Murder Is Academic

by Christine Poulson

  Alison and I stared at each other across the kitchen table. She was the first to look away. I watched her eyes slowly fill with tears. Her face softened and relaxed.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you want to see me?’

  She sighed. ‘I just wanted to explain how it all happened, and I had a vague idea that I maybe could protect my daughter and her family. It’ll be bad enough for her already that we’re dead. I thought perhaps the rest needn’t come out. Silly, really.’

  ‘Stephen will be here before too long – and the police.’

  She shrugged. ‘There’s nowhere to run to. May as well wait here as anywhere.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Paul was so fond of you, Cass,’ Alison said. ‘He really used to look forward to those chess games.’

  I pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. She smiled at me and stretched out her hand across the table. As I reached to take it, pain tore through me. I sucked in my breath and closed my eyes. A gigantic wave was lifting me higher and higher. Alison’s fingers tightened around mine.

  I was hemmed in by the table. I struggled to my feet.

  ‘I’ve got to lie down,’ I groaned.

  Alison leap up and put her arm around me. Clasped to one another like Siamese twins, we staggered together up the stairs, the narrow space squeezing us close. I sank to my knees on the floor of the study. Alison came down with me as if we were yoked together.

  ‘I can’t go any further,’ I gasped.

  She began working quickly and efficiently, unfastening my clothes, pulling off my sodden tights and knickers. I parted my thighs.

  ‘Yes, yes, take a deep breath. Now push. Push!’ she shouted.

  She leant over me. I looked up at her face. She was grimacing in sympathy.

  ‘That’s it. Grip my hand as hard as you can. Try to breathe slowly. Yes, that’s it.’

  For a few blessed moments the pain stopped. I relaxed my grip. Then it began again: something bigger, more important and more complicated than pain. I slid to a lying position and drew my knees up. I was dimly aware of sounds in the background, a door banging, voices shouting.

  I heard Alison cry, ‘Yes, yes! That’s it! Yes!’

  She was sitting behind me now with her legs spread wide. She pulled me back against her breasts. I gripped her knees and braced myself. The crown of the baby’s head appeared between my thighs.

  I heard thudding on the stairs. I looked up and saw Stephen appear in the doorway, with Jane at his shoulder. They stood for a moment transfixed. I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth and gave a last, great heave. With a final slithering rush, our daughter was born.

  Stephen was just in time to catch the blood-smeared baby in both hands.

  Epilogue

  Futile – the Winds –

  To a Heart in port –

  Done with the Compass –

  Done with the Chart –

  Emily Dickinson

  ‘Careful, careful.’

  ‘I am being careful,’ said Stephen as he unbuckled the carrycot and eased it out of the back seat of the car. ‘I can still hardly believe that they’ve let us take her home.’

  ‘I know. I was expecting to feel a heavy hand on my shoulder as we walked out of the hospital.’

  Stephen and I stood for a moment at the gate to the Old Granary with the carrycot between us. We watched the clouds scudding across the huge expanse of fenland sky. It was a deliciously fresh, sparkling spring morning in early April. After six weeks in the premature baby unit, Grace was coming home on the exact day that she should have been born. It had taken a while for us both to recover from the shock of her early arrival, and then Grace had suffered jaundice. I had stayed in the hospital with her. After all the weeks spent under artificial light, it felt strange to be outdoors. The world was full of movement and energy, and everything seemed too brightly coloured.

  There was a sound behind me. I turned my head to see Jane and Cathy standing at the door of the house. They were both grinning. Jane was holding a bottle of champagne and Cathy was clasping Bill Bailey to her breast. He struggled free, bounded down the garden, and wound himself around my legs in an ecstasy of welcome.

  ‘I know you’ll want to be quiet,’ Stephen said, ‘but I didn’t think you’d mind Jane and Cathy. They helped me get things ready.’

  ‘It’s lovely to see them.’

  Jane came forward and Stephen tilted the carrycot so that she could peep into it. I folded back the white cellular blanket and we admired the little sleeping face. Grace’s thumb was in her mouth and her other hand, curled into a fist, was resting against her cheek. Jane put her face close to the baby’s and inhaled.

  ‘Oh, God, the smell of small babies! It always make me wish I’d become a paediatrician or had six kids of my own! Isn’t she gorgeous?’

  ‘Just perfect,’ I agreed.

  Up in the sitting-room, Stephen put Grace in her carrycot on the window seat. I sat down beside her. The familiar room seemed different somehow. Then I saw that it was different: there was a new rug on the floor. Underneath it, I knew, were stains that hadn’t quite come out of the floorboards. But that wasn’t all: there was more space. The books had gone from the floor, and the wall by the stairs was covered in new bookshelves.

  Stephen was about to ease the cork out of the champagne bottle. He paused and glanced over at me, gauging my response to the changes.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you? I know you’ll want to sort the books out yourself, but I thought I’d just get them off the floor. Safer for the baby. Plus, I’ve decorated the little bedroom for her. I took yesterday off work to do it. I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘Yes, that’s all right. I mean, yes, of course, it’s great!’

  Grace’s birth and the weeks watching over her in hospital had brought us together in ways I hadn’t imagined were possible. We hadn’t talked much about the future. We had somehow just taken it for granted that we would live together in the Old Granary when we had brought Grace home. We hadn’t talked yet about selling Stephen’s flat, nor about getting married. Those were questions for later. Now, there was the round, satisfying pop of a champagne cork being drawn to focus on. Jane held out glasses to catch the froth, and the next few minutes passed in a confusion of toasts and laughter.

  When we were all settled in our seats with our glasses, Cathy said, ‘There’s something else you might feel like celebrating. I heard just as I was leaving college: Lawrence has resigned. He’s leaving at the end of the summer term. Merfyn wants you to know that he and Aiden are pushing for new appointments to the department, and then when you get back from maternity leave, there’ll be everything to play for. He said he’d ring you when you’ve had time to settle in.’

  ‘Lawrence is leaving? But why?’

  I couldn’t imagine him anywhere but in college. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that I’d ever seen him anywhere else. I’d wondered if he ever went home.

  ‘The notice that went up on the board said he was taking early retirement because he wanted to devote more time to his subject.’

  ‘Is that the academic equivalent of spending more time with your family?’ Stephen asked.

  ‘That’s right. But the question is: did he jump or was he pushed?’ I said. ‘I bet the trustees were furious when all that stuff came out in the papers about his trying to block the inquiry.’

  ‘I’ve wondered about that,’ Cathy said. ‘How did the papers get hold of it all?’

  ‘I didn’t tell them.’ I glanced at Stephen.

  He held up his hands in self-defence.

  ‘Not guilty,’ he said. ‘I do know that certain members of the local constabulary thought you had a rough deal. I really don’t know any more than that, but however it happened, it’s bloody good news.’

  He picked up the champagne bottle.

  Cathy sighed, ‘Much as I’d love some more, I’ve got to get back to college.’

  She came over to kiss me and have a
last look at Grace. ‘Don’t be in a hurry to get back in harness. Enjoy her while you can.’

  After Cathy had gone, Stephen asked Jane how Malcolm was coping. ‘It must have been a hell of a shock finding out about Margaret and Lucy.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Jane said slowly. ‘I was meaning to tell you about that. You’re not going to believe this, but it wasn’t all that much of a shock…’

  I stared at her. ‘You don’t mean to say that he knew all along?’

  ‘He didn’t know who it was, he just knew that there was someone. But he let it ride, didn’t want to force the issue. He thought if he didn’t say anything, she’d get through it and settle back into the marriage.’

  ‘Actually he was right, wasn’t he?’ Stephen said. ‘She was getting over it.’

  Would I have destroyed the letters, I wondered, if I had known that? And how had destroying them influenced the course of events? Was there even any point in thinking about that?

  Jane cleared her throat. I looked at her and saw that she was blushing.

  ‘I might as well tell you. Malcolm and I, we’re … well, we’ve become rather close.’

  ‘That’s marvellous!’ I said. I thought of what Jane had said about wishing she’d had six babies. Well, she wouldn’t have time for that, but maybe there’d be time for one? She was only a few years older than me, after all.

  Jane was beaming all over her face. ‘It’s very early days. I mean, we won’t be rushing into anything, have to see how things go.’ Her face grew more serious. ‘And of course, it hasn’t been a year yet since…’

  She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. It was less than a year since Margaret had died. Less than a year, too, since Grace had been conceived. My daughter made a little snuffling sound. I leaned over her. Her hand had fallen away from her face. I stroked her palm. She stirred in her sleep and her tiny fingers closed tightly round mine. Impossible now to imagine a world without her. I thought of the night she had been born. In the bustle and confusion of the moments after Grace’s birth, Alison had slipped away. When the fog dispersed the following morning, the police found her parked car in a field about a mile away. Her body was inside it. I was shocked, but not for long. I came to see that while it wasn’t exactly a happy ending, it was perhaps for her the best possible one. I had almost come to terms with it, but there was still a sore place in my heart for Rebecca’s mother and I didn’t think that would ever go away. Marion had come down from Newcastle to see me in hospital, bringing me a beautiful hand-knitted shawl. We would keep in touch.

  Jane broke into my thoughts.

  ‘Here’s to Grace,’ she said. ‘Long life and happiness!’

  ‘Not many people have such a dramatic entry into the world,’ Stephen said.

  I raised my glass. One day I would tell her all about it.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  MURDER IS ACADEMIC: A CAMBRIDGE MYSTERY. Copyright © 2002 by Christine Poulson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  ISBN 0-312-31807-3

  First published in Great Britain by Robert Hale Limited, under the title Dead Letters

  First U.S. Edition: April 2004

  eISBN 9781466842328

  First eBook edition: March 2013