here,’ he said. ‘Your friend Carpenter is getting pressured by Lorraine Montagu so he decides the easiest way is to kill her. Bit extreme, isn’t it?’

  ‘Happens all the time,’ said Tudor. ‘You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘But Carpenter strikes everyone as sensible, mature, level-headed. The action’s completely out of character.’

  ‘Would have been completely out of character,’ said Tudor. ‘My view is that the character’s changed.’

  ‘Or the true character has only just revealed itself?’

  ‘Or the true character has only just revealed itself.’

  ‘You say he confessed in front of the girl.’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Well, which?’ The policeman was becoming irritated. Tudor knew that donnishness had that effect. He had seen it before. All too often. ‘Did he confess, or didn’t he?’

  ‘I’d testify that he did. My guess is that the girl won’t. But the girl will make up her own mind and the truth won’t come into it. At least I don’t think it will. There may be some sort of perverted integrity lurking in there, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Whatever she decides she’ll be a lousy witness. Anything she says is going to sound thin and implausible.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Sanders. ‘She seems to have sorted you two out.’

  A long silence ensued. WPC White had a scratchy pen.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ Sanders asked, eventually.

  ‘Bring him in for questioning.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Sanders sounded exasperated. ‘He’ll deny everything. Davey sent the instruction on his computer. You carried it out. His hands are clean.’

  ‘But he bought the Royal Jelly. We can prove it.’

  ‘Clever of you to remember the name of the manufacturer on the packet,’ said Sanders, grudgingly. ‘But he’ll say it was a coincidence.’

  ‘Pull the other one,’ said Tudor. ‘Murder suspect buys lethal substance and six weeks later his girlfriend swallows it and drops dead. That’s not a coincidence. That’s cause and effect.’

  ‘Tell that to the judge.’

  ‘It’s not the judge that matters,’ protested Tudor, ‘it’s the jury.’

  ‘It all hinges on the girl,’ said Karen White. ‘Maybe I could talk to her.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sanders.

  ‘He did it,’ said Tudor. ‘He killed her.’

  ‘Actually no,’ said Sanders, ‘You did it. You mixed the lethal dose.’

  ‘But I didn’t have the first idea that Lorraine Montagu was allergic to honey for God’s sake.’

  ‘I’ve only your word for it.’

  Tudor remembered what Ashley had said about playing games. This was what he and DCI Sanders were doing now. They both knew that Ashley had killed Lorraine Montagu but they were inventing false doubts in the interests of what? Fair play? Justice?

  ‘Oh all right.’ Sanders slammed his fist on the desk. A surprising gesture. He had seemed so cool. ‘Karen’s right. The girl’s evidence is crucial but the odds are that no one is going to believe it. And if that’s the case the whole thing is too far-fetched for any jury to swallow. This life-long grudge thing for instance. Carpenter is going to deny it. He’ll tell them that he loves you like a brother. That he invited you here for the sabbatical of a lifetime. He’ll apologize for his vanishing trick which he’ll put down to pressure which the jury will accept because everyone accepts the notion of pressure these days – it’s the universal, catch-all excuse for every crime in the book. You’ll be made to look like an insensitive, self-important foreigner who’s piqued because his old friend went AWOL while experiencing acute woman trouble. A Tasmanian jury will love that. It’ll be all male. Even if we were to get a woman or two they’d be hillbilly rednecks who will think Lorraine was a brazen hussy and deserved all she got.’

  ‘All right,’ said Tudor. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘As little as possible,’ said Sanders. ‘I’ll take statements from everyone. I’ll submit a confidential report to our Director of Prosecutions, who is a close friend. We’ll discuss it. We’ll put the file away.’

  ‘You’ll close it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that exactly. It’ll stay half open at least. Your friend Carpenter will know that.’

  ‘That’s not very satisfactory.’

  ‘No,’ said Sanders. ‘A lot that happens in my job is far from satisfactory. Knowing someone is a criminal and not being able to get a court to agree is a bugger sometimes. This being a case in point. I’m sorry.’

  * * *

  Ashley drove him to the airport.

  Tudor didn’t want this but Ashley insisted and Tudor suddenly felt too drained and limp to argue.

  His premature departure was publicly explained by a crisis back home at the University of Wessex. In a sense he was sad to go. He disliked failure and he had been looking forward to Tasmania.

  ‘Pity you’re leaving so soon,’ said Ashley, as they drove out of suburban Hobart and up through dusty hills of pine and eucalyptus. ‘I was looking forward to taking you on a long bushwalk.’

  ‘That’s hardly the most tactful remark,’ said Tudor. A long bushwalk was how this wretched business started.’ The man was unbelievable, he thought, watching him change gear and lane as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Dame Edith had been sorry to see him go. So sorry, in fact, that over a glass of Rymills (not sparkling for once) she had said wistfully that she didn’t suppose Tudor would ever contemplate the headship of St Petroc’s?

  Tudor contemplated the title of Master of St Petroc’s College, Hobart, Tasmania with almost as much wistfulness, but knew perfectly well that the time for such day-dreams was long past. If it had ever existed. At least he had been able to scupper Ashley’s own aspirations in that direction. He had delivered a vicious, confidential hatchet job on his former friend and the Dame had listened with a lack of surprise which was in itself disturbing.

  ‘They say that owners take on the characteristics of their dogs,’ she remarked. ‘But few of us realize that dons assume the personality of their special subjects. Ashley’s is violent crime. Mine is what most people, erroneously, call hedgehogs. Rather me than Ashley, don’t you think?’

  The job would probably go to Jazz Trethewey who also expressed regret at his departure.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she had said. ‘And we’d hardly been amused by each other’s presumption.’

  ‘Oh I wouldn’t say that,’ said Tudor.

  ‘Wine joke,’ she said.

  Br
ad Davey said a tongue-tied good-bye which seemed a compound of embarrassment and relief.

  Tasman Penhaligon didn’t say goodbye at all.

  Sammy was effusive and obsequious though unconvincing.

  ‘Terrible bush fires last summer.’ Ashley nodded out of the window towards the stark white spars of timber stripped of all greenery and growth by the flames.

  ‘Brad pointed them out when we drove in,’ said Tudor. That had been barely a week earlier. It seemed like an eternity.

  ‘Shall you be at the Cincinnati Crimathon?’ asked Ashley.

  It was as if nothing had happened, thought Tudor. Nothing at all. Ashley was behaving as if it were still pre-history; as if the last few days had never been; as if no one had been killed; no one betrayed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Tudor. ‘It may be difficult to get away. Most of the travel budget’s been used on this trip.’

  ‘Sony about that,’ said Ashley, smiling a minor thin-lipped triumph to set beside his other recent trophies.

  * * *

  They passed a couple of articulated trucks piled high with logs from the Tasmanian forests, a couple of taxis, a white stretched Cadillac and two military jeeps.

  ‘You know you could still stand trial,’ said Tudor.

  ‘Theoretically,’ replied Ashley, eyes on the road. ‘But it’s not likely. Not now.’

  ‘So you reckon you’ve got away with it?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  Tudor peered out at the hills. The sun was low and bright. He squinted at the glare.

  ‘What did you mean about Miranda?’

  ‘What I said.’ Ashley changed down for an uphill gradient. ‘Not that I’m particularly interested in technicalities. Maybe you didn’t actually do it. But she preferred you. Snotty bitch.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something at the time?’

  ‘Don’t be childish. You know what they say about revenge. Best eaten cold.’