Matricide at St. Martha's

Matricide at St Martha’s

Ruth Dudley Edwards

Amiss & Troutbeck 05

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
click for scan notes and proofing history

Contents

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PROLOGUE
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EPILOGUE
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MATRICIDE AT ST MARTHA’S

When Alice Toon leaves an enormous bequest to St Martha’s, her old Cambridge College, the dons split into three factions: the Virgins, the Dykes and the Old Women (who are, in fact, men). Determined to do down the Dykes, the Bursar infiltrates into this maelstrom of academic politics her friend and ex-civil service colleague, Robert Amiss, along with his frightful cat, Plutarch.

The Virgins, led by the Mistress, Dame Maud Theodosia Buckbarrow, believe the bequest should be spent on fellowships in the most austere areas of scholarship; the Dykes – fewer in number but better streetfighters – want to spend the money on a centre for Gender and Ethnic Studies; the Old Women feel it should promote more worldly pleasure, and are already dreaming of the vintages to be laid down in a decent new wine cellar.

Just as it seems the Virgins are getting the upper hand, one of their number is found dead… and once again Amiss finds himself at the sharp end of a murder investigation.

Matricide at St Martha’s
is a clever, satirical and very funny new mystery from Ruth Dudley Edwards.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction

CLUBBED TO DEATH

THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH MURDER

THE ST VALENTINE’S DAY MURDERS

CORRIDORS OF DEATH

Non-fiction

TRUE BRITS: INSIDE THE FOREIGN OFFICE

THE BEST OF BAGEHOT

THE PURSUIT OF REASON: THE ECONOMIST 1843-1993

VICTOR GOLLANCZ: A BIOGRAPHY

HAROLD MACMILLAN: A LIFE IN PICTURES

JAMES CONNOLLY

PATRICK PEARSE: THE TRIUMPH OF FAILURE

AN ATLAS OF IRISH HISTORY

Collins Crime

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB

First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Collins Crime

3579 10 8642

© Ruth Dudley Edwards 1994

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 00 232519 5

Set in Meridien and Bodoni

Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsManufacturing Glasgow

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

To Martha, of course, but to John as well

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,

He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.

But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and

nail.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations – worm and savage otherwise, –

Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.

Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact

To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,

To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.

Mirth obscene diverts his anger – Doubt and Pity oft perplex

Him in dealing with an issue – to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame

Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for

the same,

And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,

The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

From: ‘The Female of the Species’,

by Rudyard Kipling, 1911

PROLOGUE

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‘Balls!’ said the Bursar and continued skipping vigorously. As her skirt rode higher, vast quantities of satin eau-de-Nil directoire knicker were exposed to Amiss’s enchanted gaze.

‘Sod this!’ she shouted a couple of minutes later. Flinging the skipping-rope into the corner of her office, she marched back to the desk, threw herself into her chair and lit one of the pipes that peeped out from under the litter of papers.

‘You’ve lost me, Jack. What precisely was it I said that you consider to be balls?’

‘That blather about the tranquillity of Cambridge after the hurly-burly of London.’

‘I was just being polite,’ said Amiss testily. ‘One has to say something.’

The Bursar yawned, leaned back in her chair and planted her feet on her desk. She took another deep pull on her pipe. ‘Drink?’

‘It’s a bit early for me.’

‘God, you’re so prissy. ’ She swung her legs off the desk, reached down to the drawer on her right and pulled out a bottle of gin. Two glasses followed. She poured a generous slug into one and let the bottle hover over the other.

‘Oh, all right, ’ said Amiss. ‘But weak, please, and may I have some tonic?’

She sloshed what to Amiss’s anxious eye looked like a treble into the second glass, shook her head and reached down to the left-hand drawer to get the tonic. ‘Ruins the taste of good gin, you know. Always take mine neat. Learned that trick in the Navy. You young people are all such wimps.’ She shoved the glass over to him. Amiss took a small sip and choked. He grabbed the tonic bottle and filled the glass up to the top. The Bursar took a mighty swig and smacked her lips appreciatively. ‘I like gin,’ she said.

‘That is patently obvious. Now what’s this all about, Jack?’

‘Less of the “Jack”. You’re going to be very formal with me here. I maintain my distance from colleagues. It all helps to put the fear of God into them. I don’t want anyone to know that we’re friends. Spoil the whole effect.’

