Dry Bones Page 4

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Lime mortar will absorb water, but Portland mortar won’t. So if you’ve used Portland mortar, salts start to form on the bricks, which eventually lead to them crumbling.’

  ‘So you’re saying that the murderer used the best mortar in terms of the health of the building?’

  ‘Yes, but as I hinted earlier, it’s much harder to mix and work with – and it’s unlikely the murderer was also a conservationist, isn’t it?’

  Highly unlikely, I think – near bloody inconceivable, if truth be told.

  Whenever a fictional detective, on-screen or in a novel, starts talking about his need to examine the motive, the means and the opportunity as it relates to this particular crime, you can pretty much guarantee that a fair percentage of readers or viewers will yawn and start to lose interest. It’s such a tired old cliché, they’ll tell each other, and if an author (or scriptwriter) feels the need to embrace it, then that must be because the fountain of his imagination has sprung a serious leak, and all he is left with is a patch of uninspired mud.

  But do you know something – it may be a cliché, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it’s a load of bollocks! In fact, saying a case should be tackled in this way is the best single piece of advice, in less than twelve words, that has ever been available to the members of any profession. And when you’re drowning in the mysteries of an investigation (as I suspect I already am) it sometimes provides a handy life raft to cling onto – although often that life raft can turn out to be no more than the proverbial drowning man’s straw.

  So then, let’s grab hold of the life raft and see where it gets us.

  Means: In this case, anything from a hammer to a large frozen custard pie would have served as the murder weapon, so there’s absolutely no point in worrying about that at the moment.

  Motive: When you don’t even know who the victims are, it’s rather difficult to work out who would have wanted to kill them.

  So what we’re left with is – you’ve guessed it – opportunity!

  Whoever bricked the two victims up in the air vent needed access to the cellars (obviously!) and had to be reasonably confident that he wouldn’t be disturbed while practicing his bit of home improvement.

  And who do I need to talk to, in order to find out which people might have had that opportunity? Mr Jenkins, the head porter, of course!

  He is standing outside the porters’ lodge, and when he sees me approaching, a welcoming smile comes to his lips.

  ‘And how are you, today, Miss Redhead?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mr Jenkins,’ I assure him.

  Have you noted the ‘Mr’?

  None of the dons or students would ever have dreamed of calling the head porter anything but simply ‘Jenkins’. I have never done that myself, not because I have a wild, egalitarian streak running through me (though I do), but simply because I could never think of calling a man of around the same age as my late father solely by his surname.

  And, in a way, this one little idiosyncrasy on my part has become the basis of our relationship. It’s not that Mr Jenkins minds being called ‘Jenkins’ by lads who’ve only just learned to wipe their own arses – like all the other St Luke’s servants, he accepts this is one of those college traditions that has refused to bend its knee to the arrival of the second half of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, my inability to overcome my background and adopt some of these traditions myself clearly amuses him, and he feels at ease in my company.

  ‘I’m working for the college at the moment, Mr Jenkins, and I need to talk to you about something,’ I say, glancing at the ground to indicate to him exactly what that ‘something’ is.

  Mr Jenkins nods, and says, ‘Well, you’d better step inside then.’

  I have never been into the porters’ lodge before, and the first things I notice as I step over the threshold – perhaps because of their positioning, perhaps because of the unanticipated incongruity – are the two glass display cases mounted on the opposite wall.

  ‘May I?’ I ask, forgetting, for a moment, why I’m here.

  ‘Of course you may,’ Mr Jenkins replies.

  Both the cabinets are works of art in themselves – the dark wood polished until it positively dazzles; the joints invisible, so that it seems as if they are held together by magic – but it is their content which takes my breath away.

  In one sits a model of a sailing ship.

  ‘It’s an exact copy of the Cutty Sark,’ Mr Jenkins says from behind me. ‘In its day, it was the fastest tea clipper in the world.’

