The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘What could he do?’ asked Peter. ‘His best defence would be to keep up the pretence of virtue.’

  ‘He could flee; he could cover his tracks,’ said Harriet. ‘And after all, Peter, that threatening note might have been a prequel to the Warden’s death; we don’t know the Warden is alive; we do know there is a murderer at work here.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Peter. ‘A strange and whimsical one, to be sure, but certainly a murderer whatever Charles may think.’

  ‘Charles is a very experienced policeman, Peter. We ought to pay attention to what he thinks.’

  ‘How right you are,’ said Peter. ‘Let’s walk our thoughts in Charles’s footsteps and see things his way for a while.’

  ‘We start with two assaults, on Mr Cloudie, and Mr Dancy,’ said Harriet. ‘Both of them wishing to sell the MS. Both assaults are unsuccessful.’

  ‘And if we are Charles we will find both dubious,’ said Peter. ‘The bell-tower one could have been an accident, and the midnight attacker with a syringe could have been a nightmare.’

  ‘Indeed. So why are we convinced they were the work of a would-be murderer?’

  ‘Because of the methods of attack,’ said Peter, ‘both being in books written by you.’

  ‘Then the death of Enistead. I liked the sound of him. I should like to have met him.’

  ‘Charles thinks that serial murderers have a consistent pattern of attack. A favourite method that they don’t vary. But we think this murderer has a favourite source of methods. An idea that is backed up by the death of Mr Oundle; haemophilia has also figured in a book of yours.’

  ‘It is presumably the murderer who buys his books in Heffers,’ said Harriet. ‘Shall we cajole Dick Fox into coming across here and having a look around?’

  ‘That would certainly alert the murderer, Harriet.’

  ‘Would it? Couldn’t I have a friend who is a bookseller, and invite him to dinner? I could ask that nice lady from Hatchard’s as well, as a sort of cover.’

  ‘Let’s stick with Charles for a bit longer,’ said Peter. ‘To be convinced he needs both an obsessively repeated method of murder, and a down-to-earth squalid motive. We offer him an improbable variety of means of attack, and a motive to do with scholarship . . .’

  ‘Hold it there a minute, Peter,’ said Harriet. ‘Are we a pair of ivory tower dreamers ourselves? What about the money? We aren’t paying enough attention to the money.’

  ‘Well, this particular money would not be in the pockets of any single person,’ Peter reminded her. ‘Do you think someone might murder for the sake of the college solvency? Charles would find that at least as hard to swallow as the idea of murder for the love of learning.’

  ‘What about you, Peter?’ Harriet asked. ‘Haven’t I heard you say that you think motive is a distraction? You concentrate on how the deed was done. I know I have heard you say “when you know how you know who.” ’

  Peter looked a little sheepish. ‘Well, the how is staring us in the face in each of these deaths,’ he said. ‘No fun to be had there. My thoughts stray to why. When we know why . . . and of course, there’s one death right out of line. Trevair is the only casualty of a manner of death not suggested in your work. And he is also the only one to die who had voted to keep the MS.’

  ‘Are we looking for two murderers?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Charles would regard that as right off the scale of probability,’ said Peter. ‘But yes, I think we are. Come, my dear, we will be late for our penitential dinner.’

  Hall dinner was poorly attended, at least at High Table. The undergraduates in the body of the Hall were as numerous and rowdy as ever. The conversation was muted. Troutbeck was there, talking to Mr Cloudie, who had summoned up the courage to reappear at the High Table, about the quality of the new applicants for college places, and the search for new appointments to replace Trevair and Oundle.

  When they rose at the end of the meal, and filed out into the quad, Peter stopped Troutbeck.

  ‘A word with you, Troutbeck,’ he said. They were standing under one of the ornate Victorian lamps that lit the path between the Hall and the Senior Common Room. ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Peter asked, and showed Troutbeck the scrap of paper.

  Troutbeck looked at it.

  ‘Do you know whose handwriting it is, Troutbeck?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s mine,’ said Troutbeck. ‘What is it? I don’t remember writing it.’

  ‘Found in the sleeve of the Warden’s gown,’ said Peter. ‘Surely you must remember writing it.’

