Matricide at St. Martha's

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘I was just this very moment thinking of ringing you,’ said Hardiman. ‘First chance I’ve had all day. What did you want?’ He did not sound friendly.

  ‘Just a quick word about the drug ring that’s impinging on both our territories.’

  ‘Bugger that, I’ve no time at present to think of anything less serious than murder.’

  ‘Things bad?’

  ‘Fucking awful.’

  ‘Are you looking for help?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to ask for help. I was about to enquire what I had ever done to you that you should have unleashed on to me that buffoon Romford.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not so bad.’

  ‘Not so bad as what? I don’t mind him having no brains: I’m used to that. It’s the Holy Joe carry-on combined with his absolute misreading of everyone around him that drives me wild. You can completely rely on Romford to be wrong about colleagues, suspects and the lot. What I want to know is how the hell he got promoted. Was he a fucking freemason or something?’

  ‘Search me, Gordon. I always found that mysterious myself. He was already an inspector when I acquired him. And it’s no good blaming me. I didn’t know he was trying to transfer to Cambridgeshire.’

  ‘Well, he had good reports from you as well as from Stolen Vehicles.’

  ‘Not exactly good,’ said Milton rather guiltily. ‘More a case of being economical with the truth. How the hell else do you ever get anyone transferred? Anyway, what’s he doing at the moment?’

  ‘Making a total bollocks of a murder in some daft local women’s college. Mind you,’ said Hardiman grudgingly, ‘it’s not easy. I’ve been in there a couple of times to see those birds and all I’ve grasped is that lots of them hate each other like poison.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, as far as I can see, there’s a lot of lefty lezzies in there who are trying to turn everything upside down and some right-wing lezzies that don’t like it.’

  ‘Sounds confusing.’

  ‘Let me give you an example. I’m introduced to some beefy dame who claims to be called Jack and who is wearing a badge announcing that she’s a dyke and she smiles sweetly and says, “Ah, Superintendent, I fear that in this establish ment yours will be regarded as an unacceptable surname. Dr. Holdness here,” she says, indicating a frizzy-headed bint standing nearby, “will wish no doubt to alter it forthwith to Hardiperson.” At this stage the frizzy-headed bint storms out of room followed by a couple of droopy-looking birds in stout boots and a tasty black.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Milton. ‘Challenging.’

  ‘Challenging? I don’t need fucking challenges. Got my hands full of decapitated corpses as it is and the most senior person I’ve got to put on this is a moron who doesn’t know a Cambridge college from a garden shed. For Christ’s sake, when he was told that the corpse was the college Mistress, he was initially under the impression that she was a lady of ill-repute.’

  ‘Haven’t you got some bright youngster who knows his way around academia?’

  ‘I have not,’ said Hardiman bitterly. ‘Joining the local police force is not what Cambridge graduates think of doing. And all that any of my lot know is how to charge a few drunken undergraduates after a May Ball.’

  ‘Tough luck. It’s a shame really. I’ve got the very man here. Young sergeant, graduate of King’s, well read, up to date with political fashions, even knows how to handle Romford.’

  ‘Are you offering me this guy, and if so, why?’

  ‘Well, since you’re in such dire need and we’re old friends I could let you have him on secondment for a week. There will, of course, be a price.’

  ‘Ah, I thought as much.’ Hardiman no longer sounded suspicious. ‘There’s no such thing as a free detective sergeant, eh? All right, let’s have it.’

  ***

  ‘Actually,’ said Milton to Pooley, ‘I got quite a good price for you. He’s taking on quite a lot of boring leg work on this drug business.’

  ‘Oh, Jim. Sorry, sir,’ said Pooley, who occasionally got confused in his twin roles as friend and subordinate. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘Quite so. But remember that I want you back after a week. There will be no extensions, so you and Robert had better get your skates on. Mind you, what I don’t understand is how you can be dancing with happiness over working with Romford in view of what you think of him.’

