Dead as a Dodo

by Jane Langton

  Mark couldn’t bear it.

  At quarter past twelve, a few days after the party at Oriel, he entered the museum. In the courtyard a father stood among the display cases with his two children, looking at the bones of Megalosaurus. A small group of schoolboys clustered around their teacher and gazed up at the giraffe. The normal humming noise that thrummed and echoed in the museum was amplified by their soprano voices. God, a person couldn’t hear himself think. Mark climbed the stairs and walked along the gallery corridor to the Zoology Office.

  The door was open. Mark walked in boldly, and found only Dr. Farfrae. She was moving busily from desk to table and back again. She looked up and said, “Oh, hello there. Mr. Soffit, isn’t it? Can I help you?”

  “Oh, no, I guess not.” He leaned in the doorway. What was she doing? Shuffling papers into a heap, peering at one of those damned jars, going to the computer, pecking out something on the keyboard, going back to the table, leafing through the papers. “How’s Dubchick’s book coming along?” asked Mark.

  “Almost done. I’m just checking.” She gave him a gleaming look. “Lots of little details.” She pulled out a chair in front of the keyboard and sat down.

  “That’s it? That pile of papers? You’ve got it all in memory?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s all here.”

  “I hope you’ve been backing it up?” said Mark, suddenly interested.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “This is the printout?” Mark came forward and reached for the heap of paper beside the computer.

  Helen put her hand on it. “Sorry, not yet. It goes to O.U.P. this afternoon. They’ve been waiting for five years. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with it. I’ve got a few more hours of work before it’s really ready. You know, little prettifications here and there. A few more references to check.”

  O.U.P. was the Oxford University Press on Walton Street, Mark knew that much. He drifted away from the Zoology Office and left the museum. At once he began running, taking the shortcut to the Banbury Road. There he took a Park and Ride bus to Summertown, where he had already discovered a computer supply store on the South Parade.

  He was back in the museum, out of breath, within a couple of hours, carrying a bag. He went upstairs at once, and glanced into the office. Dr. Farfrae was still there. Mark went back downstairs and found a spot in the east arcade behind the statue of Euclid where he could be out of the porter’s range of vision, yet still keep an eye on the south corridor upstairs. Euclid looked at him sternly and pointed out that A surface is that which has length and breadth only, but Mark was not open to reprimands from the father of geometry.

  Would the goddamned woman ever leave? Mark jiggled his bag up and down. He yawned. He leaned against Euclid’s pillar on one side, then the other, and shifted from foot to foot. At last his impatience was rewarded. Helen Farfrae came out of the Zoology Office, pulling on her coat. She ran down the south staircase, stopped at the porter’s desk to exchange pleasantries with Edward Pound, then pushed open the outside door and disappeared.

  Now the only question was, had the old biddy locked the door? Mark managed to get upstairs without being seen, and then to his intense satisfaction he found the office wide open. The woman was a damned fool! Whatever happened to Dubchick’s “masterpiece” was entirely the fault of that snotty so-called Dr. Helen Farfrae and nobody else.

  Mark’s bag contained something called “utility software.” It could be depended on to do the trick.

  Extinction Info

  This utility will totally obliterate single files,

  entire disks, or erased data,

  so that they cannot be

  recovered by any means.…

  CHAPTER 49

  Off with her head!

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Helen was beside herself. “It’s gone,” she said. “It’s all gone. The files are gone, the manuscript is gone.”

  William stared at the computer, bewildered. “But it must be in there somewhere.”

  “No, no, it’s not there. Every single chapter has been deleted. Someone went through and took them all out. See? Here’s the preface, it’s still here, but all the chapter files are gone. I managed to get into the hard disk, but they’re missing there too. They’re not in the backup directory. They’ve been absolutely, completely, totally wiped out.” Helen threw out her arms in a wild gesture. “Oh, Professor Dubchick—”

  “William.”

  “Oh, William, it’s all my fault. I didn’t lock the office door. Someone came in while I was at home checking a reference. I was only gone for an hour, but when I came back—oh, what have I done?” Helen covered her face with her hands and wept.