  ‘Well, it might have been just before one of the votes,’ said Troutbeck. ‘I was putting pressure on him to vote for the sale, rather than pussyfooting about trying to placate both parties. I expect I wrote it before the last vote we took. Yes; I’m sure that was it.’

  ‘It is unsigned, Troutbeck. You gave it to him by hand?’

  ‘Yes, I would have done.’

  ‘You were not threatening him? The note has a menacing tone.’

  ‘Threatening? What could I threaten him with?’ said Troutbeck. ‘The worst I could threaten would have been an appeal to you. Now if you will excuse me . . .’

  A cool head, and a hot temper, Peter thought. An interesting combination.

  In the archway below their window a shadowy figure was waiting for them.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Peter called.

  ‘It’s only me, sir,’ was the answer. The slight, willowy figure of Jackson stepped into the light of the quad. ‘You wanted to talk to me,’ Jackson said. ‘Is it too late?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Peter said. ‘Just the right time for a little nightcap.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t drink,’ said Jackson. ‘It breaks my concentration.’

  ‘A mug of cocoa, then?’ suggested Harriet. They both saw the boy’s face light up.

  Once Jackson was settled in a chair in the drawing room, Harriet studied him. Painfully thin, deep shadows below the eyes, slightly trembling hands . . .

  ‘You’ve been working too hard,’ she said in a tone as accusing as if charging him with a crime. ‘And when did you last have a good meal?’

  ‘I can’t stop for food,’ Jackson said. ‘Really I can’t. I’m behind with revision already.’

  Harriet put her head round the door and called for Bunter. ‘What do we have handy to eat?’ she asked him.

  Bunter offered to warm up the supper that he would have served to them had they not decided to eat in Hall.

  ‘What I wanted to ask you,’ said Peter to Jackson, ‘is what you thought of Outlander’s book about the Boethius. I take it that you read it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s my bible,’ said Jackson.

  ‘But your B.Litt. thesis was going to cover the same ground as that book,’ said Peter. ‘Have I got that right?’

  Jackson looked uneasy. ‘There’s a bit more to say,’ he parried.

  ‘I suppose you also read the notorious TLS review?’

  ‘I heard about it,’ said Jackson cautiously.

  ‘But since you say Outlander is your bible, you don’t agree with the review?’

  Jackson was looking more and more unhappy. ‘Well, Outlander’s book isn’t perfect,’ he said. ‘He got a bit carried away.’

  ‘You seemed rather carried away yourself last time we spoke,’ said Peter.

  Jackson stared at Peter, then at Harriet, then back again. He looked cornered. Then he looked at the floor. ‘I think he’s basically right about the MS,’ he said. ‘But he didn’t look hard enough. He missed some stuff. I was going to improve on him a little.’

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Peter. ‘You can still do whatever it is you were going to do.’

  ‘You can stop them selling the MS?’ said Jackson. ‘But I’m going to fail my finals. Not get a first, I mean. I can’t do a second degree without a grant.’

  ‘You can’t improve your chances by failing to eat, either,’ said Harriet.

  At this point Bunter entered, holding aloft on one h
and, posh waiter-style, a laden tray. With the other hand he flicked open a white tablecloth, and spread it on the sofa table near Jackson’s chair. Then he put down the tray, revealing a generous plate of chicken Marengo, a cheeseboard and an apple pie. He set out the cutlery, and withdrew.

  ‘Tuck in,’ said Peter.

  And Jackson did. He ate as if it were the first and last meal of his life.

  Shortly, Bunter reappeared and said, ‘More chicken, sir?’

  Jackson took more chicken. Then he moved on to the apple pie, and, one large slice at a time, consumed it all.

  How the young can eat! thought Harriet. Her own boys could do the same. And if this chap had been skipping lunch and dinner . . .

  ‘You said Outlander had missed some stuff?’ said Peter, when Jackson had slowed down a bit. ‘What stuff?’

  ‘You see, if I tell people and it gets around,’ Jackson said, ‘if everybody goes and looks at it, then it loses its value in my thesis. It won’t be my discovery, just something people know.’

