Soaked and exhausted, their breath rising visibly in the clear night air, the two old men stood and faced each other. They shook hands like two business tycoons who had closed an important deal before disappearing into the night.
Tom Adams, the club’s honorary secretary, rang Bob the following morning to tell him something he already knew. In fact, he had lain awake all night thinking of little else.
Bob listened to Adams’s account of the break-in. “What’s surprising is that they only took one thing.” He paused. “Your arm—or rather, Dougie’s arm. It’s very strange, especially as someone had left an expensive camera on the head table.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Bob.
“No, I don’t think so, old boy,” said Adams. “The local police are making inquiries, but my bet is that whoever stole the arm will probably be halfway across the county by now.”
“I expect you’re right,” said Bob. “While you’re on the line, Mr. Adams, I wonder if I could ask you a question about the history of the club.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Adams. “But you must remember that it’s only a hobby for me, old chap.”
“Do you by any chance know who is the oldest living Oxford rowing blue?” There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Are you still there?” Bob asked eventually.
“Yes. I was just trying to think if old Harold Deering is still alive. I can’t remember seeing his obituary in The Times.”
“Deering?” said Bob.
“Yes. Radley and Keble, 1909-10-11. He became a bishop, if I remember correctly, but I’m damned if I can recall where.”
“Thank you,” said Bob, “that’s most helpful.”
“I could be wrong,” Adams pointed out. “After all, I don’t read the obituary columns every day. And I’m a bit rusty when it comes to Oxford.”
Bob thanked him once again before hanging up.
After a college lunch he didn’t eat, Bob returned to his digs and rang the porter’s lodge at Keble. He was answered by a curmudgeonly voice.
“Do you have any record of a Harold Deering, a former member of the college?” Bob asked.
“Deering … Deering …” said the voice. “That’s a new one on me. Let me see if he’s in the college handbook.” Another long pause, during which Bob really did begin to think he’d been cut off, until the voice said, “Good heavens, no wonder. It was just a bit before my time. Deering, Harold, 1909-11, BA 1911, MA 1916 (Theology). Became Bishop of Truro. Is that the one?”
“Yes, that’s the man,” said Bob. “Do you by any chance have an address for him?”
“I do,” said the voice. “The Right Reverend Harold Deering, The Stone House, Mill Road, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.”
“Thank you,” said Bob. “You’ve been very helpful.”
Bob spent the rest of the afternoon composing a letter to the former bishop, in the hope that the old blue might agree to see him.
He was surprised to receive a call at his digs three days later from a Mrs. Elliot, who turned out to be Mr. Deering’s daughter, with whom he was now living.
“The poor old chap can’t see much beyond his nose these days,” she explained, “so I had to read your letter out to him. But he’d be delighted to meet you, and wonders if you could call on him this Sunday at 11:30, after matins—assuming that’s not inconvenient for you.”
“That’s fine,” said Bob. “Please tell your father to expect me around 11:30.”
“It has to be in the morning,” Mrs. Elliot went on to explain, “because, you see, he has a tendency to fall asleep after lunch. I’m sure you understand. By the way, I’ll send directions to your college.”
On Sunday morning, Bob was up long before the sun rose, and started out on his journey to Tewkesbury in a car he had rented the previous day. He would have gone by train, but British Rail didn’t seem willing to rise quite early enough for him to reach his destination on time. As he journeyed across the Cotswolds, he tried to remember to keep the car on the left, and couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before the British started to build some highways with more than one lane.
He drove into Tewkesbury a few minutes after eleven, and thanks to Mrs. Elliot’s clear directions, quickly found The Stone House. He parked the car outside a little wicket gate.
A woman had opened the door of the house even before Bob was halfway up the scrub-covered path. “It must be Mr. Kefford,” she declared. “I’m Susan Elliot.” Bob smiled and shook her hand. “I should warn you,” Mrs. Elliot explained as she led him toward the front door, “that you’ll have to speak up. Father’s become rather deaf lately, and I’m afraid his memory isn’t what it used to be. He can recall everything that happened to him at your age, but not even the most simple things that I told him yesterday. I’ve had to remind him what time you would be coming this morning,” she said as they walked through the open door. “Three times.”
“I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble, Mrs. Elliot,” said Bob.
“No trouble at all,” said Mrs. Elliot as she led him down the corridor. “The truth is, my father’s been rather excited by the thought of an American blue from Cambridge coming to visit him after all these years. He hasn’t stopped talking about it for the past two days. He’s also curious about why you wanted to see him in the first place,” she added conspiratorially.
She led Bob into the drawing room, where he immediately came face to face with an old man seated in a winged leather chair, wrapped in a warm plaid dressing gown and propped up on several cushions, his legs covered by a tartan blanket. Bob found it hard to believe that this frail figure had once been an Olympic oarsman.
“Is it him?” the old man asked in a loud voice.
“Yes, Father,” Mrs. Elliot replied, equally loudly. “It’s Mr. Kefford. He’s driven over from Cambridge especially to see you.”
Bob walked forward and shook the old man’s bony outstretched hand.
