Treasure by Degrees

by David Williams

  ‘Witaker knew about the fireworks. Could he have set up the bomb scare?’

  ‘It didn’t need any setting up — all you want to start a bomb scare is a telephone. You said the students deny any knowledge of the chicken heads and the other choice cuts.’

  ‘Yes, and since they were evidently in an unburdening mood I believe them. Are you seeing Peter Gregory again this morning?’

  Bantree smiled. ‘Yes, but don’t worry, I won’t hurt him. I always treat millionaires with respect.’

  ‘His girl-friend says he’s refusing to touch that money.’ Treasure himself found this statement difficult to believe; the Superintendent indicated his own incredulity with raised eyebrows. ‘What about the phone call that wasn’t mentioned in his statement?’

  ‘That’s what I’m seeing him about — to find out if he’s placed the voice.’ After he had been brought back to the College the night before Gregory had gone over his earlier statement, remembering he had omitted to mention that he had answered the house telephone in the SCR which had been ringing when he entered the room. A voice had asked for Witaker. On being told the American was not there the caller had enquired who was speaking and whether Gregory himself was going to watch the fireworks. The Australian had replied that he was; the telephone had then gone dead.

  ‘It could have been Witaker himself.’

  ‘Phoning from the Ladies . . .’

  ‘Making sure the room was clear. Or could it have been the person who phoned Witaker earlier, making certain he’d left?’

  ‘If there ever was such a call in the first place,’ Bantree put in sceptically. ‘If he’s cunning enough to have done this murder then we can discount everything he’s said – including the ghostly visitations.’

  ‘But why invent such elaborate embellishments?’

  ‘We may not have been let into that little secret yet. What’s the betting poor dead Cyrus makes a third appearance naming the murderer.’

  ‘Oh, come off it. You don’t think he’s mad enough to think we’d . . .’

  Bantree glanced at his watch. ‘Your clock’s slow.’ He pointed to the dashboard. ‘It’s also distinctly noisy – I thought Rolls-Royce had fixed that problem,’ he added with a smirk. ‘Look, most murderers are mad to some degree, or literally mad about something – fixated, obsessed, call it what you like. Witaker’s obsessed with money – he as good as told you that last night. If shovelling that endowment into this place was in some way going to make a pauper out of the man, or his daughter, or both of ’em – he’d do everything he could to stop it. OK, there were plenty of others with a motive to oppose Mrs Hatch but you said last night that Witaker could have been robbing the old lady blind for years . . .’

  ‘He’s effectively sole Trustee; private trusts are sometimes easy to manipulate. I only suggested that perhaps . . Professional rectitude was beginning to assert itself.

  ‘That perhaps he’s been cooking the books. Such things have been heard of even in this country.’ Bantree opened the car door. ‘Now I’m off – my first audience is with the celebrated Daniel Goldstein. See you later.’

  Treasure smiled and nodded, but he remained seated in the car watching Bantree walk towards the Hall. Something the policeman had said struck a chord in his memory. The resulting train of thought was distasteful, but it was unavoidable – and it had nothing to do with Witaker.

  The main subject of this last exchange examined himself closely in the shaving mirror provided in the guest suite bathroom. Any man would look haggard after all he had been through, even discounting yesterday’s shirt and the garbage-stained suit. How much had he told Treasure? He went over the events of the night before – so far as he could remember them. Obviously they thought he was a crank – some kind of nut. In the circumstances he would have taken the same view himself if it was someone else who had been seeing ghosts. His mother had claimed to be psychic; maybe there was something to it.

  Daylight helped Witaker put things in perspective. The best thing now was to get the hell out of this place — and this country. The Superintendent had said he might be needed for the inquest on Amelia – ‘might be’. Did they figure he was the murderer? He knew English law well enough to know how to test that idea. There was nothing that could keep him in Britain very long except a warrant. There were some pressing reasons why he should get home – even some he could admit to. Sorting out the position of the Funny Farms Trust Fund qualified as a public as well as a private reason for prompt withdrawal. Shipping Amelia’s remains back home could be handled by others. He had ordered the hire car to take him back to the Dorchester at noon. He reached for the airline timetable in his briefcase.

