‘So … just for a few months, until we find a replacement?’
Lawrence was sitting in a high leather chair behind a huge mahogany desk, and I was sitting in an armchair on the other side. The arrangement, intended to disguise the fact that he was several inches shorter than me, actually made me more aware of it. It was warm in his office, but he hadn’t unbuttoned the jacket of the pinstriped suit he always wore.
‘A little longer, say a year? There’ll be a few hundred a year on your salary, of course.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘And perhaps a grade up the scale. I can’t really offer you more than that,’ he said, misinterpreting the puzzled expression on my face.
The gleaming surface of his desk was bare except for a pad of paper and a silver propelling pencil. He picked it up and began to slide it up and down between his fingers.
‘But – a year? I don’t understand. We’ll have someone in place before then, won’t we?’
What he said next was even more unexpected.
‘As the only department that doesn’t teach a language, the English Literature Department has always been something of an anomaly. And a relatively recent one at that.’
It was true that the college had always specialized in languages. The English department dated only from the 1950s when the place had been run by a power-mad literary critic intent on founding an empire. St Etheldreda’s had been founded in 1920 by a manufacturer of patent foods and pills as a memorial to his only son, killed in the First World War. He had intended to promote internationalism by educating the future wives and mothers of the nation in the language and cultures of other countries.
Lawrence leant forward, hands clasped in front of him on the desk. The pale blue eyes looked into mine. He was waiting for a response.
‘You surely haven’t called me to discuss the history of the college?’ I said.
‘Quite right. It’s the future of the college that I have to consider, rather than its past, Cassandra. As you know, the next Research Assessment Exercise takes place in approximately eighteen months’ time. Our future funding is absolutely dependent on our performance. By this time next year, I want absolutely every single academic in this college to be able to contribute publications of some significance for our submission to the RAE.’
‘Ah.’ The penny had dropped.
‘I see we understand each other.’
Lawrence opened a drawer in his desk and took out a folder. ‘A few months ago I requested members of staff to submit details of their publications to me as a dummy run. You will remember doing that yourself, Cassandra.’
He pulled out a single sheet of paper and held it out to me.
‘This is Alison Stirling’s submission.’
There were a couple of book reviews and an article for a middlebrow journal, Writers and their Times.
‘Woefully inadequate, you’ll have to agree. And as for Merfyn…’ He spread his hands in a gesture of dismissal. ‘Worse than inadequate: embarrassing. It used to be possible to build a whole career on a book that hadn’t been written. No longer.’
‘This really isn’t fair,’ I protested. ‘They’re both excellent teachers, first-rate in Alison’s case.’
‘That doesn’t cut any ice with our lords and masters these days, unless it’s backed up by publications. I can’t give you more than a year to turn things round.’
‘And then what?’
Lawrence shrugged.
I gaped at him. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘I think you’ll find that the board of trustees will back me up. Of course, we’d be sorry to lose you and Aiden Frazer, fine academics both of you, but—’ He shook his head. ‘Two out of four, it just isn’t enough.’
I was having difficulty taking this in.
Lawrence said, ‘Do you accept my offer, Cassandra?’
He leant forward, hands clasped, and looked into my eyes. I needed time to think. I shifted my gaze. My attention was caught momentarily by a flicker of light at the edge of my vision: the Virginia creeper around the casement window sifted the sunlight into dappled patterns on the carpet. A perplexed bluebottle was throwing itself against the window and buzzing fiercely. Lawrence cleared his throat. My moment of indecision had gone on too long. I thought of Merfyn and Alison, who had a sick husband dependent on her. They were both pushing fifty and neither of them would ever get another job. Even for me it would be touch and go. I thought of my bank balance, my mortgage and my book-laden house out in the fens. Academic life is like a game of musical chairs these days; every now and then someone takes a chair away. I couldn’t risk being the one left standing when the music stopped.
‘I’ll do it.’
‘You’d better move into Margaret’s office so that you’ll have Cathy at hand.’
Cathy! Why hadn’t I thought of her? She was struggling alone to raise a teenage daughter and was as vulnerable as any of us.
‘What about Cathy? Would she also have to go, along with the rest of us?’
Lawrence shook his head. ‘Secretarial skill is transferable. She could be deployed elsewhere in the college.’
As I was getting up to go, another thought struck me.
‘Did you tell Margaret that you were thinking of closing the department?’ I asked Lawrence.
There was a pause. He pushed his chair back into a patch of sunshine. The strong light behind him blurred his features so that I couldn’t read his expression.
At last he said. ‘Not in so many words. But she would have been a fool if she hadn’t realized that the writing was on the wall. And, whatever else she might have been, Margaret was no fool.’
* * *
‘Why didn’t Margaret tell me what was going on?’ I asked Cathy.
It was the following day and we were sitting over a cup of coffee in Margaret’s office. The night before, I’d slept twelve hours and woken up feeling as if I’d been under an anaesthetic. I still felt groggy. Cathy didn’t look too good either. She was pale and her eyes were bloodshot. I’d never seen her so subdued. Even her dark, springy hair seemed flatter than usual.
