Grave Matters (11 page)

‘I think that someone doesn’t want Carol Bruce at Abbot’s Lodge,’ said Patrick. ‘She put her foot through the floorboards of a room that had been re-floored. She slipped on some steps that were perfectly dry except for where I found a trace of fine oil. She scratched her arm doing a household repair, and her dog has died mysteriously. And now she’s ill. Oh, and her car had a puncture.’

‘She’s just accident-prone,’ said Jane. ‘And people do have punctures all the time, even with tubeless tyres.’

‘I went to the garage at Meldsmead on Thursday for some petrol, and got talking to the owner. Carol’s so-called puncture wasn’t one. There was no trace of a hole in it when the wheel was brought in for repair. It must have been let down. Deliberately, I mean.’

‘How? Couldn’t it have been the valve?’ Michael asked.

‘The flat tyre was found after the Bruces had been out to a party. It was completely flat – right down on the rim. It couldn’t have been just a leaky valve – that would have gone down slowly and might have taken twenty-four hours or more to lose all its air.’

‘Some hooligan boys let it down,’ Jane said promptly.

‘In a remote lane, well away from the village? Where there’s no other house, just the Bradshaws’ market garden?’

‘Certainly the car couldn’t have been driven on a really flat tyre without it being noticed,’ Michael said. ‘Who did spot it?’

‘David. He was going to drive it home, but he noticed the car sagging – you know how they do when one tyre is really down. They had no pump and he changed the wheel.’

‘But this is fanciful in the extreme. Why should anyone want to get Carol Bruce to leave Abbot’s Lodge?’ Michael demanded.

‘It’s been empty for ages. Maybe some gang had got it earmarked as a hideout. Maybe something is hidden there – thieves do dump stuff and collect it later, even after years, when they come out of gaol,’ said Jane.

‘Well, all right, let’s accept that, however unlikely it seems, as some sort of reason. It still doesn’t connect up with your old ladies,’ said Michael.

‘Supposing we could find a link?’ Patrick said.

‘There can’t be one.’

‘There’s Meldsmead.’

‘Do you believe that Miss Amelia saw someone like the train robbers hiding their loot at Abbot’s Lodge and they did her in? Nonsense,’ said Jane. ‘If there was anything odd going on there and she knew about it, she’d report it at once – her duty, you know. Don’t forget the Slade House motto – “Virtue in all I do”.’

‘No. Miss Amelia’s death was an accident. That youth jostled her and she fell. It could have happened to any old lady who happened to be standing where she was at that moment. It was her own fault for not being in a better position. She happened to be standing above a sheer drop – short, but sheer. She fell and bowled down the stairs below. A younger person would have retrieved their balance somehow – clutched at someone, maybe had a broken leg, but might not have been killed.’

‘She hadn’t found some ancient archaeological prize she was about to smuggle back to England in her reticule?’ suggested Michael.

‘If she’d found an archaeological gem she’d have handed it over at once to some authority,’ said Jane.

‘So she wasn’t running up faked amphorae in the cellar of Abbot’s Lodge either. It’s not her ghost haunting Carol,’ Michael said.

‘Why don’t you forget it, Patrick?’ Jane said. ‘It’s making you unhappy. Usually you’re all animated when you’re on the trail of something. You’re wrong this time, surely, aren’t you? It’s just a chapter of rather unhappy accidents. The next thing you hear, Carol will be full of beans and it will all be forgotten. The broken floorboard was probably dishonest workmen – maybe they replaced the worst bits and the previous owners paid for the whole thing, all unbeknownst.’

‘You could be right,’ said Patrick. ‘I think I’ll take your advice. Anyway, I’ve a lot on next week. I’ll calm down unless someone else falls down some stairs.’ Or until he had the result of the tests on the blackberry pie.

And next week Ellen was coming to Oxford. Would she still come, or would she stand him up?

She did come. He met her at the station on Saturday afternoon, took her to the Randolph, parking right outside on the double yellow line in defiance of the traffic warden patrolling nearby, and saw her into the hotel. As she was led off to her room he arranged to pick her up at half-past six. Then he drove back to St. Mark’s, and after he had bathed, shaved, and changed himself he spent the remaining interval until it was time to fetch her fussing round his sitting-room, moving chairs and cushions fractionally, and adjusting the flowers which to Robert, his scout’s, astonishment he had bought that morning. Patrick had often entertained women in his rooms but Robert could never remember flowers being brought in to embellish the surroundings before.