  ‘Oh, he’s just a minor irritant. A murder in Cambridge. It’s what I always wanted. When I think of all those Oxbridge murder stories I’ve read, Dorothy Sayers and Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin and…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Milton hastily. ‘OK then. Off you go and enjoy yourself, bearing in mind that you’re looking for a real live murderer and that I want you to bring Robert out safely.’

  As Pooley rushed out, panting with impatience to tell Amiss the good news, Milton felt a great stab of regret at not being able to go too.

  Chapter 16

  Over the next few days, Pooley was frequently to forget his optimistic prediction that Romford would be only an irri tant, but these moments were more than balanced by the pure enjoyment of his boss’s frequent discomfiture. His favourite moment of all occurred on the very first morning.

  They were ten minutes into Romford’s second cross-examination of the Bursar and it had become patently obvious that she had taken a rooted objection to him. She attacked on two flanks. On the one hand, she lost no oppor tunity to use a blasphemy here, a four-letter word there: on the other, when she wasn’t being monosyllabic, she was even more elliptical than usual—dropping, as far as Romford was concerned, impenetrable references at every turn. As Pooley painstakingly wrote down her observation that ‘Christ only knows the mysteries of Sappho’ in answer to a question about the Mistress’s personal life, he caught a glimpse of Romford’s face and almost laughed out loud.

  ‘So who do you think might have wanted to kill her?’ asked Romford.

  ‘Fucked if I know,’ said the Bursar happily.

  ‘Please, Miss Troutbeck,’ Romford was goaded too far. ‘I must ask you to watch your language.’

  ‘Ask away,’ said the Bursar breezily, ‘but will anyone answer? You have to understand that the argot of rough tough dykes is rough and tough.’

  It was at that moment that the door crashed open to reveal a dapper little man in a check tweed suit, plum-coloured waistcoat and trilby. She jumped up.

  ‘Ida,’ he shouted, ‘are you all right?’ He rushed to her side, clasped as much of her as he could in his little arms and implanted a great kiss on her lips. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, you silly girl? I was frantic when I saw the paper this morning. Let me look, where did she hit you?’

  The Bursar indicated the offending spot, which the little man promptly kissed. Then, clearly relieved at the obviously vigorous health of his beloved, he looked around and addressed the startled police. ‘My apologies, gentlemen, for interrupting. My name is Myles Cavendish. I had to come to see that Ida was all right.’

  Romford felt it time he took control.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but are you a relative of Miss Troutbeck?’

  ‘A relative? Certainly not. I am her lover. Now have you finish ed with her? I want to take her away for a romantic stroll on the Backs.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Romford, wriggling with embarrass ment. The Bursar got up, took Myles’s hand and smiled.

  ‘Who can predict where Eros will strike?’ she observed airily. ‘I shall see you anon, gentlemen. In the meantime, Inspector, I suggest that you pray to God. She will help you.’ And with the guffaw that always accompanied her own sallies, she pranced out of the room arm in arm with Myles;—with his hat on he reached her chin. There was a silence, broken by Romford.

  ‘But she’s supposed to be one of those perverts. In fact, she wears a badge which says it.’

  ‘Says what?’

  ‘Says she’s a pervert.’ Romford was unable to bring himself to let the word ‘dyke’ cross his lips.

  ‘Perhaps i
t’s a joke.’

  ‘I don’t like jokes. “As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman when she is without discretion.”’ He brooded further. ‘Not that she’s what I’d call a “fair woman”.’

  The silence grew oppressive. Finally Pooley spoke. ‘What are we going to do now, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘If I might make a suggestion, sir?’ Pooley put into his voice every last ounce of obsequiousness he could muster.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Perhaps we might find it easier to sort out the basics if we got help from an outsider?’

  Romford looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you talking about Robert Amiss?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. When you told me he was here, I confess I thought it a stroke of luck.’

  ‘Seems very suspicious to me. Always changing jobs; always in funny company.’

  Pooley said nothing. Romford gazed down at his list.

  ‘What’s a Senior Tutor?’ he asked.

  ‘The person most in charge of undergraduates.’

  ‘Oh, so she’s quite important then.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Pooley.

