The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

‘And he angered some of the fellows here by voting to retain the Boethius, we understand.’

  ‘Yes. Since I happened to know that he was a friend of Rowse, I wasn’t surprised; but people assumed that an economist would take a rational rather than a sentimental view. I can’t think why,’ he added wryly.

  ‘Who was particularly angry with him?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Well, Troutbeck of course. But Troutbeck was the cheerleader for the selling party. I don’t know of any personal animus against Trevair on Troutbeck’s part. But then Trevair hadn’t been here long enough to acquire a portfolio of enemies.’

  ‘What a thing to say about the college!’ said Peter.

  Ambleside winced. ‘I have loved this college, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘It admitted me as a scholarship boy, and has been my home ever since. Before all this uproar it was a gentlemanly, and a gentle community, with only the sort of grouches that are bound to arise when people see too much of each other, and which blow away over a glass of port in a day or two. I am grieved at what is becoming – has become of us. I have applied for a post in the University of Western Australia.’

  ‘As far away as it is possible to get?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘No need to go that far, old chap,’ said Peter. ‘We will get this sorted out, I promise you. Now, is it possible to give us access to Trevair’s rooms?’

  ‘I have a set of keys,’ said Ambleside.

  Trevair’s rooms were orderly, and bleak. There were books, of course; there was Adam Smith and Ricardo, and Frank Hahn. One or two books about Cornwall; well, after all, his surname indicated where his roots were. The bookshelves did not seem revelatory . . . a row of photographs displayed a mature couple who were probably his parents; grieving parents now. And perhaps the happy family photo with three children sitting beside a sandcastle, and a mother and father standing behind them, were of Trevair’s sister and brother-in-law, nephew and nieces, or brother and sister-in-law . . . Trevair’s bedroom also contained a bookshelf, and this one was full of detective stories: a good dozen by Agatha Christie, a few Edmund Crispins, some Margery Allinghams, three Harriet Vanes . . .

  Peter returned to the drawing room and opened the desk drawer. A large brown paper envelope, unsealed, lay in full view. Peter slid the contents out on to the desk. A short paragraph had been written several times on college headed paper.

  Dear —

  I am writing to alert you to a difficulty I have been informed of on good authority, in the way of the college making a profit on the proposed purchase of land. The City Council has already drawn up in outline plans to develop the land in question . . . this plan is still confidential.

  It was all ready. Trevair had only to write in the names of fellows at the top of the letters; they would each look like a handwritten individual approach. Showing someone in advance had cost him his life.

  A typewriter on a side-table had a sheet of paper in it, typed halfway down; an article about the price of gold, it seemed to Peter’s glance. The top copy was a sheet of onion-skin; an expensive paper that allowed for erasure and clean correction. Peter lifted it to read it right down to the last typed line, just above the keys, and saw that Trevair had been making two carbon copies. Something struck him; he looked at other papers lying on the desk, all in very straight piles, either as Trevair had left them or as the police had left them after searching the room. There were typescripts of several more articles, all with carbon copies sorted out, paper clipped, and lying together in a stack with the top copy.

  ‘Harriet?’ asked Peter. ‘Do you make carbon copies of your work?’

  ‘Yes, always,’ she said.

  ‘Of a novel, of course; I know you do. But what about something transient – a review perhaps?’

  ‘Especially of a review,’ she said. ‘The top copy might get lost in the post.’

  Peter struck himself a mock blow on the head. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘never mind poor Trevair; let’s go and hunt the Warden.’

  To the Warden’s Lodgings they had the easiest possible access: they just had to open the door between their suite of guest rooms and the rest of the house. There was a guardian there, of course, Miss Manciple. She appeared in the corridor as soon as she heard their footsteps.

  ‘Mr Bunter is not here, Your Grace,’ she said. ‘He has gone shopping.’

  Peter decided to face down opposition. ‘We aren’t after Bunter,’ he told her, ‘we need access to the Warden’s study.’

