Murder Is Academic (23 page)

‘He has the first four weeks off as study leave, so you wouldn't be expecting him in college then, would you?'

‘No, but you mean he won't be coming in
at all
before that?'

‘I'm afraid not.'

‘Well, what's wrong with him?'

‘Stress.'

‘Is he too ill to talk to me himself?'

Celia hesitated. ‘Not that precisely.'

‘What then?'

‘He won't have easy access to a telephone at the moment.'

What could this mean? That Merfyn was in hospital? In a mental institution? I felt myself growing hot and cold.

‘For God's sake, Celia, stop talking like a civil servant and tell me what's going on.'

‘Oh, very well. He came to the station with me this morning and caught a train to Stansted Airport. He is probably airborne even as we speak.'

‘He's gone abroad?'

‘That was his intention.'

‘But where?'

‘I really couldn't say.'

I was dumbfounded. Then it struck me that there was more than one way of interpreting this statement.

‘Do you
know
where he's gone, Celia?'

‘As it happens, I don't. But if I were to hazard a guess, I would say Spain, or possibly Crete or Malta.'

Ideas of extradition floated crazily in my mind.

‘But what about the police?' I blurted out.

‘What about them?' Celia sounded surprised. ‘Oh, you mean the investigation into the death of that student. Merfyn's given a statement to the police. There's really no reason for him to stay around.'

‘But aren't you worried not knowing where he is?'

‘Not really, no. It's happened once or twice before. Things just get on top of him and he has to get away for a while. He's been building up to it for weeks. He'll buy the cheapest ticket available to somewhere warm and book into a hotel. I expect he'll give me a ring in a few days. And now, Cassandra, I must go: I have someone waiting to see me. Bye.'

I was left goggling at the telephone. I remembered what Stephen had said about the mystery of other people's marriages. Could Celia really be as unconcerned as she sounded? What was really going on? Was his departure merely a safety valve as she had implied, or was it something more sinister? Had the preoccupation with séances been a sign that Merfyn was going off the rails?

I was still brooding when there was a knock on the door.

Cathy popped her head round and said, ‘I've collected some stuff from your pigeon-hole for you. I didn't want you to forget your cake.'

She gave me several envelopes and a small silver gift box decorated with gold stars.

‘I wasn't sure that you'd have time for it this year.'

She smiled, ‘Actually I think it's turned out to be one of my best ever. And you haven't forgotten about the sherry party, have you?'

All workplaces have their Christmas rituals. Cathy's cake distributed through the staff pigeon-holes on the last day of term was one of ours. So was the sherry party. There were over three weeks to go until Christmas, but it's a festival that's celebrated early in Cambridge colleges. The undergraduates go home in the first week of December, and after that it's difficult to get both full-time and part-time staff together.

‘I suppose I'd better show my face. I'll join you when I've looked at my post.'

It included several Christmas cards from students and colleagues, a second stern reminder from the university library about the two overdue books, and a letter from an editor asking for the proofs of an article to be returned as a matter of urgency. In the anxiety of chasing up other people, I was in danger of forgetting my own contribution to the RAE. There were some bibliographical details I needed to check. I resolved to go straight to the library after the party.

In fact it was a subdued affair, scarcely a party at all. The Christmas tree in the Senior Common Room had been bought before Rebecca's death, but no-one had the heart to put up more decorations. And they weren't the only things that were missing.

‘Where's the rest of our department?' I asked Cathy.

‘Alison went home early. Paul had a very bad night apparently.'

‘And Aiden?'

Cathy grinned and pointed to the far end of the room. Craning my head round, I spotted him in animated conversation with a very chic postgrad from the French department.

‘You look tired,' she told me. ‘Why don't you sit down? I'll get you a drink. Orange juice?'

I nodded gratefully and sank down into a sofa whose springs had long gone. She came back with drinks and a plate of cheese straws.

‘Can't say I feel in a very Christmassy mood,' I said. ‘I haven't bought so much as a card yet.'

