The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘She is beyond reason,’ said Troutbeck. ‘It is cruel to keep her from me. I ask you again to tell me where she is.’

  ‘I cannot do that,’ said Peter. ‘I can ask her if she wishes to see you. If she does, of course, that can be arranged. I could also arrange for a letter from you to her to be delivered to her.’

  Troutbeck sat frowning for a while. Then he said, ‘I shall need an hour to write such a letter.’

  ‘Take your time,’ said Peter serenely. Then, as Troutbeck reached the door, he said, ‘It is good news at least that the Warden has been found.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Troutbeck stiffly, closing the door behind him.

  ‘I thought you would confront him with the allegation that he has been blackmailing the Warden,’ said Harriet, as soon as he was safely out of earshot.

  ‘More fun to play him along a bit,’ said Peter. ‘Besides, the blackmail story isn’t quite cooked yet. Better to keep it in our hands until we can fully account for it.’

  ‘You mean that there is a missing link: how did Troutbeck get to know the Warden was the wicked reviewer?’

  ‘Exactly, Harriet. I always thought it would be fun to be married to you.’

  ‘May I make a suggestion? When a piece of paperwork is missing, it’s always a possibility that it has been thrown away.’

  ‘Accidentally?’

  ‘You said Troutbeck needed it for evidence in order to blackmail the Warden. But it would also be evidence against him, wouldn’t it? If the Warden ever accused him of blackmail, he wouldn’t want to be found in possession – he would want to be able to deny all knowledge.’

  ‘So he would bin it? Tearing it up first, presumably.’

  ‘When I walked in the Fellows’ Garden the other day,’ said Harriet, ‘the gardeners were having a bonfire. They were feeding it with waste paper from a row of bins.’

  ‘Then it will be gone without trace? This is a very long shot, Harriet, but why don’t we ask young Gimps to ask the gardeners?’

  ‘If they’ve ever saved a brand from the burning, you mean? No harm in asking. Meanwhile I was thinking that I hadn’t yet kept my promise to the formidable Miss Griffiths to show you the Alfred Jewel. I don’t want to bump into her on the High and have to confess to slackness.’

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Peter. ‘Just give me a minute to set the Gimps hound on the trail.’

  ‘You do that,’ Harriet said, ‘and I’ll ring Rachel, and make sure she can cope with Mrs Cutwater for a few more hours.’

  As they walked along the Broad, towards the Ashmolean Museum, Harriet reported that Rachel had sounded quite serene, and Mrs Cutwater seemed ‘perfectly normal to her’.

  ‘Good,’ said Peter.

  ‘She said she owed you, Peter, and was glad to help. Exactly what does she owe you?’

  ‘Well, Freddy, I suppose,’ said Peter. ‘I don’t think of it as a debt. Now, this jewel we are to see, how do we know it is Alfred’s?’

  ‘It says so,’ said Harriet cryptically.

  Soon they were looking at it, propped on a stand in its glass case. A figure holding two wands in bright enamel looked up at them through an oval slab of crystalline quartz, surrounded by a band of pierced work in gold. The band said: ‘Alfred mec hect gewyrcan.’

  The label deciphered that: ‘Alfred had me made.’ At the bottom of the quartz the gold band became a boar’s head, decorated with filigree, and a round hole in the boar’s mouth showed it had once held something. A pointer, Harriet told Peter, used when reading to direct the reader to one word after another.

  ‘And we know about that,’ Harriet told him, ‘because Alfred wrote a preface to one of his translations – not the Boethius, the one about the duties of bishops – saying he was sending a pointer worth fifty gold coins to each bishopric in his land, and the pointer was to be kept with the book, and the book always in the cathedral.’

  ‘How does it come to be here?’ wondered Peter. The label told them that. ‘Found in 1693 near Athelney, where Alfred founded a monastery . . . Bequeathed to the University of Oxford.’

  ‘It’s at least as weird as it is beautiful,’ said Peter. ‘But it’s numinous all right. Who is the figure looking out at us from all that gold? Is it Alfred, or a bishop, or Christ?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet, ‘but whoever he is, I like his candid gaze.’

  ‘Is there any bad news about Alfred,’ wondered Peter, ‘or was he our only good, as well as our only great, king?’

