Loretta Lawson 01 - A Masculine Ending

by Joan Smith

  The phone rang half a dozen times before he answered it. ‘You’ve just caught me’, he said, recognizing her voice. ‘I was shutting the front door when I heard the phone ring. I’m on my way up to town. There’s been a cock-up in the first-year timetable, and Prof. Day’s summoned me to a meeting to sort it out. Bloody nuisance, but I can’t get out of it. That’s why I called, as a matter of fact. I suppose you wouldn’t be free for dinner this evening?’

  Loretta’s smile widened. ‘What a good idea,’ she replied. ‘Where would you like to eat?’

  Andrew hesitated for a second, apparently taken aback by the ease with which he had gained his free dinner. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, judging how far his luck could be pushed, ‘I always think L’Escargot is very reliable …’

  ‘I’ll book a table for eight thirty,’ said Loretta cheerfully. Hang the expense, she thought rashly - her salary cheque was about to go into her account, and she hoped it would be a productive evening. She was thrilled to be back on the trail again.

  She rang the Sunday Herald number, placating her conscience with the thought that she might not have time to ring Tracey that evening after all; but when she got through to the news desk, she discovered that he had taken the shuttle to Glasgow the morning before. It was too early to say when he might return. With a shrug of impatience, Loretta rang off. She dialled his home number and left a short message on his answering-machine.

  Loretta was the first to arrive at the restaurant. A waiter led her to the table she’d booked downstairs, and left her to study the menu. It did not take her long to work out that the meal was going to cost her considerably more than she’d saved by spending a rather miserable night in rue Roland. Nevertheless, she was looking forward to the food. A salad of sun-dried tomatoes to start, she thought, and then perhaps the salmon?

  At that moment, Andrew hurried in, slightly out of breath. He kissed Loretta’s cheek, and sat down opposite her. ‘Let’s have some wine while we think about food,’ he said, picking up the wine list. After a quick glance, he ordered something which sounded horribly expensive. ‘You’ve been working too hard,’ he said, turning his attention to Loretta. ‘You look quite tired, and term hasn’t even started. What have you been up to?’

  Loretta suppressed her irritation. Up to that moment, she had been feeling perfectly well. The black velvet dress she was wearing - the weather had changed at last - set off her pale skin and blonde hair, and she was looking forward to a new academic year. Some people seemed to have a talent for saying the wrong thing, she thought to herself. Or had her efforts to get to the bottom of the rue Roland mystery taken an unexpected toll on her? She doubted it.

  ‘You don’t look all that well yourself,’ she told Andrew with uncharacteristic malice. ‘And you’ve just had a holiday.’

  ‘No amount of holiday can compensate for the beginning of the autumn term,’ Andrew answered gloomily. ‘A new academic year, a new set of faces to memorize. The trouble is, Loretta, that I’ve discovered I don’t like students. One year they’ve got long hair and spend their spare time reading Marx, the next they’re shorn like sheep and as conservative as hell. And whichever sort they happen to be, they always think they’re the first of their kind. What I need is a nice little research job where I can write my books and keep well away from them.’

  Loretta smiled. Any minute now, Andrew would start talking in disparaging tones about the habits of ‘young people’, a favourite topic of his since reaching the age of forty. She suspected that his distaste for students was stimulated not so much by their ideas as by their youth. Perhaps she would feel the same when she reached his age. It was not a pleasant thought, and she decided to change the subject. ‘I’m going to have the salmon,’ she announced, handing the menu to Andrew.

