Murder Is Academic (5 page)

I found myself smiling. This was exactly the kind of thing I did myself. I had caches of back-up disks hidden both in my office and at home against the day when some laboured-over text should disappear into computer limbo, or the day when a burglar would take my computer and all my floppy disks. I fanned out the disks as though they were playing-cards. They had labels; Yonge book, Mrs Gaskell article, PhD thesis.

I plunged my hand back in to make sure that I had got everything, and brought out a creased manila envelope, its sides bulging. I took it over to the table and tipped out the contents: twenty or so smaller, white envelopes addressed in a large, spiky hand to Dr Margaret Joplin at her college address. The top left-hand corner of each was marked
Private and Confidential.
I opened one. Inside was a single sheet of A4 paper. It was a letter dated 16 January and headed ‘The British Library'.

‘Darling, darling, darling,'
I read.

Instinctively I spread a hand over the letter as though someone might be looking over my shoulder.

There was a tiny sound from somewhere deep down inside the house. I got up and went over to the door. I opened it and looked down the stairs, listening intently. The house was heavy with silence. I glanced at my watch. Malcolm couldn't possibly be back from his office yet. I walked over to the window that looked onto Cranmer Road. The space where his car had been parked was still empty.

I returned to the desk and skimmed the page:

… supposed to be concentrating on medieval manuscripts … can't think of anything except you … memories of that last evening we spent together … in a glow of happiness … what it was like to be in bed with you, kissing, touching, stroking … Nothing has ever been a greater surprise – and nothing has ever been more wonderful … so much in common … so right and inevitable … too soon to see how things will develop … back next week … living for the moment when I can take you in my arms again … marvellous and funny and strange … ever felt that I was so much myself before …

Always, always, yours,

Lucy

The name seemed to leap off the page.

I felt as if someone had punched me in the solar plexus. I groped for the edge of the desk and lowered myself into the chair. I put my head in my hands.

There had been infidelity all right – another woman even – I had just been looking in the wrong place.

Lucy was a student, a postgraduate in my own department, and she had died several months ago. When exactly had that been? Mid-April? Yes, it had happened just before the beginning of the Easter term.

I fumbled with the letters, searching for the one with the latest postmark. It was dated 7 April and had been posted in Derbyshire. I took the letter out of its envelope. It was soft and creased from being handled and re-folded. In one or two places the ink had run. I looked closer. Tear-stains, I guessed. The letter began abruptly and the writing rushed headlong across the page.

My love, I can't stand this concealment any longer. I know that you have got a lot to lose – so have I, for that matter – and that other people will be hurt by our decision, but it's too painful to go on like this, snatching odd moments, worrying about whether anyone will see us together and guess. I want to sweep all that aside and come out into the open.

There has never been anything like this for me, and I want to seize this happiness with both hands. I can understand that you might not want to stay in Cambridge when it all comes out, but couldn't we start again somewhere? Oh, please, please, please, my darling, be brave and make up your mind.

I hope that while I am up here for a few days you'll have time to think things through, and to realize that what we have is too good to be corroded by secrecy and lies. I love you, and want to be proud of my love, and to stand by your side in the light. One night soon, I want to lie in bed with you, breathing in your warm, sweet scent, knowing that we will still be together in the morning and every morning to come as long as we live.

You'll keep everything I've written safe, won't you? I want you to have everything of mine that I most value: all of my life and all of my love.

Lucy

I got up and walked over to the window. I watched the trees and the sky, the cars parked on the quiet street. I noted with detachment that cumulus clouds were massing in the sky to the north. The good weather that had lasted so long was on the turn.

I felt a surge of anger. A student, Margaret had had an affair with a student! It was so much at odds with my idea of her that it was like a personal betrayal. How could I not have suspected, not have noticed that something was going on? Of course, I hadn't been looking … Now I
did
look; I searched my memory for clues, for hints. There was nothing.

It was all too bizarre to be true. I seized on that idea. Perhaps it was all a fantasy, an obsession on Lucy's part. Don't people sometimes become convinced that a person they hardly know is in love with them? It's a recognized illness. But no: the way the letters had been hidden, the creases in them, the tear-stains. It was true all right.

