Matricide at St. Martha's

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘You didn’t,’ called out a voice from the back. The Mistress was unabashed. ‘Until the other day, I did. You must view my recent outspoken comments as uncharacteristic and a consequence of an unhappy struggle between colleagues which is, I believe, now over.

  ‘That issues of sexuality became such a divisive force with in the college was serious enough. What was much worse was the attempt to encourage students in a new, dangerous and joyless direction. For my generation, female liberation was about casting off the shackles imposed on women by society and rejoicing in the freedom to be human beings. It is therefore with alarm that we have seen the trend on the campuses of America, and even here, towards the pursuit of victimhood: I believe our job is to escape it, not pursue it.

  ‘I want St. Martha’s to be a college in which liberated women follow their stars, not one in which feeble throwbacks to the Victorian era whimper about hurt feelings, bitch about political correctness and act like frightened virgins if a man touches them without a pre-witnessed contract. We must take control of our lives. In the world I envisage, anyone attempting a date rape will be dealt with by a strong right hook.’

  Recognizing that the Mistress showed signs of going over the top and losing her audience, Amiss nudged Mary Lou and whispered. ‘Three cheers for the new Mistress,’ she shouted. ‘Hip, hip…’ ‘Hooray’, yelled Amiss and several colleagues. ‘Hip, hip…’ Slightly uncertainly and then with a gathering enthusiasm, the audience responded. Amiss was delighted to see Pippa shouting loudly. The cheering con tinued for several minutes. The Mistress, flushed and delighted with herself, bowed in acknowledgement, waved furiously, descended from her chair and finally jumped up and down in enthusiasm, both fists clenched in the air in the victory salute. Then abruptly she wheeled round and disappeared through the nearest door. Amiss and Mary Lou followed.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘How very interesting. And where were you last night?’

  As she began to tell him, Pooley and Superintendent Hardiman closed in on Bridget Holdness.

  Chapter 29

  Hardiman had Sandra consigned to a nearby room under the friendly gaze of DC McMenamin. Flanked by Romford and Pooley, he faced Bridget Holdness across the table. ‘There are only two suspects with convincing motives who do not have rock-solid alibis.’ It was a lie, but he told it con vincingly. ‘And those two are you and your colleague, Dr. Murphy.’

  ‘But we do have alibis.’

  There was an unfamiliar note of uncertainty in her voice.

  ‘Very leaky alibis. Let me remind you, Dr. Holdness, there were a dozen discrepancies from the time at which you went to bed, the sexual practices in which you indulged, the order of events…’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I know. It’s easy to muddle up such matters.’

  ‘In any case, the alibis make no difference, for it is clear that you and Dr. Murphy are involved in a conspiracy cen tering round your desire to gain control of this institution and the Alice Toon bequest. You wanted to be Mistress and most of your colleagues testify to your ruthlessness in the pursuit of your objectives. You and your co-conspirator appear to be most unpleasant pieces of work; I would go further—you are double murderers.’

  ‘We’re not.’

  He ignored her. ‘And contemptibly, you attempted to pin the blame on a young woman whom you pretended to befriend.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Dr. Denslow. You chose a murder weapon which was her property, planted drugs in her room and tipped off the police with an anonymous letter.’

  ‘I never even heard about any anonymous letter.’

  Hardiman handed it to her. She read it twice and pushed it back. ‘Is it really true that all the other suspects are out of the running?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She rested her forehead on her hands. No one spoke. After a couple of minutes she looked up. ‘All right then. Here goes.’

  ***

  Half an hour later, Pooley replaced McMenamin and sent him back to guard Bridget Holdness. Sandra was scowling. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Superintendent Hardiman and Inspector Romford will be along in a moment to ask you some questions.’

  ‘This is persecution. You’re picking on me because I’m foreign.’

  Pooley said nothing.

  ‘I’ll sue for wrongful arrest.’

  ‘As you wish, ma’am.’

