Gaudy Night (37 page)

“I don’t think it could have been. I was referring to various pages, and I think I should have seen it.”

“Did you give it directly into Miss Hillyard’s own hands?”

“No; I put it in her pigeon-hole before Hall.”

“So that anybody might have got hold of it.”

“Oh, yes.”

Exasperating. Harriet took possession of the paper and passed on. It was now not even clear against whom the threat was directed, much less from whom it came. She fetched Peter’s letter, and discovered that in the interval she had made up her mind. She had said she would ring up the head of the firm; and so she would. If he was not technically the head, he was certainly the brains of it. She put the call through. She did not know how long it would take, but left instructions at the Lodge that when it came she was to be searched for and found without fail. She felt abominably restless.

The next piece of news was that a violent quarrel had taken place between Miss Shaw and Miss Stevens, who were normally the closest of friends. Miss Shaw, having heard the full story of the previous night’s adventure, had accused Miss Stevens of frightening Miss Newland into the river; Miss Stevens had in her turn accused Miss Shaw of deliberately playing on the girl’s feelings, so as to work her up into a state of nerves.

The next disturber of the peace was Miss Allison. As Harriet had discovered the previous term, Miss Allison had a way of passing on to people the things other people had said of them. In a spirit of candour she had now chosen to pass on to Mrs. Goodwin the hints thrown out by Miss Hillyard. Mrs. Goodwin had tackled Miss Hillyard about it; and there had been a most unpleasant scene, in which Miss Allison, the Dean and poor little Miss Chilperic, who had been drawn into the discussion by malignant chance, took sides with Mrs. Goodwin against Miss Pyke and Miss Burrows, who, though they thought Miss Hillyard had spoken ill-advisedly, resented any aspersions cast against the unmarried state as such. This unpleasantness took place in the Fellows’ Garden.

Finally, Miss Allison had further inflamed the situation by passing on a vivid account of the matter to Miss Barton, who had gone away indignantly to tell Miss Lydgate and Miss de Vine exactly what she thought of the psychology both of Miss Hillyard and Miss Allison.

It was not an agreeable morning.

Between the married (or about-to-be-married) and the unmarried, Harriet felt herself to be like Aesop’s bat between the birds and beasts; an odd result, she felt, of having sown her wild oats in public. Lunch was a strained meal. She came into Hall rather late, to find that the High Table had sorted itself out into opposing camps, with Miss Hillyard at one end and Mrs. Goodwin at the other. She found an empty chair between Miss de Vine and Miss Stevens, and amused herself by drawing them and Miss Allison, who was next to Miss de Vine on the other side, into a discussion of currency and inflation. She knew nothing of the subject, but they, naturally, knew a great deal, and her tact was rewarded. Conversation spread; the table presented a less sullen front to the assembled students, and Miss Lydgate beamed approval. Things were moving nicely when a scout, leaning between Miss Allison and Miss de Vine, murmured a message.

“From Rome?” said Miss de Vine. “Who can that be, I wonder?”

“Telephoning from Rome?” said Miss Allison, in piercing accents. “Oh, one of your correspondents, I suppose. He must be better off than most historians.”

“I think it’s for me,” said Harriet, and turned to the scout. “Are you sure they said de Vine and not Vane?”

The scout was not very sure.

“If you’re expecting it, it must be for you,” said Miss de Vine. Miss Allison made some rather sharp observation about writers of international celebrity and Harriet loft the table, flushing uncomfortably and angry with herself for doing so.

As she went down to the public call-box in Queen Elizabeth, to which the call had been put through, she tried to arrange in her own mind what to say. A brief sentence of apology; another brief sentence of explanation; and a request for advice; into whose hands should the case be put? There was, surely, nothing difficult about that.

The voice from Rome spoke English very well. It did not think Lord Peter Wimsey was in the hotel, but would inquire. A pause, during which she could hear feet passing to and fro on the other side of the continent. Then the voice again, suave and apologetic.

“His lordship left Rome three days ago.”

