Murder Is Academic

by Christine Poulson

  ‘Fine.’

  It was only six o’clock, but a murky twilight was descending and it was growing dark inside the house. I took a bottle of Chablis from the fridge. In the bedroom I cleared a stack of books off the bedside table to make room for the wine and glasses. The heat at the top of the house was stifling, the air heavy and stale. I pulled the pins out of my bun and shook my hair free, running my hands through it close to my scalp. I opened the window: a blast of cold air came in. After a few seconds I closed it and stood gazing out towards Ely. Thick curtains of rain were sweeping across the plain. The outline of the cathedral became blurred and then disappeared. There was a flash of lightning overhead, rapidly followed by a roll of thunder that cracked like a whip. Huge drops of rain began to fall, at first slowly, then more urgently, thrashing the leaves on the trees and pock-marking the surface of the stream.

  Stephen’s car turned into the drive. I raced down the stairs to let him in. As he ran down the path, the skies opened. It was if someone was emptying buckets of water over him. He plunged through the door, gasping and pushing his hair back. I slammed the door behind him as if the storm might follow him into the house. Water was streaming off him. He kicked off his shoes, peeled off his sodden jacket and dropped it on the floor. We stepped into each other’s arms. Leaning against him, eyes closed and my face pressed against his shoulder, I breathed in the familiar citrus scent of his cologne mingled with wet, freshly laundered shirt. The dampness soaked into my shirt and made me shiver. I pulled away and got a towel from the kitchen.

  We climbed the first flight of stairs with our arms wrapped around each other’s waists. The second flight was narrowed by the books I’d piled on either side of each tread. We went up single file, Stephen towelling his hair as he followed me.

  Sheets of rain were sliding down the bedroom windows. The view out across the fens wavered, dissolved, reformed.

  I left my clothes where they fell and got into bed. Stephen did the same. I poured the wine and handed it to him.

  ‘I thought you were saving this for a special occasion.’

  ‘Isn’t every day a special occasion?’ I raised my glass. ‘To “days of wine and roses”.’

  Stephen touched his glass to mine.

  ‘“They are not long…”,’ he said, ‘Isn’t that how it goes? Tennyson?’

  ‘Ernest Dowson. One of the poets of the decadence.’

  Stephen picked up a handful of my hair and held it up to the light. Red and gold strands glistened among the brown.

  ‘There’s something decadent about making love to a woman with hair down to her waist. Have you ever thought of cutting it?’

  I looked into the familiar face: the hazel eyes with their heavy lids, the slightly aquiline nose.

  ‘Never,’ I said. I leaned across and pressed my lips to his. His arms tightened around me.

  A little later, a wine glass rolled off the bed. I heard it crack as it hit the wooden floor, but it was too late.

  * * *

  I awoke with a jolt. For a few moments I couldn’t think where I was or what time of day it was. The bedside light was on. Beyond its circle of light the room was dim. The clock on the bedside table said five to ten. Next to it was a half-full bottle of wine and one empty wine glass. My mouth was dry and I was heavy with sleep. I pulled myself up against the pillows. My hair was everywhere, stuck to my back, netted over my breasts. I gathered it up in both hands and pushed it back over my shoulders. Clothes were strewn around the bed, some of them Stephen’s. The day came back in a rush: Margaret’s study, the letters, the storm, the urgent love-making, and afterwards our bodies stuck together with sweat.

  A distant clatter of pans and a droning noise, which I recognized as Stephen singing, told me that he had gone down to the kitchen to start cooking.

  I got out of bed and opened the window. The wet garden glinted in the light from the house. The rain had sharpened the scent of the flowers and there was a delicious freshness in the air. In the deepening twilight only Bill Bailey’s white paws, chest and muzzle were visible as he strolled down the garden path.

  I poured myself a glass of wine, got back into bed and pulled the sheet up over my breasts. Presently, I heard Stephen coming up the stairs. He appeared in the doorway with a tray. He was wearing only a tea towel knotted round his waist.

