Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

The man scrutinised his visitors’ list, nodded curtly, picked up the telephone, buttoned the Master’s number, and announced Jake’s arrival in an accent that would have confounded Henry Higgins — a combination of Fenman, old Etonian, and camp Oriental.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘there be a lady to see you. Shall I escort her to your door?’ He listened for a second or two and then nodded. ‘Sure thing. Whatever you say, boss.’

Then he came round the desk, accompanied Jake out of the lodge and down a couple of steps, and pointed towards an ivy-clad building on the opposite side of the quadrangle.

‘See that there building?’ he asked.

Jake said that she did.

‘The Master’s housekeeper will greet you at the centre door,’ he added. ‘You got that, lady?’

Jake said that she had and the man went back inside his lodge.

The clock was striking its familiar bi-sexual note of twelve as Jake crossed the Great Court and, in spite of her determined negligence of sentiment, she found memories crowding in upon her: of the occasion when first she had tried to listen to her own male and female voice; of her early sexual experiences with an older Trinity woman called Faith; and of how, once, Faith had bent her head between Jake’s naked thighs and tried, unsuccessfully, to bring her sister to orgasm within the time it took the loquacious clock to strike its dual note of twelve — forty-three seconds — while poor, simple schoolboys raced around the Great Court with self-conscious honour and importance.

She knocked at the Master’s low, half-windowed door with its brightly polished letterbox. There was more evidence of smooth housekeeping within and the woman who answered the door had no sooner explained that the Master was just taking a telephone call and shown Jake into the sitting room than she was off polishing something else.

Jake walked over to the rear window and, stimulated by the sight of the Cam, allowed herself the recollection of a practical joke which some thug had played on Jake and her friend Faith as they had punted underneath a bridge near the back of Queen’s. The thug had painted a football so that it looked like one of the bridge’s stone pommels and with a tremendous show of effort, he had pushed the lethal-looking object into their boat. Thinking that they and their punt would be smashed to pieces, Jake and Faith leaped, as they imagined, for their lives, and were soaked. It was Faith, now Professor of English Literature at Glasgow University, who had seen the funny side. Faith always saw the funny side of everything, with one notable exception: when Jake, inspired by her friend’s strident and family-estranging lesbianism, decided to tell her own father she herself was gay.

It was a piece of pure sadism made all the more satisfying for Jake, since by then she was as certain that it was not true as she was that her father was dying.

Banishing these and other memories, Jake turned away from the window and stood in front of the blazing coal fire. Having warmed herself, she surveyed the Master’s books, some of them written by himself, and one of which Jake had read.

Although Sir Jameson Lang had been teaching Philosophy at Cambridge for over ten years, it was as the author of a series of highly successful detective novels that he was chiefly known to the public. Jake had read the first of these, a story in which the philosopher Plato, while on a visit to Sicily during the year 388 BC, turns detective in order to solve the murder of a courtier to King Dionysius of Syracuse. Jake recalled that in solving the crime (with the aid of Pythagorean mathematical principles) at the request of the King himself, Plato had managed unwittingly to offend this young tyrant who then proceeded to sell the philosopher/detective into slavery.

Just as well, Jake told herself, that the Metropolitan Police had trades union representation. As in Plato’s day, there were few people who ever really welcome the Truth. The truth meant a trial and nobody, apart from the lawyers, ever welcomed that. Certainly not the murderer, and certainly not the murder victim’s family who often regarded a criminal investigation as an unwarranted invasion of its privacy. It is said that justice must not only be done, but it must also be seen to be done. But Jake had her doubts. In her experience most people preferred that things be swept underneath the rug. No one cared much if an innocent man went to prison, or if a terrorist was shot dead while surrendering. No one thanked you for building a case against someone and then insisting on a show. As Jameson Lang had had Plato say to Dionysius, ‘It is not every truth that sounds as sweet as birdsong, not every discovery that is welcomed among the occult, not every light that is approved from within the shadows.’ Whatever you thought of his prose style, there was a lot in that, she thought.

The college Master made his appearance, apologising for the delay, only there had been a call from his copy editor querying a couple of points before his latest book went to press. Jake asked him if it was another Plato novel, and he said that it was. She added how much she had enjoyed the first. Sir Jameson Lang, a handsome man wearing a three-piece suit of Prince of Wales check, looked flattered. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with a shy, tight-looking mouth which gave the appearance of having suffered a small stroke, Lang appeared the quintessence of Englishness, although he was in fact Scottish.

‘How kind of you to say so,’ he drawled in the kind of voice which Jake felt might have suited some stuffy gentlemen’s club, and offered her a sherry.

While he filled two glasses from a matching decanter, Jake glanced up at the painting above a mantelpiece that was heavily populated with porcelain figures. The scene in the painting was Arcadian in its setting and seemed vaguely allegorical in its meaning. Lang handed Jake her glass and bending down to the scuttle retrieved a couple of lumps of coal the size of small meteorites which he dropped onto the fire. Noticing Jake’s interest in the painting he said, ‘Veronese’. Then he ushered her to a seat and sat down in an armchair facing her. ‘Belongs to the college.

‘I was intrigued by your call, Chief Inspector,’ he said, and sipped a little of his sherry. ‘Both as a philosopher and as someone with a tremendous fascination for — the detective form.’

His eyes narrowed and for a second Jake wondered if he was making some reference to her own body.

‘Now exactly how can I be of assistance to you?’

‘There are a number of questions I was hoping you might be able to answer, Professor,’ she said.

Lang’s crooked smile widened slowly.

‘Bertrand Russell once said that philosophy is made up of the questions we don’t know how to answer.’

‘I’ve never thought of myself as a philosopher,’ she admitted.

‘Oh, but you should, Chief Inspector. Think about it for a moment.’

Jake smiled. ‘Why not just give me a short tutorial?’

Lang frowned, uncertain whether or not Jake was being sarcastic.

‘No, really,’ Jake said. ‘I’m interested.’

Lang’s mouth relaxed into a smile again. It was already clear to Jake that it was a subject he had devoted a great deal of thought to, and one which he was keen to discuss.

‘Well then,’ he began. ‘Detection and philosophy both promote the idea that something can be known. The scene of our activity comes with clues which we must fit together in order to produce a true picture of reality. Both of us have, at the heart of our respective endeavour, a search for meaning, for a truth which has, for whatever reason, been concealed. A truth which exists behind appearances. We seek to penetrate appearances and we call that penetration, knowledge.