Oh! Did they know for what destination?

They would inquire. Another pause, and voices speaking Italian. Then the same voice again.

“His lordship left for Warsaw.”

“Oh! Thank you very much.”

And that was that.

At the thought of ringing up the British Embassy at Warsaw, her heart failed her. She replaced the receiver and went upstairs again. She did not seem to have gained very much by taking a firm line.

Friday afternoon. Crises always, thought Harriet, occurred at the weekend, when there were no posts. If she wrote now to London and they replied by return, she would still, in all probability, be able to take no action till Monday. If she wrote to Peter, there might be an Air-Mail—but suppose he wasn’t at Warsaw after all. He might by now have gone on to Bucharest or Berlin. Could she possibly ring up the Foreign Office and demand to know his whereabouts? Because, if the letter got to him over the week-end and he wired a reply, she would not be losing so very much time. She was not sure if she would be very good at dealing with the Foreign Office. Was there anybody who could? How about the Hon. Freddy?

It took a little time to locate Freddy Arbuthnot, but eventually she ran him down, by ’phone, at an office in Throgmorton Street. He was definitely helpful. He had no idea where old Peter was, but he would take steps to find out, and if she liked to send a letter care of him (Freddy) he would see that it was forwarded on at the earliest possible moment. No trouble at all. Charmed to be of use.

So the letter was written, and despatched so as to reach Town first post on the Saturday morning. It contained a brief outline of the case, and finished up:

“Can you tell me whether you think Miss Climpson’s people could handle it? And who, in her absence, is the most competent person there? Or, if not, can you suggest anybody else I could ask? Perhaps it should be a psychologist and not a detective. I know that anybody you recommend will be trustworthy. Would you mind wiring as soon as you get this? I should be immensely grateful. We are all getting rather worked up, and I’m afraid something drastic may happen if we don’t cope with it quickly.”

She hoped that last sentence did not sound as panicky as she felt.

“I rang up your hotel in Rome and they said you had gone on to Warsaw As I don’t know where you may be by this time, I’m getting Mr. Arbuthnot to forward this through the Foreign Office.”

That sounded faintly reproachful, but it couldn’t be helped. What she really wanted to say was, ‘I wish to God you were here and could tell me what to do’; but she felt that that might make him feel uncomfortable, since he obviously couldn’t be there. Still, it could do no harm to ask, “How soon do you think you will be back in England?” And with this addition, the letter was finished and posted.

“And to put the lid on things,” said the Dean, “there’s this man coming to dinner.”

“This man” was Dr. Noel Threep, a very worthy and important man, a Fellow of a distinguished college and a member of the Council by which Shrewsbury was governed. Friends and benefactors of this kind were not infrequently entertained in College, and as a rule the High Table was glad of their presence. But the moment was scarcely auspicious. However, the engagement had been made early in the term and it was quite impossible to put Dr. Threep off. Harriet said she thought his visit might be a good thing, and help to keep the minds of the S.C.R. off their troubles.

“We’ll hope so,” said the Dean. “He’s a very nice man, and talks very interestingly. He’s a political economist.”

“Hard-boiled or soft-boiled?”

“Hard, I think.”

This question had no reference to Dr. Threep’s politics or economics, but only to his shirt-front. Harriet and the Dean had begun to collect shirt-fronts. Miss Chilperic’s “young man” had started the collection. He was extremely tall and thin and rather hollow-chested; by way of emphasising this latter defect, he always wore a soft pleated dress-shirt, which made him look (according to the Dean) like the scooped-out rind of a melon. By way of contrast, there had been an eminent and ample professor of chemistry—a visitor from another university—who had turned up in a front of intense rigidity, which stood out before him like the chest of a pouter pigeon, bulging out of all control and displaying a large area of the parent shirt at either side. A third variety of shirt fairly common among the learned was that which escaped from the centre stud and gaped in the middle; and one never-to-be-forgotten happy day a popular poet had arrived to give a lecture on his methods of composition and the future of poetry, whereby, at every gesticulation (and he had used a great many), his waistcoat had leapt in the air, allowing a line of shirt, adorned with a little tab, to peep out, rabbit-like, over the waist-line of the confining trouser. On this occasion, Harriet and the Dean had disgraced themselves badly.