  I marvel at the intricacy of the detail – the infinite care that has gone into the construction.

  ‘And in the other cabinet we’ve got soldiers of the Napoleonic War,’ Mr Jenkins continues.

  The soldiers are – in their own way – as impressive as the sailing ship, and I catch myself making up very short stories about this very distinctive infantryman and that clearly haughty cavalry officer.

  ‘Did you paint them yourself?’ I ask, ‘because if you did, I’m very impressed.’

  ‘I did more than just paint them – I cast them and moulded them,’ he says.

  ‘You’re an artist,’ I tell him, admiringly.

  The air is instantly chillier.

  ‘I’m not an artist,’ he says, ‘I’m a head porter who dabbles in handicraft. I never forget that – and I’d be grateful if you didn’t.’

  I get it (I think). He defines himself by his role as head porter, and nothing can be allowed to detract from that.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I never meant to offend you.’

  ‘Nor did you,’ he says, as the warmth starts to return to his voice. ‘Now you sit down, and I’ll make us both a nice cup of cocoa.’

  ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ I protest – because I really don’t like cocoa.

  ‘It’s no trouble at all,’ he says firmly, which leaves me with the choice of possibly insulting him a second time or submitting myself to ordeal by cocoa.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I lie.

  I sit, as instructed, in one of the room’s two armchairs – an overstuffed monstrosity which was probably way past its best when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  I look around me. The lodge is a bit like Dr Who’s Tardis, in that it’s much larger inside than you think it could possibly be from the outside. As well as the armchairs, there is a desk, and the table on which (I assume) the mail is sorted. There is also a large paraffin heater, which looks like it should be included in the next NATO-Warsaw Pact arms reduction treaty, and a black-and-white portable television which sits atop an old orange crate. And, of course, there is a sink, a kettle, and several pottery coffee mugs.

  Mr Jenkins returns with two of the mugs – one for each of us – in his hands.

  The message on mine reads, ‘Jesus saves – but Moses invests!’

  It’s mildly sacrilegious, and I suspect that though Mr Jenkins would never have considered buying it himself, it doesn’t offend him enough to warrant being thrown out.

  As I force myself to take a sip of the cocoa, I try to imagine I’m actually drinking a gin and tonic.

  It doesn’t work!

  ‘This is very nice cocoa, Mr Jenkins,’ I lie again. ‘Can I ask you about the bodies, now?’

  ‘Of course. That’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘I need to know who would have had the opportunity to brick the dead men up,’ I say.

  Mr Jenkins smiles. ‘Well, there’s me, for a start – but not if they were walled up before 1926, which is when I started working for Mr Gough – or between the twenty-third of April 1943 and the fifth of March 1948, which was when I was in the army.’ He pauses. ‘Actually, I suppose I could just have squeezed it in between the twelfth and the sixteenth of October 1943, because before the powers-that-be sent me off across the water to defeat Hitler, they did generously grant me a few days leave with my wife.’

  I smile back at him. ‘You’re very precise o
n the dates,’ I say.

  ‘They’re very important dates to me – all of them,’ he replies, suddenly more serious. ‘I don’t begrudge the time I spent in the army – it had to be done, and I did it gladly – but there was never a moment when I didn’t wish I was back here.’

  ‘Tell me about Mr Gough,’ I suggest.

  ‘In the twentieth century, this college has so far had five masters, six deans and seven bursars,’ Mr Jenkins says, ‘but it’s only had three head porters – me, Mr Gough and Mr Gough’s dad.’ He pauses to brush an invisible piece of dust off his jacket shoulder pad. ‘You’d like me to tell you what kind of man he was, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Do you remember that we once had a conversation in which I told you how I felt about St Luke’s?’ he asks.

  Indeed I do. It was during my investigation of the Shivering Turn, and it had such an effect on me that I think I can repeat it almost word for word ‘I’m loyal to the buildings, I’m loyal to the traditions, and I’m loyal to the master,’ he’d said. And then he’d gone on to talk about Sir Hope Stanley – who was master a hundred and fifty years ago – as if he’d known him personally.

