Death of an Old Goat

by Robert Barnard

  Peter Day had been very genial about it. He said he was grateful to them, because he was beginning to think he was vegetating. He had packed up his nylon shirt and his toilet bag (also concealed in one of the drawers in the cellar) and had gone off. He had dropped hints that he would probably next try Canada, where he said he had contacts — which probably meant old drinking cronies.

  All in all, it was a tract for the times. It might have been sketched by Kingsley Amis before he started to like Mozart. Equally, it was very much what Bill Bascomb would have guessed without the aid of Jim Timmins’s research. The rub was that, as with Wickham, there was not the slightest connection with Professor Belville-Smith. The deputy head cataloguer had great difficulty identifying the latter, who had certainly never been in the library in his time to his knowledge, but he knew of no contact whatsoever between Day and the regular academic community. He was quite sure he had never had any official tuition or supervision — ‘what was there to supervise’, as he said? Nor was Belville-Smith, as far as Timmins could gather, likely to frequent any of the places where Day was in the habit of spending his lunch-times and evenings. Belville-Smith ate in Hall, and drank in his rooms. He had checked on possible links with Wickham, but of course he and Lucy had departed to make names for themselves in their own country some years before Day staggered up to Oxford.

  Summing up, Timmins had to confess that he had drawn a blank. But to maintain his sense of superiority — he was from Balliol — he did allow himself a rather smug remark about what extraordinary people seemed to manage to get academic appointments in the colonies, or did one call them dominions now?

  • • •

  Alice felt a little better when she got into Dr Porter’s bed room. The air of academic sterility in the study had been over-powering — the sort of atmosphere that made you wonder what you were doing with your own life. And each of the Fellows’ flat had a door from their bedrooms leading to a fire-escape, thus ensuring an easy exit for the Fellows and such girls as desired it in the event of a mass invasion from the men’s colleges. If the Porter was heard to come into her sitting-room, a quick escape was possible, if not very dignified.

  Beatrice Porter’s bedroom was, like her study, a model of neatness and propriety. There was nothing to suggest to the most fevered imagination that this bed had actually been slept in by a human body. Alice peered short-sightedly into the wardrobe, but was too intimidated to rummage as she had intended, for Dr Porter’s ineffably boring Sunday School clothes were hung up in a neat row, brushed, mothless, colourless, sexless, immaculate. The least touch, it seemed, would infect and leave traces. Alice peered down at the shoes, which were similarly innocent of the knowledge of human feet, and gave up in despair. The chest of drawers which she next tried contained what might be described as a good class of underwear, all neatly stacked in piles, all looking in what a philatelist would describe as ‘mint condition’. As she stood back and surveyed the room, the fantasy came upon her that Dr Porter did not exist. Perhaps this room was assembled to give credibility to a double identity, perhaps Beatrice Porter was in reality Australia’s Mata Hari, who spent her nights seducing secrets from the inscrutable Chinese diplomats in Canberra. Or perhaps she was a fantasy in the collective minds of the English Department, and someone had given surface credibility to the fantasy by assembling a collection of utterly anonymous clothes and shoes, and pens and rubbers, so that all that was lacking was a face and body. Then she thought of Dr Porter’s face, and the whole idea collapsed.

  In a frenzy prompted by the notion that Dr Porter might slip away early from coffee with the guests, which she was inclined to do if the discussion turned on anything other than the further restriction of visiting hours, she went from bedside cupboard to toilet cabinet, she poked the immaculate bed (and had great trouble in unpoking it), put her head under it in search of trunks — trunks full of antiquated contraceptive devices, trunks full of secret, privately-printed books on Mark Akenside from which had been cut and pasted snippets which had together made up the Porter thesis. Even boxes of cheap brandy, tins of cream cakes, even a packet of dates would be welcome. Some proof of hidden fires, hidden desires, the vaguest inclination towards — not vice necessarily, but individuality.

  It was not to be. As Alice O’Brien slipped down the fire-escape into the gathering gloom, Dr Porter still remained in her imagination, upright, characterless, non-existent, a monument to Australian wowserism, the achieved non-person. My God, thought Alice, she’s going to go far.