  ‘I don’t think Dr Ludgvan would like that at all,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid it is necessary,’ Peter told her. ‘It can be myself and my wife, or it could be the police. Which do you think the Warden would prefer?’

  She stood in their path, thinking for a moment. Then she said, ‘He will have to be told – when he returns, that is.’

  ‘Miss Manciple,’ said Peter gently, ‘when do you think he will return?’

  She was silent. She had coloured slightly; perhaps she was aware that she had betrayed herself.

  ‘My guess would be,’ said Peter, ‘that the Warden, if he is safe somewhere, as we all hope he is, will not return until the crisis in college is sorted out. What do you think?’

  She stood staring at him.

  ‘I take it that you would like him to return; that you enjoyed looking after his household? If that is the case, let us look at the papers in his study. May we?’

  She stood aside. ‘Third door on the left,’ she said.

  Peter walked, with Harriet following, into the Warden’s study.

  Everything was orderly. A large, book-lined room. A desk with no papers on its tooled leather top. Miss Manciple stood in the doorway.

  ‘I thought the Warden had left in a hurry?’ said Peter. ‘Is this how he left things?’

  ‘No, I tidied up for him,’ said Miss Manciple.

  ‘Did you often do that?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Nearly every day,’ she said. ‘He was an untidy man. Always losing his work. I used to put it away for him.’

  ‘You served as his secretary, as well as his housekeeper?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I can type; he cannot,’ she said. ‘I served as his secretary when there were matters he preferred not to send across to the college office.’

  ‘And you filed his papers for him too?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I filed things that he had me type for him here,’ she said.

  ‘So you could easily put your hands on the file copy of his review of David Outlander’s book?’

  Miss Manciple began to shake. She stepped into the room and sat down in a chair.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Never mind how, or who,’ Peter said. ‘We do know.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you!’ she almost wailed. ‘It wasn’t me! I promised; and it wasn’t me!’

  Harriet stepped in. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t you, and we will stand up for you if the need arises. We found out for ourselves. Don’t get upset.’

  ‘Could you find us a copy of that review?’ Peter asked again.

  ‘No, sir, I can’t,’ she said, still shaking. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Peter. He was speaking softly to her now. ‘Wasn’t there a carbon copy?’

  ‘Of course there was,’ she said, defensively indignant. ‘I always make one.’

  ‘So, why?’

  ‘It was stolen,’ she said. ‘Someone just walked in here from the guest suite and took it.’

  ‘Now, Miss Manciple,’ said Peter, softly now. ‘I would like you to be very sure of what you are telling us. Are you perfectly sure that it was not a case of your losing a document from the files; that beyond all doubt someone stole it?’

  ‘Yes, I am sure, sir,’ she said. ‘I came back from a shopping trip to meet my sister in London, and choose a new dress; and I took that particular day off because the Warden was in Manchester doing a lecture. I got back before him, and the moment I walked in here I could see someone h
ad been here. The filing cabinet was open, and lot of papers strewn about. I looked at once to see if the review copy had been found. And it was gone, and nothing else was gone, just thrown about on the floor and the desk.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I tidied up, sir, and I waited for the Warden to come in, and I told him. He was very put out, sir. Very put out indeed. But he didn’t want to call the police, or question the college servants to see if they knew who had been in here. He didn’t want any attention called to it at all.’

  ‘By your account,’ said Peter, ‘you knew exactly what to look for. You knew exactly what might have been taken.’

  ‘Yes, I did, sir,’ she said. And then she began to weep, holding her hands in front of her face to hide her tears. ‘Poor Mr Outlander,’ she said. ‘Poor, poor Mr Outlander. Such a nice young man. And I never heard of him harming so much as a fly, nor ever quarrelling with anyone.’

  ‘So were you upset by the Warden’s review of his book?’ asked Harriet.