  ‘You know, you’re in pretty good shape for a man of your age,’ I said.

  ‘Why, thank you. I can cook, too. Here we have penne with anchovies, olives and capers.’

  He put the tray in the middle of the bed and clambered in next to me. We ate in ravenous and appreciative silence. When we had finished, Stephen moved the tray and pulled me towards him. I put my head on his shoulder. He shifted round to kiss me, but I put a hand on his shoulder to hold him off.

  ‘I want to ask you something. How easy do you think it would be to drown yourself in a swimming pool? On purpose, I mean.’

  ‘Ah. So that’s the lie of the land? I thought there was something up. Well…’

  He lay back, looking at the ceiling as he thought this over.

  At last he said, ‘I think it would be difficult, that’s assuming you could swim. And Margaret could, I assume?’

  ‘She was a good swimmer.’

  ‘Well, you’d have to overcome a powerful physical instinct for survival. Drink or drugs could do it. Of course the pathologist will have checked for those in Margaret’s blood.’

  ‘That’ll come out at the inquest, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but it still wouldn’t prove that she’d killed herself. It might just be that she fell in accidentally and was too drunk to get out again.’

  Stephen shifted round so that he could look into my face. ‘But why are you asking? There’s something you haven’t told me, isn’t there? Have you found out that Malcolm was having an affair?’

  I turned my face away.

  ‘There is something, though, isn’t there?’ he persisted.

  ‘You won’t tell anyone?’

  ‘Cass! I wouldn’t have lasted long as a lawyer if I didn’t know how to be discreet.’

  ‘I know. OK.’

  I told him about the letters.

  He let out his breath in a long sigh.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

  ‘You don’t sound very surprised.’

  ‘I thought there was more to this than met the eye. I just didn’t know what. Do you think Malcolm had any idea?’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

  ‘You know, it’s amazing what people can keep secret. One of my first jobs when I qualified was acting for a woman who had just discovered that her late husband had another wife – and child – tucked away for the last ten years of their marriage. Neither of them knew a thing about the other.’

  I was longing for a cigarette. Lying in bed talking: this was one of the times when I missed smoking most. I realized that I had made a mistake having that cigarette on the day of Margaret’s funeral. I rolled over, took a packet of extra strong mints out of the drawer of the bedside table and offered one to Stephen.

  As he took it, he said, ‘What folly though, keeping those letters. It’s amazing the way that people will hang on to incriminating evidence.’

  ‘They were all she had left of Lucy.’

  ‘You said she was dead. What happened exactly?’

  ‘Climbing accident, in the Peak District.’

  ‘Do you think there was any chance of her leaving Malcolm?’

  I sat up and rested my arms on my raised knees while I thought about this.

  ‘Doubt it, really. She was so down on that sort of thing – people breaking up their marriages. And the scandal: her successful career here, the kudos of it, it all meant such a lot to her.’

  ‘Would it have been such a scandal? People are more enlightened than that, aren’t they – especially here?’

  I considered this. ‘Well, in a way they are, of course. Academically there is a lot of focus on homosexuality, and it’s somet
imes quite confrontational: Queer Theory is the latest thing – yes, it is really called that! And there are plenty of gay dons, there always have been, but it’s very much a male thing and there’s still quite a lot of misogyny around. Running off with a woman, and a student, at that…’

  ‘So she was on course to destroy both her private and her professional life.’ He pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘When sensible people make a mistake, they often do it big-time. Pity she didn’t destroy those letters.’

  ‘But lucky I found them and did it for her.’

  In the silence that ensued there was a thin, high wail like the cry of a baby. I got up and opened the bedroom door. Bill Bailey stalked in. When I turned to get back into bed, I saw that Stephen had propped himself on his elbow. He was staring at me as though I’d just lobbed a hand grenade into the bed.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  He went on looking at me with an expression of exaggerated incredulity.

  ‘WHAT?’

