Oxford Blood

  But these thoughts too she did not wish to repeat to Saffron. A taste for murder was said to grow, like other tastes. Tiggie was gone but Saffron still lived. She wished that she could pen her suspects together, pin one of them down, abandon the others; at the moment it was still risky to see them as more than a group, those who had had the opportunity on all three occasions.

  Bim Marcus' death could have been encompassed by anyone in Oxford at that time; they only had to walk into Rochester - which was not difficult - and then lie low until the dead of night. The murderer or murderess could then lurk somewhere else in the college, and leave easily, at leisure, when the college gates were open.

  If envy was the key, as she had felt all along, then the Iverstone family certainly had the strongest motive. Had Nurse Elsie possibly confided the truth about Saffron's parentage to one of them as well as to Jemima and Eugenia Jones? Daphne, Fanny, or even Jack. Andrew Iverstone was a ruthless man, no one denied that, and she had glimpsed his naked hatred for Tiggie as he slammed the tennis ball at her. Andrew Iverstone had been in Oxford at the time of Bim's death, and at the Chimneysweepers' Dinner and at Saffron Ivy. So for that matter had Daphne Iverstone, although it seemed even more far-fetched to suspect her, twittering innocent as she appeared. No, of the two Andrew Iverstone was the far more likely. Technically, Fanny Iverstone had had the opportunity, having been present on all three occasions. But while Fanny was slightly more plausible as a killer than her mother, she was also demonstrably very fond of Saffron, and she surely had to be ruled out on those grounds alone.

  As for Jack Iverstone, he had to be ruled out for two reasons: first he had not been present at the Chimneysweepers' Dinner, and secondly sheer niceness must make him the least plausible member of that Iverstone branch to emerge as a murderer.

  Nothing more could happen. Or so Jemima had confidently told Cass in London. Inwardly she was by no means so sure.

  Jemima took a decision.

  'I'll come with you. Or rather, you'll come with me. Stay with me. You'll be good cover for my sizzling exposure of the jeunesse dore, particularly now you've elected to leave their ranks. You'll protect me.'

  Her unspoken thought was: And I'll protect you.

  19

  Supper a Deux

  Megalith's luck was out. Or at least as far as the weather was concerned. Tantalizing sunshine succeeded the rainstorms early in the week, and then the day of the St Lucy's Commem and the Rochester Ball - and the first filming for the Golden Kids programme for that matter - was marked by a downpour in the morning.

  Jemima thought there was after all a kind of beauty about the rain-washed spires, and the heavy blue thunderclouds looming over the dome of Christ Church and Magdalen tower had some kind of Constable effect; but the huge marquees in the quads of those colleges which were about to have, or had just had a ball, conveyed all the cheerfulness of a rained-out fete, as rain fell persistently on the canvas. The boats, both punts and canoes, drawn up and chained by St Lucy's, had an especially depressing air; a young boatman was bailing them out with a misanthropic expression.

  Traditionally a Commem Ball ended with punting on the river at breakfast time as the sun rose on the tired revellers - an idyllic scene which Spike Thompson had absolutely promised to get in the can for the benefit of Cy Fredericks' romantic sensibilities concerning Oxford. With a gloom worthy of the boatman's, Jemima wondered whether rain would stop play.

  She met Fanny Iverstone in the hairdresser's.

  'Oh, it'll be all right on the night,' said Fanny confidently, reaching for a copy of Taffeta and adding it to the pile of glossy magazines on her lap. 'It always is, isn't it? I've been to dozens of Commems. God just does this to frighten us. I've got the most groovy dress, Brown's, it cost a fortune, Mummy paid, she approves of Commems, I think they remind her of her youth. She definitely brightens up at the thought of them, as though they were the last bastions of civilization.'

  Fanny laughed: 'Which is quite funny, really, when they cost a packet, the dinner's disgusting, you generally quarrel with your partner or lose him more likely or fancy someone else's partner, they last for ever, and end up at six in the morning with everyone totally pissed and, worse still, most people sick as dogs. Some civilization.'

  Jemima shuddered. Could Spike Thompson be trusted to make this unpromising material into something more like an advertisement for, say, an upmarket shampoo?

