He pulled himself together and placed a kindly hand on the Praelector's arm. 'Listen, old chap, why don't we go inside and sit down quietly somewhere and I'll see if I can get hold of the College legal fellows. I really do think it's time to get them in on this. I mean this is a spectacularly awful situation. Now what are their names?'
'Waxthorne, Libbott and Chaine,' said the Praelector shaking himself free rather irritably. He disliked being called 'old chap' and patronized quite so openly, as if he were in some sort of geriatric ward. 'Though you won't find them in at this time of night.' He gave a nasty chuckle. 'In fact you won't find them in at all. Waxthorne has been dead for the past sixty years. Buried in the cemetery on the Newmarket Road. And Libbott was cremated a couple of years later. I don't know exactly what happened to Chaine though I once heard a rather peculiar story about him ending up in King's. Something about his skull being used as a drinking mug. Waxthorne's widow told me that. I used to keep in touch with her, you know, on a regular basis. Nice woman.' For a moment his mind wandered back to those happy afternoons in her house in Sedley Taylor Road.
Beside him Sir Cathcart adjusted himself to another set of deaths. It was turning into a singularly ghastly evening. All the same he tried again. 'I thought the College lawyers were…Retter and…Wyve,' he said at last. 'Perhaps if I were to telephone them…'
'Oh, them,' said the Praelector. 'I shouldn't do that. They've got enough on their hands with this other business. Besides, the fewer people who know about it the better. No, no, we've got to handle the matter ourselves. And it is a fine night, so we should be able to find him.'
Sir Cathcart looked balefully up at the sky and gnawed the end of his ginger moustache. 'When you say "we",' he said. 'I'm not at all sure I want to get any further involved…in…well, you know what I mean.'
'Suit yourself. I know my duty. And in any case I can't see how you can slide out of it now. We're all involved. Question of the College's reputation. And frankly…well never mind about that. Least said soonest mended. We'd better go and talk it over with the Dean.' And on this curiously ambivalent note the Praelector led the way across the garden to the Dean's staircase.
They found him drinking a cup of coffee. A plate of half-eaten sandwiches was on the table beside him. Ah, hullo Cathcart, Praelector. Sorry I wasn't at Duck Dinner. Wasn't in the mood somehow. Couldn't bring myself to face it. Cowardly, I daresay.'
'Not at all, my dear chap,' said the General. 'Know just how you feel. All that damned grease and this fellow Osbert still on the premises. Ghastly business. Mangled too, according to the Praelector here. And the Senior Tutor sitting there chatting away cheerfully and acting perfectly normally. First thing I heard about it was from the Chaplain.'
The Praelector addressed the Dean sternly. 'I told you not to mention it to anyone. And there was the Chaplain practically shouting the odds from the house tops. Fortunately no one takes much notice of what he says.'
It was the Dean's turn to look decidedly uneasy. 'I can assure you I haven't said a word to the Chaplain. Last person I'd tell. You don't think…'
'I don't know what to think,' said the Praelector. 'All I know is that someone's been talking.'
The General tried to take command of the situation. 'Now then, you fellows, we're not going to get anything done nattering about it. We've got to think how to protect the College reputation. If it got out that we were sheltering a murderer, the gutter press would have a field day. And the broadsheets too. Letters to _The Times_ and television programmes. We've got to be practical and find some way of keeping the police out of it. The best way of doing that is to get the body off the premises. Where is it at the moment?'
'Well, at a rough guess,' said the Praelector, now convinced that Sir Cathcart was a great deal drunker than he looked, 'at a rough guess I'd have to say it was still in the Crypt. Of course I haven't been down to have a look lately but that's where they're usually kept.'
'The Crypt, eh? Well, I suppose it's as good a place as any. Not many people go down there. Probably kept locked in any case.'
'Invariably,' said the Dean. 'I can't see that it matters much. The really important thing is to get Skullion out of the Master's Lodge. Now he has already threatened to tell the world he killed Sir Godber if we even think of having him shifted to the Park and-'
'Excuse me,' said Sir Cathcart, sliding slowly into an armchair. 'I don't feel awfully well. Must be that damned duck, though how the hell all that fat can affect the brain so quickly I'm damned if I know. You don't think I'm having a Blue, do you?'
'A Blue? Oh no, no,' said the Praelector. A Porterhouse Blue always attacks the speech first. You wouldn't be making any sense if you'd had a Blue.'
'And how does it affect the hearing? I mean, I'm not hearing any sense half the time. I thought I heard the Dean say Skullion had threatened to tell the world he killed Sir Godber Evans.'
'Quite right too. That's what I did say,' said the Dean. 'What's wrong with that?'
Words failed Sir Cathcart. Slumped in the old leather armchair he looked pucely up at them and shook his head. 'I don't understand,' he muttered. 'I don't begin to understand.'
'We none of us do,' said the Praelector. 'That is one of the problems but it's not one we can get to grips with now. We have to take immediate action. No matter how many threats he makes Skullion must go, if necessary by force. We simply cannot afford to have a murderer as Master.'
'Of course we can't but don't you see he may say something to the Press,' the Dean said anxiously.
But Sir Cathcart D'Eath had overcome his temporary lapse. The words 'immediate action' and 'force' had reawoken his military spirit, and the clear statement that the Master of Porterhouse was a murderer had driven all other considerations out of his mind. The Senior Tutor's killing of Dr Osbert was by comparison a minor misdemeanour. He got to his feet and stood with his legs apart in front of the empty fireplace. 'Right, the first thing is for one of us to go and explain the situation to him,' he said. 'Now I've known Skullion a long time and I think I can say with some confidence that he trusts me. I shall speak to him man to man, soldier to soldier, and…'
'Oh for God's sake,' muttered the Praelector but the General ignored the interruption, '…and I shall put it to him that his duty now is to go. He has always been a loyal College servant and I daresay the action he took, however regrettable, against the late Sir Godber Evans was done for the sake of Porterhouse. Frankly I have a great deal of sympathy for the old boy and, speaking as a military man, I have little doubt that in the same circumstances I would have done the same thing. Can't say fairer than that. We had to put some of the Watussi Rifles down in Burma one time and I can say with some confidence that I did not shrink from putting my hand to the wheel. Now you chaps just wait here and I'll go and look Skullion up. Daresay I'll find him on sentry duty by the back gate.'
And before either the Dean or the Praelector could say anything to stop him he strode from the room and could be heard clattering down the staircase into the night.
'Did he have an awful lot of pressed duck?' the Dean asked.
The Praelector shook his head. 'Hardly any, unfortunately. Hardening of the arteries is an occupational hazard that seems to affect cavalrymen in particular. We'll just have to wait and see what this charge of the heavy brigade results in.'