‘It's been a grim old term. Still, you've got the baby to look forward to. Next Christmas'll be lovely. Makes it all seem worth-while. She won't understand about the presents, but she'll love the wrapping paper.'

‘What does Hannah want for Christmas?'

‘Would you believe, a tongue stud! Until she's sixteen she can't have it done without my permission.'

‘And you won't give it?'

‘Not on your life! She thinks it would be such a wild and rebellious thing to do, but actually she just wants to be exactly like her best friend, Eleanor, who is exactly like half the other fourteen-year-olds in her class. “How sad is that?” as Hannah would say, Eleanor's mother was weak-minded enough to agree to the tongue stud and gave Eleanor a letter of permission. And do you know what Hannah did? Took some of my headed notepaper and copied Eleanor's letter. She came unstuck when the body-piercing place rang me up to check. After that, I wouldn't even let her have her ears pierced. There was a lot of door banging, and weeping on her bed, but I stuck it out.'

I thought about this as I drove to the library. Up until now I had seen my little girl as a cooing baby or as a charming toddler lurching about unsteadily. I hadn't imagined her as a sulky teenager festooned with ironmongery. Oh well, time enough to worry about that, I thought, as I pulled into the car park.

I'd intended to work through until six o'clock, but by half past four I was ravenous. I had a cup of tea in the tearoom and ate Cathy's Christmas cake. I felt hungry all the time these days. Could I really be eating only for two? What if I was expecting twins? I was expanding so rapidly now that I could almost believe it, despite the evidence of the scans. I was so tired, as well. I could have put my head on the table and slept, right there and then. One more reference to check and then I could go home with an easy conscience.

An elderly creaking lift carried me up to the sixth floor of the north front of the library where the nineteenth century biography is housed. It's always dark up there. The lights between the rows of grey metal stacks are controlled by time switches, black plastic dials that you twist to the right and allow to jerk stiffly back to nought. I dumped my folder and bag on one of the small wooden tables in the narrow corridor between the stacks and the high oblong windows. I switched on the fluorescent light.

It struck me that no one in the world knew exactly where I was at that moment. It's a thought I always enjoy. I looked out of the window. Immediately below was Clare College, and beyond it I could see King's College Chapel, bone-white in its floodlights. As I admired the view over Cambridge, I forgot the pettiness and backbiting of academic life and the bureaucratic irritations. There was nowhere else I would rather have been than this library in this city. In fact, I'd like to
live
in the library. I'd often wondered if that would be possible. Of course you'd have to hide at closing time. There was actually a bed in the library: in a little sickroom off the corridor that led to Rare Books. The door was always ajar and I'd often glanced in wistfully at the narrow, neatly made-up bed and the little washbasin. And why leave it at just living in the library, I thought? It would also make a wonderful mausoleum. I could lie in state in the central reading room. Then it could be bricked up with me inside. Perhaps I'd at last get round to reading
Ulysses!
What else would I need apart from books to see me through eternity? Bill Bailey. Perhaps he could be mummified. I saw him swaddled in bandages, with his little black and white face poking out of the top. Too unkind …

I came to my senses with a sudden awareness of how quiet the library was. My desk was a little island of light in the darkness. It had a melamine surface of indigo-blue with a criss-crossing of little whitish lines. And the green carpet tiles: I hadn't noticed before that they were flecked with yellow. What an extraordinary texture they had; they were wiry and hairy, like a very rough tweed. Or was it more like something alive, moss perhaps, or the pelt of an animal? The richness of colour and texture seemed too extravagant; I closed my eyes to shut it out.

Across the inside of my eyelids, like a film being projected in a cinema, a series of pictures was flickering past. I was entranced. The film flowed so fast that I could scarcely register all the images. I saw myself in the Senior Common Room listening to Cathy talking about Hannah. Now I was looking at the little lacquer box decorated with the Snow Queen – she was actually smiling at me. Next came my interview with Rebecca. This time, though, I was on her side of the desk, looking at my own face. How comically stern I looked! I started to giggle. Then I saw Margaret's garden, and her body floating in the pool. Why had I been afraid to look? I leaned forward for a better view and found myself falling into a black hole. I jerked my eyes open.

