The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘Alas, my dear Bunter,’ said Peter, ‘thank you for your efforts, although to no avail. As someone said: There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.’

  When Harriet reached Oxford again that evening and they compared notes it was evident that they had not made much progress. ‘The police have been here all day,’ said Peter gloomily. ‘The Oxford police, that is.’

  ‘Did they ask you about that key?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Oh, yes. With a form of extreme icy politeness that is actually an insult,’ Peter said. ‘The key doesn’t get them far. A college servant went into the chapel to clean the brass and put flowers on the altar while I was playing, it seems. I didn’t hear her. But she was still there when I left and nobody was lying dead on the floor then. And of course once I was back here there were witnesses, including you – I’m afraid you will have to give them a statement tomorrow, Harriet, but in the meantime they have one from Bunter and one from Miss Manciple.’

  ‘What do we know about Trevair?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘We know he was an economist. With laughable naivety the fellows supposed that an economist would be interested in money, and therefore the solvency of the college. The selling party were delighted to have him. And then he voted for keeping the book.’

  ‘Did anyone ask him why?’

  ‘He told me he thought long-term assets outweighed present gains.’

  ‘It would be hard if he has been murdered for such an arguable opinion as that,’ said Harriet.

  ‘It’s hard to be murdered for any reason,’ said Peter mildly. ‘But the problem we seem to be having here is unreason; the murderer is a madman. It is hard to unravel or predict the actions of such a person.’

  ‘Or persons?’ asked Harriet. ‘Do we actually know that the murders are the work of only one person?’

  ‘Well, more than one murderer in a fellowship of about twenty-four people is not very probable,’ Peter said. ‘Do you think there might be a contaminant in the drinking water that produces urges to homicide?’

  ‘That would be a lovely scenario for a murder mystery, Peter,’ said Harriet, ‘if such a potential contaminant exists.’

  Peter suddenly struck himself on the forehead. ‘Harriet!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve been missing something so blatantly obvious – I’m losing my grip. Harriet, in which of your books is someone killed by being pushed off a balcony? By defenestration? By being tossed out of an organ loft? By being thrown off a roof?’

  ‘In none of them,’ said Harriet.

  ‘But in the other incidents, murder or attempted murder, there has been a precedent of sorts in your books . . .’

  ‘And in your cases, Peter.’

  ‘And have you ever written a book in which someone disappears without trace?’

  ‘No. You know I haven’t. You need a trace to make a story. But perhaps Miss Manciple’s parcels are a trace.’

  ‘We could try the third degree on Miss Manciple,’ said Peter, ‘although I gather from Bunter it might have to go as far as thumbscrews to persuade her.’

  ‘Disgusting idea, Peter,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Very well then, best beloved, we will continue to try intelligence before violence. Let’s make a careful analysis of what we do know. The college first voted on whether to sell the manuscript in Michaelmas term last year. Deadlock. The Warden used his casting vote in favour of keeping the book, and told everyone that he would always cast it in favour of the status quo.

  ‘The next vote was tabled to take place in Hilary term, this year. No doubt there was lobbying going on, but what also happened in the run-up to that vote was a pair of strange assaults on fellows; first Mr Cloudie either was threatened in his bedroom at night with an intruder wielding a large syringe, or dreamed that he was so threatened. The second oddity was Mr Dancy getting locked in the bell-tower during a ring of bells. Both of these men had voted for selling the MS, so had either of them died in the course of these odd events the deadlock would have been broken, and the book would have been safe. However, both of them survived, though severely frightened. The voting in Hilary term was deadlocked again.

  ‘The third vote is tabled for Trinity term, this year. As we know from the egregious Mr Smith, Enistead had threatened to change sides. Who knew about that, I wonder, apart from Smith’s pollsters, and the bookies? Certainly when the news of Enistead’s death reached Troutbeck at Denver he thought the vote to sell would be carried, and my services would not be required.’

  ‘And since you became involved there have been two deaths – Oundle and Trevair. Both horribly successful; the murderer is getting his hand in,’ said Harriet. ‘So where does the voting stand now?’

