Matricide at St. Martha's (21 page)

She looked enquiringly at her audience. ‘It’s not the first term of abuse I would hurl at you, Jack,’ said Amiss.

‘Yet I have no difficulty in understanding how the sheer number of obstacles that until recently stood in the way of becoming a female university teacher would break your heart. I was all right because I joined the civil service, which treated you more or less equally, but the opportunities for women were a joke in the old universities. For God’s sake, it wasn’t until 1948 that a woman could actually be conferred with a degree in Cambridge. You couldn’t join the Union until the sixties. And to this day women cannot even be full members of the Oxford and Cambridge Club.

‘There were so few places for women in Oxbridge that only a tiny percentage of the best of them ever made it there in the first place and their colleges were so miserably poor that jobs were few and conditions spartan. Can you imagine how high-minded you had to be to crave the kind of life they’ve been living in St Martha’s for decades, while around them were countless male colleges full of overfed dons swilling vintage port and wooing privileged male undergraduates who would go out into the world, where they would become successful and rich and in turn leave legacies to their old colleges.

‘Women were tenth-class citizens in Oxbridge. They were patronized by many of their male lecturers and made to feel highly unwelcome by others: it wasn’t that easy to acquire the effortless self-confidence that made one take rejection light-heartedly. Becker had shot her academic bolt because a member of her own sex was jealous of her but she didn’t know that was the reason – she assumed she simply wasn’t good enough.’

‘So what did Dame Maud do then?’

‘Told Windlesham that the injustice must be remedied and the Becker woman hunted down and, if possible, tempted back to St Martha’s.’

‘My God,’ said Amiss, ‘she was a hardliner, old Maud. What was the point after so long? Didn’t she owe more to a longstanding colleague, even if she is a cow.’

‘Maud believed in the simple principle of truth, justice and intellectual integrity. In her way, she was a fanatic.’

‘I suppose I understand intellectually, but not emotionally.’

‘I do,’ said Pooley. ‘It’s the same debate as in Dorothy Sayers’s
Gaudy Night
– intellectual integrity as against the feelings of flesh and blood people.’

‘Precisely,’ said the Bursar. ‘You and I might go for the flesh and blood people in many instances, but we’re not scholars. The point of scholars is to give scholarship priority. You want honest cops, honest scholars, honest Bursars.’ She looked at Amiss. ‘How do we describe you?’

‘ “Honest scrounger”. Pour me some more wine, Ellis.’ As he emptied the bottle in his companions’ glasses, Pooley asked, ‘Do we know what she was proposing to do if Windlesham didn’t play?’

‘Bring the matter up before the College Council and tell Becker the whole story when she tracked her down.’

‘Preserve me,’ said Amiss, ‘from the mercilessness of the good.’

‘What next?’ asked Pooley.

‘I’m handing it over to you. I suggest you go back now when we’ve finished here, ring Amy and get the facts officially, so to speak. Then you and the blithering fool can decide tomorrow morning what to do about it.’

‘I have to say, in defence of my boss, that for once this is something he might just about grasp. Idiot though he may be, he is honest and I think he’d be more in sympathy than Robert with a sea green and incorruptible like Dame Maud.’

‘Oh, I’m not entirely out of sympathy,’ observed Amiss. ‘We need people like that. I’d be worried about public standards if everyone was a wishy-washy liberal like me who likes being liked. You need the whistle-blowers and the people who don’t mind being unpopular and the people with tunnel vision.’

‘But not too many of them,’ said the Bursar. ‘They’re almost all Roundheads.’

24

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Pooley was right about Romford: he seized on the story of Windlesham and Becker with cries of joy. ‘Ah, this is more like it, Pooley. I’d say it’s pretty open and shut. The woman’s got a double motive. If the Mistress stayed alive, Windlesham would be ruined, whereas if she died her reputation is saved and she becomes Mistress as well. Go and get her. The thing to do is to lean on her. Someone like that, she’ll soon crack up. They’re not used to pressure in their ivory tower.’

‘Quite a lot of them seem pretty tough to me, sir.’

‘Well, those impertinent young perverts, yes.’

‘And the Bursar?’

‘She’s not a proper woman. At least Dr Windlesham is a normal woman; they crack easier.’

