by Ruth Wade
Death in the Quadrangle
Eilís Dillon
© Eilís Dillon 1956
Eilís Dillon has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1956 by Faber and Faber.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
Living in rather too comfortable retirement at Crane’s Court, Professor Daly was overjoyed at the invitation to give the Keyes Lectures at his old college. The Keyes Lectures consisted of an annual series of ten lectures, given by an eminent literary man, on the vast subject of the Novel. The fee offered was large enough to command respect, though not so large as popular rumour declared it to be. Professor Daly cared little for this, for he had an adequate income of his own. What really pleased him was the honour which the invitation conferred upon him. Though he was the author of a vast number of books, no one would have called Professor Daly an eminent literary man. His purple novels were written under the pseudonym of Rosemary Downes, and had fluttered the hearts of dowagers and scullery-maids alike over a great many years.
“But at last someone has awoken to the fact that five of my students have become really good writers,” he said to himself with satisfaction.
If he had had an audience he would have wiped away an imaginary tear as he finished:
“It’s my misfortune that I taught like an angel and wrote like poor Poll.”
And with a fluttering heart he posted a cool reply accepting the invitation.
Some weeks later, with ten well-composed lectures in his dispatch-case, he took the train for Dublin. He knew that his lectures would be good, and that he could give himself up with a free mind to the enjoyment of this brief return to his old way of life.
Since his retirement four years ago, Professor Daly had rarely visited the King’s University of Dublin, where he had been Professor of English Language and Literature for over thirty years. He had deliberately weaned himself away from the academic life, so as to spare himself some of the nostalgic pain of retirement. He had been successful in a great measure. Crane’s Court was as near to perfection as a hotel can be. The murder of the late owner and Daly’s close association with the solution of the mystery had given him a pleasantly possessive feeling towards the hotel and its new owners. He liked the good-humoured informality of Galway, the astonishing beauty of its environs and the ready acceptance there of himself as a great man.
But as the train rattled its way through Dublin to the station, he found himself quoting uneasily:
“He who is a great man in a small town would do well to stay there.”
Still, he reflected that it might be good for his rather stout ego to be made to feel small for a few weeks, for though he expected to be sufficiently honoured within the College, he could not hope that the traffic would stop and stare every time he passed through O’Connell Street.
It was a joy to breathe the smutty air of Dublin again. He took a taxi to the Phoenix Park, as if he intended to visit the zoo, and then walked slowly along to the tall arched gates of the College.
The King’s University of Dublin, founded by George III, consisted of only one College. Its situation was the happiest possible, adjoining the Phoenix Park. Beyond the gateway with its porter’s lodge, the ground rose a little, so that the main buildings stood on a small eminence. They formed three sides of a square, the fourth side being open to the sun. From the quadrangle thus formed the avenue sloped away down towards the main gates. The original buildings were of old red brick, warm with age, and strangely at peace with the others of later dates that were scattered here and there throughout the College Park. The open parts of the park were planted with single oaks and elms, so that the expanses of grass between were pleasantly broken up. At the foot of the hill, over to the left, a good-sized river flowed gently down to join the Liffey. It was known to the students as the Styx, and was used for rowing practice in the proper season, to the understandable annoyance of the swans that owned it.
King’s College was largely residential, the rooms being all contained in the main building. There were two-roomed suites for the students, as was the custom in the golden days when the College was built. There were slightly larger suites for unmarried members of the staff. The President’s Lodging occupied the right wing of the quadrangle. Thus the students were fortunate in being able to observe academic life at very close quarters indeed, and they never failed to appreciate this privilege.
Walking up the avenue to the main building, Professor Daly found that he might almost have been seeing it all for the first time. It was late October and the Michaelmas Term had begun a fortnight ago. The trees were in their autumn beauty, and their solitary stillness smote his heart. The old red buildings glowed peacefully in the afternoon sun. He went into the main hall and stood hesitating, feeling an almost intolerable loneliness. This was an alien and a frightening sensation for him. He was rescued from it by a middle-aged porter who darted out of a little office at the back of the hall and scurried towards him.
“Good evening, Professor! Well, it’s like old times to see you walking in through that door again. And how are you at all? And how are they all below in Galway?”
He was shaking Daly’s hand and pawing his shoulder while he talked, as so many people feel entitled to do to the old. Though he had always disliked this man for his cunning, insinuating ways, Daly was grateful to him now for the warmth of his welcome. He disengaged himself deftly and said:
“Good evening, Jennings. It’s good to be back.”
He had no intention of replying to the slightly derisive question about the health of the people of Galway. He went on quickly:
“There is room for me in College, I believe?”
“In your old rooms, sir,” said Jennings eagerly. “They’re vacant at the moment, and the President said we were to put you in there.”
He seized Daly’s suitcase and led the way up the wide, polished staircase, chattering irritatingly all the while.