  William’s head was spinning. He couldn’t comprehend the extent of the loss. “I’ve still got my notes. I can remember a lot of it. Of course it will take a while.”

  The telephone rang. Helen mopped at her face and reached for it.

  There was a bright voice on the line. “Helen? This is Dora McAdoo at O.U.P., wondering where you are. We’ve got some champagne here. We’re expecting you, are we not?”

  “Oh, Dora, I’m sorry, but there’s been a slight—there’s been a hitch. I’ll call you back.”

  Helen hung up and looked at William fiercely. “Listen, I know who it was. Maybe we can catch him before he destroys the manuscript. Where does that bastard live?”

  But by now the bastard was out of reach. He went straight back to Wolfson, carrying Dubchick’s manuscript inside his thick zippered jacket. The River Cherwell was very near. Mark went to the middle of the arched bridge over the river and dropped the pages a few at a time. Down they went, fluttering into the water, carrying with them all Dubchick’s cleverness and eloquence, all his grand sweeping theories and hopes for glory. The pale rectangles drifted downriver. Mark watched as the first of them floated out of sight.

  Only then did he wonder what to do next. The goddamned woman would certainly know who was responsible. She’d be after him. They’d all be after him. Mark ran back to his room, threw together a few things, and hurried outside. On the way across the quad he met the other Rhodes scholar at Wolfson, the nerd from New York City. They barely glanced at each other.

  But as they passed, an odd noise filled the air. From the direction of the city center came the sound of ringing bells. Mark had never heard such a clashing and clanging. It was as though every college chapel in Oxford were celebrating his departure. The nerd from New York stared up at the sky. “Hey,” he said, “will you look at that?”

  Mark did not deign to look. Head down, he walked at a fast pace in the direction of the railroad station, while the bells pealed to draw attention to a miracle in the sky. Three separate and individual suns were shining through an opalescent layer of cirro-stratus cloud. The brilliant blobs on either side of the central sun were prismatic illusions, mock suns, concentrations of light refracted toward the earth by ice crystals suspended high above Oxford and Binsey and Woodstock and Blenheim Palace and Abingdon and Banbury.

  The bell notes showered down upon Mark Soffit, the three suns dropped their dazzling radiance around him, but he failed to hear, he did not see.

  It was a long way to the station. Mark hurried to the Banbury Road and took a cab. In the back seat he stared at his knees and invented an answer to the questions they would ask of him at home: “Hey, aren’t you back early? What happened?”

  Oh, Oxford’s not all that great. They offered me a fellowship, but I turned it down. Their science is out of date, that’s the trouble. I’m miles ahead of them. I was doing more teaching than learning, so I called it quits.

  CHAPTER 50

  The courtship of animals is by no means so simple and short an affair as might be thought.

  Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

  “Freddy,” said Hal, “my wife has asked for a divorce.” He said it flatly, without introduction.

  Freddy felt the color rush into her face. “She has?” />
  Once again they had met by chance in the middle of the museum courtyard. At least, it looked like chance. Freddy drifted in from the left, dreamily approaching the glass case containing the spider crab. Hal rambled toward her from the right, and stood solemnly staring up at the stone figure of Prince Albert.

  The prince’s whiskers were elegantly trimmed. “So I just thought I’d tell you,” said Hal.

  The spider crab was immense. It was at least a meter across. “I see,” said Freddy. “Well, thank you.”

  She wanted to ask why Margo wanted a divorce. Was it because Hal was in trouble with the police? Did Hal know what Detective Inspector Mukerji was thinking? Was he about to be arrested?

  The spider crab cautioned delay. Prince Albert said not now. There seemed nothing else to say. Freddy made her way by the north stairway to the Zoology Office, where she was astonished to find Hal again. He had galloped up the stairs on the other side.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Freddy, embarrassed. She melted away again, while her father stared after her in surprise.

  Hal looked blindly at one of the crab jars, seeing nothing but blotches in a misted container. Then, to William’s further surprise, he excused himself and went away.

