An Oxford Tragedy

by Norman Russell

  It was in the early sixties that Herr Doctor Bosch had begun to betray the signs of dementia, allied to the onset of the shaking palsy. In the way of Oxford colleges, it was agreed that he should keep to his rooms – he lived in the college – until such times as his removal to an asylum proved necessary. His students, including Podmore, were ‘farmed out’ to mathematics tutors at other colleges.

  Steadman could just remember Herr Doctor Bosch, as he was always called. He had retired to his rooms the year before he had been appointed Tutor in Semitic Languages, but would occasionally emerge to be walked round the second quad by the common room butler, or the senior scout. A smiling, gentle man, he was an academic researcher more than a tutor; but he had been universally esteemed, and when he died, quite insane, in 1873, he had been widely mourned.

  It seemed to be a day for recollections. Steadman recalled his own career. He had come up to Lincoln College in 1862, from Harrow, to study Biblical languages, having been introduced to them at a very tender age by his father, a learned clergyman of the old school, who left most of his clerical duties to a series of curates, while he immersed himself in study. He had been an eager pupil, and proved to be an outstanding student at Lincoln College. In 1857, the year of his graduation, he had won the University Prize for Hebrew, and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Award for Coptic Studies.

  He had been immediately offered a fellowship in Semitic Languages at St John’s College, and had stayed there for nine happy years. It was while he was at St John’s that he published his book on the decipherment of Akkadian, an extinct Semitic language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia.

  And then, in 1869, at the age of 33, he had come to St Michael’s, and there he had stayed, growing more and more cynical as the years advanced and further promotions eluded him. He was now ‘Old Joe’, the well-liked college plumber… .

  He looked again at the photograph of Georg Joachim Bosch, and recalled one winter’s night in 1870, when he had seen the old man in earnest conversation with William Podmore, his assistant tutor, then a young man of twenty-six or so. The two men had adjourned to the Herr Doctor’s rooms, and had been closeted together for what seemed like hours.

  Steadman had been standing at the window of his sitting-room in the second quad when he had seen Podmore emerge from Bosch’s staircase, clutching a thick cardboard folder, which he was contriving to hide under the folds of his academic gown. It had been raining, and he had probably been trying to prevent the folder from getting wet. But there had been other possibilities.

  In 1870, when still only twenty-six years of age, Podmore had published the book that had secured his reputation as a mathematician. It was a dense, profoundly learned tome, which had been brought out by the Oxford University Press to great acclaim. It was entitled: The Boethian Apices: The Application of the Hindu-Arabic Numeration System to Computation in 10th Century Spain. Few would read it, and fewer still would understand a word of it. But word of Podmore’s ability as a mathematician spread abroad, and it was this publication that ultimately led to his being appointed Consultant Statistician to the Exchequer, and his being awarded the degree of DCL, honoris causa.

  Steadman had always wondered about that book. He had taken great pains to read all 480 pages, and had been left with a sense of profound unease. The bibliography had contained over two hundred entries, many referring to authors who had flourished in the 1830s. Herr Bosch had come to St Michael’s as maths tutor in 1829. Surely it had taken at least a decade to research those two hundred sources? Many of them were in German. It had seemed to Steadman that The Boethian Apices could only have been the work of an older man.

  He could still recall seeing Podmore emerging from Bosch’s staircase, clutching that bulky folder beneath the folds of his gown, as though to hide it. Had the old German scholar, realizing that his faculties were failing, entrusted his own precious manuscript to his favourite pupil, asking him to see it through the press?

  He had allowed that question to remain unanswered for a quarter of a century.

  A sudden surge of anger almost overwhelmed him. Podmore had come that morning to gloat over his failures, and to flaunt his own triumph! Well, pride came before a fall. The hypocrite had rejoiced over his old enemy once too often.

  The third room in the Bursary, known as ‘the archive’, was a windowless chamber, containing shelves full of old-fashioned deed boxes and leather cylinders in which the founding documents of St Michael’s were kept. There were, too, a row of wooden filing cabinets.

