The Shivering Turn, page 15
Once the drink has been served, I carry it over to an empty table, sit down, open my bag, and take out a pad and pen.
S H I V E R I N G T U R N, I write.
And then, because you cannot always see patterns if all the components are presented in a linear manner, I make a rough circle of the letters.
It takes me no more than two minutes to rearrange the letters into a form that makes sense, and as I stare at the two new words I’ve created, I feel angrier than I can ever remember being before.
This is not about an orgy, or drug taking, or black magic rights. This is much, much worse – and if Crispin Hetherington were here right now, I am sure I would kill him.
THIRTEEN
My martial arts instructor once taught me that one of the best ways to reach a plateau of calm is to channel your rage into something else, and by the time I return to St Luke’s, my rage has been channelled into steely determination. I no longer want to kill Crispin Hetherington – that would be making things far too easy for him. What I do want, instead, is to destroy everything he values – to take away the life he’s known and replace it with a life he will find unbearable.
As I stand in front of the college, there are two voices doing battle in my head – the one whose wishes I want to follow, and the one which warns me I am chasing an illusion. I am starting to think of them as my good angel and my bad angel, though I know the bad angel is not really bad at all, but is only trying to prevent me from doing something which may harm me – and possibly others.
‘You have no solid proof of anything,’ my bad angel tells me. ‘Everything is based on assumption – and that assumption could be totally wrong.’
‘I know that I’m right,’ counters my good angel.
‘You want to believe that you’re right – want it desperately – but that is not the same thing as being right,’ my bad angel says. ‘Tell me exactly what it is that you know.’
‘I know that Linda attended a meeting of the Shivering Turn on the night she disappeared.’
‘You don’t know it at all – you’re just guessing.’
‘I know why she was asked to attend it in her school uniform.’
‘That’s another guess. Maybe (if she was there, and that’s still a big “if”) she wasn’t asked to wear her school uniform at all, but just didn’t have time to go home and change.’
‘And I know now that her dad was probably right when he said that the reason she ran away from home was because she couldn’t face her family.’
‘He was probably right? What does that mean?’
‘It means that it may not have been her choice at all – it means that the Shivering Turn insisted on her leaving Oxford.’
‘Yes, that is possible. But it’s also possible she may have gone to join a boyfriend she met on a school trip, and who lives in London. Or she may have discovered that some other boyfriend – who has nothing to do with the Shivering Turn – had got her pregnant. Or …’
‘I don’t want to discuss it any more,’ my good angel says.
‘Well, of course you don’t,’ my bad angel taunts. ‘If I were in your shoes – building up my whole case on the flimsiest of foundations – I wouldn’t want to keep discussing it, either.’
I walk through the gate, and the porter, Mr Jenkins, appears in the lodge doorway.
‘If you’re on your way to see Lord Swift, Miss Redhead, I’m afraid he’s gone out,’ he says.
‘Actually, it’s you I came to see,’ I tell him.
He grins. ‘Well, I am honoured. What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like to know which of the porters was on the afternoon and evening shift last Friday. Do you think you could possibly look it up for me?’
‘There’s no need for me to look it up. I was on that shift myself, for the whole week.’
That’s a lucky break for me, because Mr Jenkins and I get on so well together, but it’s still by no means certain that he’ll be willing to cooperate.
‘Would it be all right if I asked you a few questions about what some of the students were doing on Friday evening?’ I ask.
His eyes narrow – and my heart sinks.
‘What’s this all about?’ he asks.
‘You do know what it is that I do for a living, don’t you, Mr Jenkins?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I believe I do know what profession you follow, Miss Redhead,’ he replies. ‘You’re a confidential inquiry agent, aren’t you?’
I’ve always thought I was a private detective and that it was a job rather than a profession – but that’s Oxford porters for you.
‘Yes, that’s what I am,’ I agree, ‘and I’m making some confidential inquiries at the moment.’
‘So what you’re asking me to do is become your informer, are you?’ the porter says flatly.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ my bad angel whispers gleefully. ‘And quite right, too – Mr Jenkins is doing no more than saving you from yourself.’
‘I know just how loyal you are to this college, Mr Jenkins,’ I say, ‘and I know I’m putting you in a very difficult position. I hate myself for doing it – honestly I do – but I really do believe that these students have done a very bad thing – a truly terrible thing.’
‘You’re right about me, I am loyal to St Luke’s,’ the porter says emphatically. ‘I’m loyal to the buildings, I’m loyal to the traditions, and I’m loyal to the master, who, for my money, is the best master since Sir Hope Stanley headed the college, a hundred and fifty years ago.’ His eyes mist over. ‘Now there was a man who combined principle and ability, if there ever was one. He could have been prime minister if he’d wanted to be, but instead he chose to devote his mind to a much more worthwhile cause.’
Despite the gravity of the situation, I find it hard not to smile when he talks about a long-dead master as if he knew him personally.