  • • •

  The level of Bill’s sherry flagon had slipped down to danger level, presaging drought and a bus-trip to town (‘town’, thought Bill drowsily in inverted commas) for a refill next day. Australian sherry was certainly something you could get used to, he thought, if you gave it a chance. They ought to make more of it in the Australian House hand-outs, those treasuries of seductive fantasies. He poured himself another, and looked at the last page of Jim Timmins’s report:

  ‘Can find no trace of a P.R. Doncaster at St Catherine’s in 1939. There is a C.R. Doncaster in 1942. Is he the one? Am beginning a preliminary investigation.’ Bill pulled his mind up. Doncaster — had he heard a Christian name? No, he didn’t think so. Must be a misprint, either in the college record or in the prospectus of the Drummondale School. Probably the latter. But Royle had said ’39. Doesn’t matter a monkey’s fart, he thought blearily. He dragged himself to his desk, pulled out his typewriter, and started typing tomorrow’s lecture on The Phoenix and the Turtle.

  CHAPTER XVII

  PARTY-SPIRIT

  MENZIES COLLEGE was in festive mood. Most of the chairs had been cleared out of the senior common room, and in the kitchens little bits of New Zealand cheddar were being attached to little bits of sweet gherkin by means of sticks — toothpicks from Norway, which made the occasion truly international — and then left to dry out in the afternoon sun. In addition, flagons of lethal red wine and still more lethal sherry stood in a shady alcove at the back of the common room, young lady Fellows from Daisy Bates College and Dame Patty College had been invited (once their names had got past the censorious scrutiny of the Master), and the student leaders of each block had not only been invited along but had been allowed to bring their steadies, though in return for the dry cheese and dry conversation they were expected to act as waiters for much of the evening.

  It was a wine and cheese party, and little else had been talked about in the corridors of power for the past week. It was, after all, the first party since the Belville-Smith murder, and though no one could think of any reason why this one should have a bloody aftermath, well — the Belville-Smith murder had been pretty irrational anyway, as far as anyone could judge, so it was just possible that this one might too. Certainly they all hoped so. A bloody aftermath was infinitely better than the hangover of accusations and recriminations which was the usual aftermath of most of the parties in Drummondale. Thus, there was, for this occasion, a quite unusual preponderance of grateful acceptances over regretful refusals.

  On the guest list there was, in addition to the Fellows and moral tutors of the various colleges (young lecturers who still found that the convenience of free meals outweighed the disadvantages of the awfulness of them), the governing body of the college — Professor Wickham, Mr Doncaster, and a few other choice souls who were slaving to make Menzies College an Oxonian oasis in the midst of savagery; there were also the heads of the other colleges, and a few isolated graziers. The Principal of Daisy Bates came with a reticule of pills and potions for sicknesses caused by excessive indulgence. The graziers were mostly from the older or wealthier families in the district, men who were expected (wrongly) to be favourably disposed towards the college and likely to leave a sizeable bequest to it in their wills. Among these were the Turbervilles; the Lullhams and the McKays were not thought to be sufficiently big fry. So enough of the merry gathering at the Wickhams’ were there to cause a rather pleasant frisson to run through those who had not been invite
d on the previous occasion, a frisson which was increased by the arrival of Miss Tambly, whose presence no one could account for, unless the Master had been doing a bit of amateur sleuthing on the side and was trying to recreate the circumstances of the Belville-Smith murder.

  As usual the affair had taken a little time to warm up (though the sherry was already unpleasantly warm). Everyone got into incongruous little groups, and found it difficult to get out of them. The Master of Menzies College had the knack of dogmatism, and his pronouncements sent rippling waves of silence in his wake. Nor was social savoir-faire conspicuous among the rest of the guests. Miss Tambly sailed in like one of those new American aircraft carriers designed apparently to hold the entire US Navy, and boomed across to the Master:

  ‘Nice of you to ask me. Quite a surprise. Pleasant little set-up you’ve got here. Scruffy but serviceable. Reminds me of my war days — same sort of cheerful make-do.’