‘I think she was trying to get Alison and Merfyn up to speed first,’ Cathy said. ‘And that was starting to happen. At least, I know that a couple of weeks ago Alison gave Margaret an outline for an article that she thought she might write.’
‘Every little helps.’
The cornerstones of our RAE submission would have to be Margaret’s biography of Charlotte Yonge, I thought, and my own book on Victorian poetry that was nearly finished.
‘And then there’s Aiden,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘No problems there.’
Cathy seemed about to say something, then she shook her head.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘Margaret did say something about Aiden. I can’t quite remember what, but I know she thought there was a problem.’
I’d have to look into that.
‘But Alison and Merfyn know what the situation is?’
Cathy nodded. ‘She put a rocket under them. I don’t know exactly what she said, of course, but I saw Merfyn when he came out: he looked a bit shaken up. He was supposed to come and see her again before the end of term.’
‘When exactly?’
Margaret’s office diary was lying on the desk beside us. Cathy reached for it and flicked it open. She ran her finger down the pages for the previous week.
‘Oh,’ she said.
I gave her a look of enquiry. She turned the diary towards me and pointed to the entry.
3.30 p.m. on the previous Friday.
The day of the funeral.
The entry had been made in Margaret’s own neat hand. After it, in brackets, she’d written ‘with first chapter of book.’
I sighed. ‘I’d better find out what’s going on.’
‘I’ll ring him and ask him to come and see you, shall I?’
‘No, no, I’ll do it. I don’t want him to feel that I’m … well, that I’m…
’
‘Pulling rank?’ She looked at me quizzically.
‘I want to tread carefully.’
Cathy pushed her glasses up onto her hair, got to her feet, and collected the coffee mugs. She stood there hesitating and frowning. I wondered what she wanted to say. She’d worked closely with Margaret, and had probably known her better than anyone else in the department. If anyone had known what was going on between Margaret and Lucy, it would have been Cathy.
She put the mugs back on the table, but still didn’t speak.
‘What is it, Cathy?’
‘Would I still be kept on if, you know, if things came to the worst? Margaret told me that I’d be OK. She knew I was worried about Hannah – with her still being at school – and I don’t get much from her dad in the way of maintenance.’
‘Sorry, of course, I should have mentioned that earlier. The college would keep you on. Lawrence said so. You’ll be all right, I promise.’
When she had gone, I let myself have a few minutes to gather my thoughts. Margaret’s office was a spacious room on the first floor of the college. The sun was striking through the Venetian blinds onto a deep red Persian rug. That wasn’t college issue, nor was the single painting on the wall, an abstract of red, black and white squares. I’d have to take them round to Malcolm, along with her other personal possessions. There wouldn’t be much. Unlike most academics – my office was a chaos of books and paper – Margaret was a minimalist. I opened the desk drawer. There was a box of Tampax, a toothbrush in a case, a small tube of toothpaste, a packet of Fisherman’s Friend, and nothing else. The desk was almost bare, too. The only decorative object was a small round black lacquer box containing paperclips. I looked at it more closely. On the lid was a painting of a woman swathed in white furs standing in a sleigh pulled by a dappled horse. The strong, clear colours – red, yellow, orange – stood out sharply against the black background. It looked like an illustration to a fairy tale, but I couldn’t quite think what.
With an effort I turned my attention back to the matter in hand. What was I going to say to Merfyn?
When I’d first met him about fifteen years ago, he was a dashing young lecturer with a penchant for wearing cloaks and fedoras, and I was a humble research student. I was in awe of him. He’d recently published some groundbreaking articles on the super-natural in Victorian fiction and was known to be working on an important book on the subject. He seemed light-years ahead of me, in a different league altogether. He’d been something of a mentor. But over the years there’d been a gradual shift in our positions. Merfyn’s book didn’t appear – and people stopped expecting it to. When my own book on Victorian women poets was published, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t just drawn level with Merfyn, I had overtaken him. Merfyn still talked as though the book would be finished one day, but I didn’t really believe it any more and I wondered if he did.
Putting this discussion off wasn’t helping. I punched in the number of Merfyn’s extension, cravenly hoping that he wouldn’t answer or that, if he did, he wouldn’t be free. But he did, and he was; he would come straight round to my office.
When he arrived, he was wearing the same linen suit, even more crumpled, that he had worn on the day of the funeral. I gestured towards two armchairs on either side of a coffee table. He sank into one and placed a decrepit briefcase at his feet. I took the chair opposite.
There was a moment when neither of us seemed to know what to say.
‘How’s Celia?’ I asked. Merfyn’s wife was a high-flying civil servant in the Home Office.
‘Oh, fine. She’s always complaining about her minister, but she loves it all really.’
‘And the girls?’
‘Oh, fine, fine.’
There was a short silence.
I took a deep breath, but before I could plunge in, Merfyn said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll feel that congratulations are in order, Cass, under the circumstances, but for what it’s worth, I’m sure you’re the right person to take over from Margaret.’
‘Thanks, Merfyn. Yes, it’s something of a poisoned chalice. You know, we really have got our backs to the wall.’
