The Sin Eater(26)

‘It does, doesn’t it? I’ll have to get it looked at properly, though. I found it after Benedict was taken to the hospital. It’s the reason I went up to the second floor – to see if I could find the rest of the set. I didn’t, though.’

‘No, and from the sound of it, it’s probably as well, in fact— Oh bother, that’s someone at the door.’

It was Michael’s friend Owen Bracegirdle from the History faculty.

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize you had a guest – oh, it’s Nell. Hello, Nell, how nice you look. I won’t intrude, I see you’re about to eat, I’ll just say hello and vanish into the night like a . . . Well, if you insist, I’ll have a quick glass of wine, thank you very much.’

Owen had come to find out if Michael was going to the Dean’s Christmas lunch tomorrow, and who Michael was supporting for the election of Professor of Poetry.

‘I am going to the Dean’s lunch, and Nell’s coming as well this year,’ said Michael, who was looking forward to walking into the Dean’s long dining room with Nell. ‘But I’m not supporting anyone for the poetry professorship; in fact I don’t even know who the nominees are.’


Owen knew, of course, and he knew all the details of each candidate. He loved college gossip and entered into it as enthusiastically as a Tudor courtier swapping backstairs intrigue. But tonight, probably in deference to Nell’s presence, he forbore to launch into one of his mildly scandalous speeches. He drank his wine, observed that Michael always had good taste in plonk, and got up to take his leave.

‘I’ve got to read some first-year essays on the First Jacobite Rebellion, scrubby lot.’

‘The Jacobite rebels?’

‘The first years. So I’ll melt into the ether and . . . Where on earth did that come from?’

He was staring at the chess piece, which was still glaring from the low table with disdainful malevolence.

‘It’s a chess piece,’ said Nell a bit defensively.

‘I can see that.’

‘I found it when I was doing an inventory of the contents of an old house earlier today. I’m hoping I’ll unearth the rest of the set.’

‘It’s not something I’d want to have sneering from the mantelpiece,’ said Owen. ‘Can I look at it? Thanks.’ He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. ‘Admit it, it really is a bit sinister, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘A bit.’

‘Wilberforce didn’t like it much,’ said Michael. ‘He glared at it, spat like a demon, then decamped to the kitchen.’

‘That was because he could smell food cooking,’ said Nell. ‘And if it’s valuable, it doesn’t matter how sinister it is, or how many times Wilberforce spits at it.’

‘I’ve got a feeling I’ve seen something a bit like it somewhere else,’ said Owen. ‘But I can’t think where.’ He put the chess piece back, then said, ‘Michael, I hate to say this, but there’s a smell of burning coming from the kitchen.’

‘Oh God, it’s the salmon.’

The salmon was not a complete lost cause because Wilberforce scoffed it in one sitting. Michael and Nell had salad and bread and cheese.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Michael, helplessly.

‘It’s fine, honestly. I love bread and cheese anyway.’ As if to prove the point, Nell sliced another wedge of Double Gloucester and reached for the butter dish.

‘Yes, but I wanted to give you a really nice meal and . . . Well, anyway, there’s fruit for pudding and one of those squidgy cakes from that bakery in the High,’ said Michael.

‘Blow the fruit and squidgy cakes, let’s take the remains of the wine to bed.’ Nell said this with such abruptness that Michael, who had been cutting more bread, looked up, startled.

‘You’re being very direct tonight, you shameless hussy.’

‘D’you mind?’ She looked at him from the corners of her eyes as if suddenly unsure of his response.

He smiled at her. ‘Refill the wine glasses and come here, and I’ll show you how much I mind.’

‘Michael,’ said Owen’s voice on the phone next morning, ‘are you immersed in something Victorian and romantic at the moment – or even in something twenty-first century and romantic?’

Michael was not immersed in anything remotely Victorian or romantic. He had just received an email from his editor at the publishing house to say they were about three thousand words short on the new book, so they would like Michael to come up with an extra adventure for Wilberforce. There was no immediate panic, she said, italicizing the word ‘immediate’. Perhaps he could put together something over his long Christmas holiday.

When Owen phoned, Michael was trying to think what Wilberforce could do in three thousand words that he had not already done in the first book. He said, ‘I promised to meet Nell at the porter’s lodge at twelve fifteen so I can take her in to the Dean’s lunch, but I’m free for the next hour. Why?’

‘Can you come along to my room? I can’t explain this over the phone.’

Owen enjoyed believing that phone conversations were insecure, despite everyone telling him it was only royalty and football stars whose phones were tapped. He said he spent most of his days studying nests of intrigue at Tudor courts and secret societies plotting to restore the Stuarts (if not the Plantagenets) to England’s throne, so he was allowed to be slightly neurotic about eavesdroppers. Last year a group of his students, gleefully influenced by this outlook, had written a satirical sketch for the OUDs, in which the concept of telephones was discovered three hundred years early, resulting in the foiling of the entire French Revolution by a text message and the subsequent continuation of the Bourbon line to the present day, and also in Guy Fawkes managing to blow up Parliament after all because somebody’s number was engaged.