Having a policeman in the house had evidently given the young girl courage to speak freely. She sat with Sergeant Maxwell in the little cramped kitchen, where a stew was simmering in a pan placed on the old-fashioned oil-stove.
‘“Have you not told Mr Fowler that you’re going?” I asked her, and she said no, because if she’d told him, he’d have forbidden her to go. And so I helped her to pack, and she left in the post-chaise from the village. So Master’s all alone here.’
‘Why do you think she ran away?’
‘She was afraid that … she never told me in so many words, Mr Maxwell, but I think she was afraid he’d poison her, too!’
The young girl’s lip curled in ill-disguised contempt.
‘What a terrible thing to imagine! He dotes on her, Mr Maxwell, and she should know that. She’s not much use in a house, and depends on him for everything. He’s in trouble, right enough, but she should have stuck by him, instead of running home to Mother.’
‘Do you think she’s left him for good? This is all between you and me, Lucy.’
‘If things go bad for the Master, she’ll stay away. But if it turns out well with him, then she’ll be back, and he’ll welcome her with open arms. She knows what side her bread’s buttered on.’
‘So you’re looking after him all by yourself?’
‘Yes. Somebody’s got to see to him: he can’t manage by himself. Father – he’s a college servant in Oxford – wants me to come home to him, but I’m not leaving Mr Fowler to fend for himself. A gentleman doesn’t know what to do.’
‘How old are you, Lucy?’
‘I’m fifteen. Sixteen this coming December.’
‘And you’re not afraid that Mr Fowler might poison you, as well?’
Lucy Hammond laughed.
‘Poison me? Of course he won’t poison me. And he won’t poison Kate, either. Beg pardon, Mrs Fowler, I should say. He’s too soft-hearted for that. As for what happened to his father, well, I don’t know. Master’s a shadow of the man he was only a few weeks ago. He’s haunted by fears and fancies, and, of course, he won’t confide in me. A gentleman doesn’t unburden himself to a servant-girl.’
Sergeant Maxwell got to his feet.
‘Well, Lucy,’ he said, ‘Mr Fowler’s very lucky to have you on his side. You’re a good girl, and one day you’ll have a husband and house of your own. And when you do, share your troubles with your husband, and he’ll share his with you. No locked drawers, hey? Goodbye, Lucy, I must go and see how my guvnor’s getting on.’
Sergeant Maxwell entered the parlour just as the Reverend Timothy Fowler, pale and trembling, was rising to his feet. He did not seem to see Maxwell: his eyes were riveted on Inspector Antrobus.
‘Are you going to arrest me?’ he whispered.
‘I am advising you to be prepared for that contingency,’ said Antrobus. ‘You must not leave this village without first informing me by telegram of your destination. My case is not yet complete, but when it is, I shall be calling on you.’
He bowed stiffly to the stricken man, and followed his sergeant out of the room.
The next morning, Timothy Fowler came downstairs to find his breakfast of egg, bacon and sausage waiting for him on the table. At the same moment, Lucy Hammond came in from the kitchen, carrying the teapot. She contrived to give him a cheerful ‘good morning.’
Why had they laughed at her, dubbing her ‘the Slow Girl’? As things stood, he would be utterly helpless without her. Kate… . Had she not realized that her flight – for such it was – would add further scandal to their situation? That man yesterday – relentless, remorseless, seeking his father’s murderer, and raking up the horror of seven years ago, when he had stood by and let Adrian Fortescue drown. He was to stay here, in his parish, a virtual prisoner, until, one day, Antrobus returned with a warrant of arrest.
‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘you have been so kind to me in my time of need. God will richly reward you for your good heart.’
The girl blushed with pleasure. It was the first time the Master had praised her. Well, she would stick by him. Maybe things would soon turn out for the better.
Half an hour after Lucy left to go home, the postman arrived, bringing him two letters. One of them bore the crest of Lord Stevenage. Its contents brought a new chill to the wretched clergyman’s heart.
