Murder Is Academic

by Christine Poulson

  I woke up covered in sweat, my hair sticking to my face and shoulders. I felt a pang of loss. If only I’d been able to get to the centre of the maze; everything would be all right then. Perhaps I could still go back into the dream? I was so evenly balanced between sleeping and waking, that it did seem possible. But then the things around me began to assert their reality: I felt the warmth of Stephen’s body by my side, there was a grey square in the blackness that I knew was the bedroom window. The dream world was slipping away rapidly like mist in the morning sun.

  It didn’t all disappear, however. It was one of those dreams that stay in your head like a hangover. I was still thinking about it as I walked into college later that morning. At the porter’s lodge John glanced my way and did a double-take.

  ‘Dr James! We weren’t expecting to see you yet. How are you?’ He made a valiant effort not to stare at my belly. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to. It seemed to me that everyone’s attention must be focused on it. I felt enormous.

  ‘Fine, thanks. The baby isn’t due for another seven weeks. And your daughter…?’

  ‘A fortnight ago. A little boy. Our first grandson. They’re both very well.’ He was beaming all over his face.

  I beamed back. ‘Congratulations! And lucky her. To have it over with, I mean.’

  I was about to move on when he said, ‘I’ve got a couple of packages here. I was going to bring them down to your pigeon-hole. Do you want to take them?’

  He handed over two padded envelopes. I recognized the return address on the smaller one and knew that it would contain the proofs of an article. The other, larger one hadn’t been through the post. My name, care of St Etheldreda’s, was written on it in neat black felt-tip pen. I didn’t recognize the handwriting.

  ‘Did this come through the inter-college post?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it must have been left by hand. I didn’t see who delivered it; it was here when I came on duty.’

  The Christmas cards that I had opened two months ago were still on the desk with their torn envelopes. Cathy had opened anything that looked official: those letters would be in her office. The rest, no doubt Christmas cards for the most part, were in a tidy pile next to the computer. I struggled out of my coat and edged gingerly round my desk. I was forever bumping into doors and catching myself on the edges of tables nowadays. I couldn’t get used to taking up so much more space in the world. I had to push my chair well back before I could sit down.

  Where to start? The serene face of the Snow Queen regarded me from the Russian lacquer box on the desk. I remembered the hallucination that I’d had in the library, her lips turning up in an enigmatic little smile as if she knew something that I didn’t. I sighed. Maybe she did know something. After all, there were plenty of loose ends. I still didn’t know if Merfyn might be having a nervous breakdown. Would I ever see him in college again? And what about Aiden and the mysterious Annabelle? I hadn’t got to the bottom of that – and probably never would.

  There was no point in sitting around brooding. I opened the door to Cathy’s office. She looked up from her work. Her face lit up with a smile of relief and welcome.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you,’ she said.

  Impulsively she got up and kissed me. Then she held me at arm’s length and looked into my face.

  ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Fine. Now let’s get cracking,’ I said. ‘If you could start getting the RAE material together, I’ll begin on the report.’

  A shadow crossed her face.

  ‘I thought you’d want the RAE stuff, but it isn’t all here. The box file with photocopies of all the articles is missing. Alison must have taken it home. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her all weekend.’

  ‘Me, too. I wanted to know how Paul was, but it’s always the answering machine. I’ll try again.’

  I went back into my office and punched in the numbers that I knew by heart. This time the answering machine didn’t click on. The ringing tone continued; I counted twenty rings. Then I hung up and sat back to consider. On the whole I thought it was a good sign that the answering machine had been switched off. At least it meant that someone had been there since the last time I’d rung. But why hadn’t Alison got back to me then, if she’d received my messages?

  Absent-mindedly I picked up the paper knife and opened the smaller padded envelope. More proofs, more queries. Back to the library that afternoon. Could I ring Alison’s daughter to find out what was going on? But I didn’t know her number or her married name. Perhaps I should just go round there right away and check up? I paused with the paper knife in my hand. I didn’t want to intrude. However, it wasn’t merely a sense of delicacy that was holding me back: I saw myself standing in the sunshine outside Margaret’s house, listening to the doorbell ringing inside, walking carelessly round the side of the house, the swishing sound of the water-sprinkler. Silly thoughts, really, because what could have happened to them? I decided to wait a bit longer. If I hadn’t managed to contact Alison by tea-time, I’d drive round before I went home.

  I slit open the larger of the packages that John had given me. A sheaf of white A4 paper about two inches thick and bound by a rubber band slithered out and flopped onto the table. The first page was headed ‘Chapter One: The Legacy of the 1890s’, and it was typed in double-spacing. I pulled off the rubber band and rifled through the pages, pausing when my eye was caught by a familiar name: ‘M.R. James had many imitators, but few peers’: ‘Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” and “Pink May” are among the most important ghost stories to come out of the Second World War’. Here and there I read a paragraph right through, my excitement mounting. The text had the unmistakable authority of someone totally in control of their material.

