The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘I think the school’s policy is to secure the college place, and then the young man does National Service before taking it up. So he would be twenty before arriving at Oxford, and somewhat toughened up.’

  ‘I see,’ said Harriet. ‘Shall you tell them to train him up to apply to Balliol, then?’

  ‘He might as well try,’ said Peter. ‘He might not make it, of course. He isn’t the very brightest bunny. But somewhere will have him. One can try for several colleges.’

  The mention of the brightest bunny turned Harriet’s thoughts to Bunter.

  ‘What will your son Peter do, do you think, Bunter?’ she asked him.

  ‘He’s a year behind Master Bredon,’ said Bunter. ‘But he’s hoping for the London School of Economics.’

  The Wimseys looked at each other across the table. They could read each other’s thoughts. How practical Bunter was, how much more in touch with the changing world . . . How many things that passed them unnoticed were clearly visible to him.

  ‘Did you suggest that to him, Bunter?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘No, my lady. But economics interests him greatly. More than any of his school subjects. I did not discourage it.’

  ‘How did he discover such an interest?’ asked Harriet, who could not, herself, imagine being attracted to it.

  ‘He has had the good fortune of having the run of His Grace’s library for many years,’ Bunter replied.

  ‘He has found something there that I didn’t know we had?’ said Peter.

  ‘He found works by Ricardo and Adam Smith,’ said Bunter, ‘and the Treatise on Money by Maynard Keynes. He told me he disagreed with all of them.’

  ‘Economists do rather tend to disagree,’ said Peter, ‘but it sounds as if my namesake has found his métier. Good for him.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘I thought we might pay a visit to Mrs Cutwater today,’ said Peter the next morning. ‘Unannounced.’

  ‘Do we have a pretext?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘No. But I have a fiction writer at my right hand who might be able to dream one up for us.’

  ‘Perhaps we might allege that we have heard a rumour that the land is for sale . . .’ suggested Harriet.

  ‘That,’ said Peter, munching his toast, ‘has the demerit of being true. The truth is always implausible.’

  ‘You could fake a breakdown at her front door,’ said Harriet, ‘but that would be less likely to lead the conversation towards the sale of the land.’

  ‘We’ll see what comes into my head,’ said Peter. ‘We don’t want to upset the poor old thing.’

  It was a sunny morning, and Peter was happy to take the Daimler for a run. First they trundled along the Cowley Road through thick traffic, and then found themselves out in the country, going south-east towards the declining Chilterns. Mrs Cutwater lived in an obscure enough house, not in any village, and they had to consult the map several times to find it. At last they turned into a narrow leafy lane, passable by only one car at a time, up which they proceeded with care – a considerable feat for Peter – till at last it emerged on the top of a modest hill, where nothing but farmland could be seen for miles.

  ‘We’ve overshot,’ said Peter, turning the car, and going down the lane again. In a few yards they met a tractor coming up, and were forced to back some distance to the hilltop again, where the road widened, and they could let the tractor pass them. Peter wound down the window and asked the way. ‘’Alfway down,’ he was told, ‘and mind the dog.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Peter to Harriet, waving his thanks to the tractor driver, ‘this is Oxfordshire, not Wuthering Heights.’

  ‘Perhaps one can wuther outside Yorkshire,’ said Harriet. ‘If the lady lives alone in this somewhat recherché spot perhaps she needs a dog.’

  Soon the presence of a telephone wire across the road alerted them to a possible dwelling, and they turned through an unmarked opening in the hedges and on to a gravel drive even narrower than the road, which brought them shortly to an old and handsome farmhouse standing in a rather attractive garden.

  ‘Farmers usually make bad gardeners,’ said Harriet.

  They marched up to the front door. ‘It’s a hall house, I think,’ Harriet said. ‘Look at the central chimneys.’

  But the door was being opened, and Peter had no eyes for chimneys. The apparition who opened the door to them was a strikingly beautiful woman, not out of her twenties, whose oval face featured wide, pallid grey eyes, and was framed in glossy chestnut-red curls falling to her shoulders. She was wearing a very open-necked green blouse. She looked at them and said coldly, ‘What do you want?’