My dear Fowler,
Of recent days I have been gravely disturbed by the rumours circulating about your father’s death. As you know, I have the highest regard for you, both as a man and a clergyman, but I cannot ignore the sinister imputations that are being made against you from different quarters. Of that, I shall say no more.
However, you will understand that I cannot now let you have the advowson of the parish until this whole matter is cleared up. Meanwhile, the present incumbent is clearly unfit to carry out his duties, and a replacement must be found soon. I have written to the Bishop telling him of my decision, and I have no doubt that he will soon communicate with you.
Please convey my compliments to your charming wife.
Stevenage
The second letter was little more than a note, but it was equally sinister in its implications. It was from the Right Reverend Anthony Thorold, Bishop of Winchester.
My dear Fowler,
In view of your present situation, I should appreciate your coming to see me here at Wolvesley Castle as soon as possible. I can make time to see you on any day of your choice.
Yours sincerely,
† Anthony Winton.
Timothy Fowler went into his study and opened his desk, in order to write three letters. It would be judicious not to reply to Lord Stevenage’s letter, but he was obliged to reply to the Bishop immediately. He would also have to let Antrobus know that he was travelling to Winchester. Finally, he would write to Fanny. When the Bishop had done with him, he would seek refuge with his sister at her school in North Oxford.
11
Sophia Jex-Blake
The memorial service for Sir Montague Fowler was held in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin on the morning of Monday, 16 July. The little procession of dons from St Michael’s College, resplendent in their gowns and hoods, walked out of Sparrow Lane, passed down Brasenose College Lane, and came into Radcliffe Square. A group of visitors, who had come to admire the Radcliffe Camera, stopped to look at them as they entered the great church.
The Warden, Dr William Podmore, found that he and Joe Steadman had been assigned seats next to each other to the left of the pulpit. For the last three weeks, he had contrived to show various favours to the Bursar, supporting him at meetings of the Senior College, and suggesting that he should move into a grander suite of rooms in the first quadrangle. Steadman had received that particular sop to Cerberus with due deference, but with a faint smile of amusement that had chilled Podmore to the bone.
The church was packed with representatives of the university and the town, together with delegations from the many charities and institutions that the late Warden had supported. The Chancellor of the University, the Marquess of Salisbury, sat with some senior clergy in the distant sanctuary. Up in the west gallery, a number of men stood with notebooks at the ready; the press were still interested in anything to do with the murdered man, his family, friends and colleagues.
Ah! Here was the outgoing Vice-Chancellor, the Reverend Henry Boyd, mounting the pulpit. He was an able speaker, but everyone knew that he’d feel obliged to talk about Fowler for longer than was decent. Well, best settle down and wait patiently for the encomium to end.
Podmore thought: had it been Steadman who had sent him that vile, anonymous letter? Could he have possibly known about his wretched, contemptible plagiarism of old Bosch’s work? But Steadman had shown no signs of exulting in his torment. He seemed his usual cheerful self, content to regale them in the common room with tales of undergraduate folly based on incidents in his second persona of ‘Old Joe’, the college plumber.
Vice-Chancellor Boyd was getting into full s
tride.
‘Many of us here today will remember Montague Fowler’s work in establishing the research library that bears his name, a library which he most generously endowed, and which will help future generations of scholars, through the field scholarships attached to it, to throw fresh light on the origins of North African civilization… .’
And a colossal waste of money that had been, thought Podmore. No wonder his children had become alarmed.
There were only two possible successors to Henry Boyd as Vice-Chancellor: himself, and John Magrath at Queen’s. Well, it would remain to be seen who was the better man. But this – this cursed burden of the plagiarism: if the truth of it ever came out, he would be ruined. There would be no possibility of his being eligible for the coveted post, and there was more than a possibility that he would be dismissed as Warden of St Michael’s.
Possibility? No: certainty. What was he to do? Was it really Steadman who had placed that terrible letter in his rooms?
There is someone who knows that you plagiarized and pillaged the work of Georg Joachim Bosch. That person has seen documentary proof of your cheating. The Boethian Apices is not your work. Perhaps one day your infamy will become known.
