The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘My colleagues don’t pay much attention to this,’ said Harriet thoughtfully. ‘There’s a tale I read somewhere – Agatha Christie, I think, but I can’t be sure – in which someone fired a gun from one flat that killed someone through a bathroom window in an adjacent flat, who just happened to be standing in view shaving. Possible, but entirely unpredictable. Nobody could plan it. It would have to be done on a moment’s impulse.’

  ‘A moment’s impulse might be enough to throw somebody out of an organ loft. Somebody slight and unprepared.’

  ‘And only because they have voted to keep the MS? That sounds cold-blooded to me rather than hot-blooded,’ said Harriet.

  ‘It isn’t difficult to imagine someone –Troutbeck, say – crossing the quad, and seeing Trevair go into the chapel, and following him in. Following him up to the organ loft, and getting into a confrontation with him there; perfectly possible.’

  ‘Why did Trevair go up into the organ loft?’

  ‘Perhaps he fancied a chance to play,’ said Peter. ‘And he saw the stair door was open, and not, as usual, locked – mea culpa!’

  ‘Do we know he was a keyboard player?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Yes, we do. Or rather I do. He has a chamber organ in his rooms.’

  ‘That must make revision hard for his entire staircase,’ said Harriet.

  ‘It’s taboo this term. All the more reason why he might have wanted a chance to play.’

  ‘So Troutbeck, or somebody – Peter, we don’t know for sure that it was Troutbeck – wants to buttonhole Trevair about something. And it turns nasty, so they fight, and Trevair falls over the gallery balustrade.’

  ‘Or is just thrown over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Each player removed from the game is worth a vote.’

  ‘Hmm. What are we going to do about Vearing?’

  ‘Get him arrested as soon as he can stand up. Perhaps we ought to talk to Inspector Gimps right away.’

  When they reached the police station they found Inspector Gimps writing up reports.

  ‘You have saved me stepping over to the college, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something here I think you ought to see.’

  He found office chairs for Peter and Harriet, and passed a report across the table to Peter.

  Peter was reading an interview with Mrs Dancy. He handed each page to Harriet as he read. Mrs Dancy had been looking for her husband, who was somewhere in college. It seemed he might well have been in the chapel, being a devout man prone to sharing his burdens with the Lord. When she entered the chapel she could hear voices raised from the organ loft. Someone was speaking ‘very rudely’ to Mr Trevair.

  ‘Could she see the speakers?’ the interviewing constable had asked her.

  No; she was standing almost immediately under the organ loft, and could not see anyone above her.

  How then, had she known that one of the speakers was Mr Trevair?

  The man who was talking to him – shouting at him actually – was calling him Trevair.

  Had she heard what the quarrel was about?

  Mrs Dancy had at first told Inspector Gimps that she never eavesdropped.

  He had pressed her. He was only asking her to remember what she had actually overheard, quite without intending to.

  She had overheard Trevair saying that he had legitimate doubts. The project was extremely risky. He had written a brief note to the fellows explaining why he thought so, what he had heard. ‘Naturally I gave a copy to you first,’ he had said.

  The other voice had said, ‘I am asking you not to put this around,’

  Mrs Dancy was not quite sure how Trevair had replied – ‘ask all you like,’ or something like that. It amounted to refusal.

  ‘There will be consequences,’ the other voice had said. And at that point she had collected herself and left.

  ‘I didn’t want to know,’ she had told Inspector Gimps. ‘Sometimes it’s best not to know. In my husband’s position . . .’

  ‘What position was that?’ Inspector Gimps had asked.

  ‘A fellow of this college who hates controversy,’ she had told him.

  He had pointed out to her that the conversation in the organ loft had probably been about the sale of the land. Yes, she had realised that. He had pointed out that if she could recognise that second voice, she would help the arrest of a very wicked person.

  Mrs Dancy had steadfastly refused to identify anyone by an overheard voice. She had told Gimps that at her age her hearing wasn’t what it used to be. You lose the finer points of voices, or of music, she had told him. She simply couldn’t be certain who it was, and she was not going to point the finger at somebody on a suspicion. She had told him all she could.

  When he had pressed her she had declared that she would say not another word without her lawyer present.

  When Peter and Harriet had both read this through, Harriet handed it back to Inspector Gimps.

  ‘I mistook my witness, I’m afraid,’ he said ruefully. ‘I took her for what she looked like: a pleasant old bird, everybody’s granny – you know the type. But once I pressed her and she mentioned a lawyer, I knew there was no point in going on.’

  ‘Oxonian old grannies are a special breed,’ said Peter sympathetically.

  Chapter 20

  As they walked through the college gate, the head porter came hastening after them.

  ‘I have been telephoned three times this evening, Your Grace,’ he said, ‘by a woman urgently wanting to speak to you. She was very agitated, sir, and wouldn’t tell me what it was about. She wouldn’t leave a name or a number. And she twice broke off the call in mid-sentence, and then phoned again later. She kept mentioning a willow pattern plate, sir. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter. ‘That’s more helpful than you know. If she calls again, put her through to the phone in the Warden’s house, will you?’

  By the time they had crossed the quad and let themselves into the house they could hear Bunter’s voice on the phone.

  ‘I can give him a message as soon as he comes in,’ Bunter was saying. ‘No, I don’t know when that will be – wait a moment, madam, I think I can hear him coming in now.’

  Peter galloped up the stairs to take the phone. A frantic voice at the other end said, ‘I am so frightened, so angry; and so frightened!’

  Peter recognised the voice of Mrs Cutwater, the owner of the land the college wanted to buy. He thought of the remote farm, and of the narrow difficult lane in the dark. ‘Meet me at the turning off the lane,’ he said.

  ‘I am locked in,’ she said. ‘He has got them to keep me locked in. They have gone out somewhere, otherwise I wouldn’t dare phone you. Oh, what can I do?’

  ‘Try to keep calm,’ Peter said. ‘Pack a small suitcase of just the least that you need. We will come and get you out of there, and bring you somewhere safe.’

  He put the phone down, and came to talk to Harriet. ‘She does sound very frightened,’ he told her.

  ‘More than she was when we saw her?’

  ‘Quite a bit more, I would say. And she says she is locked in the house. She said “he” had got “them” to keep her locked in. Why she was angry as well as frightened she didn’t say.’

  ‘Peter, what will it take to rescue her?’

  ‘We can probably break in,’ he said. ‘But if the servants, or whoever “they” are, come back before we get her out there might be a nasty scene.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we get the police?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘On reflection, I think we should.’

  It took a bit of talking to the duty officer in Oxford police station to get Inspector Gimps’s out-of-hours phone. Once the Inspector was on the line he listened to Peter’s account of a woman locked in and asking for help. ‘If this is just the usual sort of domestic spat,’ he said,’ we usually leave well alone.’

  ‘That won’t do,’ Peter said. ‘Habeas corpus applies to civilians as well as to the police.’


  ‘You’d be surprised how often the woman won’t press charges,’ the Inspector said. ‘But what do you want me to do?’

  ‘I was hoping you would go round there and ascertain that she is being held against her will. And if so get her out.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Inspector, ‘I think we can do that much.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter. ‘Can you go in some force, and can I come with you?’

  ‘Yes, to both of those questions,’ said Inspector Gimps.

  ‘I’ll meet you at the foot of the lane,’ said Peter.

  ‘In half an hour,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Someone should go with you, Peter,’ said Harriet, ‘and Bunter would be more useful than I would.’

  ‘You don’t trust contingents of the Oxford constabulary to keep me safe?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as I trust Bunter,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace,’ said Bunter.

  The lane was in darkness, of course. There was just about enough moonlight to let Peter see the telephone wire that crossed the road, and drive himself up to the farmhouse. The house too was in darkness, except for one upstairs window. A police van followed Peter up to the house, and six constables got out of it. Three of them moved round to the back of the building. The Inspector hammered on the front door, and called ‘Police!’ in a stentorian voice. Somewhere inside a dog barked. The Inspector knocked again, and again.

  Nothing happened. ‘Nobody there?’ asked one of the constables.

  ‘Hush up,’ said the Inspector. ‘Quiet, everyone.’ He beckoned Peter to stand beside him, and applied his ear to the door. Peter did the same. Someone was weeping, just audible through the heavy oak door panels.

  ‘Mrs Cutwater?’ Peter called. ‘Can you hear me? Open up for us; we have come to help you.’

  The flap of the letterbox was pushed open from inside, and a tearful voice said, ‘I can’t open up. They have taken all the keys.’

  ‘Where are these people you speak of?’ asked the Inspector.

  ‘I don’t know where,’ she said. ‘But when they get back they will kill me for this.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Peter said. ‘There are armed policemen out here ready to protect you. Stand well clear of the door, while we break it down.’

  Three hefty constables charged the door without moving it an inch. One of them fetched a stout battering ram from the back of the van, and they tried that. The door splintered a little but did not give.

  Losing patience, Peter took a revolver from his inner coat pocket, and asking everyone to stand clear, he put three bullets through the lock.

  ‘I neither heard nor saw that,’ said the Inspector. He looked horrified. But the shattered lock gave way at the next blow from the battering ram. The constables who were wielding it fell through on to the flattened door panel.

  Peter stepped over them and put on the hall light. ‘Where are you?’ he called.

  Mrs Cutwater emerged out of the shadows. She was wearing a red coat, and carrying a suitcase. She had the disorientated and fearful look of a refugee. She might have stepped straight off one of those pre-war trains from Germany bearing people in just-in-time flight.

  ‘It’s all right now,’ Peter told her.

  ‘They will come back soon,’ she replied.

  ‘Before they do, we will have taken you somewhere quite safe,’ Peter told her.

  ‘Just a few formalities,’ said the Inspector. He was quite right, of course, Peter conceded, to take Mrs Cutwater’s name; to make sure she consented to be taken into protective custody. But when it became apparent that his idea of a place of safety was a police cell, Peter intervened.

  ‘That’s a bit rough, Inspector,’ he said. ‘After all, this lady hasn’t broken the law in any way. Let me look after her; I will produce her for interview any time you like.’

  ‘Would that be acceptable to you, madam?’ the Inspector asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ he said. ‘But I rather think we will hang around here in the shrubberies and see who turns up.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Peter, who had intended leaving the hapless Bunter in a shrubbery to do just that.

  Once safely in the comfortable back seat of the Daimler, Mrs Cutwater revived a little.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked.

  ‘For tonight, what’s left of it, back to St Severin’s,’ Peter told her.

  ‘Oh, please not, please not there!’ she said.

  Peter paused for thought.

  Bunter cleared his throat. ‘Mr Arbuthnot has a place in Henley, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘Brilliant, Bunter! And Rachel Arbuthnot is a kindly soul. Henley it is.’

  Freddy was in London overnight, but Rachel took it in her stride being woken at four in the morning, and asked for her spare bedroom.

  ‘Come in, my dear, at once,’ she said to Mrs Cutwater. ‘Do you need something to eat? I’m sure you do. Have a bite to eat and then you can go to bed, and sleep it off, whatever it is.’

  She put bread and cheese and a bowl of strawberries on the table, and sat down in her dressing gown to look after her guest, and talk to Peter. Bunter went upstairs, and unpacked for Mrs Cutwater as he would have done for Peter or Harriet. As soon as they decently could, Peter and Bunter were in the car back to Oxford, in fresh early morning light.

  ‘There was nothing of a personal nature in that suitcase,’ Bunter told Peter, ‘except a photograph in a silver frame. A rather good-looking young man, my lord. And signed David.’

  They found Harriet, who had waited up for them, asleep in an armchair. Peter put a bedspread over her, and went to bed himself.

  It was no surprise to Peter when Troutbeck presented himself while he was quietly breakfasting with Harriet. Troutbeck looked a strange combination of agitated and grim.

