Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2 page)

CHAPTER 4

It was a chill November evening of the old-fashioned type.

The moon looked pale and wan, as if it shouldn’t be up on a night like this.  It rose unwillingly and hung like an ill spectre.  Silhouetted against it, dim and hazy through the dampness which rose from the unwholesome fens, stood the assorted towers and turrets of St Cedd’s, Cambridge, a ghostly profusion of buildings thrown up over centuries, medieval next to Victorian, Odeon next to Tudor.  Only rising through the mist did they seem remotely to belong to one another.

Between them scurried figures, hurrying from one dim pool of light to another, shivering, leaving wraiths of breath which folded themselves into the cold night behind them.

It was seven o’clock.  Many of the figures were heading for the college dining hall which divided First Court from Second Court, and from which warm light, reluctantly, streamed.  Two figures in particular seemed ill-matched.  One, a young man, was tall, thin and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat he walked a little like an affronted heron.

The other was small, roundish, and moved with an ungainly restlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to escape from a sack.  His own age was on the older side of completely indeterminate.  If you picked a number at random, he was probably a little older than that, but--well, it was impossible to tell.  Certainly his face was heavily lined, and the small amount of hair that escaped from under his red woollen skiing hat was thin, white, and had very much its own ideas about how it wished to arrange itself.  He too was muffled inside a heavy coat, but over it he wore a billowing gown with very faded purple trim, the badge of his unique and peculiar academic office.

As they walked the older man was doing all the talking.  He was pointing at items of interest along the way, despite the fact that it was too dark to see any of them.  The younger man was saying ‘Ah yes,’ and ‘Really? How interesting…’ and ‘Well, well, well,’ and ‘Good heavens.’  His head bobbed seriously.

They entered, not through the main entrance to the hall, but through a small doorway on the east side of the court.  This led to the Senior Combination Room and a dark-panelled anteroom where the Fellows of the college assembled to slap their hands and make ‘brrrrrr’ noises before making their way through their own entrance to the High Table.

They were late and shook off their coats hurriedly.  This was complicated for the older man by the necessity first of taking off his professorial gown, and then of putting it back on again once his coat was off, then of stuffing his hat in his coat pocket, then of wondering where he’d put his scarf, and then of realising that he hadn’t brought it, then of fishing in his coat pocket for his handkerchief, then of fishing in his other coat pocket for his spectacles, and finally of finding them quite unexpectedly wrapped in his scarf, which it turned out he had brought after all but hadn’t been wearing despite the damp and bitter wind blowing in like a witch’s breath from across the fens.

He bustled the younger man into the hall ahead of him and they took the last two vacant seats at the High Table, braving a flurry of frowns and raised eyebrows for interrupting the Latin grace to do so.

Hall was full tonight.  It was always more popular with the undergraduates in the colder months.  More unusually, the hall was candlelit, as it was now only on very few special occasions.  Two long, crowded tables stretched off into the glimmering darkness.  By candlelight, people’s faces were more alive, the hushed sounds of their voices, the clink of cutlery and glasses, seemed more exciting, and in the dark recesses of the great hall, all the centuries for which it had existed seemed present at once.  High Table itself formed a crosspiece at the top, and was raised about a foot above the rest.  Since it was a guest night, the table was set on both sides to accommodate the extra numbers, and many diners therefore sat with their backs to the rest of the hall.

‘So, young MacDuff,’ said the Professor once he was seated and flapping his napkin open, ‘pleasure to see you again, my dear fellow.  Glad you could come.  No idea what all this is about,’ he added, peering round the hall in consternation.  ‘All the candles and silver and business.  Generally means a special dinner in honour of someone or something no one can remember anything about except that it means better food for a night.’

He paused and thought for a moment, and then said, ‘It seems odd, don’t you think, that the quality of the food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting.  Makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness.  Could be worth a try, I think.  Got some good vaults in the college that could be turned over to the purpose.  I think I showed you round them once, hmmm?  Nice brickwork.’

