Slaying is Such Sweet Sorrow (3 page)

“
What
sort of person examined him?” asked Alice White, a fluttery silver-haired lady dressed in her usual lacy dress with gloves and hat. “ ‘Intern’—that doesn’t sound like a proper doctor!”

“I believe it is the American term for a houseman,” the new vicar said breathlessly as he reached us, “one taking medical training in hospital.”

“Well,” said my best friend, Fiona Bennett, “I’d not worry about it anymore, my dear. Emily and Peter are the last people to take any chances with that baby. Come along down to my house and we’ll have a nice strong cup of tea to settle your nerves.”

She was a plump, earthy woman who, like me, was amazed to be entering upon her sixties. She had lovely blue eyes and gray hair in a pair of braids wrapped round her head. She and her husband, John, a detective sergeant in the Thames Valley police, had moved right into my life like the oldest of friends during my first days in the village.

“Oh, I wish I could,” I answered. “But I have to go to this party tonight, where Peter is supposed to be awarded a headship. I agreed in a weak moment, and now I can’t get out of it.”

“Ah, your son-in-law is to be made head?” the vicar exclaimed. “How gratifying! I read
The Hero Villain
last winter in one sitting, really quite thrilling, I could not put it down.”

I couldn’t help smiling at him, his pale blue eyes alight with scholarly excitement. He was so much the idea I had always had of a rural English vicar, it was almost funny. Our previous vicar had been a loudmouthed young modernist, detested by the entire village. When he was gone, after the murder, we had expected something as bad if not worse, but miraculously we got the Reverend Henry Ivey, a gentle and studious septuagenarian, and such a traditionalist in liturgical matters that some of the villagers muttered about “popishness.”

“Well,” said the remaining member of the group, our shopkeeper-postmistress, Enid Cobb, “I got the best thing for a blow to the head, Hawkins’ Bruisin’ Compound, only eighty p the bottle. I’d wager they don’t know about it at that hospital. If you really want to help the little feller, you might come by the shop on your way out.”

I thanked her without committing myself, and she sniffed, giving me a knowing look from her small, squinted eyes.

The sun was getting low, and I knew I needed a shower and maybe a bite to eat before heading back to Oxford. When they had left I opened the gate and went up the worn brick path. The rose vine that climbed beside the door was green now, and I stopped to check for buds among the leaves. Surely there would be some soon, and I felt certain they would be the old-fashioned, cabbagey kind, with that strong, sensuous perfume.

If only I could stay home, have a peaceful evening with my music and books as the the antique mantel clock chimed off the hours—instead of trying to make conversation with people far more intellectual than I was, and to control my temper in the presence of a pair of people I hated!

I caught sight of Muzzle, almost concealed in the uncut spring grass, just outside his favorite refuge. He must have been watching to see if Archie was still around before he ventured into the house.

“Oh, Muzzle.” I sighed. “I wish I could hide in the potting shed too!”

’Tis not a black coat and a little band…

Or looking downward with your eyelids close

And saying, “Truly, an’t may please Your Honour,”

Can get you any favour with great men.

You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute,

And now and then stab, as occasion serves.

—Christopher Marlowe,
Edward II

T
he award ceremony was to be held in the Senior Common Room, where the dons hang out when they aren’t teaching or burrowing in the library. Peter and Emily had given me a tour of Mercy College weeks ago, so I knew where to go. I parked, as Peter had told me to, at their apartment building by Folly Bridge, and walked up St. Aldate’s to the college. It sits between the square, modern city police station, and the great baroque facade of Christ Church College, at the edge of Oxford’s academic center, since it’s an upstart only a couple of hundred years old. Its buildings, forming the usual square around a pampered lawn, are in the classical Roman style of Robert Adam, popular at the time of George III whose statue stands haughtily atop the tunnel-like entranceway.

The college porter checked a list of names and waved me through. I stopped for a moment and squeezed my eyes shut, reminding myself one more time that I had to play it cool and indifferent. I had let Quin get to me this afternoon, but I would definitely keep it together tonight.

I followed a cobbled path to a building that formed one side of the square, then up a flight of dark, rather damp-smelling stairs toward voices and light coming out an open door. I stopped on the top step, took a deep breath, and smoothed my red silk shirtwaist dress, hopelessly out of fashion but the only dressy garment I had brought from the States. I’d almost left it behind, thinking I’d have no use for it out in the country, but tonight was the second time I had needed it. I’d been nervous on the first occasion, entering a stately home to be presented to the upper crust, but that was nothing compared to the dread I felt tonight.

I stepped through the door into a beautifully proportioned room with one tall, arched window and three walls of packed bookshelves. A fireplace crackled with flames, portrtaits of nineteenth-century academics looked down at me from ornate frames, a small television set crouched shamefacedly in a corner. It was not a large room, the eleven people standing around on the softly faded Oriental rug pretty well filled it. I flashed an uncertain smile, my eyes sweeping over the group, getting a vague image of middle-aged men in dark suits, one heavyset woman, and two or three slim ones. Among the latter I recognized Mrs. Stone, Emily’s patient. I nodded at her and at Tom Ivey, before my eyes came to a screeching halt and hung a sharp left as they collided with Quin and his Barbie doll.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you decided to come,” I heard my son-in-law say, at my shoulder. I turned to him gratefully and met his sympathetic gaze. “I appreciate how difficult it is, but you’ll see, everything will go smoothly.”

