‘We can manage a reasonable wine cellar and a decent chef as well as central heating and roofs that don’t leak. I’ve put little Francis Pusey in charge of working out schemes for our corporate acquisition of some creature comforts. He’s having a wonderful time poring over catalogues and making lists and snapping up bargains in the food and wine depart ment and subject to strict vetoes from me and Mary Lou, he’s doing all sorts of dreary work on choosing fabrics and carpets and paints; he’s never been happier. It was that bribe that made him agree to have Plutarch stay while you were away. How is she, by the way?’
‘Horribly well. Are you sure you don’t want her back?’
‘I’d be delighted. Unfortunately, she is not a universal favourite with my colleagues. Devouring the salmon destined for high table was not the best way of winning friends and influencing people. Give her my love.’
‘I’m sure she will reciprocate. Any other changes?’
‘The Statutes are getting a reinterpretation that will have old Ridley spinning in his mausoleum. No more drill, for starters. And accomplishments are going to cover a multitude of gastronomic treats.’
‘What a disappointment! And what about people?’
‘Well, now that Emily is Deputy Mistress, she’s at peace. She no longer has any official duties since I don’t give her any thing to do. Thackaberry is a not bad Senior Tutor and Emily’s other job as Director of Studies had been taken by an outsider who’s a humdinger on the intellectual front.’
‘What happened to Bridget?’
‘She’s doing exactly as she’s told.’
‘You mean you let her stay?’
‘Yep. I have a magnanimous streak. I gave her a simple choice: accept she’d lost, turn constructive and she had a future. Otherwise she’d be drummed out and because of the scandal of the court case she’d find it hard ever to get a job anywhere else. She still doesn’t know what Sandra’s likely to say about her when the case comes up.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much of a choice.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘So she’s given up all the gender and ethnic crap?’
‘Sure. You knew she was an apparatchik. Today’s fashion at St. Martha’s is vigorous scholarship, so Bridget has returned to her old intellectual pursuits as a Tudor historian and is working diligently in the hope of landing a university lecturership. She willingly takes on all the dreary administrative jobs we give her and seems quite content with her lot.’
‘The Rev Crowley?’
‘Skulked out of the college with his suitcase the day after you left, leaving no forwarding address. No doubt he’s already ensconced in a visiting professorship in Ohio.’
‘How’s morale in general?’
‘Going up by leaps and bounds.’ Jack Troutbeck waved in Mary Lou’s direction. ‘You tell ‘em.’
‘To discover what Sandra had done really threw the kids. Then they found Bridget had reneged, and it rapidly emerged that life under Jack was going to be fun.’
‘I think you could say that the ethnic/gender forces have been comprehensively routed,’ said the Mistress compla cently. ‘The Dykes have indeed been downed.’
‘By two dykes,’ remarked Amiss acidly.
‘Don’t be a sore loser. Anyway, we’re not dykes; we’re women of catholic tastes who eschew labelling and who are devoting ourselves to the welfare of our charges.
‘Poor little wretches. Maud really was guilty of driving them into the arms of Holdness and co. I’d have gone mad myself if I’d been forced to be solemn and rigorous all the time and always pushed in the direction of land tenures and acres of footnotes. Our priority is arranging for them to have excellent teaching, lots of intellectual adventure and encouraging them to have a good time into the bargain. We aim to turn out a band of happy, tough sceptics.’
Mary Lou broke in. ‘One of the best things has been the lecture series taking the piss out of intellectual fads. Our new Director of Studies brings in people to take a comic look at the screwier bits of the academic world. With the right person you can both explain and amusingly savage everything from Marxist criticism to structuralism.’
‘Not forgetting the gurus,’ said the Mistress. She smacked her lips over her wine.
‘Sure. The assassinations of Jacques Derrida and Mary Daly were a riot.’
‘Mary Lou’s being modest. She had them rolling in the aisles with her tour de force called “Black Studies as a Floating Signifier”.’
Amiss seized the claret. ‘What’s the female equivalent of an Uncle Tom?’