She was coming down the staircase into the hall of the hotel as he arrived. She wore a plain black velvet dress with long sleeves and a high round neck; her only jewellery was a pair of drop earrings, garnets set with pearls. So this is what the poets meant, thought Patrick as he floated through the air towards her, managing to forget David Bruce for ten whole seconds.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said, unable to think of anything less mundane to say.

‘I thought this would be suitable,’ she answered, with the demure smile that enchanted him. He looked pretty good himself, she thought; he was tall, and sturdily built, and behind his large-rimmed glasses his eyes looked steadily into hers. He had a determined chin, but his mouth was wide and gentle-looking; it was a strong face, the face of a man who would make up his mind and stick to his decision, a man who might be stubborn but who was certainly sensitive and perceptive. For once his fine, dark hair was not flopping over his forehead but brushed smoothly back; she had met him often enough now to know that it would soon fall forward.

She was carrying her coat. He helped her into it, took her by the elbow and led her out to the car. Then he whisked her by small side roads to St. Mark’s, where it lurked in obscurity at the end of a cobbled street, one of Oxford’s smallest and oldest colleges.

‘I don’t know Oxford at all well,’ she said, as they went along. ‘I’ve just passed through a few times. Now one doesn’t even do that, with the ring road. I know the other place better. Isn’t that what you call it?’

He laughed.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Here we are.’ He turned into the wide gateway leading into the first quadrangle. ‘Parking laid on and everything.’

‘I knew dons led sheltered lives,’ said Ellen.

‘We do as regards parking, that’s certain,’ Patrick said. ‘But we come up against stark facts now and then. Our young men have their problems, and so do we. This way.’

He took her through the main quad and into a smaller one beyond it, then to the staircase that led to his rooms.

‘It’s quite a climb, but worth it when you get there,’ he said. ‘We’ve time for a quick drink before we go down.’

His efforts to arrange his decanters and heavy Waterford tumblers to best effect were successful. Her rapturous appreciation of where he lived was quite spontaneous.

‘Patrick! What a beautiful room! Look at all your books – and what lovely curtains – and the pictures!’ She flitted round, inspecting and exclaiming, and he stood like a tongue-tied boy admiring her until at last his social sense released his paralysis, and he dealt with their drinks.

They sat sedately on either side of the fireplace drinking sherry, which was what Ellen had chosen, and he told her about his fellow dons whom she would meet later.

‘I hope I won’t disgrace you,’ she said.

‘On the contrary, you’ll make everyone regard me with envy and new respect,’ he said.

‘I will sit next to you, won’t I?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I haven’t been to anything like this before.’

‘Oh yes. And on your other side will be Bernard Wilson, the librarian, so you can talk about your great-aunt’s books to him. He’s an amiable chap – looks a bit unusual, but dons often do.’

‘I’ll try not to stare at him,’ said Ellen, smiling.

Just before half-past seven they went down to the Senior Common Room, where Ellen was introduced with due formality to the Master and his wife. The Master turned out to be a white-haired man of about sixty who did not seem in the least formidable, and his wife, who wore a curious dress of what looked like homespun tweed, had a round face innocent of any make-up, and large guileless blue eyes so that it was impossible to feel awed by her. Bernard Wilson certainly did look rather odd with his thick pebble glasses and heavy beard, but he was so pleased to meet the great-great niece, as they worked out she must be, of the celebrated E. C. Brinton whose contributions to classical scholarship had been so great, that any shyness Ellen felt was soon dispelled. Patrick saw that she had relaxed and was preparing to enjoy herself.

Ellen found it was quite an experience to be seated at the High Table facing a sea of youthful faces ranged at right angles below. An undergraduate with flowing but clean locks read a Latin grace and the meal began. The speed with which it was consumed astounded Ellen; in no time at all, it seemed to her, the hall was clear of young men, and even at the high table plates were removed with startling rapidity. Half her orange soufflé disappeared when she laid down her fork for a moment to answer some remark of Bernard Wilson’s.

