by Tom Sharpe
‘Well, Skullion – Master, that is – I have to hand it to you, you have been doing a splendid job,’ said the Dean. ‘You had me very worried when I first came in. But I think you’ve probably done enough. We are going to want that vile man’s evidence and it won’t look good if he goes into court gibbering. Let him be for the time being, Master. You’ve done everything that is needed.’
‘Just so long as he don’t call me Quasimodo or hunchback again, sir,’ said Skullion. ‘You’d better warn him. And I don’t want him praying to me neither. I’m not some blooming idol. And he calls himself a Christian too. Bloody Yank.’
‘Leave it to me, Master,’ said the Dean and went back into the bedroom.
*
‘I have come to warn you,’ he told Kudzuvine. ‘I have come to warn you that I have persuaded the Master not to pursue the course he had in mind for you. On these conditions: you will not speak to him one word and you will on no account refer to him as Quasimodo or The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And furthermore you will behave politely and in a civilized fashion. If you fail to meet these conditions, I cannot be responsible for your safety. Do you understand?’
‘Yes sir, I sure do, sir. I sure as shit do.’
‘And that is another thing,’ said the Dean. ‘You will moderate your language. It is not customary in Porterhouse to use filthy expressions. Is that clear?’
‘I guess so, sir,’ said Kudzuvine humbly.
‘Don’t guess anything. Know it,’ said the Dean, and stalked out of the room.
21
That evening Purefoy Osbert dined in Hall for the first time and, because it was his Induction Dinner, he sat with the Senior Fellows. But first he was introduced to the Combination Room and to the Special Porterhouse Amontillado Sherry which was supposed to have been blended at the time of the Peninsular War and which was certainly very old and unusually strong. It was only drunk on special occasions and seldom more than once a year. To begin with the Dean was content to stay in the background and merely observe the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow from a distance while making sure that the waiter with the decanter saw to it that Purefoy’s glass was never empty.
Even the Senior Tutor, who was still taking very great care of his liver when it came to fortified wines, had agreed to be genial. ‘We have got to find out what this young man has come here to do,’ the Dean had told him, resisting the impulse to ask the Senior Tutor why he had not told the College Council that the anonymous donor had employed Lady Mary’s solicitors. Some time later would do to score that point.
In fact Purefoy’s reception was far pleasanter than he had anticipated. The Praelector and the Chaplain, who was in any case naturally amiable, were particularly friendly. Professor Pawley spoke about the measurement of time from the moment of the Big Bang and even went so far as to attempt an explanation of the importance of his discovery of the nebula Pawley One while Dr Buscott, who wanted to recruit Dr Osbert to his progressive camp, was complimentary about The Long Drop, parts of which he had taken the precaution of reading in the University Library. By the time they trooped into dinner Purefoy had unwittingly drunk four glasses of the Special Amontillado and was beginning to think that his first impressions of Porterhouse had been rather too harsh. Only then did the Dean move forward.
‘My dear fellow, you must allow me to introduce myself,’ he said with a show of bonhomie. ‘I am the Dean. You must come and sit beside me. I am so anxious to hear about your work. Your reputation is not an inconsiderable one and we are, I must confess, a rather ignorant bunch of old Fellows and don’t keep up with what you young people are doing in your specialized areas of research.’
Through the excellent meat soup, the poached salmon, the deliciously underdone roast beef, the crème caramel, the Stilton and the fruit but, most importantly, through the Montrachet and the Fonbadet – a small but perfect little vineyard, as the Dean was at pains to point out – the Margaux and the Château d’Yquem, Purefoy Osbert gained confidence. He was ready to talk about anything, including his belief that Dr Crippen had been wholly innocent of the crime for which he was hanged. There had been a hiatus in the conversation at that point but a kick from the Dean under the table had silenced the Senior Tutor, who had gone very red in the face and who was on the point of saying he’d never heard such damned tommyrot in his life. The situation was saved by the Chaplain who said he had never been able to think of domestic murder as a capital crime because, as in the case of Mrs Crippen, a great many women were such dreadful nagging scolds that they deserved what was coming to them. Again the Dean had intervened.