  He flung himself back onto the pillows. ‘How could you do that, Cassandra?’

  ‘You’ve just said yourself she should have destroyed them.’

  ‘But she didn’t,’ he said, emphasizing every word. ‘She did not destroy them. And it wasn’t your place to do it for her. What did you do, burn them?’

  I nodded. ‘Stephen, I couldn’t let Malcolm see those letters. It would tear him apart.’

  ‘It wasn’t up to you to decide that, Cassandra. They were evidence that should have been put before the coroner.’

  ‘Evidence of what? You said yourself that it’ll be difficult to tell if Margaret committed suicide. Why should Malcolm suffer more than he already is? He’s the innocent party in all this.’

  ‘As far as you know,’ Stephen said grimly. ‘Suppose he got wind of the affair and gave Margaret a helping hand into the pool?’

  I stared at him. ‘You don’t really think that.’

  ‘How the hell do I know?’

  ‘But … no, he wouldn’t…’

  At the sight of my stricken face he relented.

  ‘Oh, well, probably not. You said he was away on business, didn’t you? The police will have checked that out. But even so … And another thing, how can you be sure that you’re the only one who knows about this?’

  This stopped me in my tracks. ‘It was a secret. Lucy said so in her last letter.’

  ‘Really, Cassandra, for an intelligent woman, you are remarkably stupid sometimes. For all you know Lucy could have had a string of jealous lovers. She might have married, too, like Margaret!’

  Chapter Five

  From a bench outside the French windows of the Senior Common Room, I could hear a murmur of conversation from within. The end of term lunch of salmon and mayonnaise, strawberries and cream was over and I had slipped out with my cup of coffee. The storm of the previous night had cleared the air and the fine weather had returned. The carefully tended garden with the trees, its shaved lawns and its flower-beds spread out before me in the sunshine. When I came for my interview at St Etheldreda’s, I had been charmed by the domestic scale of its neo-Georgian revival architecture, and red brick and white paint, like an immense doll’s house. It was comforting to think that so many students and teachers had wandered in this garden for so long. The size of the copper beech testified to that. Probably it had been here before the college.

  I leaned back, closed my eyes and let the sun soak into me.

  First thing that morning I had gone into the college registry and got out Lucy Hambleton’s file. I looked at the next of kin box: Angela Hambleton. It was scrawled in a casual hand, one that was familiar to me from the letters. I felt a pang at the sight of that routine entry, which she little suspected would one day be needed. I skimmed the rest of the form. There was nothing to suggest she had ever been married. I noted that she was twenty-eight, a mature student in fact. I remembered now that she had been a bit older than the normal postgraduate. That made me feel a bit better about her relationship with Margaret. I saw she had been working as a qualified librarian at Durham University before being accepted to do a PhD at St Etheldreda’s, working under Alison Stirling, our specialist in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature. Because Lucy wasn’t working on the nineteenth century, I hadn’t had much to do with her. I looked at the photograph attached to the form: a narrow, bony face with a nose that was very slightly crooked, shoulder-length dark hair swept back from her face. Her chin was tilted up a little: there was something confident, even challenging, in her expression. The knowledge that she had less than a year to live added a poignancy, a kind of innocence to the photograph.

  A shadow fell on my face. I opened my eyes.

  ‘You look as if you need a drink.’

  Alison was standing next to me, holding two glasses of wine. I squinted up at her. She was one of those big women who suit being a little overweight.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she said.

  ‘Mmm, just came out to be on my own for a few minutes. The social effort was just too much.’

  ‘Know what you mean.’ She made a face. ‘Still, I suppose it wouldn’t have done to cancel the end of term party. Want me to leave you alone?’

  ‘No, no,’ I patted the bench next to me.

  She handed me a glass and sat down.