  ‘He is widely thought to have been an inattentive cook,’ Harriet reminded him. ‘He burned some cakes.’

  ‘So ’tis said,’ said Peter. ‘We should forgive him, Harriet, we are being inattentive ourselves. Back on the job. Let’s awa to Carterhaugh as fast as we can hie.’

  Chapter 21

  Waiting for them on their return, they found Inspector Gimps, with Sidney, the lithe young gardener who had wriggled under the racks of port what now seemed like an age ago.

  ‘This fellow has a tale to tell,’ the Inspector said.

  Sidney was bursting with his news. ‘You was asking about burning papers, sir,’ he began. ‘Well, sometimes fellows give us stuff to burn, because we often have a fire going for leaves and the like. Before you ever got here, sir, Mr Vearing give us a laundry basket full of papers to burn. Head gardener asked me to roll some of the stuff up as spills to start a new fire with, same as we used to do newspapers for my gran, sir. So I was rolling up pages and making a pile of spills when the head gardener come up to me, and he seed something on a bit of paper, and he said, “Hang on, my boy, not sure as how that ought to be there,” and he took it outer my hand. Where’d that come from? he wanted to know, but I’d emptied all the papers from bins all together in a heap, and I couldn’t say for sure to save my life.

  ‘The head gardener said, “We better ask someone.” And just then Mr Troutbeck was coming through the garden on his way into college, and so we asked him. And he said no, we was quite right, it shouldn’t have been sent for burning, and he would take care of it, but where was the first page? So we looked about for it a bit, but it was like a needle in a haystack. I think it must have been one of the spills I had already made, sir. Anyhow, we couldn’t find it, and in a bit Mr Troutbeck said he would have to go, and off he went with the papers he’d already got.’

  ‘And the papers in question, Sidney, they might have come from Mr Vearing?’

  ‘Could of, sir. I can’t say.’

  ‘Sidney, thank you,’ said Peter. ‘You have been a great help.’

  Sidney stood grinning till Peter remembered that last time he had been useful he had earned half-a-crown, and produced such another.

  When the boy had departed, Peter thanked Inspector Gimps.

  Harriet said, ‘So that’s the link.’

  ‘Nearly there,’ said Peter, ‘not quite. It has to be foolproof to put a rope round a man’s neck. Fill in Inspector Gimps, Harriet, could you, while I go and find the head gardener.’

  That gentleman remembered perfectly the incident described by Sidney. He was taking cuttings in a greenhouse when Peter found him, and he went on working deftly as they spoke.

  ‘What I’d like to know,’ Peter told him, ‘is what made you rescue that particular document? What caught your eye?’

  ‘Mr Outlander’s name, sir. That’s all.’

  ‘Why was that an alarm call?’ Peter asked him.

  The gardener stood up and faced Peter, with a cutting knife in one hand, and a sprig of Plumbago in the other. ‘Mr Outlander was one of ours, sir,’ he said. ‘We were all cut up about him. Don’t reckon the college has been the same place since he died.’

  Peter said, ‘Are all and any of the fellows one of yours?’

  ‘We are all college men,’ was the reply. ‘We work for the college all our lives, most of us. We make a garden for the college now and the college in years to come. Some of the fellows like the garden, and talk to us, some of them don’t. Makes no difference. What we m
ake is ours as much as theirs.’

  ‘And Outlander was one of those who noticed, and talked to you?’

  ‘He was, yes. No swank about him. He was a scholarship boy when he come here. He did a bit of odd-job gardening for his pocket money in the vacations. And his sister worked at Kew.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter.

  ‘Your missus likes the garden,’ the man added. ‘She talks to us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Peter, ‘she would.’

  ‘So we can track the carbon copy every inch of the way,’ Peter said to Harriet. ‘Vearing stole it from the Warden; then he sent it to the bonfire; then it was given to Troutbeck.’

  ‘Does Troutbeck have it now?’ Inspector Gimps asked.

  ‘No, he’s too clever for that,’ Harriet said.

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ said Peter.

  Harriet glanced out of the window. ‘Peter, look,’ she said. ‘Who is that?’

  An old man was being helped across the quad in their direction, supported by the head porter and one of his deputies. Miss Manciple was running out to greet him. The Warden looked grey and worn, but he was basically walking back into his lodgings on his own feet. Peter sent Bunter down to ask about Mr Vearing; after all, he had been much less ill than the Warden.

