Death of an Old Goat

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Christ,’ said Alice in her least sound-of-music voice, ‘who invited you?’

  ‘No one,’ said Dr Day, steadying himself against the back of an armchair, ‘but I am not insulted. I am willing to subscribe to a polite fiction that the invitation was lost in the post. Provided, of course . . . provided that now I have smelt you all out, you keep me well filled for the rest of the evening.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Lucy Wickham, gazing through the thick air towards the ceiling, ‘why we have to be embarrassed everywhere we go by the behaviour of Bobby’s staff.’

  ‘Lucy, old fruit,’ said Dr Day, making an alcoholic lunge in her direction, ‘long time no see. I hear you’ve been getting friendly with the police force, is that right? I suppose that’s why you’ve been neglecting your old friends.’

  At a sign from the Master, who had thus far in the evening fulfilled his hostly duties by keeping to a dark corner and emitting waves of taciturnity and discomfort, the student waiter-guests left their various positions and clumsily guided Dr Day to the drinks alcove, where they surrounded his swaying form and shielded the sensibilities of delicately-nurtured Australian females from the shock of his bleary appearance.

  ‘The English department does it again,’ said Alice cheerily to Mr Turberville.

  ‘That chappie seems to have a drink problem,’ said Turberville, surprisingly quick on the uptake.

  ‘His only problem is how to get enough,’ said Alice.

  • • •

  ‘You look as if you had a headache coming on,’ said the Principal of Daisy Bates College kindly to Bill Bascomb. ‘I have some very good tablets here that you can actually dissolve in whatever you’re drinking, and it removes the nastier effects.’

  ‘Seems a pity to ruin good grog, doesn’t it?’ said Bill. ‘Anyway, it’s not a headache.’

  ‘Some personal problems, I suppose,’ said the Principal. ‘I can understand that. It’s so difficult for you young men, just out from England. Tom between two civilizations . . .’

  ‘Two?’ said Bill, passing his glass through the phalanx of students’ bodies around Dr Day, and receiving a full one in exchange. ‘But it’s not a personal problem either. I’m too young to have personal problems. It’s just a word . . .’

  ‘A word?’

  ‘A word I’m looking for. It’s buzzing around my head. It came to me earlier in the evening, then it went away, and I can’t get it back. It’s quite an ordinary word, I remember that.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were creative?’ said the Principal, with an odd mixture of admiration and disapproval.

  • • •

  The evening ended as these evenings almost always did. The drinks ran out rather earlier than usual, and it was generally agreed that it had not been a good idea to closet Dr Day and five healthy, thirsty students together around the drinks table. Still, there wasn’t much acrimony on this score, because most members of the party were fairly satisfied with the high number of suspects that had been assembled to appease their appetite for sensation. Some had even got a mild frisson out of conversing with one or other of them; it was, in fact, the first time Dr Porter’s conversation had ever caused a frisson. Most of the suspects saw quite enough of each other in the general course of events to be happy at a fairly early termination to the evening, especially as most of them had been sufficiently ‘in’ to get an adequate supply of the lethal red liquid; and the number of empty flagons piled up under the table testified that no one had positively gone without. So they drove off into the night in straggling groups: bumpers were dented, jovial curses were uttered, cats were slaughtered on the roads home. Gradually a sort of peace descended on Menzies College, except around one far block, from which a country and western record in praise of the Vietnam war could be heard through an open window.

  The fresh air hit Bill Bascomb hard. He had been conversing for some time with the Principal of Daisy Bates, and had convinced her that he was a very nice boy, possibly going to the bad, but still very pleasant and understanding. His head was also filled with sherry, and filled with a word. A word that would not form itself into letters or into sounds. A word that was a mere notion, a shade, an ambiguity. He staggered along in the waste land between the five blocks, confusedly looking round and wondering where he was and which block was his own. The music did not lessen the confusion in his mind. ‘What We’re Fighting For’, a paean in praise of napalm, juggled around in his head, and he stood clutching a crude wire fence, and hazily imitating the imagined gesture of the singer. That boy is all soul, he said to himself. He saw a tree, and made for it, seeing it as a stable centre in a shifting world. A shifting, spinning, tipping, crumbling world. The white blocks all around him danced, changed positions; some of the stars in the sky zoomed towards him, and then zoomed away again. Suddenly, as he clutched the trunk for safety, the word came to him, from nowhere, from the sky, put itself in his mind, and exploded there, adding sparks to the dancing, shifting stars.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Bill loudly. ‘I bet that’s it.’