“Good of you to come all this way, Kefford,” said the former bishop, pulling his blanket up a little higher.
“I appreciate your seeing me, sir,” said Bob, as Mrs. Elliot directed him to a comfortable chair opposite her father.
“Would you care for a cup of tea, Kefford?”
“No, thank you, sir,” said Bob. “I really don’t want anything.”
“As you wish,” said the old man. “Now, I must warn you, Kefford, that my concentration span isn’t quite what it used to be, so you’d better tell me straight away why you’ve come to see me.”
Bob attempted to marshal his thoughts. “I’m doing a little research on a Cambridge blue who must have rowed around the same time as you, sir.”
“What’s his name?” asked Deering. “I can’t remember them all, you know.”
Bob looked at him, fearing that this was going to turn out to be a wasted journey.
“Mortimer. Dougie Mortimer,” he said.
“D.J.T. Mortimer,” the old man responded without hesitation. “Now, there’s someone you couldn’t easily forget. One of the finest strokes Cambridge ever produced—as Oxford found out, to their cost.” The old man paused. “You’re not a journalist, by any chance?”
“No, sir. It’s just a personal whim. I wanted to find out one or two things about him before I return to America.”
“Then I will certainly try to help if I can,” said the old man in a piping voice.
“Thank you,” said Bob. “I’d actually like to begin at the end, if I may, by asking if you knew the circumstances of his death.”
There was no response for several moments. The old cleric’s eyelids closed, and Bob began to wonder if he had fallen asleep.
“Not the sort of thing chaps talked about in my day,” he eventually replied. “Especially with its being against the law at the time, don’t you know.”
“Against the law?” said Bob, puzzled.
“Suicide. A bit silly, when you think about it,” the old priest continued, “even if it is a
mortal sin. Because you can’t put someone in jail who’s already dead, now can you? Not that it was ever confirmed, you understand.”
“Do you think it might have been connected with Cambridge losing the Boat Race in 1909, when they were such clear favorites?”
“It’s possible, I suppose,” said Deering, hesitating once again. “I must admit, the thought had crossed my mind. I took part in that race, as you may know.” He paused again, breathing heavily. “Cambridge were the clear favorites, and we didn’t give ourselves a chance. The result was never properly explained, I must admit. There were a lot of rumors doing the rounds at the time, but no proof—no proof, you understand.”
“What wasn’t proved?” asked Bob. There was another long silence, during which Bob began to fear that the old man might have thought he’d gone too far.
“My turn to ask you a few questions, Kefford,” he said eventually.
“Of course, sir.”
“My daughter tells me that you’ve stroked the winning boat for Cambridge three years in a row.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Congratulations, my boy. But tell me: if you had wanted to lose one of those races, could you have done so, without the rest of the crew being aware of it?”
It was Bob’s turn to ponder. He realized for the first time since he had entered the room that he shouldn’t assume that a frail body necessarily indicates a frail mind.
“Yes, I guess so,” he eventually said. “You could always change the stroke rate without warning, or even catch a crab as you took the Surrey bend. Heaven knows, there’s always enough flotsam on the river to make it appear unavoidable.” Bob looked the old man straight in the eye. “But it would never have crossed my mind that anyone might do so deliberately.”
“Nor mine,” said the priest, “had their cox not taken holy orders.”
“I’m not sure I understand, sir,” said Bob.
“No reason you should, young man. I find nowadays that I think in non sequiturs. I’ll try to be less obscure. The cox of the 1909 Cambridge boat was a chap called Bertie Partridge. He went on to become a parish priest in some outpost called Chersfield in Rutland. Probably the only place that would have him,” he chuckled. “But when I became Bishop of Truro, he wrote and invited me to address his flock. It was such an arduous journey from Cornwall to Rutland in those days, that I could easily have made my excuses, but like you, I wanted the mystery of the 1909 race solved, and I thought this might be my only chance.”
Bob made no attempt to interrupt, fearing he might stop the old man’s flow.
“Partridge was a bachelor, and bachelors get very lonely, don’t you know. If you give them half a chance, they love to gossip. I stayed overnight, which gave him every chance. He told me, over a long dinner accompanied by a bottle of non-vintage wine, that it was well known that Mortimer had run up debts all over Cambridge. Not many undergraduates don’t, you might say, but in Mortimer’s case they far exceeded even his potential income. I think he rather hoped that his fame and popularity would stop his creditors from pressing their claims. Not unlike Disraeli when he was Prime Minister,” he added with another chuckle.
“But in Mortimer’s case one particular shopkeeper, who had absolutely no interest in rowing, and even less in undergraduates, threatened to bankrupt him the week before the 1909 boat race. A few days after the race had been lost, Mortimer seemed, without explanation, to have cleared all his obligations, and nothing more was heard of the matter.”
Once again the old man paused as if in deep thought. Bob remained silent, still not wishing to distract him.
“The only other thing I can recall is that the bookies made a killing,” Deering said without warning. “I know that to my personal cost, because my tutor lost a five-pound wager, and never let me forget that I had told him we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Mind you, I was always able to offer that as my excuse for not getting a First.” He looked up and smiled at his visitor.
