Oxford Blood Page 7

  'I shall of course ask him to keep his oak thing to himself,' replied Jemima sweetly. 'In any case I intend to direct operations from a suite at the Martyrs Hotel. Could you be an angel and book it for me? A nice large suite, so that Lord Saffron and others can keep their distance. Megalith owes me a nice large suite for working on Golden Kids. And get onto that man, what's his name, that don who went on television the other night calling for more compulsory admissions from comprehensive schools in arts subjects - what was his name? Barber or something similar. He's got this campaign called COMPCAMP. I'm not going to let Golden Kids get by without a suitable class struggle.'

  Jemima was reminded of these bold words a few days later when she found herself sitting with Saffron at lunch in what was in fact a very small and unfashionable restaurant off the Broad.

  'For some reason my name is mud in most Oxford restaurants,' explained Saffron plaintively; he also fluttered his eyelashes in a flirtatious way which, whether joking or not, for a moment reminded Jemima of Tiggie Jones. 'And as you know the Martyrs have banned me for my lifetime, or their lifetime, whichever shall be longer. I feel the Lycee won't give me the big hand in future. Luckily when I came here before, I had the wit to book myself in as Colonel Gadaffi and they haven't twigged yet, beyond thinking I'm rather young for a military man. Alas, I can't even set foot in your lovely suite, I fear. I could shin up those pillars, I suppose, and lope in through your balcony. You have got a balcony? Looking on the Broad - looking at the Martyrs Memorial, oh that's the best one. What a relief. Anyway so far as I am concerned, life at Oxford is just one class struggle.'

  Jemima, in spite of herself, had to laugh. But Saffron merely pressed her hand.

  'No, I do so understand what Marx meant. The class struggle! When will it ever end? I ask myself. Only the other day Tiggie and I and a few others took ourselves off to the Highgate cemetery to visit the dear fellow's grave. Vodka and Blinis were judged appropriate, though as Poppy Delaware pointed out, who is a Marxist, albeit a Catholic one, something German like beer and bratwurst would really have been more appropriate. Ah, Marx! What a prophet. It's seldom a day I don't think about him, as one tries bravely to keep one's head above beer and bratwurst, with due respect to Poppy.'

  Saffron, presumably with this admirable objective in view, had ordered champagne on arrival, what he described to an unsurprised waitress in smock and jeans as the Colonel's special. Now he poured it yet again (he was, Jemima noticed, an attentive host; perhaps all the Oxford Bloods were, since they were used to playing the role to each other; or perhaps Saffron had been trained to it since childhood by his parents).

  'As if I didn't have enough to contend with, what with the class struggle and beer,' Saffron continued in the same genial voice, 'on top of it all, somebody round here is trying to kill me.'

  7

  Blood Isn't Everything

  'Look, Jemima, I'm going to hire you. That's the point. What are your rates? You're going to find out who's trying to kill me. It would also be quite nice in an off-beat kind of way to know why. Who would want to kill poor little me?' Again Saffron's look of mock innocence reminded Jemima of Tiggie Jones. She did not mention that fact to Cass Brinsley, to whom she related the conversation later that day by telephone. I don't want to inflame him further, thought Jemima sternly. In any case, what Jemima did relate was quite enough for Cass to be getting on with.

  'And you let him?' gasped Cass incredulously. 'You let him hire you? As his own personal private investigator. May one enquire the price?'

  'You may,' answered Jemima. 'We've struck a bargain. If I discover what's going on, he's going to give a huge donation to the Radical Women's Settlement for Single Drop-Outs. If I fail, he gets to take me to Ascot.'

  'Why the Radical Women's Settlement? That's the one you filmed in January, I take it.'

  'To be honest, I thought it was the cause he would most dislike,' replied Jemima. 'Originally I considered CND, but unfortunately he actually supports it, although for all the wrong reasons. He told me the noise of the American bombers from the aerodrome near Saffron Ivy disturbs the sweetness of his slumbers. Of course, it's a good thing he supports it,' Jemima added hastily. 'But you see what I mean about it being annoying.'

  'Quite,' said Cass who was a multilateralist.

