Dry Bones

by Sally Spencer

  Perhaps, at this stage in his escape, he should not have allowed himself to think about such considerations as what would happen when he was safely on the ground, because, distracted as he was, he accepted his next right handhold as safe without testing it properly, and when he put all his weight on it, he felt it coming away from the wall.

  Oh my God, he thought. Oh my God, oh my God, ohmygod …!

  He tried to free himself from this useless piece of ivy, and instead get a grip on a much firmer one, but he had already swung out so far that his trunk was over the quad, and his right arm, even stretched out to its full extent, still could not touch the wall.

  He needed to swing back against the wall, he told himself, but his right foot had already decided that since the centre of gravity had shifted, its best plan was to break free.

  And suddenly he was upside-down.

  He did not know how it had happened – he did not care how it had happened – but he wished to God it hadn’t happened at all.

  He mustn’t panic, he told himself. Panicking was actually the worst thing he should do.

  Could he right himself, he wondered. No, he didn’t think he had the nerve. But even if he could summon up the courage from somewhere, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea, because all the extra strain inherent in the manoeuvre might induce the ivy to snap.

  Yet he couldn’t just hang there forever, could he?

  And then he realised that he wasn’t going to hang there forever, because even as he was thinking through his situation, his hand was slowly moving down the vine, stripping away the shiny leaves as it went.

  Then even that strand was gone, and he knew – in what would be the last second of his life – that his head was about to hit the paving stones with some force.

  SIXTEEN

  15 October 1974

  Mr Gough is a natural storyteller, and I know this for a fact, because although I am sitting in this quiet Spanish bar on this benevolently warm autumn day, the dull thud of Boulting’s head smashing against the paving stones still rings in my ears, and I can feel the icy fingers of winter caressing my bare knees.

  ‘So what you’d got was a corpse lying stone dead in the quad,’ I say. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘What do you think happened next?’ asks Gough, and the disdain in his voice suggests that I should already know the answer, because all this occurred within the grounds of his college, and there is, therefore, only one thing that could have happened.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, declining the invitation to acknowledge him as a combination of wise man and superhero. And then, just so he doesn’t start to feel too much in control, I even decide to prod him a little. ‘Actually, I do know what probably happened,’ I continue. ‘Someone informed the dean about what had occurred, and he decided that the way to handle it was …’

  ‘The dean knew nothing,’ Gough interrupts me, clearly annoyed. ‘The dean was told nothing because he could have done nothing. He went to his grave in total ignorance of the events of that night.’

  ‘So then, if it wasn’t the dean, perhaps the bursar …’

  ‘They brought the body to me.’

  ‘Who brought the body to you?’

  ‘Who do you think? The four young soldiers who’d been in Boulting’s rooms with him! Two of them had gone downstairs before he fell – they wanted to get some fresh air – and they were standing in the archway at the bottom of the staircase when Boulting hit the ground. He practically landed at their feet.’

  ‘Did no one else see him fall?’

  ‘No one at all.’

  ‘I find that strange,’ I confess.

  ‘You shouldn’t. It was a dark cold night in February, remember, when most people prefer to be indoors. Besides, almost all the accommodation in that quad had been allocated to a military training school, and all the students were out on night manoeuvres that particular evening.’

  ‘So the four young lieutenants brought Boulting’s body to the porters’ lodge, did they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there much bleeding?’

  ‘Surprisingly little.’

  ‘And you were the one who decided to wall up Boulting in the old air vent, were you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was entirely your decision?’

  ‘No one’s but mine.’

  ‘So why did you decide to do it?’

  ‘Why?’ Gough repeats. He takes a generous slug of his brandy. ‘I decided to do it because it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘Right for whom?’

  ‘Right for everybody.’

  ‘Everybody with the possible exception of the dead man,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, everybody with the possible exception of the dead man,’ he agrees. ‘But then Boulting was an abuser of children, and it could be argued that he got a far quicker death than he deserved.’ He takes another slug of the Veterano. ‘If I hadn’t made him disappear, there would have been an inquiry into his death. And that inquiry would have been bound to reveal that the college had been sheltering the disgusting creature under its roof for nearly two years. The same inquiry would also have prevented those four brave young soldiers – who would have been called as witnesses – from returning to France, where their country badly needed them to fight against the Hun.’

  ‘So you decided to cover up a murder,’ I say.

  ‘There was no murder,’ Gough replies scornfully. ‘Perhaps Boulting fell from the wall. Or perhaps he was so overcome with shame in the middle of his escape that he simply decided to let go of the ivy. Whichever it was – suicide or accident – no crime was committed.’

  ‘Except he would never have been out there at all if he hadn’t been terrified of what the young soldiers might do to him,’ I say. ‘By the way, what happened to them? Do you know?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ Gough says, in his I-was-the-head-porter-and-I-knew-everything voice. ‘Lieutenants Springer and Matlock were killed at the second Battle of the Somme. Cole died at Wipers, and Downes went missing at Cambrai. Judd went back as an assistant to the padre. He had his legs blown off two days before the armistice. They put him on a hospital ship, but by then he’d lost so much blood that it was impossible to save him.’