  ‘Someone I care for has been abducted during the night,’ he said. ‘Do you know anything about it? If you do, you will tell me where she is.’

  ‘I take it you refer to Mrs Cutwater?’ said Peter, rather pointedly not asking Troutbeck to sit down.

  ‘You do know about it!’ Troutbeck exclaimed. ‘Tell me where she is; I very urgently need to speak to her. And if you have kidnapped her, I should remind you that that is a criminal offence.’

  ‘Nobody has kidnapped, nor yet abducted the lady,’ said Peter. ‘She asked to be rescued from a locked house, and she was duly rescued, by the Oxford police. I wish you luck in trying to establish that that worthy body of men has committed a criminal offence.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ asked Troutbeck.

  ‘Safe,’ said Peter.

  ‘I urgently need to speak to her. Tell me where she is.’

  ‘I could arrange to discover if she urgently wants to speak to you, Troutbeck, if that would help,’ said Peter.

  ‘May I sit down?’ said Troutbeck. ‘May I confide in you?’

  ‘You may sit, certainly,’ said Peter. ‘As to confiding in me, that is as you wish.’

  Troutbeck looked anxiously at Harriet, who made the slightest movement towards rising to leave. Peter almost imperceptibly shook his head, and she stayed put.

  ‘You must be wondering why I am so concerned about Mrs Cutwater; Emily, that is,’ said Troutbeck. ‘The fact is that I am engaged to her. Naturally I feel protective of her.’

  ‘A secret engagement?’ asked Peter.

  ‘For the moment, yes,’ said Troutbeck.

  ‘Your protective instincts did not extend, though, to securing her personal liberty; I take it you knew that she was confined to her house?’

  ‘The servants I employed to look after her did so rather too enthusiastically, I’m afraid,’ said Troutbeck. ‘I did not intend that she should be locked in; merely that there should be someone in the house at all times.’

  ‘Would you care to tell me why such a thing was required?’ Peter asked. ‘Against whom did she need protection?’

  ‘Against herself,’ said Troutbeck
without hesitation.

  ‘In what way was she not fit to have charge of her own coming and going?’ asked Peter. He was using his quietest and steadiest tone. Harriet wondered why he was playing Troutbeck along instead of confronting him with what they knew about him.

  ‘For one so young she has had a lot of trouble in her life,’ said Troutbeck. ‘She is – how shall I put it? – fragile. She sought my protection after her husband died; and I gladly offered it. I was a friend of that husband, as I think you know; during his lifetime I fell deeply in love with Emily, and I spoke of it only when his death left her without a friend and guardian.’

  ‘Very touching,’ said Peter. ‘Do I take it that Mrs Cutwater inherits her husband’s estate?’

  ‘You can find that out at Somerset House,’ said Troutbeck tartly. ‘But yes, for what it is worth she inherits. The estate is encumbered by debts; inspecting the will in the Public Records Office will not tell you that.’

  ‘So it is not from fortune-hunters that she needs protection,’ said Peter dryly.

  ‘Look, this is what I need to tell you about,’ said Troutbeck. ‘Emily has become delusional. There is mental illness in her family, and she is succumbing to a form of it. She suspects her friends of conspiring against her; she imagines that servants are spying on her, and old friends are cast off on the most absurd grounds. She wanders at night, sometimes clad only in her nightgown, and fights and curses the servants who find her and bring her back. She is suffering, in short, from some dreadful form of paranoia but she resists admission to the clinic in which she could receive treatment. That is why she has been locked in. As I say, for her own protection. She will no doubt, as we speak, be telling the police all sorts of wild stories about her situation, none of which should be believed unless confirmed by myself or one of the servants.’

  ‘And yet you still want to marry her?’ said Peter.

  ‘There is no accounting for love,’ said Troutbeck smugly. ‘Now, will you tell me where she is, so that I can take her home and look after her as best I can until I can get her into a clinic for treatment?’

  ‘What you say could account for Mrs Cutwater being frightened,’ said Peter. ‘But she also said she was angry. Do you know why she was angry?’