by Tom Sharpe
‘Really?’ said the General and looked at the Senior Tutor suspiciously. He had the feeling that someone was taking the piss out of him.
It was confirmed by the Chaplain who had got his hearing aid going again. ‘Colonel Someone’s Chicken,’ he shouted. ‘I had some once. You had to lick your fingers afterwards. I can’t remember why. Mind you, the waitresses were most attractive. Lovely legs and things.’
‘What’s this new chap, the Godber Evans Fellow, like?’ the General asked, to change the subject.
‘He died, you know,’ bellowed the Chaplain. ‘I’m surprised no one told you. Murdered, they say.’
‘What?’ said the General. ‘Murdered? Already?’ He looked round for the Senior Tutor but he had disappeared in the crowd.
‘I’m surprised nobody informed you,’ the Chaplain continued. ‘It happened quite a long time ago. I found it most distressing. Of course none of us liked him but …’ Any further information that might have cleared the matter up was prevented by the arrival of the Praelector.
‘I’ve just been hearing about Dr Osbert,’ the General told him.
The Praelector looked at him curiously and shook his head. ‘A nasty business,’ he said. ‘I blame the Senior Tutor myself.’
‘The Senior Tutor?’ said the General. ‘You’re not seriously telling me …’ A waiter with the decanter slid between them and filled his glass.
‘He should never have allowed the Fellow to be appointed,’ the Praelector continued. ‘We weren’t properly informed. All we were told was that some City friends had put up the money. Now, of course, it’s too late. The damage has been done.’
‘It is never too late to repent,’ bawled the Chaplain, who had been elbowed aside by the waiter and had only just rejoined them. ‘On the other hand, when you’re murdered you don’t have much opportunity.’
This time it was the Praelector who was shocked. ‘Don’t use that word,’ he told the Chaplain sharply. ‘It isn’t generally known. We can’t have rumours spreading.’
‘I should damned well think not,’ said Sir Cathcart. ‘I for one had no idea.’
‘None of us did,’ the Praelector said. ‘I only learnt about it this afternoon.’
The Chaplain looked at him in some astonishment. ‘But you were there when he admitted it. We all were. It was after his Induction Dinner. He got pickled.’ But before the matter could be satisfactorily cleared up dinner was announced. They filed into the Hall and the Chaplain shouted Grace.
‘Praelector,’ said Sir Cathcart in a conspiratorial whisper when they were finally seated. ‘I know we can’t talk about Dr Osbert now, but perhaps we should have a word in private afterwards.’
‘Just as you like,’ said the Praelector with an insouciance that took the General’s breath away, ‘though frankly I should have thought it was the other … er … matter, you know, we should consider.’
Sir Cathcart glanced cautiously around. ‘The other matter?’ he asked through gritted teeth. ‘Other matter?’
‘Can’t talk about it now for goodness’ sake,’ said the Praelector hurriedly. ‘I just hope to God the Chaplain keeps his trap shut. I told the Dean only this afternoon not to mention it to anyone. If it got to the Senior Tutor’s ears the fat would really be in the fire. The fellow’s in a bad enough state already without provoking him any further. He’s as unstable as the very devil.’
‘Yes,’ Sir Cathcart agreed, with the private thought that a man who had so recently murdered the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow was bound to be in a pretty bad way. Unstable was putting it mildly. Mad as a hatter was more like it. He peered down the table at the Senior Tutor and was relieved to see him talking quite naturally to the Fellow beside him, exhibiting no signs of homicidal mania. He was so engrossed in the thoughts this news had provoked, and in particular how he was going to get back the half of the two thousand pounds he had given Myrtle Ransby, that he hardly noticed what he was eating until Canards pressés à la Porterhouse was served.
