‘Daniel, is this wise?’ the Master asked.
‘Unlikely.’
‘But you intend to go ahead anyway?’
‘That’s right, Theo.’
Theo Bellairs sighed. They were taking Lapsang Souchong upstairs in the Master’s Lodgings, just as they had done on the day of Aimee’s death. Daniel had always had a sneaking affection for the sitting room and its atmosphere of sinful, old-fashioned luxury. To be enfolded by the vast leather armchairs was like succumbing to the embrace of comely if ageing courtesans. The room smelled of old Morocco-bound books and the tang of finest Spanish sherry; he associated it with learned conversation about Swinburne and Gerard Manley Hopkins and with slyly obscene jokes veiled by elaborate aphorisms.
Since Theo’s election as Master, the room also reeked of his cats, a pair of promiscuous Persians called Cesare and Lucrezia. Daniel had first come here as a shy undergraduate, to a cocktail party thrown by one of Theo’s predecessors, and to submit to the ritual of ‘handshaking’, when Theo, as his tutor, gave the Master an end of term report on his progress. Now he had succeeded Theo as Blenkiron Fellow in Modern History. They were colleagues, if hardly equals in the hierarchy of academe. Yet his stomach had lurched as he climbed up the worn stone steps to the Master’s door, as it had on his very first visit. He needed no reminding that he was embarking on an adventure. On something like a whim, he was giving up academic tenure, and an accompanying level of job security that most people would kill for.
Theo put down his cup with the reverence that Crown Derby deserved and strode to the seat in the bay window overlooking the spreading oaks of the Great Quadrangle. Settling himself on the velvet cushion, he folded one long skinny leg over the other. He was only a year away from retiring to the villa in Nice that he shared with his partner, a mediaevalist called Edgar, yet every movement was invested with a youthful grace. He was wearing one of the white suits for which he was renowned. Daniel had always wondered how Theo managed to keep them so clean; if he’d risked dressing in anything similar, it would be filthy within an hour. Grubbiness was alien to Theo; he was never besmirched by so much as a single cat hair.
He beckoned Daniel to join him. Down in the quad, a group of rugby players was heading for the Buttery bar, and a young man in a college scarf was running after a girl with red-rimmed eyes who was blowing her nose and pretending not to notice him.
‘Look at them, Daniel. Do you recall how it felt to be eighteen? Your early struggles with Tocqueville stick in my mind. Remember telling me that you intended to change subjects, that you wanted to study…ah, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics?’
He rolled the words out as if they were exotic profanities. Daniel couldn’t help smiling. ‘And I remember your telling me to have patience.’
‘And I was right, was I not?’
Conversing with Theo was like playing chess with Capablanca. You always had to anticipate the move after next to have a prayer of staying in the game. In his mind, Daniel heard Miranda’s words.
‘Yes, but life is short.’
‘It may feel longer for those who fritter away the opportunities that it affords.’
‘Sorry, but I didn’t come here to be talked round. You gave me time to think over my decision. I’m grateful, but my mind’s made up.’
Incapable of crude exasperation, Theo fingered his cravat. ‘You always had a streak of stubbornness.’
He’d once employed the same tone to criticise a truncated account of the coal mining industry’s role in Britain’s industrial development that Daniel had dashed off during an essay crisis prompted by a hectic affair with a girl from St Catz. That was the first time Daniel had heard the advice that Theo gave to all his disciples: to quote from one source is plagiarism, to quote from several is scholarship.
‘And it’s no good telling me that a man who’s tired of Oxford is tired of life.’
‘Yet of course it is true. Oxford is unique. Look out of the window, Daniel.’ Theo’s tone became warm although he was not, Daniel thought, a warm man. For all his many acts of personal kindness and his unfailing manners, he always seemed remote from the quotidian. Quotidian was, Daniel thought, the right word: very Theo. Theo simply did not do emotion; according to Edgar, he loved his cats more than any human being, and Daniel wasn’t sure that Edgar was joking. ‘The brightest and the best come here to learn from us. We owe it to them to give them what they seek.’
‘They seemed to manage well enough when I was away.’