All this came as something of a relief to his guest.  It was the first indication his host had given that he had the faintest recollection who he was.  Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology, or ‘Reg’ as he insisted on being called had a memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly, in that it was colourful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct.

When he had telephoned with the invitation a few days previously, he had seemed extremely keen to see his former pupil, and yet when Richard had arrived this evening, a little on the late side, admittedly, the Professor had thrown open the door apparently in anger, had started in surprise on seeing Richard, demanded to know if he was having emotional problems, reacted in annoyance to being reminded gently that it was now ten years since he had been Richard’s college tutor, and finally agreed that Richard had indeed come for dinner, whereupon he, the Professor, had started talking rapidly and at length about the history of the college architecture, a sure sign that his mind was elsewhere entirely.

‘Reg’ had never actually taught Richard, he had only been his college tutor, which meant in short that he had had charge of his general welfare, told him when the exams were and not to take drugs, and so on.  Indeed, it was not entirely clear if Reg had ever taught anybody at all and what, if anything, he would have taught them.  His professorship was an obscure one, to say the least, and since he dispensed with his lecturing duties by the simple and time-honoured technique of presenting all his potential students with an exhaustive list of books that he knew for a fact had been out of print for thirty years, then flying into a tantrum if they failed to find them, no one had ever discovered the precise nature of his academic discipline.  He had, of course, long ago taken the precaution of removing the only extant copies of the books on his reading list from the university and college libraries, as a result of which he had plenty of time to, well, to do whatever it was he did.

Since Richard had always managed to get on reasonably well with the old fruitcake, he had one day plucked up courage to ask him what, exactly, the Regius Professorship of Chronology was.  It had been one of those light summery days when the world seems about to burst with pleasure at simply being itself, and Reg had been in an uncharacteristically forthcoming mood as they had walked over the bridge where the River Cam divided the older parts of the college from the newer.

‘Sinecure, my dear fellow, an absolute sinecure,’ he had beamed.  ‘A small amount of money for a very small, or shall we say non-existent, amount of work.  That puts me permanently just ahead of the game, which is a comfortable if frugal place to spend your life.  I recommend it.’  He leaned over the edge of the bridge and started to point out a particular brick that he found interesting.  ‘But what sort of study is it supposed to be?’  Richard had pursued.  ‘Is it history?  Physics?  Philosophy?  What?’

‘Well,’ said Reg, slowly, ‘since you’re interested, the chair was originally instituted by King George III, who, as you know, entertained a number of amusing notions, including the belief that one of the trees in Windsor Great Park was in fact Frederick the Great.

‘It was his own appointment, hence “Regius”.  His own idea as well, which is somewhat more unusual.’

Sunlight played along the River Cam.  People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off.  Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light.  Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.

‘The poor beleaguered fellow,’ Reg continued, ‘George III, I mean, was, as you may know, obsessed with time.  Filled the palace with clocks.  Wound them incessantly.  Sometimes would get up in the middle of the night and prowl round the palace in his nightshirt winding clocks.  He was very concerned that time continued to go forward, you see.  So many terrible things had occurred in his life that he was terrified that any of them might happen again if time were ever allowed to slip backwards even for a moment.  A very understandable fear, especially if you’re barking mad, as I’m afraid to say, with the very greatest sympathy for the poor fellow, he undoubtedly was.  He appointed me, or rather I should say, my office, this professorship, you understand, the post that I am now privileged to hold to -- where was I?  Oh yes.  He instituted this, er, Chair of Chronology to see if there was any particular reason why one thing happened after another and if there was any way of stopping it.  Since the answers to the three questions were, I knew immediately, yes, no, and maybe, I realised I could then take the rest of my career off.’

‘And your predecessors?’

‘Er, were much of the same mind.’

‘But who were they?’

‘Who were they?  Well, splendid fellows of course, splendid to a man.  Remind me to tell you about them some day.  See that brick?  Wordsworth was once sick on that brick.  Great man.’

All that had been about ten years ago.