  'The real point, darling, is that I am now properly enthusiastic about Golden Kids - even if my reasons are all the wrong ones,' went on Jemima. 'All the reccying I'm doing, interviews with absolutely everyone in Oxford including dons from Professor Mossbanker whom I adore to Kerry Barber

  whom I'm hoping to adore because he's so worthy, it's all now a cover. So naturally I feel much better about it all.'

  Although Jemima had worked out for herself that the killer - accidental or otherwise - of Bim Marcus had probably been aiming at Saffron, she was taken aback to find that Saffron himself had made the same calculations and come to the same conclusion. An intelligent and quick-witted Saffron was not quite what she had expected to find. Still less had she anticipated finding him sympathetic. Yet away from his friends, the newspapers, away from his public, one might almost have said that sympathetic was what Saffron was. The poses were dropped. And the story he unfolded was in itself sufficiently startling and upsetting to deserve some sympathy in its own right.

  'Someone's trying to kill me,' he repeated. 'At first I couldn't take it in. The brakes failed on my car. Yes, I know I'm not the world's safest driver, but I do look after the car, and if I don't Wyndham does - he's the old chauffeur at Saffron Ivy. It was Wyndham who finally convinced me that something very odd had been done to the car; he put it down to Oxford undergraduates of course. All the same: "You could have been deceased, my lord" he pronounced with great solemnity, Wyndham having the bearing of a bishop rather than a chauffeur. There were one or two other odd incidents too, but of course I was getting pretty jumpy about everything. Then Bim was killed.'

  'When did all this start?' asked Jemima. 'I take it you don't count the fight in the restaurant. The man with the red hair and the appropriate name of Rufus, plus his enormous friend. That wasn't an attempt on your life?'

  'Rufus Pember and Big Nigel Copley.' Saffron laughed in a brief return to his airy manner. 'Oh yes, they would like to kill me all right. I must write to the Vice-Chancellor about it. Where did it start? A girl, I believe. Muffet Pember, to wit, but this is not sex and violence. This is serious.'

  It all began, Saffron told her, on the terrible day he went to see Nurse Elsie at the Hospice.

  'If only Ma hadn't made me go - but as I told you, she made such a point of it. Said Nurse Elsie was asking for me specially - you bet she was - wouldn't die happy unless I went. Then that ghastly place. No, I know it's a wonderful place and all that. But Nurse Elsie, her hand like a claw clutching mine - that was what was ghastly. Like a skeleton from the past. Isn't it odd? I'd always hated it even more when she came to look after me sometimes when Nan was on holiday. And she used to bring Jack and Fanny to stay sometimes. She looked at me so oddly, I swear she did. Hugging me when we were alone. Telling me I was her own special little boy. Touching me all the time when we were alone. Nan hugged me of course, but there was something creepy about the way Elsie did it. I knew it was wrong. Children always know things like that, don't they, even if they don't know why.

  'And now here she was, this terrifying skeleton - hanging on to me -and telling me - she was a lunatic - she was telling me - of all things—' Saffron was sounding increasingly incoherent, even hysterical. All the same, Jemima was astonished when he leant forward and without bothering to push aside the glasses or the champagne bottle, now three quarters empty, simply buried his face in his hands. The large green bottle rocked to and fro twice and then fell heavily over. The remains of the drink began to bubble out and flow goldenly across the table.

  Jemima saw that Saffron was crying.

  When he finally looked up, however, his expression was quite steady. 'Such a relief to tell someone,' said Saffron after a
while. He took Jemima's hand and pressed it.

  'You haven't told me anything yet.' Jemima spoke gently; after all she knew - who better? - exactly what he was going to say. What she had not known till this minute was the fearful strength of Nurse Elsie's dying obsession - if that was what it was. It had never occurred to Jemima, famous instinct for once at fault, that Nurse Elsie, as the days passed and death came nearer, with no lawyer arriving, might have passed on her story to anyone else. Yet she should have known it of course: when Sister Imelda referred to Nurse Elsie's 'peace of mind' at the end, Jemima should have realized that Father Thomas had granted absolution - which supposed some form of revelation to someone. To how many others did Nurse Elsie tell her story, was the unspoken question in Jemima's mind, even before Saffron told of his own interview with the dying woman.

  'Why me?' was what Jemima said when Saffron had finished relating Nurse Elsie's story. Then she received her second surprise. Saffron spoke flatly, as though all his emotion had for the time being been drained away.