I felt the twinge of an unfamiliar emotion, something that didn't seem appropriate. What was it? To my surprise I realized that it was envy. The way that Lucy had loved Margaret: did anyone feel like that about me? Stephen? I didn't think so. I certainly didn't feel like that about him.

I rested my arms on the windowsill and gazed down into the street. It took me a moment to take in what I was seeing, but when I did, my heart seemed to miss a beat.

Malcolm's car was in the drive.

I turned back into the room. Lucy's love letters were spread out over the table. Even from ten feet away her scrawling signature seemed to stand out from the page with a cabbalistic power. Surely no one could enter the room without their eye being drawn instantly to that single word. It seemed to shriek out the whole story of Margaret and Lucy's love affair.

And the door was still open.

There was a moment of crazy indecision; I didn't know whether to move towards the door or the table. Footsteps coming up the stairs decided me. I headed for the table.

A few seconds later Malcolm appeared in the doorway.

Chapter Four

‘My goodness, it's hot in here,' Malcolm said.

I turned from the desk and leaned back on it with my hands spread out behind me. We stood there for a few moments, regarding each other from opposite sides of the room, like figures in a painting by Edward Hopper.

Malcolm walked across to the window, glancing at me as he went.

‘You look quite flushed, Cassandra.'

‘It is hot,' I agreed. I could hardly hear my own voice for the blood pulsing through my head.

As my eyes followed him across the room, I caught a flash of white on the edge of my vision, down where my right hand was resting on the desk. Without taking my eyes off Malcolm I pushed the envelope behind my back.

He opened the catch of the casement window and pushed it open.

‘Not that this'll make much difference,' he said. ‘It's nearly as humid out as it is in. Wouldn't be surprised if there was thunder on the way. How are you getting on?'

He looked round the room as if seeking signs of progress. His gaze settled on the computer disks that were still lying on the
chaise-longue.

‘Oh, those are just some back-up disks that I came across,' I said hastily.

‘Ah.' He nodded.

There was a pause. I groped for something to say, but my mind was a complete blank.

Malcolm said, ‘I really came up to see if you wanted a cup of tea.'

‘That would be lovely, yes.'

At least that would get him out of the room.

‘Shall I bring it up here?' he asked.

‘No, no. I've nearly finished. I'll be down in ten minutes or so.'

Still he lingered.

‘I'll, mmm … I'll get on then, shall I?' I said.

‘Yes, of course, sorry. It's just that there's something I've been wanting to ask you. Margaret didn't make any formal arrangements about a literary executor. She did make a will, of course, we both did, but neither of us really thought that … there was no reason to think … and I don't know exactly what there is in the way of unfinished work.'

For a short while I didn't quite grasp what he was saying, and he must have misunderstood my look of incomprehension. His eyes slid away from mine. He looked embarrassed.

‘Perhaps I shouldn't have asked. You're probably too busy. It's just that Margaret thought highly of you…'

‘Sorry, Malcolm, of course: you'd like me to see if she left anything that can be published?'

‘Would you mind? I can't tell you how grateful I'd be.'

‘Yes, I mean, no, no, of course I wouldn't mind.'

‘Well,' he gestured towards the door, ‘I'll go and make the tea then.'

He got as far as the threshold. I closed my eyes and let out the breath I had been holding. When I opened my eyes he was still there, standing on the top step with one hand on the door frame.

Go on, go on.
I stared hard at his back. Perhaps I could force him out by sheer willpower.

He turned round. Without a word, he strode straight towards me and reached past me to pick something up. He was so close that I could see the weave of his cotton shirt and I caught a whiff of his shampoo. I gulped. He straightened up and stepped back.

He had the framed photograph in his hand.

‘Just thought I'd like to have this downstairs. Now I really will leave you in peace.'

He left the room.