  ‘Now, there was a man who combined principle with ability if there ever was one,’ the head porter had told me, with absolute assurance, ‘Sir Hope could have been prime minister if he’d wanted to be, but instead he chose to devote his mind to a much more worthwhile cause.’

  Have you got that? From Mr Jenkins’ perspective, being master of St Luke’s was more worthwhile than being prime minister! But I’m sure that if I’d asked him if that also applied to being the master of any of the other Oxford colleges, he’d have looked at me as if I was mad, because – as far as he was concerned – none of the other colleges even began to measure up to St Luke’s.

  ‘I know you care a great deal about the college,’ I say, inadequately.

  ‘I’m lukewarm in comparison to Mr Gough,’ Mr Jenkins said. ‘I’m not sure I’d actually lay down my life for St Luke’s, but he did.’

  ‘Did he? How?’

  ‘In 1954, he announced that he was retiring, which came as a surprise, because though he was in his early seventies by then, there was no one who didn’t believe that he was fit enough to have carried on for at least another ten years. The college asked what he wanted as a retirement present, and he said he wanted to see me made up to head porter. That was another surprise. “He’s not got the experience,” everybody said. “He’s only been back from the war for six years.”’

  ‘Bastards!’ I hear myself say.

  ‘No, no, they were quite right, by their own lights,’ Mr Jenkins tells me. ‘But Mr Gough wasn’t having any of that. “Not got the experience?” he says. “I’ve been training this lad up since he was four years old.”’

  ‘And had he?’

  ‘Oh yes, he had. My dad was killed towards the end of the First World War. Well, the widow’s pension wasn’t that much, and what you did if you lost a husband in those days was to try and find another one as quick as you could. But mum wasn’t the remarrying kind, which meant that times were hard – and they would have been harder if Mr Gough hadn’t decided to take me under his wing.’ Mr Jenkins pauses, as if he’s just realised he’s somehow gone off track. ‘What was it I was I telling you about?’ he asks.

  ‘You were telling me about how you took over from Mr Gough.’

  ‘That’s right. Normally, when people retire from a job they’ve had all their lives, they find it impossible to completely let go. Sometimes, they hang around hoping something will go wrong, so other people will say, “That would never have happened in X’s day – he was too canny to have made a mistake like that.” Then again, there are those who hang around because they want to be useful, and …’

  ‘I’d bet Mr Gough was one of the latter,’ I interrupted.

  ‘Well, if you did, you’d lose your shirt,’ Mr Jenkins says. ‘You know, Miss Redhead, anticipation’s a very useful quality to have in some jobs, but in your particular line of work I would have thought you might be better advised to concentrate on listening.’

  He says it all with a kindly smile, but it’s a rebuke nonetheless – and, I decide, a thoroughly justified one.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he tells me. ‘Anyway, Mr Gough didn’t hang around at all. In fact, he left Oxford immediately, probably to avoid just that temptation. He was dead within three months, of course, but then we all thought he would be.’

  ‘What!’ I say.

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘But I thought you told me, not five minutes ago, that he was strong enough to last another ten years.’

  ‘So he was – as long as he was head porter of St Luke’s. But the job had been his life, and once he’d given it up, he had no real reason to carry on.’

  ‘Do you ever feel …’ I begin, before I can stop myself.

  ‘A little bit guilty?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, yes,’ I admit.

  ‘Not at all!’ Mr Jenkins says, and he sounds completely sincere. ‘Mr Gough was like a father to me, but getting me this job was no paternal act – if he hadn’t thought I was up to it, he’d never have proposed me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! He knew it would kill him to leave the college, but he cared more about St Luke’s than he did about himself, and he was terrified that if he suddenly grew weak and feeble – if he had a stroke, or started going senile – someone else would choose his successor, and would make the wrong choice.’

