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They’d talked about other things. Russian political developments, Irish independence, the works of Joseph Conrad and Arnold Bennett. It had been surprisingly easy conversation, given that Jem had nothing to show for the last decade and reminiscence was impossible, but Nicky had never found talking difficult, and it felt as though no time had passed at all. They lingered over one glass of wine more than Jem needed, for the pure pleasure of it, as though everything that lay between them were covered with the tablecloth, the plates, the glasses, and they’d walked back to Anselm’s together, and?—
And Nicky had asked him if he’d come back for a cup of tea.
He couldn’t swear that Nicky had been suggesting more than tea. It would be entire madness for him to do so or for Jem to take up the offer. But Nicky had raised a brow, and Jem had opened his mouth, smiling, to agree.
And then he had caught his breath, and stopped, and the warm, laughing light had gone out in Nicky’s brown eyes like the gas cutting off as they both remembered.
Refusal had been the only possible response, but it hadn’t made a night alone in this cold, bare cell any more enjoyable.
He got up and washed. It was a Tuesday, and Nicky would be teaching, or lecturing. Jem wondered briefly if he could slip in to listen, hear DrRook at work, rather than his old friend Nicky. Probably not, and Anglo-Saxon had never appealed anyway. Nicky had waxed lyrical about its stark, rough beauty, but none of them had been convinced.
Jem went to breakfast in the Hall, since it was included in the cost of the room, solitary amid the chatter of black-gowned students. The undergraduates looked childishly young, far younger than he’d been, he was sure. Half of them probably weren’t shaving yet. How could anyone of that age commit a murder, or incite one?
A hefty young man sat with a thump on the other side of the long bench. Jem recognised him as Nicky’s erring student from yesterday.
‘I say.’ He found himself leaning over. ‘Excuse me. You study here?’
The youth looked a little surprised at the question, as well he might since he was sitting in the Hall at breakfast wearing a gown, but responded courteously enough. ‘English.’
‘Do you have DrRook?’
‘For my sins.’
‘I was up around the same time as he was.’
‘Oh, were you?’ The youth’s ears pricked. ‘Did you know the one who was killed?’
‘Toby Feynsham. Yes.’
‘That must have been extraordinary. A murder here, and unsolved! It must have been marvellous. Well, dreadful, but awfully good fun even so. What did people think at the time, as to the culprit? DrRook was arrested, wasn’t he? I shouldn’t put murder past him, I must say: you should see what he writes on my essays.’
Jem had no possible response to that. The young man rattled on. ‘College made the room into storage for three years because they thought nobody would want to live there, and of course when they reopened it, people positively fought over the ballot. Apparently, the first man who took it held a murder party and got rusticated for it.’
‘A murder party,’ Jem repeated.
‘Yes, everyone in fancy dress as the suspects, you know. I wonder if we could do something like that now. It would be an awful lark. No offence meant, of course.’ The young man was watching his face with a dawning expression of alarm. ‘It was just an idea. Probably poor taste. I say, sir?—’
‘Excuse me.’ Jem pushed his chair from the table and left, appallingly conscious of his limp, braced for a shout from behind him.You there, are you Kite? The cripple?He wondered if someone had attended the murder party with a crutch. Someone would doubtless have applied boot polish to go as Aaron. He was shaking.
It was cold and damp outside, making a walk uninviting even if his foot had been up to it. Jem took the second-best option and headed for Blackwell’s Bookshop, just down Broad Street.
‘I’m looking for local history,’ he told the counter clerk. ‘I wondered if you had a book on the StAnselm murder.’
Jem had been approached by writers twice, and burned both letters, and he had a vague idea that Hugo had mounted legal proceedings against one at some time. He hoped for a look of disapproval, aWe don’t stock that rubbish, but the clerk directed him without comment to an extensive local history section.
The StAnselm Murderwas little more than a pamphlet.Murder at the Universitywas the larger book, casebound, with a plate section. Jem opened it to that, and was confronted with the picture ofCymbeline. His own youthful, happy face; Nicky’s hooded eyes; Toby’s striking good looks. He clapped the book shut, feeling horribly self-conscious, as though everyone else could see what he was reading.
He didn’t want to buy either work, but particularly not the expensive one. He made a note of the author ofMurder at the Universityso he could borrow it from a library, resentfully purchasedThe StAnselm Murder, and took it to Seal’s, where he ordered tea and waited for his drink to brew before he opened the vile thing.
Just holding it made him feel breathless, as though the air no longer held sufficient oxygen. He didn’t want to read this, didn’t want to know what the text might hold. He wanted to drop it all and walk away, to go back to the impenetrable shell in which he’d hidden from life for a decade.
He’d spent the night in Anselm’s and sat on a roof with Nicky, drinking. He could read a pamphlet.
He opened it and ploughed through competent copy introducing the college and the cast of characters, though when he saw himself described as ‘the club-footed son of a factory hand, attending Anselm’s through charity’, he did have to look away for a moment. The pamphlet offered variously offensive summaries of them all, concluding with the Feynshams, and the upheavals in the family.
The next page was headedThe Night of the Crime. ‘I can’t,’ Jem said under his breath. ‘I can’t.’
This was what he was here for.You can, he thought fiercely, and read. A necessarily vague account of the evening in the Mitre. A map of Summoner Quad, and an explanation of Summoner’s Gift. The testimony of the fellow who had come to borrow ink and been sworn at by Toby.