  Lighting the single gas-jet near the door, Joseph Steadman rummaged through the files in the furthest cabinet until he found a cardboard folder containing a single sheet of paper. It was a handwritten record, dated in August, 1832, of the home addresses of fellows who owned property outside the college. Apparently there had been an attempt to compile a register of such properties, but some of the fellows had objected, and the idea had come to nothing, but the few pieces of paper remaining had been carefully filed in the Bursary, and forgotten.

  Joseph Steadman, however, was an avid reader of old records, and he had known about the documents filed away out of sight and memory in the 1830s. This particular sheet gave him the address of a property that Herr Doctor Georg Joachim Bosch had bought for his sister, Fräulein Helga Bosch: Church Lane Cottage, Hampton Stonor, Warwickshire.

  He remembered someone telling him, in 1880 or thereabouts, that Herr Doctor Bosch’s sister had died. The College chaplain, the Reverend and Honourable Theodore Waynefleet, had attended the funeral, and had told him that he had met the sister’s companion, a civil sort of person called Mrs Langrish. Did she, perhaps, still live there, in Hampton Stonor? It was a very obscure kind of place, a couple of miles east of Long Marston. It would do no harm at all to go out there and ask a few questions.

  The following day, Joseph Steadman hired a cab to take him out to the little Oxfordshire village of Hampton Stonor, which nestled unobtrusively under the shadow of a long wooded ridge. A row of cottages lined one side of an unmade street facing ploughed fields. There was an old church rising from its own graveyard, and nearby, in a neat garden, stood Church Lane Cottage. Fortune had evidently smiled on him, for Mrs Langrish was not only still alive, but welcoming. He was ushered into a dim little sitting-room, tastefully furnished, and bade to make himself comfortable on the settee while his hostess prepared some refreshment.

  Some minutes later, Steadman, sipping his tea, looked at the frail old lady sitting opposite him. She was dressed in the style of the 1870s, with a black bombazine dress adorned with a jet necklace. She wore a lace cap over her grey hair, secured beneath her chin by tapes tied in a neat bow. She regarded her visitor through gold-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘It’s over twenty years ago,’ said Mrs Langrish, ‘since old Dr Bosch died. This cottage belonged to his sister, Fräulein Helga Bosch, who came with him from Germany to be his housekeeper, though in fact the old doctor preferred to live in rooms in his college. She was a lovely, gentle person, and a fine piano player. I still have some of her music, and her bound copy of Schumann’s piano pieces.

  ‘After Dr Bosch died – it was in 1873, I think – I came to live with Helga. I had been lately widowed, and she and I had been friends for many years. We had a marvellous time together, Dr Steadman! We lived quietly enough, but we made forays to London, and to the Continent occasionally. We went to stay with her relatives, once, in Nuremberg.’

  ‘And Fräulein Bosch… .’

  ‘Helga died in 1880,’ said Mrs Langrish, anticipating Steadman’s question. ‘It was a bad winter here, and she caught a chill which turned to pneumonia. She lies at rest with her brother in the churchyard here. Would you like some more tea? That walnut cake is really very nice, you know.’

  Steadman settled down on the sofa and abandoned himself to tea and cake, listening to his hostess’s reminiscences, and asking the occasional question. Mrs Langrish told him that poor dear Helga had left her the cottage in her Will, which had been a very kind an
d thoughtful thing to do.

  No, she had felt no desire to move away from Hampton Stonor. It was a quiet rural backwater, suited to her temperament. For many years now she had done parish visiting, and flower arranging in the church. Her garden gave her much pleasure, though she could not do a lot now without assistance.

  Papers? Well, a lot of Dr Bosch’s books and papers had been stored in the attic after his death. Yes, they were still there, or so she supposed. She’d no interest in abstruse subjects, preferring to read edifying novels, those of Mr Trollope in particular. He was a more straightforward writer than Thackeray, didn’t he think?

  ‘I don’t suppose, Mrs Langrish,’ said Steadman, ‘that you’d let me look through those old papers? Although it’s a quarter of a century since the good doctor died, we are still interested in his work at St Michael’s College.’

