Matricide at St. Martha's (12 page)

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Throughout the long night. Amiss had frequent cause to regret his gallantry. While the Bursar’s lusty snorings were a reassuring indication that the life force coursed vigorously around her veins, they took their toll on her guardian’s jangling nerves. At about 3.00 a.m. he could stand no more. He climbed off his sofa and found his way across the room to the bed.

‘Jack,’ he hissed – gently, so as not to alarm her – ‘please stop snoring.’ There was no response other than a particularly rich explosion of sound. He raised his voice progressively for the_second, the third and the fourth attempts, rousing her finally only by shaking her.

‘What’s wrong?’ she muttered. ‘What is it? Is the joint on fire?’

‘No, Jack. But you’re snoring so loudly I can’t get a wink of sleep. Can you please try turning over?’

‘Nothing wrong with a good snore. Clears the tubes. I like snoring. You should try it.’ She fell asleep as she finished the sentence.

Miserably, Amiss crept back to his uncomfortable sofa and fell into a sleepless gloom.

Just before 7.00 came a commanding rap on the door, which he found had been inflicted by Deborah Windlesham. Amiss closed the door quietly and joined her in the corridor. She threw a disparaging glare at his crumpled appearance. ‘You look as if you’ve slept in your clothes.’

‘I have. I had little option.’

She sniffed one of those sniffs that substitutes for whole paragraphs of criticism. ‘No alarms in the middle of the night? No interruptions by assassins?’

Amiss opened his mouth to sympathize with her on her disappointment and closed it again. New Men didn’t cheek women: he had stepped out of character quite enough the previous night. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘We have been quite undisturbed.’

‘You’d better hurry up or you’ll be late for drill.’

‘I’m not going to drill.’

‘You must. We won’t have a quorum otherwise. I don’t expect the Bursar’s going to be up to it.’

‘Dr Windlesham.’ Amiss spoke with as much patience as he could muster. ‘I’m not leaving the Bursar alone until the police are with her.’

‘That’s melodramatic stuff and nonsense, as I’m sure Miss Troutbeck would be the first to agree.’ She threw open the door and marched over to the recumbent — now just slightly snorting – Bursar and gazed on her with evident irritation. ‘Can’t think why you’re so solicitous,’ she said over her shoulder to Amiss. ‘What is she? Your long-lost mother?’

‘Got it in one.’ Amiss’s temper suddenly got the better of him. ‘Now will you leave us together to celebrate our reunion?’

This time Dr Windlesham’s sniff penetrated the Bursar’s slumber. She opened her eyes slowly and then sat bolt upright. ‘What a damn disinheriting countenance, Deborah. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?’

‘I was just checking that you’d been looked after properly by your poodle.’

The Bursar’s eyes flickered over towards Amiss, who was leaning against the door trying to look
soigné
. ‘Push off, Deborah, will you? Go and be unpleasant to someone else for a change.’

Dr Windlesham marched out. Amiss applauded. ‘That’s what I like about you, Jack. Never use a stiletto when there is an axe to hand.’

‘An axe isn’t a bad weapon, but we Troutbecks rather favour the flail. That iron-spiked ball on the end of a chain saw off large numbers of infidels in short order during the Crusades, I can tell you. Now, what’s going on? Fill me in. My memories of last night are as hazy as if I’d been doing the Freshers’ pub crawl.’

Amiss told the story rapidly. ‘So,’ he ended, ‘a couple of days in bed and you’ll be back to normal, if that’s the right way to describe you.’

‘Rubbish!’

She clambered out of bed and stood there arms akimbo. Despite his irritation, Amiss thought her a rather magnificent picture of defiance. Even her lavender-sprigged flannelette nightdress could not detract from her presence. ‘I’m carrying on,’ she announced. ‘Business as usual.’

‘God preserve me,’ yelled Amiss, ‘from stubborn old cows who can’t get it into their thick heads that they’re going to get murdered if they don’t take some elementary fucking precautions!’

She looked at him in a mildly surprised way. ‘I thought it was a good thing that I had a thick head.’ Then, observing his expression, she grinned. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll be careful and I will see the police. In fact, I’ll permit you to stand guard outside the bathroom door while I ablute.’

‘And then you’ll lock yourself in the bedroom while I go and get changed until I come and collect you.’

‘Yes.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what old Major-General Bozo Troutbeck would make of this. He didn’t single-handedly take out a platoon of Zulus by hiding in his bedroom.’