Even by Porterhouse standards it was exceptional. In the belief that, with the collapse of the Chapel and the gloom emanating from the Bursar’s office about the state of College finances, this was in all likelihood the last time he would be allowed the chance to do a Duck Dinner, the Chef had gone to town. To be exact, he had gone to three of East Anglia’s largest duck farms and had returned with over one hundred and thirty plucked Aylesburys and the determination to so concentrate them that this last Duck Dinner would go down in the gastronomic annals of Porterhouse. For days the ancient presses had been groaning under the strain of achieving the greatest possible mass of duck in the least possible volume or, to put it another way, that three overweight ducks should be compressed into an oblong no larger than a matchbox. And while he hadn’t entirely succeeded in this remarkable compression, what was finally placed in front of General Sir Cathcart D’Eath had so little resemblance to a duck or anything vaguely capable of flying or floating that he had munched his way with some difficulty through the first forkful before realizing what he had just swallowed. He turned a bulging eye to the menu and then looked down at his plate. ‘Dear God, I thought this was some sort of pâté,’ he muttered, and tried to dislodge a compacted feather from his dentures. ‘This isn’t pressed duck, it’s triple-distilled cholesterol. God alone knows what it does to the arteries.’
‘An interesting point,’ said the Praelector, finishing his first helping and signalling for a second. ‘The calorific value is quite astonishingly high. In my younger days I did some slight calculations into the matter. I forget what the exact figures were but I do remember concluding that a starving man of medium build adrift on an iceflow could survive perfectly well on one portion every third day.’
‘I daresay, but since I’m not on a damned iceflow,’ the General began and was about to push his plate away when the waiter intervened.
‘Anything wrong, Sir Cathcart? Chef’s special, sir.’
The General picked up his knife and fork again. ‘Momentary hiccup,’ he said. ‘Give the Chef my compliments and tell him this duck is delicious.’
‘These,’ said the waiter enigmatically, and went away.
‘As I was about to say,’ continued the Praelector happily, ‘I have always found duck a very delicate dish. Goose tends to be a bit on the greasy side but with far more flavour to the meat whereas duck, unless it’s wild mallard of course, has always struck me as a bit bland. On the other hand with sage and onion …’
Sir Cathcart picked at his duck and tried to shut out the words. Never a great trencherman – his interest in the less savoury qualities of the opposite sex inclined him to pay attention to his figure – he was feeling decidedly liverish. He wasn’t helped by Professor Pawley, who pointed out that he had known people drop dead immediately after a Duck Dinner. ‘Dr Lathaniel was one, I remember, and then there was Canon Bowel. A question, I suppose, of the individual’s metabolism.’
‘Canon Bowel?’ said the Praelector. ‘Another rotten Master. I must say we’ve had more than our fair share of bad Masters. Not that he died at a Duck Dinner. Had an ulcer and wouldn’t attend.’
‘He tried to introduce compulsory Compline,’ shouted the Chaplain. ‘We had to do something about him, you know. Now what was the menu that night? I know we had devilled crabs with tabasco sauce to start with but …’
‘It was the jugged hare and the zabaglione …’
‘Oh yes, the zabaglione,’ sighed the Chaplain ecstatically. ‘It was a special recipe I remember. A dozen yolks of goose eggs and a pound of sugar and instead of sherry we had Cointreau. Oh, it was wonderful.’
‘And we had a special cheese with peppers on it,’ the Praelector said.
Down the table the Senior Tutor had pricked up his ears. ‘You’re talking about Canon Bowel, I can tell,’ he called out. ‘It was the cigars that finished the man off. They were enormous ones. We had to budget for them. Ah, those were the days. We were a proper college then. Used to call us Slaughterhouse.’
By the end of dinner Sir Cathcart’s sympathies had gone out to Canon Bowel, and he could fully understand the Dean’s absence. To have to sit down to a Duck Dinner knowing full well that the Senior Tutor was a murderer, and so evidently revelled in the College being called Slaughterhouse, was more than enough to put any man off colour. It was with an ashen, though mottled, face that he followed the Praelector into the Combination Room. ‘I won’t have any port or coffee, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a breath of fresh air might help.’ They went out into the Fellows’ Garden and the Praelector lit a cigar.
‘Now then, about this business of the murder,’ said Sir Cathcart. ‘What on earth are you going to do?’
‘Get rid of him of course,’ said the Praelector. ‘Can’t have him in the College any longer.’
‘You mean to say he’s still here?’