  The Master hardly accepted this as the high praise the speaker intended, and gruffly gestured towards the flagons. Miss Tambly abruptly changed course, shaking hands around as she sailed, and causing all those who had ever before felt the imprint of her massive paw to shrink into the shadows. Having equipped herself with a large tumbler of red wine, she found herself by Merv Raines, and they sank into conversation — her part consisting of barking, his of grunting.

  ‘Now as suspects go,’ said Bill Bascomb, in his jolly, tactful manner, standing in the middle of the floor talking to Alice O’Brien and a handful of students, ‘she’d be the one I’d go for, everything else being equal. She’s got the muscle, and she’d have the nerve, and say what you like it must have taken a lot of nerve.’

  ‘Don’t see that,’ said one of the students. ‘He didn’t look as if he had much fight in him. In fact, I’d back almost any of you against that old bird.’

  ‘So would I,’ said Bill. ‘Though I don’t like the “of you”. But what about hopping in the window, what about putting on your plastic overalls, or mac, or whatever it was, to make sure you didn’t get blood-stains on you? Would you fancy skulking in that waste lot on a fine night in a plastic mac, and squeezing through that window?’

  ‘Not much of a squeeze,’ said Alice. ‘It was a perfectly good size window, and it wasn’t very far off the ground.’

  ‘I realize you’re the expert on breaking and entering,’ said Bill, ‘but I’m talking of the purely psychological problems.’

  ‘Anyway, since the old bird was half-asleep when he gave his lecture,’ said the student, ‘he was probably out like a light as soon as his head hit the pillow.’

  ‘You can say what you like,’ said Bill, ‘but I’d need plenty of this inside me’ — and he held up his glass of red wine.

  ‘You had plenty of that inside, remember?’ remarked Alice.

  • • •

  The topic could not be got away from in the other little groups scattered all around the common room.

  ‘How did the school take the murder?’ said Bobby Wickham genially to Mr Doncaster. ‘Bound to appeal to a boy’s mind, I suppose. Is it still the main topic of conversation there?’

  ‘God, my husband is a bore,’ said Lucy to one of Bobby’s honours students. ‘You’d think we’d had enough of the murder by now, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘They can’t get enough of it,’ said Doncaster. ‘They were bitterly disappointed when I wasn’t arrested the next day. Some of the younger ones apparently hoped I’d be hanged on the spot in the quadrangle. They’re running a book, I believe, and I gather I and Miss Tambly are neck and neck at the moment.’

  ‘Great wishful thinkers, the young,’ said Bobby.

  ‘My feeling is,’ said Lucy, turning round, and unable to resist what was in fact still her favourite topic of conversation, ‘that he must be a very unintelligent murderer. After all, if he had only stuffed a pillow over his mouth for a couple of minutes, then put it back under him, it would probably have been put down to natural causes, and we wouldn’t have had any of this nastiness.’

  ‘You’re surely not suggesting,’ said Doncaster, looking a little startled, ‘that you’d like the idea of living in this little town knowing there was a murderer at large?’

  ‘My point is that I wouldn’t know,’ said Lucy. ‘In any case, I do know there is a rapist, a wife-beater, a man who sleeps with his own daughter and seven or eight rampant practising queers within a square mile of where we live, so I don’t see that the odd murderer would make a great deal of difference one way or the other.’

  Lucy at an academic function was rather different from Lucy among the graziers, but the difference, as someone had remarked, was only between her being unintentionally embarrassing and being intentionally embarrassing. On the whole the latter mood was to be preferred.

  ‘What’s your own particular little vice?’ she said, turning back to give her attention to the student.

  • • •

  ‘Political situation’s a bit confusing,’ said Merv Raines, expanding conversationally in his relief at escaping at last from the clutches of Miss Tambly.

  ‘Is it?’ said Bill.

  ‘The question is, what Whitlam is up to,’ said Merv.

  ‘I always find Australian politics confusing,’ said Bill, ‘so I wouldn’t notice the difference.’

  ‘What’s so bloody confusing about them?’ asked Merv, aggressively and illogically.

