The Sinister Student by Kel Richards

Author:Kel Richards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK
Published: 2016-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

It was Tuesday morning, so the Inklings were due to meet at the Eagle and Child. Once we had descended from staircase two and were back out in the open air, Jack patted me on the shoulder by way of encouragement and said, ‘Come along, old chap, what you need is a drink.’ I certainly felt like a drink in the sense that my insides closely resembled a cocktail vigorously shaken by a muscular barman.

Given this cue, all four of us headed out of the college gates, down the High Street, into the Turl, and thence down St Giles and into the welcoming, dimly lit, oak-panelled interior of the Inklings’ favourite pub.

We sidestepped our way through the public bar at the front to find that Coghill and Fox were already there, waiting for us. Warnie went to the bar to order pints all round as Jack, Professor Tolkien and I took our seats in the back parlour.

‘When is Barfield joining us for another session?’ Coghill asked.

‘From what he tells me in his latest letter,’ Jack replied, taking off his shapeless felt hat and stuffing it into a pocket, ‘not for some time. His legal practice is rather busy at the moment.’

Warnie approached, carefully balancing a tray containing four pints – Coghill and Fox having barely begun sipping theirs.

‘Jack, you’re friendly with this Scotland Yard man, this Inspector Crispin, aren’t you?’ Adam Fox asked.

‘We have met before,’ Jack admitted as he slowly filled his pipe, ‘and I find him to be an admirably sensible man.’

‘So what is he telling you, then?’ Nevill Coghill asked. ‘Do they have a suspect? Or a list of suspects? Do they know how the murder was committed? Or how the head was removed from a locked room?’

‘Crispin is playing his cards close to his chest,’ Jack replied, ‘which is, of course, quite right and proper. So I have no special inside information.’

‘Mind you, Crispin did ask Jack to have a look at the head when they recovered it,’ Warnie added, clearly proud of the respect in which the Scotland Yard man held his brother.

‘Were you now? You were asked to go and have a look?’ Fox was clearly impressed. ‘All I know is what I read in the Oxford Mail this morning. Now, don’t tell me what the head was like, I don’t want the grisly details, but answer me this: how can the body be in a locked room in Magdalen, and the head in a bag in the Cherwell half a mile away? Any theories, anyone?’

‘In Middle Earth it might be the work of a wizard,’ said Tolkien. ‘Or of one of the evil beings who’d come under the spell of the dark forces of Morgoth. Perhaps a servant of Morgoth, such as the Necromancer. But without such a being at hand I remain as baffled as everyone else.’

‘Mind you,’ huffed Warnie in his bluff way as he lit a cigarette, ‘there is some sort of wizardry afoot. Strange things are happening in Oxford.

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