'Anyone who pays for a ticket is entitled to come,' the Praelector told her, and was promptly assured that this year there would be certain unspecified measures taken to keep the rowdier element away.
'We want it to be a happy occasion,' she said. 'I think you can safely leave the staff arrangements to us. We have some excellent caterers we can provide and it will save the College authorities extra work. Now about the Master's accommodation.'
The Praelector had taken them to the Master's Lodge and had left them there. 'I shall be in my room if you need me,' he said.
They had spent several hours there and had come away apparently satisfied. 'Such a very pleasant house. And so handy having a lift. Of course it needs rewiring and a few refinements added. We will send some electricians up in a day or two. There is no need for the College to concern itself. They will use the main door of the house and Bill here will be with them. He knows about these things.'
Bill was the taller of the two men, and looked as though he knew a great deal about a great many things.
'And now if we could just have a word with the porters?'
The Praelector had taken them down to the Porter's Lodge and had gone back to his rooms uncomfortably aware that he had just made the acquaintance of three very hard people. It was going to be a very odd May Ball. And when that evening he had gone down to see if there was any mail in his pigeonhole Walter had been in an unusually serious mood.
'Bloody coppers,' he said with uncharacteristic frankness when the Praelector asked him if the visitors had stayed long. 'Telling me how to run my own business. Going to put a bloke in here with Henry and me for May Week. What do they want to do that for?'
'I think they may be looking for pickpockets and people using the occasion to come into College to steal,' the Praelector said tactfully. 'I'm sure they'll keep out of your way.'
'They'd better. Got enough to do without having the place crawling with flatfoots. Stick out like sore thumbs they do, and rude with it.'
Sir Cathcart would have found the comment precise. His feelings about the police were even less friendly. He'd had two uniformed officers and a plainclothes man in a patrol car drive up without bothering to make an appointment that morning and he hadn't liked their manners in the slightest. They had said they had received a complaint from a Mrs Ransby and had reason to believe he might be able to help them.
Sir Cathcart had tried to laugh it off. 'You mustn't believe anything you read in the papers. An utter travesty of the facts. As a matter of fact she was trying to blackmail me.'
'Oh yes, sir. Was she indeed? Blackmail you? And how was she trying to do that?' the Sergeant had asked in a tone of voice the General hadn't heard from a policeman before. The CID man said nothing. He had just stood there looking at the furniture in the hall and seeming not to be interested. Something about him annoyed Sir Cathcart, who had had two drinks for breakfast.
'Mrs Ransby tried to blackmail you and you didn't feel inclined to pay her. Very natural, sir, and may one enquire what your reaction to her demand, I presume it was for a sum of money, what your reaction was?'
'I told her to fuck off,' said the General. And frankly I'd be glad if you would go and make yourselves useful somewhere else. If you want to discuss anything more with me, you can make an appointment. I am extremely busy and…'
The plainclothes man introduced himself. 'My name is Dickerson, Detective Inspector Dickerson, and I have here a warrant to search premises in Botanic Lane…'
It had been an appalling moment, and the morning had got worse. Sir Cathcart had reacted angrily, the police had asked him if he wanted to speak to his solicitor and have him present when they searched the house, Sir Cathcart had said he did although it was the last thing he wanted, and had then changed his mind and had tried a different approach. That hadn't worked either.
'The Chief Constable is in London today, sir. If you'd like his deputy…' Sir Cathcart didn't, and had suffered the ignominy of being driven to Botanic Lane because as the Sergeant had pointed out it wouldn't look good if he was stopped for driving over the limit.
Nothing had looked good. The architects on the ground floor had watched his arrival with interest and when they got up to what Sir Cathcart had in the past jovially referred to as his little love nest he had been shocked by the mess it was in. Evidence of Myrtle's drunken struggles with the latex costume was everywhere and the brandy bottle was still on the floor of the bedroom. In the bathroom things were worse still. The consequences of the brandy were in the basin, the toothbrush was on the floor with the old razor, and the smell was most unpleasant. There was worse still to come.
'A one-way mirror, eh? And a video camera. Well, well. Someone is into porno by the look of things. I think we are going to need a photographer and the print man,' the Inspector said, and suggested they wait outside in the car. The General went downstairs and ran the gauntlet of the architects' office and sat in the police car. He'd changed his mind about his solicitor.
'You can use the car phone, sir,' he was told. An hour later with the solicitor, a very respectable solicitor who, if he had known General Sir Cathcart D'Eath in happier circumstances, didn't show it, they all climbed the stairs and inspected the rooms once again. The leather straps and the inflatable gag were placed in plastic bags.
'There is no need for you to say anything, and I strongly advise you not to,' the solicitor informed Sir Cathcart and requested that his client be allowed to go home. The General had to wait for a taxi and the Inspector said he would make an appointment to see him when they needed to ask him any further questions. Or perhaps he would prefer to come to the police station instead when they let him know. The solicitor said his client would prefer to be interviewed at home. Sir Cathcart went back to Coft Castle and was photographed by a young newspaperman who just happened to be there.
Alone in his study Sir Cathcart D'Eath sat with a revolver and a bottle of Chivas Regal and thought about shooting Myrtle fucking Ransby. And possibly some policemen at the same time.
38
As the end of term drew near and the Porterhouse Eights, no longer near the Head of the River, rowed over or moved up one, and as the marquees for the May Ball arrived and preparations were made, for erecting them, Hartang came almost unnoticed to Porterhouse. His car, no stretch limo with black windows but a three-year-old Ford as nondescript as Hartang himself, slipped into the Old Coach House and the Master-to-be climbed out and stared around at the motley of old cars, the Dean's humpbacked Rover and the Chaplain's ancient Armstrong Siddeley and Professor Pawley's even older Morris. In the space of sixty miles he had stepped from the safety and sterile modernity of Transworld Centre into a mausoleum of antique machinery. Even the large iron bolts on the Coach House doors alarmed him by their simplicity while on the whitewashed wall at one end a wooden hay-rack spoke of even older means of transport. And the floor was cobbled and stained with oil. Hartang looked at it all distrustfully and with a sense of defeat.
'If you'll just follow me, sir,' said the taller of the two men who had driven up with him. 'We can walk across to the Master's Lodge unobserved.' He opened a side door and stepped outside. Hartang followed nervously and blinked in the bright sunshine. Without his dark blue glasses the light hurt his weak eyes and he walked with head down to avoid the glare until they were in the hall of the Master's Lodge. Here evidence of the past was all too apparent. The furniture he had seen on his previous visits had been comparatively modern but in its place there was solid black oak and dark mahogany and even an old curved wooden hatstand. On the wall the portrait of Humphrey Lombert, Master 1852-83, stared through small metal spectacles sternly into the distance over his head. The floor was shining parquet with a dark red Afghan rug. Behind him the smaller man shut the door quietly and they went through into the drawing-room where a woman with permed hair and wearing a brown tweed suit was sitting on a chintz sofa looking through a copy of _The Field._ Ah, there you are,' she said. 'I do hope you had an uneventful drive.'