  'Because you knew already. That's true, isn't it? You were going to bring a lawyer. Expose the whole thing. Aristocratic fake. Phoney lord. Those were going to be the headlines on television.'

  'For heaven's sake,' exclaimed Jemima, 'who on earth told you that? It is true I was going to bring a lawyer—' She stopped. What had she intended exactly? Oh wise Cass! she thought, why didn't I listen to you before I got involved in all of this? Too late now to step back. 'That was to bring comfort to a dying woman,' she went on carefully. 'The priest wouldn't give her absolution unless she made restitution, as it's called. Making a statement to a lawyer - he wasn't a solicitor by the way, so he wasn't a commissioner of oaths, just a barrister friend of mine - that was a kind of well-meant sop.'

  Something else struck Jemima. 'Phoney lord, aristocratic fake. Those were never Nurse Elsie's words. Who else have you discussed this with your parents—' she paused delicately. After all, one of the main points of Nurse Elsie's story was that Lord St Ives had proposed the deception; he might have been motivated by a desire to spare his wife pain, but the consequence would be to deprive Andrew Iverstone - or more likely his only son Jack - of his inheritance.

  'It's not true. Don't you understand?' Saffron said this very fiercely. 'It's not true! Of course I haven't told Pa. As for Ma, it would kill her. She's in a pretty dickey state anyway.' Now it was Saffron's turn to pause. 'As a matter of fact I did tell Tiggie. Not the truth, of course. Just that you were trying to rake up some scandal about me. Spill dirt all over me. And she put the point about television. She's into that kind of thing. After all, she screws Cy Fredericks, doesn't she? Or maybe she doesn't. With Tiggie, who knows? She said she'd fix it.'

  'Fix me?'

  Saffron gave her his disarming smile. 'Fix the programme if you like. Get Megalith so involved with me, your original Oxford Blood, that they wouldn't even want to expose me - not that there's anything to expose,' he added quickly.

  'Ah.' One thing which Jemima had tucked away in the corner of her mind as not-to-be-forgotten and one-day-to-be-investigated was the reason for Tiggie Jones' hostile 'anonymous' telephone call. As for Cy Fredericks - to adapt the words of Saffron, who cared if he was screwing Tiggie or not - but in either case she understood the passionate advocacy of the Golden Kids programme which had infuriated her; clearly Tiggie was putting pressure upon him.

  'So how does it all fit in? The murder attempts - if that's what they were - and Nurse Elsie's story. In view of what she said, why should anyone want to kill you—' Jemima stopped rather awkwardly, then decided that she might as well be frank. 'Wouldn't it be better for an interested party' - that was a delicate phrase - 'to expose you?' That was somehow less delicate, but Jemima ploughed on: 'Expose you as not being your father's real son?'

  'Don't you see, that's for you to find out. All I know is that there have been these attempts. The car; that night when poor Bim died. And they all began when that horrible old woman died.'

  'In short,' Jemima ended up telling Cass Brinsley, in a voice which she hoped was as disarming as that of Tiggie Jones, or Saffron himself, in short, I've agreed to go to the Chimneysweepers' Dinner at the beginning of next term as his guest. I'll pretend to be researching the programme. But actually I'll be there as a kind of protection. In case someone has another go.'

  'Will you be wearing a gun?' enquired Cass. It was his turn to sound cold. He began to appreciate the irritation Jemima had felt at his interest in Tiggie Jones (although that was of course totally platonic, mere sociological interest in one so young, so bizarre - and admittedly so pretty). Was it possible that Jemima fancied the odious Saffron? 'Phoney lord' - yes indeed.

  Reflecting later on this conversation with Jemima, Cass angrily hoped that Saffron would turn out to be the son of a butcher and then quickly corrected himself, realizing that this was a concept highly insulting to butchers. The trouble with Jemima was that she was so convinced that her head ruled her heart, that she never seemed to notice her extreme vulnerability to any rash suggestion on the part of the aforesaid heart, added to which, what was all this heart nonsense anyway? Saffron was an extremely handsome as well as extremely arrogant young man, and when had Jemima ever been averse to a handsome man, young or old?

  Absolutely resolved to put all these thoughts away from him, Cass Brinsley reached for his telephone book and looked for the number of Flora, that pupil in his Chambers about whom Jemima had been so surprisingly suspicious. He then wondered idly what Tiggie Jones' telephone number might be and whether Cherry could be persuaded to disgorge it ... When Jemima returned to London, he would try to dissuade her from further involvement with Saffron, involvement beyond the call of professional duty to the programme. Nothing personal. Merely his concern for Jemima's own best interests.

  But it turned out that Jemima's own concern for her best interests did not exactly tally with that of Cass. During the academic holidays, Cy Fredericks' appetite for the Golden Kids programme was further sharpened by various exciting encounters with Tiggie Jones (faithfully reported to Cherry by Miss Lewis, who ran a nice line in quiet bitchery behind her agreeable Sloane Ranger exterior). And the beginning of May found Jemima once more installed in her suite at the Martyrs Hotel. What was more, she was preening himself in the mirror, preparatory to attending the Chimneysweepers' Dinner on the arm of Lord Saffron.

  'Preening' was the word because she was not going to wear a gun to dinner, she was going to wear a new Jean Muir outfit consisting of wide flowing crepe culottes, a silk blouse, and a crepe jacket cut like a very grand cardigan. Jemima was now trying the effects of a scarf against the soft grape-coloured folds of the blouse. She was sufficiently distracted not to notice a large packet on her desk until it was almost time to sally forth.

  Inside the packet was a book and a note. Jemima frowned. The title was not immediately seductive to one about to cut a swathe (in a new Jean Muir dress) among the notorious Oxford Bloods. She read the note first.

  Study it, Jemima Shore Investigator. I actually went as a blood donor over Easter at Saffron Ivy because Ma is the local President or whatever, so my good blue blood was in demand, to prove giving blood is harmless in spite of AIDS. The Prince of Wales had just given his even bluer blood, and I was out to please poor old Ma. After recent events. I do have my nice side, you know. Except my blood wasn't blue exactly, it was AB like a reader of The Times. Which, according to the uniformed vampire who took it, is a fairly rare group. At least she made me feel my blood was socially useful even if I wasn't. Something else the vampire said made me ask Ma what her group was, and she said: 'O, I think, darling, same as Pa's.' 'Oh no, Lady St Ives' says the vampire importantly, that's not possible . . .' which set me thinking. Of course blood isn't everything, I hear you say. Or isn't it?

  The paper was the familiar crackling parchment headed by the curly words 'Saffron Ivy'. There was a similarly curling S as a signature. A scribbled PS read, 'Why don't you come to the above noble pile? If you and I b
oth survive the Chimneysweepers. You could say it would be for the sake of the programme.'

  The title of the book (which had the book-plate of the Rochester College library) was Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology. A marker had been put in a chapter entitled 'Blood Grouping'. Page 349 contained a simple table, so simple in fact that even Jemima Shore, who had been woefully or perhaps wilfully stupid at science at school, could not fail to understand it. The table, entitled 'Derivation of Offspring After Landstei-ner', illustrated a sub-section called 'Blood grouping in cases of disputed paternity'. There were three headings in the table: 'Groups of Parents', 'Groups of Children' and 'Exclusion Cases'. Under 'Groups of Parents' Jemima traced down to O. The only possible blood group of children whose parents' own blood groups were both O, was given as O. The blood groups A, B and AB were specifically excluded from possibility.

  That seemed clear enough, rather horribly clear in fact. In case it wasn't, there was a further Note appended: 'A and B agglutinogens cannot appear in the offspring unless present in the blood of one or both parents. This is common to the theories of von Dungern and Hirszfeld, and of Bernstein.' So if the table was correct - Jemima glanced at the date of the book - and if she had understood the table aright and if matters concerning blood groupings were really quite so simple, and above all if Lady St Ives had got it right about her own and her husband's blood group, then Saffron could not be his parents' natural child, because the A and B agglutinogen, whatever that was, could not be present in the offspring of two O group parents. According to Landsteiner, von Dungern, Hirszfeld, old uncle Bernstein and all. The date of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology was 1950 and its author was one Glaister.

  How odd, how truly ironic, if Saffron's blood, to which he paid such store, proved in the end to be a fatal liability!