  ‘Its where it was before,’ said Peter. ‘Oundle was for selling; Trevair was for keeping. There is still stalemate.’

  ‘Unless, of course,’ said Harriet, ‘the Warden returns to his post and votes in favour of keeping the book.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter. ‘Unless that.’

  ‘Let’s pick up another trail,’ said Harriet. ‘What about the “who wrote the terrible review?” trail. How do we pursue that?’

  ‘With difficulty. Might some of your bohemian friends have a lead on that?’ asked Peter. ‘Eiluned Price, perhaps? The TLS does review books about music, after all.’

  ‘I could give it a try,’ said Harriet. ‘I could ask Eiluned to round up the old gang, and I’ll take them all to tea at the Ritz.’

  ‘I always knew you had a secret life as a temptress,’ said Peter.

  ‘Artists are always hungry,’ she replied.

  Chapter 13

  There is of course also tea at the Dorchester, and tea at the Savoy; but Harriet had no knowledge of either of those. Very lucky authors are occasionally entertained at the Ritz, perhaps by their visiting New York editors, who presumably find the décor familiar after the glories of transatlantic liners. As a result Harriet thought of the Ritz as an appropriate place for a treat. It has a light and airy dining room with a terrace overlooking the park, and numerous gilded nooks where tea can be had in comfortable seclusion. Harriet opted for one such side-table, for the purpose of confidential conversation.

  Her guests arrived together: Eiluned Price – looking shorter and stouter than ever, composing being a sedentary occupation – leading Sylvia Marriot and Marjorie Phelps behind her.

  Harriet had already ordered the tea, which was being borne towards her by several waiters following behind the guests. It was the full High Tea: mounds of small delicately cut sandwiches, scones and cream topped off with fresh strawberries, three kinds of cake, and a choice of exotic teas, from Assam and Earl Grey to Lapsang Souchong.

  ‘Oh, jolly D!’ exclaimed Marjorie. ‘You’re the girl to know, Harriet!’

  ‘Nothing for nothing,’ said Harriet. ‘I need some help. But tuck in first, and tell me how you are all doing.’

  Eiluned was eager to tell Harriet all about a commission she had just won in open competition to write music for a film about lovers who had met in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. ‘Lots of smoosh,’ she said happily.

  Marjorie had ‘sold out to Mammon’ as she put it, and was making figurines for a pottery firm in Stoke-on-Trent. ‘Pays the rent,’ she said, ‘and I eat well, and sleep at night. And I have to admit they do a lovely job of making my designs. They have a perfectionist attitude to mass production. It’s all very nostalgic, of course. I offered to make them a wartime sequence as souvenirs – Home Guard figures, and night watchmen, and Winston and Monty – but they didn’t think they would sell. So it’s back to shepherdesses. I managed to sneak in the Scholar Gipsy, I’m glad to say. They got the pastoral, and missed the literary reference.’

  ‘How about you, Sylvia, dear?’ asked Harriet. She knew perfectly well how Sylvia was: writing amazingly and living on bread and jam. Harriet had quietly and secretly been subsidising Sylvia – even Peter didn’t know this, but since he had insisted on providing her with an income of he
r own, or at her own disposal rather, she didn’t feel the need to tell him. Sylvia came to Denver from time to time for fresh air and a bit of coddling, and Harriet thought she would stop if she thought it was known that she couldn’t break even on her own efforts. Naturally Harriet had wondered about her own motives. Gratitude? Sylvia had spoken up for her at her trial. If it was gratitude it was very inconsistent of Harriet who had for years refused to marry Peter, mostly because she was grateful to him. Or perhaps it was that sneaky sense of guilt that very successful authors feel towards others who they know write better than themselves, and go unrewarded – unpaid and unread. Or perhaps she just liked Sylvia; that was the larger part of it.

  Sylvia embarked on an account of her latest novel, a strange affair about a sister shipwrecked in life by the misfortunes of her brother. ‘Not incest, I promise you,’ she said, ‘the girl doesn’t much like the brother, and finds out that she loves him only when it’s too late to save him.’