‘Of course he is. Can’t simply sneak the damned man out at dead of night,’ said the Praelector and intensified the General’s mental and physical discomfort by adding, ‘actually I intend to talk to him about it some time tonight. It won’t be easy but I’ll have to try. Of course it all depends on the weather.’
‘Really? Does it?’ said Sir Cathcart. ‘How very remarkable. Of course one’s heard about, well … this sort of thing before but I never realized communication could be affected by the weather.’
‘Only possible when it’s fine, according to the Dean,’ said the Praelector. ‘He’s the expert. I can’t be bothered myself. It’s so difficult to make out what the damned man’s saying. Not surprising in his condition but I suppose I’m too squeamish or something. Beastly state to be in. I always feel so sorry for the poor devil. A dreadful way to go.’
Sir Cathcart said nothing. He was feeling dreadful himself. He had always thought of the Dean and the Praelector as perfectly rational men, not at all inclined to superstition, and to discover now that they were both convinced spiritualists was almost as disturbing as the knowledge that the Senior Tutor had murdered the man the Praelector was hoping to talk to that night if the weather was fine. And the fact that the corpse or cadaver or whatever murdered bodies were called was still in the College, and in a beastly condition to boot, did nothing to put his mind at rest. It was no longer a question that things in Porterhouse might be in need of change. They bloody well had to be changed before the police and the media were swarming all over the place and all the Senior Fellows had been arrested. That sort of thing was going to do the College no good at all. The old name of Slaughterhouse would become a permanent one. For the first time in his life Sir Cathcart regretted his own name. It was bound to be up on the billboards.
He pulled himself together and placed a kindly hand on the Praelector’s arm. ‘Listen, old chap, why don’t we go inside and sit down quietly somewhere and I’ll see if I can get hold of the College legal fellows. I really do think it’s time to get them in on this. I mean this is a spectacularly awful situation. Now what are their names?’
‘Waxthorne, Libbott and Chaine,’ said the Praelector shaking himself free rather irritably. He disliked being called ‘old chap’ and patronized quite so openly, as if he were in some sort of geriatric ward. ‘Though you won’t find them in at this time of night.’ He gave a nasty chuckle. ‘In fact you won’t find them in at all. Waxthorne has been dead for the past sixty years. Buried in the cemetery on the Newmarket Road. And Libbott was cremated a couple of years later. I don’t know exactly what happened to Chaine though I once heard a rather peculiar story about him ending up in King’s. Something about his skull being used as a drinking mug. Waxthorne’s widow told me that. I used to keep in touch with her, you know, on a regular basis. Nice woman.’ For a moment his mind wandered back to those happy afternoons in her house in Sedley Taylor Road.
Beside him Sir Cathcart adjusted himself to another set of deaths. It was turning into a singularly ghastly evening. All the same he tried again. ‘I thought the College lawyers were … Retter and … Wyve,’ he said at last. ‘Perhaps if I were to telephone them …’
‘Oh, them,’ said the Praelector. ‘I shouldn’t do that. They’ve got enough on their hands with this other business. Besides, the fewer people who know about it the better. No, no, we’ve got to handle the matter ourselves. And it is a fine night, so we should be able to find him.’
Sir Cathcart looked balefully up at the sky and gnawed the end of his ginger moustache. ‘When you say “we”,’ he said. ‘I’m not at all sure I want to get any further involved … in … well, you know what I mean.’
‘Suit yourself. I know my duty. And in any case I can’t see how you can slide out of it now. We’re all involved. Question of the College’s reputation. And frankly … well never mind about that. Least said soonest mended. We’d better go and talk it over with the Dean.’ And on this curiously ambivalent note the Praelector led the way across the garden to the Dean’s staircase.
They found him drinking a cup of coffee. A plate of half-eaten sandwiches was on the table beside him. ‘Ah, hullo Cathcart, Praelector. Sorry I wasn’t at Duck Dinner. Wasn’t in the mood somehow. Couldn’t bring myself to face it. Cowardly, I daresay.’
‘Not at all, my dear chap,’ said the General. ‘Know just how you feel. All that damned grease and this fellow Osbert still on the premises. Ghastly business. Mangled too, according to the Praelector here. And the Senior Tutor sitting there chatting away cheerfully and acting perfectly normally. First thing I heard about it was from the Chaplain.’