‘We are about to start Trinity Term, Daniel. As you well know, the custom is to give notice during Michaelmas, so that interviews for a replacement may be conducted during Hilary with a view to an appointment commencing at the start of the new academic year.’
‘Sorry, Theo, but you won’t be short of strong candidates available at short notice. Have a word with Pederson, he’s chafing to move back from Wales. Or how about…’
Theo put up a mottled hand. It was more like a claw, these days, Daniel thought. ‘Enough. I hope this isn’t a delayed reaction to Ernst Walter’s boorishness?’
Last summer, an argument had raged in the Senior Common Room about Daniel’s entitlement to a sabbatical. The guiding principle was that one was eligible for a term away from college after completing six years as a tutorial fellow. Daniel had spent his sixth year as a visiting fellow on the other side of the Atlantic. A law don called Ernst Walter Immel had complained that a year’s absence from Oxford should not be permitted to count towards the entitlement to yet more leave, but Theo had ruled in Daniel’s favour. The deal was that he’d continue teaching until the end of Hilary. By giving notice now, Daniel could honour his side of the bargain and still leave college at Easter.
‘Much as I hate college politics, I promise that wasn’t the reason.’
‘What of the response to your television series? Petty jealousies are always vexing.’
Daniel’s scripts had been edited by ratings-driven zealots. The book on which they were based proclaimed a parallel between historical research and the work of a detective; the rewrites transformed it from a light academic essay into a quasi-crime show. The producer said this made the programmes more accessible and the viewer figures left him salivating with delight. A couple of reviewers from rival faculties of history, on the other hand, had frothed with rage. The focus on history as popular entertainment was symptomatic of collapsing educational standards and they made it pretty clear that Daniel was personally to blame.
‘By the time the editors had done their worst, the series didn’t feel as though it had much to do with me.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re planning a new career as a — ’ Theo’s cough became a choke, as if at the horror of it, ‘- a celebrity?’
‘Been there, done that. Never again.’
Theo’s saurian eyes narrowed. ‘Do tell me, then. How is the new book progressing?’
‘So-so.’ Not at all was the truth, but he refused to allow Theo to score too many points. Time to score one himself. ‘You know how it is.’
‘Indeed.’
A rival from Cambridge had savaged Theo’s last book in The Times Literary Supplement. Although he had brushed off the assault with his customary suavity, during the past decade he had published nothing but a handful of articles in obscure journals. No ego, Daniel knew, is as easily bruised as an academic’s.
‘But will pursuing this rural idyll provide fresh inspiration?’
Put with such urbane irony, the idea sounded absurd. ‘I want to make a new start, simple as that.’
‘There was a dreadful rumour — scurrilous, I’m sure — that you might be moving to Harvard.’
‘Your grapevine’s as efficient as ever. God only knows why you were never recruited by the security services.’
‘How do you know that I wasn’t?’ Theo’s eyebrows might have been designed to be arched. ‘So — Harvard?’
Daniel shook his head. His series had been shown in the States and picked up a couple of awards, although to his chagrin one of them came in the category of Best Docu-Crime. For a few weeks Harvard’s extravagant offer lingered in his mind, until he met Miranda and everything changed. Only yesterday he’d received a chaser from the Americans, but at once he’d scribbled a reply saying how flattered he was, but no thanks. He was going to extend his break from teaching for a while. Stay in England and write another book. Perhaps they might come back, putting even more dollars on the table, but it would make no difference.
‘So you said no?’
‘This really isn’t about money.’
Theo sniffed. ‘Have I ever mentioned that your famously vague, rather dishevelled charm can be a little wearisome on occasion? When it acts as a cloak for intransigence, for instance?’
‘Thanks for pointing that out, Theo,’ Daniel said easily. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
There was a scuffing at the door and Lucrezia made an entrance, heading for Theo’s lap. ‘There, there, my pretty. Now look, Daniel, you don’t have to resign. Why not get the best of both worlds? Pursue your rural dream and remain on the Faculty. Keep the flat. Rent it out, become a filthy capitalist. If you come back in Michaelmas, you won’t have to do much teaching. For goodness sake, sixteen lectures for the university over the space of a year are scarcely going to wreck your work-life balance. You’re hardly likely to succumb to occupational stress on the — ’
‘It’s not about the teaching, either.’ Daniel couldn’t ever recall interrupting Theo before. It simply wasn’t done, it was worse than singing bawdy songs during a sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to you or to the students if my heart wasn’t in my work. I just want a break, end of story.’
