Murder Is Academic

by Christine Poulson

  I got up and paced slowly up and down. As with my walk through the fog, the soothing rhythm seemed to summon up a train of thoughts and impressions. Images drifted into my mind: Cathy shaking her head as she talked about Hannah forging her signature, Aiden standing by the rack of books, Merfyn bracing himself for the impact of my anger, Alison and Paul in the back room of their house in Newnham. I concentrated on that picture. I could see Alison’s hand on Paul’s shoulder, and his smile as he looked up at her. I reached the windowsill and leaned against it, staring out into the fog. It was hard to imagine now that it had ever been the height of summer. I remembered the smell of Paul’s cigarette, my head swimming with the scent of the hot summer garden. There was a kind of seismic shift in my mind: one moment I was standing too close to the picture, all I could see were unconnected patches of colour; the next I had taken a step back and the picture had come into focus.

  That’s it, I thought. I knew now that Margaret’s death had not been an accident; I knew who had searched my house and what they had been looking for; I knew why I had collapsed in the library: everything clicked into place. There was a second of sheer intellectual delight at the rightness of it, followed instantly by horrified disbelief. Could it really be true?

  If so, the key to the mystery had been at hand ever since the day I had found Margaret’s love letters. Clinging to the handrail, I made my way carefully down the stairs to the kitchen. I took the key to the wine cellar out of the hollow book, and got out Margaret’s disks. I clambered back up to the study and spread them out on the desk. Most had the names of completed books and articles written on them in Margaret’s precise hand. I picked out a disk marked ‘Miscellaneous’ and switched on my computer. It gave its usual plangent buzz. Bill Bailey’s ears twitched. He sat up and yawned. I slotted the disk into the computer. Many of the folders on it were identified only by a date. I called one up at random and read, ‘Darling, darling M’. I scrolled down to the signature, ‘Your Lucy’. I might have guessed: this had been a truly modern love affair conducted via the latest technology as well as by old-fashioned paper correspondence. There were scores of e-mails – they must have contacted each other every day for months – and Margaret had preserved them as lovingly as if they were letters tied up with red ribbon. I closed the document and ran the cursor down the screen until I found titles like ‘Draft’ and ‘Chapter One’. I called up ‘Chapter One’. It was Lucy’s PhD thesis. She had shared everything with her lover.

  Before I was halfway down the page, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what lay behind Margaret’s death.

  I scarcely noticed the next contraction.

  My train of thought was broken by a piecing yowl. Bill Bailey was sitting by my chair regarding me with a pleading expression. Automatically I got up and made my way downstairs, Bill Bailey racing ahead of me. I was halfway down when I saw the security light go on. As I reached the hall, the doorbell began to peal urgently and continuously as though someone were leaning on it.

  Jane at last, thank God, I thought.

  Bill Bailey was winding himself around my legs in a frenzy of anticipation as I pulled back the bolt and opened the door.

  Alison was standing outside.

  * * *

  I froze with my hand on the doorknob. She was staring at me as if she had expected to see someone quite different.

  ‘Your hair,’ she said hoarsely.

  Then, as smoothly as if we had rehearsed it, Bill Bailey shot out, Alison took a step back, and I slammed the door shut. I rammed the bolt home and stood with my back against it.

  I could see down the hall into the kitchen. My briefcase was still where I had left it on the table. I forced myself to leave the door, go into the kitchen and turn the case upside down onto the table. A book and a folder fell out, followed by the rope of plaited hair. It hit the table with a slap like an eel being tipped out of a basket. My mobile phone slid out, too. I seized it. Behind me, Alison was knocking gently on the door. My fingers were trembling so much that I couldn’t key in Stephen’s number. It took me a moment to remember that it was in the phones memory. I called it up. There was a rapid bleeping followed immediately by the click of the phone being answered at the other end.

  I said, ‘Stephen, listen to me. Alison killed Margaret and Rebecca, and she’s here now, outside. I want you to ring the police. Do you understand?’

  He replied, ‘Yes, I understand. What’s going on? Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Much as before. Where are you now?’

  ‘I’ve made it nearly as far as the track. I’m going to hang up now and call the police, OK?’

  ‘Ok.’

  I sat down heavily at the kitchen table and put my hand to my side. I tried to calm my breathing.

  Alison had stopped knocking on the door, but I could hear her shuffling about outside.

  She pushed open the letterbox.

  ‘Cass, please talk to me.’

  Her voice was so flat and strained that I wouldn’t have recognized it as hers.

  ‘I can’t let you in.’

  ‘You don’t understand, I won’t hurt you. Anyway, it’s all over now.’ She began to sob.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Paul’s dead.’

  ‘Stay there.’

  I went into the cloakroom on the right of the door. There’s a little window almost at head height. I looked out. Alison was standing bathed in the intense white light of the security lamp. She made no move towards me but simply turned to face me, passively submitting to inspection. I examined her closely. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were wet with tears. Her hair was dishevelled. Her whole body looked limp and heavy with defeat.

  I opened the window.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘This afternoon. An injection. It was very quick and painless. He’d always intended to go before things got too bad. It just came much, much sooner than we expected.’