  Then his legs gave way, and he sank to sleep around the roots of the college gum-tree.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  IN AT THE KILL

  ‘BUT I’VE GOT IT,’ said Bascomb, late next morning, sitting in the arm-chair of his office at the department and looking scruffy and dishevelled. ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘You quite patently have not got it,’ pointed out Alice O’Brien, ‘since you’ve forgotten it again.’

  ‘It came to me,’ said Bill, drumming his fingers distractedly on the arms of the chair. ‘Just before I conked out, it came to me suddenly — I knew that was it.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just some drunken dream or other? I wouldn’t mind betting it was that. You’ve been thinking pretty hard about this — for you. I expect it all got into your dreams, and you just think you got the answer.’

  ‘It wasn’t a dream at all, I tell you. If I can just get on to Timmins to check for me, it will solve the whole thing. Just one word . . .’

  ‘Obviously a dream,’ said Alice, who never gave up. ‘The word will suddenly come back to you, and it will be something absolutely useless like “cucumber sandwiches” or something.’

  ‘It was not a dream, and it did mean something,’ said Bill with dignity. ‘But it certainly will come back — I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Oh God; so we’re going to have you going round agonizing over that blasted word for the next few weeks, are we?’ said Alice. ‘If I were you, I’d forget it entirely — then if there really is anything in it, it will come back when you least expect it.’

  ‘I’ve got plenty else to think about, heaven knows,’ said Bill. ‘The Master sent me a note this morning asking me to explain how come I was found curled up around a tree by one of the domestic staff.’

  ‘Pas devant les domestiques is very much his code,’ said Alice. ‘Well, good luck with your explanations. If you could only bring yourself to salute and call him sir you’d be all right. Still, I can’t imagine you’d break your heart at getting the push, would you?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Bill, ‘not as far as the company is concerned. But it’s all that cooking I shouldn’t like if I set up on my own. You’ll have to invite me to all the guest-nights you can. Do you think I could get a season-ticket?’

  ‘Possibly. The Principal did say at breakfast that you were a well-conducted young man. But she looked suspicious when I burst out laughing, and anyway she’s probably heard already about your love-affair with the gum tree. She doesn’t like anything out of the ordinary.’

  Left to himself Bill groaned, and put his face in his hands. It was tormenting — to have had the word and forgotten it. And it the clue to the whole damned business. This way madness lies, he thought. He resolved to follow Alice’s advice and try to put the matter out of his mind altogether. He grabbed a book from his case willy-nilly, opened it, and began to read:

  And as in some cases of drunkenness, and in others of animal magn
etism, there are two states of consciousness which never clash, but each of which pursues its separate course as though it were continuous instead of broken (thus, if I hide my watch when I am drunk, I must be drunk before I can remember where), so . . .

  ‘I must be drunk before I can remember where . . .’ Bill let the book rest on his knees, then turned over to look at the title. It was Edwin Drood.

  ‘Bloody good advice, Charley boy,’ he said.

  • • •

  The saloon bar of Beecher’s Hotel was aswill with beer, and so was Bill Bascomb. He was at that stage where one begins not to notice one’s surroundings, which was just as well, for no Australian saloon bar at six-thirty in the evening really bears noticing. One can count oneself lucky if one can get one’s feet out of the spreading puddles of beer on the floor. Bill had finally found himself an uncomfortably high stool, and he sat there looking red and dyspeptic. He belched very loudly every ten minutes or so in the approved manner, and the other drinkers around thought that he might be, in spite of appearances, a very nice type of chap. There was a little party of station hands beside him, with wide hats and long limbs, and high brown boots which allowed them to scorn the swirling puddles beneath them. When Bill drained his glass and ordered his third schooner, one of them said to him kindly:

  ‘A yew English, or somethin?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Bill.

