'I am sure you are quite the right person for the position,' she went on. 'Mr Goodenough will provide you with any additional information you need. There are a number of documents you will find most informative.' And on this practical note she ended the interview. There was no point in setting out her real aims now. It was much better to let him get to work quickly. Which was what she told Mr Goodenough on the phone when Purefoy had left Kensington Square. He had agreed to go to Porterhouse on the terms stated in the letter and with the guarantee that his researches or investigations into the facts of Sir Godber's life and death were to be free of any restrictions. Lady Mary had said that she would do nothing to prevent him finding the facts but implied that other people might.
'I was most impressed with Dr Osbert,' she told Goodenough. Mr Lapline had refused to accept the call ('Tell her I'm out or dead or in hospital or something,' he had told his secretary) on the grounds that her impressions of a man who thought Crippen was the innocent victim of a Scotland Yard conspiracy might be as violent as his own.
'I'm so glad,' Goodenough said. 'I must say I thought him quite the best of the bunch.'
Lady Mary tried to tell him what she thought of the rest of the bunch, but had some sort of seizure.
'Anyway, she seems happy enough with your lovely cousin,' Goodenough said to Vera. 'Yes, I quite agree. I won't use that adjective in his presence. He still treats me like some sort of animal that ought to be in quarantine. And pursuing that particular simile she has instructed me-those were her words-to get him into Porterhouse immediately. No, she didn't bother with "expeditiously". She said "immediately" and with six million in the kitty, I don't think we're going to have all that much trouble with the College Council.'
He was right. After a phone call to the Senior Tutor followed by a letter and another phone call and a fax, Goodenough felt satisfied. 'I think he has prepared the ground very well already,' he said to Mr Lapline. 'The Dean is away and cannot be contacted and according to the Senior Tutor he would be the main stumbling-block to any Fellow named after the late Master. So they're going ahead without him.'
'I should have thought the main stumbling-block would be the present Master himself,' said Mr Lapline gloomily. 'It cannot be easy to get Council decisions ratified by a Master who has difficulty speaking and can't write. Do you think they get him to make his mark? It's going to look very odd to future historians of Cambridge during the twentieth century if they do.'
'Oh I don't know. I must be more optimistic about the future than you are,' said Goodenough. 'Probably by that time nobody will be able to read at all. In any case I understand he can talk again.'
The College Council did approve the appointment of Dr Purefoy Osbert and Skullion was brought in to sign the document, though it was thought best not to let him know the bit about the Sir Godber Evans Memorial.
'Just say it is a new research Fellowship,' the Praelector advised the Senior Tutor, who was standing in for the Dean. 'His feelings for Sir Godber were not, as I recall, of the fondest.'
'He loathed the man,' said the Senior Tutor, 'and I can't say I blame him. I detested the late Master myself. What I never could understand is what the Bursar saw in him. I suppose it was money.'
'Of course it was money, though it was Lady Mary's money. Hadn't got a bean of his own. Married the stuff, and I don't think it was much of a bargain. Which brings me to my next point. I cannot begin to imagine what City financiers sponsored Dr Osbert and the Fellowship. I should have thought they would have preferred to forget Sir Godber ever existed. The damage he did to the country's commercial interests as Minister of Technological Development was enormous. Cut funding on what is now called superconductivity. It was in its infancy in those days.'
The Chaplain took up the challenge erroneously. 'Before I came to Porterhouse I conducted a great many baptisms of infants,' he said, 'but I wouldn't have called any of them "super". It has been one of the blessings of my life as College Chaplain that I am no longer required to bless any babies. Looking into what I suppose must be called their faces almost convinced me that Darwin was absolutely right. I remember one particularly horrid little boy who made me think of Occam's Razor rather wistfully.'
'Occam's Razor? But that's for circumcision, surely,' said the Senior Tutor.
Dr Buscott shuddered but kept silent. He knew what Occam's Razor was but it was too late to try to educate the Senior Fellows now. In any case the Chaplain, who was dozing off, was murmuring something. 'I've always felt very sorry for Abelard, you know. They used something like Occam's Razor on him. Most unpleasant.'
7
In a grey stone house on Portland Bill the Dean and Anthony Lapschott finished dinner and took their coffee in a long room overlooking Lyme Bay. It was late. Lapschott kept curious hours and did himself well-in the Dean's opinion, very well. Not that he would have chosen to retire to Portland Bill. It was too grey and grim and dingy for him, the streets too empty and steep and the wind coming off the sea had been gusting to Force 9 when he drove up the hill past the prison earlier in the day. It had risen further during the evening and howled round the house thrashing the few shrubs in the garden, but in the long panelled room the storm seemed strangely distant. Everything there-it was as much a study and library as a drawing-room-was luxurious, almost too luxurious, with thick Persian rugs and deep armchairs and a massive leather-topped desk and a couch on which Lapschott could spend hours reading while beyond the window storms at sea and the ceaseless wind battered the coast without affecting his comfort.
It was this contrast between the grey and grim world outside and the one Lapschott had created for himself in the house that disturbed the Dean. Besides, he had never liked modern paintings and he particularly disliked Bacon and Lucian Freud. Lapschott's tastes were too sophisticated for him and something of his distaste had evidently communicated itself to the other man. During dinner, served by two Filipino maids and a manservant, Lapschott had explained his own reasons for living where and how he did and the Dean had found them as disturbing as the house itself.
'I find it amusing to observe the end of the world,' said Lapschott. 'Perhaps I should say the ends of the worlds.' The Dean would have preferred him to say neither. Still, the underdone lamb was surprisingly good and the claret was excellent.
'And in many ways Portland Bill allows me that melancholy perspective. Geographically it is the end of England. Land's End is in Cornwall and the Cornish are Celts, and besides Land's End is very commercial these days. But here there is only rock and the lighthouse and beyond it the Race and the open sea. And to the west is Dead Man's Bay. That's what Hardy called it. A sailing ship too close inshore would be trapped by the wind coming up the Channel. Unable to round the Bill, it would be driven onto the Chesil Bank. Hundreds of dead men out there, Dean. Behind us more dead men. Two gaunt prisons and the stone quarries that went to make the Gibbs Building in King's College and St Paul's Cathedral. The convicts built the breakwater round Portland Harbour, hauling the stone from those quarries in the nineteenth century to protect the world's greatest fleet. For them Portland was the end of the world too. I can go and look down at the Harbour and find some curious satisfaction in its emptiness. What fleet there is could fit into a tiny corner of it. That world has ended now, though I have just been reading the most interesting life of Fisher by Jan Morris. A madman of sorts, Fisher built the Dreadnought and began the naval arms race with the Kaiser's Germany, a foolish and romantic duel that ended in stalemate at Jutland. The British lost far more ships and men and the German Navy never put out to sea again until it sailed to Scapa Flow and was scuttled there. Such a pointless war fought by men who were thought to be civilized.'