They were woken by the phone ringing insistently through the door to the Warden’s quarters. It stopped abruptly as Bunter answered it. Then they heard him knock gently at their door, and when Peter said, ‘Come,’ he stepped in.
‘More bodies, Bunter?’ Peter asked.
‘Not as far as I am aware, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘It is Chief Inspector Charles Parker wishing to speak to you when you are able to take the call.’
‘I’ll be right with him,’ said Peter. ‘I can take a call in my pyjamas, as long as Miss Manciple isn’t about; and if she is about these are, after all, Harrod’s pyjamas.’
‘Don’t be silly, Peter,’ offered Harriet, propping herself up on her pillow. ‘It might really be a body and you can’t go haring down to London in pyjamas, wherever you bought them.’
‘Tell Charles I’ll ring him back,’ said Peter.
In a short while Peter consulted Harriet again. ‘Can I go haring around after bodies without shaving first?’ he asked her.
‘Certainly not, Peter,’ she said. ‘There is an implication of inattention in an unshaven man that gives the impression of intellectual weakness.’
Nevertheless it was only a quarter of an hour before Peter rang Charles back.
‘Ah, there you are,’ said Charles. ‘We’ve found your Warden for you.’
‘Excellent, Charles. Is he alive or dead?’
‘Alive.’
‘Better and better. Where is he?’
‘Not far from you at all. He’s in the Radcliffe Infirmary’ – here Charles paused for dramatic effect – ‘suffering from arsenic poisoning.’
‘I should have expected that,’ Peter said. ‘I should have known.’
‘Failure of clairvoyance, Peter?’ said Charles. ‘Clairvoyance usually fails.’
‘Of course, we didn’t know where he was. No way of warning him. Can I talk to him?’
‘I don’t see why not. There’s an Oxford copper at his bedside, but nihil obstat. Unless the hospital objects.’
‘I’ll hop over there and see,’ said Peter.
First, of course, he gave the news to Harriet and Bunter. Bunter told him that Miss Manciple was weeping her eyes out in the kitchen, and Peter went down to talk to her.
‘I take it you know what has happened to the Warden?’ he asked her.
‘It was me that called the ambulance,’ she said.
‘You were with him? You have known all this time where he was? Sworn to secrecy, I take it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, you kept the secret very loyally, if not very wisely,’ Peter told her. ‘Where has the Warden been hiding then?’
‘Yarnton, sir. He has an old friend with a lovely house there, and lots of space. There’s a gardener’s cottage tucked away in the garden, behind the house gates. He was hid away safe from prying eyes.’
‘So you have been sending him things he needs – all those brown paper parcels?’
‘Sending or taking them, sir. There’s a good bus up the Woodstock Road.’
‘Is that why you were there last night? Taking him something?’
‘Not exactly. I was there cooking a dinner for him to have with a friend.’
‘Who was that?’
‘I don’t know, sir, and I didn’t see. I got the food all laid out in the kitchen ready to serve, and then he sent me off to the cinema. There’s a nice cinema in Kidlington. He gave me money for the tickets.’
‘He didn’t want you to see his guest?’
‘He said they had things to talk about, that’s all. All quite natural, sir. But when I got back to clear up he was in a terrible way; he was moaning with pain, and throwing up everywhere, and there was blood in the vomit. So I called an ambulance, though he told me not to.’
‘You were right. You probably saved his life. What about the guest?’
‘I don’t know, sir. He had gone before I got back. What is wrong with the Warden, sir?’
‘I’m afraid he has been poisoned,’ Peter told her.
‘Not with his dinner, sir. I cooked every morsel of that myself, and I ate the leftovers when I was clearing up, and I’m quite all right, sir, as you see. How is the Warden, sir? Will he be all right?’
‘I’m off to see him now,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll tell you what I can when I get back. And, Miss Manciple, I should warn you, you will have to deal with many questions from the police. They will want to know all about that dinner that you cooked.’
