The Bursar's Wife

by E. G. Rodford

  “Did you find… Elliot?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She tipped her head to indicate the building behind her. “I need to get away from this place,” she said. “Do you need a lift?” I hesitated, reluctant to impose at this time. “I could do with the company,” she said. Surely she didn’t lack people to have around her. She read my mind. “There are lots of people I could go to right now, but I need to be with someone outside my immediate circle, someone who didn’t know Elliot. Do you understand?”

  I sort of understood. Like Sandra, Jason and Kamal had helped me when Olivia had gone, rather than our common circle of friends, who turned out not to be friends at all.

  20

  SYLVIA SAT ON THE COUCH THAT BRAMPTON AND STUBBING had occupied that morning. She nursed an out-of-date peppermint tea (something Olivia had left) and stared at the glowing asbestos plates in the gas fire. She’d told me in the car that Lucy was staying at her grandmother’s while she’d come down to Parkside to talk to Brampton. “I couldn’t bear them coming back to the house. They’d been there all morning,” she’d said. She shifted around on the sofa, dressed in designer jeans and a soft-looking jumper I yearned to stroke.

  “I wanted to thank you for bringing Lucy home the other night. It was awfully decent of you.” I shrugged and said nothing because it was nothing. “I’m sorry that I didn’t acknowledge you, but I hadn’t told Elliot about you, and…” Her face crumpled and I had to get up and take the cup from her so she could cry. Despite what romantic fiction writers might claim, no one looks good crying, even a beautiful woman such as Sylvia. One does not, as depicted in films, remain expressionless and simply ooze tears. The face screws up in an ugly grimace, the mouth twists in pain. I wanted to comfort her and pondered sitting next to her and putting an arm round her but instead I went to get tissues; she was technically still a client after all.

  “Thanks.” She sniffed, taking sheets of tissue from the box I held out and blowing hard. “It’s better to get it out now; I can’t really do this when I get back to Morley, it would make people uncomfortable.” I marvelled at the kind of people she knew that couldn’t bear to see her cry when faced with the suicide of her husband. She dabbed at her eyes.

  “He made some bad investments on behalf of the college,” she said, looking at me.

  “You don’t have to explain it,” I said, although I was dying to know.

  “He’d been struggling with it for some time.”

  “How did you find out?”

  She looked away. “I’ve known for a while…” She was about to continue but started crying again and blew her nose hard. I wondered whether it was a good time to bring up my employment.

  “This is probably not the right time to ask, but do you want me to carry on looking into Lucy and Quintin Boyd?”

  She sat up straight. “Please, you must carry on. Please don’t stop. Please. With Elliot gone there is no one to protect Lucy.” Protect her? She reached out and grabbed my hands. “You’ve got to help Lucy.”

  “OK,” I said, taken aback. “In which case can I ask you something?” She was still holding my hands. Her hands were softer and warmer than I remembered when I had shaken one in my office.

  “Of course.” It was cruel to ask her at such a time but she was vulnerable and perhaps more likely to answer. Cynical, I know, but sometimes getting to the truth requires an underhand touch.

  “The night I brought Lucy home, what were you and Elliot arguing about?” Sylvia reddened and looked like a frightened deer, ready to bolt. She took her hands away.

  “I… I can’t remember. What did you hear? Does it matter? Probably about money. He was always telling me I spent too much on clothes.” She smiled weakly.

  “So it wasn’t about Lucy?” She shook her head but seemed to be struggling with something. I got the clear impression that she wanted to tell me, or someone, to unload something she was carrying around. She looked up.

  “No, it wasn’t about Lucy.” OK, so I learnt she was lying; not terribly useful except in confirming my view of human nature. She examined her tiny watch. “I have to go,” she said. “There are people waiting for me.” She asked me if she could use the bathroom and I directed her to the downstairs toilet, hoping it was clean. The phone rang as she went to find it.

  “George. It’s Sandra, where the hell have you been?”

  “Waiting for coffee at Parkside police station. The service is atrocious.”

  “I read about Elliot Booker, it was in the Argus. Reading between the lines it looks like he topped himself?”

