at all! Let’s make it four o’clock Monday, shall we? You can always ring me if you change your plans.”
We chatted for a while about the doctorate before settling into news of the college’s staff members. Then: “I meant to ask you on Friday,” said Hough, “about a Humphrey Miller from the Archaeology Department at St Matthew’s. He’s about your age, thirtyish. Do you know him at all?”
I thought for a moment. Through Claude and Tiernan, most of the names in the department were familiar to me, but I could not place Humphrey Miller. The only other man our age that I knew of in archaeology was Alan Reardon, the asocial, bookish specialist in Middle Eastern archaeology who lived at the college in rooms next to Tiernan’s. “No, I don’t think I’ve even heard of him. Perhaps he’s new, Monsignor.”
“Yes, perhaps that’s it. I just thought you might know him. But no-one at the department seems to know who he is.”
I thought for another moment. The monsignor had been so generous to me with his time. In February he’d practically devoted a whole month to straightening out my doctorate.
Here was a small chance for me to help him.
“Look, I’ll be at St Matt’s all day today. If it’s important, I could ask around for you. There’s bound to be someone there who knows him.”
“It is important. He said he had something of particular interest to me. Would you mind? I’m wearing out my welcome there.”
“I’d be more than happy to. What would you like me to do?”
“If you can find him, just tell him that I’ll be waiting for him at my presbytery at three today, as we arranged.”
I assured the monsignor I would. I finished dressing, and rode back to the college to dress for breakfast in Hall.
* * *
Once I had changed into something civilised and put my don’s gown on, I stopped by Claude’s digs to pick him up.
The layout of his digs was typical for the rooms of an unmarried don at St Matthew’s, and was identical to mine. A big sitting room with a sofa, spindly wooden chairs and a gas fire, a cramped bedroom with a cheap old wardrobe in it, a study, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom. Mostly, our digs were sparse. None of us had a wireless yet, and between us, our greatest luxury was Claude’s telephone, installed in his study just a month ago so Anne could reach him.
Some of the undergraduates, on the other hand, received huge allowances from home, and lived like princes. At night they nibbled on plover’s eggs, listened to gramophones, drank champagne and smoked Turkish cigarettes. After ten they’d often be drunk, sneaking out in groups and driving brand-new Italian sports cars to West End nightclubs like The Coconut Grove and The Nest. Claude, Tiernan and I could barely conceive of ever having enough money for things like that.
But we were voracious readers, and we spent significant amounts of our incomes on books. Volumes of every type -classical works, textbooks, literature - dominated our digs, just as they did the creaking wall shelves of our offices, the long library corridors we knew so well, and our black-gowned lives.
Claude was on his sofa reading a book about Egyptian mythology, his academic specialty. This was typical Claude: grinning, book in hand, a neat suit beneath his gown. Tiernan was also in the sitting room, his suntanned, handsome face lightening somewhat as I walked in.
“What happened to you yesterday afternoon?” I asked Claude.
“I went for a spin with Anne and a few of her doctor friends. One of them has a tourer.”
Tiernan glanced up from the newspaper he was reading. “You didn’t say that earlier. Is it new?”
“Brand new. Four hundred pounds worth. Does seventy on a straight, even with four passengers. Corners beautifully. Exactly what I need.” He looked at us both, knowing full well what we were likely to say. “I will get one, you know.”
“One day,” said Tiernan.
“One day soon, I’ve told you,” he said.
I found Claude’s car fantasies amusing, probably because I cared little about automobiles and had only actually driven once or twice before. Then Claude’s voice dropped a bit.
“I saw Deborah there, George.”
Deborah Caraman. Anne’s best friend, a doctor, like she was. Also an old girlfriend of mine.
“Good thing I wasn’t with you, Claude. She’d probably have pushed me out of the car and got her friend to me run over.”
“She hardly said a word all day to me. It’s a shame, you know, we used to get on well. Now talking to her’s like playing tennis by yourself. You’ve got to hit the ball, then run round the other side of the net and hit it back. Bloody exhausting. Poor old Anne gets so upset about it, but she keeps trying.”
“That sort of frigidity’s exactly why I broke it off,” I said.
“I told you that’s what you’d get for seeing a Catholic,” said Tiernan.
“That’s got nothing to do with anything, Tiernan.”
“It does, you know. She’s a rabid papist, while you were christened an Anglican and you’ve hardly set foot in a church since you left school. It was never going to work, I’m sorry.”
I felt like rolling my eyes. “Tiernan, let’s talk about something else, for God’s sake. What did you do yesterday?”
“Well, I worked the morning, but I wasn’t in a very good mood. I went for a walk.”
“Bit hot for that yesterday. We nearly melted on our drive.”
“You mustn’t spend time alone if you feel like brooding,” I said. “It isn’t good for you.”
“Look, I wasn’t brooding. I wanted to leave the college for a while.”
“But that’s the very definition of brooding.”
Tiernan’s voice was clipped. “I’m well ahead on all my work. There’s no peace here. I simply went out for some air.” He went back to his newspaper. It was best to change the subject when he was like this.
I turned to Claude. “Did you know that we’re both fugitives now?”
“What? Don’t tell me you’ve done something illegal. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”
“Too late. They came here for me yesterday.”
“Oh, go on! You’re not serious!”
“I am! A detective came looking for me yesterday afternoon. Gave his card to Stevens and everything.”
“Sounds like Bernard Kraay. Beastly weasel of a man. Don’t let him get it in for you the way he’s got it in for me, you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“It wasn’t Kraay. This was a Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen. He didn’t ask anything about you at all, but he knows we’re friends and he knew perfectly well what it is I do for a living at the college.”
“Detective Sergeant Aage Nielsen,” said Tiernan, at last looking up from his paper. “Sounds as though things have gone up a notch at the station. What did he want? You don’t even work in archaeology.”
“He wanted me to translate something for him, something to do with the missing jet wolf.” Suddenly I recalled my promise to Nielsen. The detective had assured me the matter had nothing to do with Claude, and I now felt it would be dishonourable of me to discuss the letters like this. I tried to wind the conversation up as quickly as I could. “Latin Church letters. Nothing important. He’s barking up the wrong tree, I think. He didn’t realise how irrelevant they were.”
“What have they got to do with the wolf, then?” asked Claude.
“One