  ‘At least it means the year’s over, and what a hell of a year it’s been,’ Alison said. ‘First, Lucy – one of the most promising postgrads I’ve ever supervised by the way, tragic waste – and now Margaret. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  I shot a sideways glance at her. She had lifted her face up to receive the sun. Her hair fell back from her forehead. She was nearly fifty, but her hair was still so dark, nearly black. There was just one white streak, so striking that you might have thought she’d dyed it.

  ‘What does it make you think?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, you know, carpe diem and all that, gather ye rosebuds while ye may. We none of us know how long we’ve got.’

  I relaxed. It wasn’t likely that she knew about Lucy and Margaret, but just for a moment I had wondered …

  ‘Too true,’ I said.

  Alison looked at me with an expression so consciously sly that it was comical.

  ‘So, how about you and that boyfriend of yours, Cass?’ she said. ‘You’ve been hanging about long enough. Why don’t you get married? How old is he, forty? Just right for you. No point in hanging about, especially if you want to have children.’

  She was a little drunk, I realized. I was feeling light-headed, too, less from alcohol than from tiredness.

  ‘There’s just the small point that he hasn’t actually asked me. A technicality, I know…’

  ‘Oh, come on. If you gave him the slightest encouragement … I’ve seen the way he looks at you when he thinks no one’s looking. Don’t look at me like that, you know I’m right.’

  I had a mental image of Stephen sitting up in bed with an outraged expression in his face. We had made things up, but our goodnights had still been cool. I had decided I wouldn’t ring him for a few days.

  ‘I don’t think we’re all that well suited, to tell you the truth. Anyway, I’ve got no intention of getting married again. Twice is enough, too much even.’

  ‘Twice? Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. But the first time: that was when you were a student, wasn’t it? Just boy-and-girl stuff. A false start.’

  ‘To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.’

  Aiden emerged from the other French windows further down the façade. With an air of manifest relief he took a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit up. I found myself wishing that some of the smoke would drift my way.

  I was about to beckon him over to bum a fag off him, when Alison shook her head and frowned at me.

  I was amused. ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’

  ‘I know we needed new blood in the department, but why did Margaret and Lawrence have to choose Aiden?’ she grumbled.
/>   ‘That book on Coleridge – very impressive. And he’s popular with students.’

  ‘Too popular. Thinks he’s a cross between Lord Byron and Jack Nicholson.’

  I smiled. He did look a bit like a young Jack Nicholson.

  ‘He does have a certain louche charm.’

  His hand went to his hair in an automatic smoothing gesture. He did this so often that it seemed as though it might account for his receding hairline.

  ‘I asked him why he always wears black – such an affectation,’ Alison said.

  ‘A lot of young people do that.’

  ‘He’s not that young – must be at least thirty. Anyway, he said, “I’m not in mourning for my life, if that’s what you’re thinking”, and he positively leered at me.’

  ‘Leered? How very Edwardian! Pity he hasn’t got a moustache to twirl!’

  Alison laughed. ‘Oh, I know I’m an intolerant old bat, but I do like the students to be students and the members of staff to be members of staff. I’ve seen him in the bar, surrounded by giggling girls. I only hope he’s not sleeping with any of them – or all of them.’

  Lawrence appeared at the French windows a few feet away.

  How much had he heard, I wondered.

  ‘Ah, Cassandra, there you are,’ he said, his tone carrying the implication that it was quite unreasonable of me to be sitting here in the sun when he had been searching for me inside. ‘I wonder, could you spare me a few minutes? In my office?’

  * * *

  ‘I want to offer you the position of Acting Head of Department.’

  Strangely enough, this possibility hadn’t occurred to me before. I’d never thought of myself as an administrator, and if I’d thought at all about who would replace Margaret – and my feet had hardly touched the ground since she died – I’d just assumed that after a decent interval her job would be advertised. Of course, it could take months to get the right person, so it made sense that someone would be in charge in the meantime, and why shouldn’t that someone be me? I had a much stronger publication record than either Merfyn or Alison, and I was senior to Aiden, who’d only been with us a year. But still, there was something I didn’t understand here. It was more to do with Lawrence’s manner than his actual words.