‘Zulus don’t have platoons.’

‘These ones did.’ She picked up a towel. ‘Come on, then.’ As he trailed wearily after her he wondered by what process she had absorbed all the vitality he had lost.

They caused rather a stir when they arrived at breakfast. The Mistress was positively solicitous, Miss Stamp went into an orgy of wittering and even Bridget Holdness managed a civil if terse enquiry.

The Bursar blossomed under all this attention. On hearing her launch into her ‘a-little-tap-on-the-head-never-damaged-a-Troutbeck’ routine, Amiss sloped off to the other end of the table and left them to it. He was rewarded by finding himself sitting between Sandra and Mary Lou and having to listen to an interminable moan from Sandra about the permanent peril in which women lived. ‘Atmosphere of male violence/no women safe walking the streets/intimidation/male resentment at women’s self-empowering/meaningful coincidence that the attack had followed the Bursar’s coming out/heterosexism leading to anti-lesbian violence/ reclaim the night/curfews on men… ’ On it went remorselessly, delivered in that high-pitched mewl that he found particularly hard to bear. As his attention drifted, he glanced at Mary Lou and their eyes met. Convinced that he had seen her lip twitch covertly, he winked at her. Her lip twitched again. In better heart, he resumed listening respectfully to Sandra.

14

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It was 8.45 when Amiss heard the Senior Tutor’s squeak of ‘Where’s the Mistress?’ Only he – bored out of his mind by Sandra’s maunderings, and nervy with sleeplessness and worry – paid her any attention. Almost everyone was listening bemusedly to the Bursar, who was celebrating her survival by engaging in family reminiscences of a kind that unsurprisingly caused her to be accused by Bridget Holdness of colluding with colonial exploiters.

His compassion aroused by the Senior Tutor’s close resemblance to a squirrel with a nervous tic, Amiss left his seat, warily circled the adversaries and went round to try to soothe her. ‘What’s the matter, Senior Tutor?’

‘She’s seven minutes late. It’s never ever happened before. You know what she’s like.’

Amiss was too new to have fully grasped the Mistress’s complicated timetable but he did know that it was set in stone.

‘She’s always in at twenty to nine.’

‘What does she do between drill and breakfast, then?’

‘Well, after drill she showers and dresses. You know, all that sort of thing.’ The Senior Tutor went slightly pink, alarmed perhaps lest Amiss’s erotic urges might be awakened by the notion of Dame Maud Theodosia Buckbarrow in the shower.

‘And then?’ He smiled encouragingly.

‘Why at 8.10, she takes a list of references to the library to check, then it’s back here promptly to breakfast at 8.40.’

‘She’s never late?’

She looked shocked. ‘ “To choose time is to save time” is her guiding principle. And she chose it many years ago.’

‘I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, Senior Tutor. Perhaps she’s dealing with the police over that unfortunate business last night.’

The little features relaxed. ‘Oh, that must be it.’ Her happiness was short-lived. It was only two minutes later that the gathering was electrified by an eruption from the kitchen. Greasy Joan came in squealing, her face a compound of terror and self-importance. She seemed to have got herself spectacularly bedraggled for this occasion. Her dank pepper-and-salt hair was all over the place, her apron sported generations of bacon fat and a long smear of egg and her stockings were mucky and bloody from where she had injured herself in her flight to bring her bad news. The gathering gazed at her open-mouthed as she wailed at top volume: ‘She’s gone and flung ’erself owt the winder.’

‘Who has?’ boomed the Bursar.

‘Our blessed Daime.’ And Greasy Joan set up an ululation that would have done credit to a banshee.

‘Stop wailing, woman,’ said the Bursar. ‘Where is she?’

‘On the front lorn, she is, boi the nettle bed.’

‘How could she have jumped out of a window on to the front lawn?’ asked Deborah Windlesham testily. ‘She isn’t an Olympic long-distance jump champion.’

Greasy Joan wailed louder. ‘Well she ’as done. She’s all over glarse.’

Rightly giving up on any idea of extracting any more useful information, the Bursar leaped to her feet. ‘Show us.’ Greasy Joan fled at the head of a stampede of dons through the kitchen to the back door, and so it was that the Mistress’s corpse was displayed simultaneously to the vast majority of her colleagues. The sight was not one on which many of them chose to linger, for not only was her body sprawled at an unhappy angle, but there was an awful lot of blood.