  Ribble had breakfasted early. Hunter-Smith, who was sitting across the desk from the Dean, had managed three hours’ fitful sleep and a cup of coffee – the last taken privately and quietly without disturbing his wife.

  ‘Fifty thousand pounds – it’s a lot of money.’ The Dean examined the cheque and the accompanying letter addressed to the Bursar which had arrived in the morning post. ‘You say Home Counties Television is the biggest of the commercial contractors?’ He knew this already but there were reasons why this morning he considered it politic to defer to the Bursar’s judgement.

  Hunter-Smith nodded. ‘HCT they’re usually called. The Senior Tutor would know more about them. Verdict on History is their . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, quite so,’ Ribble interrupted. ‘It’s really most generous. You don’t have trouble sleeping?’

  Hunter-Smith saw no connection between the statement and the question – nor had he yet fathomed the reason for the Dean’s changed attitude to him personally. He assumed the enquiry was kindly intended. ‘I have a cough that keeps me awake, but the College doctor . . .’

  ‘Gives you sleeping pills, does he?’ the other put in eagerly.

  ‘No – a cough mixture.’ Ribble looked crestfallen on receipt of this quite logical intelligence. ‘Marvellous stuff, as a matter of fact. Wasn’t much use last night – too many things on my mind.’

  Ribble appeared not to be interested in cough mixture. ‘No capsules – he doesn’t give you capsules?’ If this was a question it was clearly rhetorical. ‘I expect he gives capsules to a lot of people, though.’ Ribble looked up sharply. ‘You don’t know of anyone who gets sleeping capsules?’ Hunter-Smith did not. He had expected either a heated discussion on his decision to leave UCI or a recapitulation of the shortcomings he had displayed the night before or – with luck – simply some pleased expressions on the subject of the gift. The enquiry into other people’s sleeping habits and the remedies they applied was inexplicable.

  ‘D’you take sleeping capsules, Dean?’ This was intended as an innocuous enough rejoinder – even a pleasantry.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ The tone was alarmed. ‘Oh — yes, I see. Sometimes. The pressures of this job – well, you know them well enough, Reginald.’ He followed this with an oily smile. ‘You’re sure you didn’t hear me call “come in” when you knocked on my door at – er – at ten to six, was it?’

  ‘I can’t be absolutely sure of the time, Dean.’

  ‘Oh, I remember the time all right. I was in my bedder – ’ the Dean was a stickler for Oxford slang; it added tone – ‘getting ready to go down for the fireworks. I heard your knock – probably I didn’t call out loudly enough.’

  Hunter-Smith had the haziest idea of what time it had been when he slipped his letter of resignation under the Dean’s door. He had admitted to knocking because it would have sounded cowardly to own that he had left the letter and run. Nor could he be aware how important it was for the Dean to establish his whereabouts around six o’clock on the previous day. When he had last interviewed Ribble, Superintendent Bantree had been giving no credence to the time of Mrs Hatch’s death proffered by the police surgeon. Equally, he had been leaving nothing to chance when questioning known possessors of chloral hydrate,

  ‘My father is returning – that means another dry day.’<
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  Gregory smiled. ‘I’ll put your beer back in my fridge, Faisal. He really is a stickler for religious observance, isn’t he?’

  The two were drinking coffee with Fiona in the Prince’s sitting-room. ‘He only breaks big laws like harbouring criminals and shipping them out of the country,’ laughed the girl. ‘Is he angry, Faisal?’ she added seriously.

  ‘Don’t think so. He sounded quite philosophical on the telephone – says he wants to see the Dean again.’

  ‘Another take-over bid now Funny Farms have bitten the dust. I don’t think it’s going to work, Faisal. Anyway, I’m keeping out of his sight.’ On balance Gregory reckoned the Crown Prince of Abu B’yat would probably regard him as an ingrate. The Arab attempt to rescue him from the consequences of his assumed folly had been an act of true loyalty hardly reflected in the embarrassment he had caused. He looked at the time. ‘Mm, I’ve got to see the top copper in half an hour. Wish I could place that voice — I’m sure I’ve heard it before.’