‘The sabbatical wasn’t long enough for you?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m well aware that I’ve not done enough for college lately. Better to resign than deprive a worthier candidate of a place at high table.’
Theo kept probing, like a dentist seeking evidence of decay. ‘I’m glad you want to write. But with the greatest of respect to the libraries of Cumbria, they can scarcely match the resources of the Bodleian. Why not research your book here?’
‘I’ve spent almost half my life in Oxford. I’m stale. Believe it or not, I’ll be a better historian when I’m living in the Lakes.’
‘Recharging the batteries?’ Theo winced at the cliche even as he uttered it. ‘Well, it is not for me to suggest that you’re being self-indulgent, but you might spare a thought for the college. We’ve lost Quiggin and Kersley this year already.’
‘Sorry, but we’ve bought the cottage. I never realised conveyancers could move so quickly. Miranda is up there already.’
‘You’re sacrificing a great deal for her. I hope she’s worth it.’
Daniel was supposed to be laid-back, the newspapers said that was his style, but Theo knew better than anyone how to get under his skin.
‘Thanks for your concern, but yes.’
Theo stroked his cat, spoke softly to it. ‘He doesn’t love us any more, Lucrezia. He’d prefer to run off to the back of beyond with some girl he’s picked up. He met her on the rebound and now his heart is ruling his head. Or if not his heart, some other part of his anatomy.’
‘It’s not on the rebound.’
‘No?’ Theo flicked an imaginary spot of dust from his immaculate cuff. ‘Are you sure about that, Daniel? Can you put your hand on your heart and say that this — this frolic has nothing to do with what happened to poor Aimee Durose?’
The question stung like a wasp. ‘Aimee has nothing to do with this.’
‘You’re going into hiding.’
‘I want to do something different.’
‘It’s the same thing.’
Daniel shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
‘The truth is, that you blame yourself, isn’t that right?’ Theo’s voice was barely audible now, but Daniel had never known it sound so harsh. ‘Be honest, admit it. All this nonsense about recharging batteries may fool your new girl, but it doesn’t fool me. This is all about you and Aimee and your ridiculous guilty conscience.’
‘I’ve never known a place as quiet as this,’ Miranda said.
‘Can’t I hear someone drilling in the background?’ Daniel said into his mobile. He was draped over an armchair in his college room, on the top floor of staircase fourteen. Below in the Great Quadrangle, a lawnmower roared. In his mind he pictured the grounds of Tarn Cottage, untamed and yet oddly suggestive of an elaborate and long-forgotten design.
‘Too right. The builders are working upstairs and any minute now, I expect them to smash through the bedroom wall. I should have bought ear-muffs. At least the electrician has sorted the wiring now and the shower’s working too. I must have sluiced myself under the jet for a quarter of an hour this morning. It was just like washing away my old life. But — you should have been here last night.’
‘Wish I had been.’
She giggled. ‘It was as silent as — well, a graveyard. In the evening, I went out for a walk, just a ramble around the tarn. It was so eerie, with an owl hooting and twigs cracking. This sounds silly, but I felt nervous, knowing there wasn’t another person within a mile of the cottage.’
‘Sounds like heaven. Remember when the woman in the flat upstairs from you was burgled? And the boy stabbed by the racists while you went out to the kebab house?’
‘Of course you’re right,’ she said. ‘Funny thing is, I’ve never felt as alone as I did last night.’
‘You won’t be alone for long,’ he said. ‘The sooner I pack up here the better. Theo’s cutting up rough and I can’t really blame him. I didn’t make a good job of explaining myself to him.’
‘Maybe you should have been cryptic,’ she said. ‘It worked for me.’