It was the Bursar who got to her first, felt for her heart and then her pulse. After a minute or so she gently laid down the limp hand. ‘Here,’ she said, clicking her fingers at Amiss.

‘Give me your jacket.’

As he handed it over, Amiss tried to repress as unworthy his resentment that the fate of his only decent article of clothing should be to become a shroud.

The Bursar had dispatched Miss Stamp to phone the police and Dr Windlesham, who turned out to be Deputy Mistress, led the rest of the staff back to the dining room to acquaint the students with the news. Only Amiss, the Bursar and Greasy Joan remained.

‘Are you sure you shouldn’t call an ambulance as well?’ asked Amiss. ‘Can you be absolutely certain she’s dead?’

‘She’s broken her neck and severed an artery. There’s no pulse, no heartbeat, no breath. What do you think she’s running on, abstract intelligence?’

Greasy Joan’s lamentations increased in volume. ‘Oh, shut up, Joan, for Christ’s sake. You’d wake the dead.’

The tactlessness of this remark did nothing for Greasy Joan’s composure: it took Amiss a couple of minutes to soothe her into silent weeping. He turned back to the Bursar, who was moodily kicking the gravel. ‘I didn’t know you were an expert on first aid.’

‘I wasn’t a girl guide for nothing,’ she said absently. ‘Reef-knots, path-finding, making a fire with a couple of sticks. I could survive in any jungle.’

Amiss detected a catch in her voice. ‘This must be very upsetting for you, Jack.’

‘She was all right, old Maud. Never did any harm to anyone unless they crossed her path with sloppy scholarship. This isn’t right.’

He could see tears on her cheek. She reached into the pocket of her skirt, took out an enormous cotton handkerchief and blew her nose thunderously. ‘That’s better. Crying’s good for you. Just like old Winston, Troutbecks have never been ashamed to cry. Now, let’s get on with it.’

‘What?’

‘Whatever it is.’

Hearing the sound of a car on the drive she put on a burst of speed that had Amiss panting, as ever, to keep up. They had reached the front door by the time the car drew up.

‘Blimey,’ said the Bursar, ‘it’s the fuzz. How can they be here already?’

The car disgorged a middle-aged man of solid appearance and a pimply youth with an Adam’s apple who, even to Amiss, seemed ludicrously young.

‘Good morning, madam. Good morning, sir,’ said the older of the two.

‘You the coppers?’ asked the Bursar.

He looked taken aback. ‘Yes.’

‘Right. Follow me.’

She turned on her heel and began to charge around the building. The senior policeman looked at Amiss in perplexity.

‘We’re here to see Dame Maud Buckbarrow.’

‘The Bursar is leading you to her.’

Obediently, the policemen walked beside Amiss in pursuit.

‘How did you get here so quickly? It can’t have been more than three minutes since Miss Stamp rang.’

‘Not with you, sir. It’s almost an hour since the request came into the station from the lady.’

‘Which lady?’

‘Like I said,’ said the sergeant patiently, ‘Dame Maud Buckbarrow.’

‘Oh Christ, you’ve come to investigate the attack of last night. Not what’s happened this morning.’

‘What happened this morning?’

‘This,’ said Amiss as they rounded the corner to see the improbable tableau of corpse, sobbing Greasy Joan and the Bursar bellowing, ‘Pull yourself together woman. The fuzz’ll will be wanting to get some sense out of you.’

Amiss didn’t rate their chances highly.

The sergeant was a man of the old school. Faced with noisy women, he knew that a firm masculine intervention was called for. ‘Now, now, ladies, let’s not get hysterical. Dry your eyes and leave it to us.’

‘I would be obliged, Constable,’ said the Bursar, ‘if you would refrain from addressing me and my colleagues here in such a… ’ She paused to find the right word.

‘Paternalistic manner?’ suggested Amiss. She glared at him. ‘Such an egregiously patronizing manner,’ she substituted.

These linguistic niceties were lost on the sergeant, whose feelings had been outraged by the blow to his professional self-esteem. ‘Madam, I am not a constable. I am Sergeant Stephen Bunter and this is Constable Atkins.’

‘Well, we can’t all stand around swapping our names and telephone numbers,’ said the Bursar. ‘You’d better get on with it.’

‘What?’

‘Well whatever you rozzers do in circumstances like this. Are there only two of you?’

‘The others will be on the way, Bursar,’ said Amiss. ‘These gentlemen came at the request of the Mistress to investigate the attack on you.’