Forgathered here on the evening of Friday, February 23 (7:00 for 7:30), was a rather overcrowded throng of dons, accompanied by wives, partners, and friends, to enjoy a Guest Night — an occasion celebrated by the College four times per term. A white-coated scout stood by the door with a silver tray holding thinly fluted glasses of sherry: either the pale amber “dry” variety or the darker brown “medium,” for it was a basic assumption in such a setting that no one could ever wish for the deeply umbered “sweet.”
A gowned Jasper Bradley took a glass of dry, drained it at a swallow, put the glass back onto the tray, and took another. He was particularly pleased with himself that day; and with the Classical Quarterly, whose review of Greek Moods and Tenses (J. J. Bradley, 204 pp., £45.50, Classical Press) contained the wonderful lines that Bradley had known by heart:
A small volume, but one which plumbs the unfathomed mysteries of the aorist subjunctive with imaginative insights into the very origins of language.
Yes. He felt decidedly chuffed.
“How’s tricks?” he asked, looking up at Donald Franks, a very tall astrophysicist, recently head-hunted from Cambridge, whose dark, lugubrious features suggested that for his part he’d managed few imaginative insights that week into the origins of the universe.
“So-so.”
“Who d’you fancy then?”
“What— of the women here?”
“For the Master’s job.”
“Dunno.”
“Who’ll you vote for?”
“Secret ballot, innit?”
Mr. and Mrs. Denis Cornford now came in, each taking a glass of the medium sherry. Shelly looked extremely attractive and perhaps a little skimpily dressed for such a chilly evening. She wore a lightweight white two-piece suit; and as she bent down to pick up a cheese nibble her low-cut, bottle-green blouse gaped open to reveal a splendid glimpse of her beautiful breasts.
“Je-sus!” muttered Bradley.
“She certainly flouts her tits a bit,” mumbled the melancholy Franks.
“You mean ‘flaunts’ ’em, I think.”
“If you say so,” said Franks, slightly wounded.
Bradley moved to the far end of the room where Angela Storrs stood talking to a small priest, clothed all in black, with buckled shoes and leggings.
“Ah, Jasper! Come and meet Father Dooley from Sligo.”
Clearly Angela Storrs had decided she had now done her duty; for soon she drifted away — tall, long-legged, wearing a dark gray trouser-suit with a white high-necked jumper. There was about her an almost patrician mien, her face high-cheekboned and pale, with the hair swept back above her ears and fastened in a bun behind. It was obvious to all that she had been a very attractive woman. But she was aging a little too quickly perhaps; and the fact that over the last two or three years she had almost invariably worn trousers did little to discourage the belief that her legs had succumbed to an unsightly cordage of varicose veins. If she were on sale in an Arab wife market (in the cruel words of one of the younger dons) she would have passed her “best before” date several years earlier.
“I knew the Master many years ago — and his poor wife. Yes... that was long ago,” mused the little priest.
Bradley was ready with the appropriate response of scholarly compassion.
“Times change, yes. Tempora mutantur: et nos mutamur in illis.”
“I think,” said the priest, “that the line should read: Tempora mutantur: nos et mutamur in illis. Otherwise the hexameter won’t scan, will it?”
“Of course it won’t, sorry.”
The scout now politely requested dons — wives — partners — guests — to proceed to the Hall. And Jasper Bradley, eminent authority on the aorist subjunctive in Classical Greek, walked out of the SCR more than slightly wounded.
Sir Clixby Bream brought up the rear as the room emptied, and lightly touched the bottom of Angela Storrs standing just in front of him.
Sotto voce he lied into her ear: “You’re looking ravishing tonight. And I’ll tell you something else — I’d far rather be in bed with you now than face another bloody Guest Night.”
“So would I!” she lied, in a whisper. “And I’ve got a big favor to ask of you, too.”
“We’ll have a word about it after the port.”
“Before the port, Clixby! You’re usually blotto after it.”
Sir Clixby banged his gavel, mumbled Benedictus benedicat, and the assembled company seated themselves, the table plan having positioned Julian Storrs and Denis Cornford at diagonally opposite ends of the thick oak table, with their wives virtually opposite each other in the middle.
“I love your suit!” lied Shelly Cornford, in a not unpleasing Yankee twang.
“You look very nice, too,” lied Angela Storrs, smiling widely and showing such white and well-aligned teeth that no one could be in much doubt that her upper plate had been disproportionately expensive.
After which preliminary skirmish, each side observed a dignified truce, with neither a further word nor a further glance between them during the rest of the dinner.
At the head of the table, the little priest sat on the Master’s right.
“Just the two candidates, I hear?” he said quietly.
“Just the two: Julian Storrs and Denis Cornford.”
“The usual shenanigans, I assume? The usual horsetrading? Clandestine cabals?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. We’re all very civilized here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, you’ve only got to hear what people say — the way they say it.”
The little priest pushed away his half-eaten guinea fowl.
“You know, Clixby, I once read that speech often gets in the way of genuine communication.”
Chapter twenty-five
Saturday, February 24
There never was a scandalous tale without some foundation.
While the Guest Night was still in progress, while still the port and Madeira were circulating in their time-honored directions, an overwearied Morse had decided to retire comparatively early to bed, where almost unprecedentedly he enjoyed a deep, unbroken slumber until 7:15 the following morning, when gladly would he have turned over and gone back to sleep. But he had much to do that day. He drank two cups of instant coffee (which he preferred to the genuine article); then another cup, this time with one slice of brown toast heavily spread with butter and Frank Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade.
By 8:45 he was in his office at Kidlington HQ, where he found a note on his desk:
Please see Chief Sup. Strange A S A P
The meeting, almost until the end, was an amiable enough affair, and Morse received a virtually uninterrupted hearing as he explained his latest thinking on the murder of Rachel James.