  ‘I’d like to write the music for that,’ said Eiluned. ‘When they make it into a film.’

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ said Sylvia dryly, ‘but thank you, Eiluned.’

  Most of the sandwiches and all the cream scones had disappeared. Harriet ordered another plate of scones, and fresh tea.

  ‘Now, how can we help you?’ Marjorie asked.

  ‘I need to know how one would find out – discreetly – who wrote a certain review in the TLS,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Can’t be done,’ said Eiluned briskly. ‘I have a friend who only wanted to say thank you to a reviewer for a lovely notice of her book about Purcell. They wouldn’t tell her. They said they would forward a letter to the reviewer.’

  ‘What do you suppose happens, though, in the depths of Printing House Square?’ asked Harriet. ‘Someone must know, or they wouldn’t be able to pay the reviewers. Are they like other papers do you think, who pay by the column inch of material used? Who keeps track?’

  I don’t know,’ said Marjorie, ‘but I know a man who might.’

  ‘Can I talk to him?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘He’s a printer,’ said Marjorie. ‘Printers are odd fish, and they drink like them, or some of them do. They can work very late; when they finish putting the paper to bed the buses and the tube have stopped running, except the night buses at very infrequent intervals. So they go off to a dive and drink till the transport system starts up again. Manly men, you might say. I do know where to find him, but not till halfway through the morning tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll stay in London overnight, then,’ said Harriet.

  ‘What fun, Harriet!’ said Marjorie. ‘Shall we all go to the flicks together, like old times?’

  ‘We could go to From Here to Eternity,’ said Eiluned.

  ‘That’s where we are all going in the long run,’ said Harriet, ‘after all.’

  John Taylor worked late and rose late. He was having breakfast when Marjorie and Harriet arrived at his digs. His landlady showed them into the dining room in which their man was eating in solitude, and offered to make more coffee. Harriet feared Camp Coffee, but accepted; Marjorie, a step more canny, declined. Taylor was wearing an open-necked shirt, and no tie. His jacket was hanging over the back of his chair, and he had not yet shaved. He looked like the morning after the night before; but then, Harriet supposed, with working hours like his every morning was the one after the night before.

  They introduced themselves, and waited for him to finish his eggs on toast. Harriet, sipping her coffee, regretted it bitterly – bitterly was the appropriate word.

  ‘Well, ladies,’ said John Taylor at last, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s a long shot, Mr Taylor,’ Harriet said, ‘but we were wondering if you might be able to help us identify the author of a certain review in the TLS.’

  ‘Risk my job?’ he said. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You might be saving lives,’ said Harriet. She briefly outlined to him the story that there had been bad feeling about the review, which might lie behind events in the present. He heard her out.

  ‘I can’t help you anyway,’ he said. I’m just a poor lowly compositor; it’s the people in the dolls’ house you want to talk to.’

  ‘The dolls’ house?’ said Marjorie.

  ‘The folk upstairs on the subbing floor,’ Taylor said. ‘Those who send the copy down for us to set up in print. Any of us could teach any of them the rules of grammar and punctuation, leave alone the rules of valid deduction. And not a man of us has a college education. Just an apprenticeship that goes back to Wynkyn de Worde.’

  ‘Yours is a learned trade,’ Harriet said. ‘I salute you. Unfortunately we can’t get to talk to anyone in the dolls’ house.’

  ‘So round you come to the back door. I blame you for this, Miss Phelps.’ He glared at Marjorie, but he looked grumpy rather than angry. ‘See here,’ he said, ‘the copy comes down from the editorial department. We put it down on the bench beside the linotype machine, and we type it out. Then the lines of type get set in formes; we stroke the surface of the type like it was a girl’s cheek to make sure it’s smooth and level; then the formes are locked and sent to be inked and proofed. We don’t see the proofs; we’re working on the next copy on the linotype machines. Get the picture?’