‘The students are another matter entirely,’ Mr Jenkins continues. ‘There are some I’m very proud of – and you’re one of them – but there are others who have me seriously worried. It has to be the college that maketh the man, not the other way around, and any student who doesn’t live up to the ideals of St Luke’s is undermining its very foundations. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘And you say that these students you’re interested in have done some bad things?’
‘Yes, and if I don’t stop them, I’ll sure they’ll do it again. You see, they’ve formed this society which is—’
‘I don’t want to know the details, thank you very much,’ Mr Jenkins says curtly.
I can see he regrets the words as soon as they are out of his mouth.
‘I interrupted you,’ he says, as if he can’t believe it himself. ‘I have stood at this gate for thirty-two years, and never, in all that time, have I interrupted a member of coll—’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I tell him. ‘There, you see, I’ve just interrupted you, so now we’re even.’ I wait for an artful two beats, then ask, ‘Will you help me, Mr Jenkins?’
‘What is it you want to know, Miss Redhead?’
I want him to confirm that all the members of the Shivering Turn were out of college that evening.
But that’s all it is – a confirmation – my good angel reminds me, because I already know they will all have been out of college on Friday.
‘You don’t know anything – you are doing no more than supposing,’ my bad angel screams.
No, I’m not – I know the true nature of their meetings now, and because I know that, I also know that they wouldn’t dare to hold them in their rooms inside the college.
I run through the list of names for Mr Jenkins.
‘Do you remember them leaving college sometime in the late afternoon or early evening?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ the porter replies. ‘As a matter of fact I do.’
‘All of them?’
‘All of them.’
I am hoping – I am praying – that the reason he remembers so easily is because they were each carrying something.
And if they were all carrying something, and if those ‘somethings’ were identical, then my bad angel can go and take a long walk along a short pier.
I take a deep breath.
‘Were they all carrying something, Mr Jenkins?’ I ask.
‘Yes, they were.’
‘And what was it?’
‘They all had Greenleaf & Tonge carrier bags in their hands – new ones.’
I had been expecting him to say something like ‘Roman togas’, because togas would add a certain frisson to their nasty little games, but, in a way, this is even sicker than I’d ever imagined.
Greenleaf & Tonge, Gentlemen’s Outfitters, is located at 111–115, Oxford High Street. It is all that a gentleman’s outfitters should be, and more, offering a wide range of jackets and trousers, suits, shirts and ties and socks for the well-dressed and discerning man about Oxford, but one of its core businesses – and one in which it has been involved for over a hundred and fifty years – is the production and sale of academic gowns.
There are a vast array of different gowns – Commoners’ Gowns, Scholars’ Gowns, Advanced Students’ Gowns, Bachelors’ and Masters’ Gowns, Bachelors’ and Masters’ Lace Gowns, Doctors’ Gowns …
And I am guessing – and am hopefully about to confirm – that it was gowns that the Shivering Turn members had in their brand-new Greenleaf & Tonge carrier bags on the night Linda Corbet disappeared.
There are three assistants in the department. Two of them are young, crisp, polite (without being subservient), and efficient. The third is a middle-aged man who is currently fawning over a snotty-looking type ordering a Doctor of Letters’ robe and hood.
I quickly decide that if I can make him despise me enough to let his guard drop, this fawner – this snob by association – is my best bet.
I station myself by the tie rack, and become absorbed in a study of the array of university, college, social club and sporting association ties which are on offer, and I stay there until I see that the man I want to deal with me is free, and the other two are occupied.
I emerge from my hiding place as an incompetent and uncomprehending carrot top – the sort of woman who is destined from birth to end up as somebody’s maiden aunt.
The older assistant spots me, and quickly looks around to see which of the other two he can foist me off on. Then he realizes he will have to deal with me himself, and assumes the expression of a man who likes to kick-start his day by drinking a pint of vinegar.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ he asks – unhelpfully.
‘Yes, please,’ I reply, all meekness and confusion. ‘I’d like to buy a Bachelor’s Gown.’
‘Bespoke – or ready-made?’ he asks – and it is plain that he expects me to choose the latter.
But ordering the former will give me more time with him – more opportunity to find out what I need to know.
‘Does bespoke mean made-to-measure?’ I wonder aloud.
‘Indeed it does, madam,’ he says, and though he doesn’t actually add, ‘Don’t you know anything, you stupid cow?’, it is clearly in the subtext.
‘Then bespoke is what I want,’ I tell him.
The news seems to cheer him somewhat.
‘In that case, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until a female assistant is available, madam,’ he says. ‘I’ll just go and see …’
‘Oh, there’s really no need for that,’ I say. ‘I’ve already got the measurements.’
I hand him a piece of paper. He studies it for a second, then runs his eyes – totally and completely asexually – over my body.
‘Whoever took these measurements had no idea what he was doing, madam, because I can assure you that if we make you a gown to the specifications you’ve just handed me, it will not—’
I laugh. ‘Oh, you think it’s for me!’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Of course not. I’m not bright enough to have gone to any university, let alone Oxford.’
‘Then who is it for?’ he asks.
‘It’s for my cousin. She’s a first-year undergraduate at St Luke’s. That’s one of the colleges here, you know.’