  After a short discussion on the merits of the duck, he decided to join her; and while they waited for the first course to arrive, he regaled her with a colourful account of that afternoon’s meeting in the history department to sort out the timetable. Inexplicably, two compulsory first-year lectures had been scheduled for the same day and time, and the error had only just been noticed. Neither of the lecturers concerned was willing to agree to a change at this late date; when one of them finally gave in, the alternative proposed by the unpopular head of department was a slot already occupied by one of Andrew’s lectures. He was an excellent storyteller and in normal circumstances Loretta would have enjoyed his acerbic comments on his colleagues’ conduct at the meeting. Tonight, however, she was keen to steer the conversation round to the subject of Hugh Puddephat. As soon as Andrew paused for breath, she took her chance. ‘I was up in Oxford at the beginning of this week,’ she said, as casually as she could. ‘I stayed a couple of nights with a friend who lives in Woodstock Road. She teaches English, and she was telling me about this don who’s disappeared. Hugh something, I think his name is.’ She paused, then added, ‘Hugh Puddephat, that’s it.’ Was she overdoing it? She crossed her fingers and plunged on. ‘You know lots of people at Oxford. Have you ever come across him?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know Hugh,’ Andrew said unsuspectingly. ‘We were at college together, as a matter of fact. There was a time when I knew him quite well. He and I and a few other people used to hang around together when we were students. We were all gay but scared stiff to do anything about it. This was after Wolfenden, of course, but before the change in the law. Mind you, Hugh was always a bit different from the rest of us. I was profoundly relieved when the law was relaxed in 1967, but I think it just added to Hugh’s problems. It took away one of the reasons he used to justify trying to suppress his homosexuality, you see. In the end, he married one of his own students. Partly in the hope of keeping himself on the straight and narrow - you’d be surprised how many gay men do that - and partly because he thought it would do his career a bit of good. Veronica’s an Honourable, you see. I rather liked her, though I couldn’t see how the thing would work. She had absolutely no idea, and Hugh went out of his way to keep it from her. That’s why I began to see less of him. After he was married, he even started making jokes at dinner parties about limp wrists and fairies. So I gradually stopped visiting them. They spent their honeymoon at rue Roland, by the way - Hugh was the classic brilliant but penniless academic at the time and, to do him credit, he didn’t want to take Veronica’s money. Or Veronica’s father’s money, to be more accurate.’

  So there was a connection between the flat and Hugh Puddephat, thought Loretta, her heart beating fast. ‘I suppose most of your friends must have stayed there at one time or another,’ she said casually. ‘Has Hugh ever stayed there since?’

  ‘Once or twice, but a very long time ago,’ Andrew said. ‘Certainly not in recent years. Veronica used it occasionally. In fact, now you come to mention it, I’m a little bit peeved with her. She got in touch months ago, at the end of the summer term, in fact, to ask if she could borrow the flat. It was a little bit awkward, because she wanted to spend a long weekend there in July, and I had to sort out the dates with Alex to make sure they didn’t clash. She came and collected the keys, and that was the last I heard from her. The keys came back through the post, without even a thank-you note. I don’t even know whether she used the flat, or whether she changed her mind and didn’t go for one reason or another.’ He paused, and then shrugged. ‘I’d completely forgotten about that. Perhaps it was Veronica who spring-cleaned the flat? Though it’s no more in character for her to do it than it is for Alex. After a year or two of keeping house for Hugh, she put her foot down and said it was ridiculous not to use her money. Ever since then, she’s had a cleaning lady and a gardener. I can’t quite picture Veronica down on her knees with a scrubbing brush. Don’t get me wrong, Loretta,’ he added, ‘It’s not that I don’t like her. But I have always felt rather uncomfortable in her presence. And that’s Hugh’s fault, not hers. When he introduced me to her, just before the wedding, he sort of … well, he didn’t come out and say it, but he got the message over that he didn’t want her to kno
w I was gay. So I’ve always felt in a false position where Veronica’s concerned.’

  Loretta was only half listening. Had Veronica’s visit to the flat in July - if she had indeed made one - anything to do with what had happened there in September? She felt sure there must be a connection, but at the moment she couldn’t see what it was. Perhaps she should engineer a meeting with Veronica? She decided to try a different tack. ‘What d’you think has happened to Hugh?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Andrew admitted. ‘I supposed he’ll turn up sooner or later. I think the most likely thing is that he’s had some sort of accident. He may be sitting in a hospital bed somewhere in Italy at this very moment, wondering who he is and why he knows all these long words like hermeneutics.’ He paused, a puzzled look on his face. Fearing that he was going to ask why she was so interested in Puddephat’s disappearance, Loretta rapidly changed the subject. In any case, she’d probably got as much out of Andrew as she was going to.