  She got up as the others entered. ‘You’ve no right to keep me here like this.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Hardiman. ‘I’m charging you with the wilful murders of Dame Maud Theodosia Buckbarrow and Dr. Deborah Windlesham and the attempted murder of Miss Ida Troutbeck and I must warn you that…’

  ‘You can’t,’ she screamed, ‘I’ve got alibis.’

  ‘Not any more you don’t,’ said Hardiman. ‘Your mate Bridget has blown the gaff.’

  It took the three of them and two reinforcements Hardi man had brought with him to subdue her, for she managed to produce a show of strength that would have impressed a Troutbeck. Finally handcuffed, she was removed to a police car. Hardiman tenderly mopped the scratch she had planted on his right cheek. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Romford looked at him sternly. ‘You are speaking about a friend of mine.’

  Hardiman narrowed his eyes. ‘I warned you before, Rom ford. This time I’m going to fucking castrate you.’

  ***

  ‘Yippee!’ said the Mistress. She brandished the empty bottle in the air and shouted. ‘More champagne!’

  A scurrying waiter disappeared to fulfil her command.

  ‘Mind you, young Pooley, it was about bloody time. Talk about making heavy weather of it…’

  ‘If Hardiman hadn’t come along, I don’t think we’d have resolved it unless Sandra had murdered every member of the College Council.’

  ‘I hope Hardiman gives Romford a pretty hard time,’ said Amiss.

  ‘I think he’s getting a choice between being hanged, drawn and quartered and being sent on secondment to the Falkland Islands.’

  ‘Let’s drink to the Falklands,’ said the Mistress. ‘He can convert the sheep. They’re about his intellectual level.’

  They clinked their glasses gravely. More champagne arrived and was uncorked and the trio settled down to serious ordering.

  ‘Right,’ said the Mistress when they had a respite. ‘So what made the Head Bitch come across?’

  ‘Seeing the anonymous letter. She guessed it was Sandra.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The Americanized spelling of “centre”. That’s what Romford had missed, needless to say, and I spotted.’

  ‘You mean Bridget jibbed at Sandra framing Mary Lou but not at her murdering a brace of dons?’

  ‘No, no. Don’t be silly, Robert. She didn’t believe that Sandra was a murderer because she didn’t want to believe that Sandra was a murderer, so she didn’t allow it as a possibility. Then the anonymous letter forced her to face facts. As she said when she came clean, it all suddenly fell into place.’

  ‘You’re making her sound rather like a human being.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ said Pooley cautiously. ‘You, Jack, however, always alleged that she was pragmatic rather than principled.’

  ‘True, true, I did. And it’s the idealists that are really dangerous.’

  Amiss fiddled with a bread roll. ‘You mean that Sandra believed all that crap but Bridget just used it for effect.’

  ‘She didn’t just believe it, she believed in it like a religion. She was as bad as Romford.’ Pooley checked himself. ‘What am I saying? At least Romford doesn’t murder people to bring them to Jesus. Sandra murdered to bring Jesus, i.e. Bridget, to power for the creation of a PC heaven in a dank corner of Cambridge.’

  ‘Heaven preserve me from idealists,’ said the Mistress, swilling her champagne. ‘Whoever they are and no matter how high-sounding their motives seem to be, they are usually in the business of gaining power for themselves or their own faction. I
t doesn’t matter if they call themselves National Socialists or Basque Separatists or Red Brigaders or IRA or whether they call it freedom, justice, democracy or power to the people or even flower power—what they really want is to control other people and bend them to their will.’

  ‘It seems a bit much to spill so much blood just to stop St. Martha’s being insufficiently multicultural.’

  ‘You know bloody well that wasn’t what it was about. First you control language; then you control thought; then you send your evangelists forth to spread your dreary message.’

  ‘She must be mad.’

  ‘So Holdness charitably thinks.’

  ‘Now let me be clear about my colleagues,’ said the Mistress. ‘The alibis were completely false?’ She began on her venison.

  ‘Yes. Holdness thought it was perfectly sensible when Sandra suggested it, that they should cover up for each other in case the unjust cops pointed the finger at them because they were lesbian.’

