The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘And all the targets except Enistead have been among those who have voted to sell the MS,’ she said. ‘And there is also the missing Warden.’

  ‘Well, he might not be dead,’ said Peter. ‘He might just have considered his position, as we know he was invited to do, and fled.’

  ‘What do you make of this, Bunter?’ asked Harriet. She was hoping Bunter’s imperturbability would put a cool and rational interpretation on things. But for once Bunter was not cool.

  ‘It looks like serial murder to me, my lady,’ said Bunter. ‘Or rather, attempted serial murder.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Peter, ‘we need Charles.’

  ‘Ask him for help, then, Peter,’ said Harriet. ‘But while he is on his way I shall pay some calls at Shrewsbury College.’

  ‘Good idea, Harriet,’ said Peter. ‘They know you are expected in Oxford, so the sooner the better. Bunter, would you care to suggest gently to the college servants that there might be a murderer on the loose – well, it will already have occurred to them, won’t it? – and see if anyone offers helpful suggestions as to suspects.’

  Bunter nodded, and took his leave, taking the breakfast tray with him.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I think I might look out someone called Elaine Griffiths.’

  ‘What will she do for you?’

  ‘She might know if King Alfred could write,’ he said.

  Harriet spent the first part of her morning browsing happily in Blackwell’s, which did, she discovered, stock detective fiction, though only by Oxford-based authors. Edmund Crispin was there, and Harriet bought a copy of The Moving Toyshop. Her own had been lent to somebody, and never returned. It’s amazing, Harriet thought, how perfectly honest people who would starve rather than steal sixpence, will steal books without compunction.

  There was a Michael Innes – A Private View – so Harriet also bought a copy of that. Looking for something more literary she found a novel by L.P. Hartley –The Go-Between.

  Then she wandered out into the morning sunshine, which was doing its best to lighten the soot-engraved buildings along the Broad.

  She had timed her arrival at Shrewsbury College for the morning break, during which she expected to find a reasonable number of her old friends drinking coffee in the Senior Common Room, and lo! it was just as expected. Harriet blinked as she entered; for a few seconds she was back before the war, before marrying Peter, before titles and riches, back as the raw, sensitive, uncertain person, fending off her own best chance at happiness, on whom the college had pinned its hopes of clearing up a scandal without a scandal becoming public knowledge. Just a blink, and then Harriet landed in the present day and noticed the changes in the scene before her. New curtains . . . faint traces of anti-blast sticky tape still adhering, irremovable, on the common room windows . . . new faces . . . But here was a familiar face, Dr Baring, the Warden of Shrewsbury, coming towards her, with outstretched arms, and saying, ‘Harriet! My dear Harriet, how good to see you! Come and sit among your old friends.’

  Soon Harriet was sitting in the centre of a circle of armchairs, with Miss de Vine, and Miss Hilliard, and Miss Martin all beaming at her, as though she were Queen of the May. For a moment she didn’t recognise another figure, walking with a stick, coming towards her – Miss Lydgate, by all that’s wonderful! But Miss Lydgate with short cropped grey hair, and not a hairpin in sight. The cropped hair framed her wrinkled, slightly harassed face as the swept-up but ever falling long hair had never done. Harriet jumped up and embraced her.

  ‘How long are you to be in Oxford?’ asked Miss Lydgate.

  ‘I don’t quite know,’ Harriet said.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Miss de Vine, ‘it depends how long it takes your lord and master to sort out the quarrel at St Severin’s.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Only – I’ve retired now, of course,’ said Miss Lydgate, ‘but I’m doing just a little thing for Notes and Queries about prosody in Spenser . . . and I am in such a muddle . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll help,’ said Harriet.

  This made everyone, including Miss Lydgate, laugh.

  Miss Martin was bringing a tray of coffee cups from the sideboard. ‘I think yours is black with no sugar,’ she said to Harriet.

  ‘How kind you all are,’ said Harriet. ‘I feel so at home here, I wish I could abandon everything and come and do a B.Litt. here.’

  ‘What would it be about?’ asked Miss de Vine.

