The Last Detective

Chapter Two

Later the same morning at the University of Bath, I found myself watching Miss Hunter – who is the personal assistant to the Dean of Letters – arrange six chocolate digestives on a plate. In the next room the University Steering Committee was in session and I had been summoned for item six on the agenda. I was due to go in with the coffee. After twenty minutes I was getting restless. I still hadn't got over that uncomfortable session with Dr Bookbinder. I remember helping myself to a biscuit and saying facetiously, straining to put myself in a better frame of mind, 'Peculiar name to give it – the Steering Committee. What do they do in there – ride around on pushbikes?'

Hilary Hunter likes a giggle. She seemed to enjoy the mental picture of five professors solemnly pedalling around the dean's office for the entire morning, but as a loyal PA she couldn't laugh at the dean's expense, so she turned and flicked the switch on the kettle. It had come to the boil twice already.

Another minute passed.

The buzzer on her desk sounded. She poured the coffee and picked up the tray.

I opened the door for her and murmured, 'Watch out for the race leader in the yellow jersey.'

It was like a nudge in the ribs for Miss Hunter. She made a snorting sound as she stepped through the door.

The dean said, 'Do you require a tissue, Miss Hunter?'

She shook her head.

'Leave the tray, then. We'll help ourselves. Jackman, do come and join us.' The dean gestured towards a vast chintz-covered settee. The comforts of life are important to him. He goes in for check-patterned woollen shirts and hand-woven ties. His flat cap and golf bag were hanging on the door. This year it was his turn to preside over the Steering Committee. The others were drawn from different faculties. I knew three of them slightly and sometimes propped up a bar with the fourth, Professor Oliver, the Art man.

'How is the fledgling School of English faring?' the dean asked in his ponderous way.

'Chirpy enough,' I answered.

'Ha – yes. Ready to take wing?'

'What's on offer, then – a trip to the States?'

The dean chuckled. 'You're an optimist.' He turned to his left. 'Isn't he an optimist? Professor Oliver, would you be so good as to explain?'

'Me?' Tom Oliver asked in a spray of biscuit crumbs. He needed something to chew. Smoke-free committee meetings are an ordeal for a man who habitually keeps a pipe alight. He took a gulp of coffee and swallowed hard. 'You probably know, Greg, that we're trying to buff up the university's image in the town.'

'The city,' said the dean.

'Correction. The city. There was some criticism a year or two back that we'd built the proverbial ivory tower up here at Claverton and were ignoring the burghers.'

'Now that's uncalled for,' said the dean.

'Burghers,' Oliver repeated. 'The good citizens. The suggestion was untrue, of course. With our strength in science and technology we've always been involved with local industry through sandwich courses. We provide a marvellous range of extramural courses. We have the Concert Society arranging musical events. At Christmas we let hundreds of shoppers use the car park for the park-and-ride scheme. And of course the students have their rag week and so on.',

'The sedan chair race,' contributed the Professor of Comparative Religions, a featherweight who annually agrees to be transported around the course.

That, too. What I'm leading up to is that three years ago, before you joined us, Greg, we held an exhibition in the Victoria Gallery.'

'The one over the public library,' chipped in the dean. 'Fine exhibition, it was, for a pioneering effort.'

A guarded look dropped like a visor over my features.

'It fell to me to organize it,' Oliver continued. 'My brief was to put on a show called Art in Bath, featuring painters who actually lived here at some point in their lives. A motley crew, I have to admit. Gainsborough, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Whistler, Lord Leighton and a few lesser lights.'

'Professor Oliver had one of his own on show,' said the dean. 'An abstract, mainly in pink, as I recall.'

Oliver said self-consciously. 'I needed to fill a space. I would have preferred to put on a complete show of modern work, but the Society of Bath Artists had its annual show in the gallery a month before, and I was told firmly that this must be different in character, a more traditional exhibition.'

Sensing, perhaps, that the positive aspects of the Art in Bath Exhibition needed to be stressed more, the dean came in again. 'There was a first-class response to our request for the loan of pictures – from private collections as well as the more obvious sources. That's partly the point of an exhibition such as this. It's a way of involving the local people, reminding them that we exist. It got into the papers and on local television and radio. Professor Oliver got to be quite a media man in the end.'

Tom Oliver's eyes rolled upwards at the memory.

By now I'd heard enough of this. I sat back and folded my arms. 'Let's have it, gentlemen. What am I lumbered with?'

The dean frowned. 'No one has lumbered you with anything, Jackman. I would have thought a professor of English might have employed a more felicitous word than that.'

'Clobbered?'

'We seem to be at cross-purposes,' said the dean. 'I know you don't mince words, Jackman, but there's no cause to be obstructive before we have even outlined the proposition. I see this as a shining opportunity for the English Department to make a name for itself. You know, as the newest department in the university you have a lot of ground to make up on those of us who were here at the beginning. And with only two years' intake of students to administer I wouldn't have said you were overburdened. You won't be awarding degrees for another year.'

'Fair cop,' I said. 'You want me to bang the drum this year. Do I have a free hand?'

'Within limits.'

I shrugged. 'I don't have a free hand.'

'We have a proposal – rather an engaging one -originating from the city council itself. It has this committee's strong support, naturally.'