He laughed. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
When Miranda had announced that she was leaving the job, Tamzin had jumped to the conclusion that she was planning to bring a claim for sexual harassment. Without any prompting, the company offered a severance payment, ‘in full and final settlement.’ Her response didn’t mask her contempt, and senior management, in panic mode, increased the golden handshake by fifty per cent. Better than winning the lottery. ‘Anyway, I’ll have said my last goodbyes by the time you get back here.’
‘I can’t wait to see you again,’ she said softly. ‘This really is a different world, you don’t realise until you spend a few days here. It’s not just that you can’t drive fast down the lanes and that the hills mess up the TV reception. I keep thinking I’m a different person. When I called the plumber on the phone, I was tempted to make up a new name for myself. A new identity for a new life.’
‘Please don’t change,’ he said. ‘It’s you I want, no one else.’
During a break from the tedium of packing books, he glanced through the Oxford Mail and an article about people-smugglers caught his eye. It was so easy these days to buy a new identity. With a few keystrokes, an internet surfer could acquire a fake driver’s licence, eulogistic job references, a sheaf of utility bills for a false address. Miranda’s fantasy had lodged in his brain. What would it be like, to take on a different name? How did it affect the way you felt inside, pretending to be someone that you were not?
He was jerked out of his reverie by a fierce knocking at the door. The caller strode in without awaiting a response. Gwynfor Ellis seemed to fill the poky room. No one could doubt that his hefty frame and battered features belonged to a veteran rugby player. Few who did not know him would guess at his unrivalled knowledge of Celtic history or at the delicacy with which he pored over ancient texts.
‘Thought I’d better come and see for myself,’ he said, nodding at the boxes of books piled high on either side of the window. ‘See whether you’d change your mind before you succumb forever to the embrace of Satan, masquerading as The Good Life. I was looking out from the library window and saw you leaving Theo’s. He’s pissed off with you, that’s for sure.’
Daniel spread his arms. ‘He thinks I’ve let him down. Possibly he’s right and I should have hung around longer. I owe him a lot, no question.’
‘I’d say you’ve repaid the debt over the years. Of course, opinion in the SCR is divided. You’ve replaced the new building programme as the hot topic in college. It’s just as well you’ve been lying low. Most of the fogies think you’ve lost your marbles, giving up your fellowship in return for a lifetime’s servitude of doing-it-yourself.’
Daniel groaned. The scions of the Senior Common Room loved nothing better than trashing the reputations of absent friends over tea and scones. Whenever he thought of them — which wasn’t often — he not only remembered that Lewis Carroll had been an Oxford don, but also guessed what inspired the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
‘What they don’t realise is that Miranda loves nothing better than slapping paint on walls. She’s in her element already, organising the tradesmen. With any luck, the makeover will be half-finished by the time I move up there.’
‘You’ll be lucky. It took Debbie and me six months to get one small bathroom sorted.’ Gwynfor hesitated. ‘Tell me it’s none of my business, but…is Miranda running away from something — or someone?’
‘Of course, it’s none of your business,’ Daniel said calmly. ‘Listen, she was in a relationship for a few years. He was married with three kids. Eventually his wife found out and gave him a her-or-me ultimatum. He chose to stay married. My lucky break, but it shattered Miranda’s confidence for a while. I understand what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong.’
‘Question is, do you really need to make a complete break? Why can’t you leave yourself a bit of wriggle room?’
‘Sorry, it’s like a Mills and Boon romance, but we want to make a commitment to this.’
Gwynfor stared. ‘Commitment? Daniel Kind? Am I hearing right?’
Daniel grinned. ‘Past performance is no guide to the future, as the investment folk say. Wriggling’s off the agenda. Miranda had enough of that with the married man and all the reasons why the time was never right for him to pack his bags and leave his family.’
‘But in case things don’t work out up north?’
‘Cumbria isn’t on the other side of the globe.’
‘It’s further away than you think. And I’m not talking miles on the clock.’
‘I suppose you’re right. But it’s something I have to do.’
‘Well, Miranda is a gorgeous lady.’
‘Yes,’ Daniel said. ‘She is.’
