Murder Is Academic (25 page)

When the phone rang, Stephen got up to answer it.

‘For you,' he said, putting the phone down on the table beside me.

It took me a few seconds to extract myself from my book, where the most serious thing that could happen was that Adolphus Crosbie might jilt Lily Dale.

‘I hope I'm doing the right thing ringing you,' Cathy sounded close to tears. ‘The Master expressly told me not to bother you, but I thought you ought to know.'

My heart sank. I closed my book. ‘What's up?'

Stephen was sitting again with his newspaper, but I could tell he wasn't really reading it.

‘Everything's going wrong, Cass. We're weeks behind with preparing the RAE submission.'

‘But I thought you were dividing that between you!'

‘Alison made a start, but I've hardly seen her for the past fortnight. Paul hasn't been well. I think it might be really serious this time.'

‘Oh, no, poor Alison – and poor Paul.'

‘I know, I know. I feel awful worrying about the department at a time like this. Aiden's doing what he can, but of course Merfyn's away on study leave and we can't manage everything, just the two of us. And that's not all! Oh, Cassandra…'

Now she was really crying. I'd never known her to do this before.

‘What is it?'

‘I don't know if I should tell you.'

‘Oh, come on, you've got to now.'

‘Well, I came into college this morning to try and catch up with things a bit and I found Tim from Estates in my office. He was measuring it up!'

‘What?'

Stephen had given up all pretence of not listening. His eyes were fixed on my face. Bill Bailey was affected by the change in atmosphere, too. He sat up as if he'd suddenly remembered an urgent appointment and began to wash one of his back legs assiduously.

‘I asked him what the hell he was doing and do you know what he said? At first he just muttered something about rationalization of office space, but when I pressed him, he got annoyed. He said I must be the only person in the college not to realize that the department was going down the tubes and that we'd soon be out on our ears. He said … He said that…' She didn't seem able to spit the words out.

‘
What
did he say?' I insisted.

I saw the door open and my mother came in. Stephen caught her eye, looked in my direction and grimaced. She went over and sat down next to Bill Bailey on the window seat.

‘He said no-one thought you were up to the job and that when you failed it would give Lawrence the excuse he needed. The Master had been wanting to get rid of the department for years and that was why he had appointed you as head, and when you had to take sick leave, it was money from home!'

‘He thought that, did he? I'll be in college first thing Monday morning!'

Stephen was frowning and shaking his head vehemently. I glared at him and clamped the receiver closer to my ear.

‘Are you sure you're well enough?' Cathy was saying.

‘I'm much, much better. Now listen, try not to worry. I'll sort all this out, OK? See you soon.'

I hung up.

‘That bastard.' I was seething.

‘Calm down,' Stephen said. ‘This isn't good for you.'

‘OK, OK, yes, I will calm down. What is it people say: “Don't get mad, get even”? That is exactly what I intend to do.'

My mother and Stephen exchanged glances.

‘I've got to go home soon in any case,' I said. ‘If I don't, I'll end up having the baby here.'

There wasn't much Stephen could say to that. The two of us had taken over my mother's bedroom, leaving her to shoehorn herself into the tiny spare-room. The house was splitting at the seams already.

‘And we need to start getting things ready,' I added. ‘We haven't even bought a cot yet.'

‘But do you have to go back to work?' Stephen asked,

‘Do you think I would be able to relax at home knowing what's going on? That Lawrence is scheming to sack us all?'

‘If only the police had found Rebecca's attacker.…'

‘I know, I know, but I've got to go sometime. Cathy ringing up like this has just tipped the balance, that's all. I've been feeling … oh, I don't know, but I really want to get back. There's so much to do.' I paused, not knowing how to describe the strange restlessness that I'd been feeling in recent days, and the deep pull of home.

‘It's the nest-building instinct,' said my mother unexpectedly. ‘It may be nearly forty years ago, but I remember feeling just the same before you were born. Are you sure the baby isn't due until the middle of March?'

A series of images and sensations flashed through my mind: the heat of a June night, the crack of a thunderclap, a rumpled bed, the sound of breaking glass. I looked up and caught Stephen's eye.