'What is it?'

'Jane Austen in Bath.'

There was a silence.

'Jane Austen, the writer,' added the dean, whose sarcasm wasn't complicated by subtlety. 'In case you weren't aware of it, she lived in the city for several years.'

'You learn something every day,' I said. 'Is that the deal -just Jane?'

'And Bath. The theme, the rationale, of the exhibition is a celebration of Jane Austen's years in Bath.'

'A celebration?'

'Exactly.'

I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Pity she isn't still around to enjoy the irony of this.'

The dean bristled. 'You had better explain that remark.'

'Jane Austen's years in Bath were no cause for celebration. She was pretty pissed off with the place.'

'Professor Jackman!'

'All right – it was the least happy phase of her life.'

'That's rather sweeping, isn't it?'

The professor of comparative religions reached for the last chocolate biscuit and said, 'What is happiness? What did happiness amount to for Jane Austen? We are dealing in abstractions here.'

'As I recall it,' I said, 'when the Reverend George Austen informed his family that they were to move here from Steventon, where Jane was born and brought up, she passed out. Fainted. They had five years in Bath. It failed lamentably to come up to Steventon in her estimation. She had a series of unhappy experiences about that time – a broken engagement, the deaths of friends. Her father died here. They had to move into more humble lodgings, and after they finally left she described it as a happy escape. Happiness amounted to escaping from Bath.'

After another uncomfortable pause the dean said doggedly, 'The fact remains that she was a resident. And one of the world's great novelists.'

'Not one of the great novels was written in Bath.'

The dean glared over his glasses. 'Correct me if I'm mistaken, Professor. Bath does, as I recall, feature prominently in the novels.'

I looked around the room at the other members of the committee. 'There's no ducking this, is there?'

'It isn't something to be ducked. It's an opportunity, Jackman. Everyone who has heard of it so far is extremely excited about the prospect. The city librarian and his staff have promised every assistance.'

My heart sank. 'People have been told already?'

'One or two crucial individuals.'

'I wish you'd brought me in earlier.'

Oliver said, 'Greg, we only heard about it ourselves this morning.'

I sighed heavily, got up and walked to the window. 'And I'm supposed to find enough exhibits to fill the Victoria Gallery?'

'The Assembly Rooms,' said the Dean with an air of triumph. 'We have been offered the Assembly Rooms.' triumph. 'We have been offered 'God – that's even bigger.'

'It couldn't be a more appropriate venue. Do you appreciate the significance? Jane Austen must have danced there many times.'

Tom Oliver said, 'Actually, Dean, it was gutted by bombs in the last war.'

'And perfectly restored.'

'Right,' I said, turning to face them. 'It's a bloody great ballroom. How am I supposed to fill it? So far as I can remember there's one postcard-size portrait of Jane by her sister, and that's in the National Portrait Gallery because no other picture of her exists. If I get a loan of that, which is unlikely, it's not going to fill a hundred-foot ballroom.'

The dean shuffled his papers. 'I'm confident that if you embrace the opportunity as Professor Oliver did three years ago, we shall have an admirable show.'

I turned to the professor of comparative religions. ' "Embrace the opportunity" – how's that for an abstraction?'

Tom Oliver, wanting to be helpful, said, 'You might make use of the novels in some way.'

'Open at certain pages and displayed in glass cabinets?' I said. 'Not exactly riveting, is it? It isn't going to pull in the crowds when they can pick up the same books in any shop in the town.'

'City,' murmured Oliver.

'You could photograph the houses she lived in,' said the dean.

'And blow them up to actual size?' At this stage, I was in no mood to take any suggestion seriously. 'True, if I back them with hardboard and stand them upright like theatre scenery, that might help to fill the bloody Assembly Rooms. I could dress my students in period costume and have them disport themselves around the scenery, commenting, "Upon my word, the gentlemen of the Steering Committee are deserving of our plaudits, for a happier conjunction of town and gown than this was never conceived." '

'Come off it, Greg,' said Oliver before the dean could erupt. 'When you've had time to think it over, you'll have some bright ideas.'

'It's window-dressing, isn't it? Jane Austen is a name to pull in the tourists. Nobody stopped to consider what Jane herself really thought of the place. I suppose it's too late to point out this slight ethical objection to the genius who suggested it.'

'But that is the very reverse of all we're trying to achieve,' the dean pointed out to me. 'We want to make a gesture of support to the city, not humiliate them by scoring academic points. And, yes, it is too late. Far too late.'

I asked fatalistically, 'How long have I got?'

Oliver said, 'It's essentially a summer exhibition.'

'… opening on 9 September for three weeks,' said the dean as if he were passing sentence.

'That takes care of my vacation,' I said.

'I'd like a progress report this time next week, if that isn't too much to ask.'

I happen to be blessed or cursed with acute hearing. As I was leaving the outer office, I overheard the dean saying, 'What an obstreperous fellow. I don't recall this side of him emerging when he was interviewed for the chair.'

Oliver said, 'You weren't here, Dean. It was during your sabbatical.'

'Ah.'

'He's very well regarded by his students.'

'I can believe it.'

'He won't let us down.'

'He had better not.'