Although both his parents had been dead now for a long time, someone wheezing in the street could still trigger memories of the sound of his father’s laboured breathing. His parents had lived to see him graduate with first class honours from Durham, although his father had died before he completed his PhD and never shared the pride his mother took in calling her son ‘doctor’.
Not going up to Cambridge proved to be no drawback for Motram. His sheer ability had taken him through a couple of successful post-doctoral fellowships at prestigious American universities where he had established himself as a researcher of international repute in the mechanics of viral infection. His particular interest lay in the epidemiology of plagues of past times, although this generally had to take a back seat to the study of more modern problems for which it was easier to attract funding.
John had met Cassie shortly after getting a lectureship at the University of Newcastle, where she had been in her final year of a medical degree, and had decided very quickly that she was the girl for him — a choice not entirely applauded by Cassie’s parents, who’d held higher social aspirations for their clever daughter. However, their love had survived the slings and arrows of outraged parents and they had married six months later.
The marriage had been successful from the outset, surviving the strain of the first few years of the demanding work that goes with being very new in their chosen professions, particularly for Cassie who, as a junior doctor in a busy hospital, seemed to be on call every hour of the day and night. Life had got easier with Cassie’s move into general practice and John’s growing academic reputation, which had made it easier for him to obtain research funding.
Two children had come along and the Motrams had been in a position to give them the best possible start in life. Their daughter, Chloe, was currently a translator with the European Commission in Brussels, and their son had followed his mother into medicine and was establishing a career in surgery. There were no grandchildren as yet but the possibility was a warming thought for both of them, and Cassie, who had an eye for decor, kept an eye out for possible changes to one of the upstairs rooms in their cottage which she felt might be ‘nice for little people’.
FOUR
John Motram took his time on the walk through the streets of Oxford, savouring the undoubted charm of the place and letting its history seep into his bones. He smiled as he realised that his affection for its dreaming spires was not entirely born of academic regard; being an avid fan of Inspector Morse was certainly playing its part. He found himself keeping an eye out for a Mark Two Jaguar.
Nothing disappointed him about the interior of Balliol College either. Everything just got better.
‘The Master will see you now,’ said a suitably deferential woman who looked as if she might have been a pillar of her church guild, sensibly dressed from her high collar with the cameo brooch to her polished brogues.
Motram was shown into a large office that couldn’t fail to impress. Minimalist it was not; metal and plastic pointedly failed to make an appearance. Wood — old polished wood — reigned supreme, comfortable in the light that came in through a series of tall, leaded windows that also admitted the sound of chimes and bells, confirming Motram’s arrival at the appointed hour of eleven a.m.
A tall, patrician man rose from behind his desk and smiled. ‘Dr Motram, good of you to come. I’m Andrew Harvey, Master of Balliol. Please come and sit down. You must be wondering what all this is about.’
It wasn’t a question, but Motram, who’d been thinking about little else for the past week, said, ‘I think I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued.’
‘Quite so,’ said Harvey. ‘I’m afraid microbiology isn’t exactly my field, but I understand that you are an expert on both the viruses of today and the epidemics of the past, shall we say?’
‘That’s a fair enough description.’
‘What is it that intrigues you about past plagues, doctor?’
‘Their cause. What many people don’t realise is that microbiology is a very young science. Bacteria weren’t discovered until the late 1800s and viruses even later, so the identification of the causes of the great epidemics of the past has been based largely on guesswork… or presumption.’
Harvey smiled at the acid emphasis Motram had put on the last word. ‘I understand there is… something of a disagreement between you and your academic colleagues over the origin of the Black Death. Am I right?’
‘You are.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Motram frowned slightly. He didn’t quite see where all this was leading, but he continued, ‘There’s a general assumption among the public and indeed some of my colleagues that the fourteenth-century pandemic generally called the Black Death, which wiped out a third of the population of Europe, was caused by an outbreak of bubonic plague.’
‘I’m afraid I have to admit to being one of the public who subscribe to that view,’ said Harvey. ‘Wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’m convinced it was caused by a virus.’
Harvey looked slightly bemused and Motram smiled, recognising the problem. ‘There is a very big difference between bacteria and viruses,’ he said. ‘They are completely different entities but, for some reason that escapes me, people appear reluctant to take this on board.’
‘Ah, educating the public,’ sighed Harvey, relaxing into his chair with a slightly amused expression on his face. ‘Never an easy business. But in what way are they different, doctor?’ He managed to endow the question with the unspoken rider, And does it matter?
‘Bacteria can exist independently,’ Motram explained. ‘They are living entities in their own right. They have all they need to grow and divide provided they can find suitable nutriment. Viruses can only exist inside living cells. In fact, there is a longstanding argument over whether they should actually be regarded as living things at all.’
Harvey nodded. ‘I see.’
‘Another major and more practical difference is that you can treat bacterial infections with antibiotics: antibiotics are useless against viruses.’
‘So what makes you think Black Death was caused by a virus and not plague — which presumably, in the light of what you’ve just said, is a bacterium?’
Motram nodded. ‘A rod-shaped bacterium called Yersinia pestis, named after a Russian microbiologist called Yersin who worked with Louis Pasteur. It was originally called Pasteurella pestis after his boss, but in the end justice prevailed.’
Harvey gave a slightly pained smile that suggested too much information and Motram cut short the lecture. ‘I suppose I began to wonder about ten years ago when I was studying the rate of spread of Black Death in Europe. It was all wrong for a bacterial infection like plague and it didn’t show the seasonal differences you would expect.’
‘Was the spread faster or slower than you expected?’
‘Much faster. Plague is primarily a disease of rats. Human beings get it from fleas, but Black Death spread like wildfire, as if it were an airborne infection like flu.’
‘Are you alone in your suspicions?’
‘Not any more,’ said Motram. ‘Scientists have been working on a genetic mutation in human beings which confers resistance to certain virus infections. It’s called Delta 32: basically it leads to the absence of a receptor on the surface of certain cells in the body, which denies viruses access to the cells they would normally infect.’