  “It looked like that to me,” I said. I heard the toilet flush and water running in the sink. I tried to remember if the towel was fresh – Sylvia was used to better things.

  “Jesus, George, don’t tell me you found him? Is that why you were at Parkside?”

  “For my sins.” The loo door opened and Sylvia came out. She’d done something to her face – added a little colour perhaps.

  “I have to go, Sandra.”

  “Wait, I’ve got some news on Sylvia Booker. Remember you asked me to check whether she’d been at Morley the same time as Quintin Boyd?” Sylvia came down the hall and stood there, smiling abstractedly. I held up a finger to her and mouthed ‘one minute’. She nodded and went to the hall mirror.

  “What did you find?” I said.

  “Well, they were there at the same time, and she was doing Law as well, although not corporate like him, civil. They graduated the same year and get this, they were in the same house. Apparently the colleges have these things called houses—”

  “I know what they are.”

  “OK. You don’t sound very impressed.”

  “It’s not a good time.” Sylvia was adjusting her hair in the mirror. She’d lied to me about knowing Quintin. Two lies uncovered in one evening.

  “Why didn’t you say? I have more,” Sandra said. Sylvia turned to me and pointed to her watch and then the door. I held up my finger.

  “Make it quick,” I said into the phone.

  “Elliot was also a student there at the same time, same house, did Economics.”

  “Thanks, that’s very interesting. I’ll catch you tomorrow,” I said into the receiver.

  “Wait,” Sandra shouted.

  “What is it?”

  “They all graduated the same year,” she said.

  “And?”

  “It was the year your father left.” Jesus Christ. Of course it could just be a coincidence.

  “George?” I looked at Sylvia who was finding her coat. “Did you hear me?”

  I put the receiver down on Sandra and said to Sylvia, “Sorry about that.” I helped her on with her coat.

  “Thank you, George, for the tea, for taking me in. I appreciate it.”

  “Thank you for the lift,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and released it. “I better go and sort things out.”

  “If you need anything…” I said.

  She put her fingers on my forearm. “Find out what Quintin wants with Lucy.”

  I watched her walk to her Mini and get in.

  As she pulled away from the kerb I grabbed my jacket and keys, got into my car and followed.

  * * *

  Sylvia didn’t head back to Morley; instead she drove straight to the railway station. It was approaching five, and too many cars were parked outside the station entrance, waiting to pick people up as they emerged. Sylvia pulled into a small space on the wide part of the pavement right outside the entrance. I drove past her and double-parked in the car park where I could watch her if I craned my neck. She was looking towards the station entrance where a stream of people started to emerge. A car blocked my view and the driver beeped at me. He couldn’t go round me as I was blocking his route. I drove round the parking lot, hoping to get back into position. Stupid of course, since everyone was doing the same thing. Cars were following me round, circling as they waited for the people they were picking up to come out of the station. I g
limpsed Sylvia approaching someone in the crowd. Some wanker blew his horn at me. I gave him two fingers then discovered it was a woman. She returned the gesture, despite the toddler in the back. I kept driving.

  Sylvia was talking to, no, shouting and gesticulating at, Quintin Boyd. I had to drive out of the car park and go past the Mini hoping that Sylvia wouldn’t see me. She was too engrossed. I was back into the car park where I pulled into a disabled parking space. When I got out Sylvia seemed to be begging Quintin to get into her car. He, however, was having none of it, and just then his silver Mercedes pulled up and he opened the back door.

  Before Quintin got in he said something to Sylvia which made her cringe like a child at a raised fist. The car, with square-headed Mark at the wheel, took off. Sylvia stared after it. She was hugging herself, probably against the cold, but it could equally have been at what Quintin had said to her.

  21

  THE NEXT MORNING, BEFORE EVEN MY EARLY-BIRD NEIGHBOUR left for work, I was in Cottenham and parked in sight of number thirty-two where the alleged benefits cheat lived. No one came out. If the guy was working he wasn’t doing a nine-to-five. Bored, I left, stopping by the nursing home to see my father. They didn’t encourage you to stop by at any old time but they didn’t forbid it and I liked to surprise them. Megan, the young care assistant, was clearing away my father’s breakfast tray.

  “You’re here early. No flowers today?”

  No, I had not brought flowers. I sat with my father as he stared out of the window into the garden. It wasn’t a bad view; they’d placed bird tables and feeders on the semi-circular lawn and a cold sun was out. I tried to recall his last year at work, the year Sylvia, Elliot and Quintin had graduated from Morley. There didn’t seem to be much significance to attach to this, except that he had retired early on full pension due to, as my mother put it, “Problems at work.” I never learnt what these were, but my father made no secret of his loathing of some of the students, who he said treated him like shit. Hence his endless asides to me along the lines of, “Never let anyone think they are better than you are, Kevork.” I hadn’t heard him speak for nearly a year, perhaps somehow realising he wasn’t making sense anymore.

  Megan brought me a cup of tea.

  “I think it’s lovely that you come and visit, you should see the number of people here that don’t have visitors.” She put the cup down on a side table. “It was nice of your cousin to visit your father.”

  “Cousin?”

  “Yes, a distant cousin I think it was, not a cousin.”

  My heart skipped a beat – as far as I knew I didn’t have a cousin, distant or otherwise. “When was this?”

  “A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday.”

  “I wonder which cousin it was?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “Did he or she give a name?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t on duty but we talked about it on the Monday because it was unusual for anyone else to visit. Sorry I didn’t mention it before. I didn’t think it was important.”

  I shrugged. “I’m just curious, I hadn’t realised someone from the family had visited, that’s all, and it would be remiss of me not to thank them. Of course I don’t want to embarrass myself by thanking the wrong cousin.”

  “I could find out for you.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble; like I say, I’m just curious.”

  She smiled. “It’s no trouble at all. I’ll ask Angela when she’s in tomorrow, she was on duty that Sunday.”

  * * *

  Back in Cambridge I got a coffee from Antonio’s and took it to the office. Nina was coming down the stairs as I started to ascend, dressed in her crisp white coat and the little pin on the lapel. I had to wait at the bottom to let her come down. Our aborted date seemed a distant memory now.

  “Hello,” I said. I was half expecting the cold shoulder but she grinned at me and I swear she tossed her hair as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “I heard about your act of chivalry Friday night. You should have said something.” She brushed something from the shoulder of my coat, caressed it even. “Shall we try again? Perhaps you could come to mine. I’ll cook something healthy.” Now her voice was caressing me. I mumbled something, which she took as a yes. She said something about Friday night. I said something about how great that would be. She smiled and walked on. I checked my chin for drool.

  I was pondering the ups and downs of dating as I went through the open door of my office. Sandra was sitting at her desk, typing fast.

  “Hello, stranger,” she said, looking up at me without any discernible reduction in her words per minute. I sat at my desk, put my feet up and looked at my shoes – there was a little dried mud on the sides from when I’d found Elliot.

  “Did you tell Nina about my brush with Lucy Booker?” The typing stopped.

  “Trust me, George, I was doing you a favour. She was telling anyone who’d listen that you ran off with a young girl.”

  “She said what?”

  “She was telling everyone in the building about your date before it happened and afterwards, you arse. We’re women, we talk. Anyway, yesterday she was saying that you’d dumped her for a young girl in the pub. So I took her aside and explained that as it happens you were on a case and to stop badmouthing you. I may have used stronger language.” I could imagine Sandra taking Nina aside; that would have been worth paying to see. Sandra started typing again and her words per minute increased, a sure sign she was annoyed.

  “OK, Sandra, I was wrong, you were doing me a favour.”

  “Can I do you another favour?” I grunted at this rhetorical question. “It’s not my business, but she’s not right for you. Trust me. There, I’ve said it.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s not your business.” Secretly I was worried that Sandra would find out that I’d just made another date with Nina. I was regretting it myself now having learnt that Nina liked to blab.

  To break the awkwardness I gave Sandra a précis of yesterday’s session with the police and my heart-to-heart with Sylvia afterwards, ending with her confrontation of Quintin at the station.