  ‘I want you to know how sorry – how sincerely sorry I am, Peter.’ The young Prince looked grave. ‘Apart from the misunderstanding, I should not have told the police I saw you coming out of the SCR . . .’

  ‘Nonsense and forget it. I’d have told them myself — when I’d come round,’ Gregory added with acerbity. ‘At least you established I was coming out, not going in, at ten to six. Say, what were you doing at the window anyway – climbing out again?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ asked Fiona from where she was examining the wall display of weaponry with a new interest.

  ‘Well, the last time his father was here this young scoundrel got off an hour of meditation by retiring to the bedroom with alleged migraine, climbed out the window and joined me for a noggin – it’s perfectly easy.’

  ‘Faisal – for shame.’

  The Prince disregarded Fiona’s admonition. He looked seriously at Gregory. ‘I give you my word, Peter, it was not like that. I didn’t leave the bedroom.’

  ‘OK, old son – I was only kidding,’ said Gregory lightly.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THAT PART OF Itchendever village which passed for the whole in the eyes of the through traveller was something of a hoax. A few houses – mostly of late-Victorian or Edwardian vintage – straddled the road running east from Winchester. The inevitable garage of no discernible vintage whatsoever offered iced lollies, Hong Kong shirts, and cut-price tights – to disguise the fact the proprietor was having a hard time selling petrol. The Trout, though unprepossessing in itself, was a signpost to the cognoscenti. Its name arid position at the junction with a narrow road leading south suggested diversion to rural and piscatorial delights beyond. The sign ‘To the Church’ at the same junction was more accurate in its promise. The fishing rights were sternly prescribed: the church was usually open.

  Treasure was already aware that the old and aesthetically rewarding heart of the village lay down towards the river. He had decided to walk there partly for exercise and partly to avoid the confluence of sightseers waiting to observe further murders at the gates. He clambered over the perimeter railings and strode past the pub, enjoying the morning sunshine and wishing he were playing golf.

  He had looked up the church in Betjeman’s Guide to English Parish Churches before leaving London. The ‘majestic seventeenth-century brick tower’ could be seen from the main road. Now the ‘massive buttresses to the Norman-Transitional nave’ came into sight as he rounded a bend just after The Rod and Fly. He took the word of the Poet Laureate that the outside walls had been criminally wronged by being scraped of old rough-cast in 1892; even so, they still looked attractive. The Vicarage was less pleasing – at least in every aspect. The vile man who had added red-brick, bay-windowed wings to what had clearly been a dignified mid-Georgian edifice had no doubt been the despoiler who had soiled his hands and mind destroying rough-cast. Not for the first time, Treasure reflected that countless English vicarages would now be more practical as well as seemly if Victorian clergymen had at best been celibate and at worst obliged to make do with three children, two servants, six bedrooms, and an episcopal ban on building extensions.

  ‘Ha! Morning, my dear fellah.’ The disembodied voice of Hassock hailed from on high. The Vicar was cleaning an upstairs window – perilously from the outside, and clad in contrasting cassock and oilskin hat. ‘Keeps the drips off,’ he shouted, squeezing a wet sponge on to the drive with one hand while adjusting his headgear with the other. Treasure hoped the entablature was worthy of being treated as a boardwalk. ‘Down in a jiffy; let yourself in – the door’s open.’

  Treasure hesitated at the threshold. The front door was, indeed, open wide, but two pairs of eyes were viewing him with suspicion. Tottle, the immense black cat, was lying just inside, absently licking the head of a fully-grown fox. The first bizarre conclusion that Tottle might just have captured the other animal and brought it back alive by dint of superior force and intellect – or even sheer fright – was dispelled as the fox rolled on to its back and began digging the cat in the ribs with its hind legs. Tottle suffered this distraction without removing his gaze from the newcomer.

  Though an animal lover, Treasure eschewed a first instinct to stroke the fox for fear it might bite – and also the cat in the reasonable certainty that it would bite. He trod warily around both recumbent creatures into a wide hallway arranged like a junk shop temporarily given over to a jumble sale.

  ‘Thought you might call; that’s why we’ve been tidying up the place.’ Hassock, now hatless, descended the stairs and gazed around at the confusion as though satisfied with a job well done.

