‘Ghastly,’ Peter told her. ‘The whole place will fall apart if we can’t get this cleared up quickly.’
‘Colleges have long lives,’ she said.
‘Depends what you mean. The buildings are old; the charter dates back to the Tudors, the shell of the institution is indestructible. Even if the place went bankrupt I expect a richer college would come to the rescue. But if by “the college” you mean this society, this particular group of people, then if this goes on much longer it will implode, and need building again from scratch. They’ll claw at each other to destruction judging by what it felt like tonight.’
‘Poor Peter,’ said Harriet. ‘And here was I peacefully eating a rather good omelette made by Bunter, and an apple turnover made by Miss Manciple. Those two have made peace, and are sharing the kitchen without warfare declared or undeclared.’
‘Bunter should have been a diplomat,’ said Peter. ‘He’s wasted on us.’
‘Something occurred to me in all this tranquillity, Peter.’
‘What was that?’
‘There is somebody who doesn’t have an alibi. Or, rather, who hasn’t been asked for one.’
‘There are all the college servants; but somehow, it doesn’t seem likely.’
‘Not them – think again.’
Peter thought. ‘I give up,’ he said.
‘The Warden,’ said Harriet. ‘What about him?’
Chapter 9
‘This is taking much longer than I thought it would,’ said Peter over breakfast the next morning. ‘I think perhaps I ought to tootle back home for a quick visit, and see how Mama is faring. Will you come too?’
‘I am sure we would have heard if anything bad had befallen her,’ said Harriet, ‘but it’s a good idea just the same. You always cheer her up. Can you do without me? I was proposing a day in the Bodleian.’
‘I can manage without you as long as you assure me that absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll go almost right away and be back by tomorrow night. And you can keep Bunter to look after you.’
Peter was as good as his word, and drove himself off, leaving the college by ten. Harriet immediately felt unanchored and slightly at a loss. She took a notebook with her, and trotted off to Bodley. She was in search of the back copies of the Times Literary Supplement in which she intended to find the review that had ruined the reputation of David Outlander.
Periodicals were kept in the Upper Reading Room, less theatrical than the Radcliffe Camera, less romantic than Duke Humfrey, but practical and comfortable, its tall Gothic windows giving it an airy and light ambience. Harriet chose a desk, filled out an order slip for 1948 (hadn’t Gervase said it was five years ago?) and waited, awash with nostalgia.
It was not long before the librarian brought her the four folio volumes containing the TLS for 1948. The quality of newsprint had still been the dreadful wartime kind. It was already yellowing, like the sulphurous paper of nineteenth-century novels, like those of Le Fanu with which she was so familiar. No person with any respect for documents could flip through the pages rapidly for fear of pulling a piece of the page edge off in one’s hands.
Harriet settled to a slow deliberate turning and scanning of the pages. She found what she was looking for in the third issue for April 1948.
The volume had a tendency to close itself under its own weight, and risked pressing a fold into the flimsy pages as it did so. Harriet carefully propped it open at an angle by supporting its covers on piles of books. Then she opened her notebook on the desk beside it and began to read and copy.
Mr Outlander has prefaced this work (which incidentally has not been published by OUP) with the usual statement of gratitude to various scholars in his field, and the announcement that all the errors are, of course, his own. In that case he has almost nothing to be grateful for, since his work is a tissue of egregious errors from start to finish . . . Before indulging in relief that at least the distinguished names who have allegedly helped the author are free from the extraordinary degree of ignorance on display here, it would be well to remember that Mr Outlander himself is an Oxford graduate, and a research fellow of St Severin’s College . . .
Golly! thought Harriet. Of course she was familiar with adverse reviews, having reaped a good few of those herself, especially in her novice days as a writer. She had noticed, as any ‘trade’ writer would do who strayed into a scholarly field, the particular vitriol with which learned disputes were pursued on review pages . . .