‘They’d do better to find out who the guest was,’ said Miss Manciple stoutly. ‘It has to be him that poisoned the poor Warden. Like I say, it wasn’t my dinner.’
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Warden was not fit to be seen. By good chance Peter intercepted a doctor leaving his room and, claiming his status in St Severin’s, obtained a little information. The doctor said his patient had ingested a heavy dose of arsenic, which had not proved lethal only because of the prompt and disobedient action of his servant. (One up for the devoted Miss Manciple.) He was being treated by chelation, and was expected to live, though not perhaps to recover completely from the impact on his heart and liver. Try visiting tomorrow, Peter was told; the chelation should have had some effect by then. Peter asked for an explanation of what, exactly, chelation was. It was, he was told, the action of a chemical that bound itself to heavy metal and made it soluble in the bloodstream, causing it to be washed out of the human body through the kidneys. Arsenic was a heavy metal. Peter thanked his informant, and returned to the college.
He more than half expected to find the Oxford police interviewing Miss Manciple, but they had not yet arrived. Perhaps they were handing it over to the Scotland Yard Poison Unit; perhaps they had not yet realised the Warden had eaten a meal with a guest, and were assuming an environmental source of arsenic. They would shortly be on the trail, going over the gardener’s cottage at Yarnton with due diligence. Peter decided to steal a march on them; he swept up Harriet, Bunter and Miss Manciple – best not have anyone around to be questioned by the police at this juncture – and took them all on a quick drive to Yarnton Manor.
The owner of that beautiful house was abroad; his housekeeper said she had not yet been able to contact him to tell him what had happened. She had never heard of anyone being taken ill at Yarnton in such a manner before, and she had kept well clear of the gardener’s cottage other than bringing some food when requested, because it was supposed to be kept secret that anyone was living there. Also the Warden – she called him Mr Ludgvan – had told her that he was working on something very demanding, and needed peace and quiet. The secrecy was now presumably blown away, and she had no objection to a party from the college, including Miss Manciple whom she knew to be a trusted friend, inspecting the cottage. ‘You won’t find anything wrong there,’ she added, ‘but have a look by all means.’
The cottage was in fact a small house, standing alone in a quiet corner of the grounds. On one side its windows faced into an orchard, on the other into a small wooded copse. Its seclusion was complete. There was a living room, looking unloved and unlived-in with dark Victorian furniture, and an empty grate cleaned of ashes. There was a dining room with utility furniture, smelling of wax polish, a small kitchen and scullery, cleaned of any trace of any meal.
‘I didn’t know any better than to clear it up,’ said Miss Manciple unhappily.
Upstairs there were two rooms under the eaves, with little dormer windows. One was the bedroom, smelling of sickness, with disordered sheets; the other had a desk under the window, and had obviously been used as a study.
‘Can I clear up the bedroom, sir, and wash those sheets?’ Miss Manciple asked.
‘Best not,’ said Peter.
He walked through to the study bedroom. The desk was covered with papers. The Warden’s handwriting was sprawling and untidy; no wonder Miss Manciple had typed for him. Just to make sure, he summoned her to stop grieving over the sheets, and come to inspect the handwriting. Yes, it was the Warden’s.
Peter whi
pped a handkerchief from his pocket and, using it to cover his own fingers, opened the top drawer of the desk. The drawer contained the usual desk clutter of paper-clips, rubber bands, pencils and pens, and a single Woolworth’s exercise book. Carefully, holding it through the handkerchief, Peter laid it on the desk and opened it. The top line of the top page was a heading: APOLOGIA. ‘If I die in suspicious circumstances . . .’ Peter read. He urgently wanted to read on.
‘That is probably the whole fons et origo of all this,’ said Harriet, looking over his shoulder.
‘But we can’t touch it,’ said Peter. ‘We mustn’t interfere with a crime scene, even if we think the police when they get here will do just that.’
‘That’s harsh, Peter. They probably know their job.’
‘They’ll be out of their depth with this case, I think,’ said Peter. ‘But then we’re not exactly in our depth ourselves. I’m glad we know that this book exists. But for access to it I suppose we must apply to Charles.’