Dr. Threep was a large, agreeable, talkative person, who at first sight appeared to present no loophole for sartorial criticism. But he had not been seated at table three minutes before Harriet realised that he was doomed to form one of the most notable additions to the collection. For he popped. When he bent over his plate, when he turned to pass the mustard, when he courteously inclined himself to catch what his neighbour was saying, his shirt-front exploded with a merry little report like the opening of ginger-beer. The clamour in Hall seemed louder than usual that night, so that the poppings were inaudible beyond a few places to right and left of him; but the Warden and the Dean, who sat beside him, heard them, and Harriet, sitting opposite, heard them; she dared not catch the Dean’s eye. Dr. Threep was too well-bred, or perhaps too much embarrassed, to allude to the matter; he talked on imperturbably, raising his voice more and more to be heard above the din of the undergraduates. The Warden was frowning.

“—the excellent relations between the Women’s Colleges and the University,” said Dr. Threep. “All the same—”

The Warden summoned a scout, who presently went down to the Junior High and thence to the other tables, with the usual message:

“The Warden’s compliments, and she would be obliged if there could be rather less noise.”

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Threep. I didn’t quite catch.”

“All the same,” repeated Dr. Threep, with a polite bend and pop, “it is curious to see how traces of the old prejudice linger. Only yesterday the Vice-Chancellor showed me a remarkably vulgar anonymous letter sent to him that very morning...”

The noise in Hall was dying down gradually; it was like a lull in the intervals of a storm.

“... making the most absurd accusations—oddly enough against your own Senior Common Room in particular. Accusations of murder, of all things. The Vice-chancellor...”

Harriet missed the next few words; she was watching how, as Dr. Threep’s voice rang out in the comparative quiet, the heads at the High Table jerked towards him, as though pulled by wires.

“...pasted on paper—quite ingenious. I said, ‘My dear Mr. Vice-chancellor, I doubt whether the police can do much; it is probably the work of some harmless crank.’ But is it not curious that such peculiar delusions should exist—and
per
sist—at this day?”

“Very curious indeed,” said the Warden, with stiff lips.

“So I advised against police interference—for the moment, at any rate. But I said I would put the matter before you, since Shrewsbury was particularly mentioned. I defer, of course, to your opinion.”

The dons sat spell-bound; and in that moment, Dr. Threep, bowing to the Warden’s decision, popped—with so loud and violent an explosion that it resounded from end to end of the table, and the major embarrassment was swallowed up in the minor. Miss Chilperic suddenly broke out into a spasm of high, nervous laughter.

How dinner ended, Harriet could never properly recall. Dr. Threep went over to have coffee with the Warden, and Harriet found herself in the Dean’s room, helpless between mirth and alarm.

“It’s really very serious,” said Miss Martin.

“Horribly. ‘I said to the Vice-chancellor—’”

“Pop!”

“No; but honestly, what are we to do about it?”

“I defer to your opinion.”

“Pop!”

“I can’t imagine what makes shirts do that. Can you?”

“I’ve no idea. And I meant to be so clever this evening. Here, said I, is a Man come among us; I will watch everybody’s reactions—and then it all went Pop!”

“It’s no good watching reactions to Dr. Threep,” said the Dean. “Everyone’s too used to him. And anyhow, he has half a dozen children But it’s going to be very awkward if the Vice-Chancellor—”

“Very.”

Saturday dawned dull and lowering.

“I believe it’s going to thunder,” said Miss Allison.

“Rather early in the year for that,” said Miss Hillyard.

“Not at all,” retorted Mrs. Goodwin; “I’ve known plenty of thunderstorms in May.”

“There is certainly something electrical in the atmosphere,” said Miss Lydgate.

