David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

“Sorry,” Teresa said. “I’m on duty. I didn’t mean anything by that. It was a figure of speech. If he was a friend of yours—”

“No,” the woman answered, with equal conviction, and downed the whisky in one go. “He wasn’t that either. Not at all. I’m just a mite put out to discover that he, and by implication the rest of us in the academic community… we’re all somehow less interesting than this murderous colleague of yours.”

Teresa took Kirk’s book out of her bag and waved it in the air. “Not to me you’re not. I was hoping he could clear up a few things that were bothering me. While I couldn’t claim to have made much personal contact with him during our brief meeting yesterday, I have read his book. And that I find very interesting indeed. That, Professor Morrison, is why I’m here.”

“It was you?” she asked, intrigued. “The woman who was with him when this happened?”

“Not with him. Locked in his office. He saved my life, I think. Not that he meant to.”

“Don’t undersell yourself,” Regina Morrison said with some admiration.

Unconsciously, Teresa stroked the plaster sticking to her scalp. “I’ll try to remember that.”

“But I don’t understand why you, of all people, are here. I’d have thought you had plenty of real work to occupy you.”

Regina Morrison had a way of coming to the point with a remarkable directness. It hit home too. When she thought about Monkboy being left to his own devices, Teresa Lupo felt far from comfortable.

“I need to tie up some loose ends. You’ve read Kirk’s book?”

“Oh yes,” she answered. “I’m an administrator now but I’m a classicist at heart. One day I’m going back to teaching. Sooner rather than later if I lose another member of staff this suddenly. I got parachuted in here from Edinburgh last autumn so don’t expect me to provide too many searing insights into Randolph Kirk’s persona. But I read his book and admired it greatly. When I took the job I hoped he had another one on the cards and perhaps I’d get an early look-in. That was one reason I came.” She thought carefully about what to say next. “Little did I know.”

“Know what?” Teresa asked impatiently.

“To be honest with you I thought I’d be telling all this to a real police officer.”

She couldn’t wait that long, though. Regina Morrison was itching to get on with her tale.

“I’ll pass it on. Promise.”

“I’m sure you will,” the woman chuckled. “The truth is I was about to fire him. It’s just one nasty job after another here at the moment. They brought me in from outside for a reason. No one local, and certainly no one Italian, was going to face up to the… difficulties that needed cleaning up. I may as well tell you. It’s going to come out anyway one day. Maladministration. Fraud. Some exceedingly dubious academic projects. And Randolph Kirk. A wonderful scholar, one of the best of his generation at Cambridge apparently. But a lonely little man with a lonely little man’s habits. He couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Most academics move on once in a while. That’s the way to get more money. Not Randolph. He stayed here for a reason, my dear. He had to. If he’d pulled some of his tricks anywhere else he’d be out of work for life, sued for every penny he owned, and possibly in jail too.”

For a moment, Teresa felt like a cop, standing on the brink of some important discovery. It was a wonderful sensation. “Tricks?”

“He molested young women. The younger the better. I don’t know the full extent of what went on. Back home we’re like the Americans. Girls scream sexual assault if someone says they’re wearing a nice dress. Why Sigmund Freud settled in Vienna is beyond me. We’re ten times more anal in Edinburgh. Here it’s the opposite. Everyone keeps their mouths shut. Maybe they think it goes with the course. All the same, I had enough evidence to terminate him within six weeks of falling into this chair, and had your gun-wielding colleague not intervened I would have done it very soon. Trust me.”

Teresa tapped the book. “Was it connected with what he wrote?”

Regina Morrison smiled back at her across the desk. “You and I think along the same lines. Remarkable. I read that a couple of years ago. Then when I turned up here and started hearing some stories about the real Randolph I read it again. You needed to meet the man to understand this. He wasn’t just writing history. He was laying out the grounds for some kind of personal philosophy of his, one he thought he was copying from those rituals. You know what I think? He played it out. He persuaded some of those gullible girls. He convinced them what they were doing was worth a try somehow. I can’t believe they were fooled by all his mumbo-jumbo, mind, but you know what girls are. Perhaps there was something in it for them. Whatever. My guess is he put on one of those masks he was always writing about, pretended he was the great god himself and had his fun. It didn’t fool anyone else, of course. The kids knew why they were doing it. To get the right grades or something. If old Randolph invited along a few visitors—and I suspect he did because he was a man who desperately needed to be told how clever he was every living second of the day—I don’t imagine they bought into his fancy myths either. They were just having a little fun for free. I’m guessing there, which is something no academic should do, but I feel it’s right anyway. I talked to a couple of ex-students. They’re just too scared to tell, to be honest. I wonder why.”

Teresa’s pulse was racing. There had to be evidence here. There had to be something Regina Morrison could give her.

“Do you have names? Places?”

The woman on the other side of the desk eyed her suspiciously. “You could get me into big trouble. You think I haven’t put enough noses out of joint around here already? They brought me in to sort things out. That kind of work never makes you popular. Once I’m finished firing then they fire me. That’s the way it goes. But I don’t want to give them any early excuses.”

“Regina,” she said, taking care to pronounce the name perfectly, “this isn’t an academic exercise. It’s not about finding out why Randolph Kirk died. Not directly. There’s a girl who’s gone missing. Right now. Maybe she’s been abducted. Maybe she went willingly, not knowing what she was in for. But I’m sure it’s something to do with all this. There was evidence in her apartment. A thyrsus. Some other items. That’s why I went to see him in the first place.”

Teresa Lupo looked at her watch. She needed to get back to the morgue. There were so many questions to ask this unusual, intelligent stranger, and so little time.

“But if Randolph’s dead—” Regina Morrison wondered. “Surely she’s safe. You don’t think he went around abducting these girls. He couldn’t do that. Not—”

Regina Morrison hesitated.

“Not what?”

“Not on his own.” The Scotswoman’s composure was broken for a second or two. Teresa could see she genuinely was worried. “Look,” she said, toying with the photo of the dog in front of her. “I’ve been sitting here all morning waiting for you people to turn up. Where have you been? Who are you to start shouting ”urgent“ now? When I heard what had happened to Randolph last night I came in here late and took a little look around his office. A raid you might say. I thought I’d get in there before you people did. I didn’t understand your timekeeping habits then, you understand.”

“You broke into his office?” Teresa gasped, a little in awe.

Regina Morrison tapped her nameplate. “That’s what titles are for. I came up with something too, locked away in a drawer with some teeny little padlock on it. Randolph hadn’t a clue, you know. The man was utterly unworldly. You don’t seem the squeamish sort, Teresa. Am I right?”