  Miss Manciple took a while to recover herself. ‘I asked him about it,’ she said. ‘And he told me it was all in the day’s work for scholars. We have to have thick skins, he said. So I asked him was it what he really thought about Mr Outlander’s book. And he said it would put things back in proportion. People were saying silly things about the manuscript and talking it up to be worth a lot more than what he thought it was. And he said if that went on the fellows would be selling the manuscript just for the money. So he was putting things right. Sir, he didn’t mean to harm Mr Outlander; really he didn’t. He was dreadfully upset about him killing himself; it made him ill for months. He took to walking round his rooms at night, like he was haunting himself.’

  Her tears had dried up, but she was looking grey and gaunt. ‘And as to what happened next,’ she said, ‘he said he had brought it upon himself, and it served him right. He said that more than once to me; over and over would be more like it.’

  ‘What did happen next?’ asked Peter.

  ‘If I told you I knew, I would be telling more than I know,’ she said, ‘but I think he was being blackmailed. I think that’s what it was.’

  ‘For money?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Oh, no, sir, I don’t think it was that. I looked after his bills for him, and so I saw his bank statements. There wasn’t a penny of extra money going out. It was about that voting they kept having. His vote, and his casting vote. And now he isn’t here, and they’ll have to do without his vote, either one way or the other.’

  ‘What do you think has happened to him?’ Peter asked.

  ‘It’s got too much for him, sir, and he’s run away,’ she said.

  ‘So much for the anonymity of TLS reviews,’ said Harriet ruefully, when they were back in their own part of the house. ‘Usually anger and indignation at hostile reviews rage impotently in the void; but once one knew who the reviewer was . . .’

  ‘The question now,’ said Peter, ‘is who the blackmailer was; or is, rather. Did we keep that note from the sleeve of the Warden’s gown? Someone might know the handwriting.’

  ‘I’m sure we kept it,’ said Harriet. ‘Bunter will have it safe somewhere. But it’s very revealing, Peter. Anyone who saw it and recognised the writing would know who had been threatening the Warden. Are we ready for that?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Peter. ‘Is there anyone here we think reliable?’

  ‘Mr Gervase seems cool and rational,’ said Harriet.

  ‘And there’s Ambleside,’ said Peter. ‘We’ll try them.’

  Chapter 15

  But what they actually did next was to drive themselves, Bunter included, through the hours of darkness back to Denver, driving home in aching anxiety and unhappiness. The Dowager Duchess had fallen down some stairs; she had broken three ribs and an ankle. Worse, the doctors thought she might have had a stroke, and that had caused the fall.

  She was being treated in hospital at King’s Lynn. There was a horrible revived memory of the drive to Denver the night the house had partly burned down. The night that Peter’s brother Gerald had died, and he had become a reluctant Duke. Going to an emergency, and not knowing what one will find . . . Peter had to be allowed to drive; it was purgatory to him to be driven, even by Bunter, and he was tense enough already. To Harriet’s relief and astonishment, however, he pulled to the side of the road on the way out of Cambridge, and handed over to Bunter. ‘I’m not fit to drive,’ he said apologetically. ‘Too worried.’

  ‘Sit in the back with me, Peter,’ Harriet said, ‘and hold my hand.’ Meekly he did so.

  ‘Feeling my age,’ he said.

  But it was his mother’s age that was on all their minds. The Dowager Duchess was eighty-four, still buzzing around her life like a queen bee, although often tired now, needing a nap after lunch, going early to bed. If she had had a stroke there was no knowing what would survive of her, at such an age. King’s Lynn was beyond Denver; they drove straight past the gates of their house, and on up the A10. Long before they arrived there was silence in the car. They had given up making cheerful remarks to each other, and were wrapped in their own inner worlds; three thinking islands, entire of themselves.

  Harriet wondered what it would mean for Peter to lose his mother. She couldn’t imagine. His mother had always been his champion, always the one who understood him, who saw through the surface. Then Harriet wondered how she herself would feel. The answer was – desolate. Peter’s love had secured his mother’s love for her, before they had even met; no, that was not quite right – the Duchess had attended Harriet’s trial, and had read her books. She had not been surprised by Harriet, but Harriet had been astonished by her. So utterly unlike what she had supposed a duchess to be! So amusing, so affectionate, so zany and practical at once . . .

