Grantchester Grind

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Purefoy said, coming out of his doorway. ‘I’d like a few words with you.’

  The Senior Tutor looked at him angrily. He didn’t like being accosted without a title. It smacked of rudeness. And he certainly didn’t want any words with Dr Osbert. ‘Busy at the moment,’ he said and turned into his doorway.

  Purefoy Osbert followed him before the Senior Tutor could shut the door in his face. ‘It’s about the allegations the Dean has made,’ he said.

  ‘Allegations? What the devil are you talking about?’

  ‘I was hoping you could explain exactly what your role was,’ Purefoy said.

  ‘My role? What role?’ demanded the Senior Tutor.

  ‘In the light of Skullion’s confession it is important to get things in their proper perspective,’ Purefoy continued. ‘Now the Dean says that … Well, perhaps it would be fairer to hear your account. That way you will be saved the need for denials.’

  The Senior Tutor backed unsteadily into his study. ‘Skullion’s confession?’ he gasped. ‘What has Skullion confessed to?’

  ‘To being responsible for the actual murder of Sir Godber Evans. Only the act of murder. He puts the responsibility … Now, if you’ll just state for the record what part you played …’ Purefoy hesitated and waited for the Senior Tutor’s reaction to the imputation that he had played any part in a murder. It was a long time coming. The Senior Tutor was staring at him in horror.

  ‘Sir Godber Evans’ murder?’ he managed to say finally. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘That is not what the Dean has said in his statement. Now, at the time of the murder you were not in College yourself. According to the evidence you gave at the inquest. If you want to change that now …’

  ‘Change it? But I was at Coft Castle visiting Sir Cathcart D’Eath. There were people there who saw us.’

  ‘Us?’ said Purefoy with a look of some doubt on his face. ‘You did say “us”?’

  ‘Of course I said us. The Dean and I.’

  ‘Really? That is not what the Dean has said,’ Purefoy replied. ‘Still, if that is your story …’

  ‘Of course it is my story,’ shouted the Senior Tutor. ‘It’s the bloody truth.’

  ‘There is no need to shout,’ Purefoy told him. ‘Why don’t you sit down and tell me about this so-called alibi? You’ll feel much better when you’ve got this off your chest.’

  Without thinking the Senior Tutor sat down. His mind was a maelstrom of hopelessly conflicting emotions. Thought hardly came into it. ‘I haven’t got anything to get off my chest. I don’t know anything about Sir Godber Evans’ murder. I didn’t even know he had been murdered. No one told me.’

  Purefoy Osbert smiled, and his smile seemed to imply that the Senior Tutor had hardly needed telling. ‘Now, when you spoke to him earlier on the fatal evening what did you actually say to him?’

  ‘Say to him? Say to whom, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Skullion of course.’

  ‘But I didn’t speak to him that evening. Why the hell should I have spoken to Skullion?’

  ‘That’s for you to tell me,’ said Purefoy Osbert. ‘Now according to the Dean you were the one …’

  ‘Fuck the Dean,’ shouted the Senior Tutor. ‘I don’t care what that stupid bastard says, I’m telling you I never went anywhere near Skullion that evening –’

  ‘Right,’ Purefoy interrupted. ‘So the Dean is a liar and …’

  ‘Look,’ the Senior Tutor yelled, ‘I don’t know whether the bloody man is a liar or not. What I am …’

  ‘So you’re saying his account of your actions is correct now?’

  The Senior Tutor stared wildly round the room. Purefoy Osbert recognized the symptom. It was exactly what he had experienced in Mrs Ndhlovo’s apartment. He decided to strike another blow at the Senior Tutor’s morale. ‘As you know the Master, Skullion, was taken away this morning …’

  There was no need to say more. The Senior Tutor clearly did know, but until that moment the full implications of the Extraordinary Council meeting hadn’t occurred to him. He could understand only too well the Praelector’s statement that Skullion was non compos mentis. Frankly the Senior Tutor found the Latin totally inadequate to describe the man’s state of mind. He was clearly as mad as a hatter. But then so was the bloody Dean, if it came to that. In the Senior Tutor’s imagination the police were already interrogating Skullion and would shortly continue their investigations in Porterhouse itself. And the Dean must have had some hand in the murder or he wouldn’t be making allegations against him to this swine Osbert. The Senior Tutor made up his desperately confused mind.