  She could not resist asking Fanny: 'Then why go?'

  Fanny looked at her in surprise, her blue eyes opening wide. 'Oh, one has to go,' she said. 'It's just that one doesn't expect to enjoy oneself very much. That's all.' And she turned her berollered head happily back to the cosy vitriol purveyed by Taffeta magazine.

  Jemima thought it was time for an urgent conference with her director and her cameraman. Guthrie Carlyle had vanished but she found Spike Thompson at St Lucy's in the rooms of Rufus Pember, who turned out to be Chairman of the Ball Committee, with Nigel Copley, as a committee member, also present. She had not seen Rufus, except fleetingly in the High, since the night of the Chimneysweepers' Dinner when he had appeared with Nigel Copley from the river. The memory of that secret expedition upstream - even if Rufus and Nigel had to be acquitted of the attack on Saffron, on the evidence of Fanny Iverstone - stirred in her momentarily other thoughts about that night and the possible movements of other participants in the drama. The police, after some initially strenuous inquiries, had for want of any real evidence against anyone, abandoned the investigation. Privately Detective Chief Inspector Harwood gave it as his opinion that it was a typical piece of undergraduate folly which had gone wrong. He did not exactly say: 'Let them lay about each other with boat hooks, if they like, so long as the honest citizens of Oxford are left in peace.' But Jemima got the impression that the thought lay somewhere at the back of his mind ... Then her attention was distracted by the merry sight of Spike Thompson and Jimbo, the sound man, recording as they put it, 'some useful wild track of champagne corks popping'.

  'Who pays?' enquired Jemima sternly.

  'Jemima! You ask me that! These lovely boys are paying, aren't you boys?' Spike seemed to have had a hypnotic effect on Rufus and Nigel, or else they were already glazed with champagne-tasting on behalf of the Ball Committee, for they nodded agreement.

  'This is going to be the greatest Commem Ball ever. And that's official. Right, boys?' Rufus and Nigel nodded again. 'You name it, they've got it. Bands. They've got bands. All the big names: Glenn Miller—'

  'Style of Glenn Miller,' interrupted Rufus Pember, showing a moment's anxiety at the enthusiasm of his new friend. 'Glenn Miller's dead.' He paused. 'Isn't he?'

  'Of course he's dead! But he lives again in the person of this fabulous guy with this fabulous band. Then there's Boy George and the Culture Club - no, sorry mate, the new Boy George and the new Culture Club. This lot's going to be big, right Rufe? And the latest reggae band. What's the name of the latest reggae band? It doesn't matter. They met a man who met Bob Marley; they have to be good.'

  Rufus nodded more happily, as Spike Thompson reeled off the names of a further five or six famous bands or groups or singers ending with one singer whose sex Jemima never did quite work out since he or she was described as looking rather like Mick Jagger's younger brother, but sounding more like Marlene Dietrich.

  'Something for everyone,' said Jemima diplomatically. But Spike Thompson was not finished yet.

  'And the fireworks! And the sideshows! There are exotic sideshows: strip-tease; both sexes. No, correction, all three sexes. Correction again, this is the eighties, all four sexes. A disco, a dancing bear—'

  'No, the bear can't come. It's got a previous engagement,' put in Nigel.

  'Pity. I was planning the shot. Anyway, all-night videos in the Junior Common Room, videos of an advanced nature, I take it. As for the Senior Common Room, God knows what will be going on in the Senior Common Room, some of these professors are ravers.'

  'We organize this Ball, you know,' sa
id Rufus, slightly stuffily. 'The undergraduates. It's nothing to do with the dons. We do it all - our committee. We organize everything from the champagne' - he looked' pointedly at the bottles, now empty - 'to the security, to keep out the gatecrashers.'

  'Of course you do, mate, no offence meant. And it's all going to be recorded by Megalith Television. Immortalized.'

  Jemima wondered when the moment would come to break it to Spike that whatever turn his nocturnal activities might take, he was not expected to bring back shots of 'advanced' videos to Megalith Television ...