  ‘Who did she think had done it?’

  ‘The attack on Jack she thought could be anyone, since she’s so annoying.’

  The Mistress grinned proudly.

  ‘Number one murder she’d fingered Windlesham. Number two, she thought was Jack. Then she had some second thoughts during Jack’s speech because of the effect it had on Sandra.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Rage. Holdness admitted to us that she thought Sandra unhinged by Jack’s election and feared she might do some thing violent and it was then she began to wonder if she already had.’

  ‘And Sandra’s admitted it?’

  ‘Yep. She was so out of control that she let it all out. Killing Jack proved too difficult, so she decided to murder—or at least seriously injure—Dame Maud. That, she thought, would knock the stuffing out of the Virgins. But then, although Windlesham was prepared to cooperate to some extent with Bridget, Sandra decided it would be simpler to see her off and put Bridget fully in charge. One successful murder made a second seem logical.’

  ‘The doctored ladder is one thing,’ said Amiss. ‘Even the blunderbuss. But stabbing someone seems unlikely for such a wimp.’

  ‘She took anatomy at college; she knew what she was about and she had sharpened up Mary Lou’s paper knife most efficiently.’

  ‘Any remorse?’

  ‘No. She blames the victims.’

  ‘I look forward to her defence,’ said the Mistress. ‘It should be entertaining.’

  ***

  When they had chewed over the previous several days as well as their dinners and the Mistress was at the brandy-and-pipe stage, she leaned back and surveyed them both benignly.

  ‘Happy endings in prospect, then. Presumably you, Ellis, go back to London festooned with laurels from a grateful Cambridgeshire police force?’

  ‘Well certainly a few nice words from Hardiman.’

  ‘And Romford?’

  ‘It’s not too bad for him really. He was fed up anyway and the early retirement deal is very good and now that Mrs. Romford’s got a full-time job they’ll be financially pretty comfortable.’

  ‘Doesn’t he feel humiliated?’

  ‘No, he’s got a touch of the Sandras really—always blames everyone except himself. He complained a bit about how disgraceful it was that there was no room for God in the modern police force, reminisced nostalgically about that peculiar God-cop who used to be Chief Constable of Man chester and cracked down on a large range of people he considered undesirable, but then told me that God moved in mysterious ways and that no doubt all this persecution was designed to give him the opportunity to evangelize more.’

  ‘I suppose that’s good news,’ said the Mistress. ‘Mmm, this is extremely nice brandy. Now, Robert, what about you? Are you going to stay on and fulfil the task for which you were nominally hired?’

  ‘I think not, Jack. I have fulfilled the task for which I was really hired and a lot more to boot. I adopted the advice of the college poet:

  ‘“If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss…”—and did so.’

  ‘“Well, you’ve certainly shown initiative. Can’t complain about it really. I’m enjoying being Mistress. I intend to make things hum. How did you pull it off, anyway?’

  ‘Easy. You underestimate yourself, Jack.’

  ‘No one ever accused me of that before.’

  ‘In the popularity stakes, that is. Pusey couldn’t stick you but he grudgingly admired you and the Senior Tutor was rather frightened of you but thought you would be an absolutely ideal Mistress and so I’m sure you will be. A touch unorthodox perhaps, a little coarse and not quite what the founder had expected but one can’t have everything.’

  ‘Does this mean,’ asked Pooley, ‘that you are going to have to acquire some scholarly interests?’

  ‘I have scholarly interests, dammit,’ said the Bursar. ‘I have, in my time, written the occasional monograph on mili tary history. And I am no mean student of Kipling. But you don’t have to be scholarly any more to run an Oxbridge college. In fact, scholars are passé: it’s administrators and glorified fundraisers these days. I shall be swanning around, milking the trusts and squeezing the rich until the pips squeak. It’s my firm intention to ensure that St. Martha’s becomes comfortable as well as intellectually respectable. Now, to get back to where we were. Robert, why don’t you stay?’

