Murder Is Academic

by Christine Poulson

  I turned my attention to my book on the Victorian novel and opened it where I had marked a place with a strip of paper, I read a few lines.

  The evangelicalism of the first half of the nineteenth century was a potent force in the lives of many writers and thinkers. Even those such as George Eliot and John Ruskin, who rejected the evangelical faith of their childhoods, could not entirely throw off its influence. For George Eliot, duty remained an absolute moral imperative, even when God had become ‘inconceivable’ and immortality ‘unbelievable’.

  There was a knock on the door and Rebecca came in. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes late. She caught the gesture, but didn’t say anything. I examined her face. Was this just sloppy timekeeping, or a carefully judged gesture of defiance? Probably the latter, but I decided to let it go: better to keep my powder dry.

  Rebecca sat down in the chair next to my desk and anchored two curtains of mousy hair behind her ears. We contemplated each other in silence. Her large, smooth freckled face made me think of an egg. She had prominent green eyes with heavy lids. Her mouth was small and pursed, a little sulky in its set.

  I picked up her essay and read out the first few lines aloud.

  The Evangelicalism of the early nineteenth century was an important force in the lives of many writers and thinkers. Even those like George Eliot and John Ruskin, who later rejected the Evangelical faith off their childhood, remained under it’s influence. For George Eliot, Duty remained an absolute moral value, even though God had become ‘inconcievable’ and Immortality ‘unbelievable’.

  ‘Can you explain to me, Rebecca, how it is that the first page of your essay is virtually identical to the beginning of Chapter Four of my own book?’

  I gestured to where it lay open on the desk.

  Her eyes flickered away from mine. ‘It’s not exactly the same.’

  ‘Oh, come on. The odd word has been changed and you’ve introduced some mistakes in spelling and punctuation, unintentionally no doubt. Nothing more. And this hasn’t been the only problem with your work lately, has it?’ I gestured towards her file. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me? A personal problem, perhaps…?’

  I expected to hear of a broken love affair, an illness in the family, or parents divorcing. She said nothing.

  ‘All right, I’m going to give you one more chance. Go away, put your books to one side, and rewrite this in your own words. I want to see you back here on Monday morning at nine o’clock with a new essay.’

  ‘By Monday!’ she burst out. ‘I’ve got rowing practice this afternoon and there’s a race tomorrow.’

  ‘Academic work takes precedence over sport, you know that, Rebecca.’

  She put a hand on the edge of my desk and drummed her fingers. I let my eyes drop to her hand and then raised them to meet her gaze. After a moment she looked away and removed her hand, but her chin was still lifted defiantly and her small mouth was tight with anger.

  The interview wasn’t going as I had expected. I was surprised by her intransigence. Students don’t mean to cheat as a rule, and they quickly apologize when they realize what they’ve done wrong. And even if they do mean to cheat, they’re usually smart enough to play dumb and put on a show of being contrite.

  ‘If I don’t have this essay by next week, and if I’m not satisfied that it’s all your own work, I’ll have to inform the Master. You could be suspended from the college.’

  Finally I seemed to have got through to her. Her lips were still pressed tightly together, but her eyes were brimming. One single tear spilled over and wound its way down her cheek.

  ‘What is it, Rebecca?’ I asked more gently. I took a tissue from the box on my desk and handed it to her.

  Her face crumpled. The corners of her mouth went down in a grimace. She looked like a child about to have a tantrum. For a few moments she struggled to speak. Eventually a single word emerged.

  ‘Lucy,’ she said.

  My heart stopped for a moment, and then lurched. Then I thought perhaps she didn’t mean Lucy Hambleton. Names go in fashions and the college was full of Lucys, Emmas and Kates.

  ‘Rebecca, you’d better tell me what this is all about.’

  ‘I thought she loved me. She did love me until … until that woman came along,’ she wailed. ‘It wasn’t fair. She tried to hide it from me. And she’d still be alive, Lucy would still be alive if—’

  She was almost incoherent in her anger and misery.

  ‘If what, Rebecca?’

  With a visible effort, she got herself back under control. ‘If she hadn’t come to this rotten place!’

  She reached over and took her essay off the desk. In front of my astonished eyes she ripped it in two.

  ‘I’m not going to do this fucking essay Just you try and make me. I can make trouble for you and this bloody college, and don’t you forget it!’

  She grabbed her rucksack and ran out of the room. I got to the door just in time to see her vanish round the corner of the corridor and hear her feet running down the stairs.

  * * *

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What for?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘For not saying, “I told you so”.’

  We were in The Free Press, a small pub in the tangle of little streets and terraces of Regency houses to the north of Parker’s Piece. It’s a rowing pub, and the wooden panelling is crowded with memorabilia. Faded photographs of young men in blazers looked down on us, and above the threshold of the tiny inner bar, where we were having an early lunch, was the blade of an oar on which the names of a long-gone boat team were painted in white. It was very busy – it always is – but that makes it a good place to talk. No one can hear you above the hubbub.

  ‘I won’t say I’m not tempted,’ Stephen admitted. ‘I’ve thought all along that someone somewhere probably knew about Lucy and Margaret. It’s difficult to be as discreet as all that – especially when you’re mad about somebody.’

  ‘I know, I know. I just so much hoped that it was all in the past now and that Malcolm wouldn’t have to know.’

  ‘This Rebecca – you think she had something going with Lucy herself?’

  ‘Looked that way. Stephen…’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘There’s no question of letting Rebecca get away with this. If she doesn’t write a new essay, I’ll have to report her to Lawrence. I’m wondering if I should get in first. If it’s going to come out anyway, better he doesn’t hear it from an angry student.’

  Stephen said, ‘I shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to go to Lawrence. From what you said, it’s not clear how much Rebecca knows. And, by the way, Cass, I’d certainly steer clear of saying anything about the letters. If you were ever brought to book over those, and I don’t see how you could be, then you could always claim you were acting within your powers as Margaret’s literary executor.’

  I was surprised and amused by this pragmatism. ‘Is that the solicitor speaking?’

  He put on a look of mock solemnity. ‘My dear, don’t you know you should never do anything without consulting your solicitor? And now, another drink?’

  ‘Better not. I’ve got to cycle back to college and I’m seeing Merfyn this afternoon. I’ll need all my wits about me for that.’

  ‘Coffee then.’

  ‘Not for me, but get me a packet of Benson and Hedges, would you?’

  ‘Cass!’

  ‘Just this once. I absolutely must have a fag. Just one. You can keep the rest of the packet for me.’

  He raised his eyebrows in a pantomime of reluctant agreement.

  ‘It’s the ritual as much as anything,’ I explained, when he brought them back to the table. I stripped off the cellophane and shook a cigarette out of the packet.

  ‘Helps me get my thoughts in order.’

  He nodded and pocketed the packet. I lit up and took a deep drag. We sat in thought for a few minutes.

  ‘I’m supposed to be seeing her on Monday. She’ll have had a chance to calm down by then. I’ll try
and find out exactly what she meant. If she turns up.’

  ‘She might well be regretting it already. Remember that Tom Lehrer song?’ Stephen grinned. ‘“Plagiarize, plagiarize, let no one else’s work evade your eyes”? You know what amazes me? That she had the chutzpah to crib from your own book!’

  I wasn’t enjoying my cigarette as much as I’d expected. I stubbed it out without finishing it.

  ‘It’s happened before,’ I said. ‘At least she didn’t produce a copy of my book from her bag and ask me to autograph it for her! One student that I was ticking off for something similar actually did that.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Better be getting back to college.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Stephen put his hand on my arm. He reached into his briefcase and brought out something wrapped in tissue-paper.

  ‘I saw this in the antique shop opposite the museum.’