‘You must excuse the Chaplain,’ he said. ‘He has always been something of a ladies’ man.’ The remark left Purefoy so baffled by its implications that he did not know how to reply. By that time the talk had passed on to a discussion of the varying merits of Château Lafite, which the Dean maintained had a delightfully feminine quality about it, and Château Latour, which the Senior Tutor preferred as being more masculine. In other circumstances Purefoy would have found these preferences deeply suspicious. But now he was happy to have another chunk of Stilton. All his prejudices about Porterhouse had been dissipated by the combination of sherry and the various excellent wines and the conviviality with which he was surrounded. ‘I’m really enjoying myself,’ he confessed to the Dean, who said he was delighted to hear it.
‘It is always refreshing to welcome a new face to High Table,’ he said, after the Chaplain had mumbled Grace and they were going through to the Combination Room for coffee and port or brandy, whichever one preferred. The Senior Tutor stuck to coffee but Purefoy, who had never in his life drunk so much and who was decidedly tiddly, made the mistake of taking both port and cognac, much to the Senior Tutor’s horror and the Dean’s delight. He was achieving what he had set out to do. His only worry was that Purefoy Osbert would pass out before he could discover what the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellowship really entailed. And when Purefoy accepted a second cognac, the Dean intervened. ‘My dear Dr Osbert,’ he said, ‘let me advise against it. Port is all very well on its own and in moderation but, as it is already fortified with spirit, to add cognac to it is to risk a very unpleasant Morning After The Night Before. Don’t you agree, Senior Tutor?’
‘I do indeed,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘The other night in Corpus … But I’d rather not speak about it.’
But Purefoy had seized on the word. ‘Talking about corpses,’ he said, ‘you know what I’m supposed to be researching here?’
‘No,’ said the Dean with a geniality he did not in the least feel. ‘I have been wondering what your particular interest in the College is. Do tell us.’
‘You’ll never guess.’
The Dean smiled and preferred not to. ‘I don’t suppose we will.’
Purefoy Osbert swallowed the rest of his port and held out his glass for more. ‘I’m here to find out for Her Ladyship which of you Fellows murdered her husband. He was Master of Porterhouse you know.’
In the silence that followed this appalling revelation the Dean had the presence of mind to say that he had heard Sir Godber mentioned as the Master but that in his opinion the real power lay with Lady Mary. ‘I suppose you might say we had a Mistress of Porterhouse rather than a Master and, had I intended to murder anybody, I think I’d have chosen her rather than him. A very ineffectual man, hardly worth murdering.’
A nervous titter ran round the little group. Purefoy concentrated on this argument. It seemed logical to him but there was a flaw in it somewhere. It took him some time to spot it.
‘’S right,’ he said with a terrible slur. ‘But you kill him and she hasn’t got any power, has she?’
‘There is that,’ said the Dean. ‘I can’t fault your reasoning. And on which of us Fellows do your suspicions lie most heavily?’
‘Don’t have any suspicions,’ Purefoy managed to say with some difficulty. ‘All good fellows as far as I can see.’
‘Which by the look of things cannot be very far,’ said t
he Praelector, and got up to leave. ‘I must say this is the first time in a very long life that I have been a murder suspect. It’s a novel sensation.’
But the Senior Tutor wasn’t taking the accusation so casually. ‘By Heavens, I’ve never heard anything so monstrous. Appointing a Fellow to prove that one of us murdered her bloody husband. I’m going to consult my lawyer in the morning. The woman is going to pay for this,’ he said, and stormed out of the room after the Praelector.
Purefoy Osbert sat on with the Dean and the Chaplain, who had fallen asleep in his chair and was dreaming of the girls in Boots.
‘Drink up, my dear chap,’ said the Dean and passed the port. ‘And, Simpson, I think Dr Osbert might like another cup of coffee.’ The waiter poured coffee. ‘And I don’t think you need wait up any longer.’
He waited until Simpson had gone before continuing with his questions. Purefoy Osbert was exceedingly drunk now. ‘And what makes Her Ladyship think Sir Godber was murdered?’ he asked. ‘I always understood him to have over-indulged his taste for Scotch, and then fallen and cracked his skull on the grate. That is certainly what the coroner’s jury decided.’