  ‘Sheridan Le Fanu,’ said Harriet.

  ‘You’ve been working on that a long time,’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘Write the book, and present it as a dissertation for the B.Litt.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I have to keep residence as well?’ said Harriet.

  ‘But you wouldn’t mind that,’ said Miss Lydgate.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind it, but I couldn’t do it,’ said Harriet ruefully. ‘I have serious responsibilities at home. But,’ she added hastily, ‘I am enjoying being in Oxford again, now.’

  ‘I don’t suppose your presence here might bring that gorgeous young man – Lord Peter’s nephew – what was he called?’ said Dr Baring.

  Harriet felt the change in her expression in her facial muscles. ‘I’m afraid not. He did not survive the Battle of Britain.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,’ said Dr Baring. ‘We seem to have missed that. How dreadful for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘Infuriating though he was, he was the sunshine in our lives. But I don’t blame you for not knowing; he was one among so many.’

  Obviously deciding to change the subject, Miss de Vine said, ‘So what do you think Lord Peter will decide about the situation in St Severin’s? Or mustn’t you tell us?’

  ‘Well, it won’t be secret when he has decided,’ said Harriet. ‘But I think he’s still weighing it in the balance.’ Then on impulse she said, ‘How would it fall out if such a dilemma occurred in this college?’

  ‘We’d keep such a manuscript if we had it,’ said Dr Baring decisively. ‘But then it’s different for a women’s college.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Money would be different for us,’ she said. ‘All the women’s colleges are as poor as church mice compared to the great medieval foundations like Christ Church and Merton. We are used to getting by. We have to be.’

  ‘Wouldn’t years of getting by make money more attractive rather than less?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘It depends to whom one compares oneself,’ said Dr Baring. ‘We don’t, like a hard-up men’s college, compare ourselves to a rich men’s college. We compare ourselves to women’s colleges in other universities. And then we live very simply. We don’t have many grand dinners, we don’t drink port, we don’t have immensely expensive buildings to maintain, we don’t pay our senior members as much . . .’

  ‘I see,’ said Harriet. She wondered whether she should point out that in that case the conservation and insurance of something like the Boethius would be an even worse strain, but decided against it.

  ‘We shall all be very shocked, you know, if St Severin’s sells that manuscript,’ said Miss de Vine emphatically. ‘It will be a betrayal of what Oxford stands for. But forgive me, I must go – I have a tutorial, and I am so sardonic with them if they are late.’ And she hurried away. The Senior Common Room was emptying rapidly as the clock reached eleven; having promised Dr Baring to bring Peter to Hall dinner before they left Oxford for their unimaginably distant home – even further away than Cambridge! – Harriet left.

  An unfamiliar porter nodded to her as she went through the lodge – of course Padgett would have retired.

  She walked back down Parks Road, filled with a sudden sadness. Eheu, fugaces . . .

  Latin not being her strong point, she reverted to English.

  Even such is Time, that takes in trust

  Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

  And pays us but with earth and dust –

  But a sunny morning in Oxfo
rd is not the place for mourning. Nor did the slight changes in Shrewsbury College justify such a feeling. They were tiny straws in a very light summer breeze. What had got into her? Perhaps the mention of Lord St George. And rounding the corner of the Broad and Holywell Street, seeing the row of eroded pseudo-Roman faces looking down at her from the railings in front of the Sheldonian, she felt reminded that Oxford stood for permanence – a qualified permanence – rather than transience.

  Since there was still some morning left to spend, Harriet, on her return to Sever’s – how that undergraduate slang stuck to one! – went to the college library to see what they might have with any kind of bearing on Le Fanu. She took an armful of books from the shelves, and went to sit at a table in a nook between two grand bookcases, stopping on her way to her seat to look briefly at the manuscript cause of all the trouble. She had found a comfortable position – a worn, sagging, leather-seated chair, a desk worn smooth with age, a window looking out on to the fellows’ garden; she had to take a grip on herself to give her attention to the books she had found, of which the most interesting was not directly to do with Le Fanu, but was a collection of reports on cases in the Marylebone magistrates court from the nineteenth century. Harriet began to read of old unhappy far-off things and judgements long ago, and was deeply immersed when she heard voices in the bay behind her. She looked round. There were some gaps in the row of books on the shelf, through which she could hear, but not see. Someone was saying, urgently, ‘I have to talk to you.’