‘Think of all those disappointed fans of yours. The porters were complaining they couldn’t cram all the mail into your pigeon-hole. And what will the two of you do for money?’
‘I’ll start writing again, when I’m ready. A proper book, not a TV script. And I’ve sold the house in Summertown for twice the price that the two of us are paying for this cottage. Miranda’s flat is still on the market, but we haven’t even needed a huge loan. So the cash won’t run out in a hurry. It’s not as if I earn a fortune as a college fellow.’
‘Tell me about it. All the same, you’re committed and she isn’t?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. We’re going into this together, the cottage is ours in equal shares. She’s passionate about Brackdale, the move was her idea. I tried to talk her out of it.’
‘But you’ve changed your mind.’
‘The more I think about it, this isn’t so much getting away from it all. It’s more like going back home.’
Gwynfor stabbed a thick index finger at the wall posters advertising a musical at the Playhouse, a performance of The Real Inspector Hound in the Newman Rooms, a Balliol concert. Daniel had taken Aimee to each of them.
‘This is where you belong. Oxford gets inside you, there’s no resisting it. You’re part of the place and it’s part of you.’
‘That’s what I used to think,’ Daniel said. ‘But now I’m breaking free.’
‘Something I need to tell you,’ Daniel said, switching off the car radio. ‘I should have mentioned it before, but the time never seemed quite right.’
After a final weekend in Oxford, they were caught in a tailback on the Thelwall Viaduct, on the way back to their new home. Three lines of vehicles stretched ahead of them, as far as the eye could see. In a minibus in the adjoining lane, a group of teenage girls were waving their arms in the air and singing to pass the time. Rudimentary lip-reading suggested a tribute to Abba’s greatest hits.
Miranda took a breath. ‘If it’s about Aimee, you don’t need to say any more, okay? That’s all in the past. What went on between you and her — it’s private. It doesn’t affect you and me.’
‘It’s not about Aimee.’
With a wicked grin, she said, ‘Listen, I already worked out that you weren’t dressing down for the benefit of the TV ratings. No image consultant required, you really are that scruffy.’
‘Lucky that unkempt was fashionable at just the right time. No, it’s about the cottage.’
‘Oh, is that all? Break it to me gently. Does the roof need replacing? Some bad news in a secret codicil to the survey that I wasn’t allowed to see?’
‘The roof’s fine. This is to do with the cottage’s history.’
‘You’ve been investigating?’ She smiled. ‘Does it have a ghost? The spirit of an old farmer’s wife who fell in the tarn and was too plump to climb out?’
‘No ghost,’ he said. ‘At least — not exactly.’
‘What, then?’
He swallowed. ‘All those years ago, when we took a holiday in Brackdale, I made friends with a murderer. He lived at Tarn Cottage.’
‘Jesus.’
‘But he was only thirteen years old. He’d never done anyone any harm in his life. What’s more, I’ve never believed he was capable of murdering anyone.’
‘A miscarriage of justice?’ She was at once sympathetic, ready to be outraged. Her research for a series of articles about women falsely accused of killing their children had robbed her of faith in the judicial system. She cared passionately for life’s victims; it was one of the things he loved about her.
‘He was suspected of murdering a young woman, a tourist. But the case never came to court. He and I met while my dad and I were out walking. Our first full day in the Lakes. His name was Barrie Gilpin and he lived in Tarn Cottage with his widowed mother. We talked and started playing together. I could tell he was different, but I didn’t know quite why. I’d never heard of autism and he had a mild form of it. We were two loners who sort of hit it off together. We saw each other every day, he became part of our family for a fortnight. When we were leaving, I made a promise to write, to stay in touch. Then my father left home and our world fell apart. I let Barrie down. I never wrote that letter.’
‘You can’t take the blame for that. Don’t always be so hard on yourself.’