  ‘I do see that,’ said Peter. ‘I am inviting you to trust us.’

  Jackson gave Peter a long meditative stare. He had lost the famished look, but was looking at the cheeseboard through the corner of his eye.

  ‘Promise?’ he asked.

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well, Outlander didn’t look closely enough at the colour of the inks,’ Jackson said, taking the plunge. ‘He seemed to think that Alfred might have made the entire gloss. But there’s a brownish ink in which the Latin text is written; then there’s a bluish-black ink in which the gloss is written; then there are a few words here and there in a blacker ink. Those words are not so elegantly written, and the lines are not quite straight.’

  ‘What do you make of your observation?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I thought perhaps the text was glossed for Alfred by his scribes, but that when he was using it, he made some jottings in his own hand, and the different ink would be the one he used.’

  ‘Apart from you and now us,’ Peter said, ‘is there anyone else who knows about your theory?’

  ‘Miss Griffiths knows,’ said Jackson.

  ‘And what does she think of it?’

  ‘She would like some analysis of the different inks. To back me up. But I can’t see how I could do that without scraping the words on the page to get a sample of inks for analysis. And I’m not going to be allowed to do that; it would damage the pages. I’m supposed not to be thinking about this till after my finals.’

  Bunter, standing in the door, cleared his throat.

  ‘Yes, Bunter?’ said Peter.

  ‘I was wondering, my lord, if the dubious ink was darker or lighter than the main text?’

  ‘Oh, it’s darker,’ said Jackson. ‘But only ever so little.’

  ‘So long as what makes it different is that it is darker, my lord,’ said Bunter, ‘then photography might help.’

  ‘How would it help?’ asked Peter. ‘Explain yourself, Bunter.’

  ‘At the print-making stage, my lord,’ said Bunter, ‘one rocks the print in the tray of developer, and the darkest part of the print becomes visible first. I think it possible that the sensitivity of the printing paper might be greater than that of the human eye.’

  ‘It’s worth a try, don’t you think, Jackson?’ said Peter.

  But Jackson did not reply; he had fallen asleep where he sat.

  Peter and Bunter between them lifted him out of his chair, and laid him on the sofa. Bunter brought a blanket, and covered him to the chin. Then the three of them tiptoed away to their own more comfortable but less urgently needed beds.

  In the morning their bird had flown. The blanket Jackson had slept under was neatly folded, and a note saying, ‘Thank you’ was laid on it. The Warden’s door to the quadrangle was still bolted on the inside; Jackson had let himself out through the garden door.

  ‘I wonder how many people know about that door?’ said Peter.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Can we play by ourselves, Bunter?’ Peter asked. ‘Would you have to run back to Denver, or can we obtain the necessaries in Oxford?’

  ‘There is a college photographic society, my lord, with a simple darkroom in one of the attics. That would have all that we need.’

  ‘How do you know that, Bunter?’ Peter asked.

  ‘A member of that society spotted me using the Leica IIIf which your lordship generously gave me for Christmas,’ said Bunter, ‘and got into conversation with me. I have been invited to speak to the society on the subject of Leica cameras next week, my lord.’

  ‘Have you indeed? Did you accept?’

  ‘I did, my lord. As also an invitation to speak to the college Wine Society, on the subject of port.’

  ‘I perceive, Bunter,’ said Peter peevishly, ‘that you do not expect me to solve the college mysteries in the next day or two.’

  ‘I did consider that possibility, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘But then I recalled that I have not had a holiday as such since 1949, and I supposed that you would not grudge me two days’ absence in Oxford to fulfil these commitments.’

  ‘You suppose right,’ said Peter, abashed. ‘So what next?’

  ‘I must inspect the darkroom,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Can I come too?’ asked Peter.

  ‘If you wish,’ said Bunter.

  Leaving Harriet to her own devices, her two menfolk collected a key from the porter, and went in search of the darkroom.

  It was up a lot of stairs, in the oldest part of the college, and through a door labelled in large red letters: DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT WARNING. Bunter knocked and waited; then they entered a room crouching under the sloping eaves. There was a sink, a bench, a darkroom light with a deep orange shade, a washing line with tiny pegs on it for hanging prints to dry, a shelf of chemicals, and some stained plastic trays in various colours and sizes.