  Do you know something – I’m inclined to believe this whole story!

  And that’s not only because it has the ring of truth about it, but also because I don’t think Mr Gough, whatever his other talents, has the imagination to fill in the background with so many intricate details. So, as I see it, whilst he might have made some rather dubious ethical choices at the time, he’s pretty much off the hook for the first – and only the first – of the killings.

  But I also think that what happened in the aftermath of Boulting’s death might well help to explain some of the circumstances surrounding Makepeace’s death, nearly thirty years later – because having once had the experience of playing God, it wouldn’t surprise me if Mr Gough hadn’t developed a craving for an encore.

  ‘Tell me about what happened to James Makepeace,’ I suggest. ‘Did he fall off a wall as well?’

  ‘Now you’re just being sarcastic, Miss Redhead,’ Mr Gough says, sounding offended.

  He’s right, I was being sarcastic – and that was a big mistake, because whilst, amongst my generation, sarcasm is pretty much a main strand of the communication process, it’s much more alien to a man who was born when Queen Victoria still had almost another quarter century of ruling to do. And this is something I need to bear in mind all the time I’m talking to him – he’s a very old man, and he doesn’t see the world in anything like the same way I do.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, swallowing some richly deserved humble pie. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘What actually happened to Makepeace was that he was struck from behind, in the courtyard, and staggered into the closest place where he thought he might find help, which happened to be the porters’ lodge,’ Gough says in a tone which indicates that he’s prepared to let bygones b
e bygones.

  ‘What time of day did this happen?’ I ask.

  ‘It was night.’

  ‘So it was dark?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I expect that, just as in the case of Boulting, the weather was awful, and there was no one around.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Now how convenient was that?

  ‘So James Makepeace staggered into the porters’ lodge,’ I say. ‘What did he do after that?’

  ‘As soon as he was inside, he collapsed onto the floor. I bent down beside him, to see what I could do to help. His mouth was opening and closing, like he was trying to say something. “What’s that, sir?” I asked, to encourage him. “The Americans,” he managed to gasp. “It was the Americans what did for me.” And no sooner had he got the words out of his mouth than he died.’

  Again, incredibly convenient!

  ‘Do you know what he meant by saying the Americans had done for him?’ I ask.

  ‘He meant they’d killed him.’

  ‘And why would they have done that?’

  ‘They’d done it in revenge – because they thought that he’d killed one of theirs.’

  ‘And had he?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘I thought you had your ear to the ground at all times,’ I say, risking taunting him slightly. ‘I thought there was nothing that went on in the college that you didn’t know about.’

  ‘In the college,’ he agrees. ‘But I can’t be expected to know about everything that happens in the whole of Oxford and district.’

  ‘You must know something – or you wouldn’t have said that the motive for the murder was probably revenge,’ I point out.

  He shrugs. ‘All I do know, is that the people I talked to from the American camp just outside Oxford, were convinced that Makepeace had murdered one of their regimental supply sergeants – a man called Comstock.’

  ‘What did they base this belief of theirs on?’

  ‘I think they based it on the fact that Makepeace was a queer.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ I say.

  ‘A queer,’ he repeats, and then, as if in an effort to make things clearer, he adds, ‘a brown hatter, a bum bandit, a nancy boy.’

  ‘Like Charlie Swift?’ I suggest.

  Gough stiffens in his seat. ‘When you say Charlie Swift, are you perhaps referring to Lord Charles Swift?’ he asks in a voice that carries with it all the chill of an Arctic gale.

  ‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘I am.’

  ‘Lord Swift is not a queer,’ he says, with great dignity.

  ‘Then what is he?’

  ‘Lord Swift is a homosexual.’

  I want to laugh, but I know it would be a mistake.

  Lord Swift is not a queer, he is a homosexual!

  In this modern world of ours, I’ve noticed that the owner of a large company can never be a fraudster or an embezzler – such low terms are reserved for men who run much smaller companies – and he must, instead, be considered the victim of creative accountancy gone wrong.

  And so it is with the English class system – Charlie, with a long and distinguished family history behind him, cannot be considered a queer, but must instead be seen as a homosexual, which – if it is pronounced with a certain gravitas – almost sounds like it refers to a moderately high ranking member of the Church of England (say someone between provost and canon).

  ‘So James Makepeace was a queer,’ I say, doing my best to hide my distaste for a word which seems to come so naturally to Gough. ‘I still fail to see how that ties in with him killing a US sergeant.’

  ‘Sergeant Comstock was also a queer, though they don’t call them queers over there – they call them fags. He’d been seeing a lot of Makepeace, but then they had a row which led to a fight in one of the pubs. It was just across the river from Magdalen College and it was called the Crossed Keys then, though it’s probably changed its name by now. Billy Bones, who was the landlord, has long since gone up to that great wrestling ring in the sky, but there might still be some of the regulars around who remember it, if you want to check.’

  I’ll bear that in mind,’ I say.