  ‘All right, I will tell you this,’ he said. ‘The Dean was the one who suggested we go out to Coft Castle that night. He suggested it at Dinner and I remember being most surprised. In fact I said it was not on and wouldn’t work but he insisted in spite of my objections.’

  ‘I see,’ said Purefoy after a significant pause. ‘That isn’t the story the Dean provided us with. He said you were the one who insisted on being out of the College that night. He says …’

  ‘Then he’s a bloody liar,’ shouted the Senior Tutor. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what he said.’

  Ten minutes later Purefoy Osbert left the room. The Senior Tutor had given him some very surprising information, had in fact opened up an entirely new can of worms and one that would almost certainly provoke General Sir Cathcart D’Eath to an ouburst of fury and indiscretion. Purefoy couldn’t imagine what it would do to the Dean. In his room he checked his pocket tape recorder and changed the tape. Then he went down into the Fellows’ Garden well pleased with himself. Mrs Ndhlovo and her friend had done him a good turn after all.

  *

  The Praelector travelled down to London by train and caught a taxi to the Goring Hotel. It was not where he usually stayed, preferring a more modest establishment near Russell Square on his very infrequent visits to the capital, but the Goring had a solid respectability about it and in the circumstances the Praelector knew he needed all the solidarity and respectability he could muster. It was there that he received Schnabel and Feuchtwangler for the informal meeting he had requested. The deeply alarmed Mr Retter had advised against it. ‘You’re going to be talking to men …’ Mr Retter had hesitated over the word and almost said ‘shysters’ ‘… who would skin their grandmothers alive for the sort of fees they’re earning from Transworld. You really must be most careful what you say to them.’

  ‘I always am,’ said the Praelector, and decided not to add ‘when talking to lawyers’.

  And so that evening a seemingly benign old man greeted Schnabel and Feuchtwangler in a corner of the lounge. ‘I am sure this whole wretched business can be settled more amicably,’ he told them when they had made themselves relatively comfortable. Mr Schnabel said he doubted it. Mr Feuchtwangler nodded his agreement.

  ‘Our client is not an amicable man,’ Schnabel said.

  The Praelector smiled. ‘So few of us are,’ he said. ‘But we must try to accommodate ourselves to circumstances, don’t you think?’

  Schnabel said he didn’t think their client understood the word.

  ‘“Accommodate,” or “Circumstances”?’ the Praelector enquired.

  ‘Both,’ said Schnabel.

  ‘All the same he must have a well developed sense of self-preservation to have survived so long,’ the Praelector went on. ‘Is Mr Passos still in town?’

  Schnabel blinked and looked at the old man with new eyes. Feuchtwangler swallowed drily.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about anything like that,’ said Schnabel.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ the Praelector agreed. ‘It is outside your remit. However, I imagine it is a matter of some concern to your client, and I rather think he wouldn’t welcome deportation to Thailand or Singapore. I believe the death penalty there is mandatory for certain commercial activities. Of course I’m by no means an expert in these matters but …’

  ‘Shit,’ said Schnabel. This
wasn’t a benign old man with grave-spots on his hands. This was death itself.

  The Praelector signalled to a waiter. ‘I wonder if you’d care to join me in a drink,’ he said. Neither of them wanted anything stronger than water. The Praelector ordered a fino. ‘Now, as I said at the start, I am sure this whole affair can be dealt with on an amicable and mutually beneficial basis and one that your client will find most acceptable. I shall, of course, need to put the proposal to him personally and I daresay he would prefer me to visit him in his office. I have one or two important appointments to keep tomorrow morning but perhaps four o’clock tomorrow afternoon would suit him.’