Ahead of me the parallel lines of book stacks and the wall converged on what I'd thought was a blank white wall, but now I saw that there was a door in it. As I watched, the doorknob slowly, very slowly, began to turn. Something dreadful was behind that door. I had to get away. My eye was caught by something red. Close to the top of one of the stacks a few yards away was a red light. It had a shade upon which the word ‘Stairs' was picked out in transparent glass. As I moved towards it I saw the door at the end of the stacks opening wide. I did not want to see,
must not
see, what was emerging. I plunged down the stairs, swinging myself round corners as the staircase twisted from floor to floor. My hair had come loose. A loop of it whipped across my face. The metal walls boomed as I crashed against them, ricocheting between wall and banister like a ball on a bagatelle board.

My baby, I mustn't hurt my baby.
I forced myself to slow down. From a window I caught a quick, photographic glimpse of two elderly dons deep in conversation as they walked down the library steps. As I stumbled down the last flight of stairs, I shouted for help. I emerged into the broad corridor that runs from the tearoom to the issue desk. I saw heads turning, expressions of surprise.

And that was when I started to laugh. How silly it was to be frightened! There was nothing to fear in the library. The books and manuscripts, all the knowledge and all the power that knowledge brings, they belonged to me. They were all inside my head. I had
become
the library and now that I knew everything, that had to mean I knew who had killed Rebecca, and that was what I was trying to explain to the anxious faces rocking and swaying around me. But the words wouldn't come, and a dark wave was breaking over me, sweeping away faces, library, knowledge, everything.

Chapter Eighteen

A brilliance was seeping under my eyelids: it must mean that there had been a fall of snow overnight. I would open my eyes to a world transformed, but not just yet, not until this feeling of convalescent weakness had passed. I must have had a fever, or perhaps a bad dream, but it was all right; Mummy was somewhere nearby. Soon I'd be able to get up and play in the snow, but there was no hurry. I was perfectly content to lie there, comfortably suspended between sleep and wakefulness. There was a delicious smell, something faint but very familiar – what was it? – and nearby someone was talking very quietly. I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but it didn't matter. The sound was soothing, like having the radio on low.

I wanted to sink back into sleep, but there was something uncomfortable caught on my hand. I tried to move, but my arm appeared to be tethered to the bed. My other hand was free and was lying outside the bedclothes, but they were strange, too. My hand slid over a cool cotton sheet. What had happened to my duvet? The pleasant drowsiness was ebbing away.

With an effort I opened my eyes.

I was not at home in my own bed with the radio playing and snow falling outside. I was in a white room, lying in a hospital bed attached to a drip. I was wearing a hospital gown.

I turned my head to locate the source of the murmuring sound. Stephen was standing by the window talking to himself, or perhaps to someone invisible. I didn't find this surprising, merely interesting.

He turned towards me and smiled. The lower part of his face was dark with stubble. On his cheeks were the lines of scratches that had almost healed.

He said, ‘She's waking up. Yes, thanks for phoning.'

He folded the mobile phone into his hand and sat down beside me.

‘How are you feeling, sweetie?'

How was I feeling? I would have to think about that.

‘Head aches,' I decided.

Stephen's hand was warm in mine. I couldn't float very far away while he was holding on to me, so perhaps I would go back to sleep. I was unable to do that just yet though, because something was nagging at me, something very, very important. When I knew what it was, my heart turned over.

‘The baby?'

‘She's fine, absolutely fine. Look, this is monitoring her heartbeat. See? She's OK.'

There were wires snaking out from under the sheet. I turned my head to follow them. I squinted at the screen. A series of regular green blips was moving across it.