  Of course, Harriet thought, a daughter can inherit . . . this is, after all, no poor old thing.

  ‘We were hoping to have a word with Mrs Cutwater,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well?’ she said, and then after a baffled pause added, ‘I am Mrs Cutwater. What is your business with me?’

  ‘We understand you have some land to sell,’ said Peter smoothly. ‘We would like to discuss it with you. May we come in?’

  ‘You have been misinformed,’ she said, beginning to close the door.

  ‘Let me put it another way, Mrs Cutwater,’ said Peter. ‘You are the registered owner of land about which certain stories are circulating.’

  ‘What stories?’ she said.

  Peter produced his visiting card. Not, Harriet noticed, the ducal one, but one of the old ones: ‘Lord Peter Wimsey, private detective’.

  Mrs Cutwater took it, glanced at it, and laughed. ‘You look whimsical enough,’ she said. ‘Oh all right, come in.’

  She led the way into a plainly furnished farmhouse kitchen. An Aga radiated heat. A big golden retriever lay comfortably spread out in front of it half asleep. It did not look like a dangerous dog. A dark oak dresser of some antiquity bore a row of blue and white plates over which Harriet saw Peter pass an appreciative eye.

  ‘Sit down,’ Mrs Cutwater said, indicating the kitchen chairs ranged round the big table. Then, as if collecting herself, she said, ‘This is the warmest room in the house.’

  Peter sat down with alacrity and Harriet followed suit.

  Mrs Cutwater did likewise, taking a chair opposite them. A woman in an apron holding a duster appeared in the doorway, stared hard, and slowly withdrew. A person no doubt responsible for the sparkling plates, the swept and shining floor, the scrubbed deal table – Mrs Cutwater did not look like a woman for housekeeping in person.

  ‘These rumours are what precisely?’ she now asked Peter.

  Harriet wondered what Peter would say.

  ‘I have been told that you have land to sell, but that it is not, and is not likely to be, on the open market,’ he said.

  ‘That is my business, surely, Mr Wimsey,’ she replied. ‘And not entirely correct. What has it to do with you?’

  ‘Always interested in land, don’t you know,’ Peter said. ‘I have a few acres of my own over in Norfolk. And some wit once said the thing about land is that they aren’t making any more of it. Just wondered why it isn’t on the open market, that’s all. That’s usually the way to get the best price.’

  ‘What is it to you if I don’t get the best price?’ she asked.

  ‘To me personally, nothing, of course,’ he said, ‘but I don’t like to think of someone recently widowed, and a bit in the dark about things, being taken advantage of.’

  ‘Chivalry, is it?’ she said with a barking laugh. ‘Oh, don’t lose any sleep about me. My husband wasn’t God’s gift to a young woman, believe me. And his death wasn’t unexpected – he’d had his three-score years and ten, and he rather liked the bottle. I’m not cut to the quick over losing him. Far from it. And I’m not without advice. Will that answer you?’

  ‘I’m glad to hear you have advice,’ said Peter. ‘I am interested in why your adviser has suggested a private sale.’

  ‘My adviser has told me not to discuss it with anyone,’ she said. ‘You never know who people are. I mean how do I know you ar
e who you say you are? And who is this, with you?’

  ‘I am Peter’s wife,’ said Harriet quickly. Peter was all too likely to introduce her as also Harriet Vane, detective novelist, and she didn’t want to prolong the interview with a woman she had taken a strong dislike to.

  Mrs Cutwater cast a long considering stare at Harriet, in which ‘how did you pull that off?’ could rather too easily be read.

  ‘I’m still not supposed to talk to anyone,’ she repeated.

  ‘Do you know why you have been instructed not to talk to anyone?’ Peter asked. ‘Would that be something to do with St Severin’s College?’

  ‘Oh, so that’s who you’re from,’ said Mrs Cutwater. ‘Well, I’m certainly not supposed to be talking to you, then. But to put your mind at rest I’ll tell you just this: it’s a sentimental matter. My late husband wanted it. And it was his land, after all.’

  ‘If St Severin’s were unable to buy it, would the land be sold to someone else?’ Peter asked.