Bob sat on the edge of his seat, mesmerized by the old man’s recollections.
“I’m grateful for your candor, sir,” he said. “And you can be assured of my discretion.”
“Thank you, Kefford,” said the old man, now almost whispering. “I’m only too delighted to have been able to assist you. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you, sir,” said Bob. “I think you’ve covered everything I needed to know.”
Bob rose from his chair, and as he turned to thank Mrs. Elliot, he noticed for the first time a bronze cast of an arm hanging on the far wall. Below it was printed in gold:
H. R. R. DEERING
1909–10–11
(KEBLE, Bow)
“You must have been a fine oarsman, sir.”
“No, not really,” said the old blue. “But I was lucky enough to be in the winning boat three years in a row, which wouldn’t please a Cambridge man like yourself.”
Bob laughed. “Perhaps one last question before I leave, sir.”
“Of course, Kefford.”
“Did they ever make a bronze of Dougie Mortimer’s arm?”
“They most certainly did,” replied the priest. “But it mysteriously disappeared from your boathouse in 1912. A few weeks later the boatman was sacked without explanation—caused quite a stir at the time.”
“Was it known why he was sacked?” asked Bob.
“Partridge claimed that when the old boatman got drunk one night, he confessed to having dumped Mortimer’s arm in the middle of the Cam.” The old man paused, smiled, and added, “Best place for it, wouldn’t you say, Kefford?”
Bob thought about the question for some time, wondering how his father would have reacted. He then replied simply, “Yes, sir. Best place for it.”
DO NOT PASS GO
May 1986
Hamid Zebari smiled at the thought of his wife Shereen driving him to the airport. Neither of them would have believed it possible five years before, when they had first arrived in America as political refugees. But since he had begun a new life in the States, Hamid was beginning to think anything might be possible.
“When will you be coming home, Papa?” asked Nadim, who was strapped safely in the back seat next to his sister May. She was too young to understand why Papa was going away.
“Just a fortnight, I promise. No more,” their father replied. “And when I get back, we’ll all go on holiday.”
“How long is a fortnight?” his son demanded.
“Fourteen days,” Hamid told him with a laugh.
“And fourteen nights,” said his wife as she drew into the curb below the sign for Turkish Airways. She touched a button on the dashboard and the trunk flicked up. Hamid jumped out of the car, grabbed his luggage from the trunk, and put it on the pavement before climbing into the back of the car. He hugged his daughter first, and then his son. May was crying—not because he was going away, but because she always cried when the car came to a sudden halt. He allowed her to stroke his bushy mustache, which usually stopped the flow of tears.
“Fourteen days,” repeated his son. Hamid hugged his wife and felt the small swelling of a third child between them.
“We’ll be here waiting to pick you up,” Shereen called out as her husband tipped the skycap on the curb.
Once his six empty cases had been checked in, Hamid disappeared into the terminal and made his way to the Turkish Airlines desk. As he took the same flight twice a year, he didn’t need to ask the girl at the ticket counter for directions.
After he had checked in and been presented with his boarding pass, Hamid still had an hour to wait before they would call his flight. He began the slow trek to Gate B27. It was always the same—the Turkish Airlines plane would be parked halfway back to Manhattan. As he passed the Pan Am check-in desk on B5, he observed that they would be taking off an hour earlier than him, a privilege for those who were willing to pay an extra sixty-three dollars.
When he reached the check-in area, a Turkish Airline
s stewardess was slipping the sign for Flight 014, New York-London-Istanbul, onto a board. Estimated time of departure, 10:10.
The seats were beginning to fill up with the usual cosmopolitan group of passengers: Turks going home to visit their families, those Americans taking a holiday who cared about saving sixty-three dollars, and businessmen whose bottom line was closely watched by tight-fisted accountants.
Hamid strolled over to the restaurant bar and ordered coffee and two eggs sunnyside up, with a side order of hash browns. It was the little things that reminded him daily of his newfound freedom and of just how much he owed to America.
“Would those passengers traveling to Istanbul with young children please board the plane now,” said the stewardess over the loudspeaker.
Hamid swallowed the last mouthful of his hash browns—he hadn’t yet become accustomed to the American habit of covering everything in ketchup—and took a final swig of the weak, tasteless coffee. He couldn’t wait to be reunited with the thick Turkish coffee served in small bone china cups. But that was a tiny sacrifice when weighed against the privilege of living in a free land. He settled his bill and left a dollar in the little tin tray.
“Would those passengers seated in rows 35 to 41 please board the aircraft now.”
Hamid picked up his briefcase and headed for the passageway that led to Flight 014. An official from Turkish Airlines checked his boarding pass and ushered him through.
He had been allocated an aisle seat near the back of economy. Ten more trips, he told himself, and he would fly Pan Am business class. By then he would be able to afford it.
Whenever the wheels of his plane left the ground, Hamid would look out of the little window and watch his adopted country as it disappeared out of sight, the same thoughts always going through his mind.
Twelve Red Herrings Page 10