  ‘You’re most welcome to look at them,’ said his hostess, with a little silvery laugh. ‘You’ll have to make your way through the cobwebs and the spiders to find them. They’re in an old suitcase up there somewhere. Or maybe it was a paper parcel. One of these days I’ll bundle them all up and send them back to Oxford. What do you call the man in charge there?’

  ‘The Vice-Chancellor. But… .’

  ‘Ah! Here’s little Florence walking up the path. She’s come to help me with the housework. Go up the stairs, and you’ll see a little door to the right of the landing. Behind it are the steps going up to the attic.’

  Mrs Langrish rose to open the door to a young girl, presumably Florence. Steadman mounted the stairs, and some moments later found himself in the attic of Church Lane Cottage.

  The place was not as cobwebby as Mrs Langrish had suggested, but it was very dusty, and the little window under the eaves, which looked out over the rear garden, was dim with grime. The suitcase lay on the floor behind a couple of trunks, and an old sideboard minus its drawers. It was clear the suitcase had not been opened or examined since it was placed there, a quarter of a century earlier.

  When Steadman picked it up, the case flew open, and its contents cascaded to the floor with a crash and a cloud of choking dust. He hastily picked up the various items, and placed them on the sideboard.

  It was at that moment that he felt the presence of someone in the attic with him. He turned round with a start, but there was no one there. No one, at least, that he could see. At the same time, he knew that something or someone wanted him to examine the old books and papers: instead of being an intruder – a desecrator, even – he was certain that he had been made welcome, and with that realization the sense of someone else present in the attic abruptly left him. He peered through the little grimy window, and saw that he was looking beyond the cottage garden and into the ancient churchyard.

  There were two books, both backed in faded brown paper. One was a German-English Dictionary, very dirty and scuffed; at one time it had been nibbled by mice. The other was a copy of Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, with many underlinings, and translations into German scrawled in the margins. There was a packet of letters, still loosely fastened by faded pink tape. They proved to be correspondence from his relatives in Germany, some dating back to the 1830s. There were also several books of logarithmic tables.

  There was a single page of an ancient manuscript, written in Arabic, and pasted to a square of cardboard. And a diary, a simple cloth-bound affair of the type that one could buy at any stationer’s.

  Joseph Steadman stood with the diary, which Bosch had written in English, open in his hands. This dim, dusty attic was not the place to give full attention to the old German scholar’s words. But a cursory glance showed him that in stumbling upon this diary, he had acquired the means of delivering his enemy into his hands.

  When he descended the stairs, Steadman found that mistress and maid were undergoing a small domestic crisis in the kitchen. The stone sink was near overflowing, its murky waters brown with tealeaves. The tea-things stood inverted on the drain-board.

  ‘Mrs Langrish,’ said Steadman, ‘I should very much like to make a copy of some of the entries in this diary, if you’re agreeable. Thank you. Now, please fetch me a knitting needle, or a length of curtain wire.’

  While the astonished womenfolk stood by in amazement, Old Joe the college plumber removed the blockage from their sink, and flushed away the unwanted detritus with a bucket of fresh water from the yard pump. Then he sat down at the tea table, and copied one particular and damning entry that Dr Bosch had made in his diary on Thursday, 17 November 1870.

  7

  An Evening Reception

  The Bursar steeled himself to wait until after dinner in hall to examine more closely the entry that he had copied from old Dr Bosch’s diary. The great carved-chair was now occupied by the new Warden, Dr William Podmore, who seemed rather subdued that evening. He was evidently quite sober, and may have begun to regret some of the confidences that he had shared with Steadman.

  Nevertheless, a certain feeling that normality had returned to St Michael’s was in the air that night. How long would it last? Steadman would readily admit that he had never liked Podmore; but what he had learned that day at Hampton Stonor told him that the man was unfit to hold any office in the University of Oxford.

  It was dusk when Steadman climbed the little winding stair to the Bursary. The lamps were still lit, and he made his way directly to the archive, lit the gas-jet by the door, and opened the safe. From it he took his copy of the diary entry, and laid it on a desk. It was time to read it more carefully, and at leisure.

