Colin Dexter - Death Is Now My Neighbor

If only Dawn Charles could have recalled a little more.

“If” — that little conjunction introducing those unfulfilled conditions in past time which, as Donet reminds us, demand the pluperfect subjunctive in both clauses — a syntactical rule which Morse himself had mastered early on in an education which had been far more fortunate than that enjoyed by the receptionist at the Harvey Clinic.

Indeed, over the next two weeks, most people in Oxford were destined to be considerably more fortunate than Dawn Charles: She received no communication from the poetry lover of Pembroke; her mother was admitted to a psychiatric ward out at Littlemore; she was twice reminded by her bank manager of the increasing problems arising from the large margin of negative equity on her small flat; and finally, on Monday morning, January 29, she was to hear on Fox FM Radio that her favorite consultant, Mr. Robert H. Turnbull, MB, ChB, FRCS, had been fatally injured in a car accident on Cumnor Hill.

The Master shall not continue in his post beyond the age of sixty-seven. As a simple rule, therefore, the incumbent Master will be requested to give notice of impending retirement during the University term immediately prior to that birthday. Where, however, such an accommodation does not present itself, the Master is required to propose a particular date no later than the end of the first week of the second full term after the statutory termination ( vide supra ).

—Paragraph 2 (a), translated from the Latin, from

the Founders’ Statutes of Lonsdale College, Oxford

Sir Clixby Bream would be almost sixty-nine years old when he retired as Master of Lonsdale. A committee of Senior Fellows, including two eminent Latin scholars, had found itself unable to interpret the gobbledegook of the Founders’ Statutes ( vide supra ); and since no “accommodation” (whatever that was) had presented itself, Sir Clixby had first been persuaded to stay on for a short while — then for a longer while.

Yet this involved no hardship.

He was subject to none of the normal pressures about moving to somewhere nearer the children or the grandchildren, since his marriage to Lady Muriel had been sine prole. Moreover, he was blessedly free from the usual uxorial bleatings about a nice little thatched cottage in Dorset or Devon, since Lady Muriel had been in her grave these past three years.

The position of Head of House at any of the Oxbridge Colleges was just about the acme of academic ambition; and since three of the last four Masters had been knighted within eighteen months of their appointments, it had been natural for him to be attracted by the opportunity of such pleasing preferment. And he had been so attracted; as, even more strongly, had the late Lady Muriel.

Indeed, the incumbent Master, a distinguished mathematician in his earlier days, had never enjoyed living anywhere as much as in Oxford — ten years of it now. He’d learned to love the old city more and more the longer he was there: It was as simple as that. Of course he was somewhat saddened by the thought of his imminent retirement: He would miss the College — miss the challenges of running the place — and he knew that the sight of the furniture van outside the wisteria-clad front of the Master’s Lodge would occasion some aching regret. But there were a few unexpected consolations, perhaps. In particular, he would be able (he supposed) to sit back and survey with a degree of detachment and sardonic amusement the infighting that would doubtless arise among his potential successors.

It was the duty of the Fellows’ Appointments Committee (its legality long established by one of the more readily comprehensible of the College Statutes) to stipulate three conditions for those seeking election as Master: first, that any candidate should be “of sound mind and in good health”; second, that the candidate should “not have taken Holy Orders”; third, that the candidate should have no criminal record within “the territories administered under the governance of His (or Her) Most Glorious Majesty.”

Such stipulations had often amused the present Master.

If one judged by the longevity of almost all the Masters appointed during the twentieth century, physical well-being had seldom posed much of a problem; yet mental stability had never been a particularly prominent feature of his immediate predecessor, nor (by all accounts) of his predecessor’s predecessor. And occasionally Sir Clixby wondered what the College would say of himself once he was gone... With regard to the exclusion of the clergy, he assumed that the Founders (like Edward Gibbon three centuries later) had managed to trace the source of all human wickedness back to the Popes and the Prelates, and had rallied to the cause of anticlericalism... But it was the possibility of the candidate’s criminality which was the most amusing. Presumably any convictions for murder, rape, sodomy, treason, or similar misdemeanors, were to be discounted if shown to have taken place outside the jurisdiction of His (or Her) Most Glorious Majesty. Very strange.

Strangest of all, however, was the absence of any mention in the original Statute of academic pedigree; and, at least theoretically, there could be no bar to a candidate presenting himself with only a Grade E in GCSE Media Studies. Nor was there any stipulation that the successful candidate should be a senior (or, for that matter, a junior) member of the College, and on several occasions “outsiders” had been appointed. Indeed, he himself, Sir Clixby, had been imported into Oxford from “the other place,” and then (chiefly) in recognition of his reputation as a resourceful fund-raiser.

On this occasion, however, outsiders seemed out of favor. The College itself could offer at least two candidates, each of whom would be an admirable choice; or so it was thought. In the Senior Common Room the consensus was most decidedly in favor of such “internal” preferment, and the betting had hardened accordingly.

By some curious omission no entry had hitherto been granted to either of these ante-post favorites in the pages of Who’s Who. From which one may be forgiven for concluding that the aforesaid work is rather more concerned with the third cousins of secondary aristocrats than with eminent academics. Happily, however, both of these personages had been considered worthy of mention in Debrett’s People of Today 1995:

STORRS, Julian Charles; b. July 9, 1935; Educ. Christ’s Hosp., Emmanuel Coll., Cambridge (BA, MA); m. Angela Miriam Martin March 31, 1974; Career Capt. RA (Indian Army Reserve); Pitt Rivers Reader in Social Anthropology and Senior Fellow Lonsdale Coll., Oxford; Recreations taking taxis, playing bridge.

CORNFORD, Denis Jack; b. April 23, 1942; Educ. Wyggeston GS Leicester, Magdalen Coll., Oxford (MA, DPhil); m. Shelly Ann Benson May 28, 1994; Career University Reader in Medieval History and Fellow Lonsdale Coll., Oxford; Recreations kite flying, cultivation of orchids.

Each of these entries may appear comparatively uninformative. Yet perhaps in the more perceptive reader they may provoke one or two interesting considerations.

Was, for example, the Senior Fellow of Lonsdale so affluent that he could afford to take a taxi everywhere? Did he never travel by car, coach, or train? Well, quite certainly on special occasions he would travel by train.

Oh, yes.

As we shall see.

And why was Dr. Cornford, soon to be fifty-four years old, so recently converted to the advantages of latter-day matrimony? Had he met some worthy woman of comparable age?