A Habit of Dying (24 page)

‘Ah, that. I thought perhaps you might have googled me,’ was Stephen’s slightly lame, apologetic reply.

He had found her standing, invisibly she hoped, beside an arch in the cloisters where they gave out onto the quad, where a few of the delegates had spilled out from the main building to enjoy the balmy summer day. He had been easy to avoid until then and she’d taken a seat at the very back of the auditorium for the first session of the day. If pressed, she would have admitted it had been interesting and, if she let her mind skip past the finer points of the technology and the science, she’d even enjoyed the chance to look into another world. Then, while the men, plus the solitary woman, of science talked their talk over coffee, Stephen had sought her out, only to be greeted a little coolly, he thought. Lydia was pale and her eyes were dark and sunken, all trace of the previous evening’s zing quite gone. He’d enquired of her health, had she slept badly? ‘Why
didn’t you tell me?’ was all she’d said. When he had looked a little blankly, she showed him her crumpled programme of the day with her finger right by his name.

‘Well, I didn’t google you.’ she said flatly.

‘Perhaps it was a little vain of me,’ he added, ‘to think that you would be interested.’ He was caught unawares by this turn of events, his title, like his academic honours, wasn’t something that he often gave any thought to, nor expected others to. ‘And it is this that has upset you? Do you somehow think that I am not the person that you thought I was? I have hidden nothing Lydia, I am who I am and I cannot help that.’

Direct and precise. Softly said, but nonetheless straight to the point. Such clarity of thought only served to reinforce Lydia’s insecurities.

‘In a way, I suppose. It made me think I didn’t belong here, in your world,’ which was as near to the truth as she felt able to venture.

They were moving into new territory, beyond the uncomplicated country walk, the pleasant meal. Something personal had appeared, and it had appeared at a most inconvenient time.

‘Well, we can talk about my world another time perhaps, but for now we need to take our seats.’ As they turned back towards the Common Room Lydia may have felt the slightest hint of his hand on her back, gently guiding her, or she may have imagined it.

The session on documents was presented by Felix Russell, a gawky young man in his late twenties. He appeared quite uncoordinated, as if his body had been assembled from various spare parts that had not become fully acquainted with each other. His clothes, a tweedy jacket over a check shirt and ill-knotted tie, belonged to an earlier generation. His lower half was hidden by the podium, but Lydia was sure that cord trousers and brogues would be close to the mark. As he finished each sentence his hand flew to his glasses to check that they were still securely placed across his nose. His delivery was poor, but he was listened to intently, and Lydia found his subject quite riveting, made all the more vivid for her by constant mental reference to her own document of mystery,
her journal. He spoke of obtaining DNA from fingerprints on the paper; how the age and acid content of the paper affected the process; how the conditions of storage could cause minute changes in the chemistry; how the content and composition of the inks and graphite could determine the age of the writing. When he had finished with the chemistry he addressed the physical, and spoke of pressures and indentations, the slope of the writing. All these Lydia could comprehend with ease without need to understand the science. He turned to the typed, the photocopied and the computer printed, illustrating how, even here, special processes could reveal hidden snippets of knowledge. Next, he spoke of the words themselves, how it was only relatively recently that language experts had been asked to help forensic science by analysing the words beyond their obvious meanings to shed light on some other aspects of the writer. The first time such analysis had famously come to public attention had been the letters written by Peter Sutcliffe to the policeman leading the search for him. He talked about the choice of words and the combination of words and how they could help build a picture of the writer and how difficult it was for even a professional author to hide his ‘writing profile’, even when composing dialogue for one of his characters. He closed his presentation hinting at the shape of things to come, the power of computers in analysing both the chemistry and the language. The applause from his peers as he left the platform was more than polite, they had willed him to complete his task without mishap, and shared his relief at having done so.

Stephen had carefully ensured that Lydia was seated next to him for lunch at a table with a half a dozen others, including the awkward Felix, who was seated on her other side. Stephen introduced Lydia to him, adding that he thought they might have much to talk about.

‘I really enjoyed your talk.’

‘Thank you. I am not really very good at these things, public things.’ His fingers flicked to his glasses.

‘It doesn’t matter, everybody seemed to think it was good.’ He looked so uncomfortable, so much the fish-out-of-water, that Lydia
found herself needing to encourage him, re-assure him of his right to be there.

‘Professor Kellaway said that you had some writing, a document, that you wanted to talk about.’

Professor
Kellaway. Another revelation, not that Lydia was too surprised. ‘Ah, yes. I didn’t know that he had mentioned it. It’s not really that interesting. I mean it is for me, but probably not for you.’

‘He suggested that there was something of a mystery involved.’

‘ To my way of looking at it, there are many odd, or at least unusual, things about it. It’s a very long story, but I’ll try and be brief. It’s hand written, in a kind of old ledger. I think the ledger is much older than the writing. The entries start at the back and work forward. The writing is by one person, I’m sure, but in different inks and some pencil and the writing changes. It’s in the form of a kind of journal, not exactly a diary. And the content is, well, a bit disturbing. I think the person who wrote it suffered some kind of breakdown. It ends abruptly, without any kind of resolution. No, that’s not quite true, there is a resolution of a kind for the writer, but not for the reader. But then again I don’t think it was written for a reader, I think it was only written for the writer.’

Lydia cut herself short, all too aware of how easily she could be carried away with the story. As she paused, she turned as if for validation to Stephen. He was looking at her as a father might look at a favourite daughter with a mix of affection and pride. Or was he looking at her as his pet project, his amateur protégé? The thought unsettled her.