  ‘And if it’s the TLS the names of the reviewers have been removed before the linotype operator sees the copy?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘If it’s the TLS, yes.’

  ‘So if it were a particularly hostile review, of, shall we say, a book about a medieval manuscript, that wouldn’t attract notice on the printing floor?’

  John Taylor was suddenly looking directly at Harriet, with sharp attention.

  ‘I do remember noticing one like that, some time back,’ he said.

  Harriet asked, ‘Did you type it out?’

  ‘No; I read it in the forme,’ he said.

  ‘But that would be back to front, wouldn’t it?’ asked Harriet. ‘Mirror writing?’

  ‘We can all read stuff in the forme,’ he said contemptuously.

  ‘You noticed it because it was so hostile?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘I noticed it because I knew the man who wrote the book it was about,’ said John Taylor.

  ‘David Outlander? Do you mind telling me how you knew him?’

  ‘I had him under me just after the war,’ Taylor said. ‘I was his sergeant. Brave young fellow – foolhardy almost. We were defusing some of the hundreds of bombs lying around in London. I was chuffed when I heard he had got a degree. Would have liked one of those myself. So the review got me narked. Anything else you want to know?’

  ‘You were narked; so did you do anything about it?’

  ‘What could I do?’

  ‘You could have found out who wrote it.’

  ‘And how do you imagine I could do that?’ he asked.

  This is a game of chess, thought Harriet; I need a strong move. ‘The TLS pays its contributors,’ she said. ‘And the newspapers that I review for pay by column inch of the copy they print. So someone keeps track; someone measures the column inches and relates that to the person who will get paid.’

  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘That’s the Father of the Chapel.’

  Marjorie interjected, astonished, ‘Whoever is the Father of the Chapel?’

  ‘He’s the King and Emperor of everything that happens on the printing floor,’ said Taylor. ‘Even the editor of The Times pays him respect. He sticks up for us, and we do what he says. He would never let out information that was supposed to be confidential.’

  ‘But there must be a clerk to whom he gives those column inches,’ said Harriet. ‘You could have asked him.’

  ‘Strewth, lady, there’s no shaking you off, is there?’ he said. ‘All right; I did go and ask someone in accounts. He owed me a favour, he won a packet on a race tip I gave him. But I’ll have you remember my job is on the line if you go blabbing about how you found this out.’

  ‘I don’t want to do you harm, John Taylor,’ sa
id Harriet. ‘I want to put a spoke in the wheel of someone who is malevolently harming others.’

  ‘So you say,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Taylor,’ Harriet said, ‘do you know what happened to David Outlander?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Taylor. ‘I heard that.’

  ‘Did you know he hanged himself?’

  She saw him flinch. He hadn’t known. She followed through. ‘We think it might have been because of the review.’

  He took his time thinking about that. Then he reached behind himself, and pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket. From the notebook he tore a blank page. Then he groped for a pen, and scribbled something on his piece of paper. He folded it over and handed it to Harriet. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Now let me be a while. I’ve to be at work in an hour or so.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Taylor,’ said Harriet. She put the piece of paper in her pocket, and left with Marjorie.

  ‘God, that news upset him,’ said Marjorie as they walked towards the underground.

  ‘It naturally would,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Is that why you’re muted and glum instead of skipping along, saying “mission accomplished”?’ asked Marjorie.

  Harriet deflected the question. ‘How did you get to know him, anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘Known him for ever,’ said Marjorie. ‘He lived on my street in Finchley when we were children. We used to play in his house or mine. He played with my John Bull printing set and I played with his plasticine. We both made a mess of the kitchen table, whichever kitchen table we played on.’

  Harriet thanked Marjorie, promised to see her again soon, and took a bus to Paddington to get the next Oxford train. She was indeed feeling morose. She had not played fair with John Taylor. She had not told him that it might be to protect the reviewer that Peter wanted to know who he was. Had he known that, John Taylor would not have divulged what he knew.

  The train was past Reading before Harriet got out the piece of paper, and looked to see what she had extracted from John Taylor. It said: