Murder Is Academic

by Christine Poulson

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ I said.

  * * *

  The results of the EEG came back that afternoon. They were normal.

  ‘I want to go home,’ I told Dr Nathan.

  He was leaning against the rail at the end of the bed, looking at me over the top of half-rimmed glasses. Stephen and my mother were sitting on either side of my bed, and Stephen was holding my hand. I was sitting up against the pillows. My mother had brushed and plaited my hair for me and brought in a proper nightdress. Now that I was out of the hospital gown I felt more like my old self and was ready to put up a fight.

  ‘That wouldn’t be wise,’ Dr Nathan said. ‘I’ve agreed with your obstetrician that the best thing would be to transfer you to the Rosie and keep you under observation for at least a few more days. Possibly longer.’

  ‘But the neurologist couldn’t find anything wrong. No-one can find anything wrong. You said so yourself.’

  ‘Grounds for cautious optimism,’ he admitted. ‘But I wouldn’t feel justified in allowing you home yet. You need complete rest. Stress may well have played a part in this.’

  After what had happened to Rebecca, this was the last place I was likely to feel relaxed. I remembered my dream of being chased through the hospital. It was still as vivid as if it had really happened. In fact, it was more vivid in the way that dreams sometimes can be. I felt sick just thinking about it. I couldn’t stay here. But what would the doctor think of my mental state if I told him that I thought one of my students had been murdered in the hospital? I looked at Stephen. He was frowning. I guessed that he was probably thinking the same thing.

  I’d already opened my mouth to speak when my mother cleared her throat. I looked at her. She caught my eye, winked slightly and gave a barely detectable nod. I didn’t know what was coming, but I knew it was going to be good. I relaxed against my pillows. She stood up and Diorissimo wafted across the room. She put her hand on the rail next to Dr Nathan’s, lifted her face and looked straight into his eyes. I’d seen that look before. It was guaranteed to stun a man at a hundred paces. I knew that from experience; it had bowled over every single one of my boyfriends – except, it seemed, for Stephen. In classical times that expression could have launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium. The doctor swayed like a tree in the breeze.

  ‘I’m afraid it really is impossible for my daughter to stay in hospital a moment longer than is strictly necessary,’ she said gently. ‘You see, she suffers from hospital phobia.’

  If that hadn’t been true before, it certainly was now. The most convincing lies are always composed largely of the truth. I was desperate to get out of the place. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stephen registering faint surprise. I glared at him. He gave an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders.

  For a moment I thought Dr Nathan had swallowed this whole. Then he rallied.

  ‘There’s nothing about it in her notes,’ he said, ‘and, if this is the case, why didn’t she request a home delivery?’

  Why indeed? I knew I was about to find out.

  ‘That was my doing, Doctor. Perhaps it was selfish of me. I had such a hard time with my own babies, I couldn’t let Cassandra take any risks.’ A brave little smile played around her lips.

  Was this too much? I examined Dr Nathan’s face. He caught my eye. I hastily arranged my face into a simper.

  ‘But surely you must have noticed,’ my mother went on, ‘that we haven’t left her alone for a single instant. She’d panic immediately if one of us wasn’t with her.’

  Bravo, Mother, you are a genius. I thought.

  ‘Well…’ said Dr Nathan.

  My mother pressed home her advantage. ‘If there are any problems at all we’ll bring her straight back, won’t we, Stephen?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  ‘I’ll have to consult my colleague,’ Dr Nathan warned her.

  ‘Naturally.’ She beamed up at him. ‘Thank you so much, Doctor.’

  He paused at the door.

  ‘But it must be clearly understood that complete rest means just that. There is no question at all of Dr James going back to work.’

  ‘Oh, surely…’ I began.

  ‘We’ll see that she follows your instructions to the letter,’ Stephen said hastily.

  He looked at me sternly. ‘Is that a promise?’

  I nodded. He left the room.

  ‘Well, Laura,’ Stephen said. ‘You’re wasted as an accountant. You should have been an actress.’

  She checked her already immaculate make-up. There was an air of triumph in the way that she snapped shut her Mary Quant powder compact.

  ‘Or possibly a master criminal,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, he couldn’t have forced Cass to stay,’ Stephen went on. ‘If the worst had come to the worst, she could have discharged herself.’

  ‘Of course she could, darling, but Cass is too law-abiding to feel happy doing that.’

  I recognized this picture of myself and winced.

  ‘And quite right, too, with the baby coming,’ she added hastily. ‘He could make things very difficult for her.’

  * * *

  I wound down the window on the passenger side.

  ‘I can’t help feeling a bit defeated,’ I said. ‘There’s still so much to take care of at the college.’

  Stephen put his hand over mine on the edge of the car window.

  ‘They’ll have to manage without you. Nothing’s more important than your health and the baby’s. And it’ll be a relief to me to know that you’re safe in London.’

  I closed my fingers around his. My mother tactfully busied herself with Bill Bailey, who was complaining bitterly from his cat carrier on the back seat of her BMW.

  ‘Forget about the college for a while,’ he said. ‘Ring me as soon as you arrive, OK?’

  To my chagrin I felt tears welling up. I squeezed my lips together and nodded. His ribs were still too bruised for him to bend down and kiss me. He gently unpeeled my fingers, raised the palm of my hand to his mouth.

  ‘I’ll come down next week,’ he said.

  He released me and stood back. I pressed the button for the electric window. The glass barrier rose up between us.

  Mother started up the car. Bill Bailey immediately began a rhythmical wailing that I knew he would keep up indefinitely. He’d be hoarse by the time we got to London.

  As we drove down the street, I watched Stephen’s reflection grow smaller in the wing mirror. When we pulled out onto the road by the river, I saw him give a final wave before he turned to go into his flat.

  It felt as though something was ending, and in a way it was. I didn’t know it at the time, but the play was nearly over. What kind of play was it? A tragedy, in which the spring was wound tight and was almost ready to be released.

  But it was to be several weeks before the last act would begin.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was on a Saturday towards the end of January that the call came.

  I was lying on the sofa in the first floor sitting-room of my mother’s little mews house, where once hay and tack had been kept. Downstairs, where the horses had lived, were two small bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Over the weeks a routine had been established. I spent my days resting or working quietly on my book, occasionally catching the Tube to the library or having a walk in Kew Gardens. Stephen came down at weekends. Bill Bailey had at last settled in. Today he was stretched out full-length on the window seat in a pool of winter sunshine. Stephen was in an armchair next to him, reading the Independent. My mother was out shopping. I was reading one of my favourite Trollope novels, The Small House at Allington, in a little blue World’s Classics edition.

  When the phone rang, Stephen got up to answer it.

  ‘For you,’ he said, putting the phone down on the table beside me.

  It took me a few seconds to extract myself from my book, where the most serious thing that could happen was that Adolphus Crosbie might jilt Lily Dale.
>
  ‘I hope I’m doing the right thing ringing you,’ Cathy sounded close to tears. ‘The Master expressly told me not to bother you, but I thought you ought to know.’

  My heart sank. I closed my book. ‘What’s up?’

  Stephen was sitting again with his newspaper, but I could tell he wasn’t really reading it.

  ‘Everything’s going wrong, Cass. We’re weeks behind with preparing the RAE submission.’

  ‘But I thought you were dividing that between you!’

  ‘Alison made a start, but I’ve hardly seen her for the past fortnight. Paul hasn’t been well. I think it might be really serious this time.’

  ‘Oh, no, poor Alison – and poor Paul.’

  ‘I know, I know. I feel awful worrying about the department at a time like this. Aiden’s doing what he can, but of course Merfyn’s away on study leave and we can’t manage everything, just the two of us. And that’s not all! Oh, Cassandra…’

  Now she was really crying. I’d never known her to do this before.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know if I should tell you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, you’ve got to now.’

  ‘Well, I came into college this morning to try and catch up with things a bit and I found Tim from Estates in my office. He was measuring it up!’

  ‘What?’

  Stephen had given up all pretence of not listening. His eyes were fixed on my face. Bill Bailey was affected by the change in atmosphere, too. He sat up as if he’d suddenly remembered an urgent appointment and began to wash one of his back legs assiduously.

  ‘I asked him what the hell he was doing and do you know what he said? At first he just muttered something about rationalization of office space, but when I pressed him, he got annoyed. He said I must be the only person in the college not to realize that the department was going down the tubes and that we’d soon be out on our ears. He said … He said that…’ She didn’t seem able to spit the words out.

  ‘What did he say?’ I insisted.

  I saw the door open and my mother came in. Stephen caught her eye, looked in my direction and grimaced. She went over and sat down next to Bill Bailey on the window seat.

  ‘He said no-one thought you were up to the job and that when you failed it would give Lawrence the excuse he needed. The Master had been wanting to get rid of the department for years and that was why he had appointed you as head, and when you had to take sick leave, it was money from home!’

  ‘He thought that, did he? I’ll be in college first thing Monday morning!’

  Stephen was frowning and shaking his head vehemently. I glared at him and clamped the receiver closer to my ear.

  ‘Are you sure you’re well enough?’ Cathy was saying.

  ‘I’m much, much better. Now listen, try not to worry. I’ll sort all this out, OK? See you soon.’

  I hung up.

  ‘That bastard.’ I was seething.

  ‘Calm down,’ Stephen said. ‘This isn’t good for you.’

  ‘OK, OK, yes, I will calm down. What is it people say: “Don’t get mad, get even”? That is exactly what I intend to do.’

  My mother and Stephen exchanged glances.

  ‘I’ve got to go home soon in any case,’ I said. ‘If I don’t, I’ll end up having the baby here.’

  There wasn’t much Stephen could say to that. The two of us had taken over my mother’s bedroom, leaving her to shoehorn herself into the tiny spare-room. The house was splitting at the seams already.

  ‘And we need to start getting things ready,’ I added. ‘We haven’t even bought a cot yet.’

  ‘But do you have to go back to work?’ Stephen asked,

  ‘Do you think I would be able to relax at home knowing what’s going on? That Lawrence is scheming to sack us all?’

  ‘If only the police had found Rebecca’s attacker.…’

  ‘I know, I know, but I’ve got to go sometime. Cathy ringing up like this has just tipped the balance, that’s all. I’ve been feeling … oh, I don’t know, but I really want to get back. There’s so much to do.’ I paused, not knowing how to describe the strange restlessness that I’d been feeling in recent days, and the deep pull of home.

  ‘It’s the nest-building instinct,’ said my mother unexpectedly. ‘It may be nearly forty years ago, but I remember feeling just the same before you were born. Are you sure the baby isn’t due until the middle of March?’

  A series of images and sensations flashed through my mind: the heat of a June night, the crack of a thunderclap, a rumpled bed, the sound of breaking glass. I looked up and caught Stephen’s eye.

  ‘Pretty sure,’ I said.

  My mother intercepted the glance and laughed. ‘I suppose you should know.’

  * * *

  Stephen put the cat carrier on the lawn and opened its door. Bill Bailey edged out suspiciously. When he saw where he was, he leapt into the air and raced round and round the garden. He wasn’t the only one glad to be home. I was smiling as I unlocked the door. I had to push it a bit against the pile of letters, free newspapers and junk mail that was backed up behind it. Stephen dumped my bag in the hall and went back to the car to bring in the box of books that had accumulated at my mother’s over the weeks.

  I went upstairs with the post. The sitting-room seemed uncared for, even though Stephen had made a point of spending an occasional night in the house. The heating had been left on low to stop the pipes from freezing, but it was still chilly and there was damp in the air. A couple of old newspapers were strewn over the sofa. A half-drunk cup of tea, lumpy with curdled milk, stood on my desk. I went over to the window and stood watching diamonds of reflected light flashing off the stream below. I gave a great sigh of contentment. Home at last. I turned and ran a finger along a shelf of books. How I’d missed these old friends!

  I was collecting up the newspapers when the telephone rang. My thoughts flew back to that evening when I had thought there was an intruder in the house. Stephen is here, I reminded myself, and the locks have been changed. All the same I let it ring half a dozen times before I picked it up.

  ‘Cassandra? This is Jim Ferguson.’

  ‘Jim.’ I lowered myself onto the sofa.

  ‘We’ve got someone for the attack on Rebecca. I thought you’d want to know straight away.’

  My heart turned over.

  ‘It’s no-one you know, and it’s pure chance, I’m afraid, that led us to him. We were called to a house in Cherry Hinton last night to deal with an intruder, a man in his twenties thieving to feed a drug habit. When we questioned him, he broke down and confessed to attacking a girl last autumn.’

  Stephen came in with the book box. He looked at me in enquiry and I motioned him to the sofa beside me.

  Jim went on, ‘He followed her and grabbed her bag. He had a spanner in his pocket all ready for a spot of breaking and entering. When she started screaming, he hit her with it, then he panicked and ran off.’

  I tried to get to grips with this. ‘So Rebecca dying when she did, with the fire alarm going off, that was just a coincidence?’

  ‘I know,’ he said sympathetically. ‘I don’t like them either, but they do happen.’

  A thought struck me. ‘A confession on its own won’t be enough, will it?’

  ‘No, it’ll have to be backed up with forensic evidence, but we’re hopeful of getting that. There was blood on the spanner and on his coat. He hid them both in someone’s garden. Until we’ve retrieved them, I’d like you to keep this to yourself, by the way.’

  ‘Of course, yes. I thought there’d already been a house to house search for the murder weapon?’

  ‘Probably didn’t extend far enough. We’re trying again.’

  ‘I feel a bit of a fool,’ I said ruefully.

  ‘Well, don’t. You had good reasons for being suspicious.’

  He then chatted to Stephen while I pottered about, unpacking books and putting them back in their places.

  ‘Great news!’ Stephen said,
when he at last hung up the telephone.

  ‘Mmm, I suppose so.’

  ‘I thought you’d be so relieved!’

  ‘You would think so, wouldn’t you?’ I admitted. ‘But I don’t really feel anything much. A bit depressed, if anything.’

  ‘Come and sit next to me.’

  I slumped down beside him on the sofa.

  ‘Anyone would think that you were disappointed to discover that there isn’t a killer lurking in the college,’ he said. ‘It’s a weight off my mind, I can tell you. I’m going to see a client in Bury St Edmunds tomorrow. I won’t have to fret myself into a lather about getting home before you do.’

  I leant against him and put my head on his shoulder.

  ‘Somehow I can’t really get excited about it,’ I said. ‘And I do feel such an idiot for letting my imagination run away with me, when in the end it turns out to be something so stupid and senseless and accidental. In a strange sort of way it’s a bit of an anticlimax.’

  ‘Well, things did look suspicious. I thought so, too, remember.’

  I sighed. ‘You known, it’s irrational, but deep down I must have felt that finding Rebecca’s killer would somehow make everything all right again. But she’s still dead, and Margaret, too, come to that. And I’ve still got a fight with Lawrence on my hands.’

  * * *

  I had never before seen a maze made out of books, and what beautiful books: bound in dark blues, and greens, and reds, and tooled in gilt. The walls were as high as my head. My task was to find the centre. There was something there that I needed. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that it would solve all my problems. I stepped in the dim passageway between the walls of books. I had read somewhere that in a maze you should keep turning left, but when I did that I soon reached a dead end and had to double back. I found myself back near the entrance. I decided to turn right and this seemed to get me further into the labyrinth. I saw that the books here were all numbered. I reached up and took one off the top of the wall. I opened it to find that it had my name on it, not written on the flyleaf, but actually printed on the title page. I turned over the pages. Everything that I had ever done, every thought that I had ever had was recorded here. It was the story of my life. I looked at the number printed on the outside: 6.9.1965. That date had been my first day at school. I was about to pluck down another book when I noticed that I was not alone in the maze. I could hear footsteps. Someone was coming up behind me, someone I didn’t want to see. It was more vital than ever to get to the centre: I knew I would be safe there. I walked faster, the footsteps walked faster; I stopped, they stopped. When I walked on, they matched their pace to mine. I began to run and the footsteps pattered behind me, growing louder and louder until I realized that they weren’t footsteps anymore, but rain, big drops of rain bouncing and splashing off the books! A wind was getting up, the walls began to sway. A book slid off and hit the floor with a thud. It was followed by another and another. Then the walls were crashing down behind me as I ran, closing the way back. I was running faster and faster, nearing the centre, one more turn and—