  Thursday, 17 November 1870. My faculties are failing. So, I fear, is my strength. Today, I summoned my young friend William Podmore to my rooms, and handed him the manuscript of my book, The Boethian Apices. I urged him to revise and present the text for publication, and then to offer it to the Oxford University Press. I have toiled over it for the last five years, and I fear that, when published, it will serve as my epitaph. Podmore promised most solemnly to see the work through the press. I have consequently left him the sum of £100 in my will as a thanks offering. Am I a vain man? I can see in my mind’s eye, the title page of the book when it finally appears:

  The Boethian Apices: The Application of the Hindu-Arabic Numeration System to Computation in 10th Century Spain

  By Georg Joachim Bosch,

  Sometime Fellow of St Michael’s College, Oxford

  What was it that the preacher said? All is vanity!

  Plagiarism! The unforgivable sin of academe. What should he do? To have this knowledge, and not speak out, made him an accessory after Podmore’s cursed fact of cheating and chicanery. It was not his book. He held his doctorate under false pretences. What… .

  There came a knock on the door, and in a moment Gerald Templar had joined him in the archive. As usual, he looked rather unkempt, his evening clothes crumpled, as though he habitually kept them in a trunk instead of a wardrobe. His eyes shifted uneasily behind the little round gold pince-nez that he was wearing.

  ‘Look here, Bursar,’ he said, ‘you’re sending out the battels bills for the Senior College this week, aren’t you? Would you think it awful cheek if I asked you to tell me now what I owe? I want to be prepared, you see, as money is tight this month.’

  Steadman rose from his chair and went back into the far room, which was his office. He spent some time looking through one of the filing cabinets until he found young Templar’s bill. It was hardly a fortune, he thought, but then, these things were relative. He took the bill with him to the archive, and handed it to the nervous young man.

  ‘Hmm… . Twelve pounds, fourteen and eleven. Not as much as I’d feared. Thank you, Bursar. It was very civil of you to let me see it.’

  ‘Look here, Templar,’ said Joe Steadman, ‘are you in financial difficulties? If so, you can confide in me, you know. I can give you all kinds of advice about managing money, if you’re not too proud to accept it!’

  ‘That’s very good of you, Bursar, and I’ll bear it in mind.’

  Templar se
emed enormously relieved, and his anxiety had given place to a kind of secret exultation. His eyes blazed with excitement. Well, thought Steadman, it was a change from his habitual moroseness. He seemed to linger at the door, as though making up his mind to say something.

  ‘I remember mentioning in hall one night,’ he said, ‘that my father was a doctor. That was true, but he died two years ago, leaving my sister and me in very straitened circumstances. Mother died when I was sixteen, and Grace – my sister – only twelve. I shared the stipend that went with my scholarship with my sister, until such times as she could find employment, which she did when she turned sixteen. It was at a typing bureau, and she’s still employed there. Of course, I’m finding my feet, now, but it will be a long haul yet until various outstanding debts are paid. That’s what brought me here tonight. I’ll bear in mind what you said about financial advice. Good night, Bursar, and thank you.’

  Steadman watched the young man as he left the Bursary, head held high, and listened as he clattered confidently down the little staircase to the first quad. He returned his copy of the diary entry to the safe, and extinguished the gas-jet at the door.

  On Thursday, 28 June, two days following Steadman’s visit to Mrs Langrish, Dr William Podmore, MA, DCL, gave an evening reception in the Senior Common Room to celebrate his elevation to the Wardenship of St Michael’s College. There were twenty-five Fellows on the Foundation, and all of them had flocked to dinner in hall, and then had trooped across the Fellows’ lawn and into the Senior Common Room. They knew that Billy Podmore’s eyes would scan them all, looking for defaulters.

  College servants, retained for the evening at the Warden’s expense, circulated among the assembled dons, offering glasses of champagne arrayed on silver trays. On a buffet at one side of the room, canapés and sweetmeats had been set out enticingly, and near them, open boxes of cigars, for the pleasure of those who desired a postprandial smoke.