It had been produced on a typewriter, which gave it a terrible anonymity.
Podmore glanced at the man sitting beside him. Steadman seemed to be listening to Boyd with rapt attention. But then, he had been devoted to Fowler – ‘Monty’, he’d called him.
He had destroyed that hateful letter, but its words had been seared into his memory.
Dr Joseph Steadman contemplated slipping his watch out of his waistcoat pocket to see what time it was, but thought better of it. He had long ago mastered the art of seeming to be enraptured by something that was boring him silly. Would old Boyd never stop?
He glanced at the nearby Cranmer’s pillar, where he could see the ledge that had been cut into the stonework to provide a support for the wooden stage that had been erected in 1556. There, Archbishop Cranmer had sat on the morning of Saturday, 21 March, to hear a sermon preached by Dr Henry Cole, Provost of Eton. It would not have been as interminable as Boyd’s encomium, because all present on that occasion were anxious to see Cranmer burnt at the stake outside Balliol later that day.
Podmore was clearly not listening to Dr Boyd: his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Steadman had no desire whatsoever to expose the Warden publicly for the plagiarist that he was – there was a limit to one’s dislike of the man. But it was inwardly satisfying to know that the fellow was a cheat and a fraud. Perhaps there was a suffering, guilty soul lurking behind that smug carapace of superiority? He doubted it. Men of Podmore’s stamp, whatever their outward appearance, were as hard as nails.
‘And now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost… .’
At last! The Vice-Chancellor had stopped. He left the pulpit, and they all rose to receive a blessing from Bishop Mackarness. The organ sounded, the Chancellor left in his own little procession, followed by the Mayor and Council. The congregation poured out thankfully into sunlit Radcliffe Square.
‘If you are lucky enough to succeed Henry Boyd as Vice-Chancellor,’ said Steadman, ‘will you promise not to give such unconscionably long addresses?’
Podmore laughed.
‘Well, I’m not in Holy Orders, Steadman,’ he said, ‘so I will have no clerical records to break in that respect! But come, let’s get back to the reception in hall. You used the word “lucky” just now. I don’t think luck will come in to it. I’m more than confident that the powers-that-be will see the wisdom of making me their choice. John Magrath will come a worthy second.’
Fanny Fowler left the church, and hurried to a private-hire hackney carriage drawn up in nearby Catte Street. It was still the period of full mourning, so that she was afforded a welcome anonymity by her long mourning veil. What an ordeal it had been! John had attended as a matter of form, but had contrived to leave the church early through a side door, in order to catch a train back to London, where business beckoned.
Timothy – poor Tim! He was in her house, now, skulking like a fugitive. She would tell him about the service, and how appallingly dry and formal it had been.
The carriage turned into Broad Street. It would be a long haul from there, down past the Ashmolean Museum, and then along the seemingly endless Walton Street and out to Port Meadow. She sat back on the cushions and thought about her brother.
He had written to her, telling her of Inspector Antrobus’s visit, his terrible accusation, and his insistence that Tim should inform him by post or telegraph of his whereabouts at all times. Kate had left him to stay with her parents. Well, she could stay there, for all Fanny cared. Little fool!
At first, Timothy would tell her nothing. He had been summoned by the Bishop of Winchester to an interview. He had received the Bishop’s letter last Thursday, and in a kind of fit of desperate rage and humiliation, he had dashed off a telegram to Inspector Antrobus and hurried down to Winchester by an early train on Friday. The Bishop had seen him immediately, but Tim would not tell her what he had said to him.
Lord Stevenage had withdrawn his offer of the advowson, but really, there was nothing else that he could have done.
Fanny sighed. Poor, foolish, ambitious Tim! She had always gone in awe of him, but now she felt only compassion and a desire to protect him, both from himself, and from a hostile world. Publicly, she would deny that her brother had had any part in his father’s death, and yet she could fully understand Mr Antrobus’s determination to think otherwise. Her brother’s conduct in retaining the packet of poison had been more than suspicious: it could only be explained by assuming that he was guilty.
That very morning she had confronted him about the matter.
‘You say that you saw that packet lying under Father’s bed, and that you picked it up. Why did you put it in your pocket? Why did you take it back secretly with you to Hampshire, telling no one about it? Can you blame people for thinking that you are a guilty man? Do you care? Do you care what I think about you?’
Her vehemence had evoked a response of sorts.
‘When I saw it, Fanny, I was horrified. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that either you or John had dropped it there. I thought that one or other of you could not wait for Father to die in the natural course of things. And so I hid it away. How it came to the light of day I don’t know. Do you believe me?’
‘It’s not a very pleasant thing to hear you say that you thought your own brother and sister were capable of murder,’ she’d replied. ‘But yes, I do believe you. And you, Tim, should have had more faith in your own family. You should have taken that poison straight away to the police. As I once told Mr Antrobus, Father lived in St Michael’s College. It was there, among that pack of dons, that he should be looking for his killer.’
It was then that he had told her about his interview with the Bishop of Winchester.
The Bishop had told him that the Church could not countenance any scandal in the matter of Sir Montague Fowler’s death, particularly any suggestion that he had been made away with (they were the Bishop’s own words) by his own son, a clerk in Holy Orders.
Timothy was to go to St Faith’s, Spanner Lane, a poor dockside parish in Portsmouth, and labour there among the poor and destitute for a period of three years. As he was now a man of considerable substance, he would not receive a stipend. An Anglican bishop had no power to force a cleric into a particular parish, but if Tim refused to do as he was bid, the Bishop would suspend his licence to preach.
Frances could not forbear a smile when her brother expressed his horror at having to serve in a Ritualist parish, ‘little better than Rome’, with orders from the Bishop that he was not to interfere with the worship and customs of the place.
After this outburst, Tim had rallied a little, and had contrived to eat a light breakfast before she set out for the memorial service. For all that, he still lay under suspicion, and it was clear that Mr Antrobus had singled him out as the
man who had murdered his own father for gain. He had faced the disappointment of losing Lord Stevenage’s patronage manfully enough. He would now have to respond to the Bishop’s challenge, and lie low at Portsmouth for a few years. That is, of course, if he was not arrested for Father’s murder, found guilty, and hanged.
When she arrived back at Makin House, she learned that Tim had gone for a walk across the meadow. Throwing off her mourning cloak, she retired to her study, where Trixie brought her a welcome cup of tea. What a cheerful, willing girl she was! She remembered asking her whether Trixie was her real name. ‘It’s really Patricia, mum,’ she’d said, ‘but that’s not a servant’s name.’ She’d mentioned this interesting piece of below-stairs etiquette to the Lady Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, who told her that girls christened ‘Helen’ who wished to go into service had to call themselves Ellen. Ellen was acceptable as a name for a servant. Helen was not.
The Lady Principal … Elizabeth Wordsworth had not only been the founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall in 1879, she had gone on to found and endow St Hugh’s College. Daughter of one bishop and sister of another, she was a formidable woman, and one of Fanny’s heroines. Would she, perhaps, agree to be her confidante? They had met on more than one occasion, and the older woman had shown her approbation of Fanny’s determination to succeed in her plan to educate senior girls for entrance to the three Oxford women’s colleges.
Fanny sat down at her desk, and began to compose a note to the Lady Principal of Lady Margaret Hall.
The following Wednesday was a hot, sultry day, though the sky seemed innocent of any threatening clouds. Miss Wordsworth had sent a reply by hand to Fanny’s note, stating that she would be free that morning, and would look forward to seeing her any time after nine o’clock.
There was a quality of domesticity and warmth about Lady Margaret Hall that Fanny had never found in any of the other colleges of the university. It had started life fifteen years earlier in a yellow-brick, mock-Gothic villa in Norham Gardens, where Miss Wordsworth had opened her college with nine students. The house, known as Old Hall, had received a fine redbrick extension designed by Sir Basil Champneys in the eighties. In a way perhaps unique to Oxford, the new building soon came to be known as New Old Hall.
An Oxford Tragedy Page 13