  ‘I don’t think any time is going to –’ Schnabel began but Feuchtwangler cut in. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘When you say “a mutually beneficial basis”, it would be helpful to us in arranging this meeting to know where we stand in the matter.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said the Praelector. ‘I quite understand your concern. Let me just say that the financial consequences of the proposal I have been authorized to put before your client will not adversely affect your firm in the slightest. Quite the contrary. As you know we have been represented by Waxthorne, Libbott and Chaine in Cambridge and naturally for purely minor matters we shall continue to use their services. However, in the hoped-for eventuality that your client accepts our proposal, the College will need the expertise of a firm with wider experience in the field of finance and commercial law. And now if you will excuse me I must leave you. I have a dinner appointment with my godson.’

  Accompanied by the two lawyers the Praelector went out to a taxi. ‘Downing Street,’ he told the driver in the clearest voice. ‘Number Eleven.’

  Schnabel and Feuchtwangler stood on the pavement and stared after the taxi. There was no doubt now in their minds that their client was going to keep the appointment the following afternoon.

  In the taxi the Praelector smiled to himself and, as they drove down Whitehall, leant forward. ‘I have changed my mind,’ he told the driver as they drove down the Mall. ‘There’s a rather good restaurant in Jermyn Street. I think I’ll dine there.’

  32

  By luncheon the freedom the Dean had felt on leaving the Council Chamber had evaporated. In its place there was a sense of uncertainty and the feeling that things were occurring in a mysterious and secretive way which would change the College entirely. The situation had passed beyond the Dean’s control. One shock after another had left him exhausted – too exhausted to notice that the Senior Tutor kept looking at him with such poisonous hatred that Sir Cathcart’s belief the night before that the man was a homicidal maniac seemed perfectly plausible. Certainly the Senior Tutor had murder in his heart and only the established practice of not having full-blown rows at High Table (a practice that went back to the seventeenth century when two Fellows had fought an impromptu duel between the game pie and the roast beef over a misunderstanding of the word ‘Bestiary’ which duel had resulted in the death of a talented theologian with a harelip) prevented the Senior Tutor from telling the Dean exactly what he thought of him. In any case, the Friday lunch fish had its usual moderating influence. There were far too many bones in the red mullet to attend to.

  Only the Chaplain was in conversational mood. ‘I am most concerned about the Master,’ he said. ‘I tried phoning Addenbrooke’s to find out his condition and they assured me he hadn’t been admitted.’

  ‘Hardly surprising. I don’t suppose they recognized him,’ said Dr Buscott. ‘Not as the Master of a college at any rate. Possibly as a tramp or something of that sort.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean by that?’ asked the Senior Tutor, glad to be able to vent his feelings fairly legitimately.

  ‘Simply that Masters of other colleges are rather more distinguished and don’t wear bowler hats.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he was admitted in a bowler hat,’ Professor Pawley commented. ‘Even if he was wearing it when he had this latest stroke, which strikes me as doubtful, they would have removed it when he was put on the stretcher.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with bowlers,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘They used to be very fashionable. Guards officers in mufti had to wear them. Still do, for all I know.’

  ‘I remember seeing Larwood when I was a small boy,’ said the Chaplain. ‘He was really fast. But it was Jardyne who caused all the rumpus over the bodyline bowling. Now they wear helmets.’

  ‘We weren’t talking about those bowlers. We were talking about Skullion’s hat.’

  ‘Of course I asked for him by name. They wouldn’t have known who I was talking about otherwise. They still said he wasn’t there.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s in the Evelyn,’ said Professor Pawley. ‘They say it’s very comfortable there.’

  The Dean ignored their talk. As far as he was concerned Skullion no longer existed, and in any case he had no intention of telling them where Skullion had gone. The fewer people who knew, the better. He was wondering where the Praelector had got to and whether it had been wise to give the old man the authority to conduct negotiations with a candidate of his own choosing. It was too late now to do anything about it, but all the same he couldn’t help feeling anxious. In the end he excused himself before the end of the meal and went for a quiet walk along the Backs.