‘Know they did,’ said Purefoy. ‘Know they did. I read the transcript she had made. Know all about it.’
The Dean made a note of this. The damned woman had really gone to some pains. And now she was prepared to spend six million pounds. It was all most interesting. Purefoy’s next remark was even more revealing. ‘Seen the post-mortem report too,’ he said.
‘Have you indeed? And does that support Her Ladyship’s thesis?’
‘She says he never got drunk.’
‘Yes,’ said the Dean encouragingly. ‘And?’
‘The autopsy report says he wasn’t drunk either.’
‘But the autopsy report that I remember definitely stated that he had drunk a large quantity of whisky,’ said the Dean.
‘But it hadn’t made him drunk before his head was hit,’ said Purefoy.
‘Really? How do we know that?’
‘You don’t, but I do,’ Purefoy said. ‘Because it wasn’t in his bleeding blood.’
‘Bleeding blood? I don’t quite follow.’
‘The blood he bled. It was in his stomach when he died but it hadn’t got into his bloodstream so he couldn’t have been drunk, could he?’
The Dean said nothing. For the first time he felt a sense of unease about Dr Purefoy Osbert. The man might be very, very drunk, but the clarity of his reasoning told the Dean he was not dealing with a fool. Lady Mary had chosen her champion very shrewdly. ‘And do you think Sir Godber was murdered?’ he asked.
‘Me? I don’t know. I only go on facts and I don’t have enough of them to know or even think but …’ Purefoy Osbert paused. He was staring straight ahead of him as though the Dean was not there but his mind was still working with surprising swiftness and concentration.
‘Yes?’ prompted the Dean.
‘Motive,’ said Purefoy. ‘Supposing he was murdered, cherchez the motive. The Dean had one and the Senior Tutor. They were going to be sacked. She said so. Yes, they had motives. But they also had alibis. They’d gone to this General’s party and could prove it. Very convenient, that.’
The Dean sat motionless and listened. It was like hearing a man whose mind was sleep-talking. What he was saying had a frightening logic to it.
‘And someone else had a motive. The Porter, Skullion. He had been sacked. He wanted revenge. He wanted his job back and he’d get it if Sir Godber died. The Dean and Tutor would see to that. They’d owe him. So where was he that night? There’s a question needs an answer.’
It was very still in the Combination Room. Only the Chaplain’s heavy breathing seemed to stir the air. A clock ticked loudly. The Dean’s unease had turned to fear. The reasoning was impeccable. He and the Senior Tutor had had no invitations to Sir Cathcart’s party. They had gone there to force the General to use his influence to rid the College of Sir Godber and, while they were gone, the Master had been mortally wounded. Accidentally, of course. Of course he hadn’t been murdered but listening to this drunk young man thinking aloud was eerie and a little frightening. It was as if Dr Osbert were the prosecuting counsel in a trial, slowly but insistently building up his case. On the Bull Tower the clock struck midnight. And still Purefoy followed his line of thought aloud. ‘But why didn’t the Porter Skullion get his old job back?’ he asked.
The Dean didn’t reply. He wanted to hear Dr Osbert’s answer.
‘Because the Dean and Senior Tutor said the dying Master had named Skullion as his successor. But why should Sir Godber do that when he hated him? That doesn’t make sense.’
It hadn’t made sense to the Dean at the time but he had a terrible idea what was coming next. He was wrong.
‘So what does make sense? They only said the dying man named him. No one else was there to prove he really had. Yes, that’s more like it. They made the Porter Master to reward him for doing the killing or because they had to keep him quiet. Or both. That does make sense. Much more.’ Purefoy paused.
Beside him the Dean was driven to intervene. The charge was too monstrous to be ignored. ‘But Skullion had a Porterhouse Blue, a stroke,’ he said. ‘He was incapacitated.’
Still staring into space Purefoy Osbert waited for an explanation to come to mind. ‘Ever hear of a man who’s incapac … incapacitated by a stroke going to prison?’ he asked and answered the question himself. ‘I haven’t. A man in a wheelchair who couldn’t even speak, in prison? It doesn’t happen. And yet they make the Porter Skullion who’s had a stroke and is in a wheelchair the Master? Of Porterhouse, the snobbiest college in Cambridge? There has to be a reason.’