The room was suddenly swept and brightened by a passing minute of sunlight. A librarian arrived beside her, and lowered a white canvas blind to keep the sunlight off the books on the desk. Restored to low-contrast cool illumination, Harriet bent to her task of note-taking, and then read on.
The very least that one might expect from a supposed scholar of Alfredian writing would be familiarity with the handwriting of tenth-century scribes, sufficient to permit distinctions to be made between genuine productions of the period and later productions such as the obvious forgery of the gloss on the St Severin’s manuscript. Even the clue offered by the colour of the ink used for this gloss has been ignored. Of course, the Boethius continued to be read for many years after the reign of Alfred – no less a later luminary than Chaucer translated it. The manuscript gloss itself has been made by a no doubt honest later scribe who had no disreputable intent. The scandal arises, and the appropriate use of the word forgery, when contemporary pseudo-scholars seized with sentimental and romantic desires unalloyed by more than minimum knowledge of their subjects create attributions that are absurdly without foundation . . .
Harriet carefully copied the review into her notebook. She was flinching as if it had been directed at herself. By and by she took a rest, sat back in her chair and thought. She had often enough been stung by a review, especially when it was adverse but with a grain or more of truth in it. But it is in fact easy to tell when a reviewer is motivated by spite or private axe-grinding. When once that had happened to her she had found herself blithely rising above it; only a reasoned and reasonable assessment of her work had power to hurt; a vendetta could be ignored.
And other people’s reactions to reviews could be very unexpected. She had once had a severe ticking-off in the Manchester Guardian, in a long review of Murder by Degrees which had stretched down the page. Several friends had congratulated her on it. When she told her publisher about this, deeply baffled, he had replied, ‘My dear, never read the things, just measure the column inches!’
In terms of column inches, David Outlander was doing fine – the demolition of his work covered an entire page, and turned over to a column on the following page before reaching its coup de grâce.
There is, I am afraid to say, another possible explanation for the jejune errors and ridiculous fantasies in a book written by a fellow of an Oxford college, who surely ought to know better, and that is that a monetary consideration is involved. The manuscript whose value would be immensely enhanced, should the foolish attribution promoted in the book under review gain ground, is the property of the college of which the author is a member. Corruption takes many forms.
‘Whew!’ murmured Harriet. And then, ‘I wonder who wrote it?’ But reviews in the TLS were anonymous, and the yellowing sheet of newsprint at her elbow was not going to tell her that.
Carefully she closed the volume, and took her way home. Passing Shrewsbury College she remembered her promise to help Miss Lydgate, and dropped in on her to see what was needed. Miss Lydgate’s problems were all about prosody in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the proofs of which were scattered all over every surface in her room. Her delight on Harriet’s appearance was immense. With deep relief Harriet put nasty reviews and violent deaths behind her, and buried herself for the moment in how exactly to define and describe the song-like, music-derived rhythms of the poems of Edmund Campion.
No breath of faction fluttered Miss Lydgate’s scattered papers. Nor was any of the confusion in her mind – it was all in the paperwor
k. Luminous clarity, however hard won, would emerge before the proofs were sent to the printer. There was such a thing as learning for its own sake, as devotion to a scholarly life. Harriet began sorting and ordering the paper according to the page numbers, and laboured happily till halfway through the afternoon, when, both of them feeling hungry and realising they had had no lunch, they adjourned to the common room for tea and buns.
Harriet relaxed, surrounded by old friends, by the common-sense mutuality of a group of women who had once sought her help, and then befriended her, who had resisted quarrelling for many days under pressure, and of whom Peter had said that they had saved their college by their solidarity. She could hardly resist the thought that the fact that the fellows of Shrewsbury College were women, women to a man so to speak, whereas the fellows of St Severin’s were men might have something to do with the in-fighting that Peter and she had been treated to. With a shudder she reflected that although the crisis in Shrewsbury College had seemed exceptionally nasty at the time, it had not involved all-but severed heads and blood-soaked carpets. She had herself, long ago, witnessed a death involving that sort of thing, and she was not surprised that Peter had been visibly upset yesterday. All that blood . . .
‘You are far away, my dear,’ said Miss Lydgate, breaking into her thoughts. ‘And look, here is Dr Baring, and Miss de Vine coming to join us. They will want fresh tea –would you like another cup?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Harriet. ‘I was wool-gathering. How rude of me.’
‘Oh, but I do understand!’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘I have the greatest difficulty myself in remaining on the scene where I actually am at the time; shall we have more tea?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Harriet, jumping up. ‘Let me get it. I shall bring a tray and everyone can put in sugar and milk as they like.’
When she brought back her loaded tray the two newcomers had pulled up chairs, and there was a cosy circle to sit down in.
‘Do tell us, Harriet,’ said Miss de Vine, ‘how the investigation at St Severin’s is going along . . .’
‘I’m really not sure that I should,’ said Harriet cautiously.
‘Well, at least tell if it looks as if you will be leaving Oxford shortly,’ said Dr Baring.
‘I think not,’ said Harriet, smiling at the transparent ruse.
‘In that case,’ said Miss de Vine, ‘would you consider giving a talk to one of our undergraduate societies?’
‘Hmm,’ said Harriet. ‘What would you want me to talk about?’
‘Perhaps about the relationship between detective stories and real life,’ said Miss de Vine, and then blushed deep crimson as she realised that Harriet might take that as a reference to her trial for murder, long ago now, but never forgotten.
‘Really, Helen!’ expostulated Dr Baring.
‘Let me rephrase that,’ said Miss de Vine, recovering herself. ‘Would you talk to us about the relationship between detective stories and literature?’
Audibly indrawn breath in the circle of people round the tea-tray told Harriet that that, too, was seen as a bêtise by her companions.
‘Yes – I could manage that,’ said Harriet amiably. Everyone relaxed.
‘I’ll make arrangements as soon as I can,’ said Miss de Vine, ‘and offer you a choice of dates.’
By and by Harriet headed back to St Severin’s, with the tactlessness of excellent people, and bloodshed, competing as the focus of her thoughts.
Peter had driven himself home to Denver in record time. Without even the discreet Bunter riding with him offering an occasional indrawn breath, he had indulged his boyish taste for speed. He had a curious impression that seized him every time he drove through the gates at Denver into the park. He had never got over the sense that it was his brother the Duke’s house that he was approaching; but why were the gates standing open? Why wasn’t Jenkins in the lodge? For the few moments when his memory resisted the reminders that he was in the present time he recovered the younger son’s insouciance, the younger son’s carefree tomfoolery . . . then as his car took the turn in the drive that brought the greatly altered house into view gravitas reclaimed him, and his responsibilities enveloped him again.
A few minutes later he was sitting with his mother beside the fire in her drawing room.
She, too, was a shock for the first few seconds when he was here again after an interval. She was now very old; she had always been a little lady, but she had been a bundle of energy for so long that the passive person she had now become would have been unrecognisable but for her animated expression.
‘Peter! Darling Peter!’ she cried. ‘How lovely to see you! Is it all sorted out over in Oxford, then?’
‘I’m afraid not, Mama,’ said Peter. ‘It will be a few days yet. So I just thought I’d motor across to see how you are.’
‘You should know better than to ask an old lady that,’ she said. ‘You might get told.’
‘You are perfectly yourself, I see,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘Will you have to go back at once?’ she asked. ‘You’ve left Harriet behind?’
‘I have left Harriet,’ he said, ‘to mind the shop. And I can certainly spend the night, and talk to you over dinner.’
‘That will be lovely, dear,’ she said. ‘There’s venison pie tonight, I think. One of the deer from the park. I’m always so surprised at how dark the meat is from those pretty pale creatures – wouldn’t you expect only the red deer to be red meat? And Cousin Matthew will be glad. He has something to show you.’