The familiar sensation of grinding rage gripped Pooley’s vitals. He breathed deeply. ‘I’ll go and look for her, sir.’

Ten minutes in, Pooley wished it was possible to shoot senior officers for incompetence. Even in his most anti-Romford moments he could not have envisaged that the man would throw away a set of excellent cards by simply placing them face up on the table in front of his opponent. There was no attempt to trap the new Mistress into a lie.

Impotently, Pooley ground his teeth as he thought of how he would have conducted the interview, coaxing out of her assertions of a warm, happy relationship with no trouble and no friction and then finally beating her over the head with proof of her own falsehoods. Romford’s approach – ‘I have reason to believe, ma’am, that you and the late Dame Maud had words over a Miss Becker,’ had enabled her to produce a competent and unincriminating version of the dispute. Over and over again Romford tried to get her to alter her version and over and over again she refused to budge.

An hour into the interview even Romford realized they had reached a stalemate. Far from cracking, Dr Windlesham was becoming even more unpleasant as the morning went on. Pooley wished she wouldn’t be so patronizing; Romford was going to be in a vile mood at having a subordinate listen to him being treated in this way.

‘I must insist, Dr Windlesham, that you are in a very serious position; personal offensiveness will not assist you in your predicament.’

‘Inspector Romford, we have been over the same ground, by my reckoning, five times. There is nothing more to say.’

Romford was goaded by the condescension of her tone. ‘Can you give me any reason, ma’am, why I shouldn’t conclude that you murdered Dame Maud to keep her mouth shut?’

‘For the last time, Inspector – and this is the last time, for I have better ways of occupying my time even if you do not – we had an intellectual disagreement on a matter of college policy, we agreed to differ, Dame Maud intended to raise the matter for discussion among our colleagues, I concurred and the matter would have been settled amicably at the Council. I have every reason to believe that my colleagues would have taken my side, being unlikely to wish to see the college’s good name dragged in the mud over a minor error I made twenty years ago.’

‘It was not a minor error. You ruined her career.’

‘For the sixth time, Inspector, I did not ruin her career. For the sixth time, let me remind you that she is a successful barrister, earning probably ten times what you earn, and if it is true that I came between her and a Fellowship at St Martha’s she should be on her knees every day thanking me. Now, I have no intention of wasting any more time on this absurdity.’ She rose up and picked up her book.

‘You can’t go yet.’

‘I can and I will. I am the Mistress here now and I have urgent work to do. It may escape you, Inspector, but I have a college to run and my predecessor to bury. If there is any further unwarranted persecution of me I will feel obliged to have a word with your chief constable. I wish you good morning.’

‘Well, she’s certainly unpleasant enough,’ said Pooley. ‘We knew that. She’s a complete cow.’

‘She’s not all cow,’ said the Bursar. ‘Close to it, I grant you, but she has a couple of good qualities – guts and certainly spleen. I always like a woman who can push the rozzers around. Romford at least must be developing a healthy respect for the inhabitants of St Martha’s.’

‘I think he is. He referred to you collectively as “that monstrous regiment”.’

‘Dear old John Knox. What a splendid turn of phrase. I’d rather be loathed and despised than patronized. This’ll shake up Romford – do him good.’

‘That’s all very well, but he may have let a murderer off the hook.’

‘Maybe, maybe. My money’s still on the Dykes. And of course, Crowley isn’t out of it yet. I think old Deborah’s revelation that the Becker sex-pot made it big in the law alters the picture pretty substantially. Certainly she’s right that most of us would have voted against reopening the whole business. In fact, I would have probably been able to stop Maud doing anything about it, come to think of it; she usually listened to me.’

Pooley sank his chin on his right fist. ‘I feel very dispirited. We’re left with hardly a decent suspect now unless Romford can crack an alibi.’

‘Romford!’ said Amiss. ‘He couldn’t crack an egg if you gave him a hammer.’

‘Trust in the Lord, Ellis,’ said the Bursar. ‘Something’ll turn up.’

