The First Murder
Page 35
The action began building up to the climax, Cain bitterly complaining about Abel’s better fortune and ability to offer higher quality sacrifices to God. The lethal weapon was already in his hand – for lack of an ass’s jawbone, one of the college archaeologists had loaned a Bronze Age shin-bone from his departmental collection – and Cain was beginning to brandish this threateningly as the acrimonious dialogue reached its peak.
Suddenly, Hieronymus became aware that the attention of the audience had been diverted, some looking about them, others whispering and several edging out towards the exit at the back. The actors on stage also felt that they were losing their grip on the spectators and their speeches faltered, as did Drabble’s haughty stream of Latin.
Above the words as penned hundreds of years before by the prior could now be heard the all-too-familiar ‘thrum-thrum’ of an approaching pulse-jet. Even more menacing was the fact that a moment later, the engine was heard to cut out.
The sudden silence in the hall was far more sinister than the previous droning from above, but was abruptly broken by Peter Partridge’s shouts from the stage. Now incongruously waving the three-thousand-year-old bone, he yelled for everyone to take cover. The cellars of the college were designated as air-raid shelters and the entrance was within a few yards of the lecture hut. Those on stage began to clamber down from the platform and join the orderly but hasty stream of people, now shepherded by Peter as ARP boss and by other members of the staff. Even Harry Drabble dropped his usual posturing to help the older members of the audience to hobble a little faster to the door.
‘How long do you reckon we’ve got, Peter?’ shouted Blanche, as she helped the aged wife of the bursar towards the exits.
‘Can’t tell. Sometimes it’s a couple of minutes, but it can be much less. But it may land a mile away, if we’re lucky.’
As if to mock his hopes, there was a tremendous explosion and a blast of air that blew out many of the windows, though Peter’s sticky tapes prevented a storm of flying glass. Thankfully, the flying bomb had struck three hundred yards in front of the college, so that the big U-shaped building sheltered the hut from the worst of the blast, though it suffered badly itself.
Then, amid screams of fear and terror, came another ear-splitting crash as one of the tall brick chimneys of the college teetered over and fell onto the roof of the lecture hall. It landed on the near end, squarely above the stage. The rafters gave way and the roof structure, plus half a ton of masonry, folded down on to the ‘black box’. By now almost everyone was at the other end near the doors, many already having gained the entrance to the shelter opposite.
Peter Partridge, like the captain of a sinking ship, was last to leave the hut, in his capacity as ARP supremo. He was shepherding out the last straggler and could not resist a last backward glance at the ruination of Loftus’s primitive medieval scenery, just visible in a cloud of cement and brick dust. But also just visible was a shod foot sticking out from under a pile of collapsed blackout curtains – and even more ominous was the flickering of flames at the side of the stage, where the mangled electricity distribution-board had short-circuited and ignited yet more curtains that had fallen onto it.
Though the centre of the roof was now groaning and ceiling plaster falling like snowflakes in anticipation of a further collapse, Peter turned and hurried back to the stage end as fast as his gammy leg would allow. He was alone, as the last of the geriatric visitors had left for the shelter.
‘Loftus!’ he yelled as he hauled his heavy surgical boot up the steps to the platform. He knew who it was, as Maltravers had worn a pair of Clark’s open-toed sandals on his bare feet, to imitate Abel’s antediluvian footwear.
‘Loftus, are you all right?’ Even in such fraught circumstances, Peter realised what an inane question this was. The victim would hardly be lying in a burning disaster zone out of choice!
He limped across to the heap of curtains and debris, feeling the heat from the rapidly increasing fire a couple of yards away, which was avidly devouring more of the cardboard, plywood and fabric substance of the stage set. Pulling off some shattered rafters to reach the mound of black fabric, he found Loftus lying on his back, gasping and blue in the face, in the throes of a severe acute asthmatic attack.
‘Are you hurt, old chap?’ Peter asked urgently, kneeling and lifting the victim into a sitting position. Afraid that he had been struck by a falling beam, Peter rapidly scanned Loftus’s body, but saw nothing sinister, and between his wheezing paroxysms Loftus managed to shake his head.
‘We’d better get you out of here pronto, chum! There’s a bit of a fire starting upstage.’
His own leg defect made it difficult, but he managed to drag the other man to the edge of the platform and then stumbled down the steps himself to grab Loftus in a clumsy fireman’s lift and stagger halfway back down the hall, just in time to avoid the collapse of another section of roof. Running out of strength, he was forced to lay Loftus on the floor and bend panting over him until he got his own breath back.
By this time, several of the staff who had escaped to the air-raid shelter had noticed that Peter and Loftus were missing and had returned to look for them. Hieronymus Drabble pattered along behind them and soon was organising everyone, but by then Peter Partridge had delved into Loftus’s pockets and found his asthma inhaler. A few puffs began to improve his breathing and colour, but as soon as the Auxiliary Fire Service and Red Cross ambulance arrived, Peter insisted that he be shipped off to hospital for more effective treatment, along with a few others who had minor injuries, mostly from flying glass.
A few minutes later, Agatha Wood-Turner stood with Christina Ullswater, watching as Peter climbed into the back of the ambulance with his colleague. The two women were both shaken, but unhurt and unbowed by the afternoon’s events. The blonde postgraduate stared after the retreating ambulance as it left the college.
‘Well, looks as if the prior’s curse has struck again, after eight hundred years!’ she said uneasily. ‘Yet Cain and Abel seem to have made up their differences in a rather dramatic fashion.’
The wise old Agatha nodded. ‘Young lady, I think that possibly this may at last have lifted that stigma from The Play of Adam.’
Christina looked enquiringly at Agatha. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You asked me not long ago why Peter and Loftus always seemed at odds with each other. Well, I happen to know why, because I was there. When Peter applied for the lecturer’s post here, Loftus, as a senior lecturer, was on the appointment committee and it was his vote that swung it. Paradoxically, Peter has always resented that, feeling that he should have been appointed solely on merit, not by a favour, and since then he’s always been difficult with the very man that got him the job.’
Christina looked puzzled as she used her handkerchief to dab away a smear of blood from a small glass cut on the older woman’s cheek. ‘I don’t understand why Loftus should have been shown him such partiality, Agatha.’
The expert on religious art smiled at her knowingly.
‘Because I happen to know that although Peter and Loftus had different fathers, they had the same mother! So they really are brothers – at least, half-brothers. Though Peter felt guilty about this bit of nepotism, being siblings, they were well cast as Cain and Abel. Now that at last a performance of The Play of Adam has had a happy result, maybe it always will!’
Historical note
The V-1 terror offensive against Britain began a week after D-Day in June 1944 and continued until October, when Allied troops overran the launching sites in France, though the last one to reach England was as late as March 1945. A total of over nine thousand of these jet-engined missiles were launched at South-East England, up to a hundred a day, though many never reached their targets. The 2,419 that exploded, killed over 6,000 people and injured over 17,000.
After the French sites were captured, the offensive was directed at Antwerp then in Allied hands, at which 2,448 V-1s were launched, with great loss of life
.
Following the V-1 campaign, the Germans used the large V-2 rockets, which were far more destructive. Over 3,000 were launched, killing over 7,000 victims.
After the war, these were the basis of both US and Soviet intercontinental missiles and space programmes.
ENDNOTE
1. See Hill of Bones, The Medieval Murderers, 2011.