“I agree with you,” said Miss Barton.

Harriet had slept badly. She had, in fact, been walking about College half the night, a prey to imaginary alarms. When at length she had gone to bed, she had had the tiresome dream about trying to catch a train, hampered all the time by a quantity of luggage which she strove vainly to pack in misty and unmanageable suit-cases. In the morning, she struggled desperately with the proofs of Miss Lydgate’s chapter on Gerard Manley Hopkins, finding it as unmanageable as the suit-cases and very nearly as misty. In the intervals of disentangling the poet’s own system of sprung, counterpoint and logaoedic rhythm, with its rove-over lines and outrides, from Miss Lydgate’s rival system of scansion (which required five alphabets and a series of pothooks for its expression), she wondered whether Freddy Arbuthnot had succeeded in doing what he had promised and whether she ought to leave it at that or do something else: in which case, what? In the afternoon, she could bear herself no longer and set out, under a threatening sky, to wander about Oxford, and walk herself, if possible, into exhaustion. She started up the High, pausing for a few moments to stare into the window of an Antique shop; there was a set of carved ivory chessmen there, for which she had conceived an unreasonable affection. She even played with the idea of going boldly in and buying them; but she knew they would cost too much. They were Chinese, and each piece was a complicated nest of little revolving balls, delicate as fine lace. It would be jolly to handle them, but idiotic to buy them; she was not even a good chess player, and in any case, one couldn’t play chess comfortably with pieces like that. She put temptation aside and moved on. There was a shop full of wooden objects embellished with the painted shields of colleges: bookends, match-stands, pens shaped like oars and horribly top-heavy, cigarette-boxes, inkpots and even powder-compacts. Did it add a zest to facial repairs to have them watched over by the lions of Oriel or the martlets of Worcester? To be reminded during the process that one had a betrothed among the tripping stags of Jesus or a brother nourished by the pious pelican of Corpus? She crossed the street before she came to Queen’s (for Mr. Pomfret might conceivably pop out of the gate, and she was rather avoiding an encounter with Mr. Pomfret) and went on up the other side. Books and prints—fascinating at most times, but insufficiently exciting to hold her attention. Robes and gowns, colourful, but too academic for her mood. A chemist’s shop. A stationer’s, with more college bric-à-brac, this time in glass and pottery. A tobacconist’s, with more coats of arms, on ash-trays and tobacco-jars. A jeweller’s, with college arms on spoons and brooches and napkin-rings. She grew weary of college arms and turned down a side-street into Merton Street. In this untouched and cobbled thoroughfare there should be peace, if anywhere. But peace is in the mind, and not in streets, however old and beautiful. She passed through the iron gate into Merton Grove, and so, crossing over Dead Man’s Walk, into the Broad Walk of Christ Church and along this and round to the towing path where the New Cut meets the Isis. And there, to her horror, she was hailed by a well-known voice. Here, by special interposition of all the powers of evil, was Miss Schuster-Slatt, whose presence in Oxford she had till that moment mercifully forgotten, convoying a party of American visitors, all eager for information. Miss Vane was the very person to tell them everything. Did she know which of these barges belonged to which college? Were those cute little blue-and-gold heads griffins or phoenixes and were there three of them to symbolise the Trinity or was that just accident? Were those the Magdalen lilies? If so, why was there the initial “W” painted all round the barge and what did it stand for? Why did Pembroke have the English rose and the Scotch thistle at the top of the shield? Were the roses of New College English roses, too? Why was it called New when it was so old, and why mustn’t you call it “New” but always “New College”? Oh! look, Sadie—are those geese flying across? Swans? How interesting! Were there many swans on the river? Was it true that all the swans in England belonged to the King? Was that a swan on that barge? Oh, an eagle. Why did some barges have figure-heads and some not? Did the boys ever have tea-parties on the barges? Could Miss Vane explain about those bumping races, because nobody had been able to understand from Sadie’s description. Was that the University barge? Oh, the University College barge. Was the University College the place where all the classes were held?