  Mr Vearing, Bunter reported, had been brought back to his rooms in college an hour ago.

  Peter turned to Inspector Gimps.

  ‘Would you get across the quad to Vearing’s rooms,’ Peter said, ‘and read his rights to Mr Vearing, and charge him with the murder of Mr Enistead, and Mr Oundle, and the attempted murder of Thomas Ludgvan, Warden of this college.’

  ‘Ready to go, are we, sir?’ said Gimps. ‘What about Mr Trevair?’

  ‘What about him indeed,’ said Peter. ‘But I don’t think he’s Vearing’s work. He’ll only cloud the water.’

  ‘Should I take an extra constable or two with me?’ asked Gimps.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll need to,’ said Peter. ‘The man is too ill to put up a fight or flight.’

  ‘Peter, what will happen to Vearing?’ asked Harriet anxiously. Her anxiety was not for the man who had always given her the creeps, but for Peter, who was known to have a hard time living with an execution that he had had a hand in bringing about.

  ‘If his lawyer is worth anything, he’ll plead insanity,’ said Peter. ‘He’ll be in Broadmoor for the rest of his life.’

  ‘He won’t hang?’

  ‘The uproar about the Bentley case has abated public support for hanging somewhat,’ said Peter. ‘I rather think the days of capital punishment may be drawing to a close.’

  ‘So the only loose end is Trevair? He doesn’t fit the pattern, does he? I suppose he couldn’t have fallen over that balustrade?’

  ‘What do you think?’ said Peter. ‘But I would like to know why. There’s no fun in this,’ he added plaintively. ‘I used to think when you know how you know who; but that isn’t working well at all. We can all see how; it’s why that is the problem.’

  ‘I thought we knew why: they had all thought an economist would vote for land, and he voted for the book.’

  ‘But mad Vearing was killing people to keep the majority for the book; why would he go for Trevair? It suggests a second murderer. As unlikely as a second actor once was in a Greek tragedy.’

  At that moment the Warden appeared, knocking lightly on the communicating door, and stepping into the guest room.

  ‘I should have been here to welcome you when you first appeared in college,’ he said. ‘Better late than never. I hope you will get us all sorted out very soon.’

  ‘Please sit down,’ said Harriet anxiously. ‘You don’t look well enough to be on your feet.’

  The Warden sat. ‘Do you know why Vearing tried to poison me?’ he asked Peter.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Peter told him. ‘I took the liberty of reading your blue exercise book.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Warden. ‘Well, it spares me the unwelcome task of telling you. Since I am told I shall recover in a while, I shall not press charges. We can forget about this.’

  ‘It might perhaps be forgettable, Warden,’ said Peter, ‘if the attempt on you were the only one. Alas, Mr Vearing has made several attempts, and has succeeded in killing two others: Mr Enistead and Mr Oundle. He will certainly face charges of murder.’

  ‘What will become of him?’ asked the Warden. ‘For a fellow of the college to hang . . .’

  Peter explained what he thought would become of Mr Vearing.

  ‘Well, he must indeed be mad,’ the Warden said.

  ‘Unfortunately, though madness rules out responsibility, it does not prevent malice,’ said Peter. ‘But you have had more to contend with than Vearing. I think if I am right, Troutbeck has been blackmailing you.’

  ‘In a way,’ said the Warden. ‘He was threatening to let the whole college know that I had written the review that so upset poor Outlander. But that was the truth; I thought I ought to face the music rather than turn myself into Troutbeck’s puppet. I took a degree in law, as well as one in history, Your Grace; and although you hear people say the greater the truth the greater the libel, the law takes no such view. In law a man is not entitled to enjoy a reputation that would not be his were the truth about him known. I could and did face down Troutbeck.’

  The Warden got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Stay here as long as you like,’ he said. ‘Ellen Manciple is taking me to the seaside to stay with her sister, and recover in peace.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ offered Harriet. ‘She is an excellent woman.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Warden. ‘That book will have to be sold, you know,’ he added. ‘But it will no longer be my concern. I am not well enough to continue; I shall resign and let younger men bear the burden.’