  ‘Met Foxy Fred, have you? – tame as a Corgi, that one.’ Treasure had once been bitten by a Corgi. ‘Ah, I see Tottle’s in from next door – Margaret must be motorizing this morning; cat gets upset in the car’ – in contradistinction to the effect it had on bicycles – ‘old Foxy stays indoors during the hunting season – instinct, I expect.’ The Vicar picked up a tangle of blankets from the hall table, thus revealing two saucepans, a large earthenware teapot, and a toy tricycle with a missing front wheel. With a triumphant expression he grasped the teapot and replaced the blankets.

  ‘Come and greet the happy throng.’ He took Treasure by the arm and led him around a huge perambulator, full of books and an assortment of framed pictures, towards a half-open door. ‘Pram belongs in the kitchen,’ he remarked in passing – though whether this indicated the presence in that region of a baby, or a literate cook with a catholic taste in art, was a matter for conjecture. ‘This is Mr Treasure – say hello, everybody.’

  There were a dozen or more people in what probably passed as the Vicarage drawing-room-one small child was, in fact, actually engaged in proving the last point by defacing a wall with yellow chalk. An assortment of armchairs and a dilapidated sofa were arranged in a semicircle around the fireplace. These were occupied by several young men and women in dressing-gowns, reading newspapers, and an older girl in a pre-Raphaelite dress and a very pregnant condition sipping coffee from a large mug. At their feet was a gaggle of children of various ages squatting around a square piece of cardboard covered in what looked like hieroglyphics and a scatter of coloured counters. Andy, the unfortunate youth whom Treasure had encountered the day before, was kneeling amongst the children. ‘My daughter, our undergraduate paying guests – but not very often, ha! – and my grandchildren, plus our friend Andy.’ The Vicar introduced the throng with a proprietorial air.

  ‘Gramps, Gramps, Andy’s just got to market!’ A chubby-faced little girl screamed her important message.

  ‘Has he now! Well done. And I’ve found the teapot, my cherubs.’ There was a general murmur of congratulation. ‘Caroline, take it out to Granny in the kitchen.’ The nominated cherub hastened to obey.

  ‘What are you playing?’ asked Treasure, moving closer to the group.

  ‘Going to Market,’ chorused the children.

  ‘It’s home-made and expendable, which is just as well in this family.
’ The older girl had Hassock’s strong chin, but her voice was soft and melodious. As if guessing the question in Treasure’s mind, she added, ‘They’re not all mine, Mr Treasure, three of them are my sister’s.’

  ‘Saturday morning is baby-sitting time at the Vicarage,’ boomed Hassock. ‘Both my daughters had the good sense to settle within spitting distance.’

  Treasure was examining the home-made game. ‘This looks like . . .’

  ‘Funny Farms,’ put in one of the male students, languidly, and without looking up from The Times.

  ‘Funny Farms my eye,’ cried the Vicar. ‘I was playing Going to Market in my nursery fifty years ago – you ask Margaret Stopps.’

  ‘Pity you didn’t patent it, sir – you might have been rich by now,’ proffered the same young man.

  ‘Rich? Who wants riches,’ replied Hassock, scanning the threadbare carpet approvingly. ‘Anyway, I didn’t invent the thing, it wouldn’t have been mine to patent.’

  ‘Uncle Marcus – I got to market.’ Andy, despite his disfigurement, looked somehow less conspicuous amongst this jolly, sympathetic crowd. He was dressed in a dark-coloured football jersey and blue jeans.

  ‘I know, Andy, jolly good show.’ Hassock was all encouragement. ‘You’ve had quite a week, haven’t you? Trips to town, presents, fireworks, and sweeping the board. Don’t forget your homework now.’ The lad beamed in appreciation. ‘Well, Mr Treasure and I must retire to debate great issues – we’ll be in my study.’

  The two men threaded their way back across the hall to a small, book-lined room on the other side. Compared to what he had seen of the rest of the house, Treasure marvelled at the comparative order that reigned there. ‘Devil of a mess, I’m afraid’ was Hassock’s unexpected comment. ‘Must sort this place out one of these days. Take a pew.’