Grantchester Grind

36

Skullion was sitting on the verandah staring grimly out over the garden and the mudflats at the sea beyond when Mrs Morphy took Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo through the house.

'I have to say he's a very difficult one is Mr S,' she told them. 'The others, Dr V and Mr L, well they have their nasty little ways which is only to be expected at their age but I wouldn't say they were unfriendly. Just a bit messy and so on, you understand, but as I say to Alf, he' s my husband, when you get to their age, not that he's likely to the way he smokes and drinks, you'll be the same, and I hope there's someone around like me to clear up after you. I mean the cost of the laundry. Of course we've got a machine but…'

'When you say he's unfriendly…' said Purefoy to change the subject.

'You'll see for yourself,' said Mrs Morphy. 'Downright rude, but then he's only been here a short time and he hasn't got used to it yet. But he will. They all do because we don't stand on ceremony here and never have. Just the same, Mr S hardly opens his mouth and when he does what comes out isn't fit for decent hearing.' She paused at the glass doors of the verandah and said. 'I won't come out if you don't mind. He'd only tell me to…well, you know what.'

She slouched back into the kitchen and left them standing in what was evidently the dining-room. Next door a television was on. Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo looked out at the dark figure in the bowler hat hunched in his wheelchair on the verandah. This was not the Porterhouse Park they had expected but a red-brick house standing on a little promontory by itself and with a dilapidated wooden fence separating it from the gorse and tufted grass of the sand dunes on either side. There was nothing park-like about it and Purefoy had driven up and down the main road half a mile away several times before stopping at a petrol station and asking for Porterhouse Park.

'There's a house they call the Park,' the woman at the till had said. 'Don't know anything about Porterhouse. It's the old folks' home down Fish Lane, you know, one of them geriatric places. I wouldn't want to go there.'

Now, standing hesitantly in the dining-room filled with dark furniture, and made darker still by the roof of the verandah, they could understand her reluctance to have anything to do with the Park. Purefoy opened the door and Skullion expressed his feelings for the housekeeper. 'What do you want now, you old bitch?' he asked, without moving his head. 'Come to see if I'm fucking dead yet? Well, I'm not so you can bugger off.'

Purefoy coughed diplomatically. 'Actually, it isn't the old bitch,' he said and moved forward so that Skullion could see him. 'My name is Osbert and I've come up from Porterhouse…'

From under the rim of the bowler hat Skullion peered up at him and Purefoy found himself looking into two eyes dark with hatred and contempt. For a moment he almost backed away from such open hostility but he stood his ground and presently, much to his astonishment, Skullion grinned.

'Dr Osbert? So you're Dr Osbert. And you've come up from the College. Well I never. Wonders never cease.' He paused and grunted, possibly with pleasure. 'I've been looking forward to meeting you. I have indeed. Get a chair and sit down so I don't have to break my neck looking up at you.'

Purefoy pulled up a wooden chair and sat. At the back of the verandah Mrs Ndhlovo stood motionless. And you can tell her behind me to sit down too,' Skullion said and there was no doubt about his amusement now. 'Want to know how I know she's there?' he went on and didn't wait for an answer. 'Because the old cow in there stinks, and I mean stinks, and her behind me washes. Makes a change. She your secretary?'

'Not exactly but all the same we'd like to talk to you.'

'Daresay you would,' said Skullion. 'I daresay you would.' He transferred his gaze across the unweeded flowerbeds and the stunted roses to the brown mudflats and the silver runnels of water flowing through them. The tide was far out and only a few seabirds moved on the mud. It was a dispiriting prospect. "They call this Porterhouse Park. Funny sort of name for a dosshouse but then they've got a funny sort of sense of humour, dons have. That or they want to fool you into coming here without a fuss. But you're a don, aren't you?'

'I'm supposed to be. I'm not sure I am, though.'

'No more sure than I am,' said Skullion. 'No, you're not a don. Not yet. You're Mr Nosey Parker who's being paid by that Lady Mary to find out who killed her husband. And now you know.'

Purefoy said nothing. He was waiting to hear Skullion tell him.

'And shall I tell you why you know? I will anyway. Because you were sitting in the maze the night I got pissed on Hardy's and warned the Dean what I'd do if they sent me here and you were listening.' He chuckled. 'I could practically hear you listening. Know that?' Again he paused. 'I could hear you because I knew you weren't hardly breathing. And if that doesn't make sense to you, work it out.'

Purefoy tried to. He was still afraid of the man in the wheelchair who had spoken without any guilt about murdering Sir Godber and his fear had returned now. With a difference. There was a mind at work underneath that ridiculous bowler hat. An old mind intelligent from years of watching and listening and waiting for someone else to do something and then suddenly doing something nobody would have expected. He'd just done it now by telling Purefoy he'd known he'd been in the maze that night.