  ‘Dr. Emily Twigg,’ said Romford. ‘She’s got to be an improve ment. Sounds a respectable sort of person.’

  ***

  Pooley could see the relief evinced by Romford as he shepherded the Senior Tutor into the room. Although the hairnet remained incapable of performing much of its function, the general grey effect of the woolly ensemble spoke of spinsterhood, celibacy, modesty and other traits that Romford found particularly attractive.

  His relief was short-lived. When he sought enlightenment on what motive anyone might have had to murder Dame Maud the dam broke and a torrent of impassioned words spewed forth, with ‘rigour’, ‘excellence’, ‘honour’, ‘integrity’, ‘truth’, ‘scholarship’, ‘Beowulf’ giving way to ‘vixens’, ‘minxes’, ‘sloppiness’, ‘lack of standards’, ‘unknown American tenth-rate writers’, ‘destruction of all that St. Martha’s stood for’ and much, much more.

  ‘Excuse me,’ interrupted a desperate Romford five minutes into the monologue. ‘Can you be more specific? I’m new to all this you see. I’m just a policeman.’

  The Senior Tutor gazed at him and—conscientious teacher that she was—cocked her little ear the better to understand his question.

  ‘What I’m trying to understand is the big difference between them, these two sides you’re talking about. You thought you should be teaching different things, is that it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Could you maybe give me a simple example?’

  ‘Well, if I tell you,’ she said, struggling desperately to be helpful, ‘that the only English playwright they wanted to study was Aphra Benn, that George Eliot wouldn’t be accept able at all if she hadn’t been a woman and that you’re not supposed to be allowed to think that F.R. Leavis had anything to say. No, no, no, even though they didn’t like anything he said, it all had to have been said by Queenie; he was supposed to have been a parasite on her superior intellect.’ Her whiskers quivering, she waited for his reaction.

  ‘Thank you, Dr. Twigg,’ Romford said heavily. ‘I’ll be in touch later if I have any more questions.’ He watched her dully as she scuttled from the room. ‘We’ll go back to the station,’ he said to Pooley, ‘and see what forensic has come up with. You’d better arrange to have that fellow Amiss in this afternoon.’

  ***

  ‘Try and win him over, Robert.’

  ‘How am I supposed to do that? Let a Bible fall out of my pocket?’

  ‘Don’t say anything that shocks him.’

  ‘I thought everything shocked him.’ Amiss sounded grumpy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Bored and restless. There’s no one to plot with. Jack Troutbeck hasn’t been seen since she disappeared off on the arm of that little bookie and you’re hardly available at all. And I don’t even have a proper job to do in this establish ment.’

  ‘Go and make friends with somebody. Snoop.’

  ‘I can see you haven’t been listening to me, Ellis. You might as well tell a smoker to make friends in a Californian gym. As far as the Virgins are concerned, I’m something in short pants from another planet and it suits the Dykes to believe I’m Jack the Ripper. Anyway, you never catch them singly.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry. I’ll stop whinging and look forward to tonight. Where will we meet to chew it all over?’

  Pooley looked embarrassed. ‘I can’t make it tonight.’

  Amiss’s wail was desperate. ‘You can’t mean it.’

  ‘No option, I’m afraid. Romford’s asked me to come home and have tea with his wife. He said he didn’t want me at a loose end on my first evening here.’

  It was unfortunate that Amiss’s cry of ‘fucking hell’ coincided with Romford’s entry into the interview room. He pursed his lips so hard that they disappeared into a thin line. ‘You are upset about something,’ he observed frostily.

  ‘I am, Inspector Romford. I must apologize for using that expletive, but I fear my nerves have been frayed by the happenings of the last twenty-four hours—particularly by the callous murder of that fine woman.’

  Romford visibly softened.

  ‘I did not know her long,’ went on Amiss, ‘but long enough to know her to be a gallant and gracious lady.’

  As ever, when Amiss began to perform, Pooley was gripped by the fear that he would overact and blow it. Romford, however, was looking a little less acidulous.

  ‘It would have been her then that gave you the job, would it?’