  'And all this for one hundred guineas a double ticket,' ended Spike brightly. 'I mean, it's given away, isn't it? I'm surprised you have so much trouble with gatecrashers. You'd think they'd be glad to pay.' Ah, that's my boy, thought Jemima. For a moment Spike had had her slightly worried. The price of the ticket reminded her that she needed to discover the final details of Kerry Barber's demonstration outside St Lucy's against the price of the aforesaid tickets and in favour of aid to the Third World. She looked into Jack Iverstone's rooms. Instead of Jack, she found Kerry himself, scribbling a message on Jack's desk.

  'His father's ill,' Barber told Jemima cheerfully over his shoulder. 'They've telephoned through. Some kind of attack brought on by high blood pressure. It almost makes a rationalist like me believe in God when the bad guys start getting it.'

  Under the circumstances, Jemima saw no need for any conventional expression of sorrow. Nor was she particularly surprised, remembering that sweating flushed bull-like figure on the tennis court. Playing competitive tennis, even limited to three sets, was certainly no way to combat high blood pressure.

  Jemima was more surprised when Jack Iverstone arrived that evening at her suite at the Martyrs Hotel, just as she was changing for the ball - or the programme - and announced that he was carrying on with his protest.

  'No, I'm going through with it. It's important to me. My chance.' 'But Jack,' protested Jemima, 'your father—'

  ‘It's a put-on. Fanny agrees with me. She's carrying on with her plans. We had a frightful row on the subject of Kerry Barber's demo. He said I was making a fool of myself. I said I could live with that. Then he changed tack and said I was making a fool of him. The idea of me appearing on television riled him, you see: he thinks he has the media all sewn up. Now he produces this convenient attack and I'm supposed to come running.'

  Shortly after Jack Iverstone departed, Saffron himself arrived. In his dark green tail coat with its white facings - the mark of an Oxford Blood - he looked extraordinarily handsome; the slightly gaunt appearance he had presented since his accident, and still more since Tiggie's death, suited him. With the thick black hair flopping across his forehead, slightly too long for the conventional idea of one who wore a tail coat in the evening, Saffron looked for a moment more like a musician, a young violinist perhaps, than a rich young undergraduate come to escort a lady to a Commem Ball.

  Because Jemima was wearing a ball dress of roughly the same colour -bottle-green watered taffeta, off the shoulder, with flounces and a very full skirt - she had to admit to the mirror that they looked curiously well matched. Even her white shoulders matched the white facings of his coat.

  It's a great pity I'm not into younger men, thought Jemima, as Saffron kissed her quite hard on the lips. This is all very well, but I've got more serious things to do like make a programme. And more serious people to kiss, for that matter. All the same, she responded to the kiss with an enthusiasm which took her - and perhaps Saffron too - by surprise.

  After a bit, they broke apart; green eyes met black ones. Jemima patted her hair, in a gesture she only used on television when she was extremely nervous.

  'Eyes like a cat,' said Saffron. 'Do you scratch like a cat as well? I have a feeling you might’

  'Dinner, Saffron. You're taking me to dinner. We queue for our dinner tickets, right? And then take our places in the tent. It's all in with the ticket, I gather, which it jolly well should be. We're not going to film that, so there's plenty of time.' She was speaking too quickly. 'The demo doesn't get going till about eleven. That's where I catch up with Spike. And you're not coming to that with me.'

  'I thought we'd have some pink champagne in my room at Rochester first, supper a deux,' said Saffron carefully. 'And some lobster. I've studied your tastes. We're having our own ball, as you know, but I've bribed a member of the committee with an extra bottle to let me keep the key to my own room. All the rooms are supposed to be doled out to the eight hundred jolly people as sitting-out rooms but I didn't fancy that very much. As for the official Comment dinner, why don't we give that a miss? Not exactly an inspired menu, with Rufus Pember at the helm, and another eight hundred people at St Lucy's milling about in a tent like the vegetable show at the Spring Fair at Saffron Ivy.'