But the reason never came. Without any warning Purefoy Osbert slowly tilted forward out of his chair and fell flat on his face. For a moment the Dean sat looking down at the sprawled figure. There was no contempt on his face now, only a look of fear and something like admiration. His hatred was reserved for Lady Mary.
The Dean got up and went out into the Court and crossed the lawn to the Porter’s Lodge. ‘Walter,’ he told the Head Porter. ‘I think the new Fellow needs assisting to his rooms. And wake the Chaplain while you are about it.’
‘Can’t hold his liquor, sir?’
‘You could put it like that, Walter,’ the Dean said, but he said it without conviction. Drunk, the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow was capable of frightening deductions. Sober, he might be lethal. Lethal and absolutely wrong. The Dean climbed wearily up the stone staircase to his rooms thinking, as he so often thought, how dangerous pure intellect alone could be. In Cambridge pure intellect was power and like power it tended to corrupt. Something would have to be done about Dr Purefoy Osbert.
22
Edgar Hartang wasn’t interested in intellect, pure or otherwise, but he was adamant that something be done about Kudzuvine. He had been in consultation with his legal team for hours and nothing that Schnabel, Feuchtwangler or Bolsover had told him had been to his liking. ‘You telling me because that fucking Kudzuvine goes apeshit in this fucking Porterhouse I got to spit out twenty million pounds you got to be as crazy as he is,’ had been his first reaction.
‘We are merely speaking in terms of the legal consequences of this action,’ Schnabel had told him. ‘And if the facts as laid out by the solicitors acting for the College are as they state them to be liability certainly lies with Transworld. That is the unfortunate fact of the matter and our unavoidable conclusion.’
Two days later the facts of the matter had worsened and Skundler, who had lost a stone in weight through having to live in the presence of a man who made it abundantly clear he intended to have him killed very painfully, had been ordered to get some independent operatives to find Kudzuvine.
‘No, not from Chicago, not yet,’ Hartang had shouted at him. ‘Locals. And on the phone, Skundler. You’re not leaving this room.’
The operatives’ report that Kudzuvine was almost certainly still in Porterhouse, and a fur
ther communication from Waxthorne, Libbott and Chaine that they had even more damaging though unspecified evidence, had sent Hartang into a paroxysm of rage. ‘You mean the fucker’s squealed?’ he screamed at the legal team. ‘I’ll … I’ll crucify that … that …’ Words failed him.
‘Apparently he’s given an affidavit of some sort,’ Bolsover told him. ‘Like it’s a sworn statement, a confession –’
‘I know what an affifuckingdavit is,’ Hartang bawled. ‘Whadda they mean by our ancillary activities for shit-sake? That’s what I want to know.’
‘One can only suppose …’ Feuchtwangler hazarded to take some of the heat off Bolsover. He preferred to leave the supposition unsaid.
‘Suppose? I knows. I know what …’ He turned to Skundler. ‘What does Kudzuvine have in that head of his? Like details, you dummy, not fucking neurons. What he’s got to have spilt to these fucking shysters?’
Skundler took a desperate gamble. ‘As a V-P he’s got details, sir. Got a lousy mind …’
‘That I’m learning. Tell me the new.’
‘He’s got a photographic memory, Mr Hartang sir. Filing cabinet full of account numbers and times of consignments and fund flows and …’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Edgar Hartang, and wiped the sweat from his face. There was a long and terrible silence. Finally he spoke. ‘Get me some independents Stateside …’ he began, but this time Schnabel stepped in with remarkable courage.
‘I … we would strongly advise against any action that might make the situation worse,’ he said.
‘Worse? Just how much worse can it get you don’t think this is worst? I got to take this shit do nothing about it?’
‘I did not say that. I just want you to know that there is nothing in this communication from the solicitors to indicate that they intend to move from civil action and initiate criminal proceedings. That’s our reading of it.’ Beside him his two partners nodded their agreement.