  The reply with chilling hostility, almost hissing, was, ‘I vowed I would never talk to you again. Never in my life. Get away from me, I have not changed!’

  Harriet froze. Any sound she made, turning a page even, might reveal her to be within earshot of this exchange. And although anger shifted the register of the voice avowing the speaker had not changed; Harriet recognised it as that of Mr Vearing.

  ‘That is ancient history now, surely,’ said the first speaker. ‘And in this present crisis we could make common cause . . .’

  ‘It’s ancient history, is it?’ Mr Vearing did not trouble to keep his voice low. ‘You can bring the dead to life? Until he breathes again I will not talk to you.’

  ‘I did not do it!’ said the first voice. ‘You guessed, and you guessed wrong.’

  ‘But I heard you defend it,’ said the second voice. ‘I heard you laugh and say it would put him in his place. And cui bono? That’s a good question to ask. I will not talk to you!’

  Harriet had just decided that she should get up and walk rapidly past the next bay between the shelves to get a swift glimpse at who was talking, but she was forestalled. One of the speakers rushed past her desk and was gone. And as she rose from her seat to try to get a glimpse of the other speaker here was Peter, coming towards her.

  ‘I wondered if I would find you here,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  As he spoke the swing door at the other end of the library closed behind her back; she had caught sight of neither of those she had overheard. For the first time in her life she could have wished Peter to be later in joining her.

  ‘What do I think about what?’ she asked distractedly.

  ‘Why the Boethius, of course,’ he said. ‘What else should it be?’

  ‘Peter, did you meet anyone as you came into the library?’ she asked. ‘Someone in a hurry?’

  ‘Troutbeck barged past me,’ said Peter. ‘In too much of a hurry to say hullo. Tell me about it later, Harriet, Charles is waiting for us in our rooms.’

  ‘This,’ said Assistant Chief Constable Charles Parker, greeting Harriet with a hug, ‘is quite like old times.’

  The hug was undoubtedly not Assistant Chief Constable-like behaviour; but Charles, as well as being an old friend and fellow campaigner of Peter’s, was his brother-in-law, and unapologetically fond of Harriet.

  Greetings joyfully accomplished, they sat down together in the armchairs by the fire of the guest suite’s drawing room. Bunter brought sherry for Charles, and white port for Peter and Harriet.

  ‘Now then, now then,’ said Charles in stentorian tones, ‘what’s all this there here?’

  Eagerly Peter expounded the problem to him, finishing with: ‘It looks uncommonly like serial murder to me, Charles. Or serial attempts.’

  ‘Serial murder is very uncommon, Peter,’ said Charles. ‘But the major flaw in your theory is this: we always catch the serial murderers in the end, because we can identify their methods. They repeat themselves until they are caught. Few though the cases are I have known, both those and any others I have heard about are marked out by the repetitive use of the same methods and oddities – like always leaving a red handkerchief on the scene of the crime, or always taking a lock of hair or a bit of underwear from the victim. Your list – one possible murder and two possible attempts, is it? – simply doesn’t meet the criteria.’

  ‘Hell, Charles, it’s not like you to be obtuse,’ said Peter. ‘What is repeated in this case isn’t a particular method of murder, but the fact that the murder methods are all in Harriet’s books. Naturally she doesn’t repeat herself; she wouldn’t anyway, from sheer craftsmanship, but she has an ample source of ideas from cases that I have worked on, often with your help.’

  ‘I often ask myself,’ said Charles benignly, ‘when putting together a case in my mind, how it would play out in court, and what judge and jury would make of it. Once or twice I have been quite sure who has perpetrated a crime, but equally sure that it would seem so preposterous to the man or woman on the jury that the police could not secure a conviction. We have had to let the matter go. Or at least go into the cold cases file.’

  ‘Do you mean, Charles, that if a murderer devises a devilishly colourful and unlikely way to kill, he or she is likely to get away with it?’ asked Harriet, appalled.

  ‘Alas, Harriet,’ said Charles, ‘devilish ways to kill are your province rather than mine. In the world I live and work in murder is usually squalid, the suspects are obvious and the motives are both obvious and squalid. There are only three, as a rule. Take your choice between avarice, lust and vengeance. I have never encountered a motive that has anything to do with a medieval manuscript. Land speculation might amount to the motive of greed, but in this case the greed is not for the benefit of any possible assassin, but for that of a college. The truth is, my dears, I don’t believe a word of it. And the most obvious motive of the lot is Peter’s.’

  ‘Mine?’ said Peter. ‘I am only doing my duty as the college Visitor.’

  ‘And you are not in the least in quest of that amusing life of old, when you could detect all over England, and murders came to meet you on every road you took? Why don’t you just rule on the sale or retention of that manuscript and take the road home to Denver? Come via London and have dinner with us. Mary will love to see you.’

  ‘I think you might be forgetting the little matter of the missing Warden,’ said Peter.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Charles. ‘Well, it isn’t an offence under the law to abandon one’s post and go wandering. It may be breach of contract, and damnably inconsiderate, but it isn’t against the law. Not a matter for the police.’

  ‘For the missing persons department?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I suppose it might be that. Do you want me to add Thomas Ludgvan to the missing persons register? Do we have a picture?’

  ‘The college has a portrait of him in oils when he was elected as Warden,’ said Peter.

  ‘Leave it with me,’ said Charles. ‘We’ll run him through the missing persons regime.’

  ‘Right,’ said Peter. ‘How about lunch, Charles? We could spin out to the Rose Revived.’

  Charles looked bashful. ‘I have heard,’ he said carefully, ‘that there is a pub in Oxford at which C.S. Lewis often takes lunch.’

  ‘There is indeed,’ said Peter. ‘But he lunches with a group of cronies. If just setting eyes on him is inducement enough . . .’

  ‘Do you read children’s books, Charles?’ asked Harriet, cons
iderably surprised.

  ‘I read The Screwtape Letters first,’ said Charles, ‘and that led me to read more. He’s a sound theologian, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Harriet, ‘but I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Peter, ‘on with our overcoats and it’s off to the Bird and Babe.’

  ‘I think the pub is called the Eagle and Child,’ said Charles, and then, ‘Oh, I see.’

  It was not till the late afternoon that Charles departed for London, having caught the desired glimpse of the sound theologian quaffing beer. Harriet then lost no time in telling Peter what she had overheard in the library.

  ‘Real, seething hatred,’ Harriet said. ‘And you know, Peter, it seems to me from the moment I heard all this, that it wasn’t really a material for hatred. Annoyance, maybe. Grounds for a feud if the fellows wanted to go tribal and play team games with each other – but murder? If I were writing this into a novel I couldn’t get away with the honour of the college versus the wealth of the college as a motive for anything worse than throwing a book across a room.’

  ‘Novels have to be plausible,’ Peter said. ‘Life doesn’t. Life often isn’t.’

  They sat silently for a few moments, contemplating this. Then Peter said, ‘Right. What have we got? A disappearance. A fishy accidental death. Two assaults that might have been attempted murder, apparently based on your books . . . and a little hate talk overheard in the library. Anything else?’

  ‘Someone mentioned a review to me at dinner last night,’ said Harriet.

  ‘An adverse review, I imagine,’ said Peter. ‘Who mentioned it?’

  ‘I think he was called Gervase,’ Harriet said.

  ‘We could go and ask him what he meant, I suppose,’ said Peter.

  ‘From what you told me,’ said Harriet, ‘you hoped to receive deputations; planned visits deliberately laying out a case to you. What if you could speak to these people one at a time? In confidence?’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Harriet,’ said Peter, ‘but it would take some time. There are about twenty of them all told.’