“You’ll see great changes here, sir, since your time. Great changes. The President is a great man. Oh, a great man!”
“A very able man,” said Daly gently, pained at the smallness of Jennings’s supply of adjectives.
“’Twould take yourself to think of the word, sir,” said Jennings, looking at him with delight. “An able man, indeed.”
Patronizing little So-and-so, thought Daly, glancing sideways at Jennings. A moment later he reproached himself for his harshness. It was no wonder that Jennings had developed a patronizing manner, after a quarter-century of playing nursemaid to professors. He hurried to make a friendly remark:
“I don’t know the President very well. I was acquainted with him years ago, before he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy, but he had only been in College a year when I retired.”
“That’s right, sir,” said Jennings. “’Twas a pity he couldn’t carry on with the mineralogy after he became President. But sure he couldn’t be everywhere.”
“Professor Gleeson succeeded him, I think?” said Daly.
“That’s right, sir. A quiet sort of a man. The students say he’s not a patch on Professor Bradley.”
“Students always say that,” s
aid Daly tolerantly. “I remember Professor Gleeson as a very clever man indeed. Students like to be talking about the good old times. The greatest numskull is labelled a genius once he has retired.”
“That’s right, sir, of course,” said Jennings coolly. “Sure they say the same about Professor Badger, sir, that he’s only trotting after yourself.”
They had reached the outer door of Daly’s old rooms, and Jennings’s face was blank while he opened the door and led the way in. He appeared to be all unconscious of the implications of his last remark, though this seemed hardly possible. Daly found himself quite uncomfortable until Jennings had placed his suitcase in the bedroom and had left him alone. Then he went over to the tall, embrasured windows of the study, and stood for a long time looking down on the drowsy quadrangle. Except for a brief interval once, and for occasional holidays, he had lived in these rooms for thirty years. He knew every tree and shrub in the park as well as he knew his own face in his shaving glass. Even the students who rambled about in groups seemed exactly the same, as if their lives had been suspended in time like the lovers on a Grecian urn. He saw one or two of his ageless former colleagues, still lost, no doubt in thoughts of academic viciousness.
The room behind him was painfully familiar too, so that he could hardly bear to turn around at last and examine it. There he saw that it had not changed at all either. The panelled walls, the wide oak fireplace, the deep, commodious bookshelves now empty, were the same as they had always been. The leather-covered armchairs and the leather-topped library table were the same that he had always used. Even the long, brass fire-irons were set at their familiar angle. He thought it rather cruel of Bradley to have put him in these rooms again. But Bradley was a thick-skinned fellow, and he might have imagined that he was doing him a kindness.
He was roused at last by a double tap on the door, and a moment later a querulous-looking old man in a green apron trotted into the room.
“Lewis!” said Daly. “I’m going to weep on your shoulder!”
Lewis allowed himself a momentary smile before he resumed his habitual expression of pain and disillusion.
“Glad to see you, sir,” he said, in the tones of a man who has drunk life to the lees and found it sour. “Jennings should have told me you were coming this afternoon. I’d have lit the fire. I’d have dusted the rooms. I’d have — ”
“Never mind, Lewis,” said Daly soothingly. “It’s not Jennings’s fault. I didn’t tell anyone the exact hour at which I expected to arrive.”
“You should have sent a telegram,” said Lewis reproachfully. “People can’t be expected to be inspired about the time you’re going to come. I’d have had your tea ready — ”
He stopped suddenly, as if he had realized the futility of trying to teach a retired professor how to behave. Then he said waveringly:
“Seeing you standing there made me think it was old times, sir. But the old times were never like this.”
Lewis had always looked as sad as an old mother turned out into the snow on Christmas Eve. The difference now was that he no longer seemed to revel in his sorrows.
“Jennings tells me that Professor Bradley is a fine President,” Daly said innocently.
“Jennings would say that,” said Lewis bitterly. “Jennings is the boy that will mind what he says, even to yourself, sir, and make sure to curry favour in high places. Jennings is a person of No Principle.” He shook his head slowly. “There’s terrible changes here, sir, enough to make the old President, God be good to him, turn in his grave.”
Daly doubted the truth of this, remembering how hard it had been to induce the late President to turn in his chair, even while he was alive. Bradley’s administration would be entirely different. The late President, who had been Professor Blake of Archaeology, had reigned throughout Daly’s association with King’s College. He had had a mania for jigsaw and crossword puzzles, and had believed that his health profited by spending fourteen hours out of the twenty-four in bed. Somehow his work had got done, and the College had had a cheerful, lotus-eating air about it during his time. In the absence of tension, also, research work had progressed at a great rate, so that on the whole it was hard to call Blake a failure.
“Blake was King Log,” Daly thought, “and if I’m not very much mistaken, Bradley has turned out to be King Stork. He was the type for drastic changes and no nonsense.”