  From the way he handed it to me, I could tell it was fragile. It was a shallow, saucer-shaped porcelain bowl decorated with a grainy monochrome print in grey, a little crude but full of charm. A kneeling woman in an empire-line dress that exposed one breast was putting the yoke of a miniature chariot around her neck. The small boy in the chariot was brandishing a toy whip.

  Stephen was watching my face.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘I could see it was like the others you’ve got. “Maternal recreation” you said those prints are called?’

  I leant forward and kissed him lightly. He put an arm round me and gave me a longer, firmer kiss. I felt a passionate response that took me be surprise.

  ‘I’ve got to go back to work,’ I said, pulling back and laughing.

  * * *

  As soon as I saw Merfyn I knew that something was wrong. Cathy had let him into my office and he was slumped in one of the armchairs waiting for me. He looked like a schoolboy called up before the headmaster. One leg was twisted round the other and his hands were tucked defensively under his thighs. When I caught his eye, he immediately looked away.

  He said, ‘I might as well tell you straightaway, Cass, that I haven’t got anything more to show you.’ The remnant of his Welsh accent was far more in evidence than usual.

  I sat down opposite him, trying to disguise my annoyance. ‘Merfyn, don’t you realize how important this is for the future of the department, and for you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ He was impatient. ‘And it isn’t as if I haven’t been working hard. I’ve done hardly anything else all summer. In fact I wrote several chapters.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  He didn’t reply. As I sat regarding Merfyn, a familiar feeling swept over me, a compound of embarrassment, weariness and a a profound longing to be somewhere else. If only I could close my eyes and open them again to find that I had miraculously been transported to a desert island. Actually, I reflected, it didn’t even have to be a desert island. Anywhere would do, anywhere that wasn’t here.

  Get a grip, I told myself, you’re in charge here. I sat up straight, too quickly perhaps because specks of light danced before my eyes and my head reeled. I lowered my head and closed my eyes.

  ‘Cassandra? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’

  Merfyn was leaning forward, looking at me anxiously.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. Look, Merfyn, even if you’re not satisfied with it, I’d like to see what you’ve produced over the summer.’

  The silence between us lengthened.

  Eventually he heaved a huge sigh and said, ‘If you must know, I’ve destroyed what I wrote.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘It’s the truth. I’ve torn it into little pieces.’

  ‘But – you’ve got it on disk? Yes?’

  ‘’Fraid not. I’ve deleted it from my word processor.’

  I sat back. An image flashed into my mind: a little sheaf of white paper tumbling into the darkness of cyberspace, slowly turning over and over, growing ever smaller, like an astronaut whose lifeline has been severed. Gone for ever. I almost missed what he said next.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’ He shook his head and looked away.

  ‘Merfyn! Look at me!’

  His eyes slid back reluctantly.

  ‘You’re not going to like it,’ he said. ‘Conan Doyle told me to do it.’

  In fifteen years of teaching, this was the most original excuse for an unfinished piece of work that I had ever heard.

  Merfyn was lying back in his chair, legs stretched out, watching the ceiling, apparently relieved to have got this off his chest.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I said.

  Scarcely had the words left my mouth when I wondered if this was more than a figure of speech. Could it be something pathological here, a syndrome to which a psychiatrist could give a label? Perhaps Merfyn couldn’t help himself? Perhaps he just could not finish this book? Was he even a little bit crazy? He didn’t look as if he had lost touch with reality, but then what does a person who has lost touch with reality look like? Did I think he’d be gibbering and picking at his clothes?

  ‘Not at all,’ he said calmly. ‘He came directly through the medium this time. Told me that what I’d written wasn’t good enough. Of course, as soon as he said that, I realized. I think I’d probably known it all along. I’ll just have to do it again.’

  I seized on this. ‘So it was the medium who told you.’

  ‘No, I told you, it was Conan Doyle acting through the medium.’

  ‘And who is this person, this medium? Does she take money for this?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. She’s very strict about that. Ingrid’s a perfectly respectable person, a medical secretary, actually. It’s a gift she has. She tries to help people.’