  ‘No need terpologize,’ said the man generously. ‘Takes all sorts, arfterawl.’

  ‘ ’Sright,’ said his mate.

  ‘Ya like Strylian beer?’ said the first, in the condescending manner of a Florentine asking a visitor if he admired the ‘David’.

  ‘Yes, very much,’ said Bill, who knew which side his bread was buttered. ‘It’s just the bubbles I can’t get used to.’

  The conversation lapsed for a few minutes while his new friends pondered whether he had intended to insult the Australian nation as a whole. Luckily they decided he was just ignorant.

  ‘Yer werkear, do yer?’ asked the first, turning to him again.

  ‘Yes, I’m up at the university,’ said Bill.

  That explained it. It was just ignorance.

  ‘Nice set-up yerve got there,’ said the man.

  ‘Yes, real nice,’ said Bill, who had been long enough in the country to know all the conversational ploys.

  ‘Some pretty funny characters, though,’ said the man.

  ‘Too right,’ said Bill, from his heart.

  ‘Some real drongos,’ said the man.

  ‘Yeah, some real no-hopers,’ said Bill.

  ‘Yeah, some real ning-nongs,’ said the man. Bill hoped this wasn’t some sort of competition. But his friend managed to hop out of the groove he was lugubriously ploughing:

  ‘Not that they’re all English, by any means,’ he said, bringing out his new thought expansively.

  ‘No, that’s true,’ said Bill.

  ‘Lotter them er New Zealanders,’ said the man.

  ‘Yes, New Zealanders are the worst,’ said Bill.

  ‘Yer couldby right,’ said the man. ‘There’s a right lotter drongos comes from New Zealand.’

  ‘Yeah, a lot of no-hopers,’ said Bill, who knew his cue by now.

  ‘Wa wud yew say, Charlie,’ said the man, turning to his mate, who was gazing pensively into his brown, bubbly glass. ‘Would yer say New Zealand or Britain produced the biggest load of ning-nongs, taking it by and large?’

  ‘Oh, New Zealand,’ said the second station-hand. ‘Not a doubt of it. Now, yer meet some real nice Englishmen, once in a while.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said the first, including Bill in the compliment. ‘A real nice type, setches yerself.’

  ‘Much obliged,’ said Bill.

  ‘Then there’s that other pommie,’ said the second man. ‘The one that usually comes in here round about four o’clock. Yew know, that one from the Uni.’

  ‘Harf the bloody Uni’s in here at four a bloody clock,’ said the first man, after pondering a while. ‘Which one do yer mean, Charlie?’

  ‘That one who’s always half-pissed before he arrives, Dave,’ said the other. ‘You remember, told us all about Oxford, some libry eruther. And about some place called Sheffield, or something . . .’

  ‘Oh, you mean Peter Day,’ said Bill Bascomb.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Charlie. ‘Peter Day. Bloke innis fifties. That’s the one. Yer know him then?’

  ‘I should do. He’s a colleague of mine,’ said Bill, thinking this was one place where he didn’t have to feel ashamed of the fact.

  ‘Well, I’d say he was a real good sport,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yes, a real good scout,’ said Dave.

  ‘A real good cobber,’ said Charlie.

  ‘One of the best,’ said Dave meditatively. ‘Here, where are yer going then?’

  They gazed at the fast-retreating form of Bill Bascomb, who had pushed open the swing-doors into the foyer and fallen head first over the fringes of the tattered carpet.

  ‘Must be gointerbe sick,’ said Charlie. ‘E lookeda bit greener bout the gills.’

  ‘All these bloody pommies do,’ said Dave.

  But in their insular prejudice they did Bill Bascomb an injustice. As they spoke, he was already half-way to the emergency telegraph office of the Post Office, a few yards down the main street.