Now I noticed that Emily was with her father, engaging him in determined conversation, and I realized she and Peter had divided the job of supervising her parents this evening.

“No reason it shouldn’t,” I said firmly. “How’s our boy getting along?”

“He was fine all day. We’ve stopped worrying about concussion.”

“That’s a relief!” My eyes scanned the crowd again, moving so quickly past Quin and his woman that Peter noticed.

“It turns out she’s no Barbie, is she?” he said quizzically.

I didn’t understand what he meant for a moment, and when I did I stared at him in surprise. I had called her that for so long, and thought of her, when forced to, as a sexy young babe, that I could hardly believe what he had said. My eyes turned reluctantly toward the fireplace, and I looked at her for the first time.

No, she was definitely not a Barbie. She had to be in her forties, a couple of decades older than I’d imagined her. She wore a long jacket that matched her gray woolen dress and tried its best to hide her rather too-round hips and stomach. Her face was square-jawed, and middle age had carved some furrows around her wide mouth and her best feature, a pair of large, expressive brown eyes. She knew how to wear makeup to emphasize them and play down the jaw problem, but she seemed to have given up on her hair, it just hung down straight in a Dutch bob with bangs.

So he had left me for a middle-aged, overweight woman with a bad haircut! It had hurt enough when I thought I’d lost out to youth and beauty, but this was worse. I must have been cast aside for something she had that I not only didn’t have, but couldn’t even perceive. A tornado of anger and confusion went whirling through me, and somewhere in the middle of it a little voice whispered, What is this? He can’t hurt you anymore, remember?

They must have felt my gaze, because simultaneously they turned their heads and met it. She remained expressionless, but he threw me a nervous, tentative smile. I was so far from smiling at that moment, my facial muscles felt paralyzed. Incredibly, he nudged her, nodding toward me, and she took a step forward. I spun around and started across the room toward the window, thinking with bitter satisfaction of a phrase from some Victorian novel: “She cut them dead!”

I should have been thinking instead of where I was going, because I walked right into one of the middle-aged men. His glass flew out of his hand, splashing both of us. I looked down at my one good dress, its skirt now decorated with a purple Rorschach puzzle of wine.

“I do beg your pardon,” said the poor man earnestly, pulling out a wrinkled handkerchief and dabbing ineffectually at the skirt. “Entirely my fault! Always been renowned for my clumsiness. Out, damned spot!” he muttered abstractedly.

“Not at all,” I said, “it’s not your fault. If that
woman
over there hadn’t—”

“My dear Catherine,” said Peter, back at my side, “what an unfortunate accident, but it mustn’t cause any change in your plans.” He murmured so only I could hear, “Don’t give her the satisfaction.”

“I shall of course pay any cleaning bills,” the other man went on, bleeding with contrition. He was tall and heavily built, a great bear of a man except for his open, be-spectacled face and graying hair in dire need of a barber’s attention.

“This is Geoffrey Pidgeon,” Peter said. “He was my tutor in undergraduate days and the main force in my getting a lectureship. Geoffrey, Emily’s mother, Catherine Penny.”

Geoffrey squeezed my hand so hard I wanted to yelp.

“Absolute gubbins,” he went on relentlessly apologizing while I tried to free my aching hand. “Ever since a boy, I’ve been causing these situations, don’t know why unless it’s that there’s just too much of me.” He finally let go and ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up on top like a cockscomb.

“For heaven’s sake, Geoffrey, give over,” someone said. “I’m sure the lady has other, no doubt equally modish raiment in her closets.”

That snide remark had come from a man who contrasted with Geoffrey Pidgeon in every particular. He stood near the window with a pretty, dark-haired young woman, and when I looked at him he made a slight bow.

He was tall, slim, and startlingly handsome, with a shining head of blond hair untouched by gray although I had a feeling he was the same general age as the rest of these people. His eyes were a piercing blue, almost hypnotic. His dark suit was beautifully cut, obviously tailor-made for him, and he wore a red rosebud in his lapel that picked up the small red figure in his silver tie. There was something charismatic about the man, and something unsettling too.

“Edgar Stone,” Peter said shortly, “Catherine Penny.”

He would have led me away, but Stone jumped in. “I once removed a wine stain like that from the leather cover of a fourteenth-century book. I wonder if I should tell you how I did it?” He cocked his head, waiting for me to bite.

“Since this dress has done duty for at least twelve years,” I responded, “I think I can retire it without bothering you for help. High time I got a new one.”

A few people laughed discreetly at that, but Edgar Stone said, “No trouble, I assure you. I have some expertise in restoring the old and outworn.” He eyed my dress. “I collect rare and antique documents, you see.”

