An Oxford Scandal

by Norman Russell

  *

  In his lodgings at St Gabriel’s College, Dr Edward Chalmers, the Provost, put down the second of two letters that he had received, and permitted himself a chuckle. Really, it was too amusing! He’d show them to Jardine later. Poor man! He was bearing up well, throwing himself into his college duties with an energy that did him great credit. Imagine, to know that your wife had been murdered! So far, the police seemed to have no idea of the perpetrator.

  Mrs Jardine’s funeral had taken place on Saturday at Botley Cemetery, where a new grave had been opened. Neither Jardine nor his wife came from Oxford, and seemed to have lost touch with any family members in London. Dear me! How sad it had been. The son and daughter, both young adults, had stood with their father, all three in deepest mourning. Gorringe had been there, and his wife Amy, and a woman friend of the family, who had been rather too lachrymose for decency. Well, it was all over now.

  The first letter had been from the Archbishop of Westminster.

  Archbishop’s House,

  Carlisle Place, SW

  My dear Provost,

  It is with great interest that I have heard of the discovery at St Gabriel’s College of the remains of the revered Martyr St Thomas à Becket. A friend has assured me that these relics are genuine. I assume that the remains were spirited away from Canterbury at the time of the depredations of Henry VIII, by persons loyal to the Catholic Faith.

  As I am sure you will agree, these relics rightly belong to the Roman Catholic Church, from which they were seized, and I feel that you will want to return them to us, with the generosity of spirit for which I believe you are renowned.

  May one of my clergy call upon you to discuss the matter? Simply name a time and place, and I will ensure that a high-ranking priest will promptly present himself.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Herbert Vaughan, Card.

  The second letter was in similar vein.

  Lambeth Palace, SE

  From the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

  My dear Chalmers,

  We have heard here at Lambeth that the remains of St Thomas à Becket have been unearthed at St Gabriel’s. As you know, these were taken from the vaults of my Cathedral Church at Canterbury, presumably in the early stages of the Reformation.

  I have no wish to condone the barbarities and profanities of that era, but I feel I am entitled to claim those remains for the Church of England, to whom they rightly belong. I hasten to assure you that no idolatrous act of worship would take place once these relics are secured. They will be accorded a decent reburial in a place far away from London or Canterbury, where they can be quietly forgotten.

  Please let me know when you will be able to hand over the remains to my representative, the Bishop of Oxford.

  With every blessing,

  Edward Cantuar

  *

  Shenstone Hall nestled in an enclosing belt of ancient oaks in a remote valley of the Sussex Weald. The three friends had left the train at a small and sleepy country town, where an open carriage had been waiting to collect them and their luggage. They journeyed through the rich though fading countryside, past farms, and little hamlets, until they came in sight of the ancient, half-timbered house. It was fronted by an old-fashioned garden, that owed nothing to the genius of designers such as Capability Brown. A stone bridge carried the road over a dry moat.

  ‘I say, Napier,’ said George Blackwell, ‘it a grand old pile, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ said Harry. ‘It was built in the mid-years of the fifteenth century, but this frontage was added in 1574. The estate used to be vast, but it’s shrunk to a quarter of its original extent over the centuries. We had to sell land regularly to pay the fines.’

  George was about to ask a question, but a sign from Arthur silenced him.

  The carriage passed over the stone bridge, and came to a halt in the inner courtyard. Facing them was another range of Tudor work, with an arched entrance door, over which a Latin motto had been carved in some past age.

  Lumen me regit, vos umbra

  Accompanied by two servants who carried their luggage, they passed through the door and came into what had been the great hall of the old house. At some time in succeeding centuries, it had been divided by a wall of panelling, on one side of which was a comfortable dwelling chamber. Old portraits covered the walls, and suits of armour stood guard near the great open fireplace, in which a couple of logs were blazing.

  The guests had just time to take in their surroundings when a door in the far wall opened, and Harry Napier’s father came into the room to greet them. They saw a hale, upright gentleman in his fifties, his face clean-shaven, and his shock of hair prematurely white. He seemed delighted to see his son’s guests, shaking them heartily by the hand. He was dressed in a suit of country cut, with a gold watch chain draped across his waistcoat.