  ‘Because I mustn’t and you’ll easily find someone to do the Whitehall and academe job. I’m getting out of the path of temptation.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think temptation is going to rear its head again. I have taken the necessary steps to ensure that hence forward you remain pure. Haven’t you noticed?’

  Amiss was alarmed. ‘What have you done? You’re surely not kicking Mary Lou out?’

  ‘On the contrary, my dear boy. Mary Lou and I look forward to continuing our already intimate working relation ship.’

  ‘Christ Almighty.’ Amiss looked at her in horror. ‘You’re kidding. You haven’t? You’re not? You couldn’t?’

  ‘I could and have and will. It’s in both our interests.’

  ‘You treacherous old cow.’

  ‘Did you or did you not say that you would stop cavorting with Mary Lou if you could?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Are you or are you not concerned to preserve your relationship with Rachel?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘So what are you bleating about then? I thought I should focus her attention elsewhere before you really screw things up.’

  ‘You’re all heart, Jack. Always thinking of others. I hope it’s not too much of an imposition on your good nature.’

  ‘Don’t worry too much about that, my dear Robert. As you well know, the lady is scrumptious.’

  Pooley’s brows were knitted. ‘This is none of my business but I thought…I thought all that badge-wearing and so on was put on. I mean, what about Myles Cavendish?’

  ‘Oh, Myles,’ she said carelessly. ‘Myles, I suppose, you could say is my steady. But I am a woman of appetites: there is plenty of room in my life for both Myles and Mary Lou. What’s the matter with you, Robert? You are looking decidedly pissed off.’

  ‘How do you expect me to feel when I discover a desirable lover has just been stolen from under my nose by a fat, elderly woman?’

  ‘That’s ageist and sexist. You’re just piqued that Mary Lou has fallen for a woman of experience. You should be thanking me. She is; her conscience was beginning to stir.’

  ‘Well, nonetheless I’m still not going to stay and that’s not because of pique. I’m taking off for Delhi and Rachel; then I’ll take stock.’

  ‘What about Plutarch? You can’t leave her locked up in that cathouse forever: it would be heartless.’

  ‘I bloody well can leave her in that expensive cattery for another few weeks. If you’re so worried, why don’t you look after her yourself?’

  ‘I’ll think about it, though I rather fear that Francis would st
amp his exquisite little feet at the very notion. Well then, if you must go, go. And when you get back you and Ellis must come down to Cambridge and the three of us will have a reunion. Or maybe we’ll make up a quartet with Mary Lou.’

  ‘If I can bear it by then, you’re on.’

  ‘Oh, and Robert, I urge you to take the advice of a woman of the world and don’t tell Rachel. There are limits to what even the most understanding person can bear.’

  ‘I was fretting about that.’

  ‘Fret not, my boy. This is a time to be pragmatic rather than principled. Sacrificing Rachel’s peace of mind to salve your guilty conscience would be bad for everyone. After all, if she’s been at it with the local embassy Lothario, do you want to be told?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘QED. Now why don’t you both join me in a celebratory cigar and let us cease bandying ladies’ names. For as Kipling so wisely observed: “A woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.”’

  Epilogue

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mary Lou.

  ‘When were you appointed?’

  ‘A couple of weeks ago. Unanimous vote at the College Council.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that being Bursar was exactly your scene.’

  ‘This girl has hidden talents,’ said the Mistress. ‘I’ve dis covered she’s an administrator manqué. And now we have the power and the money to sort the college out there’s a hell of a lot to do.’

  ‘Bring us up to date.’

  ‘Well, a large chunk of the Alice Toon money is going as Maud broadly wanted—in the direction of scholarship, but only some in the direction of the balls-aching scholarship that was so near to her heart. We’re going simultaneously for excellence and élan.’

  ‘E.g.?’

  ‘Tell you later. Additionally, I’ve found a way of diverting two million towards licking the fabric of the college into shape and making it a pleasant place to be.’

  ‘Good God! Not wine cellars and haute cuisine?’