  For a moment the Senior Tutor almost followed him but thought better of it. There was time enough to have it out with the Dean and for all he knew the police were keeping an eye on the College. He had never for one moment believed the story about Skullion being taken to hospital. With a sense of tact that was surprising, or perhaps for the practical reason that a wheelchair could not be got into a police car, the police had made use of an ambulance to take Skullion to the Parkside Police Station where they were undoubtedly questioning him. For a moment the Senior Tutor wondered if he ought to do something about getting him a solicitor before remembering that the Praelector had mentioned visiting Mr Retter that morning ostensibly to consult the partner about the constitutional position of a successor to a mentally incompetent Master. Again he was astonished at the tact and care the Praelector had shown in avoiding unwanted publicity. It only went to prove the College Council had been correct in putting so much trust in him.

  All the same the Senior Tutor was still in a filthy mood when he set off for the Porterhouse Boat House across Midsummer Common and as he rode his bicycle his thoughts were centred on Dr Purefoy Osbert. He would dearly like to find some way of making that young man regret the day he had ever set foot in Porterhouse. He was still considering the possibility of somehow incriminating the damned Dr Osbert when, having vented his fury on the First Boat, he cycled back to the College.

  As he passed the Porter’s Lodge Walter came out with an envelope.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ he said. ‘Urgent message for Dr Osbert and since you’re on the same staircase I wonder …’ The Senior Tutor took the envelope and hurried on. He was anxious to see what the urgent message was. It might prove to be useful.

  Once in his room he switched the electric kettle on and steamed the envelope open and read the letter inside. It held little interest for him. It was simply an invitation from the President of the American Association for the Abolition of Cruel and Unusual Punishment to meet with the author of The Long Drop, a work that she had read with great interest and appreciation etc. Unfortunately her schedule was very tight and the only free evening available was Friday. She was staying with friends in Cambridge overnight but would be honoured to meet Dr Osbert outside the Royal Hotel at 8 p.m. The Senior Tutor folded the letter and put it back into the envelope before changing his mind and tearing it up. That was one appointment Dr Osbert was not going to keep.

  *

  In London Schnabel was on the phone to Transworld Television. ‘I’m telling you they are evidently offering you a way out,’ he told Hartang. ‘This guy’s the genuine article and he’s got real influence.’

  ‘Like how real?’ Hartang wanted to know.

  ‘Like Downing Stree
t,’ Schnabel told him.

  There was a long pause while Hartang considered this extraordinary statement.

  ‘He’s got that sort of influence, what’s he want from me?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s got some sort of proposal to put to you. He stated quite specifically that he thought that the matter could be dealt with on an amicable and mutually beneficial basis. Feuchtwangler was with me. He can tell you.’ Feuchtwangler told him and handed the phone back to Schnabel. It took another half hour to convince Hartang to agree to see the Praelector and even then he remained highly suspicious. It was the mention of extradition to Singapore as an alternative that finally persuaded him.

  ‘You get this one wrong, Schnabel, and I won’t just be looking for some new legal advisers, I’ll be needing the help of some contractors from Chicago. Know what I mean?’

  Schnabel said he did, and hung up. ‘Number Eleven Downing Street and the stupid bastard talks like that,’ he said.

  *

  The Praelector rose late and had a leisurely breakfast. Then, in case his movements were being watched, he paid a visit to a nephew who did have a job in the Home Office. After that he had lunch with a retired bishop. All in all his day was spent building up in any watcher’s mind the belief that he was dealing with a man of very considerable influence. When he returned to the Goring Hotel, an invitation to meet with Mr Edgar Hartang at the Transworld Television Centre was waiting for him. The Praelector had a rest and then took a taxi to Docklands where he was subjected to a body check and the attentions of the metal detector before shooting up and down in the elevator to the unnumbered floor and Hartang’s bleak office. Hartang greeted him with an ingratiating concern and a sickening servility that fully substantiated the Bursar’s account of his meeting with him. Hartang had slipped into his middle-European charm mode. It didn’t fool the Praelector for a moment. On the other hand he was pleased to see that Hartang had discarded the blazer and the polo-neck and even the white socks and was dressed slightly more formally in a light suit with a plain tie.