The car was stuffy, the windows were misting up. He turned down the heater and said, ‘There’s more. Like I told you, I swore to my mother that I wouldn’t make contact with my father. Louise never exchanged a word with him from the day he walked out until the day he died. But I did. He’d fallen for a civilian worker at police headquarters and they moved up to Cumbria together. He’d always loved the Lakes, wanted to settle there, but my mother was Mancunian, through and through. The Lakes weren’t far away, but she insisted on sticking close to her roots. We never travelled much, for me going up to Oxford was a great adventure. All the time, I wanted to get back in touch with my father. I must have written him a hundred letters, over the years, but I never sent a single one. I just couldn’t do that to my mother, it would have been worse than his infidelity.’
Miranda squeezed his hand. ‘But he was your flesh and blood. She didn’t have the right…’
‘She didn’t have very much at all after Dad abandoned her,’ Daniel said. ‘He was never mean over money, but the divorce was bitter. There were rows over his right of access to Louise and me. In the end he simply gave up. That made me feel he’d written me off, but as the years drifted by, I wondered if there was another side to the story. Then one day I saw my father’s name in the newspaper. Inspector Ben Kind of the Cumbria Constabulary, quoted in connection with a murder inquiry. A woman had been killed and her body left on the Sacrifice Stone. Remember it?’
‘The strange boulder, perched on the summit of the fell.’
‘Yes, Barrie was in awe of the Stone. The story was that every year in pagan times, the community used to sacrifice a virgin. To make sure the gods were appeased and the lakes didn’t run dry. I’d forgotten all about it until I read that report in the Guardian. Then I started to wonder if it had rung a bell in my father’s memory.’
‘Did your father arrest Barrie?’
Daniel shook his head. ‘He never got the chance. Barrie’s body was found not far from the victim’s. He’d fallen into a ravine and died. Case closed, as far as the police were concerned. I couldn’t help thinking about his mother. Poor Mrs Gilpin, he must have caused her plenty of grief, but she still worshipped him.’
‘And she’s the lady whose cousin is selling the cottage?’
Ahead of them, traffic was edging forward. Daniel touched the accelerator and switched the tape back on. Carole King, singing “It’s Too Late”.
‘So there you have it. Tarn Cottage was once home to a murderer, if the police were to be believed. Barrie spent his whole life there. He would never have moved away. Sorry, I should have told you before. But…’
He hadn’t known how she would react, but she surprised him with her calm. ‘It’s not a problem. You didn’t want to upset me, to put me off after I’d set my heart on the cottage. That was sweet of you. Just like your trust in your old friend.’
‘Barrie may have seemed odd, but he was a gentle soul.’
‘You and he were only kids. Time passes. People change.’
‘Not that much. There wasn’t a violent bone in his body. My father knew Barrie, he entertained him one wet afternoon with the card tricks he used to amuse Louise and me with. Barrie lapped it up, the two of them got along famously. That should have counted for something with the old man.’
‘You discussed it with him?’
‘Not for a long time. I was too furious. It seemed to me that they’d found a convenient scapegoat. But eventually I made the call. He’d retired by then and he nearly had a seizure when he realised it was me on the line. He wasn’t good at articulating his feelings, but that was what I suppose I wanted. When it didn’t happen, I felt frustrated. I’d had a couple of beers, I said a few harsh things. When I rang again to apologise, he said he’d done a lot of thinking. He wanted to call my mother and apologise for the hurt he’d caused her. Louise too.’
‘And did he?’
Daniel kept his eyes fixed on the line of cars ahead. ‘No, but it wasn’t his fault. I–I didn’t encourage him. I said they were both still bitter, even after so many years. Knowing them as I did, I couldn’t imagine them letting bygones be bygones. They were too proud.’
‘Did you discuss Barrie Gilpin?’
‘It was a one-sided conversation. He clammed up on me. I had the feeling that there was plenty he wanted to say, but he didn’t know how to say it. Not long after that, while I was speaking at a conference in Philadelphia, he died. Killed one night in a hit and run accident. They never found the driver, I suppose it was some idiot who was way over the limit. I didn’t even find out he was dead until after the funeral. My mother had a stroke a month later and never regained consciousness.’
‘What did you think he’d wanted to tell you?’
He hesitated. ‘It’s probably wishful thinking.’
‘Go on.’
‘Something in his manner made me believe that he agreed with me. He didn’t believe Barrie Gilpin was a murderer.’