‘Miss McKenna,’ Sarah panted, ‘I’m so pleased you’re here. It’s my typewriter, it’s broken, the ribbon, I can’t fix it and I’ve got this work for Mr Kirk that has to be handed in and I don’t know what to do. Will you please come and help me?’
The gorgon inspected Sarah carefully. Her hair was indeed a mousy colour and she was wearing a suit that Sarah did not believe could ever have been fashionable, in a colour once memorably described by Edward as Repugnant Brown.
‘Take it more slowly, Sarah. Your typewriter is not functioning?’
Sarah nodded.
‘The ribbon is malfunctioning?’
‘It’s come off,’ Sarah said, ‘it’s wrapped round some other part and I can’t undo it. I’m sure you could sort it out for me, Miss McKenna, it would only take you a minute or two.’
By now, in the master plan, the gorgon should have been out of her lair and halfway down the stairs. Edward was rooted to his window. Barton Somerville had been in with Kirk for over ten minutes. It was four minutes since Sarah had set off for the gorgon’s cave. The operation was not going according to plan.
‘Did you say you had some work that has to be completed for Mr Kirk?’
Sarah nodded. ‘Why don’t you borrow another machine?’ Miss McKenna suggested brightly. ‘We could get one of the porters to bring it up for you.’
This possibility hadn’t featured in Sarah’s conversations with Edward at all, but she rose to the occasion magnificently.
‘I thought of that but it wouldn’t do, Miss McKenna. Mr Kirk has a special machine which produces slightly bigger type on the page. I think his eyes must be going. It’s the only one of its kind in Queen’s. And,’ here Sarah looked at her watch and groaned, ‘it’s meant to be handed over by lunchtime and I’ve got pages and pages to do. I’ll get sacked if I don’t finish it. It’s for that big fraud trial, you see. Please, Miss McKenna, won’t you come and help me. You’re the only person in the Inn who can save me now! Please! We must be quick!’
‘Well,’ said the gorgon, ‘it’s most unusual for myself and the Treasurer to be out of the office at the same time but it can’t be helped.’
Sarah half dragged her out of the office and down the stairs, the gorgon pausing only to close the door. Nineteen minutes had elapsed since Barton Somerville entered the Kirk chambers. Twenty had passed before Sarah and Miss McKenna were sighted approaching Sarah’s rooms. Twenty-two had elapsed before they had clattered up the stairs and Edward reckoned they were fully engaged with the errant typewriter ribbon. After twenty-three minutes Edward, with three black box files under his arm, set out across the path leading to Fountain Court. He wanted to run but he knew he couldn’t. Walking across the court like this was perfectly normal. Running, unless a man was extremely late for court, was most unusual.
‘I think the reason the barristers refused to speak to us, Chief Inspector,’ said Powerscourt, ‘is that they were ashamed of themselves. Even the Head Porter, not a man famous for criticizing his lords and masters, said that their language was often worse than that of Billingsgate Fish Market and the behaviour bad enough to have some of them up in front of the justices for breaches of the peace.’
‘I suppose,’ said Beecham, ‘that if you make a living by being prepared to insult people in a courtroom occasionally, you won’t find it too hard when it comes to events back in your own chambers.’
‘Exactly so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘The contest appeared to be going along with little advantage to one side or the other until about ten days before polling day. You must remember, Chief Inspector, that the porters were most intimately involved in the event. They were following the gentlemen’s bets on the outcome very closely and they themselves had a variety of wagers at different odds with the unofficial bookmaker, covering bets, bets on the size of the majority, bets on the total number of votes that would be cast, that sort of thing. Anyway, as I say, with ten days to go Newton and his people decide it’s time to take the gloves off. They start putting it about that the barristers should not be electing a bencher who would only be able to serve from Monday to Wednesday. This was a clear reference to Dauntsey’s nervous depressions, his days off, as it were, the inexplicable occasions when his great talent seemed to desert him.’
‘That was a pretty filthy tactic,’ said Chief Inspector Beecham. ‘Did it work? Surely the barristers knew all that already?’
‘It seemed to work for about a week,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Whether it took Dauntsey’s people that long to do their research, or whether they thought Newton’s tactics might backfire, I don’t know. But they certainly fought back in kind. Newton wasn’t a gentleman, they said. His father kept two grocery shops in Wolverhampton. His grandmother had been a junior parlourmaid. They produced a rather vicious but very effective cartoon, apparently. Across the top was the legend “Our New Bencher” with many exclamation marks beside it. Underneath were two drawings, one showing a younger but very recognizable Newton counting out the change in the grocery shop, and the other showing him helping an elderly lady, presumably his grandmother, to fold the ironing in some great airing room. A hundred years ago or less, people fought duels for stuff like this.’
‘Have you thought, Lord Powerscourt, that it may be that the people here still haven’t stopped fighting duels for this kind of smear?’
‘I see what you mean, Sarah,’ said the gorgon, inspecting the loops of typewriter ribbon festooned across the top of the machine. She tugged, lightly at first, then harder and harder until the veins on her neck began to stand out. ‘Do you have any scissors? And a spare ribbon, I’m sure you must have one or two of those.’
Edward was less than a hundred yards away from the Treasurer’s staircase.
Sarah realized to her horror that the gorgon’s solution would see her out of the door in a minute or so. Edward might not have enough time. He might be caught by the gorgon in person and confined in some monstrous prison.
‘Surely it won’t work if we cut it,’ she said. ‘That bit of ribbon that’s stuck around those two keys means that we won’t have the letters p and l at all.’
‘I think you’ll find,’ the gorgon said rather sharply, seizing the scissors firmly as if she was going to slit someone’s throat, ‘that if we cut the ribbon as close as we can to the keys, they will be released as the ribbon falls down into the machine.’ She began clipping the ribbon firmly. Edward was now at the entrance to the staircase containing Barton Somerville’s quarters. Twenty-five minutes had elapsed. The Treasurer might even now be on his way back to his quarters but Edward did not dare look round.
With a particularly vicious snip the gorgon freed the reluctant keys of p and l. ‘There,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t as bad as all that. Do you have a new ribbon, Sarah?’
Edward took the stairs up to the first floor two at a time. The door was closed. Oh, no, he said to himself, peering back down the stairs. Very gingerly, as if the door might explode in his face, Edward turned the handle and pushed. He was in.
‘I think I’ll be getting back now,’ said the gorgon, watching Sarah unwrap another roll of typewriter ribbon. ‘We can’t leave the Treasurer’s office unmanned for too long, can we.’
Sarah was not sure if Edward had had enough time. She wondered desperately if there was some other ruse that might keep the gorgon in her attic a little longer.
Edward had brought down the three files relating to 1899 and the first six months of 1900. He slipped the three dummy files he had brought into the place where the originals had been, checking they were correctly aligned with their fellows.
Miss McKenna waited no longer. With a businesslike ‘Goodbye’ she was down the stairs, heading rapidly back towards her lair.