Which was more than could be said for Skullion. Seated in his wheelchair in the ambulance, he knew he had been betrayed again. He wasn't going to Coft Castle as the General had promised. They had been on the road too long for that and they were moving too fast. They were on the motorway and heading for Porterhouse Park and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He had been taken for a mug again. And they had done a good professional job getting him out of Porterhouse too, sending Arthur off to the chemist for the prescription of his blood-pressure pills and then as soon as the Master's Lodge was empty coming in without so much as a by-your-leave and having him through the doorway into the ambulance before you could say Jack Robinson and then off through the traffic as if everything was hunky-dory.
Oh well, it was his own bloody fault. He shouldn't have got pissed and threatened the Dean. And he shouldn't have listened to Sir Cathcart fucking D'Eath. He should have known those bastards would stick together. Always did and always would when it came to saving their own skins. Not that they were above slitting one another's throats if it came to that. And now that he was gone they'd say he'd had another Porterhouse Blue and Cheffy and them wouldn't know any better. They wouldn't know he'd been taken off to Porterhouse Park and if they did it wouldn't do any good. No one ever visited the Park. It was just somewhere they sent you when you'd lost your marbles like old Dr Vertel and Mr Manners who'd become an embarrassment with his incontinence and his nasty habit of suddenly attacking undergraduates with his umbrella because he thought they were sniggering at him behind his back. And now it was his turn and no doubt they'd have some hard old woman in charge to give him his pills and order him about and give him baths. Doubtless too they would wheel him out on sunny days to stare out over the landscape and listen to the other old loonies mumbling to themselves. He'd have to eat with them too and they'd call him Skullion and treat him like dirt just as they used to do when he was a porter. Old Vertel had never liked him, and he must still be alive because there'd been no obituary in the Porterhouse Magazine. Skullion sat in his wheelchair and stared at the curtain they'd pulled across the rear window of the ambulance, and cursed himself for a fool.
31
Purefoy Osbert watched the Fellows file out of the old Library with interest. For a moment he thought they had been discussing the threat he posed to the Master but the meeting had been called before his confrontation with the Dean. Something else was in the wind. Some undergraduates passing him in the Court had spoken about the Master having another Porterhouse Blue and of an ambulance arriving at the Master's Lodge. Whatever the cause of the air of excitement in the College, Purefoy was determined to make use of it. His visit to the Dean and the Dean's impotent and stammering fury had done surprising things for Purefoy's confidence. He no longer felt overawed by the atmosphere of Porterhouse and in his own mind saw it as having no more importance than some casual roadside cafe. Its ceremonies and rituals like the Induction Dinner, its archaic terminology-'the Dossery', 'the Fellows' Combination Room', 'the Buttery', 'the Dean', 'the Master'-were mere devices, theatrical and phoney, having the intention of fooling immature and impressionable minds and masking, like some masonic ceremony, the littleness of the officials who hid behind such titles. In all the other colleges Purefoy had visited at one time or another there had been at least some slight self-mockery. Not at Porterhouse. Here the dense seriousness of small minds prevailed. Purefoy Osbert saw through the pretence and chose his next target. It was to be the Senior Tutor. He caught him as he came up the stairs to his room.
'Ah, there you are,' Purefoy said, corning out of his doorway. 'I'd like a few words with you.'
The Senior Tutor looked at him angrily. He didn't like being accosted without a title. It smacked of rudeness. And he certainly didn't want any words with Dr Osbert. 'Busy at the moment,' he said and turned into his doorway.'
Purefoy Osbert followed him before the Senior Tutor could shut the door in his face. 'It's about the allegations the Dean has made,' he said.
'Allegations? What the devil are you talking about?'
'I was hoping you could explain exactly what your role was,' Purefoy said.
'My role? What role?' demanded the Senior Tutor.
'In the light of Skullion's confession it is important to get things in their proper perspective,' Purefoy continued. 'Now the Dean says that…Well, perhaps it would be fairer to hear your account. That way you will be saved the need for denials.'
The Senior Tutor backed unsteadily into his study. 'Skullion's confession?' he gasped. 'What has Skullion confessed to?'
'To being responsible for the actual murder of Sir Godber Evans. Only the act of murder. He puts the responsibility…Now, if you'll just state for the record what part you played…' Purefoy hesitated and waited for the Senior Tutor's reaction to the imputation that he had played any part in a murder. It was a long time coming. The Senior Tutor was staring at him in horror.
'Sir Godber Evans' murder?' he managed to say finally. 'I had no idea.'
'That is not what the Dean has said in his statement. Now, at the time of the murder you were not in College yourself According to the evidence you gave at the inquest. If you want to change that now…'
'Change it? But I was at Coft Castle visiting Sir Cathcart D'Eath. There were people there who saw us.'
'Us?' said Purefoy with a look of some doubt on his face. 'You did say "us"?'
'Of course I said us. The Dean and I.'
'Really? That is not what the Dean has said,' Purefoy replied. 'Still, if that is your story…'
'Of course it is my story,' shouted the Senior Tutor. 'It's the bloody truth.'
'There is no need to shout,' Purefoy told him. 'Why don't you sit down and tell me about this so-called alibi? You'll feel much better when you've got this off your chest.'
Without thinking the Senior Tutor sat down. His mind was a maelstrom of hopelessly conflicting emotions. Thought hardly came into it. 'I haven't got anything to get off my chest. I don't know anything about Sir Godber Evans' murder. I didn't even know he had been murdered. No one told me.'
Purefoy Osbert smiled, and his smile seemed to imply that the Senior Tutor had hardly needed telling. 'Now, when you spoke to him earlier on the fatal evening what did you actually say to him?'
'Say to him? Say to whom, for God's sake?'
'Skullion of course.'
'But I didn't speak to him that evening. Why the hell should I have spoken to Skullion?'
'That's for you to tell me,' said Purefoy Osbert. 'Now according to the Dean you were the one…'
'Fuck the Dean,' shouted the Senior Tutor. 'I don't care what that stupid bastard says, I'm telling you I never went anywhere near Skullion that evening-'
'Right,' Purefoy interrupted. 'So the Dean is a liar and…'
'Look,' the Senior Tutor yelled, 'I don't know whether the bloody man is a liar or not. What I am…'
'So you're saying his account of your actions is correct now?'
The Senior Tutor stared wildly round the room. Purefoy Osbert recognized the symptom. It was exactly what he had experienced in Mrs Ndhlovo's apartment. He decided to strike another blow at the Senior Tutor's morale. 'As you know the Master, Skullion, was taken away this morning…'
There was no need to say more. The Senior Tutor clearly did know, but until that moment the full implications of the Extraordinary Council meeting hadn't occurred to him. He could understand only too well the Praelector's statement that Skullion was _non compos mentis._ Frankly the Senior Tutor found the Latin totally inadequate to describe the man's state of mind. He was clearly as mad as a hatter. But then so was the bloody Dean, if it came to that. In the Senior Tutor's imagination the police were already interrogating Skullion and would shortly continue their investigations in Porterhouse itself. And the Dean must have had some hand in the murder or he wouldn't be making allegations against him to this swine Osbert. The Senior Tutor made up his desperately confused mind: