The Age of Treachery

by Gavin Scott

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see him with Alan Norton, for example?”

  “Alan Norton?”

  “Remember the row he had with Norton at High Table?”

  “I’d completely forgotten it.”

  “About Norton being a fellow traveller.”

  “Good God, it’d completely gone out of my head. But surely that wouldn’t have been enough for Norton to murder him?”

  “Who knows?” said Forrester.

  “Did you suggest that to the police?”

  “No. I didn’t want to appear to be trying to protect you. There’s plenty of other people who can tell them about Lyall’s row with Norton.”

  “But could Norton really have done it?”

  “I don’t know. He was certainly angry. Did you see him at all, after High Table?”

  “No. As I said, I came straight home.”

  “Alright,” said Forrester. “Let’s try another tack. Have you any idea how Lyall came to be in your rooms?”

  “None.”

  “You hadn’t asked to meet him to discuss Margaret?”

  “I had not,” said Clark. Then a surprised expression came over his face and he leaned towards Forrester. “Listen, I made a mistake just now about Norton; the fact is I did see him after High Table. He was walking away down the South Cloister.”

  “Which leads to your stairs.”

  “Among other places.”

  “Like Lyall’s rooms.”

  “Yes. But Norton couldn’t have—”

  “Perhaps not, but if you didn’t kill Lyall, Gordon, someone else must have.”

  “But surely not Norton.”

  “Alright. Here’s another thing you should know: Haraldson was in Lyall’s room that night.”

  “What? The Norwegian?”

  “I found him there myself, knocked out cold.”

  “Good God. So could he have—”

  “I don’t think so,” said Forrester. “This was after the murder and I know he was in the Lodge reading an Icelandic saga to the rest of us when Lyall was killed.”

  “Hmm. He looked like the sort of chap who’d demolish anybody who got in his way. But what was he doing in Lyall’s rooms?”

  “God knows.”

  “Do you think whoever bashed him also killed Lyall?”

  “Possibly,” said Forrester. “Of course the police might say it was you.”

  “How could it have been? For one thing Haraldson’s about a foot taller than I am.”

  “You could have been standing on something.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Nevertheless that’s what the police will probably claim. They seem fairly determined you did it.”

  “I’m in a mess, aren’t I?” said Clark.

  “Have you called your solicitor?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I think you should do that.”

  “He was my father’s man. He must be about seventy-five.”

  “Ask him to recommend someone younger.”

  “I shouldn’t need a lawyer! I’m innocent.”

  Forrester was about to answer this objection when the doorbell rang. Forrester went to answer it – and found Inspector Barber and a sergeant on the doorstep. Barber gave Forrester a hard look before pushing past him into the house. By the time Forrester had followed him in the detective was already speaking to Gordon.

  “Gordon Alistair Clark, I have here a warrant for your arrest for the murder of David Patrick Lyall of Barnard College, Oxford, on the night of January 13th. You are free to remain silent but anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

  Clark fought to retain his composure.

  “I did not do it,” he said at last. “My wife has told you I was at home with her.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Barber, “it seems that alibi is false. We have two witnesses who testify that at the time of the murder your wife was seen in another place entirely. If you want to pack one or two things, sir, we have a police car waiting outside.”

  Clark looked at Forrester – but there was nothing either of them could think of to say.

  7

  A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN

  Margaret Clark came home just after the police had gone and when Forrester told her what Barber had said she became wildly hysterical, repeating over and over again that she had been at home with Clark when she said she was. Inwardly furious, knowing she needed someone with her and determined not to be that person, Forrester had taken her address book and practically forced her to give him the name of a woman colleague who could come round; he also called her doctor and asked for him to bring a sedative.

  While he was waiting for the doctor he called Clark’s solicitor and arranged to see him, and when Margaret’s friend from the Bodleian arrived he left at once, cycling furiously through the snowy streets, oblivious now to their calm and beauty.

  Clark’s solicitor’s offices were in a picturesquely twisted, half-timbered building and Clark’s solicitor seemed to have been designed to match. He was an elderly man who spent most of the time while Forrester was speaking to him nervously twisting a pipe cleaner into the shape of a cat, and at the end of the recital had nothing to say except, “Oh dear, oh dear.” With tact and persistence Forrester requested that a younger member of the practice take over the case, and then sat down with him. But it was still awkward: the proffered candidate, Peter Nestleton, was certainly younger, but also stolid and unimaginative.

  On the other hand he seemed competent and concerned. As Forrester listened to him he remembered that competence was all that was required of Clark’s solicitor; the key to saving his friend would be the defence counsel he engaged, and that could wait for later. But as he watched Nestleton set off for the police station Forrester did not feel any lifting of his spirits. He knew the appropriate people would soon be doing all the appropriate things to comply with the demands of the system. He also felt it very probable that however thorough and conscientious they were, in the end Gordon Clark would hang for a crime he did not commit.

  * * *

  Ken Harrison was waiting for him when he got back to his rooms and for a moment Forrester stood looking at him, trying to remember what the hell he was supposed to be tutoring him about. Then, apologising for his distraction, he asked him to read his essay out loud. Instead, Harrison brought out a hip flask.

  “I hope this isn’t too much of a cheek, but it’s a single malt – and you look as if you need it.” Harrison handed him the flask and as he tipped it back Forrester felt the peaty liquid spread its warmth in the pit of his stomach.

  “Yes,” he said. “Good idea, Harrison. Thank you.”

  “I was very sorry to hear about Dr. Clark,” said Harrison, settling himself into the chair on the other side of the fireplace.

  “You know he’s been arrested?”

  “The college is buzzing with it.”

  Forrester drank more whisky. “I believe he’s innocent,” he said.

  Harrison nodded. “He’s always seemed a pretty good stick to me. But things look rather black for him just now, don’t they?” Forrester handed him back the flask and Harrison returned it to his pocket. “Who do you think did it then, Dr. Forrester?”

  Forrester looked at him sharply. Harrison had drawn his attention to a simple truth: the only certain way of keeping Gordon Clark from the gallows was to find who had killed David Lyall.

  “I have no idea,” he replied. “But I intend to find out.” The words came out without thinking, but as he spoke he knew that was exactly what he had to do.

  “Good for you,” said Harrison. “And – I hope it doesn’t sound presumptuous – I’d like to do anything I can to help.”

  “You?” said Forrester.

  “Well, I’m sure you know lots of people who’d be more use—”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant. But I can’t ask you to do that. I’m supposed to be tutoring you in ancient history. And you’re supposed to be studying for a
degree.”

  “I can do both. Anyway, this afternoon you’re obviously preoccupied with this. Why don’t we just talk about it and leave the Greeks for next week?”

  Forrester considered this.

  “This isn’t just an excuse to get out of reading your essay, is it?”

  “No,” replied Harrison, equably. “I’ve written it.” He took out the pages. “I’ll leave it behind; you can read it when I’ve gone. Or I can read it to you now – I really don’t mind.”

  “No,” said Forrester. “I’ll take you up on your offer. Actually, it’ll be quite a relief to talk.”

  And as he said the words Forrester knew that it would be, because Harrison was exactly the sort of stolid, unflappable comrade you would want to have in the proverbial foxhole. Forrester had been in plenty of proverbial foxholes during the past five years, and the truth was he had rarely had someone with him who had Harrison’s oddly comforting qualities. No matter that the man was technically his student – he knew he needed him. “Tell me what you want to know,” he said.

  “What would be most useful for me,” said Harrison, “would be if you just told me what happened that night as if I knew nothing. I’ve only heard bits and pieces anyway; but pretend I know nothing.” So Forrester did, only leaving out, because of his promise to Margaret Clark, the Senior Tutor’s revelation about his wife’s affair with David Lyall.

  During the narrative Harrison puffed gently on his pipe and when it was over he found that it had gone out and required the usual ritual cleaning, refilling and relighting. During this he said, “What about the wife?”

  “You mean, did she kill David Lyall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I saw them together, once. Well, more than once, actually.”

  “Together?”

  “On the riverbank. There was something about the way they stood – well, I suspected they were… close.”

  Forrester thought about this. If even Harrison had been aware of something going on between Margaret and Lyall, it wasn’t going to be long before the police found out.

  “So why should she kill him?” he temporised.

  “Lovers’ quarrel? Crime of passion? I don’t know but that’s the sort of thing that has to be considered, isn’t it?”

  Forrester thought about this – and realised it gave him an opportunity to get something out into the open without breaking a confidence.

  “Surely if they were having an affair,” he said, “the person who’s most likely to have done the killing would be Clark himself?”

  “But you don’t think he did, so I’m discounting that,” replied Harrison. That didn’t get them much further, but Forrester felt obscurely gratified by Harrison’s confidence.

  “And there’s another thing,” said Harrison. “You’ve told me the police have witnesses proving she wasn’t at home when she said she was. Could she have been up at the college?”

  Forrester felt a cold shiver as Harrison spoke; it was an image he didn’t want to contemplate. Had Margaret been there, waiting for Lyall with a knife, in Clark’s own rooms?

  “Well, I don’t know where the witnesses who said she wasn’t at home actually said she was,” he replied carefully. “But if she killed Lyall in Gordon’s college rooms she was deliberately setting him up as the guilty party. Are you saying she’d let her husband hang for a murder she’d committed?”

  “I don’t know how she felt about her husband,” replied Harrison reasonably. “If she was having an affair with Lyall I’m guessing that there were at least some problems with the marriage.”

  Forrester thought about this. “She tried to give him an alibi,” he said.

  “It was an alibi for her too.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Forrester, because he hadn’t. He got up and began to walk about the room. “Alright, let’s note that possibility. I’m not discounting it, we shouldn’t discount it, but I somehow don’t believe it. Knowing both of them, I can’t really give it credence. Let’s talk about some other options.”

  “Well, what about Dr. Norton? According to you, Lyall was fairly beastly to him at High Table and Norton wasn’t at the saga reading. He had motive and opportunity. Why haven’t the police arrested him?”

  “I don’t know. I’m assuming he has an alibi.”

  “We should check that out.”

  “How do you mean, ‘check it out’?”

  “Get him into conversation, find out what he told the police about where he was. Would that be practical for you? Just in casual conversation? I could try but it might seem a bit awkward coming from an undergraduate as opposed to one of his colleagues.”

  “No, it’s a good idea. And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t ask him.”

  “There were an awful lot of people in the Lodge that night,” said Harrison regretfully. “But if I understand you rightly it wasn’t physically possible for any of them to have done it, right?”

  “Not really,” said Forrester. “And as I was in the same room with them I’m afraid I’m part of their alibi.”

  “What about this chap Haraldson? The one you found knocked out in Lyall’s rooms? Do you think he told the police the truth? About going up there because he saw somebody poking about? I mean, there’s no proof of that, is there? Barber only has his word for it.”

  “True,” said Forrester. “And in fact I’m somewhat doubtful about his story.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he was lying on top of the torch.”

  “The torch that was supposed to have hit him?”

  “Exactly. It doesn’t prove he wasn’t hit with the torch, but it seems odd.”

  “But Haraldson was definitely in the Master’s Lodge with you when Lyall was killed?”

  “He was up in the minstrels’ gallery, reading an Icelandic saga.”

  “And there were a couple of Icelanders there too?”

  “Yes. Engineering students. Hakon and Oskar something.”

  “And some German chap?”

  “Peter Dorfmann. Apparently one of the ‘Good Germans’. But he wasn’t one of the readers – he was down in the main room with me and the others.”

  “Any relationship between him and Lyall?”

  “None that I know of. Dorfmann knows Charles Calthrop, though – the Foreign Office chap who was also at High Table. I saw them together in Whitehall yesterday.”

  “What about Calthrop? Did he have anything to do with Lyall?”

  “He talked to him; perfectly civilised conversation about the state of Europe, that kind of thing. I’ve no reason to think they’d ever met before last night.”

  Harrison was silent for a while.

  “I take it there’s no doubt Lyall definitely fell from Clark’s window?”

  “Not really – there were no footprints in the snow leading to the spot where he was lying, so he couldn’t have walked there. The only way he could have got there was through that window. And there was broken glass all around him.”

  “Alright,” said Harrison. “Shall we draw up a plan of attack, then?”

  Forrester smiled wryly. “It has the right military ring to it,” he said. Harrison grinned.

  “I suppose we both thought we were done with that sort of rot on VE Day.”

  “I certainly did,” said Forrester, “but you’re right. If I’m going to do anything for Gordon I’d better get organised. But I am very reluctant to draw you away from your studies. This isn’t your affair.”

  “Unless I choose to make it my affair,” said Harrison. “And in effect, I have.”

  Forrester looked at him: solid, optimistic, the pipe clamped determinedly between his teeth – and felt he was extremely glad to have Harrison on his side. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate that very much.”

  He picked up a notepad and began to write as Harrison, for the umpteenth time, tried to get his pipe alight again.

  8

  THE MASTER’S PORT


  Forrester took the Master aside before High Table that evening and asked if he could speak to him afterwards. When the meal was over he accompanied him to the Lodge. Once inside, Winters seated him by the fire and offered him some port.

  As the rich, dark wine ran over his tongue, Forrester felt a sense of ease that had long eluded him. The fire crackled in the hearth and its light gilded the spines of the books on the shelves lining the room. There was a fine Shiraz prayer rug in the space between the two chairs and its dusty pink fibres glowed gently as if with an inner light.

  But it was more than that. Professor Michael Winters was a profoundly reassuring presence: massive, comfortable in himself, at ease with the world. Forrester remembered that Winters’ father had been a general in the first war; he could imagine him sitting by a fire in some French chateau, talking confidentially to Field Marshal Haig about the next big push. He wondered if Winters’ interest in the Viking sagas was his oblique response to his father’s military valour.

  Forrester’s father had been in the first war too, of course; as a private. He’d survived it too, only to come back to the almost equally dangerous life of a North Sea trawlerman. His anger at the incompetence of the generals never abated; nor did his bitterness about the incompetence of the peace that followed. But Forrester had had enough of bitterness; he found refuge in Winters’ comfortable view of the world.

  “So, my dear Forrester, what can I do for you?” asked the Master, when they had savoured the port.

  “I believe Gordon Clark is innocent, Master,” he said, “and I’m doing my best to find evidence to prove it.”

  “I applaud you,” said Winters. “Dr. Clark is your friend and deserves every effort you can make on his behalf. As Plautus said, ‘Is est amicus, qui in re dubia te juvat, ubi re est opus.’”

  “He is a true friend…” said Forrester, touched, “who, under doubtful circumstances…”

  “Aids in deed, where deeds are necessary,” the Master finished. “As you are doing for Gordon. Needless to say I’ll do anything I can to help you.” Then he paused, weighing his words. “I ought to make it clear, though, Forrester, that I myself don’t share your view. I simply can’t see any other explanation for the facts as we know them.”