  ‘Er, no, not exactly. I was appointed by an interview panel that included the Bursar and the Senior Tutor.’

  ‘Oh, them. I hope they were better at interviewing than at being interviewed. What do you make of them then?’

  ‘Well,’ Amiss said cautiously, ‘Dr. Twigg is a woman who is most dedicated to her profession, but I have to admit that she’s not always the easiest person to have a conversation with.’

  ‘And the other one?’

  ‘Bit of a rough diamond?’

  ‘You can say that again. Except I don’t know about the diamond. I wouldn’t want her near my daughter. No manners, filthy tongue and no morals as far as I can see.’

  ‘Heart of gold though, I’ve heard it said,’ added Amiss in a sudden rush of loyalty to his friend.

  ‘Who says?’

  Amiss was only briefly foxed. ‘The late Dame Maud, oddly enough. They and the Senior Tutor were old friends—undergraduate rowing companions.’

  ‘Rowing? I don’t hold with rowing for young women. It’s unladylike.’

  ‘Ah, but Inspector, we are mere men. Who are we to block the progress of the ladies?’

  He caught Pooley’s eye and stifled the temptation to take the rhetoric further. Instead, he brushed up his pious expres sion and listened intently to Romford. ‘In the course of the next few days, we will be taking details about when the library stairs were last used and narrowing down the time in which the outrage could have been planned, but that is a matter for more junior officers, Mr. Amiss. It is my job to ascertain any possible reasons why anyone could have wished to do this disgraceful thing.’

  ‘Inspector, I don’t wish to be presumptuous and I am, of course, very new here, but might it help if I sketched in the back ground a little? It might perhaps save you some valuable time?’

  Romford’s acquiescence sounded positively friendly.

  Chapter 17

  After an hour or so, Amiss was let go. Romford, who had been crouched on the edge of his chair, shoulders hunched and with the misery of his expression deepening as the com plications mounted, threw down his pen and sighed heavily. ‘“Silly women laden with sins, led away with diverse lusts.” This is no place for an honest man, Pooley.’

  ‘But, sir, surely your experiences on the Vice and Murder Squads must have brought you into contact with much worse people than this?’

  ‘I
have been in dens of iniquity in my time, Pooley, but at least with ordinary villains you know where you are. All this filth and loose talk and unnatural sexual practices from so-called educated people is a different business. Especially when it comes out of my taxes. Subsidized degenerates, that’s what they are here. Trying to poison the minds of the young.’

  He appeared lost in thought for several minutes; Pooley wondered if he were praying. At length he roused himself and looked at his watch.

  ‘Six o’clock. We’d better be getting home to Mother.’

  ‘Mother?’

  Romford smiled. ‘That’s what I call Mrs. Romford.’

  Pooley felt it didn’t augur very well.

  Pooley never was to find out Mrs. Romford’s first name, for Inspector Romford had firm notions about keeping a proper social distance with subordinates. It was one thing to let them into your house; it was quite another to let hierar chical standards slip. Mrs. Romford herself was more friendly.

  ‘“Ellis”,’ she said, ‘that’s a funny name. I never heard that before.’

  ‘It’s been in the family a long time.’

  ‘Oh, how nice, dear,’ she said vaguely. ‘I like a nice historical name. Now, would you excuse me a minute while I ask my husband about something?’

  ‘Can’t it wait, Mother?’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute, Michael.’ She seemed excited. ‘I’m sure Ellis won’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not, Mrs. Romford.’

  They left him in the living room. Unexpectedly for a man of Romford’s known austerity, like the frock Mrs. Romford was wearing, the decor was big on flounces and patterns. The pink curtains with their ruffles and loops picked out one of the more overwhelming colours in the garishly-patterned carpet, the fabric of the loose covers of the three-piece suite picked up the purple, the green and the orange, and had deep frills at the hems, elaborately-worked antimacassars at the back and on the arms and a large number of tapestry scatter cushions of a quite remarkable banality. Pooley could not decide which one was the worst: the swan, the doe-eyed deer, the white fluffy kitten or the soulful labrador.