  The subject of rue Roland did not come up again in the course of the evening until Loretta was stepping into a taxi for Islington outside the restaurant. ‘Oh,’ she cried, pausing by the door of the cab, ‘I’ve forgotten to bring your keys.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Andrew. ‘They’re only the spare set. Wait till the next time I see you.’ Loretta climbed into the taxi, and headed for home.

  First thing next morning, her telephone rang. It was Tracey. ‘Did I wake you up?’ he enquired innocently. ‘There was a message from you on the tape when I got back last night. I thought it might be urgent.’

  ‘Not this urgent,’ said Loretta, looking at the clock on her bedside table. It was seven thirty. ‘I was only returning your call, as a matter of fact.’ She was mildly irritated, well aware of what Tracey was up to. Her reticence about certain areas of her private life irked him, and he occasionally found an excuse to ring early in the hope of catching her unawares. Resisting the temptation to call his bluff by pretending someone was with her, she asked how he had got on in Glasgow.

  ‘Wild goose chase,’ he said grumpily. It appeared she had touched a raw nerve. ‘All the fault of the news desk. They insisted on me going up there to see this chap who was supposed to have proof of a fiddle being carried out by a bunch of telephone operators at one particular exchange. It would have been quite a sexy story if it was true - lots of money involved. But the crucial thing he hadn’t told us was that his girlfriend was one of the operators involved in the ring, and he’d just had a big row with her. That’s why the story sounded plausible in the first place - he knew enough about the operation to string us along. He’d even been inside the building, and could describe who sat where. I only began to smell a rat when he couldn’t come up with the documents he claimed to have. He said he’d put them at a friend’s house for safe keeping, and the friend just happened to have gone away on holiday. I took him out for a boozy lunch, and in the end he admitted he’d made the whole thing up. By then, of course, I’d wasted two whole days in Glasgow. And it’s too late to put together the story I really wanted to do this week. I told the news desk they should send someone else, one of the junior reporters. They’ve got to learn that this business is plagued with fantasists and people with grudges. It’s an occupational hazard of investigative journalism. How’s your investigation coming along, by the way?’

  Loretta swallowed her distaste at Tracey’s coldbloodedness. She disliked the casual way in which he made decisions profoundly affecting other people’s lives - choosing whose tale of woe should be front page news, and whose story deserved nothing more than the wastepaper bin. But she needed his help. ‘I’ve found out a lot,’ she said, ‘and I’m very keen to talk it over with you. The trouble is that term starts tomorrow, and I’m rather tied up with work. Are you free at the weekend?’

  Tracey suggested meeting for a drink when he finished work on Saturday evening. ‘What about going to a movie?’ he added, asking if she’d seen a French film which had opened in London a couple of weeks ago. She hadn’t, and they agreed to meet at seven.

  Loretta put down the phone with a sense of unease, wondering if she’d done the right thing. It meant a delay of two more days before deciding what to do next, and she was reluctant to wait so long. But it couldn’t be helped. The beginning of the autumn term was, apart from exams, her busiest time of year. Her discovery in Paris couldn’t have happened at a worse time from that point of view, and she would just have to accept it. Frustrated, she picked up that day’s Guardian and looked to see whether there were any stories about the search for Puddephat. She found nothing, although she didn’t know whether to put this down to a lack of success on the part of the police or the massive coverage afforded to the hijacking of a wide-bodied jet over Italy. The presence of a minor American film star among the hostages had prompted more than usually exhaustive coverage of the event, and several columns were devoted to a blow-by-blow account of the aircraft’s comings and goings. Putting the paper to one side, Loretta told herself that she would have to put Hugh Puddephat out of her mind until Saturday.