  They pulled up at the hospital entrance; Peter stalked in and asked for his mother.

  Staircases, painted cream above, green below. Ward numbers. Signs. Swing doors. They asked the matron where to find the Duchess.

  ‘Do we have a duchess?’ she said.

  ‘Honoria Wimsey,’ Harriet tried.

  ‘Of course. Last bay on the right.’ Peter was instantly on his way there. Harriet asked for news.

  ‘We’ve set her fracture,’ the matron said. ‘And we’re keeping her in because we understand she has never had a fall before, and the doctors want to observe her for a few days to see if there are signs that she has had a stroke.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘I don’t think so, but it’s best to be sure,’ the matron said.

  Harriet walked down the ward to the Duchess’s bed. Beside the bed on one side sat Franklin, hollow-eyed, white-faced, clearly utterly exhausted. The woman was nearly as old as her mistress, and this must have been dreadful for her, thought Harriet. On the other side of the bed Peter was now sitting, holding his mother’s hand. She appeared to be asleep. A nurse brought a third chair, and Harriet sat down. The Duchess had a dramatic black eye, which gave her a piratical appearance, and the lump in the blankets indicated a cast also on her left leg. Harriet thought she remembered her father saying that old bones took longer to heal.

  ‘Don’t go, Mama,’ Peter said softly.

  An hour passed, and then Helen appeared. ‘Oh, if you are here, I needn’t have come,’ she said to Peter. Her unmoderated voice woke the patient.

  ‘Oh, lordy, Peter,’ she said, ‘I was just dreaming I was holding your hand, and here you are! And Harriet too. How lovely. Did you say don’t go, dear? Soon, perhaps, but not now. Have they offered you a cup of tea?’

  Helen said, ‘I’ll be off, then, and leave it to you, Peter.’

  Harriet said, ‘Could you drive Franklin home, Helen? She needs to rest.’

  Helen blinked. It was not a welcome request, but she acceded to it. Harriet began to persuade Franklin, who was trying to refuse, when the Duchess said, ‘Go home and get some sleep, Franklin. Don’t be a silly goose.’

  ‘I’d rather stay,
m’am, if you don’t mind,’ said Franklin.

  ‘I do mind,’ said the Duchess. ‘I’ll be home later today, and I need you on your feet to look after me there. Off you go, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘What makes you think you’ll be home today, Mama?’ said Peter, when Helen had swept Franklin away with her.

  ‘I haven’t had a stroke, Peter,’ the Duchess said. ‘I can remember perfectly why I fell; I didn’t black out at all, I just tripped over the loose sole on my old slipper. And I reached out for the top of the banister rail to steady myself, and it was just a bit too far to reach, so I toppled over right at the top of the stairs. And down them a bit. Just a fall. Nothing to worry about.’

  Peter laughed. ‘You should see yourself, Mama,’ he said. ‘All right; I’ll go and talk to the doctor about you.’

  He came back looking more cheerful. ‘I can get you sprung from here tomorrow,’ he told his mother. ‘Shall I get you into a private room for tonight?’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that, Peter,’ the Duchess said. ‘It would be lonely all by myself. And they are so kind here. And there’s a lovely woman in the bed opposite who has been telling me all about her hens and her grandchildren. She has little ones, called Bantams, and they lay delicious eggs – the hens, I mean, not the grandchildren. The hens hide the eggs on her farm, and the grandchildren are good at finding them. She might be hurt if she thought I had asked to be moved.’

  ‘Just as you like, Mama,’ Peter said. ‘We’ll go and find some lunch, and come back later.’

  Harriet was glad to hear lunch mentioned; the moment anxiety abated, she realised she was very hungry.

  The appropriately named Duke’s Head supplied lunch, and would provide a bed for the night. Since visiting was allowed only between five and seven in the afternoon – an exception had been made for the first visit after an emergency, and that exception was no longer judged necessary – they had an afternoon to spend.

  ‘Let’s go and look at Castle Acre,’ Peter suggested.

  ‘What’s there?’ Harriet asked.