  At once Freddy and Hal nearly collided in the coffee room. At this they both burst out laughing. Destiny, decided Hal, had something to be said for it.

  Mary Kelly was there before them. “Oh, Freddy,” she said, putting down her coffee cup, “I want to ask you about something.” Looking apologetically at Hal, she drew Freddy aside. “Didn’t you say you and Oliver met on a ski trip in Switzerland? I could swear that’s what you said.”

  Freddy looked puzzled. “A ski trip? No, it wasn’t a ski trip.”

  “Well, what were you doing in Switzerland?”

  “Rock-climbing.”

  “Rock-climbing!” Mary clapped her hand to her forehead. “How stupid of me! Yes, of course you were rock-climbing. With spikes and clampons and ropes, a lot of ropes?”

  “Crampons. Yes, I told you. Oliver taught me the ropes.”

  Mary hurried away to tell the news to Homer. Freddy and Hal were left alone together in the coffee room. Now that they were no longer in the presence of the Prince Consort and the giant spider crab, they allowed destiny to take its course.

  Mary was apologetic. “It was so stupid of me. I just assumed that Zermatt meant skiing. Rock climbing never occurred to me.”

  “We were both pretty dumb,” said Homer. “We should have guessed. After all, his father said Oliver was good at sports. We just didn’t think of this sport. Although it does seem strange to me that a pious young clergyman would risk his life on the sheer faces of cliffs, like that guy we saw on the Carfax tower.”

  Mary thought of Oliver’s parents, bravely discussing their son with strangers, revealing his faults and vulnerabilities. “I suppose it was a way of building self-esteem. I suspect he didn’t have much.”

  “In any case,” said Homer, “we’ve got to tell Mukerji.”

  Homer hated making appointments. He set out that afternoon for St. Aldate’s and plunged along Cornmarket Street. It was teeming with busy shoppers. At Carfax he nearly jumped out of his skin as a truck spoke up beside him with a recorded message, Attention! Attention! This vehicle is reversing! In the next block he had to inch past queues of people waiting for buses. Babies abounded in strollers and prams, they were dragged along beside mums and dads. There were tourists unfolding maps, teenagers in madcap outfits, a girl with a bass viol, a boy hawking newspapers with shocking headlines, BODY PARTS FOUND IN FILE CABINET, KILLER RUNS AMOK IN GLASGOW. Homer skipped sideways as a City Link bus released its brakes with a hiss and edged out into the street. He caught fragments of conversation, aristocratic Oxford vowels, excited glottal stops, snatches of Japanese. Pigeons soared in a flock above the roof of McDonald’s and fluttered down on Tom Tower, then rose again as the bell bonged twice for two o’clock.

  The officer on duty at the entry desk at St. Aldate’s was Police Constable Gilly. Homer conned him into opening the gate and letting him hurry down the corridor to the office of Detective Inspector Mukerji. But when he flung open Mukerji’s door, he found the room jammed with half a dozen constables. They were crowded together on folding chairs while Mukerji lectured on the muzzle velocities of various projectiles and the resulting damage to human tissue.

  Heads turned as Homer opened the door. “Whoops, sorry,” he said, backing out.

  “Give me ten minutes, Dr. Kelly,” called Mukerji, beaming at him.

  Homer cooled his heels in the reception room. He read all the notices.

  WANTED

  VOLUNTEERS FOR

  IDENTIFICATION PARADES

  £lO REWARD

  FOR ALL ENQUIRIES CONCERNING

  LOST/STOLEN/FOUND CYCLES,

  PLEASE GO TO THE CYCLES

  OFFICE IN FLOYD’S ROW.

  THEIR ROYAL HIGHNESSES

  THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF KENT

  VISITED THIS POLICE STATION

  ON I2TH NOVEMBER 1990 TO

  MARK ITS REOPENING.

  The last was not a notice, it was a stone plaque. How condescending of the duke and duchess, thought Homer, congratulating himself on being an American.

  “Homer?” Gopal Mukerji smiled at him, his glasses flashing, his black brows arching, his eyes alive with sparkling lights. “Come in. You are here to tell me that the Reverend Oliver Clare was a rock climber, is it not so?”