  ‘Welcome to Shenstone,’ he said. ‘Feel free to make this house your own, lads, while you’re here. There’s good shooting, as long as you don’t want anything very special, and there are river trout rising in the mere. Show them round the place, will you, Harry? I’ve some estate work to engage me till dinner, which will be at seven. Joseph, my valet, will help you all to dress.’

  Dinner was served in an old, crooked chamber with Tudor panelling and an eighteenth-century stucco ceiling. It was lit by silver candelabra placed on the dining table, and the mantelpiece of the open fireplace. It was very comfortable, and the two young visitors to Shenstone began to enjoy the unfamiliar luxury of relaxation.

  Mrs Napier, who apparently suffered from a liver complaint, was much better that evening, and enlivened the conversation at dinner by asking the two young men for details of their families, what they were reading, and whether they had yet formed any serious attachments to young ladies. She was an attractive, elegant woman, a little younger than her husband, and with the knack of making young men feel at ease.

  Next morning, the three friends went out with guns into the surrounding woodland, taking one of Mr Napier’s beaters with them, together with a handsome and eager golden retriever. They spent most of the morning shooting rabbits, and a number of game birds that rose from the coppices. It was great fun, and lacked the tense competitiveness of Rugby or rowing in one of the college eights.

  At eleven o’clock Harry excused himself, as he wanted to have a quiet chat with his father. Much had happened in College so far that Michaelmas Term, he said, and he wanted Mr Napier to know all about it. He was not often home during term time.

  He found his father waiting for him in the library, a fascinating room holding shelves full of ancient folios kept behind glass, and rows of seventeen and eighteenth-century calf bound books. As Harry well knew, few of them had ever been read. The Napiers had never been avid readers. Light came from two large lattice windows, one at either hand of the long chamber. The glass glowed with the escutcheons and blazons of the many ancient families allied to the Napiers. One window overlooked the bridge, the other, a formal garden, rather forlornly empty and tidied up for the winter.

  There were a number of dim portraits on the walls, and Harry knew that his father would not begin a conversation until he had paid homage to them. Evelyn Napier of Hunterville, died 11 August, 1588. The dead man’s face looked straight at him out of the picture, his eyes holding a mysterious reproach. He had been hanged at Tyburn for harbouring a priest in his country house at Hunterville, in Surrey. Dame Elizabeth Napier OSB, died 5 June 1774. Mother Superior of a convent of nuns at Calais. And finally, the man who had borne his own name, Blessed Henry Napier, martyred at Tyburn, 20 January, 1575. The full length portrait showed a pale, balding man in clerical robes, with a rope around his neck. A priest, he had been hanged, drawn and quartered, and his remains burnt to ashes. Harry Napier touched the portrait briefly, and his lips formed the words, Jesu, mercy, Mary, help.

  ‘I rec
eived your letter on Wednesday, Harry,’ said Harry’s father, who was sitting at a writing desk placed in the window embrasure. ‘You tell a good story, my boy, and a vexing story, too. You say here that they found the arm – and leg-bones, but not much else. They wouldn’t have found the ribs, or the backbone, or the bones of the feet, of course.’

  ‘Nor the head, Pa. Rumour has it that Becket’s head is in one of the French cathedrals.’ He smiled, and his father returned the smile.

  ‘Those friends of yours – I like them very much. You choose your friends well. But I’d advise you not to let them in on this particular venture. It wouldn’t be fair to involve non-Catholic folk in something that society in general might feel to be reprehensible.’

  ‘And not just society, Pa. The Cardinal will not be best pleased! Does Mother approve?’

  ‘She does. So lock the door, Harry, and we’ll get down to business.’

  Mr Napier unlocked a drawer in the desk, and brought out a massive volume bound in leather, with metal clasps holding it shut.

  ‘You are not often required to swear the oath on the Catholic Bible, Harry, but this, as you know, is one of those occasions.’