And he felt a little glow of relief that he had been safely retired before the accession of this new dynasty.
He told Lewis that he had had tea, and eased him gently out of the room. It was clear that Lewis wanted to pour out the accumulated grievances of several years, but Daly felt that it would be unkind to encourage him. The fortunate Jennings had seen that his best plan was to become an admirer of Bradley. It was a pity that this had been impossible for Lewis.
After the old man had gone out, a little huffily, Daly found himself surprisingly free from his former nostalgia. He wagged a metaphorical finger at himself and said:
“You are a wicked old fellow, to be so quickly consoled at the trials of others.”
But it was with an irrepressibly cheerful grin that he went downstairs and out into the quadrangle in search of some members of the staff who would tell him more of their common misfortunes.
He had no sooner reached the front steps, however, than Jennings came hurrying towards him from the direction of the President’s Lodging. It was too late to fly.
“The President knows you’re here, sir,” Jennings panted. “He wants to see you at once. I’ll take you over.”
“By no means! I’d like to see if I can remember the way,” said Daly.
He left Jennings looking slightly disconcerted, and started off across the quadrangle to the President’s front door. On the way he encountered a stooped, longhaired little man, who looked twenty years older than Daly but was in fact five years younger. They stopped and the little man shook Daly’s hand heartily and painfully. When he could trust his voice not to shake, Daly said:
“It’s good to see you, Delaney. I thought you had retired.”
“One more year to go,” said Delaney. “Only one more year. I have a very important job in hand, that I must get finished with before I go. Yes, very important. I hope I’ll have time for it; though it’s more a question of opportunity than time.”
“What is it?” asked Daly, who was finding this rather difficult to follow.
“I’ll tell you some day soon,” said Delaney, earnestly fixing large trusting eyes, under shaggy white eyebrows, on Daly’s face. “We heard you were coming. I’ve been looking forward to telling you. Where are you going now?”
“To see Bradley.” Daly nodded in the direction of the President’s Lodging. “He’s waiting for me.”
“Bradley turned out to be a rat, did you know?” said Delaney mildly.
“Lewis has been telling me that things have changed since he took over,” said Daly.
Delaney sighed.
“I find his energy depressing,’ he said. “You’ll see.”
He waved vaguely and moved on, an oddly shaped little figure, bulging mysteriously in unexpected places. Feeling a little uneasy now, Daly continued on his way, and found his heart pounding ridiculously while he waited for the door to be opened to his knock.
His fears of personal embarrassment were soon stilled. Bradley greeted him with hearty affection in his study, and settled him down with a glass of sherry in front of a blazing wood fire. Watching him from the depths of an armchair, Daly noticed that Bradley had aged a little. He looked his full sixty years now, though he was as bouncy as ever. He had developed the slightly watchful air of all Presidents. His strong, black hair had a heavier sprinkling of grey, and his waistcoat had taken an outward curve. Since he was tall and broad-shouldered, the effect was dignified. Bradley had always been a handsome fellow, and his new air of authority and assurance became him well. The only trouble, thought Daly, is that professors hate to be treated with authority and assurance.
Daly felt a little glow of pleasure, and his critical attitude to Bradley softened. Though he could not actually like him, there was no denying that Bradley cut a far better figure than old Blake, whose somnolent, heavy body, coated in cigarette ash, had been an offence in itself. In Blake’s time, this room had been a shambles, littered with old newspapers and small tables with partly finished jigsaw puzzles. Daly remembered one — a map of the world, with vast expanses of blue sea in hundreds of tiny pieces of nightmare similarity. The very recollection of it made him experience again the terrible feeling of frustration, like a man lost in a maze, which had possessed him when first he had caught sight of it. But Blake had finished it, down to the last triumphant, futile piece, and had invited his friends in then, like the woman in the Gospels, to rejoice with him.
“Who cleaned up this place when Blake died?” he asked curiously.
“Miss Blake did that,” said Bradley, looking a little surprised. “She set two chimneys on fire, burning the crosswords. Old Delaney got into a great state of excitement. He wanted to divert the smoke under the floors to smoke out the rats.”
“Is he still talking about rats?” asked Daly.
As he spoke he remembered that Delaney had mentioned rats even in their brief conversation.
“Yes, he still has rats on the brain,” said Bradley. “I only hope he’ll get to the end of his time without causing trouble.”
“Do you think he has got worse?” Daly asked anxiously. “I met him just now and he seemed the same as usual.”
“He talks about rats on the Academic Council now,” said Bradley. “He never used to do that. I saw some of the younger men laughing at him the other day. One could hardly blame them, really. He made quite a scene. We were talking about this new money that we have been offered, and Delaney thumped the table and shouted that this college would be no good until we had got rid of the rats. I really blushed for the poor old man. It was dreadful.”