  I was trying to take this in when a new and quite different sort of pain seized me. Beginning at the sides of my body, it flowed into my belly and rose steadily to a peak. I gripped the rim of the little washbasin and closed my eyes until the pain ebbed away. I opened them again to see Alison staring anxiously at me.

  ‘What’s the matter? Is the baby coming?’

  ‘No, no, not yet.’

  Even as I said it I wondered if it were true. I looked at my watch: twenty to seven. I hadn’t timed the last contraction, but the one before that had been at six fifteen. They were getting closer.

  We looked at each other in silence for a few moments, then Alison said, ‘When did you realize?’

  ‘About five minutes ago, oddly enough.’

  ‘I suppose you found Lucy’s thesis on one of Margaret’s backup disks. I should have known a lot earlier on that there’d be another set somewhere,’ Alison said. ‘She was so bloody well organized.’

  She didn’t sound bitter, just resigned.

  ‘But Alison, how did you think you could get away with it?’

  ‘I nearly did, though, didn’t I?’ There was no triumph in her voice, only sadness.

  ‘Did you kill Lucy, too?’

  Alison looked astonished. ‘Of course not! I was terribly upset when I heard about the accident. But then…’

  She paused. Our eyes met and I was the first to look away. Strangely, what I felt was not anger or fear, but something more like embarrassment, the sort of feeling one gets when one is obliged to comfort someone with their ignorance or bad manners.

  ‘But then…?’ I prompted.

  ‘Well, after a bit I did begin to wonder. Lucy’s work was so good – she’d done a lot of research before she even came to Cambridge – and some of it was almost in publishable form. It seemed such a pity to waste it.’

  ‘You could have published it under her name.’

  ‘Oh, what would have been the point of that?’ she said impatiently. ‘She was dead, after al
l. It couldn’t affect her career, could it? Whereas for me – it could make all the difference. I was so desperately worried about losing my job. I knew I wouldn’t get another one at my age and with no publication record, and I couldn’t see how we’d manage without my salary. Luckily the girl who shared Lucy’s room was away in the States for the term, so I borrowed a key to their room from the porter’s lodge and erased the article from the hard drive of Lucy’s computer. I took her backup disks, too, and all her written notes. I thought I’d got everything.’

  ‘I know what happened next. When you showed Margaret the article, she saw what you’d done. Did she threaten you with exposure?’

  ‘She invited me round to her house and told me that no-one else knew and that she would keep quiet about it, on condition that I didn’t submit the article for publication and that I resigned. Otherwise she’d tell Lawrence and I’d be sacked.’

  The pain hit me again like a fist clenching and unclenching low in my belly. I groaned and continued to cling onto the washbasin.

  ‘Cass? How are you feeling?’ Alison’s voice seemed to come from a distance.

  The pain ebbed slowly away.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’m OK. Go on.’

  Alison was too caught up in her story to stop anyway. ‘She said she thought she was being generous. Generous! I begged and pleaded with her, but she was adamant. I was so angry! There we were, sitting by that bloody pool, next to that enormous house that her husband’s money had bought. How could she understand anything about our struggle to keep going?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Then what happened?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘I lost my temper. There was a pile of exam papers lying on the table beside her. I grabbed the top one and tore it in half. That got her going all right. She went for me and I pushed her away. She fell into the swimming pool, hit her head on the side and sank like a stone. At first I did think of going in after her and pulling her out, but then…’

  She looked up and flushed when she saw me gawping at her.

  ‘It just seemed meant to be, somehow. An accident, really, like Lucy’s death. After all, I didn’t actually intend to kill her.’

  This time Alison was the one to glance away, and I saw a muscle twitch below her left eye.

  ‘Margaret had been wearing a wrap-round skirt over her swim-suit,’ she said. ‘I took off all my clothes and waded into the pool and managed to get it off her. I didn’t want any doubt about its being an accident.’

  The image that this conjured up in my mind was one that I knew I’d never forget.

  ‘I searched the house for Margaret’s copy of the thesis. At last I found it, in a little drawer tucked underneath her desk; both a disk and a hard copy. Then I just walked home quickly. Luckily there wasn’t a soul about.’

  ‘Did you tell Paul what had happened?’

  ‘Of course not. That was the whole point, don’t you see?’ she said as though I was being wilfully obtuse, ‘I didn’t want Paul to be worried. I didn’t even tell him my job was at risk. The week after the funeral, I managed to get into Margaret’s office and check for anything incriminating. After that I thought I was safe.’

  I felt a heaving sensation and a warm wetness between my legs.

  I saw my own astonishment mirrored on Alison’s face.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘My waters have broken.’

  I grabbed a towel and stuck it between my legs.

  ‘You’d better let me in. I’ve been through this myself, remember, and I was with my daughter when she had her baby.’

  I looked doubtfully at her. ‘The doctor should be here soon. And Stephen.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I won’t hurt you – or the baby,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘You wouldn’t hurt me! What about the cake? You switched it for a piece with cannabis in it! That’s what Paul was smoking to relieve his MS, wasn’t it?’