I stood there for a bit with one hand flat on my chest, waiting for my breathing to return to normal. When he had had the time to get down to the kitchen, I gathered up the letters and put them into a zipped pocket inside my briefcase. I didn't know what I was going to do with them, I just knew that I wasn't going to leave them here. I picked up the computer disks and the draft of an article that I'd found on the table and put them in my briefcase, too. For some absurd reason this made me feel I was committing less of a felony. After all, if I was Margaret's literary executor, I had a right to take things away, didn't I?

Downstairs in the kitchen, Malcolm was sitting at the table, looking at the photograph propped up against the teapot.

I made a show of looking at my watch.

‘Would you mind if I didn't stay for tea after all? If I leave now, I might miss the worst of the rush hour.'

‘Of course, if you're sure. Are you all right Cassandra?' he said, looking at me doubtfully.

‘Oh, yes, yes, I'm OK, just a bit tired, that's all. Oh, and by the way, Malcolm, I've got some of Margaret's research material. I'll try to have a look at it soon.'

‘No hurry,' he said, getting to his feet. ‘I'll come out to your car with you. Give me that.'

He stretched out his hand. Before I knew what had happened, he had taken the briefcase. As we walked down the hall, I couldn't have been more conscious of that case if I'd known Malcolm was carrying radioactive uranium. I had to make an effort not to snatch it away from him.

As he opened the front door, Malcolm said, ‘You know, Cassandra, I've been a lucky man.'

I didn't know what to say. Fortunately a response didn't seem to be required.

‘Yes,' he repeated, standing back to let me out, ‘very lucky. Over twenty years of happy marriage. It's a long time. A lot of people never have that, I mustn't ever forget it.'

‘She was a remarkable woman,' I said. That certainly was true.

Outside the air seemed denser, as if it were pressing my clothes to my skin. My scalp prickled with the heat. In silence we walked round the sweep of the drive to the car, our feet sinking into the gravel. I unlocked my Renault and Malcolm put the briefcase onto the back seat. I pecked him on the cheek and got into the car. It reeked of hot plastic and the steering wheel was almost too hot to touch.

Glancing at my wing mirror as I drove, I saw Malcolm still standing at the kerb. The next time I looked he had gone. As I waited for a break in the traffic at the junction with Grange Road, I looked again and saw the tiny figure of Jane Pennyfeather emerge from her garden gate and turn into Malcolm's drive.

*   *   *

As I drove north-east on the A14 towards Newmarket, I tried to reconstruct the past in the light of what I had discovered. Had the affair been serious? Yes: with Margaret, it couldn't have been otherwise, and there was the evidence of what Lucy had written, too. I thought back to when Lucy had died. We'd all been upset, of course, but had Margaret seemed more upset than the rest of us? I remembered the energy that she had put into establishing a memorial fund. Perhaps she had managed to channel her grief into that. It was deeply disturbing to think that this emotional drama had been played out under my nose and that I had been totally unaware. Did Malcolm know? All my instincts told me that he didn't.

As I swung into the lane that leads to the Old Granary, I realized that I had driven the eight miles from the A14 on autopilot. I couldn't remember any of it. I parked by the gate and got out of the car. The hundred tiny sounds of the countryside – the rustlings, the birdcalls – that I usually hardly noticed were conspicuous by their absence. I looked up at the trees. Not a leaf was moving. A sullen yellow light bathed the garden. The clouds that I had noticed earlier in the day now filled the sky to the north and they had darkened to a dingy gunmetal grey.

Bill Bailey came bounding down the garden path, greeting me with a loud mew. I picked him up. He squirmed out of my arms and ran up the path ahead of me. When I opened the door, he brushed past my legs and sprinted into the kitchen as if he, too, were conscious of the coming storm. I closed the door and leaned against it, savouring the relief of being home.

In the kitchen Bill Bailey was sitting by the fridge, his eyes fixed intently on me. I poured a saucer of milk for him and a large whisky for myself, and went over to the floor-length window. I stood for a while, watching the water flowing lazily out from under the house. That running water had always seemed such a friendly thing; for the first time I wondered if it would be possible to drown in it. It was only a couple of feet deep, but didn't I remember reading somewhere that you could drown in only a few inches of water?