'So now you want me to tell you all about it,' Skullion went on. 'And I'm prepared to. I'm even prepared to tell you everything I know, everything. But not for nothing. And I'm not talking about money. I've got what they call a sufficiency in my bank account. I'm talking about something else.'

'Yes?' said Purefoy. 'What else do you want?'

Skullion squinted at him for a moment. 'I want out of here. That's what I want. Out of here. And I can't do that on my own. Except the only way I've worked out is to wheel myself down there when the tide's in and drown in the mud and I don't intend to do that unless I have to. No, you go back and get a van I can get into and some rope and a torch and come back here tonight at one o'clock and pick me up at the gate and we'll go somewhere and I'll tell you everything I know. That's my terms.'

'I suppose we could do that,' said Purefoy a little uncertainly. 'But the gate is locked. There's a chain and a lock on it. The woman came out and unlocked it.'

'And there's a key here,' Skullion told him. 'And even if there wasn't, the fence is so rotten you could kick it in. Anyway those are my terms. A van big enough to get this chair in and don't forget the rope. That's all. One o'clock.'

They left him there and walked back to the road, got back into the car and drove up Fish Lane to the main road.

'I wonder what he has in mind,' Purefoy said. 'You ever seen anyone like that before?'

'Whatever he's got in his mind he's going to give it to you so long as you get him out of there. What a terrible place. And that awful woman.'

'And you really think we ought to do what he wants? I mean supposing he dies or something.'

'Purefoy, your trouble is you think too much. Just do something for a change.'

They hired a van in Hunstanton and bought some nylon rope. Then they spent the rest of the day walking along the beach and sitting in cafés and wondering what Skullion was going to tell them. And, in Purefoy's case, worrying. He had never done anything like this in his life.

At eleven o'clock they left the Renault in a side street, drove along the coast road towards Burnt Overy and the mudflats and parked up a lane inland and waited. At ten to one the van was outside the gate with the headlights off. Over the fence they could see the silhouette of the house. A light in a window at one end was still on but presently it went out.

Purefoy got out and tried the gate. It was locked. 'I hope to goodness he's got the key,' he said. 'I don't fancy having to kick the fence in. It would make a hell of a noise.'

From the sea there came the slop of the waves on the mudflats. The tide was in and the wind had risen, and far out the lights of a ship coming from the Continent and heading for King's Lynn could be seen. Purefoy shivered and went back to the Transit van to check that the doors at the back were already open so that they could hoist Skullion and the wheelchair in quickly. He didn't want to hang about. He had the feeling that what he was doing was somehow illegal like kidnapping and if the police came along it would be difficult to explain. Mrs Ndhlovo had no such worries. She was enjoying herself. Skullion had impressed her. Even in his wheelchair and semi-paralysed she had recognized him for a proper man though understandably a nasty one.

It was one o'clock exactly when they heard the wheelchair and saw the dark shape coming slowly towards them up the old tarmac drive.

'Gates open inwards or outwards?' Skullion asked.

'Inwards, I think. Yes, inwards,' Purefoy said.

'Right, then here's the key. It's the one I've got in my fingers. You open them while I back off.' He handed the bunch of keys over and Purefoy used the torch to find the lock. When it was undone and the gates open, Skullion came through. 'Now lock them again and with the chain and give me the keys. That'll teach them what it feels like to be locked in when you want to go to work.'

'I thought you didn't want them to come after you,' Mrs Ndhlovo said and made Skullion chuckle.

'Come after me, duckie? They wouldn't turn out to look for me, not unless I was the only poor bugger down there and their jobs depended on it. Glad to see the back of me. The same as I am of them. And they keep the phone locked too, so only they can use it or hear what you say. And I've got the key of that too and of the cellar and the kitchen cupboards. Mean as cats' whiskers. Now this is the difficult bit, getting me up into the van. You do the chair first. I'll prop myself up here.'

He got out of the chair and stood leaning against the side of the van. By the time Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo had lifted the chair in and Purefoy had tied it securely to the passenger seat with the rope, Skullion had worked his way round to the back to watch.

'Now give me the end of the rope and I'll pull and you shove. I still got some strength in my arms. One of them anyway. Here, put my bowler somewhere out of the way.'

It was a struggle getting him in but they managed it and presently, with Skullion seated in the wheelchair and breathing heavily, they started up Fish Lane.

'Where do you want to go, Mr Skullion?' Mrs Ndhlovo asked:

'Home,' said Skullion. 'Where the blooming heart is.'

'You mean to Porterhouse?'

'Oh no, not there. Not yet, any rate. Just drive down to Cambridge and I'll show you. Take the Swaffham road. Won't be much traffic on it this time of night.'