Caroline Minuscule Read online

  His habitual optimism was returning; it didn’t obliterate the events of the last few minutes, but it rearranged their contours in his mind. It was going to be all right: no one would connect him with Gumper’s death – his presence in the building was explained by his visit to the Common-Room. The worst he need expect was routine questioning by the police at some point, for presumably they would check all Gumper’s students as a matter of course.

  The corridor on the ground floor was empty, too. Dougal skipped out of the building, feeling like a reprieved prisoner, and turned left into the dimly lit alley which led to the college’s side entrance. There was no one in sight.

  He set out briskly, swinging his briefcase. He was only ten yards away from the Department when a burly shape slid out of a darkened doorway into his path.

  ‘Hullo. I’ve been waiting for you.’ The stranger moved a little closer. ‘I’d like to have a chat.’

  2

  The second shock of the evening was worse than the first. Dougal stood like a statue, rigid with fear. It couldn’t be the police already, and knowing who the man must be, he wanted to run. But the weight of his knowledge was like a physical impediment to movement.

  ‘Please,’ the stranger said.

  The monosyllable changed everything. The man might have been asking him for a light. Dougal looked up at the man’s face – he was several inches taller – faintly illuminated by the light over the doorway. It told him nothing.

  ‘What do you want?’ Dougal heard himself saying. He was rather surprised that he was able to say anything at all.

  ‘To talk to you. Wouldn’t take a moment. We could have a drink?’

  Damn it, thought Dougal, why was the man being so polite? You don’t expect probable murderers to specialize in old-fashioned courtesy. It was unsettling. It was also reassuring – he was in a position to refuse (he hoped) and rush off home by way of a crowded, well-lit tube train. Perversely, this drove him to accept. Afterwards he wondered why he had done so, but at the time it seemed natural – frighteningly automatic, almost – to prefer the stranger’s company to his own.

  The man suggested going to the Lamb. ‘It’s a bit of a walk, I know, but I imagine we’d both be more comfortable away from all this.’ He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the History Department. Dougal nodded.

  The stranger led the way down the alley and they walked without obvious haste out of the college. In the street they walked side by side, a yard apart, down to Russell Square. It had begun to drizzle; the garden in the middle of the square looked dank and uninviting. Dougal’s companion put up his umbrella and sheltered them both.

  Neither of them spoke – Dougal had the uncanny sensation that they were both too busy sizing up each other’s physical presences, like strange dogs uncertain whether to sniff or snarl.

  Lamb’s Conduit Street appeared on the right. They crossed it diagonally and walked into the crowded warmth of the pub.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Special Bitter, please.’ Dougal changed his mind. ‘No, better make it Ordinary.’ There were two empty high stools by the window ledge just inside the door. Dougal put his briefcase on one of them and straddled the other. ‘I’ll keep these for us.’

  ‘Standing and drinking is so uncomfortable,’ the man said. ‘I’ve never been able to understand why some people actually prefer it. Shan’t be a moment.’

  The stranger nudged his way skillfully into the ebb and flow of drinkers popping in for a quick one or two after work. The atmosphere was smoky and loud with conversation. Dougal watched the back view of his companion as far as intervening bodies allowed him to do so. It was the first time he had been able to see even part of him clearly. The first impression was one of size – he was comfortably over six foot and the navy-blue raglan overcoat he wore made him look broad to match. Dougal caught a glimpse of dark blue pinstripe trousers beneath it, and gleaming black shoes.

  The man turned and weaved carefully through the crowd. He put down the drinks – a pint and a double whisky – on the window ledge. Dougal felt envious of the way his hands were steady.

  He sat down, raised his glass and drank. He looked with frank curiosity at Dougal, who felt he might as well do the same. If the man’s back view had suggested a prosperous professional of some sort, the front view amply confirmed it. His hair, flecked with grey and thinning at the temples, was neatly cut; the face radiated a well-fed, anonymous respectability – the man looked distinguished, thought Dougal, though it was odd that he had so few lines. He was wearing a silk shirt, a pair of plain gold cuff links, and the sort of tie which has school or regimental associations.

  His companion noticed the direction of Dougal’s glance and, surprisingly, chuckled. ‘I’m from Charter-house today.’

  Dougal laughed.

  ‘My name’s Hanbury – James Hanbury.’

  ‘William Dougal.’ They shook hands solemnly. Dougal wondered where the hell this was all leading. Had he been stupid to give his own name?

  Hanbury ran his finger round the rim of his glass. ‘I was in that . . . seminar room, is it? – the room next to Gumper’s – half an hour ago. The door was open, so I could hear very well.’ He took a long sip of his whisky.

  The pause gave Dougal time to think of the implications – as he suspected Hanbury had intended. Hanbury must have heard him go in and out, twice, of Gumper’s room; if he had been able to see as well, he would have noticed Dougal’s indecision – possibly seen him wiping the door handle. But it didn’t make sense: if Hanbury was the murderer, why should he go out of his way to meet Dougal? Supposing Dougal’s arrival had prevented him leaving the building, why hadn’t he slipped away while Dougal was in the Common-Room?

  ‘You knew Dr Gumper?’ enquired Hanbury blandly.