  I thought this over.

  ‘Now, look here, Merfyn,’ I said. ‘I’m going to be honest with you. I do not believe that you had a psychic experience.’

  Merfyn was shaking his head vehemently.

  I raised my hand as he was about to speak. ‘I’m not saying the medium’s a phoney. Most likely she acts in good faith. She’s extraordinarily adept at picking up signals of agreement or dissent from other people. Tiny things that other people wouldn’t notice, OK? So what she’s actually giving expression to is what’s already on your mind.’

  ‘That’s all very well, Cassandra, but you weren’t there. If you had been, I know you’d have been convinced. I know it’s genuine.’

  When a discussion reaches that point, there’s really nothing more to be said. I was at a loss. I leaned back in my chair and considered the matter. Should I just leave it at that? But what about Merfyn’s book? And the future of the department? There was so much at stake. Would Margaret have let it go? Of course not. I didn’t need to go to a séance to know that. So what would she have done? She would have tackled the situation head-on.

  I sat up and looked Merfyn in the eye.

  ‘All right. Next time, I’ll come with you.’

  ‘What?’ He gawped at me with his mouth open.

  ‘What’s the matter, Merfyn? Not really as convinced as all that? Think the process won’t stand up to rational scrutiny?’

  He rallied. ‘Not at all. I’d be delighted for you to come. In fact, I’d planned to go again on Saturday. Do you want to come then?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Let’s begin, shall we?’

  Ingrid gestured towards a round mahogany table in the centre of the room.

  ‘Where do you want us to sit?’ I asked, for all the world as though this were a dinner-party.

  ‘I’ll sit here. If you could be opposite, Cassandra. And – now let me see – if I have Stephen on my left and Merfyn on my right. Does that suit everyone? I think it works best if it goes male, female.’

  It is just like a dinner-party! I thought. However, there was nothing on the polished table except a small pile of A4 lined paper, a Biro and a couple of pencils. We took our places. Wo
uld it be like séances in the movies, where everyone puts their hands on the table? Rather to my surprise it was. We didn’t hold hands, but just let our little fingers touch. Ingrid looked round the table, catching the eye of each of us in turn. Then she gave a little nod.

  It had begun.

  There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t believe in this, I told myself, I don’t believe in it. I pressed my little finger against Stephen’s and was reassured by an answering pressure. I hadn’t protested much when he had insisted on coming. I needed the support of his sturdy scepticism.

  The room grew very still. Outside I could hear the swish of cars going past on Milton Road, could even detect the change in engine noise as they went down a gear to turn a nearby corner. The sound seemed only to accentuate the quietness in the room. I stole a glance at Ingrid. Her face was expressionless, her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted. She wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Though, come to think of it, what had I been expecting? A fey, New Age figure with long hair and floaty garments? A dotty, dishevelled eccentric like Margaret Rutherford in Blithe Spirit? Ingrid was a woman of about fifty, discreetly made-up, wearing deep red nail varnish and what looked like a Jaeger suit. It was easy to imagine her as the mainstay of some consultant at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

  I looked surreptitiously around the room. It was crowded with furniture and bric-a-brac. There was a pale deep pile carpet and over-stuffed chintzy sofas and chairs, patterned with big splashy flowers. Family photographs in gilt frames stood to attention on every available surface. The curtains were open. Outside it was bright and sunny and the room was warm. To the left, I could see a shaft of sunlight shimmering with dust motes. Into my mind came a memory from childhood, one I hadn’t thought of for years. At about the age of six, half-asleep in my bed one morning, I had been convinced that I had seen a fairy. Now I couldn’t remember the actual experience, only my conviction and my mother’s polite interest. I know I was being humoured, and I was cross. ‘I did see it, Mummy, I did.’ ‘I’m sure you saw something, darling.’ It was years before I realized that my fairy must have been a mote of dust, floating and glimmering in the sunlight.