‘Pretty sure,' I said.

My mother intercepted the glance and laughed. ‘I suppose you should know.'

*   *   *

Stephen put the cat carrier on the lawn and opened its door. Bill Bailey edged out suspiciously. When he saw where he was, he leapt into the air and raced round and round the garden. He wasn't the only one glad to be home. I was smiling as I unlocked the door. I had to push it a bit against the pile of letters, free newspapers and junk mail that was backed up behind it. Stephen dumped my bag in the hall and went back to the car to bring in the box of books that had accumulated at my mother's over the weeks.

I went upstairs with the post. The sitting-room seemed uncared for, even though Stephen had made a point of spending an occasional night in the house. The heating had been left on low to stop the pipes from freezing, but it was still chilly and there was damp in the air. A couple of old newspapers were strewn over the sofa. A half-drunk cup of tea, lumpy with curdled milk, stood on my desk. I went over to the window and stood watching diamonds of reflected light flashing off the stream below. I gave a great sigh of contentment. Home at last. I turned and ran a finger along a shelf of books. How I'd missed these old friends!

I was collecting up the newspapers when the telephone rang. My thoughts flew back to that evening when I had thought there was an intruder in the house. Stephen is here, I reminded myself, and the locks have been changed. All the same I let it ring half a dozen times before I picked it up.

‘Cassandra? This is Jim Ferguson.'

‘Jim.' I lowered myself onto the sofa.

‘We've got someone for the attack on Rebecca. I thought you'd want to know straight away.'

My heart turned over.

‘It's no-one you know, and it's pure chance, I'm afraid, that led us to him. We were called to a house in Cherry Hinton last night to deal with an intruder, a man in his twenties thieving to feed a drug habit. When we questioned him, he broke down and confessed to attacking a girl last autumn.'

Stephen came in with the book box. He looked at me in enquiry and I motioned him to the sofa beside me.

Jim went on, ‘He followed her and grabbed her bag. He had a spanner in his pocket all ready for a spot of breaking and entering. When she started screaming, he hit her with it, then he panicked and ran off.'

I tried to get to grips with this. ‘So Rebecca dying when she did, with the fire alarm going off, that was just a coincidence?'

‘I know,' he said sympathetically. ‘I don't like them either, but they do happen.'

A thought struck me. ‘A confession on its own won't be enough, will it?'

‘No, it'll have to be backed up with forensic evidence, but we're hopeful of getting that. There was blood on the spanner and on his coat. He hid them both in someone's garden. Until we've retrieved them, I'd like you to keep this to yourself, by the way.'

‘Of course, yes. I thought there'd already been a house to house search for the murder weapon?'

‘Probably didn't extend far enough. We're trying again.'

‘I feel a bit of a fool,' I said ruefully.

‘Well, don't. You had good reasons for being suspicious.'

He then chatted to Stephen while I pottered about, unpacking books and putting them back in their places.

‘Great news!' Stephen said, when he at last hung up the telephone.

‘Mmm, I suppose so.'

‘I thought you'd be so relieved!'

‘You would think so, wouldn't you?' I admitted. ‘But I don't really feel anything much. A bit depressed, if anything.'

‘Come and sit next to me.'

I slumped down beside him on the sofa.

‘Anyone would think that you were disappointed to discover that there isn't a killer lurking in the college,' he said. ‘It's a weight off my mind, I can tell you. I'm going to see a client in Bury St Edmunds tomorrow. I won't have to fret myself into a lather about getting home before you do.'

I leant against him and put my head on his shoulder.

‘Somehow I can't really get excited about it,' I said. ‘And I do feel such an idiot for letting my imagination run away with me, when in the end it turns out to be something so stupid and senseless and accidental. In a strange sort of way it's a bit of an anticlimax.'

‘Well, things did look suspicious. I thought so, too, remember.'

I sighed. ‘You known, it's irrational, but deep down I must have felt that finding Rebecca's killer would somehow make everything all right again. But she's still dead, and Margaret, too, come to that.
And
I've still got a fight with Lawrence on my hands.'