Franklin appeared, and reminded the Dowager Duchess gently that it was time for her nap.
‘I’ll see you at dinner, Mama,’ said Peter.
Cousin Matthew was usually to be found in the library, which was, thank God, part of the house that had been barely scathed in the great fire, and still contained the greater part of the library accumulated by successive Dukes of Denver, who had evinced an impressive desire to collect books and line the walls with them in fine bindings, if rather less enthusiasm for actually reading them. Peter’s mother had been used to tell him often that he must be a throwback to her side of the family – the Delagardies having, by her account, been pillars of the Enlightenment.
‘Hullo, Matthew,’ said Peter, entering the library. ‘I understand there is something you want to show me.’
‘Oh, yes, Peter,’ said Cousin Matthew, rising to his feet and extending a hand to meet Peter’s proffered handshake. ‘I just thought I might have a look to see what else we might have on St Severin’s, beside the charter that I found for you when all this blew up.’
‘Tally ho!’ said Peter. ‘And did you run a fox or two to ground?’
‘Well . . .’ said Cousin Matthew doubtfully. He was not a hunting man, or not in the field, anyhow. ‘There are copies of the college charters right the way back; not quite to the foundation, but as far back as the intervention of the Duke who first interested himself in their affairs.’
‘Anything interesting in them?’
‘Well, this is the earliest one we have,’ said Cousin Matthew, unrolling a parchment scroll on the library table, ‘and it says here that no property of the college worth more than fifty shillings can be sold or given away without the agreement of the Visitor. And it says why: that any who are disposed of their good will to make gifts to the aforesaid college, may be secure and in safety, trusting that such gifts shall be held in perpetuity, and that the donors’ names shall be inscribed in the memory of the college, and in the prayers offered by the college for their members and benefactors. That’s interesting, isn’t it, Peter?’
‘Extremely interesting, Matthew. It settles the matter, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, it would, Peter, if the charters had remained unchanged. But the college has a right to modify its charter from time to time, and that sentence has been removed from more recent charters.’
‘Did earlier Visitors consent?’
‘The consent of the Visitor is not required. He must enforce the p
roper interpretation of the charter, but he doesn’t get to write it or take a hand in rewriting it.’
‘Bother. And I suppose it’s not the sort of thing that my esteemed ancestors would have troubled their noble heads about.’
‘Not really. Most of these charter rolls have obviously not been looked at for many many years.’
Cousin Matthew, however, was speaking with, for him, unusual animation. Peter looked at him, and said, ‘Come on, old chap. Spill the beans. What’s up your sleeve?’
‘I don’t keep beans up my sleeve,’ Matthew said.
Peter was dumbstruck. When had he last heard his cousin attempt a witticism? Something was exciting him enough to enliven his usual gravity and gloom.
‘The charter has been updated pretty regularly over the years,’ Cousin Matthew said. ‘So I thought I would just look through and see exactly when the proscription of sales of college property was first omitted.’
He paused.
‘I give up,’ said Peter. ‘Tell me.’
‘That paragraph runs through all the charters until the last but one,’ said Matthew triumphantly. ‘It dis-appears from the charter before the present one – drawn up in 1945.’
‘How drastically do these successive charters change?’ asked Peter.
‘Oh, not much at all through the nineteenth century. St Severin’s changed its charter to allow non-Anglican fellows in the 1860s sometime – I should have made a note of when . . .’
‘That doesn’t matter at present,’ said Peter. ‘But I am interested to know what other changes were made in 1945.’
‘I thought you would be,’ said Matthew. ‘So I checked carefully. None.’
‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant,’ said Peter blasphemously.
Of course, now he was in the house, other matters engulfed Peter, and demanded his attention. His land-agent needed to discuss an exchange of fields between neighbouring tenant farmers, one of whom wanted more arable, the other more pasture. The hunt had ridden roughshod through some hedges and over some fences during a time when Peter had been in London months back, and they were dragging their feet over paying to make good the damage.
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