  Harry Napier knelt down, and placed his right hand on the Bible. He began to speak in low tones, and the words that he uttered were those of a solemn oath private to his family. It was quiet in the old, sunlit library, and the only sound was that of the Latin words of what was in effect part affirmation and part prayer.

  When it was done, Mr Napier rose, and crossed the room to one of the book shelves. He pressed a hidden spring, and the whole set of shelves swung inwards to reveal a draughty stone passage. Father and son descended a stone staircase which took them down to a floor of beaten earth. Light was provided by curious little mirrors in the walls, communicating with hidden light-slits in the black and white timbers of the house.

  A heavy wooden door lay before them, a door set in a stone arch, upon which was carved the same motto that stood above the doorway of the inner courtyard above. Lumen me regit, vos umbra. ‘The light ruleth me, the shadow ruleth thee.’

  Mr Napier lit a lantern which stood ready with a tinder box, and Harry followed his father into a long stone chamber, on either side of which were ancient tombs, most with a recumbent effigy placed on the lid. Further in, islands of shelves flanked the walls of the catacomb, each shelf containing the mouldering coffin of some ancestor. Finally, they came to an area where little could be seen other than a kind of tank or pit dug deep beside the end wall of the chamber. Mr Napier thrust the lantern near to the mouth of the pit.

  ‘It will be here,’ he said. ‘Beyond that wall is the modern family vault beneath the private chapel. And if it happens, as please God it will, I will brick up the door to the catacomb, and have the old secret door from the library converted to solid wall.’

  Father and son retraced their steps and regained the sunlit library.

  ‘Now, go and find those friends of yours,’ said Mr Napier, ‘and take them in to luncheon. I expect they’re starving by now! If they’ve potted a brace of rabbits, we can have rabbit stew for dinner!’

  8

  Day of Wrath

  Anthony Jardine stepped out of his house in Culpeper Gardens and looked up at the November sky. It formed a canopy of clear, cloudless blue, the kind of sky that was capable of lifting one’s heart in the uncertain weeks leading up to winter.

  Dora’s funeral had taken place at Botley Cemetery, four days earlier. Both children had offered to stay with him, but he had seen their anxiety to return to the lives that they had made for themselves, and had had no trouble in dissuading them.

  He had been invited to have luncheon with Professor and Mrs Gorringe, his next-door neighbours, knowing that the purpose of their invitation was to provide him with a welcome sanctuary from the humiliation of the public gaze. The police had discovered the house in Rose Hill Lane where he and Rachel played at being husband and wife. Gossiping neighbours had alerted the press, and Jackson’s Journal had told its readers about what it headlined ‘An Oxford Scandal’.

  While this unfortunate lady, sick and alone, made her last journey by tramcar to her cruel death, her husband, a distinguished Fellow of St Gabriel’s College, was keeping an assignation with a woman, as yet unidentified, whom he passed off as his wife in a house that he had purchased in a respectable road in Cowley. All will agree that such a man is a moral reprobate; some will make more sinister assumptions. The public awaits the results of the police investigation, and the censures of that man’s superiors at St Gabriel’s. Both ‘Town’ and ‘Gown’ need to be rid of this blot on their several reputations.

  Confound them and their mealy-mouthed hypocrisy! If they ventured to elaborate on what they called ‘more sinister assumptions’, he would sue them for libel. His colleagues had acted as though nothing whatever had happened, making it clear in various ways, overt and covert, that they regarded him as an innocent man whose wife had been murdered. To have hinted at moral reprobation in a colleague would have been considered irredeemably vulgar.

  Arthur and Amy Gorringe had proved themselves to be true and loyal friends, showing him kindnesses far above what he deserved. But from Rachel there had been no word. So far, neither police nor press knew that Rachel Noble was the woman who had posed as ‘Mrs Charles Jordan’. Why had she not written to him? She was quite right, of course, not to risk her reputation by providing him with an alibi for the evening of Dora’s murder: he would never have permitted that. But surely…?