‘I’ll have to ask Sandra,’ said the Bursar cheerfully. ‘When are visiting hours?’
‘You couldn’t really get a blacker joke,’ observed Amiss, ‘if you’ll forgive the expression. Sandra goes to all that trouble to rub out poor old Maud and the dreadful Deborah and the net result is to put you two in charge. I wonder how she feels about it all. What’s the news on her, Ellis?’
‘The word on the grapevine is that she’s still in a state of culture shock. Her parents were over within twenty-four hours and the three of them seemed pretty confident of getting her off on the grounds of the persecution she suffered at the hands of Dame Maud and Deborah Windlesham which had eroded her self-confidence and driven her to violence.’
‘Oh, God,’ groaned the Bursar. ‘It sounds just like home.’
‘However, the lawyer they tried with that one told them it wouldn’t wash, that Britain is a sensible place still, just, and the notion of murderer as victim hasn’t quite taken off here. Unless they could have her declared insane, in which case they could go for diminished responsibility, she’d had it.’
‘I’m surprised she didn’t try the pre-menstrual tension defence,’ observed Amiss. ‘I seem to remember her bleating on about how it excused any violence.’
‘She said that to me once,’ said the Mistress. ‘I asked her if that made it all right for men to be excused rape if they had an excess of testosterone. That shut her up for a while at least.’
‘And then?’ prompted Amiss.
‘They pursued the insanity angle, but couldn’t find a compliant shrink.’ Pooley shrugged. ‘What was left to Sandra but the child-abuse angle? Her father had abused her sexually, her mother had abused her psychologically, she had been unattractive, she hadn’t got good grades at High School because her teachers didn’t like her and so on and so on. This not only failed to impress the lawyers but caused her parents to take deep umbrage. They disappeared back to America leaving her to work out her defence with a solicitor and barrister provided by legal aid. She’s feeling very aggrieved about that.’
‘So what’ll happen?’
‘Life imprisonment,’ said Pooley.
‘Is it fair,’ asked Amiss, ‘when Bridget gets off scot free?’
‘Not really scot free,’ said the Mistress. ‘She’s working out a very long penance. Besides, I think she truly has learnt her lesson.’
‘Nobody as duplicitous as that could ever be relied on.’
‘Oh, we won’t rely on her, will we, Mary Lou? We’ll use her. She’s not the sort of person you make a friend of but there’s plenty like her in public life. You just make sure they’re channelled in the right direction and their success is dependent on yours.’ She burst out laughing. ‘Mind you, you haven’t heard the best of it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘She’s not a lesbian.’
‘Who?’
‘Bridget.’
‘How do you know?’
‘She told me,’ said Mary Lou. ‘That’s one of the reasons they mucked up so badly over the alibi. Sandra was always pursuing her but she wouldn’t succumb. She had a boyfriend in Ely, rather rough trade and is as straight as they come. It was just convenient to pretend otherwise.’
‘So poor old Sandra wasn’t even getting her oats.’
‘Poor old Sandra, my foot,’ said the Mistress. ‘It’s people like her get women a bad name. St. Martha’s is going to produce robust feminists, i
sn’t that right, Mary Lou? And they’re going to have some fun as well.’
‘Female cavaliers,’ said the Bursar with a grin.
Amiss smiled at her. ‘Two months in, you’ve achieved high office, you’ve turned your back on all you were taught at your alma mater, you have conspired to bring down your sisters, indeed you sleep with the enemy. I hope you feel a sense of shame.’
‘Balls!’ said the Bursar.
More from this Author
For other books, upcoming author events, or more information please go to:
www.poisonedpenpress.com/ruth-dudley-edwards
Contact Us
To receive a free catalog of Poisoned Pen Press titles, please contact us in one of the following ways:
Phone: 1-800-421-3976
Facsimile: 1-480-949-1707
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.poisonedpenpress.com
Poisoned Pen Press
6962 E. First Ave. Ste. 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Matricide at St. Martha's Page 22