After the pudding course, the members of the S.C.R. and their guests returned to the Senior Common Room for dessert. Port and madeira circled round, and this time everyone sat another way, with the don next in seniority to the Master presiding. This was Bernard Wilson. His guest, a woman don who often appeared on television and wrote learned books on prehistory, sat beside him. Ellen now found herself augustly placed beside the Master. He enquired where she lived and what she did, and talked about his married daughter in Vancouver, where he hoped to go in the long vacation. Ellen had spent a year in Canada after her secretarial training and had worked her way across to the West Coast. They talked about totem poles, and how to read the legends they told, and the problem of the Indians. Time flew, and eventually the Master and his wife left, followed by some of the other guests. Those remaining changed their seats again in another bout of General Post and began to talk shop of various sorts. Ellen was fascinated; she had never spent an evening like it, and what impressed her most was the extreme courtesy of everyone. At each introduction a potted biography of either party was related to the other so that there was some starting point for conversation, and everyone talked as if they really were interested in what they were saying, and the responses their remarks evoked. She was encouraged to talk about her own job, and learned that most of the married dons, particularly the younger ones, lived in college-owned flats or houses. The world of commerce in which she moved was alien here, Ellen realised a little bleakly.

After a while Bernard Wilson suggested that she and Patrick should join him and his guest in his rooms for a nightcap. They wound their way there along tortuous passages and up and down various flights of stairs. Over the doorway the legend
Dr. B. L. Wilson
was neatly painted in white. Patrick’s door had been similarly labelled with his name. That was the only resemblance between the two sets, for the interior of Bernard’s was chaotic. There were books and papers piled on every chair and heaped all over the floor, so that spaces had to be cleared among them before anyone could sit down. Then there was a hunt for four glasses of any sort, let alone matching ones. But the drink cupboard was well-stocked. The Burmanns, which Patrick had brought back from Mulberry Cottage were displayed to Ellen, proudly shelved in a glass-fronted cupboard, and Bernard told her he was eager to buy many more of Amelia’s collection, including, on behalf of a pupil, her Oxford edition of Cicero.

‘One volume’s missing,’ Ellen said.

‘Has it not turned up?’ Patrick asked. ‘It will, I’m sure. It must have got into the wrong place somehow.’

Bernard’s guest had taken off her shoes which she said pinched her toes. She padded about the room in bare feet picking up papers and inspecting them, then casting them from her in a despairing way. After that she fell to bemoaning the intellectual levels of her pupils and declared that none would get any sort of degree, much less good ones.

Later, Patrick told Ellen that this woman was a brilliant teacher and one of the best brains in the university, but drinking made her melancholy.

‘And she has a rare virtue. She isn’t afraid of being outclassed by her pupils – she welcomes any challenge,’ he added.

Ellen digested this information as they trekked back through the building to his rooms, where she had left her coat.

‘Don’t you ever leave papers about?’ she asked him, looking at its orderly state.

‘Often. But I tidied up for you. I wanted to create a good impression,’ he said. ‘Have I managed it?’

‘Yes, you have,’ she said. ‘How nice they are, all your colleagues. Their manners are so marvellous. People push and shove so, in London. It’s restful to be somewhere where there’s ritual in what goes on.’

‘Customs and ceremonies have their merits,’ Patrick agreed. ‘But dons can be pretty beastly to one another, when aroused. Many are the feuds among us. Have you enjoyed your evening?’

‘Very much,’ she said, and meant it.

In the morning Patrick showed her the college by daylight, and they spent some time in the library. Ellen was intrigued by the ancient volumes still chained in place as they had been centuries before. Then she said she must go down to Mulberry Cottage and was there a bus?

‘I’ll take you,’ he said.

‘Oh no, Patrick. I couldn’t put you to all that trouble,’ she replied.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘It’s no trouble.’ Just a very great pity and dire disappointment; he had planned a day in the Cotswolds and then a return to Mark’s for tea in his room. She softened the blow a little.

‘We could look out a few more of those books Dr. Wilson wanted, perhaps,’ she suggested. ‘There’ll be something we can eat, I’m sure, even if it’s only a tin.’