  He walked up his neighbour’s path and rang the bell. The door was opened immediately by the Gorringes’ elderly butler, a thin, balding man dressed in rusty black. Entering his host’s house was to find himself in an earlier era, for it was furnished in the heavy early Victorian style which had been publicly celebrated in the Great Exhibition of 1851.

  The rooms contained massive pieces of carved furniture adorned with bunches of mahogany grapes and the pensive heads of carved monks. There was a great deal of marble statuary, mainly depicting lightly-clad young ladies carrying urns on their frail shoulders. All the rooms were covered in the dark floral papers popular in the days before the dawning of the Arts and Crafts movement. The only modern items were the elaborate electric chandeliers with their array of little globes; beside the door of each room was the brass ‘switch’, used to send the electric light to the globes.

  And yet, for all its heavy curtains and stands supporting potted aspidistras, it was a warm and cheerful house, much more so than his own house had ever been. Apart from the old butler, whose name was Munt, there were three maids, a cook, and a scullery maid. Professor Gorringe was a quietly prosperous man.

  ‘Come in, Jardine,’ said Gorringe. ‘We’ve a guest for luncheon today, somebody who’s written some intriguing things about both our specialist periods.’

  ‘It’s not that rotter Count Raphael Savident is it?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Gorringe permitted himself a chuckle. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ He lowered his voice, and added: ‘Is it true that Betty’s mother has taken her away from you? Munt mumbled something about it yesterday.’

  ‘It was true enough, Gorringe,’ said Jardine, smiling. ‘But after one day’s absence, Betty threw a tantrum, if that’s the right word, and Mother was obliged to send her back to me. I expect the £16 a year Betty earns had something to do with it, as well!’

  The old professor chuckled again.

  ‘Come up to the drawing room,’ he said, ‘Amy’s there with our guest. We’ll have a glass of sherry, and then go down to luncheon.’

  As soon as Anthony Jardine entered the room his eyes were drawn to a beautiful woman who had risen from a sofa to greet him. The mere sight of her left him entranced. He scarcely acknowledged his hostess, as he found it well-nigh impossible to withdraw his gaze from the Gorringes’ guest.

  He saw a woman of hi
s own age, raven-haired, with dark intelligent eyes and an olive complexion that betrayed her Mediterranean origin. She was wearing a day dress of stiff mauve silk, matched with a cream high-collared jacket and a pelerine cape of dark lace. There was something infinitely distinguished about her clothes which spoke to Jardine of French provenance; little Mrs Gorringe could have told him that they were the product of Monsieur Worth’s Paris salon. The whole ensemble formed a welcome contrast to his own deep mourning.

  The woman rose, and gracefully extended a hand to greet him. It was a typical Gallic gesture; an English lady would have remained seated. Jardine took her hand, and in a manner not typical of him, bowed over it.

  ‘Jardine,’ said Arthur Gorringe, ‘may I introduce Madame Elodie Deschamps, Archivist of the Frankish Library at Aix la Chapelle. She has come to deliver a lecture at St James’s College on Philip II of France and his secret correspondence with King John.’

  ‘I think, Anthony,’ said Amy Gorringe, with a hint of mockery in her voice, ‘that you should release Madame Deschamps’ hand, now. You’ve taken possession of it for far too long.’

  Jardine stammered his apologies. The French woman laughed.

  ‘I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Jardine,’ she said, in perfect English. Her voice, he thought, was both melodious and seductive. ‘Professor Gorringe has told me of your discoveries at St Gabriel’s College. Perhaps, over le déjeuner, you would give me an account of it. It may be that I can add to your knowledge of Becket’s remains from my own studies in France and Germany.’

  After drinking a glass of the Professor’s powerful Oloroso sherry, they went down to lunch, served in the Gorringes’ heavily-furnished dining room. The old butler supervised the parlour maid and her assistant as they served a substantial meal of ox-tail soup, fried tripe, and rump steak served with broccoli, mashed potatoes, gravy and bread sauce. This was followed by Victoria pudding and savoury biscuits.