He nodded. ‘The RAE, yes, I know.’
He delved into his case and pulled out a bulging blue cardboard folder. He presented it to me with a flourish.
‘I think this will relieve your mind to a certain extent.’
Pulling out the top page, I saw it was headed ‘Chapter One’.
‘What’s this? It’s not…?’
Merfyn was beaming all over his face.
‘It is? It’s your book? But that’s…’
For a few moments, words failed me.
‘It’s, well, what can I say? It’s just great!’
‘No need to hide your amazement,’ Merfyn said. ‘I’m pretty surprised myself. And my publishers must have despaired of it years ago. I’ll have to break it to them gently, they might have a collective heart attack!’
I read out loud the title of the first chapter. ‘“Is there anyone there?” Spiritualism in the mid-nineteenth century. Wow! How much is there here?’
‘First four chapters. I’ll push on with it over the summer. And I’ve got a few weeks’ study leave in the Lent term next year. I’ve got masses of material, some of it partly written up. I’ve never quite been able to work out how to put it all together until now. It could be finished in the spring if I really go at it.’
I flipped over the pages of Merfyn’s typescript, reading a sentence here and there.
‘This looks absolutely fascinating. Didn’t people like Ruskin and Tennyson and Browning attend séances in the 1860s?’
‘Absolutely right. They really took it seriously. Of course mediums were often exposed as charlatans, but not always by any means. Have you heard of the American medium, John Dunglas Home?’
I shook my head.
Merfyn leaned forward, clasped his hands between his knees and prepared to give me a little lecture. ‘He took London society by storm in the 1860s. The most extraordinary things happened at his séances; the room vibrated, objects flew about, people were chilled by cool breezes, music was produced by invisible instruments. On one occasion, reputable witnesses claimed to have seen him float in through a first-floor window.’
‘Some sort of hypnosis?’ I hazarded.
‘Perhaps. Or maybe some sort of superior conjuring trick.’
Absently, I went on turning the pages. Hadn’t I heard him say something like this before? Something about a conjuring trick? When had that been?
‘Actually,’ he was continuing, ‘in Home’s case, no one managed to prove that he was a fraud.’
A picture was forming in my mind: Merfyn and I pausing on a threshold, about to move from the brightness of a sunny day into a dim interior.
‘One has to approach all this with an open mind. Just occasionally, the evidence is extraordinarily compelling. In fact…’ His voice trailed away.
When had that been? And what exactly had he said to me?
Merfyn was asking me a question.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘I said, have you ever been to a séance, Cassandra?’
I shook my head.
‘You don’t believe that … well, that something of us could survive after death?’ he asked.
‘I don’t say that exactly. But surely the whole spiritualism thing – mediums and séances – that’s all phoney isn’t it?’
With an air of decision Merfyn sat up straight and said. ‘Can I confide in you, Cassandra?’
Oh dear, I thought. When someone asks you that, it’s never really a question, is it? He scarcely paused for breath, before plunging on.
‘That’s how my writer’s block was cured, Cassandra. At a séance.’
‘At a séance?’
My voice carried more disbelief than I had intended. Merfyn flushed.
‘I might have known you’d react like this. Conventional academic thinking is so blinkered. Are you going to let me explain,
or are you just going to shoot me down in flames?’
‘OK, OK. All right, go on.’
‘Look, I was desperate. I’d had so many false starts with the book, given up so many times, and then Margaret told me that I was jeopardizing the future of the department, so I had to produce something.’
‘But why did you think going to a séance would help?’
‘I thought I might begin the book with a description of a séance. I was as sceptical as you are. I thought it might be a way in, that’s all. To begin with, nothing happened. There were one or two messages for other people – breathtaking in their banality, to be perfectly honest. And then something quite different happened.’
Merfyn narrowed his eyes in concentration, as if he was visualizing the scene.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What happened??’
‘The medium started groping around the table. One of the others seemed to know what she wanted. There was a pen and some paper in the middle of the table. He pushed it towards her and then, well, something extraordinary happened.’
Despite my scepticism, I was sitting on the edge of my seat.
‘She pushed it towards me,’ Merfyn said, ‘and the man sitting next to me nudged me to let me know that I was meant to pick it up. Then, well, it’s difficult to describe, but I seemed to slip into a kind of trance, my hand started moving of its own accord, and I just found myself writing, on and on. And when I’d finished there were several pages. What I’d got was the beginning of my book, more or less as it is there.’
He gestured towards the folder that I was still holding on my knee.
I stared at him, speechless.
And it was at that precise moment that there was a knocking sound, scarcely audible. A gentle rat-tat-tat. Merfyn’s eyes widened. My mouth went dry. Neither of us spoke and then it came again, a little louder. Our heads swivelled towards the door. The handle turned, it slid open, Cathy’s dark curly hair and then her face appeared round the edge of the door.
‘I’m frightfully sorry, I wouldn’t have interrupted you, but I’ve got Lawrence on the line. He needs to know immediately if you can attend a meeting for departmental heads at ten o’clock on Monday morning.’
Murder Is Academic Page 6