  But Mrs Cutwater made no reply to that. She sat silently looking down at her hands, clasped on the table in front of her.

  Peter got up. He wrote something on a torn-out page of his pocket diary, and put it on the table in front of her. ‘If you ever feel you need different advice,’ he said, in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice, ‘try that number. Mention my name.’

  She left the paper untouched on the table. ‘Well, perhaps it’s a little conspicuous there,’ Peter said. He retrieved the paper, and stepping over to the dresser slipped it behind one of the plates. ‘Behind the coffee-rimmed pre-willow pattern plate,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave you in peace, Mrs Cutwater.’

  She made no move to rise to show them out. Looking back from the kitchen door as they retraced their steps into the hall, Harriet saw that she was shaking where she sat. They closed the front door behind them, and got into the car. Before Peter started the engine, Harriet said, ‘You frightened her, Peter. Do you know why?’

  ‘Can’t say that I do,’ said Peter. ‘But it will bear thinking about.’

  They entered the narrow lane up which they had found their way to the farmhouse. Even Peter was constrained to drive slowly down it. It seemed a long way. At last the Daimler was nosing out of the blind turning on to, not a main road, but a reasonably wide and navigable country road. Peter peered to his right, and saw a car approaching, indicating a left turn.

  ‘He’ll have to wait for me,’ muttered Peter, ‘there isn’t width enough for him to turn in alongside me.’

  The other car approached at speed. Harriet closed her eyes, expecting a crash. But at the last minute the other driver drew to a brake-squealing stop, and allowed Peter to get out of the lane in front of him. Peter acknowledged the concession with a wave. And then suddenly the other driver changed his mind, retracted his indicator arrow, and instead of turning up towards the Cutwater farm, continued towards Abingdon. Peter considered this manoeuvre in the rear mirror rather longer than he should have done, though the road they were now on was at that point straight.

  ‘Odd, that,’ he said. ‘And it was a Sunbeam Talbot.’

  ‘So?’ said Harriet, baffled.

  ‘So the thick plottens,’ said Peter, putting on speed towards the next steep bend. Harriet saved her breath for the scream she expected to need any minute, but actually they returned safely to Oxford, and restored the car to the appointed parking place. They didn’t go into the college, but walked away down the Broad and St Aldates to have lunch at the Elizabeth.

  ‘Was this place here when you were up, Harriet?’ asked Peter, sitting across from her with a candlestick or two between them on a pink linen tablecloth.

  ‘I don’t know, Peter,’ said Harriet. ‘I couldn’t have afforded it.’ She spoke without the simmering anger that would once have accompanied this sort of remark, having forgiven Peter his wealth now that she knew more about how he spent it.

  ‘Well, what do you make of this morning’s little trip?’ he asked her once they had chosen their food.

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I picked up on the fact that there was something a bit odd about that sale – didn’t we already know that?’

  ‘To suspect something isn’t to know it,’ he said. ‘Did you notice the contradiction?’

  ‘Between declaring that she had had no love for her husband, and declaring that the land sale was a sentimental gesture to him beyond the grave? Yes, I did. But people are complicated, aren’t they? Couldn’t she have a conflicted attitude to him? After all, she married him.’

  ‘There’s a little detail you don’t, I think, know, Harriet,’ said Peter. ‘Troutbeck drives a Sunbeam Talbot. He arrived at Denver in one. A pre-war dark blue coupé,’ he added irrelevantly. ‘You were working when he came.’

  ‘Do you think it’s Troutbeck who has been advising Mrs Cutwater?’

  ‘Plainly, it might be. Did you see clearly who was driving that Sunbeam this morning?’

  ‘Sorry, no. The hood was up. Anyway the car went on past the turning.’

  ‘But he, or she, I suppose, was indicating an intention to turn up the lane before he spotted us.’

  ‘All right, let’s speculate. Troutbeck is having enough influence over the fair Mrs Cutwater to make her frightened of talking to us. Troutbeck is a leading member of the sell the book and buy the land party in the college. Why doesn’t he want it talked about? What’s in it for him?’