  Loretta arrived punctually at her office next day at ten o’clock. The pattern of the first day of the autumn term was fixed; the first-years, who had arrived at their halls of residence the day before, came to the department in the morning to sign up for various optional courses. At eleven, they split up into small groups and assembled in the rooms of the lecturers whose courses they had chosen. Just after eleven, Loretta was handing out reading lists to the dozen students who wanted to attend her seminars on Virginia Woolf when there was a knock at the door. It must be a latecomer, Loretta thought to herself, calling, ‘Come in.’

  The door opened, and Mrs Whittaker put her head into the room. ‘A Mr Tracey is on the phone,’ she said. ‘He wants to speak to you urgently. I’ve explained that you’re tied up until twelve, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ The secretary’s features clearly showed her disapproval of Tracey’s behaviour. It was an unwritten rule in the department that teaching sessions were not to be interrupted by phone calls, especially not private ones.

  Loretta stared at the woman for a moment, thoughts racing through her head. Tracey was well aware of the rule; something must have happened. Realizing that not only Mrs Whittaker, but twelve newly arrived first-year students, were waiting for her in expectant silence, she pulled herself together. ‘Please tell him I’ll ring him on the dot of twelve,’ she told the secretary. ‘And I’m sorry you’ve been troubled.’ She didn’t know how she was going to contain her impatience, but it would not do to make an enemy of Mrs Whittaker. And she did have a responsibility to her students. But what on earth could have happened?

  As soon as the last student had filed out of her office, Loretta picked up the phone. It was still switched through to the secretary’s office, and it took an infuriatingly long time to get a line. She was holding her breath when she finally got through to Tracey’s extension. ‘What’s happened?’ she demanded, without preamble.

  ‘They’ve found the body,’ he told her, equally blunt.

  ‘Body?’ she gasped, a wave of nausea passing through her. In her mind, she was back at the flat in rue Roland, a jumble of bloodstained sheets confronting her.

  ‘Puddephat,’ Tracey added, dispelling all doubt. ‘It came up on the PA tapes an hour ago. You know, the Press Association teleprinter. You’ve seen it in the corner of the office. The police announced it this morning.’

  More images whirled through Loretta’s head - the figure she had seen in the bed, a body being dragged to the door, herself in handcuffs waiting to board the ferry. Or would they fly her back to Paris? She had been right, and she had done nothing about it! But I didn’t know, she argued back, picturing all too clearly the disbelief on the policemen’s faces. And there was my mother to think about, she pleaded. You couldn’t expect… She pulled herself together, and asked a question. ‘Where did they find him?’ she asked weakly.

  ‘They haven’t said officially,’ Tracey said, ‘but I ca
lled a mate of mine at the Yard as soon as I heard. He’s making some inquiries, and he’s going to ring me back.’ At that moment, Loretta heard the sound of another phone ringing. That’s probably him,’ Tracey said. ‘I gave him another extension number in case we were talking when he rang. Look, can you meet me at lunchtime? The pub opposite the office in half an hour?’ Loretta agreed, and put the phone down.

  The sour taste in her mouth made her retch a couple of times, and after a moment, she got up and walked out of her office to the coffee machine. She fumbled for change and pressed the button for black coffee. Hating it, she drank half and left the rest standing in its cup on a window sill. She went back to her office, put on her coat, and went to find a taxi.

  Tracey was waiting for her in the pub. ‘Read that while I get you a drink,’ he said, handing her a piece of paper which she recognized as PA copy. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, putting his hand on her arm. ‘You look absolutely green. I think you need a brandy.’ Loretta didn’t argue.

  As Tracey made his way to the bar, she put the story on the table in front of her.

  A police investigation is under way in two countries after the identification of a body in Paris as that of Dr Hugh Puddephat, the missing Oxford don [she read].

  The body, which was discovered in the city yesterday morning, was identified through fingerprints. No papers or personal items are believed to have been found with it.