  How had this got here? I shook the envelope again. A single sheet fluttered out. It was a letter addressed from a hotel in Malaga. Dear Cassandra, I read, There’s all of my book here, except for the last chapter. I’ll e-mail it to Celia, who will print it out and deliver it to college for me. The publishers promise to have it out by the end of the year if I get everything to them by Easter. I’ll be back in a fortnight with the rest of it. Hope everything is well with you and the baby. Love, Merfyn. P.S. Thanks.

  The whoop I gave brought an anxious Cathy out of her office next door. I handed her the letter and rang Lawrence’s office.

  His secretary answered. Lawrence was in a meeting, could she take a message?

  ‘It’s Cassandra. Tell him I’m back – and this time it’s personal.’

  ‘Oh, Cassandra, good. Yes, what was that last bit again?’

  ‘Never mind: just tell him that I have the RAE report in hand and that Merfyn’s book will be out by the end of the year.’

  Magically, my mood had lifted. I felt like a new person: someone efficient, cool-headed and determined. I leaned back in my chair. A hairgrip fell to the floor and a coil of my hair flopped down onto my shoulder. I twisted a lock of it thoughtfully around my finger.

  Now that I felt like a new person, perhaps it was time to become a new person.

  * * *

  As soon as I walked out of the hairdresser’s, an icy blast stung the back of my bare neck. I turned up the collar of my coat. As I walked along, I moved my head from side to side, trying to familiarize myself with the change. My head felt so much lighter. It was lighter. It was only now that the two-feet long plait of hair lay coiled up like a snake in the bottom of my briefcase that I could fully appreciate how much it had weighed. The hairdresser had told me that she could sell it for me, but I had decided to take it home.

  I walked through the courtyard of Clare College, the cold pressing against my face, squeezing the tips of my fingers in my gloves. I stopped to rest for a moment on the bridge over the Cam, and leaned my bump against the railings. The fretted outline of King’s College Chapel was blurred not by the damp, raw, grey fog so usual for Cambridge, but by a mist that was luminous, suffused with sunlight. Everything around me – buildings, trees
, people – seemed to glow as if lit from within. I walked on to the library through an enchanted world.

  I stood for a while in the cloakroom, admiring my new self. I looked stronger, sharper, yet at the same time more feminine. The cap of dark hair gleaming with auburn highlights revealed the shape of my head, and my eyes seemed enormous. Fronds of hair, released from the weight that had previously held them straight, curled around my face.

  I went into the reading room and settled myself at a table. As I looked around, getting my bearings, I spotted Aiden sitting about twenty feet away. He was tapping away on his laptop, totally absorbed. Now and again he looked up and stared straight ahead as if searching for the right word. Then his hand would shoot up to smooth back his hair, and the dark head would bend again to his task. He had no idea that I was watching him. I sat back and surrendered to the pleasure of observing while remaining unobserved. I examined his features one by one: the thinning hair, the rather pointed nose, the slightly blemished skin. In repose he wasn’t a good-looking man. It was the power of his self-belief and his easy manner that made him attractive to women.

  Again I wondered about Annabelle Fairchild. I had thought of it as an upper-class name, but was there a touch of the Highlands about it, a whiff of Celtic twilight? I could see a cloud of auburn hair, a snub nose, freckles on a milky skin. It could almost be the name of one of those fey fin de siècle figures like Jessie MacDonald or Fiona Macleod, whose poetry I had included in my anthology. Fiona Macleod? It was as if a light had been switched on in my head. An extraordinary thought occurred to me. I looked thoughtfully at Aiden. He had rolled up his sleeves. A muscular arm covered in fine black hair rested on the table. It couldn’t be, or could it?

  I went out to the bank of computers in the catalogue room and called up the post-1977 catalogue. Cambridge University Library is a copyright library, so it receives a copy of every book that is published in Britain. When the answer to my query came up, it was like the moment when one fills in the last line of a crossword.

  I went back to the reading room and sat next to Aiden. I scribbled a line in my notebook while I waited for him to look round. When at last he raised his head, his eyes widened and he pursed his lips in a soundless whistle of appreciation. It took a while for me to realize that he was admiring my new haircut. I smiled. I tore out the page and pushed it over. He took it and read it. He raised his eyebrows and turned back towards me. Our eyes met and he gave a little nod of rueful capitulation.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘How did you guess?’ Aiden asked.

  We were in the tearoom. On the table between us lay a fat paperback. The cover showed the distant figure of a woman standing on a headland looking out to sea. The colours were restricted to tones of misty blue and grey. Gold capitals discreetly announced the title and the author: Many a Summer by Annabelle Fairchild.

  I said, ‘Have you heard of Fiona Macleod?’

  Aiden shook his head.

  ‘Of course in the nineteenth century it was usually women who wrote under male pseudonyms: George Eliot, George Sand—’

  ‘The Brontës – I’ve always thought that Currer Bell was a magnificently masculine pseudonym.’

  ‘I agree. Now and then men went in for a bit of gender-bending, too. Fiona Macleod was the pseudonym – well, actually more the alter ego – of William Sharp. No-one realized that she didn’t really exist until after his death. He even wrote a bogus entry for her in Who’s Who. Annabelle Fairchild – well, I suddenly thought that she sounded almost too good to be true. Then I realized: Aiden Frazer. The initials were the same. Everything fell into place.’

