Tom Sharpe - Grantchester Grind

'There is that,' said the Dean. 'I can't fault your reasoning. And on which of us Fellows do your suspicions lie most heavily?'

'Don't have any suspicions,' Purefoy managed to say with some difficulty. 'All good fellows as far as I can see,'

'Which by the look of things cannot be very far,' said the Praelector, and got up to leave. 'I must say this is the first time in a very long life that I have been a murder suspect. It's a novel sensation.'

But the Senior Tutor wasn't taking the accusation so casually. 'By Heavens, I've never heard anything so monstrous. Appointing a Fellow to prove that one of us murdered her bloody husband. I'm going to consult my lawyer in the morning. The woman is going to pay for this,' he said, and stormed out of the room after the Praelector.

Purefoy Osbert sat on with the Dean and the Chaplain, who had fallen asleep in his chair and was dreaming of the girls in Boots.

'Drink up, my dear chap,' said the Dean and passed the port. 'And, Simpson, I think Dr Osbert might like another cup of coffee.' The waiter poured coffee. And I don't think you need wait up any longer.'

He waited until Simpson had gone before continuing with his questions. Purefoy Osbert was exceedingly drunk now. 'And what makes Her Ladyship think Sir Godber was murdered?' he asked. 'I always understood him to have over-indulged his taste for Scotch, and then fallen and cracked his skull on the grate. That is certainly what the coroner's jury decided.'

'Know they did,' said Purefoy. 'Know they did. I read the transcript she had made. Know all about it.'

The Dean made a note of this. The damned woman had really gone to some pains. And now she was prepared to spend six million pounds. It was all most interesting. Purefoy's next remark was even more revealing. 'Seen the post-mortem report too,' he said.

'Have you indeed? And does that support Her Ladyship's thesis?'

'She says he never got drunk.'

'Yes,' said the Dean encouragingly. And?'

'The autopsy report says he wasn't drunk either.'

'But the autopsy report that I remember definitely stated that he had drunk a large quantity of whisky,' said the Dean.

'But it hadn't made him drunk before his head was hit,' said Purefoy.

'Really? How do we know that?'

'You don't, but I do,' Purefoy said. 'Because it wasn't in his bleeding blood.'

'Bleeding blood? I don't quite follow.'

'The blood he bled. It was in his stomach when he died but it hadn't got into his bloodstream so he couldn't have been drunk, could he?'

The Dean said nothing. For the first time he felt a sense of unease about Dr Purefoy Osbert. The man might be very, very drunk, but the clarity of his reasoning told the Dean he was not dealing with a fool. Lady Mary had chosen her champion very shrewdly. 'And do you think Sir Godber was murdered?' he asked.

'Me? I don't know. I only go on facts and I don't have enough of them to know or even think but…' Purefoy Osbert paused. He was staring straight ahead of him as though the Dean was not there but his mind was still working with surprising swiftness and concentration.

'Yes?' prompted the Dean.

'Motive,' said Purefoy. 'Supposing he was murdered, _cherchez_ the motive. The Dean had one and the Senior Tutor. They were going to be sacked. She said so. Yes, they had motives. But they also had alibis. They'd gone to this General's party and could prove it. Very convenient, that.'

The Dean sat motionless and listened. It was like hearing a man whose mind was sleep-talking. What he was saying had a frightening logic to it.

'And someone else had a motive. The Porter, Skullion. He had been sacked. He wanted revenge. He wanted his job back and he'd get it if Sir Godber died. The Dean and Tutor would see to that. They'd owe him. So where was he that night? There's a question needs an answer.'

It was very still in the Combination Room. Only the Chaplain's heavy breathing seemed to stir the air. A clock ticked loudly. The Dean's unease had turned to fear. The reasoning was impeccable. He and the Senior Tutor had had no invitations to Sir Cathcart's party. They had gone there to force the General to use his influence to rid the College of Sir Godber and, while they were gone, the Master had been mortally wounded. Accidentally, of course. Of course he hadn't been murdered but listening to this drunk young man thinking aloud was eerie and a little frightening. It was as if Dr Osbert were the prosecuting counsel in a trial, slowly but insistently building up his case. On the Bull Tower the clock struck midnight. And still Purefoy followed his line of thought aloud. 'But why didn't the Porter Skullion get his old job back?' he asked.

The Dean didn't reply. He wanted to hear Dr Osbert's answer.

'Because the Dean and Senior Tutor said the dying Master had named Skullion as his successor. But why should Sir Godber do that when he hated him? That doesn't make sense.'

It hadn't made sense to the Dean at the time but he had a terrible idea what was coming next. He was wrong.

'So what does make sense? They only said the dying man named him. No one else was there to prove he really had. Yes, that's more like it. They made the Porter Master to reward him for doing the killing or because they had to keep him quiet. Or both. That does make sense. Much more.' Purefoy paused.

Beside him the Dean was driven to intervene The charge was too monstrous to be ignored. 'But Skullion had a Porterhouse Blue, a stroke,' he said. 'He was incapacitated.'

Still staring into space Purefoy Osbert waited for an explanation to come to mind. 'Ever hear of a man who's incapac…incapacitated by a stroke going to prison?' he asked and answered the question himself. ‘I haven't. A man in a wheelchair who couldn't even speak, in prison? It doesn't happen. And yet they make the Porter Skullion who's had a stroke and is in a wheelchair the Master? Of Porterhouse, the snobbiest college in Cambridge? There has to be a reason.'

But the reason never came. Without any warning Purefoy Osbert slowly tilted forward out of his chair and fell flat on his face. For a moment the Dean sat looking down at the sprawled figure. There was no contempt on his face now, only a look of fear and something like admiration. His hatred was reserved for Lady Mary.

The Dean got up and went out into the Court and crossed the lawn to the Porter's Lodge. 'Walter,' he told the Head Porter. 'I think the new Fellow needs assisting to his rooms. And wake the Chaplain while you are about it.'

'Can't hold his liquor, sir?'

'You could put it like that, Walter,' the Dean said, but he said it without conviction. Drunk, the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow was capable of frightening deductions. Sober, he might be lethal. Lethal and absolutely wrong. The Dean climbed wearily up the stone staircase to his rooms thinking, as he so often thought, how dangerous pure intellect alone could be. In Cambridge pure intellect was power and like power it tended to corrupt. Something would have to be done about Dr Purefoy Osbert.

Edgar Hartang wasn't interested in intellect, pure or otherwise, but he was adamant that something be done about Kudzuvine He had been in consultation with his legal team for hours and nothing that Schnabel, Feuchtwangler or Bolsover had told him had been to his liking. 'You telling me because that fucking Kudzuvine goes apeshit in this fucking Porterhouse I got to spit out twenty million pounds you got to be as crazy as he is,' had been his first reaction.

'We are merely speaking in terms of the legal consequences of this action,' Schnabel had told him. And if the facts as laid out by the solicitors acting for the College are as they state them to be liability certainly lies with Transworld. That is the unfortunate fact of the matter and our unavoidable conclusion.'