  ‘Take life easy for a bit,’ said Peter. Miss Manciple was lingering anxiously at the door. ‘And thank you for your hospitality.’

  When he had gone, Peter said, ‘I think a little drive to Henley now, Harriet. I think Mrs Cutwater can tell us the rest of this story, and we should certainly make sure that Rachel Arbuthnot is not overburdened by her unexpected guest.’

  ‘Is Gimps coming with us?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘No; she will talk more freely to just us. We shall take Bunter, and leave Gimps to keep an eye on Troutbeck, and tail him if he goes anywhere. Shouldn’t be hard. A dodgy customer should not have such a conspicuous car.’

  A ride across rural England on a sunny afternoon in late spring has pleasures all its own. At Shillingford Peter stopped the car, and Bunter got out and bought a bunch of flowers and a pot of honey from a roadside stall. A frothing white surf of cow parsley foamed at either side of the country roads, and the pastures were ablaze with buttercups. By and by a Sunbeam Talbot could be glimpsed in the rear mirror. Peter slowed down, but the Sunbeam slowed down also, keeping well back.

  ‘I wonder when the pursuer will realise he is pursued?’ said Peter.

  Quite soon, perhaps, for when they reached the outskirts of Henley no pursuer, no flashy car was in sight.

  The Arbuthnots had a large and pleasant house with a driveway screened from the road by trees. It was in the style affectionately known as stockbroker’s Tudor, which was nearly right for Freddy, who was a commodities broker, with a splendid financial brain, and partly responsible for the wealth that Peter had accumulated before the war, and was now steadily sinking into the estate at Denver. Because the Sunbeam had not been in sight in the rear mirror when Peter turned into the drive, and because of the screening trees, Peter was pretty sure the pursuit had been shaken off.

  But the crunch of their wheels on the gravel had announced their arrival, and Rachel came flying round the house from the garden with arms extended in affectionate greeting, and Mrs Cutwater coming behind her. ‘Peter!’ she cried. ‘Harriet! We have been having such a good time.’

  ‘I perceive these are coals to Newcastle,’ Peter said, presenting Rachel with the flowers.

  ‘Oh
no, they’re not,’ she said, ‘I adore Sweet Williams, and they’re hard to grow. Most biennials are.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Peter. ‘There’s honey, too.’

  ‘Come in, come in, everyone,’ said Rachel. ‘Freddy will be home soon. But I expect you’ve come to talk to Emily. Here she is.’

  Emily Cutwater looked a different woman from the last time they had seen her. She was glowing from the fresh air, and had lost the wary look and the rings under the eyes she had had before. Her remarkable beauty was fully evident again – the chestnut hair, the grey-green eyes . . . No wonder, Peter thought, Troutbeck was after her.

  Rachel led them through to her pretty, chintzy sitting room. Bunter melted away into the background as he often did, and Peter and Harriet sat down with Mrs Cutwater.

  ‘This girl has quite a tale to tell,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ll go and make some tea.’

  ‘Mrs Cutwater,’ said Peter.

  ‘I think you are a friend,’ she cut in, ‘and I like my friends to call me Emily.’

  ‘Emily,’ Peter said, ‘Mr Troutbeck has told us you are engaged to him. Is that true?’

  ‘I was,’ she said, ‘but I’m not now! The cheating rat!’

  ‘You have changed your mind about him,’ Peter said. ‘Was that because he had you locked in?’

  ‘That came later,’ she said.

  ‘Could you bear to tell us from the beginning?’ said Peter.

  She folded her hands in her lap, and wrinkled her brow in thought. Then she looked steadily at Peter, glancing from time to time also at Harriet, and began.

  ‘It starts with Andrew,’ she said. ‘Andrew Cutwater, my husband. I told you whoppers about him. He was nearly eighty when I met him, and a sad old chap. He needed a hand in the house and garden, and I was looking for work somewhere near Oxford. He employed me as a housekeeper. Michael Troutbeck was a friend of his, almost the only one who ever visited him. Otherwise all he had were mates he took a drink with at the pub. He didn’t work his farm any more; he had bits of it let to other farmers. He bought it just before the war, not thinking then that it would get too much for him. Anyway, he was harmless, and kind. He did drink far too much, but he was a bit of a gentleman if you know what I mean. Of course you do.