  Homer was astonished. He admitted it humbly. “How did you find out?”

  They went back to Mukerji’s office, which was empty of constables, although a sickening chart of impact wounds was still propped on the bookcase.

  “I suspected it might be so, and I telephoned the local rock-climbing club. It turned out that Oliver Clare was their best climber, with many famous ascents to his credit. Miss Fredericka Dubchick is also a member of this club, although not of the same standing.”

  “So Oliver knew exactly what to do with the rope that was left on the roof by Charley Firkin.”

  “Yes, of course. I gather that the ropes for rock climbing are more elastic than Firkin’s, but the difference would have given no trouble to an experienced climber like our young clergyman.”

  “He was escaping from the night watchman,” said Homer slowly, staring out of Mukerji’s window at the Magistrate’s Court across the street. “Helen Farfrae saw him climbing up the steep side of that glass roof. I confess I hate giving up on the orangutan, but no, it was the Reverend Oliver Clare, all right.” Homer turned back to Mukerji. “But Bobby Fenwick wasn’t a rock climber, was he? Did you ask if he was a member of the club?”

  “Of course. No, no, he was not a rock climber.” Mukerji dusted a speck from the picture on his desk, a photograph of his wife, a plump pretty woman in a scarlet sari. “But he thought he could do what Oliver had done. He followed him up the rope. Tell me, Homer, what happened then?”

  “Oh, hell,” said Homer angrily, “I suppose Oliver sat up there on the peak of the roof waiting for Fenwick, and then, goddamn it, I suppose he just—”

  They said it together: “Cut the rope.”

  “And then he took the rope away with him.” Homer’s gloom returned. “I confess I still find it hard to understand how a devout young man like Oliver Clare, a mild-mannered clergyman devoted to St. Mary the Whatchamacallit—”

  “The Beneficent.”

  “—could have committed murder.”

  “I imagine it didn’t feel like murder at the time. After all, he didn’t lay a hand on Fenwick. He merely cut the rope with his pocketknife and let nature take its course. Gravity took over.” Mukerji’s beaming smile faded. “And the same was true when he tried to get rid of Dr. Farfrae and killed her husband by mistake. It was entirely passive. He didn’t lift a finger in violence. It was simply a matter of moving a trestle and turning out the lights. Was that murder? Surely you wouldn’t call it murder.”

  Homer’s gloom increased. “And a
ll because he wanted to be a bishop.”

  “A bishop? Surely you are joking.”

  “That was all the motive he had, nothing more. Well, except for protecting the honor of his family.”

  “The honor of his family!” Mukerji snorted bitterly. “What about the honor of Fenwick’s family? That young man had a wife and child.”

  Homer stood up to go. “What about the suicide question? Do you still think someone actually murdered Oliver Clare?”

  Mukerji tossed his hand helplessly. “We’re working on it. I am deeply suspicious of Dr. Shaw and the pretty young Fredericka Dubchick. The murder weapon was his! Perhaps the murderous assault was also his, concealed by the girl’s protective story that Oliver was still alive when she arrived.” He shrugged. “And of course there are also some pretty rough kids at Nightingale Court who could have done it. We’ve been talking to the skinhead who broke Oliver’s window and stole his television the week before. The boy owns a nasty-looking knife of exactly the same kind as Dr. Shaw’s. Perhaps he came back to Oliver’s place, hoping to pick up something else, thinking Oliver would not be there, and then Oliver surprised him, so the kid pulled out the knife and killed him. Or better still, he was wearing gloves and he picked up Shaw’s knife and used it, then put it in Oliver’s hand. Unfortunately this wholesome young man has an alibi. A couple of his skinhead friends claim he was with them, burgling a video store in Abingdon.” Mukerji shrugged. “We are trying to break their stories. Give us a little more time.”

  “Thumb screws?” suggested Homer. “The rack?”

  Mukerji didn’t think it was funny.

  CHAPTER 51

  I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone.… Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines.