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The old man set down his cup and steepled his fingers. ‘Are you here to pursue the truth?’
‘If I can. Yes. I want to know what happened to Toby.’
‘And how do you propose to discover that, when the police could not?’
He chose his words carefully. ‘I don’t feel entirely certain that the police had all the information.’
‘That is a potentially serious accusation.’
‘I mean the details. The little interactions day to day that are meaningless, forgettable, normal, and which might have seemed too trivial to remember or repeat.’
The Master’s lips thinned. ‘If they were forgettable ten years ago, why would they be memorable now?’
‘Maybe our ability to remember changes with our desire to do so.’
They watched each other in silence for a moment. Jem had the sudden, distinct feeling that he was in a tutorial. The book-filled room, the old photographs, the old man asking sharp questions.
‘I see,’ the Master said at last, taking up cup and saucer once more. ‘But, MrKite, any investigation inevitably turns up private matters. Your little clique had those, didn’t you? Affairs that might not be relevant to this matter, but that you would certainly not wish to be disclosed.’
‘I suppose everyone’s got those,’ Jem said as steadily as he could. His heart was thumping unpleasantly. Surely the Master couldn’t know. Had anyone peered through the cracks in shutters, heard noises? ‘I don’t want to intrude into anyone’s privacy. But Toby’s dead, and I’ve never known why. I just want the truth.’
‘I’m quite sure you do.’
Don’t you?Jem wanted to demand. The man was twitchy, and he thought he could guess why. The rest of them had had those letters sent to their workplaces, after all: Nicky would not be exempt.
‘I know about the anonymous accusation,’ he said, and the Master’s cup tinkled violently against the saucer.
‘You—’ DrEarnshaw’s mouth worked slightly. ‘MrFeynsham told you?’
Jem’s first, bewildered thought was that the old man was senile. He opened his mouth to say,I’m afraid MrFeynsham’s dead, but some part of his brain, working faster than the rest, cut in. ‘He told me a great deal.’
‘Did you inform the police of what he had said?’
‘I don’t put any stock in accusations from people who aren’t prepared to use their names,’ Jem said, feeling his way.
‘I told MrFeynsham the same thing. I told him, if he or anyone had evidence of a crime, or reason to suspect one had been committed, he should go to the police. The college could not launch an investigation into a complaint if the complainant refused to stand by his allegation.’
Toby had been considering a formal accusation, something perhaps worthy of the police. Jem’s stomach plunged. ‘And you didn’t tell the police what Toby had said to you,’ he hazarded.
The Master tapped his cup, hands restive. ‘MrFeynsham simply asked how the college might proceed if it received an anonymous accusation that one of its students was guilty of a serious offence. It was a theoretical enquiry. Naturally, if he had told me anything of substance, I should have repeated it. Naturally. I had nothing of substance to repeat.’
‘He spoke to me on the subject in Trinity term of 1895,’ Jem tried. ‘A couple of weeks before he was murdered.’
The Master pressed his lips together, which was sufficient confirmation. Toby had let him know there was trouble at Anselm’s, and when he was murdered shortly afterwards, the Master had kept quiet rather than risk opening a can of worms, and never mind that Toby’s enquiry might suggest the killer was an Anselm’s student. Anything to protect the college. He’d probably put pressure on the coroner to suggest the passing-lunatic theory too. Oxford colleges did not like scandal.
‘So Toby didn’t confide anything worth repeating to you,’ Jem said, and tried to keep the contempt out of his voice.
‘Nothing. I consider the matter quite irrelevant. I have always believed that poor MrFeynsham’s death was the act of an intruder, abusing the hospitality of Summoner’s Gift. I hope everyone now accepts that.’ His rheumy eyes were fixed on Jem. ‘I hope you do, MrKite. It would be most distressing to have this business stirred up again. It is unconscionable and DrRook would be the greatest sufferer.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Jem said. ‘I quite understand.’
Jem left the room in a state of some mental disarray and emerged into fog. It was light, just enough to brush his skin and blur the light of the lamps that were being lit against the enclosing twilight, but chill and clinging.
Back in his bare room, he summarised the conversation in his little notebook, feeling like a first-year student once more. He recorded the specific words the Master had used as best he could, thinking around the implications as he did so.
Toby had asked what would happen if an Anselm’s student was anonymously accused of a serious crime. Once, Jem might have assumed he was simply concerned about Nicky’s safety. He wished he could think that now.
It seemed all too likely that Toby had intended to make trouble. For Nicky? Or for someone else? The others had all been law-abiding so far as Jem knew, but then, they’d probably thought the same of him. He was beginning to think he’d known a great deal less about his friends than he should have.