  I remind myself why I’m here – and why I’m forcing myself to drink this cocoa.

  ‘Did Mr Gough control the access to all the cellars?’ I ask, and the moment the words are out of my mouth, I realise that I’ve said them just a little too casually.

  Mr Jenkins’ eyes harden – as if he senses his hero is about to come under attack.

  ‘Yes, he did have keys – but so did the master, the dean, and the bursar,’ he says.

  He seems to be suggesting that there were only four keys – in which case this might turn out to be easier than I’d thought it would.

  ‘Even though the other people had keys, I imagine that Mr Gough, from what you’ve told me about him, would have been the kind of man to know exactly who used the cellar and when,’ I say.

  ‘You’re suggesting that those bodies couldn’t have been bricked up without his knowledge, aren’t you?’ Mr Jenkins demands angrily.

  ‘It’s a question I have to ask, and a possibility I have to look into, Mr Jenkins,’ I say.

  He sighs. ‘Yes, I suppose it is. But what you have to understand is that, as good as he was at his job, Mr Gough wasn’t a superhuman. He spent most of his time in the college, but he didn’t live here, and sometimes he had to go home. The master, the bursar and the dean, on the other hand, do live here – but maybe you’ve already ruled them out, because they’re so educated.’

  No, I haven’t ruled them out, but it’s true I’d placed Mr Gough at the top of the mental list – which is dumb because having little formal education isn’t even a small step towards being a killer, and having enough academic qualifications to stuff a large pillow with is no debarment to indulging in a little part-time murder.

  ‘Besides, if you don’t mind me pointing it out, Miss Redhead, you’re forgetting the two world wars,’ Mr Jenkins says.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘You most certainly are. During both World War One and World War Two, a number of soldiers were billeted here, and though I don’t know it for a fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used the cellars to store their equipment.’

  I wouldn’t be surprised either, I think, reflecting that it has only taken a few well-chosen words from Mr Jenkins to expand my suspect list into the tens, or – more likely – into the hundreds.

  Charlie didn’t mention this possibility, did he?

  And I know why he didn’t mention it – because if he had, I’d never have agreed to take on
this investigation, however much he’d begged me.

  Not that I can blame him, I suppose – though in his shoes I’m not sure I’d have been equally tricky and disingenuous with my best mate.

  There’s just one more thing I need to run by Mr Jenkins.

  ‘The stonemason thinks that whoever bricked up the bodies – or at least, bricked up the second of the bodies – made a pretty botched job of it,’ I say.

  ‘I think I have to agree with him,’ Mr Jenkins says.

  ‘So you noticed it yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just before I became head porter. I took my annual two-week holiday, and I spent those two weeks going through the college until I knew every brick and stone in it.’

  I like Mr Jenkins a lot, and I certainly don’t want to find a way to implicate him in the second murder (he must have been somewhere between minus four and plus three when the first one occurred, so we can safely rule him out for that), but like him or not, I have an unpleasant job to do, and unfriendly questions to ask, and that’s just the way it is.

  ‘Did you report this botched job when you noticed it?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was ugly, but it seemed safe and solid enough.’

  ‘And you weren’t surprised that the bursar had passed it as acceptable work, despite it being far below the standards of anything else in this college?’

  ‘No, what I thought was that there’d been a war going on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

  ‘As the war progressed, all the college servants of a suitable age were called up. So what was Mr Gough to do? He brought in retired servants, doddering old men, bow-legged with age, who spilt much more wine at table than they poured.’

  ‘I’m not sure I see the point,’ I admit.

  ‘It was the same across the board. Most of the bricklayers and carpenters either joined the army or were given work directly related to the war effort. So when the bursar needed a builder, he’d have had to call on a retired brickie or chippy – old men whose hands shook, and who’d forgotten half the skills they once had.’

  ‘So you thought that was who had worked on the air vent – a man well past his prime?’