The new Number One suspect didn’t show at breakfast. It was 9.30 when Greasy Joan, sent to Dr Windlesham’s bedroom to summon her, threw hysterics at the sight of her body, which had been stabbed several times with a sharp paper knife bearing the legend ‘Boston Red Sox’. The only clues yielded by the police search were a few wiry black hairs in her bed. By lunch-time, with the preliminary forensic report in, Romford was cock-a-hoop. ‘Now that we know she was full of sleeping pills, we know even someone as small as that black girl could have done the stabbing, so my instinct was right. Stands to reason, nice quiet backwater like this, it’s got to be a foreigner. She’s American. They don’t understand anything except violence, especially the blacks. I’m only surprised she didn’t use a gun. Go and get her. We’ll give her a going over and then we’ll take her in.’

‘Sir, just before I do. Why? I mean, what motive?’

‘That lesbian takeover. She sees off Mistress Number One, so as to get that Holdness woman made Deputy, then she sees off Mistress Number Two. You’ll see, Holdness will step into her shoes any day now and they’ll get hold of all this money and use it to disseminate whatever filth they want. Plain as a pikestaff.’

‘I wouldn’t be certain, sir, that this lady necessarily sees eye to eye on everything with Dr Holdness.’

‘Stuff and nonsense, Pooley. Which side do you expect black American lesbians to be on? Motherhood and apple pie?’

It was rare for Romford to make a joke. When he did he fully appreciated it. Pooley waited for the merriment to subside. ‘Sir, I’m just suggesting that we might go a little gently with her. The evidence is, er, a trifle circumstantial.’

‘Do what you’re told. Go and get her and warn the boys to be ready for the arrest.’

Pooley hovered. ‘The students are very edgy at the moment, sir. We need to be careful.’

‘Are you telling me my job, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good.’

Pooley quit the room unhappily. His first port of call was the phone box in the hall from which he rang Superintendent Hardiman; his mobile was switched off. His second was Amiss’s bedroom, which was empty. So too was the Bursar’s. Having told the DCs what to expect, he reluctantly commenced the search for Mary Lou, whom he found in the library.

Professionalism and inside knowledge fought within him as they walked to the interview room, exchanging desultory small talk. ‘Dr Denslow,’ he said finally, ‘could I just warn you that Inspector Romford’s bark is worse than his bite?’

She eyed him curiously. ‘You mean he shouts a lot?’

‘I shall deny it if you quote me, but what I mean is that he sometimes jumps too readily to conclusions.’

She stopped and looked him full in the face. ‘Come on, call a spade a spade.’ She grinned broadly. ‘I’m not going to rat on you; I know you’re a friend of Robert’s. Are you trying to tell me Romford’s attempting to pin this on me?’

‘I can’t say any more. Just that if you are outraged by what Inspector Romford says or suggests or even does, don’t panic.’

Mary Lou smiled, ‘I don’t. But I’m very grateful for the tip-off.’

‘I must warn you that whatever you say may be taken down and used in evidence.’

Mary Lou looked at Romford in a relaxed fashion.

‘I’m from out of town, Inspector. What’s all that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s an official warning.’

‘Of what?’

‘That anything you say might be used against you.’

‘That’s a pretty vague explanation.’

Romford looked helpless.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Pooley. ‘It means simply, ma’am, that anything you say to us might be used in court, should you appear there.’

‘In the dock?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Well, that would be some interesting experience. Just what are you fingering me for?’

‘Murder,’ said Romford.

‘Why should
I
murder the Mistress?’

‘Ha!’ Romford looked triumphant. ‘How do you know she’s been murdered? The one that found her’s been taken off to the hospital and we didn’t tell anyone yet that it wasn’t natural causes.’

Mary Lou looked at him blankly. ‘Everyone knows she’s been murdered.’

‘They do not. This is a matter known only to the police.’

‘But it’s been in the newspapers.’

Romford looked discomforted. ‘Oh, I see. You were referring to Dame Maud.’

‘Well, she was the Mistress, wasn’t she? What’s going on round here, Inspector?’

Romford cleared his throat and put on his impressive voice. ‘There is a measure of misunderstanding at this point in time, owing to the fact that Dr Windlesham, the present Mistress, has been murdered too.’

‘What! This is getting Shakespearian – no one else could explain matricide on such a grand scale.’

‘What do you mean, matricide?’

‘The murder of your mother.’ Seeing Romford’s perplexity, she added, ‘I mean that the Mistress is the mother of the college.’ Romford still looked blank. ‘Oh, never mind,’ said Mary Lou, ‘it was just a thought.’