Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective

'What do you suggest?'

Off-handedly he said, 'Don't bother – she'll get her sleep now. I've put her on phenobarbitone.'

I frowned. 'Is it as bad as that?'

'We've run through the milder hypnotics. She tells me they had little or no effect.'

'It's been going on for some time, then? I didn't know.'

'This is severe, intractable insomnia, Professor. We must break the cycle somehow, and in cases like this a good old-fashioned barbiturate will do the trick when some of the newer tranquillizers will not. When we have re-established the habit of sleep, the natural pattern should reassert itself in a few weeks.'

'You mean there's nothing I can do?'

'There's still the underlying problem. It may be physical, but of all the causes of sleep loss, anxiety is the most common. I can see that you're sympathetic, and that's helpful in itself, so if you can find out what is troubling her and do something constructive about it, you'll do more good than phenobarbitone in the long run. Please be discreet, however.'

That's rich!' I said.

'Professor, as an intelligent man, I'm sure you won't need telling that a patient's confidence in her doctor is vitally important.'

'Point taken,' I told him, and this time I didn't hold back. 'And as an intelligent man, I ought to advise my wife to change her doctor. Good morning.'

I got up and walked out.

Before starting the car I sat for some time trying to understand why Geraldine should have been losing sleep and how it was that I had failed to notice. The possibility didn't cross my mind that the phenobarbitone was intended for me.

Later the same morning at the University of Bath, I found myself watching Miss Hunter – who is the personal assistant to the Dean of Letters – arrange six chocolate digestives on a plate. In the next room the University Steering Committee was in session and I had been summoned for item six on the agenda. I was due to go in with the coffee. After twenty minutes I was getting restless. I still hadn't got over that uncomfortable session with Dr Bookbinder. I remember helping myself to a biscuit and saying facetiously, straining to put myself in a better frame of mind, 'Peculiar name to give it – the Steering Committee. What do they do in there – ride around on pushbikes?'

Hilary Hunter likes a giggle. She seemed to enjoy the mental picture of five professors solemnly pedalling around the dean's office for the entire morning, but as a loyal PA she couldn't laugh at the dean's expense, so she turned and flicked the switch on the kettle. It had come to the boil twice already.

Another minute passed.

The buzzer on her desk sounded. She poured the coffee and picked up the tray.

I opened the door for her and murmured, 'Watch out for the race leader in the yellow jersey.'

It was like a nudge in the ribs for Miss Hunter. She made a snorting sound as she stepped through the door.

The dean said, 'Do you require a tissue, Miss Hunter?'

She shook her head.

'Leave the tray, then. We'll help ourselves. Jackman, do come and join us.' The dean gestured towards a vast chintz-covered settee. The comforts of life are important to him. He goes in for check-patterned woollen shirts and hand-woven ties. His flat cap and golf bag were hanging on the door. This year it was his turn to preside over the Steering Committee. The others were drawn from different faculties. I knew three of them slightly and sometimes propped up a bar with the fourth, Professor Oliver, the Art man.

'How is the fledgling School of English faring?' the dean asked in his ponderous way.

'Chirpy enough,' I answered.

'Ha – yes. Ready to take wing?'

'What's on offer, then – a trip to the States?'

The dean chuckled. 'You're an optimist.' He turned to his left. 'Isn't he an optimist? Professor Oliver, would you be so good as to explain?'

'Me?' Tom Oliver asked in a spray of biscuit crumbs. He needed something to chew. Smoke-free committee meetings are an ordeal for a man who habitually keeps a pipe alight. He took a gulp of coffee and swallowed hard. 'You probably know, Greg, that we're trying to buff up the university's image in the town.'

'The city,' said the dean.

'Correction. The city. There was some criticism a year or two back that we'd built the proverbial ivory tower up here at Claverton and were ignoring the burghers.'

'Now that's uncalled for,' said the dean.

'Burghers,' Oliver repeated. 'The good citizens. The suggestion was untrue, of course. With our strength in science and technology we've always been involved with local industry through sandwich courses. We provide a marvellous range of extramural courses. We have the Concert Society arranging musical events. At Christmas we let hundreds of shoppers use the car park for the park-and-ride scheme. And of course the students have their rag week and so on.',

'The sedan chair race,' contributed the Professor of Comparative Religions, a featherweight who annually agrees to be transported around the course.

That, too. What I'm leading up to is that three years ago, before you joined us, Greg, we held an exhibition in the Victoria Gallery.'

'The one over the public library,' chipped in the dean. 'Fine exhibition, it was, for a pioneering effort.'

A guarded look dropped like a visor over my features.

'It fell to me to organize it,' Oliver continued. 'My brief was to put on a show called Art in Bath, featuring painters who actually lived here at some point in their lives. A motley crew, I have to admit. Gainsborough, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Whistler, Lord Leighton and a few lesser lights.'

'Professor Oliver had one of his own on show,' said the dean. 'An abstract, mainly in pink, as I recall.'

Oliver said self-consciously. 'I needed to fill a space. I would have preferred to put on a complete show of modern work, but the Society of Bath Artists had its annual show in the gallery a month before, and I was told firmly that this must be different in character, a more traditional exhibition.'

Sensing, perhaps, that the positive aspects of the Art in Bath Exhibition needed to be stressed more, the dean came in again. 'There was a first-class response to our request for the loan of pictures – from private collections as well as the more obvious sources. That's partly the point of an exhibition such as this. It's a way of involving the local people, reminding them that we exist. It got into the papers and on local television and radio. Professor Oliver got to be quite a media man in the end.'

Tom Oliver's eyes rolled upwards at the memory.

By now I'd heard enough of this. I sat back and folded my arms. 'Let's have it, gentlemen. What am I lumbered with?'

The dean frowned. 'No one has lumbered you with anything, Jackman. I would have thought a professor of English might have employed a more felicitous word than that.'

'Clobbered?'

'We seem to be at cross-purposes,' said the dean. 'I know you don't mince words, Jackman, but there's no cause to be obstructive before we have even outlined the proposition. I see this as a shining opportunity for the English Department to make a name for itself. You know, as the newest department in the university you have a lot of ground to make up on those of us who were here at the beginning. And with only two years' intake of students to administer I wouldn't have said you were overburdened. You won't be awarding degrees for another year.'

'Fair cop,' I said. 'You want me to bang the drum this year. Do I have a free hand?'

'Within limits.'

I shrugged. 'I don't have a free hand.'

'We have a proposal – rather an engaging one -originating from the city council itself. It has this committee's strong support, naturally.'

'What is it?'

'Jane Austen in Bath.'