  “She’s really worried about this Quintin Boyd eh? Enough to pretend she doesn’t know him.”

  I turned to her. “Show me where you found the details of Sylvia and Elliot going to Morley.” I scooted my wheeled chair over to her desk. She made room for me to see the screen as she brought up a bookmarked website.

  “It’s a website of Morley alumni. You just type in a name, if you have one. At first I couldn’t find Sylvia Booker but then I realised she’d be under her maiden name.” She typed in ‘Sylvia’. Three of them came up. She clicked on Sylvia Jessica Patten. “And there she is. Quite a stunner she was, and so young looking.” Indeed. I didn’t say that she’d also aged very well. She’d been photographed in her graduation garb and it listed her course (Civil Law) and the societies she’d been in. The list looked like a straight copy of her daughter’s interests except for something called the Cambridge Blue Club. A small paragraph described her postgraduate achievements. In her case marrying Elliot Booker seemed to have happened immediately after graduation and Lucy was born the same year; they hadn’t wasted any time. There was a list of the charities she was currently a trustee of, a couple I already knew about. It looked like she’d never practised law in anger.

  Sandra clicked on Elliot’s name. He had a first in Economics and apprenticed at the usual management consultancy firms before becoming bursar back at his old college five years ago. The only society he’d belonged to, apart from the debating team, was the Cambridge Blue Club.

  “What do you reckon the Cambridge Blue Club is?” I said.

  “No idea,” Sandra said. “Something Cambridge related.”

  “Very good, detective. ‘Cambridge blue’ refers to the colour worn by university sports teams. Maybe it was a sports club.”

  “You can also list people alphabetically,” she said, clicking on a button. “Boyd is just down from
Booker, obviously.” She clicked on Quintin Boyd and a picture of a tousle-haired young man with the same strong jawline I’d seen on his company website and in the flesh from afar was at the top. “There’s something of George Clooney about him,” she said. My eye, however, was drawn to his society memberships. He seemed to belong to most of them, including something called Republicans Abroad and, guess what, the Cambridge Blue Club. But I wanted to check something else. Something that Sylvia had said yesterday when I’d met her outside the police station.

  “Go back to the list of names.” She clicked back in the browser. There it was, four down from Boyd. Judith Brampton. I jabbed excitedly at the name. Sandra clicked. Brampton, Judith, graduated eighteen years ago. Read Criminal Law, joined the police fast-track graduate programme the year of graduation. A picture of a younger Brampton smiled out at us; it was the first smile I’d seen on her. I scanned for her club memberships.

  Member of the Cambridge Blue Club.

  “Bloody hell,” I said.

  “What does it mean?” she said. I scooted back to my desk.

  “It means they were all in the same club.” Sandra got back to work and I Googled the Cambridge Blue Club with no result. I chewed over things for a while, but the typing was having a soporific effect. I’d got up far too early. The typing stopped.

  “Why don’t you go, I’ll lock up,” Sandra said. I picked my feet up off the desk.

  “OK, I need to do some food shopping anyway.” She watched me put my raincoat on.

  “Buy something healthy, won’t you, George?”

  “Yes, Mum.” She looked suitably pissed off as I left.

  It was only when I was downstairs that I remembered that I hadn’t told Sandra about the strange visitor to the nursing home, but I saw no point in worrying her.

  22

  ON THE WAY HOME I STOPPED AT THE SUPERMARKET TO BUY ready meals, some steaks, frozen chips and peas. I also selected milk and fruit and eggs and coffee, enough for a week. I then wheeled by the drinks section and looked for bargains: 3 for 2 offers, bin ends, a litre for the price of 75ml. I had to move the food in the trolley to prevent it from being crushed by bottles and cans. I stood in the queue at the checkout replaying Friday night in my head, when I’d taken Lucy home and listened at the door to Sylvia and Elliot arguing. The woman behind the till was distracting me with excessive chat, asking me how I was and what did I think of the weather. She scanned my stuff coming down the conveyor belt with beady eyes as well as the barcode reader.