‘Bursar!’ A note of desperation was creeping into Amiss’s voice. ‘Why am I here?’

‘Because I need an ally to sort out this, this…’

‘Mess?’

She shook her head irritably, ‘just searching for the
mot juste
,’ she said. ‘Try another.’

‘Imbroglio?’

She shook her head. ‘You don’t know a word for witches’ brew?’

‘Sorry, I think it’s normally known as a witches’ brew.’

‘Oh, anyway,’ she said impatiently, ‘the nub is that St Martha’s is in such a state that even I cannot tackle its problems alone.’

‘And in essence what are they?’

‘Money and politics.’

‘No sex?’

The Bursar knocked out her pipe with some savagery on the heavy brass ashtray. ‘Here, sex is politics and politics is sex.’

Amiss felt his head swimming. The Bursar’s darkly impenetrable briefing, the gin and an empty stomach were cumulatively taking their toll.

‘Where do I come in?’

‘I’ll get you in. Do what I tell you and you’ll be a Research Fellow by next week.’

There was a knock on the door. The Bursar’s roar of ‘Enter!’ was loud enough to make Amiss jump. A tiny, elderly, whiskery woman tottered in. She was wearing district nurse’s shoes, thick grey woollen stockings and something grey and woolly underneath her threadbare gown. Much of her hair was confined within a bun on the top of her head, but although it was encased in a brown net which contrasted rather oddly with her white hair, enough had escaped to make her look deranged.

‘That minx, Bursar! That dreadful, dreadful minx!’

‘Which one?’ asked the Bursar wearily. ‘Sandra or Bridget?’

‘Sandra, of course. I said the minx. Bridget’s the hussy.’

‘What’s she done?’

‘She sent me this commentary on my reading list—’ she brandished several sheets of paper— ‘and it’s full of all that awful gibberish, you know.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said the Bursar. ‘All that DWEM stuff again.’

‘I don’t understand any of it. It’s all full of words like “Anglo-centric” and “neo-colonial perspective” and “patriarchal dominance”.’

‘So what’s new?’ asked the Bursar. ‘Why don’t you just ignore it?’

‘She’s circulated it round all my students and you know what will happen.’

‘Have you talked to the Mistress?’

‘Not on a Tuesday morning.’ She sounded shocked.

‘Sorry,’ said the Bursar. ‘One forgets. Leave it with me, Senior Tutor, we’ll have a word about it later on today and don’t let the… ’ she paused for a second, ‘minxes, get to you.’

The door closed on the afflicted don. The Bursar hurled the papers viciously into the corner. ‘ “Minxes”, indeed. “Vipers” would be more like it. They’ve got that poor midget in a fearful state.’

‘Do I gather you are suffering an outbreak of political correctness?’

‘You can say that again. They’ve gone to war and the enemy is the Dead White European Male. The battle cry is, “Get the DWEMs off the reading list and bring on the one-legged black lesbians.” ’

‘But that’s a pretty normal scene on many a campus these days, isn’t it?’

‘This time the whole future of the college is at stake. Come on, drink up and I’ll take you out for a decent lunch. I’m fed up with this health kick.’

‘What health kick?’

‘Well, I’m trying to lose weight,’ said the Bursar stiffly. ‘Why do you think I was skipping?’

‘What about the gin?’

‘Gin isn’t fattening. How could it be? It’s a clear liquid. Anyway, I’ve got to keep my strength up.’

‘Why are you trying to lose weight?’

‘Well, look at me. How would you describe me?’

‘Plump?’ hazarded Amiss politely.

‘God, what a mimsey word. Portly is more like it. I’m portly. Mind you, in this bloody place I’m not allowed to be portly. “Differently-sized”, that’s how that half-wit Sandra described a fat student the other day. Anyway, I’ve been doing a bit of huffing and puffing climbing the stairs so it’s time I did something about it. Come along. I know where we can get some excellent bloody roast beef and a decent bottle of claret.’

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The trouble with Jack Troutbeck, wrote Amiss to Rachel, is that though she is a particularly splendid old bird, and one with whom I worked and occasionally caroused very happily in the civil service, once she has decided you’re intelligent it’s almost impossible to get any information out of her: she assumes you pick up everything by osmosis. However, I applied myself to extracting the salient details and have now got a grip and awfully entertaining it all sounds.