Last Tango in Aberystwyth

I said, 'Ah.' And then after I'd thought some more, added, 'I didn't know you could do that.'

Gretel smiled and looked down at her clogs. 'You don't believe, I can tell.'

'I didn't say that, I've got an open mind.'

Morgana nudged her friend. 'Make some ectoplasm, that'll shut him up.'

There was another peal of giggles and this time they both laughed so much the wooden beads clacked.

'Oh I couldn't!' squealed Gretel. 'Not after what happened the last time.'

The barman threw a suspicious look in our direction as if he'd read our thoughts and didn't need any reminding about the last time. Gretel added, 'Besides, it takes me half an hour just to get an eggcupful!'

'I expect a little goes a long way,' I said helpfully. 'Tell me about the Dean.'

Gretel picked up her beads, fingered them for inspiration and, prompted by subtle but insistent nudges from Morgana, gave me the background. He'd been at the college for many years and in all that time hadn't said boo to a goose. There wasn't any record of him ever having said anything to a goose, in fact, but if he had you could be sure it would have been more polite than boo. Then one day, out of the blue, he astonished everyone by announcing his intention to go away for a few days.

This revelation led to looks of disbelief being exchanged between the two girls. I was about to say it didn't seem like such a big deal when we were interrupted by raised voices at the next table.

A young man put down his glass sharply. 'Oh really, Jeremy, next you'll be telling me, like, Osiris never happened or something!'

'I'm just saying -'

'Perfumed unguents, wax, spices ... you know all that goo they make balm out of. Alexander the Great preserved in honey ...'

'Oh sure, spare me the O level stuff please! All I'm saying is wrapping in cloth and burying in dry sand was accidental and wasn't a chief mortuary concern ...'

'And I suppose the settlements at Abu Qir don't exist either?'

'Sssh, you two, keep it down!' said some of the other students at the table. 'You'll disturb the other drinkers.'

There was a murmur of approval round the table. 'Yeah, it's getting late anyway, we'd better go back and study.' They began to finish off their drinks.

We turned back to our own conversation.

'Maybe the Dean just felt like a holiday,' said Calamity.

Gretel blinked in disbelief. 'But Dean Morgan would never do anything as frivolous as that! And besides, he didn't say he was going to Aberystwyth, that's the funny part. It was Gwladys Parry the cleaner who saw him just by coincidence on the Prom, coming out of the Excelsior Hotel. Well, we couldn't believe it. The Dean in Aberystwyth! I rang the Excelsior Hotel straightaway and they said he had already checked out. Then a few days after that he rang me from that number I gave you —'

'The speakeasy?'

'Yes. But when I called him back it was really strange, I could hear the sounds of ... well ... a party or something in the background and the man who answered said ...' She half-closed her eyes as she tried to remember the exact formulation, '"It is the club policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of any patrons on the premises." But I knew it must have been a wrong number because the Dean would never go to a party.'

'It's unheard of,' said Morgana.

'What did he call you about?'

'Oh, he said to cancel his milk and I was to take his cat and the litter of kittens she'd just had and drown them.'

I took out the photo. It was just a stiffly posed shot of a priest in a dog-collar, taken for some yearbook or catalogue and obviously cut out of one.

'That's the best I could find.'

'Maybe he just wanted to go and play bingo or something,' suggested Calamity.

'But why would he want to do that?'

'For some light relief. Must be pretty spooky looking at stiffs every day.'

Gretel gave an understanding sigh. 'Yes, I know what you think — we must be really boring because we do what we do, not like those students in Aberystwyth. Everyone thinks the same.'

'Or they think we're really ghoulish,' said Morgana. 'Just because we do experiments with worms and flesh.'

Gretel nudged her friend. 'They're disappointed because we're not like the Bad Girl.'

They giggled again.

'Who's the Bad Girl?'

'Oh,' said Gretel throwing her nose up. 'We don't talk about her.'

'And you're wrong anyway,' added Morgana. 'Undertaking's a lot more exciting than you think. Do you know...' she exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Gretel, 'we each get a cadaver at the beginning of term to practise on, just like being a real doctor. Fancy that!'

'Yeah,' said Gretel. 'And some of the ones from Aberystwyth have died violently. I found a bullet hole in mine.'

'And mine had a crushed larynx!'

'And we get to go on some great field trips — the catacombs or crypts ... at Easter we're going to Golgotha.'

'All the same, none of this is any reason to think he's in trouble.'

Morgana nudged Gretel. 'Tell him about the other thing.'

Gretel took a breath and leaned closer in. 'A week after he went, a man came looking for him. A really strange man.'

'You mean strange for Lampeter,' asked Calamity, 'or strange for a normal town?'

I kicked her under the table.

'He was dressed funny and was unfriendly,' said Gretel.

'Rude,' added Morgana.

'What did he look like?'

'We couldn't see his face,' said Gretel, 'because he wore a muffler and had a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low —'

'With a black feather stuck in it.'

'And he wore a long black coat like the ones the medieval Jews wore - you know, like the ones they sell in Peacocks for nineteen ninety-nine.'

'The gaberdine ones.'

'Then a few days later the Dean called again, and I told him that a man in a Peacocks' coat was looking for him and he sort of cried out and said, "Oh my God, I'm doomed!"'

'What I don't get,' said Calamity, 'is why he contacts you and not a secretary or something?'

'Because', said Gretel, 'we're his friends, we do voluntary work for him and things.'

'What sort?'

She shrugged. 'Oh nothing special, alms-giving mostly. Just like students anywhere, really.'

I let that one pass.

They paused and then said together, 'And of course we do his laying out.'

I fought the reflex to choke. 'You do that for the Dean?'

'Well, you can't expect him to do it himself, can you?' said Morgana huffily.

'And he pays us for it,' said Gretel. 'We're lucky to get it. I mean, how else are you supposed to survive on a grant these days?'

As the bus drove up the main street to turn at the top we saw through the back window a fracas on the neatly trimmed lawns of the college. The two students who had been arguing earlier in the pub were trading blows, surrounded by the rest of their group who were excitedly egging them on. From the cloisters on either side of the lawn, scholars and tutors poured forth in a flapping black gale of academic gowns, like starlings or startled bats, running like the wind and shouting dizzily with excitement, 'Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!'

Chapter 3

The Excelsior was one of those crumbling, fading hotels that stood in a gently curving row on Aberystwyth Prom facing the sea. It was a hotel that spent the summer dreaming of better days, and wore its four stars on either side of the main door like combat medals. Like the motoring organisation that awarded the stars, it was a refugee from the world of A and B roads and button B telephones. A world in which a lift was considered an American contrivance and shared bathrooms at the end of the corridor were the norm. People still wore jackets and ties here and took luncheon and, perhaps most damning of all, it was the world that gave us Brown Windsor soup. Inside the hotel the floors creaked as you walked, like the innards of a wooden ship. It was an old, rickety dowager of a hotel and if it were possible for a building to get arthritis and walk with a stick this one would. I knew all this because once, for a season many years ago, I had worked there as the house John. An underpaid sleuth with a cubby-hole and a nightstick and a remit to keep one eye on the shifty characters who walked in off the street and an even beadier eye on the dodgy ones who worked there.