Richard glanced around the great dining hall to see what had changed in the time, and the answer was, of course, absolutely nothing.  In the dark heights, dimly seen by the flickering candlelight, were the ghostly portraits of prime ministers, archbishops, political reformers and poets, any of whom might, in their day, have been sick on that same brick.

‘Well,’ said Reg, in a loudly confidential whisper, as if introducing the subject of nipple-piercing in a nunnery, ‘I hear you’ve suddenly done very well for yourself, at last, hmmm?’

‘Er, well, yes, in fact,’ said Richard, who was as surprised at the fact as anybody else, ‘yes, I have.’

Around the table several gazes stiffened on him.

‘Computers,’ he heard somebody whisper dismissively to a neighbour further down the table.  The stiff gazes relaxed again, and turned away.

‘Excellent,’ said Reg.  ‘I’m so pleased for you, so pleased.’

‘Tell me,’ he went on, and it was a moment before Richard realised that the Professor wasn’t talking to him any more, but had turned to the right to address his other neighbour, ‘what’s all this about, this,’ he flourished a vague hand over the candles and college silver, ‘...stuff?’

His neighbour, an elderly wizened figure, turned very slowly and looked at him as if he was rather annoyed at being raised from the dead like this.

‘Coleridge,’ he said in a thin rasp, ‘it’s the Coleridge Dinner you old fool.’  He turned very slowly back until he was facing the front again.  His name was Cawley, he was a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology, and it was frequently said of him, behind his back, that he regarded it not so much as a serious academic study, more as a chance to relive his childhood.

‘Ah, is it,’ murmured Reg, ‘is it?’ and turned back to Richard.  ‘It’s the Coleridge Dinner,’ he said knowledgeably.  ‘Coleridge was a member of the college, you know,’ he added after a moment.  ‘Coleridge.  Samuel Taylor.  Poet.  I expect you’ve heard of him.  This is his Dinner.  Well, not literally, of course.  It would be cold by now.’  Silence.  ‘Here, have some salt.’

‘Er, thank you, I think I’ll wait,’ said Richard, surprised.  There was no food on the table yet.

‘Go on, take it,’ insisted the Professor, proffering him the heavy silver salt cellar.

Richard blinked in bemusement but with an interior shrug he reached to take it.  In the moment that he blinked, however, the salt cellar had completely vanished.

He started back in surprise.

‘Good one, eh?’ said Reg as he retrieved the missing cruet from behind the ear of his deathly  right-hand neighbour, provoking a surprisingly girlish giggle from somewhere else at the table.  Reg smiled impishly.  ‘Very irritating habit, I know.  It’s next on my list for giving up after smoking and leeches.’

Well, that was another thing that hadn’t changed.  Some people pick their noses, others habitually beat up old ladies on the streets.  Reg’s vice was a harmless if peculiar one -- an addiction to childish conjuring tricks.  Richard remembered the first time he had been to see Reg with a problem -- it was only the normal angst that periodically takes undergraduates into its grip, particularly when they have essays to write, but it had seemed a dark and savage weight at the time.  Reg had sat and listened to his outpourings with a deep frown of concentration, and when at last Richard had finished, he pondered seriously, stroked his chin a lot, and at last leaned forward and looked him in the eye.

‘I suspect that your problem,’ he said, ‘is that you have too many paper clips up your nose.’

Richard stared at him.

‘Allow me to demonstrate,’ said Reg, and leaning across the desk he pulled from Richard’s nose a chain of eleven paper clips and a small rubber swan.

‘Ah, the real culprit,’ he said, holding up the swan.  ‘They come in cereal packets, you know, and cause no end of trouble.  Well, I’m glad we’ve had this little chat, my dear fellow.  Please feel free to disturb me again if you have any more such problems.’

Needless to say, Richard didn’t.

Richard glanced around the table to see if there was anybody else he recognised from his time at the college.

Two places away to the left was the don who had been Richard’s Director of Studies in English, who showed no signs of recognising him at all.  This was hardly surprising since Richard had spent his three years here assiduously avoiding him, often to the extent of growing a beard and pretending to be someone else.