He wants to sneer at me for daring to assume that he wouldn’t know St Luke’s is a college, and he wants to express his outrage that my cousin wants the gown. He manages to produce an expression encompassing both – which really is no mean feat.
‘Your cousin does realize, doesn’t she, that as an undergraduate, she’s not allowed to wear a Bachelor’s Gown?’ he asks.
‘Oh dear, does that mean you are refusing to sell me one?’ I say, looking worried.
He sighs heavily. ‘I regret to say that it does not, because we would simply have no grounds for doing so. When the gown leaves our establishment, it is merely a piece of cloth fashioned in a particular manner. It is only within the confines of the college itself that it acquires a weighty and symbolic significance.’
He should really do this to music, I think. A Beethoven concerto, or perhaps a soaring choral work, would fit in perfectly with his ‘weighty and symbolic significance.’
Pompous prat!
‘Is madam still with me?’ he asks.
I laugh again – I really am a dizzy type, aren’t I?
‘Well, you know what young people are like,’ I say. ‘It’s fashionable among her friends to wear a Bachelor’s Gown, and she wants one for herself.’
‘You should tell her to be careful,’ he says. ‘Oxford colleges take their traditions very seriously.’
‘I’m very fond of tradition myself,’ I tell him. ‘My mother suggested we should have roast beef last Christmas Day, but I put my foot down and insisted on a turkey.’
He looks at me as if I were an imbecile.
‘I am talking about quite a different kind of tradition,’ he tells me. ‘If, for example, you turn up for an examination and you are not wearing the full subfusc – dark suit and socks, black shoes, white shirt and white bow tie if you are a man, or white blouse, black bow tie, dark skirt, dark stockings and black shoes if you are a woman – you will not be allowed to take that examination, however important it is to your future.’
‘I didn’t realize that,’ I lie.
‘And if your cousin is seen to be wearing a Bachelor’s Gown by anyone in authority, she will be subject to what might turn out to be a rather stringent disciplinary procedure.’
‘So what you’re saying is that if she’s going to wear it, she should be very careful where she wears it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And is that the same advice you gave to all the other St Luke’s students who bought Bachelors’ Gowns last week?’
‘It is.’
He realizes his mistake the second that he’s spoken – but it’s already far too late!
‘I’m afraid I’m not in a position to discuss one customer’s buying habits with another customer, madam,’ he adds icily.
‘Then you shouldn’t do it, should you?’ I ask snottily, and now I’m very much in the grande dame mode. ‘I was told this shop was famous for its discretion, but I seem to have been sadly misinformed.’
I was right! I was bloody right! I think, as I walk out of Greenleaf & Tonge.
Almost the first thing anyone offered a place at Oxford University has to do on arriving in the city is to buy a gown and mortarboard, because you will not be recognized as a member of the university until you’ve attended a matriculation ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre – and you can’t attend a matriculation unless you’re in full subfusc.
So all the members of the Shivering Turn will already own gowns and mortarboards, and the mortarboards will suit their purpose perfectly. But the gowns won’t, because they are commoners’ gowns – bum freezers.
What they needed, they must have decided, were much longer gowns – gowns with gravitas – if they were to play a particularly nasty game of randy schoolmasters debauching an innocent schoolgirl.
By the time I arrive at the Blind Beggar pub, it is after five-thirty in the afternoon, and I have already visited more than a dozen pubs and restaurants peppered around central Oxford.
The Beggar is a slightly run-down establishment, and certainly not one I’d ever consider spending an evening boozing in, but what makes it particularly interesting to me now is that, in the Yellow Pages, it advertises itself as having a function room.
I walk into the lounge. The walls are wood-panelled, and hung around them are a series of eighteenth-century prints (presumably by Hogarth, and also, presumably, having a blind beggar as their subject matter). Aside from the walls, there has been no attempt to capture the Georgian ambience. The carpet is the usual swirl of lurid colours, the tables and chairs are only one step up from those you’d find in a greasy spoon café, and the top of the bar is covered with a padded black plastic which is doing its best to pretend it’s genuine leather.
There is a middle-aged barmaid in a frilly blouse at one end of the bar counter, and a spotty youth with sly eyes at the other. After a moment’s consideration, I select the spotty youth.
‘Yeah?’ says the youth, who is so busy using his finger to create patterns from beer spilled on the bar that he can hardly be bothered to look up. ‘Do you want something?’
‘I believe you have a function room for hire,’ I say.
‘S’right.’
‘Do you think I could see it?’
‘Not now, no.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s the governor what rents out the room. You’ll have to wait till he comes in.’
‘And when will that be?’
The youth shrugs. ‘It might be half an hour, but then again, it might be longer than that.’
‘I have another appointment in half an hour,’ I tell him. ‘I was rather hoping to see it now.’
He shrugs again. ‘There’s nothing I can do about that. Like I said, it’s the governor’s business.’
I take a crisp five-pound note out of my pocket and lay it on the bar before him.
‘Couldn’t you show it to me?’ I suggest.
He sweeps the note up with all the speed and finesse of a professional magician.