  ‘Well, possibly he is acting out of a sincere desire to see the college safe out of its difficulties,’ said Peter. He did not sound convinced.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ said Harriet, ‘as long as the college is paying a fair price; and there’s nothing much wrong with it if the college is paying a nearly fair price.’

  ‘And there is nothing wrong with it as long as Troutbeck has no personal interest in the matter – beyond, of course, the security of his college salary. They are all interested parties to that extent.’

  ‘Are you saying that the other faction – the keep the MS at all costs people – are relatively disinterested? After all, they are imperilling their salaries rather than securing them,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Peter, ‘really they all seem a bit too impassioned for my liking. Something’s going on that we haven’t got down to yet.’

  Peter paid the bill, and they wandered out into a cool Oxford afternoon, taking the route through Radcliffe Square, the scenic route, Peter called it.

  When they reached the quiet of their rooms Harriet said, ‘One thing that was clearly going on, Peter, was that you fancied that gorgeous woman. But how could she be your type if I am your type?’

  ‘Come here, Harriet,’ said Peter, in a suddenly husky voice, ‘and I’ll show you something.’

  She stepped into his embrace. A little time passed. Then releasing her he said, ‘A bed for you and me. And don’t follow the quote and deny me till we married be, for I distinctly remember marrying you barely a step from where we stand.’

  ‘Oh, I remember that, too,’ Harriet said. ‘But it’s two thirty in the afternoon, Peter.’

  ‘Must, to thy movements, lovers’ seasons run?’ he asked.

  ‘But it’s no good apostrophising the sun on an overcast day,’ Harriet objected.

  ‘It will begin to seem, not that I fancy another, but that you no longer fancy me,’ he said, pulling a woeful face.

  ‘Not that,’ she said. ‘Never that.’

  ‘Come, madam, come, then,’ he said.

  Looking around like guilty children in case Bunter spotted them – though surely Bunter could be surprised by nothing that they did – they went to the bedroom and closed the door.

  ‘What better covering need’st thou than a man?’ he said, his fingers clumsy with haste helping her unbutton her blouse.

  Later, quite a while later, they were lying entwined in a nest of warm and tangled sheets.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be too old for this?’ Harriet asked. ‘Can you imagine our parents acting like
this, at our age?’

  ‘There are limits to the imagination,’ he said, his voice muffled by her hair. ‘And one’s parents’ very private lives are off limits.’

  Their dozing satisfaction was suddenly disturbed by raised voices off. Bunter, asserting himself. Someone shouting at Bunter. Peter rolled over and looked at his watch.

  Five o’clock. A perfectly appropriate time of day for a caller to be shouting at Bunter; a somewhat revealing time of day should the master of the house appear in a dressing gown, even one of Chinese silk. ‘I’d better put some togs on and go and see if Bunter needs some support,’ he said. ‘Linger as long as you like.’

  ‘What do you think is going on?’ asked Harriet as another stretch of a raised voice reached them.

  ‘I’ll put my money on Mr Troutbeck, hell-bent on calling me out for a duel,’ said Peter.

  ‘Don’t get involved in a duel, my lord,’ said Harriet, propping herself up on her pillow to watch Peter dress. ‘I can’t afford to lose you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Peter. ‘If he challenges me, I get to choose the weapons. And I’ll choose rapiers. I’m a good swordsman.’

  ‘What if he is a good swordsman too?’ asked Harriet, not quite sure if this conversation was in earnest.

  ‘He’s rather too heavily built for that,’ Peter said, doing up his tie. ‘He’ll think better of it.’ He skipped over to the bed, lifted Harriet’s hand to his lips, and then left her to meditate.

  It was indeed Troutbeck, pacing around the drawing room seething with fury, whom Peter found waiting for him.

  ‘What in hell do you mean, Denver, by forcing your way in on Mrs Cutwater, and interrogating her? Who do you think you are? You have authority only over the fellowship of this college, you are abusing it by bullying anyone else . . . and who the devil told you Mrs Cutwater’s name? What scoundrel exposed her to your intrusion? My God, when I find out who put you on to her I’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!’

  ‘You must save your wrath for the Land Registry,’ said Peter coolly, ‘although I don’t know exactly what threat from you would make them tremble in their collective shoes. I imagine that they would call the police.’