*   *   *

I had never before seen a maze made out of books, and what beautiful books: bound in dark blues, and greens, and reds, and tooled in gilt. The walls were as high as my head. My task was to find the centre. There was something there that I needed. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it would solve all my problems. I stepped in the dim passageway between the walls of books. I had read somewhere that in a maze you should keep turning left, but when I did that I soon reached a dead end and had to double back. I found myself back near the entrance. I decided to turn right and this seemed to get me further into the labyrinth. I saw that the books here were all numbered. I reached up and took one off the top of the wall. I opened it to find that it had my name on it, not written on the flyleaf, but actually printed on the title page. I turned over the pages. Everything that I had ever done, every thought that I had ever had was recorded here. It was the story of my life. I looked at the number printed on the outside: 6.9.1965. That date had been my first day at school. I was about to pluck down another book when I noticed that I was not alone in the maze. I could hear footsteps. Someone was coming up behind me, someone I didn't want to see. It was more vital than ever to get to the centre: I knew I would be safe there. I walked faster, the footsteps walked faster; I stopped, they stopped. When I walked on, they matched their pace to mine. I began to run and the footsteps pattered behind me, growing louder and louder until I realized that they weren't footsteps anymore, but rain, big drops of rain bouncing and splashing off the books! A wind was getting up, the walls began to sway. A book slid off and hit the floor with a thud. It was followed by another and another. Then the walls were crashing down behind me as I ran, closing the way back. I was running faster and faster, nearing the centre, one more turn and—

I woke up covered in sweat, my hair sticking to my face and shoulders. I felt a pang of loss. If only I'd been able to get to the centre of the maze; everything would be all right then. Perhaps I could still go back into the dream? I was so evenly balanced between sleeping and waking, that it did seem possible. But then the things around me began to assert their reality: I felt the warmth of Stephen's body by my side, there was a grey square in the blackness that I knew was the bedroom window. The dream world was slipping away rapidly like mist in the morning sun.

It didn't all disappear, however. It was one of those dreams that stay in your head like a hangover. I was still thinking about it as I walked into college later that morning. At the porter's lodge John glanced my way and did a double-take.

‘Dr James! We weren't expecting to see you yet. How are you?' He made a valiant effort not to stare at my belly. I couldn't blame him for wanting to. It seemed to me that everyone's attention must be focused on it. I felt enormous.

‘Fine, thanks. The baby isn't due for another seven weeks. And your daughter…?'

‘A fortnight ago. A little boy. Our first grandson. They're both very well.' He was beaming all over his face.

I beamed back. ‘Congratulations! And lucky her. To have it over with, I mean.'

I was about to move on when he said, ‘I've got a couple of packages here. I was going to bring them down to your pigeon-hole. Do you want to take them?'

He handed over two padded envelopes. I recognized the return address on the smaller one and knew that it would contain the proofs of an article. The other, larger one hadn't been through the post. My name, care of St Etheldreda's, was written on it in neat black felt-tip pen. I didn't recognize the handwriting.

‘Did this come through the inter-college post?' I asked.

‘No, it must have been left by hand. I didn't see who delivered it; it was here when I came on duty.'

The Christmas cards that I had opened two months ago were still on the desk with their torn envelopes. Cathy had opened anything that looked official: those letters would be in her office. The rest, no doubt Christmas cards for the most part, were in a tidy pile next to the computer. I struggled out of my coat and edged gingerly round my desk. I was forever bumping into doors and catching myself on the edges of tables nowadays. I couldn't get used to taking up so much more space in the world. I had to push my chair well back before I could sit down.

Where to start? The serene face of the Snow Queen regarded me from the Russian lacquer box on the desk. I remembered the hallucination that I'd had in the library, her lips turning up in an enigmatic little smile as if she knew something that I didn't. I sighed. Maybe she
did
know something. After all, there were plenty of loose ends. I still didn't know if Merfyn might be having a nervous breakdown. Would I ever see him in college again? And what about Aiden and the mysterious Annabelle? I hadn't got to the bottom of that – and probably never would.