What a puzzling man. He couldn’t be flirting with an old biddy like me, but for some reason he seemed determined to get a rise out of me.

“Have you found anything exciting recently?” asked the girl, gazing up at him with a sort of awe. I had a feeling she had spoken just to get back his attention.

“As a matter of fact, I had a great piece of luck the other day,” Stone answered, granting her a brief smile before turning his gaze back to Peter and me. “You might be interested in it, Tyler—a very good copy of Jonson’s
Bartholomew Fair,
late seventeenth century.”

“Congratulations,” Peter said gruffly.

His hostility seemed to amuse Stone. “Of course, I had to take some less interesting pieces to get the price down sufficiently, a Dickens, an original volume one of Blackstone’s
Commentaries,
a boring little chapbook from Westminster School.”

I heard Quin’s voice, from across the room. “Really, an original Blackstone? That’s something I’ve always wanted to own. I’m a lawyer—barrister—you see.”

“Ah, yes, William Blackstone—a Pembroke man.”

That comment came from the heavyset woman I had noticed before, sitting in an easy chair a little away from the others. She was dressed very plainly, in a gray suit with woolen stockings and sensible, lace-up leather shoes. The thick lenses of her glasses distorted her eyes, making them appear startlingly large and wavering, as if she looked up from under water. Peter led me over to her, obviously anxious to escape from Edgar Stone.

“This is Dorothy Shipton, our resident Webster expert. Emily’s mother, Catherine Penny.”

“Webster, as in—?” I said as we shook hands. They both looked at me with amazement.

“John Webster,” she amended. The full name meant nothing to me either. “Elizabethan playwright—
The White Devil? The Duchess of Malfi?”

“You’ll have to make allowances for my being a Yank,” I said. “I’m sure every schoolchild in England knows all about John Webster, but he’s not exactly a household name in the States.”

“Rather strong medicine for schoolchildren,” said another man, who stood nearby with an attractive woman. “I don’t think he’s particularly well known to the general public here, either, but you should take a look at one or the other of those plays. For beauty of language, I’d say he comes pretty close to the Other Fellow.”

“Violent, however,” the woman beside him put in, “simply full of murder and mutilation! George Bernard Shaw, for one, found his plays quite disgusting.”

“Yes, well, Shaw’s the fellow who dismissed Elizabethan dramatists generally as ‘a rabble of dehumanized specialists in elementary blank verse’!” Dorothy Shipton exclaimed, firing up with indignation. “It’s quite true, Ms. Penny, that Webster’s plays are full of cruelty, but then so is life, isn’t it? And if you appreciate strong female characters who know their own minds, you can’t do better than his two great duchesses.”

“We’ll have to provide you with a copy of
Malfi,
” Peter said to me. “I’d be most interested to hear your reaction.” He indicated the man and woman who had just been speaking. “Let me introduce you to the famous head of our Elizabethan playwrights faculty, Cyril Aubrey, and Ann, his wife.”

As I shook hands with them, Peter went on, “You’ve heard of Aubrey, I assume?”

Not very tactful, because it must have been obvious from my face that I hadn’t.

“No, no, why would she?” said Cyril Aubrey. “It’s not as if the
Ur-Hamlet
were even as well known as John Webster to people outside our field, Peter.”

“Well, I do know
Hamlet,
” I said. “That’s one Americans actually read in school.”

They laughed, and Peter explained, “The
Ur-Hamlet
is something no one has read, because like a great many Elizabethan works, it was never published. It’s only known from references in letters and diaries. You see, while Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
was first produced in 1601, another play by that name is mentioned by people who’d seen it before 1589.”

“Earlier than any play by the Other Fellow,” Dorothy put in.

“Quite. People used to speculate this lost
Hamlet
—the
Ur,
by the way, is a Germanic prefix meaning ‘primitive’—was an early effort he later refined into the play we know, and others suggested various contemporaries as the author. But all speculation ceased eight years ago when Cyril’s definitive book on Thomas Kyd came out.”

“I was fortunate, that’s all,” said Aubrey, looking uncomfortable, as Brits so often do when they hear themselves praised. Dorothy and Ann exchanged indulgent smiles at his modesty. Edgar Stone was smiling too, in his smug way, watching us but not deigning to join the conversation.

“Aubrey found a bundle of old letters in a London antiques shop,” Peter went on, “among them one by John Puckering, a government official who interrogated Kyd in prison. He mentions in passing that Kyd is the author of ‘the revel called Hamlet.’ When the book came out with this letter reproduced in it, you wouldn’t credit the sensation it made. He’s been a celebrity ever since—at any rate, in literary circles.”

“Oh, come along, Peter,” said Aubrey, in an agony of embarrassment. He was a brown sort of man—brown tweed jacket, friendly brown eyes, an unruly mop of graying brown hair. Why were academics so averse to good haircuts? I wondered. There was a generally rumpled look about Cyril Aubrey, and I figured he was just too immersed in Thomas Kyd and his cronies to notice when his hair needed combing or his shirt ironing. His wife was smiling at him fondly, so I presumed she had given up long ago on making him presentable.