The three of them went downstairs, to find that Bunter had been burrowing in the dustbin. He had extracted two wine bottles: one of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and one of Sauternes. He was handling them with gloves.
‘Shall I fingerprint these, my lord? Since we are here?’
‘Good idea,’ said Peter.
‘Miss Manciple, do you recognise these bottles?’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ she said. ‘I bought the red one from Mr Thrupp in the college, because the Warden asked for it. I told Mr Thrupp it was for you, sir. Sorry about that. And the other bottle I didn’t see before I came to clear up. The guest must have brought it.’
‘I suppose there isn’t the least dribble left in either of those bottles?’ said Peter wistfully.
‘What could we collect a sample in, my lord?’ asked Bunter.
Miss Manciple piped up, ‘The Warden smokes cigars that come in metal tubes, each one separate,’ she said. ‘I’ll find a couple of those.’
Very gently Bunter upended each bottle over one of the empty aluminium tubes. Just one drop from each bottle was collected.
‘I take it we have taken the last but one, rather than the very last drop from those bottles?’ asked Peter.
‘There is enough left for the police. What now, my lord?’ Bunter asked.
Peter looked at the bottles, each having a powdered area around the neck, where Bunter had dusted the fingerprints prior to photographing them. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Well, we can’t clean them off to cover our tracks; that really would be interfering with a crime scene. We’d better just leave them on the kitchen table, and confess if asked. On the other hand . . .’
‘On the other hand what, Peter?’ asked Harriet.
‘Reading the Warden’s Apologia would leave no traces. We can’t take it; and of course the police may arrive here any minute, but I could read it.’
‘They’re not likely to arrive here soon,’ said Harriet. ‘Unless the Warden recovers enough to be interviewed. The only other person who could tell them about this hide-away is Miss Manciple, and she’s with us here.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’
‘I suggest that I take Miss Manciple and Bunter out to lunch at the Turnpike Inn, that we passed on the way here, and you sit and read that exercise book.’
‘Don’t I get any lunch?’ asked Peter.
‘Choose between lunch and duty,’ Harriet told him.
‘Oh well, there’s always dinner in prospect,’ Peter said.
‘If I may say so, Your Grace,’ said Bunter to Harriet, ‘I might be of most use lurking in the grounds, in order to give the Duke time to leave by the back door if the police are arriving at the front.’
‘You, too, put duty before nourishment, dear Bunter,’ said Harriet. ‘Come along, Miss Manciple. Don’t argue; you deserve a treat.’
Harriet, having talked herself into having to drive the Daimler, left very cautiously to cover the short distance to the pub, and resigned herself to learning all about Miss Manciple’s early career on the stage.
Peter, feeling disconcertingly like a small boy raiding the larder, went upstairs and settled at the Warden’s desk to read.
APOLOGIA
If I die in suspicious circumstances, this memo will offer background to the situation in which I died. This mess is my own fault, my own doing. It was a fool’s trick to slate young Outlander’s book as I did. I went about it with gusto and I even remember enjoying using immoderate language in the task. Of course, I had no idea that Outlander was fragile; I did not intend to hurt him at all, which even I think was strange of me, looking back on it. Why did I do it? Not to damage a research fellow of my own college, but to damage the claims being made for that accursed manuscript. People were putting a huge monetary value on the thing, and that was triggering greed in a section of the fellowship, and the fellows were forming factions that were tearing the college apart. I did not think our problems could be resolved for long without reducing the number of fellows, a very unpopular idea. The whole idea of buying our way out of making that hard decision by selling a book and buying land was flawed.
As I say, although I thought his book rather speculative, I had no animus against Outlander, and I was appalled at his death. And it was all for nothing, since the dispute in the college did not die down, and there seemed to have been no effect on the insurance value, and presumably the sale value of the MS. The likely buyers of the MS if it were put up for sale were American university libraries, and various American scholars were writing papers in support of Outlander’s views. I became a very unhappy old man. It served me right, I think. I was living with a heavy heart – I had had no idea how literal that expression is.