‘It does sound interesting, I’d certainly like to see it, do you have it with you?’

‘Oh, no, I’m afraid not.’ She had quite forgotten. It had been Stephen’s suggestion of the previous evening, and had been lost in her private crisis. Now she saw that he had manipulated the meeting with Felix, designed it so that she could show him the journal, which he assumed she would have brought, just because he had suggested it. Why couldn’t he have given her the reason for his suggestion, explained the circumstance, instead of arranging things
to happen as if by chance? Besides which, she was suddenly unsure that she really wanted to share it with anyone. It was intensely private, never intended to be read by anyone, she alone held that privilege. If this Felix Russell, this expert in his field, were to see it and dismiss it as nonsense, where would that leave her? Uncertainty gnawed at her again and the idea of skipping the afternoon sessions crept into her mind.

Neither Felix Russell nor Lydia quite knew how to continue the conversation. Felix had done his bit, had easily complied with the great man’s wishes, as he was duty bound to do, while Lydia had no inclination to reveal anything more. Stephen tried to include her in conversation with the expert on arson, but Lydia politely declined to be drawn. When the meal was finished, Felix offered her his hand for want of knowing any other way of bidding her goodbye and Stephen was immediately required elsewhere. If she wished she could just collect her coat, slip away and not a soul would notice.

The Botanic Gardens were busier than she thought they might be. It had been years since she was there on her only previous visit and that had been at night, when a son-et-lumiere had caught her attention and on a whim she had spent the evening wandering alone through the display. Now the voices around her were Japanese and American, interspersed with those of their Oxford guides. At the far corner of the gardens, close to the Cherwell, she found a spot beneath a great spread of branches and rested there in the warmth of the afternoon. Yesterday’s rain had freshened the earth and the air was filled with the subtle scents of the garden. Light and shade played across the water, sparkling on its journey, soothing her troubled spirits, as the sight of moving water has done for so many. She would return to Magdalen in time for coffee and Stephen’s presentation, she owed him that at least. But for an hour or so she would empty her mind, or at least let its jumbled contents settle a little. As the peace of the place enveloped her, a stray thought popped into her head: had they ever come here to walk and sit awhile by the river, the journal writer and his wife? If she looked hard enough through squinted eyes, would she catch some flicker
of their presence? Instead of dismissing the idea as an idle waste, Lydia let herself drift with the notion. Hadn’t he written of the river at one point? All along she had thought it was the Thames, what else would she think when it ran only yards from her home, but it might just as easily be the Cherwell or any other for that matter. As the minutes floated by, her passion re-asserted itself and she smiled at the thought of describing it so. She realised how directionless she had become when the drive to solve her puzzle waned, and welcomed the feeling of renewed vigour that its return brought her.

It was a refreshed and enlivened Lydia who congratulated Stephen on the excellence of his quite absorbing and wide-ranging review of forensic evidence. He couldn’t help but notice the change in her, the colour in her cheeks, the life behind her eyes.

‘I see you are feeling better.’

‘Yes, thank you Stephen, I’m quite recovered. I’m sorry about this morning. And I didn’t think you’d mind me missing the arson man.’

‘Not at all, what did you do with yourself?’

‘I had a very good hour in the Botanic Garden, have you been there?’

‘No, but I know it’s close by.’

‘Perhaps I’ll take you there one day,’ Lydia said without thought or consideration.

‘Good, yes, I’d like that. I take it we are friends again?’

‘Yes, it was really so good of you to invite me today, but I won’t be coming to the dinner tonight. I hope that’s alright. I have things that I want to do.’ Then, by way of confirming their friendship she added, ‘And I will keep in touch, let you know how I’m getting on with the Joslins.’

Lydia took her time getting home, allowing herself a long detour through Rose Lane, along by Christ Church meadow to St. Aldates, then to Folly and the path by the river to Osney. All the while, her senses were alert for some feeling of place that she might find echoed in the journal. Despite being surrounded by the ghosts of millennia, none spoke to her. She paused a few moments by the
Pot Stream to read the inscription on Edgar Wilson’s memorial, seeking some whispered insight from the drowned hero, but none came. It didn’t deter or unsettle her, the whole weekend lay ahead, a weekend of her own pleasure, a weekend she was determined would be one of achievement and progress. She would re-read the journal, tease some new gem from its pages, follow Bertie where she could – ah! the phone book, thank you Stephen – and tackle the sandcastles album. And there were also those photographs that Dorothy had given her, they needed closer examination, some previously unseen connection might be gleaned from them.

To take advantage of the remains of the day, Lydia carefully arranged a table and comfortable chair in her patch of a garden. The evening would be long and warm and she would not need her computer for the task she had set herself. She poured a glass of Petit Chablis and put the bottle in a cooler, placed a pen, a pencil and a blue highlighter on the table, and settled herself with her carefully transcribed copy of the journal. Little new might be learned from the anger or the distress, nor the story such as it was; what she was looking for was any fact that might easily have been overlooked, overshadowed by the power of the emotion. Facts which, when drawn together, might offer some additional insight to the circumstances of the writer or even the object of his distress.

The dusk had begun to envelop her by the time she had carefully read every word again, trying without success to ignore the anguish, trying to see only the unconsidered trifles buried in the words. She’d used her highlight pen in twenty or so places on the manuscript to remind her of the fragments that she had found. None of them came as a surprise, there was no shock of discovery, rather, that taken as a whole, they could amount to a little more than the sum of the fragments. She carefully wrote out a summary of her findings in the last light of the day.