Purefoy didn't disagree. Skullion was different but he still wasn't at all sure he liked him. There was a hardness about him that alarmed him and in any case he couldn't forget the menace in Skullion's voice when he threatened the Dean. "That's because you've lived such a protected life, Purefoy,' Mrs Ndhlovo told him. 'When are we going to take the van back and fetch the car? Not today, please. I'm too tired and anyway I think you ought to hear what he has to say first.'
They went out to lunch and it was four when they finally went to the house in Onion Alley off the Newmarket Road. A plump woman let them in. 'He's in the front room because of the stairs and we never use it really,' she said. 'Special occasions. So we made up a bed for him. He's still in it. I'll just go and see he's tidy. Oh, and I'm Mrs Rawston. Charlie, my husband went to school with Mr Skullion.'
They found Skullion sitting up in bed with his bowler on the table beside him. 'Wondered when you was coming. Thought you might have got cold feet.'
'There's no need to be rude,' said Mrs Rawston.
'Not being rude,' said Skullion, 'Dean'll know by now I'm gone from the Park and you gave that B-I-T-C-H your name didn't you? So they'll have a fair idea.'
'Nobody's said anything to me,' said Purefoy. 'But it's true. That dreadful woman does know my name.'
'Just so long as you don't let them know I'm here. If they ask you can say I told you to get lost. They can go on searching the mud for a bit. Do them good. And it'll do them good at the College to wonder what's become of the Master. It's all right, Mrs Charlie, you don't have to wait unless you want to hear a lot of history.'
'I'll make a pot of tea,' said Mrs Rawston and went out.
'We'll get round to why I did what I did to Sir Godber Evans in a bit,' Skullion went on. 'First I'll tell you what they're like and why I'm here and not where that General Sir Cathcart D'Eath promised I'd go if I kept my trap shut, out at Coft Castle which isn't any sort of castle and he trains horses.'
They listened as he told the story and presently Mrs Rawston returned with the tea tray and some biscuits and left them to themselves.
'You do shorthand?' Skullion asked Mrs Ndhlovo who said no but she wrote fast. 'Right, then you'll have to use a tape recorder and I'll go slow because I've got a lot to tell if you want to hear it. The history of the College from a different point of view than any you'd get from anyone else. As it really is or was and not dolled up with things left out because they wouldn't look nice. Forty-five years I was there in the Porter's Lodge and what the porters and the College servants don't learn in forty-five years isn't worth knowing. More than the Dean, more than the Praelector, more than anyone. And I'll tell you if you want to hear.'
'Oh, but I do,' said Purefoy. 'I don't suppose anyone has written a history of Porterhouse from that angle.'
'Course they haven't. Haven't asked and the Dean and them wouldn't have allowed them to if they had. They won't allow you to either, not have it published at any rate. But you can write it down for the record. Just be careful and don't keep it in your room. Dean and Senior Tutor went through your stuff one day you were out.'
'What?' said Purefoy in astonishment and anger. 'Went through all my notes and…Are you sure?'
'Dead certain,' said Skullion. 'Watched them from my bedroom in the Master's Lodge. Saw them through the window and they came out looking shifty and went to the Secretary's office. Want to know why?'
'Yes, I bloody well do.'
'Because there's a copier there. Then the Dean went back up again and came out looking smug.' Skullion laughed. 'I may miss some things but not a lot and what I don't see or hear, other people tell me. But that's not for anyone else's ears. Right?'
'All right,' said Purefoy, still fuming. 'Just the same they had no right-'
'Oh come off it. Right? Right doesn't come into it. You come up here all of a sudden as the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow, get appointed when the Dean's away and the Senior Tutor gets me to sign my name to your appointment without telling me what you are or who put up the money, and they're still not certain, and you think they're not going to want to find out? Was there anything in there said Lady Mary was behind you?'
'No, no I don't suppose there was.'
'Must've been something, because the Dean drives out to Coft Castle to see Sir Cathcart that afternoon and he don't do that just for a chinwag. Never mind that. Just don't leave what I'm going to tell you lying around. Put it somewhere safe out of College.'
He finished his tea and handed the cup to Mrs Ndhlovo. 'And you'd better not be seen around,' he told her. 'You'd be better off in digs. Mrs Charlie'll recommend some The Dean and the Senior Tutor don't hold with women in College.'
'I don't care what they hold with. I'm entitled-
'Entitled? You may be entitled but they can dig up something in College Rules and Regulations says you're not and cause him a lot of trouble arguing about it. Take my word for it. When I've finished, that'll be different. For the time being keep your head down. They can think what they like but there'll be nothing they can do. And I don't want them finding me and trying to stop me spilling the beans.'
'If you say so, Mr Skullion, if you say so.'
'Sensible,' said Skullion, pleased by the 'Mister'. 'Now you'll be wanting to get that van back and fetch your car and you don't want to be all night about it. Ask Mrs Charlie about the digs and I'll see you tomorrow. Any time in the morning.'
It was almost midnight when they got back to Cambridge and slipped up to Purefoy's rooms. 'Just this once,' Mrs Ndhlovo said. 'I'll move into the digs in the morning.'
Dinner in Hall had been a sombre affair. Mention of Porterhouse Park was normally avoided as being an unsuitably morbid topic but there could be no avoiding it now.
'Dr Osbert and a woman went up to see him? How the deuce did they find out how to get there?' the Senior Tutor wanted to know.
'It seems our young colleague is rather more ingenious than his manner suggests,' said the Dean. 'Someone claiming to be from the hospital phoned to say that blood was needed for a transfusion, Skullion had burst an ulcer or some such nonsense, and they needed the address. Walter gave it to them. And now Skullion has disappeared and the police tell me that all the gates were locked and the keys have gone.'
'Nasty, very nasty. He couldn't by any chance have taken himself off?'
'One hardly supposes a man in his condition in a wheelchair would get very far without being spotted. No, I think the presumption must be that Dr Osbert agreed to help him get away from there.'
'But what on earth for? I shouldn't for a moment imagine he and Skullion have anything in common. Just the sort of young man he most dislikes.'
The Dean kept his thoughts on the matter to himself and glanced significantly at the Praelector but the Praelector had preoccupations of his own. The Bumps were coming up and after them the May Balls, and for the first time in several years Porterhouse was having its own May Ball. By that time Hartang would be installed in the Master's Lodge-for once the Inauguration of the new Master was being postponed until the Michaelmas Term in case certain rearrangements had to be made-and the Praelector had spent part of the afternoon with three people from London whose IDs suggested they were Customs and Excise but whose questions and inspection of the College and in particular the Master's Lodge seemed to have more to do with security. The woman had been the one who had impressed the Praelector most. In her forties, she had the air of a perfectly ordinary housewife on her way back from a supermarket-she actually carried a shopping bag-or the local library to collect a new historical romance. Her hair was permed and slightly blue, she was short and plump and at first sight she appeared happily absent-minded. By the time they had finished that first impression had been replaced by another. The patina of cheerful absent-mindedness had been overlaid by too much intelligent questioning and the authority she obviously possessed. The Praelector preferred not to wonder what was in the shopping bag. She seemed particularly interested in the May Ball.