  Saffron took Jemima over to Rochester under the shade of an enormous black umbrella. Even so, her long green taffeta skirts swished in the puddles of St Giles and she feared for her very high-heeled green satin sandals. Then Jemima went swishing up the winding staircase of Staircase Thirteen and climbed to the top, past Proffy's door (the oak, she noted, was firmly sported) all the way to Saffron's room at the top. It was in half darkness: then Jemima realized that the top of the vast tent which filled the Hawksmoor quad, on which the rain was gently rattling, obscured the window, through which she had once been able to look down on the green sward, the fountain and the Fellows' Garden beyond.

  Saffron slammed the heavy door.

  'We don't want any interruptions from eager beavers of this college, male and female, having their first and only night out of the year.'

  He opened the pink champagne and poured it into a silver mug which looked like a christening mug - Jemima turned it round and saw the engraving: Saffron Ivo Charles 28 October 1964. She also saw that the room was filled with white roses, Virgo, the kind of greenish-white rose she loved.

  'More study of my tastes.' She drank. She wondered whether he would get the date on the mug changed to the twenty-sixth, and thought he probably would not. She drank again.

  Afterwards Jemima blamed the champagne (a thin excuse however from a champagne drinker, so perhaps it was the scent of the white roses) for the fact that after a while Saffron persuaded her that her taffeta dress was really too wet to be worn, that the dress needed hanging up to dry if it was to feature properly on Megalith Television in a couple of hours' time, and really all Jemima needed to do was to step out of it, and then the problems of the world would be solved, or at least for the time being, and even if they weren't, the evening would be off to a very good start ... So Jemima did step out of the green taffeta dress, which left her, roughly speaking, in her stockings and high-heeled green shoes, all of which Saffron much appreciated, and shortly after that Saffron and Jemima adjourned to his bedroom, a small untidy cell off the sitting room, with a scarcely made bed, none of which made any difference to the pleasure and variety of what followed, the endless pleasure, the remarkable variety.

  'Christ!' exclaimed Saffron, a good while later, sitting up in bed with his black hair in chaos. 'There's somebody trying to unlock the bloody door.' There was a good deal of other black hair all over his body, and as he jumped up and snatched at the red towelling robe, Jemima was reminded of how at Saffron Ivy she had thought he looked like a gipsy; no longer like a musician, he was much more like a gipsy, a healthy muscular young gipsy. Saffron ran into the other room, leaving her in the little cell. Jemima sank, sensuously, beneath the duvet. Then she thought in her turn: 'Christ, my dress is hanging up in there.'

  She heard Saffron say: 'My dear Proffy, I've got special permission.'

  'From the Dean, Saffer?'

  'Have some lobster, Proffy,' was Saffron's reply. 'And some pink champagne!'

  It seemed a very long time indeed before Saffron returned to the bedroom, in the course of which Jemima had begun to wish she had not also left her little gold bracelet watch in the sitting room, as well as her green crystal drop earrings (all of whic
h must be extremely conspicuous, unless Saffron had had the wit to conceal them). The watch became increasingly vital. If the worst comes to the worst, thought Jemima, the programme comes first, and if I ever doubted it, witness the fact that I'm going to have to stalk into the sitting room starkers except for a pair of green sandals, and assume my clothing as graciously as possible, under the watchful eye of Professor Mossbanker as he guzzles the lobster, in order to get to St Lucy's on time to film Kerry Barber's demo.

  But it did not come to that. Saffron returned.

  'Proffy! He sure has a nose for a party. And for lobster. And for champagne for that matter.' Saffron heaved a sigh. 'Most dons give the Commems a wide berth. But I believe the old boy was simply moseying about the Staircase looking for refreshment.'

  Jemima did not enquire about the dress. She only hoped that Proffy's legendary absent-mindedness extended to overlooking a ruffled green taffeta ball dress swaying gracefully in the window of Saffron's room. She was busy trying to replace Jemima, happily reckless lover of Saffron, with that other Jemima, presenter of Megalith's Golden Kids programme.

  As Jemima and Saffron sped, under the great black umbrella, from Rochester, down the Broad and Long Wall to her rendezvous with Spike outside St Lucy's, they passed a series of other revellers, the men in dinner jackets — wing collars were clearly in fashion, and the occasional tail coat — the girls all in long dresses which would have satisfied Cy Fredericks.