  Knew. So Hanbury probably had killed Gumper. Dougal fought an instinct to recoil physically; this was the first killer he had met and he was surprised that the urge to recoil was so weak. In fact, he realized, the only thing which really concerned him was the worry about his own safety: where and why does a killer stop killing?

  ‘He was my tutor,’ he said at last, because there seemed no reason not to.

  ‘Really? What’s your subject?’

  Dougal felt suddenly oppressed by the unreality of the situation – this could be an interview with a prospective employer, or a heavy-going chat with an elderly relative.

  ‘The influence of the Carolingian court on the transmission of pagan Latin literary texts in the early Middle Ages.’ The words rolled out mechanically: so many people asked this question, and most of them changed the subject when they heard the answer.

  ‘Dr Gumper was an expert on the period?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. He thought so, and I suppose he was. He knew most about the script, of course.’

  ‘Would I be right in thinking’ – Hanbury took another long swallow of his whisky – ‘that you yourself have a . . . working knowledge of the subject?’

  Dougal suspected the conversation had reached a crossroads of some sort – Hanbury had spoken like a chess player making a gambit which might prove crucial. He hesitated before replying, choosing his words with care.

  ‘I’ve an overall grasp of it, you could say. Nothing like Gumper’s, though. I know a fair amount about the script – Caroline Minuscule. I know where to look for information.’ On impulse he added, ‘One of the reasons I chose the subject was its obscurity. The less work that’s been done on something, the easier it is to produce adequate research without too much effort. You don’t have to bother with so many secondary sources. Big fish and little ponds.’

  Hanbury looked at Dougal reflectively. ‘That’s very interesting. Have a cigarette.’ He pulled out a packet of tipped Caporals.

  They both had one. Dougal inhaled the pungent tobacco with relief; he hadn’t noticed how much he wanted a cigarette. The conversation lapsed: the second round will start in ninety seconds, thought Dougal. What was going through Hanbury’s
mind? He was probably a murderer and knowing that made him, Dougal, some kind of an accessory after the fact. If Hanbury was trying to incriminate him, he was taking a great many unthinkable risks in order to – what? – how did this conversation groom Dougal for the role of culprit? The simple answer was that it didn’t. The only conclusion that Dougal could see, not that it seemed a plausible one, lay in the one common link between himself and Gumper – knowledge of the Carolingian period. But it was unbelievable that someone should be killed for that knowledge – and that the killer should risk discovery by immediately approaching another source.

  His own reactions puzzled him, too – he should be running for the police, or at least away from here, instead of having an amicable drink with a person who he had every reason to suspect was a murderer. He was scared, yes, but the fear was of the vicarious sort induced by a good horror film – no, it was more real than that. In a way, he supposed, the most frightening thing was the absence of any revulsion towards the act or the man who had done it. If he was going to be honest with himself, his predominant emotions were curiosity and a muted but noticeably euphoric sensation of excitement; the latter, no doubt, was not entirely unconnected with a pint of Young’s on a recently emptied stomach.

  Hanbury was massaging his fingers, Dougal noticed, as if the process gave him pleasure. He had well-kept hands – long and graceful, with none of the wrinkles or brown spots of age; the nails were large, square and obviously carefully manicured. He stroked his hands as if they were a cat on his lap – Dougal found it vaguely disturbing.

  Hanbury spoke again, almost apologetically: ‘You look rather older than the average student.’

  It took Dougal a second or two to catch the question mark which dangled unobtrusively from this remark; Hanbury wanted some background information, but was trying not to be too blunt about it.

  ‘I’m twenty-nine. I was left a little money by an aunt last year and decided to do another degree. Or do some work towards one, anyway.’

  ‘No grant? How very self-sacrificing!’

  Five years ago Dougal would have blushed; now he just blushed internally. ‘Not really. I’d been away from education for seven years and I thought it would make a change.’

  ‘What had you done before then?’ Hanbury was openly curious and it surprised Dougal: why should it matter? It was, in any case, a question he disliked answering.

  ‘Oh, this and that. The sort of things which don’t make up a nice curriculum vitae. I travelled abroad quite a lot; worked in a library; drove a minicab.’ All true, if misleadingly selective.

  It was time to take the offensive. ‘How about you? What do you do for a living?’

  ‘Jack of all trades,’ said Hanbury with a smile. Something told Dougal that he disliked the question as well. ‘At present I suppose you could say I’m in the lost and found business. Gumper was helping me look for something, but he backed out at the last moment . . . between you and me it caused a great deal of inconvenience. My employers were paying him very adequately for a small service – all quite above board, though perhaps not the sort of thing one need mention to the Inland Revenue – and he had accepted their terms, and they his. Mutually beneficial. Then he started being difficult. He was a greedy man, you know.’

  Dougal did know; he could imagine cupidity blinding Gumper to all other considerations. It wouldn’t have been greed alone, though – Gumper had liked to make himself felt, to stamp the world around him with his image.

  ‘Really very silly,’ Hanbury continued. ‘I don’t think he realized the sort of people my employers are. They tend to react rather sharply to threats of any kind.’