  I turned the book over so that I could read the blurb. ‘In a field hospital in war-torn Europe, a surgeon falls in love with the woman whose life he has saved, only to find that they are separated…’ Much of the rest of the cover was taken up by endorsements from newspapers and women’s magazines: ‘Move over, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’; ‘Heart-rending, unputdownable: I cried my eyes out’; ‘Perhaps once in a generation a book comes along that for sheer scope and emotional power rivals Gone With the Wind and Doctor Zhivago. This is one such book.’

  ‘Blimey!’

  ‘It’s selling very well,’ Aiden admitted modestly. ‘And I’ve been short-listed for the Betty Trask Award.’

  ‘Excellent! Congratulations … Annabelle.’

  Aiden’s mouth twitched.

  I said, ‘You know who I thought she was, don’t you?’

  ‘The beautiful and mysterious Annabelle? How I wish I really did have a mistress like that! The expression on your face was so deliciously disapproving, Cassandra! I was tempted to own up on the spot.’

  ‘So who was that at the Garden House Hotel?’

  ‘My agent. We’d been meeting a film producer who’s optioned Many a Summer. And that wrong number you got? That was the new assistant in the publisher’s office. She got my pseudonym and me muddled up, then tried to cover it up by pretending that she was Annabelle!’

  ‘You know, even then I thought that the name sounded familiar. That day in Smith’s: that’s where I saw it. You weren’t standing by the…’

  ‘Soft porn? No! I’m afraid I was admiring my own book on display.’

  ‘The W.H. Smith Romance of the Month, no less.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  His face creased and laughter lines sprang up around his eyes. The full, rich comedy of it burst on me, too. I began to giggle. Aiden’s shoulders were shaking. I was laughing aloud now. I tried to get a grip on myself, but then I remembered the expression of surprise on Aiden’s face as he lay on the floor with a cascade of blue-and-white paperbacks tumbling down on his chest. Laughter lifted me up like a huge wave. I gasped for breath, my ribs were aching.

  The people at neighbouring tables turned towards us, startled, and then tactfully looked away.

  I realized that Aiden was trying to say something.

  ‘Cassandra.’ he managed to get out at last. ‘Don’t you think … you should…’

  ‘What?’ I shrieked.

  ‘Stop! You might – you might go into – labour!’

  This struck me as the funniest thing I had ever heard. What could be more appropriate than to give birth to my baby in the library? It would guarantee her a good supply of reading matter right from the start. Aiden’s face was grotesque with laughter. I roared. Tears poured down my cheeks. All of a sudden I wanted to stop. My eyes met Aiden’s. Sanity was returning to his face and he looked worried. He leaned over, took my hand and gripped it hard. I hung on to it, bit my lip and pressed my other hand flat on the table. I closed my eyes and mouth and breathed in deeply through my nose. A few convulsive hiccups and splutters and I was myself again. I opened my eyes. Aiden smiled at me and released my hand. I fished in my handbag for a handkerchief and dabbed my face.

  ‘I haven’t laughed like that for ages,’ Aiden said.

  ‘There hasn’t been much to laugh at,’ I admitted.

  ‘Almost as good as sex.’

  ‘No, please,’ I lifted a warning hand. ‘Don’t start me laughing again. Tell me how you came to write a romantic novel.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’ve always enjoyed what’s disparagingly called “women’s fiction”. Used to read my older sister’s Georgette Heyer novels under the covers when I was a teenager.’

  ‘No doubt imagining yourself as a sardonic Regency buck in skin-tight breeches?’

  He grinned. ‘That kind of thing. Then two or three years ago I was visiting my sister and I picked up the novel she was reading. It was pretty feeble and I thought I could do better. She challenged me to have a go and I found I was rather good at it. Annabelle Fairchild was my sister’s idea.’

  ‘But Aiden, why did you let me make such a fool of myself? Couldn’t you have told me?’

  He was silent for a few moments.

  Then he said, ‘I did think of it, of course, especially after Stephen spotted me in the Garden House, but I didn’t know how you’d take it. You see, Margaret wa
s absolutely livid.’

  I stared at him. ‘You told Margaret?’

  ‘She’d noticed that I wasn’t spending much time on my academic writing, and wanted to know why.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Oh, not long before she died. The week before maybe? She wasn’t amused. I don’t think she would have minded so much if I’d been writing something obscure and highbrow – but popular fiction, that just put me beyond the pale. She told me that I should be devoting all my time to boosting the department’s academic record. That was what I had been appointed for and anything less than a hundred per cent commitment just wasn’t good enough. I could see her point of view. If you’re going to be a successful academic these days, you have to be at it more or less non-stop.’

  I couldn’t deny that.

  ‘So what does the future hold, Aiden?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to quit academic life altogether – not yet anyway – but I wondered about going part-time. And I also thought … well, how would if be if I set up a creative writing course? They’re very popular at the moment.’