  ‘Anyway, a day after the fight, Comstock’s body was found down by the river. That bit is in the police files, if you’re interested.’

  I’m fairly sure that part of his story is true, and, in all probability, there are other parts of it which are, too. But taken as a whole, it doesn’t add up.

  How likely was it, for example, that anybody planning to kill James Makepeace would have attacked him just outside the porters’ lodge, rather than waiting for the chance to murder him somewhere there was less likelihood of a witness suddenly appearing?

  What were the chances that the assassin could deliver a blow which was hard enough to kill him, but not immediately – a blow that left him just enough time to stagger into the porters’ lodge and blame his death on the Yanks?

  Still, the best way to sort out the wheat from the chaff is to pretend to accept it all at face value initially, and then gently lead the discussion into areas Gough might be a little less comfortable in.

  ‘I can understand why you hid Albert Boulting’s body,’ I say, and then, stretching the truth a little, I add, ‘I even think, on reflection, that it was the right thing for you to do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gough says. ‘I do not need your approval, but it is nice to know that I have it.’

  Well, screw you! I think. But aloud, I say, ‘What’s got me really puzzled is why you decided to do the same thing with Makepeace’s corpse.’

  ‘I decided to hide that for exactly the same reason I decided to hide Boulting’s,’ Gough says. ‘Look, I could have informed the Thames Valley police force, but there would have been no point, because they were never going to catch the murderer.’

  ‘Weren’t they?’

  ‘Of course they weren’t. All the Americans would have given each other alibis, and there would have been no way to break any of them. Besides, the police were already stretched, with so many of their officers gone to serve in the armed forces, so the investigation would just have made life even more difficult for them. So nothing would have come of my reporting it, except that it would have damaged the college’s reputation.’

  ‘Why would it have damaged the college’s reputation – just because Makepeace was a homosexual?’

  ‘No, because Makepeace wasn’t just a homosexual – he was like a dog on heat. I don’t want to shock you, but …’

  ‘I’m not easily shocked,’ I tell him.

  ‘No, most women are not easily shocked these days,’ he says, regretfully. ‘Things are changing even here, on Majorca. Modesty and femininity seem to have gone completely out of fashion.’

  ‘You were just telling me that Makepeace was “like a dog on heat,”’ I remind him.

  ‘And so he was. If it moves and it’s got testicles, impale it – that was his motto. And I didn’t want to see the newspapers filled with accounts of scruffy young tramps and layabouts describing in lurid detail exactly what they’d allowed a St Luke’s man to do to them for a few pennies.’

  Again, it’s a question of degree, I think. If the young tramps he’s picturing had been, instead, the younger sons of the aristocracy, and if, instead of buggering them in a convenient dark alley, he’d flown them out to a luxury villa in the South of France before having his way with them, then, somehow, that wouldn’t have seemed quite so bad.

  But even allowing for moral relativism, Gough’s story still has its weaknesses.

  ‘A queer is not as bad as a child molester,’ I say, putting it, not without a certain degree of revulsion, in his terms. ‘The college must have had a fair number of queers over the years – and its reputation is still intact.’

  A rare look of indecision crosses Gough’s face.

  ‘The college’s reputation might have survived, but I’m not sure that Lord Swift’s reputation would have,’ he says finally.

  ‘You mean …’
/>   ‘James Makepeace and Lord Swift spent a considerable amount of time together – naked.’

  I’d learned over the previous few days that Makepeace had been at the college at the same time as Charlie, and that he was gay, but it had never occurred to me (or perhaps, in hindsight, it was more a case of I’d never dared let it occur to me) that they had been lovers.

  Oh Charlie, you bloody fool, I think. Why did you have to hide that particular part of the story from me, your best friend – you insensitive, mistrustful, stupid, lying bastard?

  But I mustn’t be distracted … I mustn’t be distracted.

  I came here with the idea that Mr Gough was the mastermind behind the killings – a sociopath megalomaniac who was only truly alive when exercising the power of life or death over others. And though he’s spent the last hour attempting to either charm, intimidate or confuse me – and sometimes all three at once – nothing he has done or said has made me abandon that original idea.

  OK, maybe he didn’t kill Albert Boulting (or even cause him to be killed) and maybe he didn’t kill (or cause to be killed) James Makepeace, but over the forty-odd years he was in the college, there must – given his nature – have been other deaths he was implicated in, and there must be other bodies – perhaps a good few of them – stuffed away in quiet corners of St Luke’s.

  How do I know this?

  I don’t know it with certainty – but consider the logic. Gough has not set foot in the college himself for over twenty years, yet he still has enough power and influence in Oxford to compel someone else to kill Lennie Moon. And that’s no small thing – that isn’t a ‘listen, I lent you a cup of sugar once and now I want you to do something for me,’ type favour.

  And surely, the only thing that would compel anyone to commit a murder would be the knowledge that if they didn’t, other murders they had been involved in would be revealed.

  Very clever, you’re thinking to yourself, but what I haven’t explained is why Mr Gough would want to have Lennie killed in the first place.

  To which I counter – why would anybody else want Lennie killed?