  React with a well-dressed executioner, thought Dougal; when in doubt, garotte. He would be finding it increasingly difficult to take the conversation seriously, were it not for the silent witness of its seriousness which lay in a first floor room less than a mile away.

  ‘Of course’ – Hanbury pulled his right earlobe reflectively – ‘it is rather awkward for my employers. Gumper was doing a small but important piece of work for them. And, as you say, the literary aspect of the Carolingian era is a relatively obscure field. Which brings me to the reason that I asked you for a drink. I wonder if you would be interested in doing it in his place?’

  Silence fell between them again. Dougal appreciated the leisurely pace at which Hanbury was conducting the conversation. The man was staring into his glass, now, as if he found its contents absorbing. He wasn’t rushing it, despite the urgency which the events of the past hour predicated. Dougal’s mind grappled with the choice: it was an impossible one – how much of a security risk would Hanbury consider him to be if he refused? Would acceptance lead to something more dangerous than being an accidental accessory to murder? He blurted out, ‘Look, what’s all this about? I can’t decide without knowing a little more.’

  ‘My employers had asked Gumper to transcribe a page of a medieval manuscript. He was to have done a translation as well, and to have assessed its date and provenance and so forth. He had already said that the script was Caroline Minuscule. A very straightforward job for someone in your line of country. Not so easy if you don’t know a serif from an ampersand and haven’t the time to find out.’

  ‘I presume the reason for all this is none of my business?’ Dougal was talking to himself as much as to Hanbury, but the latter nodded. Well, it was easy enough to think of reasons, after all – maybe Hanbury worked for a fence who had been offered a valuable stolen manuscript and wanted a discreet expert opinion on it, though Dougal hardly felt he had reached that status. It was odd, nevertheless – surely there couldn’t be much of a market for stolen medieval manuscripts, unless of course the hypothetical fence had a private buyer already in mind, one who wasn’t overscrupulous.

  Hanbury said, slowly and quietly, ‘You have my word that there’s no risk here at all – for yourself or anyone else. And, in return for quick, reliable work, my employers are willing to pay very generously. In cash. Ten-pound notes.’ He was looking at Dougal’s tatty leather jacket as he spoke and it was as if he had added, ‘And you look as though you need some money too.’

  It was the detail of ten-pound notes which decided Dougal. It made the whole thing possible, no longer an academic speculation. He asked what sort of amount Hanbury’s employers might have in mind (to have merely asked ‘How much?’ would have jarred in the circumstances).

  ‘Twelve hundred,’ replied Hanbury. ‘Cash on delivery with a small retainer in advance – plus a bonus for speed, perhaps. Would you be able to drop everything and concentrate on this for a day or two?’

  Dougal nodded. He hardly heard the question. The idea of getting 1,200 pounds for a couple of days’ work swam like a seductive mirage in his mind. He owed his landlady two months’ rent. His aunt’s money had somehow reduced itself to double figures. His credit cards were on the verge of changing from flexible friends to implacable usurers. Amanda was an expensive luxury.

  His thoughts swerved away from the question of Hanbury’s motives, from the lengths his employers were willing to go in order to get what they wanted; it was none of his business and, if it was, it lay in the province of his conscience which he had always found to be an obliging, biddable organ. It would help no one to bring the spectre of morality into this.

  Despite what Hanbury had said, there must be a risk, but he couldn’t for the life of him see where it was; a reasonable degree of caution should prevent the police from linking him with Hanbury, even supposing they succeeded in identifying the latter as Gumper’s killer; Hanbury’s employers were obviously dangerous – but surely they would only get unpleasant if, like Gumper had done, he started trying to cheat them. If he did an efficient job, why should there be any danger?

  He looked across at Hanbury. ‘Okay, I’m interested. What would I be working on – the original or a photograph?’

  ‘A photograph, I’m afraid. We don’t have the original.’

  Yet, thought Dougal. Aloud, he said, ‘That should
n’t matter too much if it’s a reasonable reproduction.’ A question which had been troubling him all the time they had been in the pub, worrying him somewhere below the level of conscious thought, suddenly found words which insisted on being spoken. ‘Look, why did you take the chance? I know I didn’t rush off to the nearest phone when I . . . when I saw it, so you might trust me from that point of view, but I don’t see why you took the gamble that I had the same sort of skills as Gumper. Wasn’t it a hell of a risk?’

  Hanbury smiled and Dougal realized that the man was actually enjoying himself, and boggled at the thought that someone could extract pleasure from juggling with dangers. Hanbury only slightly dispelled the illusion by saying, rather in the manner of Holmes to Watson: ‘The risk was minimal, in fact. Gumper and I had a little scene, you see, during which he was unusually informative. Towards the end anyway. He told me that he had given the photograph to one of his students, who should be returning it this week. He mentioned your name. One imagines he would have checked what you had done – presumably he wanted to avoid the donkey work. The very fact that you went to see Gumper suggested you knew something about the subject – paleography is hardly a popular option, I thought. Then, as you came out of his room the second time, you were carrying your briefcase – I could see through the crack of the door of the seminar room – and the initials WD were clearly visible on it. It seemed reasonable to assume that you were you, as it were.’