The Praelector addressed the Dean sternly. ‘I told you not to mention it to anyone. And there was the Chaplain practically shouting the odds from the house tops. Fortunately no one takes much notice of what he says.’
It was the Dean’s turn to look decidedly uneasy. ‘I can assure you I haven’t said a word to the Chaplain. Last person I’d tell. You don’t think …’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ said the Praelector. ‘All I know is that someone’s been talking.’
The General tried to take command of the situation. ‘Now then, you fellows, we’re not going to get anything done nattering about it. We’ve got to think how to protect the College reputation. If it got out that we were sheltering a murderer, the gutter press would have a field day. And the broadsheets too. Letters to The Times and television programmes. We’ve got to be practical and find some way of keeping the police out of it. The best way of doing that is to get the body off the premises. Where is it at the moment?’
‘Well, at a rough guess,’ said the Praelector, now convinced that Sir Cathcart was a great deal drunker than he looked, ‘at a rough guess I’d have to say it was still in the Crypt. Of course I haven’t been down to have a look lately but that’s where they’re usually kept.’
‘The Crypt, eh? Well, I suppose it’s as good a place as any. Not many people go down there. Probably kept locked in any case.’
‘Invariably,’ said the Dean. ‘I can’t see that it matters much. The really important thing is to get Skullion out of the Master’s Lodge. Now he has already threatened to tell the world he killed Sir Godber if we even think of having him shifted to the Park and –’
‘Excuse me,’ said Sir Cathcart, sliding slowly into an armchair. ‘I don’t feel awfully well. Must be that damned duck, though how the hell all that fat can affect the brain so quickly I’m damned if I know. You don’t think I’m having a Blue, do you?’
‘A Blue? Oh no, no,’ said the Praelector. ‘A Porterhouse Blue always attacks the speech first. You wouldn’t be making any sense if you’d had a Blue.’
‘And how does it affect the hearing? I mean, I’m not hearing any sense half the time. I thought I heard the Dean say Skullion had threatened to tell the world he killed Sir Godber Evans.’
‘Quite right too. That’s what I did say,’ said the Dean. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
Words failed Sir Cathcart. Slumped in the old leather armchair he looked pucely up at them and shook his head. ‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t
begin to understand.’
‘We none of us do,’ said the Praelector. ‘That is one of the problems but it’s not one we can get to grips with now. We have to take immediate action. No matter how many threats he makes Skullion must go, if necessary by force. We simply cannot afford to have a murderer as Master.’
‘Of course we can’t but don’t you see he may say something to the Press,’ the Dean said anxiously.
But Sir Cathcart D’Eath had overcome his temporary lapse. The words ‘immediate action’ and ‘force’ had reawoken his military spirit, and the clear statement that the Master of Porterhouse was a murderer had driven all other considerations out of his mind. The Senior Tutor’s killing of Dr Osbert was by comparison a minor misdemeanour. He got to his feet and stood with his legs apart in front of the empty fireplace. ‘Right, the first thing is for one of us to go and explain the situation to him,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve known Skullion a long time and I think I can say with some confidence that he trusts me. I shall speak to him man to man, soldier to soldier, and …’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ muttered the Praelector but the General ignored the interruption, ‘… and I shall put it to him that his duty now is to go. He has always been a loyal College servant and I daresay the action he took, however regrettable, against the late Sir Godber Evans was done for the sake of Porterhouse. Frankly I have a great deal of sympathy for the old boy and, speaking as a military man, I have little doubt that in the same circumstances I would have done the same thing. Can’t say fairer than that. We had to put some of the Watussi Rifles down in Burma one time and I can say with some confidence that I did not shrink from putting my hand to the wheel. Now you chaps just wait here and I’ll go and look Skullion up. Daresay I’ll find him on sentry duty by the back gate.’
And before either the Dean or the Praelector could say anything to stop him he strode from the room and could be heard clattering down the staircase into the night.
‘Did he have an awful lot of pressed duck?’ the Dean asked.