  ‘Well, I still haven’t worked out the difference between a premier and a prime minister,’ said Bill.

  ‘Christ, you bloody Pommies,’ said Merv, unconsciously stepping up the Australian content in his accent; ‘you’re still living in the colonial age, the lot of you. You’d like to send out some bloody chinless wonder from the Royal Family to be Governor-General, like in the old times.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Bill. ‘The army needs all the men it can get at the moment.’

  ‘You’d like to rule us from Whitehall,’ said Merv, who could never forgive Britain for giving Australia independence without making her struggle for it, ‘you’d like some snotty little civil servant to make all our decisions for us, ruling the savages for our own good.’

  ‘We’ve got enough savages to rule in Northern Ireland, thank you,’ said Bill. ‘We’re not taking on any more at the moment.’

  ‘You bloody toffs from Oxford,’ said Merv, his voice becoming more and more like a disagreeable Indian stringed instrument, ‘you never done a hand’s turn in your lives, put your shoes outside your door at night, leave the washing-up for the servant to do, call your man to fetch your buttered scones from the JCR . . .’

  ‘I always got my own teas,’ said Bill. He glanced over to where Mr Doncaster was gracefully handing Dr Porter a glass of lemon squash, and made off in their direction. He was in no mood for a great Australian punch-up. Merv looked highly deprived by his departure, and seemed to be looking around for another Englishman.

  • • •

  ‘Very confusing, the political situation,’ said Mrs Turberville, to a lanky student who was feeding her with cheese-filled footballs, ‘very confusing indeed.’

  ‘Too right,’ said the student.

  ‘I’ve always said,’ said Mrs Turberville, raising her considerable voice as if she were addressing a public meeting, ‘that this fellow Whitlam ought to be tried for treason, and then put against a wall and shot.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the student tolerantly.

  ‘The trouble with the university,’ said Mrs Turberville, ‘is that it’s red, through and through, infiltrated by Peking . . .’

  • • •

  ‘Of course, Augustan satire is quite beyond the average student’s comprehension,’ said Dr Porter to Mr Doncaster and Alice O’Brien.

  ‘Certainly we don’t find much in the way of subtlety among our boys,’ said Mr Doncaster, seeking desperately with that furtive wandering of the eyes people who are cornered at parties get for some means of escape from Dr Porter’s idea of party small-talk.

  ‘Take the Mo
dest Proposal, for example,’ said Dr Porter.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr Doncaster.

  ‘Relax,’ said Alice; ‘she’s not making you an offer.’

  Mr Doncaster smiled vaguely, as if this was witty conversation at a level in which he could not hope to participate, and turned with relief as Bill Bascomb approached in flight from Merv Raines.

  ‘Very confusing, the political situation,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just had that one,’ said Bill. ‘Do you think we could try the drought for a change?’

  But he looked very preoccupied, and he was. He paid little attention to the attempts at conversation. A word was buzzing around at the back of his mind . . . half-formed . . . tantalizing . . . screaming to come out . . . a word . . . something he had been reminded of . . . a word . . . a memory.

  ‘Let me fill your glass,’ said Doncaster in desperation to Alice.

  • • •

  ‘Have you tried the new toffee-flavoured laxatives on your girls?’ said the Principal of Daisy Bates College to Miss Tambly. ‘I’ve had some very interesting results from them.’

  ‘Don’t believe in all this coddling,’ said Miss Tambly brusquely. ‘Toffee-flavoured, my fat aunt. If medicine’s going to do any good, it’s got to be damned unpleasant. We give cod-liver oil for most things. Tried and tested. If we didn’t do that, we’d have them round to the dispensary the whole time. The governors are very down on that sort of expenditure, you know. Never make a profit that way.’

  ‘How difficult for you to have to think of things like that,’ said the Principal, with genuine sympathy.

  Miss Tambly was just about to say something very Australian about institutions which were supported by taxpayers’ money when they were interrupted.

  ‘What ho!’ said a voice from the door. ‘A festive scene, eh? Hospitality? Conviviality?’