  Unfortunately there were also some chinks of light showing through the window blind, and creating splashes of sunlight on the opposite wall.

  ‘Doesn’t that make the room useless?’ asked Peter. The chinks of light seemed brighter and brighter as their eyes adjusted to the general gloom.

  ‘I expect these young tyros manage to make prints of their snapshots,’ said Bunter disapprovingly, ‘but it will have to be fixed for the experiment we wish to try.’

  ‘How can it be fixed?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Something pinned over the window. I’ll see what I can find,’ said Bunter.

  ‘Meet me in the library,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll make sure the book is ready for you to photograph when you’ve fixed the light problem.’

  Bunter clattered down the stairs ahead of him, and Peter followed at leisure, lost in thought.

  As he had supposed he would, he found Jackson head down over his revising, in a corner of the library. He had regained the haggard expression that had been briefly lifted last night; could he be hungry again? At Peter’s insistence he suspended his work long enough to find a page with one of the supposed jottings in different ink on it. And the librarian arranged the book open on the best lit desk, with its pages held open by weighted ribbons.

  Long before Bunter appeared with his Leica Jackson had gone back to his work.

  ‘Fixed?’ Peter asked.

  ‘All fixed now,’ Bunter told him.

  Bunter was a careful photographer. Peter sat on a library chair, and watched him work. He used a tripod and a light-meter, measuring the light at the camera position, and then the incident light on the manuscript page. He took a tape measure from his pocket and measured the distance required to focus the camera.

  ‘You used not to go to such trouble, Bunter,’ Peter said.

  ‘I have learned a lot from my wife,’ Bunter told him.

  ‘As have I from mine,’ said Peter.

  At last Bunter was satisfied, and took several exposures. Peter, listening to the silky click of the shutter, counted twenty. Then without a word spoken, Bunter directed the
camera at Jackson, sitting in a window bay, leaning over his work, his head aureoled in sunlight. Two more exposures.

  Before the MS was put away Peter took a look at the page Jackson had chosen. There was only one short sentence that was out of line with the steady march of the gloss over the Latin words. Peter would not himself have seen any difference in the colour of the ink in which it was written.

  ‘Perhaps, my lord, you would like to give me a couple of hours to develop and wash the film, and allow it to dry,’ said Bunter.

  Peter returned to sit in his room, and opened the window to let in the sweet warm air.

  Once again voices rose to him from people walking through the archway beneath him. Idle chatter in broken phrases . . . He began to read, and not listen. Then suddenly he heard a voice speaking urgently.

  ‘Why is Troutbeck so agitated?’ a speaker asked. ‘You would think it was his own money at stake . . .’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Peter told himself, looking out of the window in time to see two unidentifiable backs receding across the quad. ‘Follow the money. That’s what Freddy would say.’ And the money led to thoughts of Troutbeck.

  Having allowed Bunter due time, and knocked on the darkroom door before entering, Peter stepped into total blackness.

  ‘As black as hell, as dark as night, Bunter,’ he said into the void. Bunter threw a switch, and the room was bathed in a very dim orange-red light. There was a strong smell of chemicals, but no chinks of daylight. ‘How did you fix the window?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I asked around,’ Bunter said, ‘and it turned out that Miss Manciple had kept all the blackout curtains from the Warden’s house. In case they should be needed again, she said.’

  ‘God forfend!’ said Peter. ‘Although he isn’t as a rule to be relied upon to forfend, any more than he is to forbid. Now what, Bunter?’

  ‘I am about to make a print, my lord,’ said Bunter.

  As Peter’s eyes got used to the gloom he saw that the enlarger, which had been covered with a cloth, was now ready. Beside it on the bench was a row of three dishes, containing liquids. Bunter switched on the enlarger, and a negative picture of the photographed page appeared on the base plate. There was some fiddling about, while Bunter centred a paper frame to contain the projected picture, raised the enlarger head a little, and focused the enlarging lens.