What made matters much worse was that X, one of my few friends in the college, was distraught at Outlander’s death, and made a determined attempt to find out who the reviewer was. He wanted me to use my position as Warden to bring pressure to bear to unmask the reviewer. I refused, on the grounds that the interests of scholarship demanded that reviews should be fearless and free, however unreasonable they might be in the eyes of some.
My friendship with X cooled immediately and then quite suddenly became icy and remote. I am very isolated in the college now. I wondered if X had in fact managed to find out that I wrote the review, although I did not see how. Then I went to Manchester to deliver a lecture, and Stella Manciple took a day off in London. On her return she found my papers disturbed, and the carbon of the review missing. There was no sign of damage to the house locks, and a discreet enquiry to the porters’ lodge showed that the master key had not been borrowed; indeed Stella was assured that the porters would not have lent the key to my Lodgings to anyone in any circumstances. Then I remembered that when we were close friends I had given the spare key to X. A quick look for it showed us that he had not returned it. A further search through my papers made it certain that the carbon copy of my submission to the TLS was missing. Of course I should have destroyed it – my God, why didn’t I destroy it? I thought, X has stolen the carbon copy. But I couldn’t ask him about it without unmasking myself as the reviewer.
Then as if all that were not enough, Troutbeck revealed that he knew about it. He began to blackmail me. Unless I vote to sell the MS he will reveal to the whole world that I am the author of the review. That would destroy my authority as Warden. I accused Troutbeck of stealing my papers and he just laughed at me. Finally he threatened me with physical violence, and I fled. I am safe here, I think, but I cannot live here for ever. I have a lot of time to think. X is the only person that I know to have had a chance, albeit a brief one, to look for that carbon. But I cannot imagine X of all people empowering Troutbeck of all people. Nor do I imagine that Stella Manciple is at fault. I would trust her with my life; indeed, in view of what Troutbeck was threatening to do to me I am trusting her with my life since she knows where I am.
I can see no way out of this situation. But I ought to reappear in college for the next vote. I quail at the thought, and am deeply depressed
at my confinement here continuing without limit. I have decided to try to mend bridges with X, and have invited him to dinner with me here tomorrow. Perhaps if I offer true remorse we can resume some sort of friendly relations.
Peter read through this effusion twice, and then sat thinking for a considerable while. It was evidently important to know who X was. And rather odd, now he came to think of it, for a man making effectively a note to post-mortem investigators to refer to a colleague as X. What good was this note if it concealed the name of one of the main players?
Peter read it through again, and then went to find Bunter in the shrubbery. The two of them walked down the road to the pub, to join Harriet and Miss Manciple. Those two had found themselves to be both daughters of country doctors, and were happily comparing notes about their adored and high-minded fathers.
Although it was nearly two o’clock Peter and Bunter were allowed to order ploughman’s lunches, so duty had not really come at the price of nutrition. Peter was preoccupied, and Harriet, supposing that he didn’t want to discuss what he had read with Miss Manciple present, held her peace, and a desultory conversation took place, partly between Bunter and Miss Manciple, on the question of the exact nature of an authentic ploughman’s lunch: was it bread and cheese and onions? Was it denatured by the inclusion of slices of ham? This diverted their thoughts from the hapless Warden and his situation.
Peter asked the publican about the authenticity of his ploughman’s, and was told that the lunches were as authentic as the ploughmen who ordered them. For that retort he got a generous tip when they left.
Peter parked the car at the top end of St Giles, within a few yards of the Radcliffe Infirmary, and handed over to Bunter to take the two women back to college, though Harriet elected to walk.
When Peter showed up at the Warden’s bedside he found the man ashen white, and semi-conscious. A nurse hovered at the bedside. ‘He is much better,’ she told Peter. ‘Out of danger. But we have given him heavy painkillers to help him through the next few hours. I am told that when he can be interviewed the police must talk to him first.’
The Late Scholar Page 23