Sir Cathcart stirred unhappily in his seat. 'There has evidently been some sort of ghastly cock-up,' he said. 'All the same some stupid bastard told me…' His voice trailed away as enlightenment slowly dawned.
'The Chaplain, perhaps?' hazarded the Dean.
Sir Cathcart nodded.
'Ah,' said the Praelector significantly and reached for the brandy. 'That explains everything. Which still leaves us with the vexed question of a Master to succeed Skullion. I take it that we are all agreed that he has not nominated Lord Pimpole.'
For a moment it seemed as though Sir Cathcart was going to object on the grounds that he had given his word as a gentleman etcetera, but he backed away. Sheep and dogs were too much even for his sexual eclecticism. 'Good,' continued the Praelector. 'In that case I shall convene an emergency meeting of the College Council to have the Master declared _non compos mentis._ This will negate any future nominations he might attempt. It is the only method open to us and it will have the additional advantage of rendering any ridiculous assertions that he murdered Sir Godber Evans nugatory. And now, if you'll excuse me, it is long past my normal bedtime.'
'And mine,' said Sir Cathcart.
As he made his way out past the Porter's Lodge a figure hurried by into Porterhouse It was the man the General had come to identify.
30
It was a very different Purefoy Osbert who came into Porterhouse that night. He no longer felt strongly that crime was a product of the law or that human misbehaviour existed only as a side-effect of police brutality and social repression. He had moved beyond these generalizations into a more personal world in which his own anger dominated everything. He had been deliberately humiliated and made to look an idiot. All the way back from Kloone he had faced the fact, the evident fact that Mrs Ndhlovo, far from loving him or even feeling fond of him, had made a mockery of his feelings for her. Just as evidently she had always regarded him as a fool. And Purefoy was prepared to agree with her. He had been a damned fool to have been taken in by her stories of a black husband in Uganda who had ended up as various portions of President Idi Amin's late-night snacks. A woman who could hoodwink the University authorities into believing such an unlikely story by speaking pidgin English had to be an experienced charlatan. It wouldn't have surprised him to have learnt that she had never been anywhere near Africa and that her encyclopaedic knowledge of sexual practices had been obtained entirely from treatises on the subject or from hearsay. Whatever the case she was definitely a liar and a fraud as well as a heartless bitch and Purefoy wanted no part of her. She belonged to a past that he intended to forget. He had even given up the idea of writing her a letter in which he told her what he thought of her. She wasn't worth the trouble, might even find some satisfaction in knowing how much she had hurt him, and besides he had more constructive things to do.
For one thing he was going to make his presence felt in Porterhouse. The place was worse than an anachronism, more than an archaism, it was decadent, possessed a diseased arrogance to disguise its abysmal banality and lack of any academic distinction and to hide from the outside world the fact that it was morally as well as financially bankrupt. What other colleges in Cambridge hid from the world Purefoy had no idea but, whatever that might be, they did produce educated graduates and distinguished scholars. It was even claimed, though Purefoy found the statistic incredible, that one college, Trinity, had produced more Nobel Prize winners than the whole of France. In short, other Cambridge colleges could afford to parade a sense of superiority without appearing wholly ridiculous. Porterhouse had no such right. It was ridiculous. Worse still, it had as a Master an ignorant brute who could admit to having murdered the previous Master without a vestige of remorse or regret. Well, all that was going to change. Maddened by Mrs Ndhlovo's laughter and the recognition it had brought with it of his own ineffectuality, Purefoy Osbert had lost all fear of the place and of the elderly buffoons who were the Senior Fellows. He intended to fulfil his contract as the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow and make his presence felt. With this dominating thought he strode past Sir Cathcart D'Eath without noticing him and went to his rooms. It was too late to do anything now but in the morning he would tackle the Dean and tell him what he knew and what he intended to do. He had in mind to announce that he was going to the police with his knowledge and he would see how the Dean reacted. It was this reaction that would actually be his purpose. Purefoy Osbert had discovered gifts of provocation. He would force the Dean to admit the truth of Skullion's confession. Or to deny it. It hardly mattered which. His own position didn't matter to him either. All his life he had pretended to accept only certainties. But now in the space of half an hour in Mrs Ndhlovo's flat he had learnt that nothing was so unsettling as some prior knowledge mixed with absurdly inconsequential accusations. He would apply the technique to the Dean in the morning. Exhausted by the day's events Purefoy Osbert slept soundly.
The Praelector slept too, though in short bursts. He always went to sleep quickly only to wake an hour or two later to be awake dwelling on the previous day's events or simply lying quite happily in the darkness letting thoughts roam. He rather enjoyed his broken nights. They gave him an opportunity to ponder things uninterruptedly and without the feeling that he ought to be doing something useful. But this night his thoughts were focused narrowly on the question of the new Master. Unlike the Dean and Senior Tutor he had no illusions about Porterhouse. He had, as he had told the Dean on their walk, been shocked at the state of the College finances. And then on top of that had come the shock of Skullion's crime and his imminent removal to Porterhouse Park and the need to decide on a successor. Finally, and in its own way most disturbingly, the multiple misunderstandings at Duck Dinner and in the Dean's room had proved once and for all the incompetence of those who were supposedly in charge of the College. The Senior Tutor had become childishly emotional, the Dean was demoralized and Sir Cathcart D'Eath's changes of mood and identity suggested he was beginning to suffer from senile decay. The time for radical change had obviously come. As the sky began to lighten at dawn the Praelector went to the nub of the problem and with a sudden grasp of essentials found a startling solution.
In fact it was so startling that he hoisted himself up the bed and sat upright against the pillows to consider it more carefully. But though he looked at it from as many angles as he could think of he could not fault the solution. On the other hand it was so extraordinarily wild and daring that he could hardly bring himself to believe in it. Besides, the risks were tremendous. For an hour he lay there propped up against the pillows searching for a more moderate alternative and failed to find it. Then with the clearest picture in his mind of what he must do and with the certain knowledge that he had found a way to save Porterhouse, he slid down the bed and went back to sleep.
At half past seven he was awake again. He got up, had his bath and shaved, and then, as he did every day, he stood naked in front of the wardrobe mirror and studied his long, lean body with a dispassionate acceptance that was the tribute he paid to reality. What he saw was what he had become, an old man with spindly legs, a slight stoop but with clear blue eyes above a long nose and a firm, if shrunken, mouth. Having done that he dressed more carefully than usual and chose a suit that was so old that it seemed to have no perceptible style at all. It was his favourite suit and one he wore so seldom that Dege might have cut it for him only a week before. Having dressed and checked that his tie was as imperceptibly smart as the suit he went down to breakfast by way of the Porter's Lodge.