  • • •

  Inspector Royle had had a rather up and down time since the night of the rain making (which had not produced rain). The next two days had been spent in bed, recovering from the unaccustomed exercise, and grunting at intervals with pain and bad temper. What he was mainly worried about, apart from the possibility that his morning dates would be looking round for more reliable partners, was the ridicule which he anticipated from the rest of his loyal team when he returned to the station. However, he had obviated that by the simple device of telling them nothing about the events of that evening at all. He calculated rightly that not one of them would have turned up at the right spot, so that if they didn’t hear the details from him, they wouldn’t hear them from anyone. Thus, he maintained an enigmatic silence, broken only by mysterious hints of secret knowledge, and all his underlings said among themselves that Royle was a deep one, and no mistake.

  Now he was sitting bolt upright in his desk chair, very inspectorial, and furrowing his brow. He was also groaning inwardly. He hadn’t had to think so hard since he had been on the track of the mysterious graziers’ conspiracy, and since the failure of that little piece of detection (failure so far as the murder investigation went, that is, for he had some thoughts of making a good thing out of it, banking on the local graziers’ hatred of appearing ridiculous) he had not held thinking in particularly high esteem.

  ‘I just can’t get what you’re getting at,’ he said wearily. ‘Let’s start again at the beginning. Cut out the smart-aleck stuff and give it to me straight. And you’d better make it convincing, because he is one of our most respected figures.’

  ‘Not for long he won’t be,’ said Bill confidently. ‘Look, from 1938 until 1941 he was a scout at Jesus College, Oxford. That’s what this telegram from my mate on the Oxford Mail means.’

  ‘Fine body of boys,’ said Royle, in an apparently automatic response. ‘I can’t for the life of me see what that’s got to do with murder.’

  ‘A scout,’ said Bill slowly, ‘is a college servant. That’s why the damned word kept buzzing around in my brain — every time I saw him handing someone drinks, it started again. A scout is a man who cleans out the students’ rooms, washes up for them, fetches their meals — waits on them, if they can afford to pay him. That chap was a trained waiter, and you could see it in his whole body.’

  ‘So what?’ said Royle. ‘A man can’t help it if he hasn’t had your chances. This is a democratic country. You’ve got a down on him because he’s not out of the top bracket. You aristocrats!’

  Bascomb’s parents came from Dulwich, but this didn’t seem the time to bandy around family trees.
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  ‘He was a scout at the college until 1941,’ he said, ‘and then he went into the army. Do you get it now? And he came to Australia as soon as the war ended, in 1946.’

  ‘Well, so bloody what?’ said Royle exasperated. ‘Is it a crime not to have had much of an education? Why, even I myself . . .’

  ‘You don’t put MA Oxon after your name,’ said Bill.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You don’t claim to have a degree from Oxford.’

  ‘Well I’ve never heard him claim that either, come to that,’ said Royle. ‘Who says he claims it?’

  ‘We established right at the beginning that the prospectus of the Drummondale School says he has an MA from Oxford. Obviously they got their information from him. At any rate, they can hardly have got it from Oxford. He always says he went to St Catherine’s, which hasn’t got any college buildings, so no one knows anyone else there. If anyone else came along who was there at the same time, he wouldn’t necessarily be exposed.’

  Royle took some time to digest this.

  ‘So, what you’re saying is that he’s claiming a degree, and he hasn’t a right to it — is that it?’

  ‘You’ve got it in one,’ said Bill.

  ‘Well, now, even you would admit that something like that is hardly a matter for the police, surely?’

  ‘It is if he kills someone to keep his secret,’ said Bill.

  ‘Now, you’ve got no cause to say that. Where’s your proof? I ought to warn you that Mr Doncaster has some very powerful friends in this town. What evidence have you he killed the old bugger?’

  ‘Firstly, he’s the only one with a shadow of a motive, right?’

  ‘You don’t get a conviction on motive alone, you know. You can’t go along to a judge and say “this man had a motive — convict him” ’ (though God knows he had done just that often enough — and got his conviction at that). ‘You’ve got to have other things — bodies and weapons, and things,’ he concluded lamely.

  ‘He had the opportunity as well. You’ve got no check on his movements after he left the Wickhams’.’