'And then?'
Then he said he could tell him,' the Dean went on. '"Because I did. And if you try to sweep me under the carpet to the Park, I'll tell him. Because I murdered the bastard." He told me to put that in my pipe and smoke it.'
The Praelector sighed a long sigh. 'He said to sweep him under the carpet, did he? He's got a long memory, has Skullion. I made a joke once along those lines.'
'And he remembered it,' said the Dean. 'He said you'd called it under the Parket.'
'And that's the truth,' the Praelector said and whacked a tuft of grass with his stick. 'That was when Vertel had to go away before the police arrived.' He paused for a moment. 'So Master Skullion has us by the short and curlies, has he? I think not.'
He turned and led the way up to the tarmac path and the Dean followed. He was relieved to have confided in the Praelector. There was a strength in the older man he knew he'd somehow lost himself, a strength of purpose and a terrible clarity of thought. And this time the Praelector led the way through all the gates.
They neither of them spoke for a long while and it was only when they had crossed Laundress Green and reached the Mill that the Praelector turned aside. 'You have told no one else, not even the Senior Tutor?' he asked.
'No one, Praelector, not a soul.'
'Good. And now we'll go separate ways into the College. We don't want to be seen together going in. I'll speak to you later. Things cannot rest like this.' And with what appeared to the Dean to be surprising energy, the Praelector strode off down the lane towards Silver Street.
For a moment the Dean lingered by the Mill looking at the water churning over the weir and under the bridge beneath him, remembering nostalgically the time a South African undergraduate had swum the Mill Pond in midwinter for a five-pound bet. That had been in 1950, and the young man's name had been Pendray. A Cat's man, the Dean seemed to recall, and wondered what had become of him. He looked up in time to see the Praelector disappear down the public lavatory on the far side, which explained his sudden hurry. With a fresh sense of disillusionment the Dean turned away and went the other way down Little St Mary's Passage. He would have a cup of tea in the Copper Kettle before going back to Porterhouse. There, sitting unhappily, he understood now why in earlier times the Praelector had been known as the 'Father of the College'. The term 'Grantchester Grind' had taken on a new meaning for him too.
At Kloone University Purefoy Osbert finished his day of Continuous Assessment, the monthly process of reading his students' essays, appending a short commentary to each of them and giving them grades. He had driven up from Cambridge with the satisfying feeling that he had something to tell Mrs Ndhlovo that would surely convince her he was a proper man. It had taken him some days to get over his cold and the fear he had experienced in the maze but during that time his view of himself had changed. He had come to Porterhouse to find out who had murdered Sir Godber Evans and in the space of a few weeks he had succeeded where lawyers and trained private detectives, who had spent months and even years, had failed. He had recorded the time and place, the Dean's presence and the circumstances surrounding the event most carefully and had even gone to the expense of hiring a safety deposit box in Benet Street in which to keep these documents. On the other hand he had rejected his first impulse to go down to London to tell Goodenough and his cousin Vera, on the grounds that they would either consider his findings inconclusive or take immediate and, in his opinion, precipitate action. He needed time to think things over, and besides his own theories about the causes of crime and the role of the police and law as being responsible for criminal behaviour had been thrown in doubt. Worse still, for the first time in his life Purefoy had, if not met a murderer face to face, seen his shape and heard the violence in his voice. There'd been no reasoned argument, no plausible excuse or even explanation for his action, only the threat to tell Purefoy that he had murdered Sir Godber if the Dean and Fellows tried to send him to Porterhouse Park. Purefoy Osbert had never heard of Porterhouse Park before. Now he knew it was where old Fellows went when they became a nuisance or got in trouble with the police. That much he had learnt. But basically the mystery of Skullion's motive remained unsolved. There was a lot of groundwork still to do before he could submit convincing findings to Lady Mary and to Goodenough and Lapline.
The more he thought about the problem the more he found fresh snags. He had disclosed his reasons for being the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow to the Dean and to the other Fellows in the Combination Room and they would be on their guard. Purefoy cursed himself for his drunken indiscretion. It meant that every question that he asked would meet with silence or a deliberately misleading answer. In short, he had learnt what he had come to learn, but could do nothing with it. There was another reason for not knowing what to do, and one that weighed upon him all the time. Skullion was old and crippled, a tragic figure in his wheelchair and his ancient bowler hat, and to expose him now would do no good to anyone. Only Lady Mary's sense of vengeance would be satisfied and Purefoy had come to feel no sympathy for her. The murderer would never kill again and, even if the case against him could be proved, what good would prison do? Not that, in Purefoy's informed opinion, prisons did any good to anyone. They were the symptoms of society's failure and infected what they were supposed to cure. Skullion was already punished and imprisoned by his immobility. With so many conflicting thoughts colliding in his mind Purefoy Osbert sought escape by concentrating on his love for Mrs Ndhlovo. He would explain it all to her and, being a woman who had seen so much of life, she would be bound to know exactly what to do.
Having finished his marking and made arrangements to meet all fourteen students the following day for lunch in the University Canteen to discuss any problems they might be having with their reading list, he went off rather more cheerfully to visit Mrs Ndhlovo. On his way he bought some red roses. Mrs Ndhlovo's flat was on the first floor of a large Edwardian house. Purefoy climbed the stairs and was about to knock on the door when it was opened and he found himself looking at a woman who resembled Mrs Ndhlovo, but wasn't, and who didn't seem surprised to see him. She was dark-haired, wore glasses and was dressed rather formally in a skirt and a high-necked sweater. 'Oh my God, it's you,' she said. 'I might have guessed it. You don't give up do you?'
With a feeling that something was very wrong, though for the life of him he couldn't think what except that he had somehow come to the wrong house and that the woman must suppose he was a rent collector, or someone who looked like him and who had been making a nuisance of himself or even sexually harassing her, Purefoy stammered his apologies. 'I'm terribly sorry,' he said. 'I was looking for a Mrs Ndhlovo.'
'Mrs Ndhlovo doesn't live here any more,' said the woman.
'I see,' said Purefoy. 'Do you happen to know her new address?'
'You want to know Mrs Ndhlovo's new address? Is that what you're asking?' said the woman with what Purefoy could only consider rather gratuitous repetition and an almost sinister emphasis. He had a feeling too that her voice had changed.
'Yes, that is what I'm asking for,' he said staring at her blue eyes behind the thick lenses of her glasses. 'I'm an old friend of hers from the University.'
'So,' said the woman, and looked him up and down rather rudely. 'How old?'
'How old?' said Purefoy, feeling even more peculiar. The woman's accent had changed with that 'so'. It sounded middle-European. 'Oh, you mean how long have I known her? Well, actually I've known her-'