  She looked contrite. ‘I didn’t think that it would have such a dramatic effect. I just wanted to get you out of the way for a while.’

  ‘And when you realized that Margaret had another set of backup disks, you searched my house!’

  ‘I’m so sorry about breaking that sweet little bowl.’ This seemed to worry her as much as anything.

  A wave of pain hit me. Something inside was being pulled tighter and tighter.

  ‘No, no,’ I groaned.

  I clutched my belly with one hand and thumped the wall again and again with the other. I bit my lip until blood came. Just when I thought that I couldn’t stand it a moment longer, the tension relaxed and the pain slowly subsided.

  ‘Cass, please let me in! Please!’

  I looked up. Alison’s face was at the window. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  I can’t do this on my own, I thought.

  ‘Even if I could bear to harm the baby,’ Alison said, ‘what good would it do me? Think about it. I heard you on the phone; Stephen knows what I’ve done. So do the police by now. They’ll probably all arrive together.’

  I thought about it.

  ‘Like something out of a Marx brothers movie,’ she added.

  At that moment she sounded just like her old self. Perhaps it was that as much as anything that decided me.

  ‘Very well. Put your bag down over there, near the gate. Yes, that’s it. Now take your clothes off.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just down to your underwear will be enough, but do it, or I won’t let you in.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I want to make sure that you haven’t got a syringe hidden about your person.’

  She flushed. I thought she wasn’t going to do it. Then she kicked off her shoes and pulled off her fleece, dropping it on the ground. A few moments later, her sweater and jeans joined it. She stood there shivering in her white cotton knickers and bra; a big, pale, Rubenesque woman.

  ‘Socks as well?’ she asked.

  ‘No, that’s enough.’

  I went into the hall and opened the door. Alison walked through into the kitchen and I followed her.

  ‘You can put my coat on,’ I said.

  She took it off the chair where I had left it when I came in, and slung it round her shoulders. She sat down at the kitchen table. The rope of hair was still lying there. Alison just looked at it at first, then she stroked it.

  ‘I never thought you’d pluck up the nerve to get rid of this. It really suits you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How about a cup of tea?’

  I thought it over. ‘Oddly enough, it’s just what I feel like, but I’m not supposed to eat or drink at this stage, am I?’

  ‘Oh, sod that. Your body will tell you what it wants.’

  Alison put the kettle on. I watched her moving about the kitchen laying out cups, getting the milk out of the fridge.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she said.

  I shook my head. I had to keep moving, pacing up and down between the door and the window, the palms of my hands resting on my aching belly.

  There was still something I needed to know.

  ‘What about Rebecca?’

  Alison poured out the tea. ‘She tried to blackmail me. Told me she was finding the work too difficult, but couldn’t afford to re-take her final year, so could I fix things for her? She said it would wreck my career if it came out about me and Lucy. I couldn’t think how she knew.’

  ‘She didn’t,’ I said dryly. ‘You both must have got the wrong end of the stick. She thought it was you, not Margaret, who’d been having an affair with Lucy. You thought she meant the thesis.’

  Alison’s mouth gaped. She groped for a chair and sank onto it, her eyes never leaving my face. I struggled not to feel a grim satisfaction as I told her about Margaret and Lucy.

  ‘You didn’t know about that, did you? You needn’t have killed Rebecca.’

  Her eyes were now fixed on the table.

  ‘When you went to the hospital to finish her off, did you in
ject her with whatever Paul used? Something from the chemistry lab, I suppose.’

  Her head jerked sharply. ‘I couldn’t risk her incriminating me. How would Paul have managed if I’d been arrested?’

  The folder from my briefcase was still lying on the table. The flap had fallen open.

  ‘That’s my article,’ she said, sounding surprised.

  ‘Do you know, I’ve been carrying it around in my bag for months. I never did get round to reading the rest of it.’

  She took the article out of the folder. ‘This isn’t going to be much use to you now, is it? I’m sorry about that.’ She folded it neatly in two. ‘What’s going to happen to the department, do you think?’

  ‘We’ll be OK.’

  Alison tore the article in half very slowly and neatly.

  ‘Why did Margaret have to make such a fuss?’ she said.

  She went on with her work of folding and tearing. A little white mound of torn paper was growing in front of her. I stood on the other side of the table and watched her.

  ‘All this need never have happened,’ she continued.

  She scooped up the scraps of paper in both hands and tossed them up. They flew out of her hands like startled birds and then floated down with majestic slowness, landing on her shoulders and hair like giant flakes of snow. Some settled in our cups and the tea turned them ochre.

  ‘It’s not Margaret. It’s you,’ I said. ‘You’re the one. You’re the Snow Queen.’

  She looked at me, puzzled. I studied her face, taking in her creamy complexion, the slightly ironic set of her lips, the lock of white hair springing up from her forehead.

  The anger I’d felt earlier returned. I could hardly speak for emotion, but at last I spat the words out. ‘You mustn’t try to put the blame on anyone else. Of course Margaret couldn’t let you steal someone else’s research. Of course she couldn’t. Trying to tell the truth about things – that’s what academic life is about. If we haven’t got that, we haven’t got anything. It’s more than a job, it’s what we are.’