them. She only hoped that they wouldn’t be parted before their
time, as she’d been from her own sweetheart.
“I’ve cut a nice piece of cake for you, Dr. Coppersmith. You
always seem very thin, so you’d better have a double ration. Dr.
Stewart—” Miss Peters passed a smaller piece to Jonty, “—you
don’t need building up at all so you can make do with this. I never put on an ounce so I’ll have a double ration too. Lemuel can lump it if he can’t be bothered to get here.”
Whether this was entirely fair, given that her brother had a
meeting with the vice chancellor and had sent his apologies for
tea, was a moot point. Jonty and Orlando just smiled, knowing
full well how fond their guest was of her brother and sure that he would be getting the very largest slice of the cake.
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“How are we progressing with the Woodville Ward? Early
days, I suppose?”
Jonty motioned them to his best armchairs, perching himself
down on the rug.
“Indeed, Miss Peters. We’ve been getting ourselves up to
date with all the pertinent points and I suppose we’ve as many of the established facts at our fingertips as anybody has ever had.”
Orlando also had cake crumbs at his fingertips and was
surreptitiously licking them off.
“What about these new papers?”
“Those letters make very interesting reading,” Jonty
interjected. “Orlando doesn’t agree with me but I have a feeling that Johan Breton is somehow involved in the case. The simple
fact that no one else has him down for a suspect seems to me very odd.”
“You’ve not said a truer word. Especially considering that
just about everyone else alive at the time has been accused by
some theorist or other.” Miss Peters produced her anti-historian snort.
“Which theory do you think would win the prize for the
most outlandish?” Jonty asked. “We must all have one we admire
for its sheer audacity and we should share them. I have a
particular fondness for something concocted by one of my fellow
undergraduates—he wasn’t a historian, I hasten to add, so
wouldn’t have gone straight into Miss Peters’ bad books.”
“And will you enlighten us with it?” Orlando smiled at Jonty
then raised an eyebrow at their guest.
“Not until Miss Peters has told us hers, as I think mine
would out-trump both of your offerings.” Jonty looked as if he
was trying to appear innocent and not quite succeeding.
“I’m always happy to share my opinions, as you well know,
gentlemen, so I’ll begin. I doubt that Dr. Stewart’s friend’s theory can be as farfetched as my favourite but I’ll attempt to present it www.lindenbayromance.com 61
Charlie Cochrane
as it came. Him—Dr. Smarmy Owens—now no longer with us.
Oh, I don’t mean he’s dropped dead, more’s the pity; still
infesting the college next door, although I suppose that amounts to the same thing.”
“Swine,” Orlando muttered.
“As I was saying, he’d allegedly studied all the evidence
then to hand in great detail, and his conclusion was that Richard III had committed the deed.” It was a known fact in the college
that the only thing the Master’s sister and her great rival Nurse Hatfield had in common was a fondness for the house of York and
particularly for its most notorious member.
“But that’s ridiculous!” Jonty spluttered. “He died in 1485,
long before Charles Shaa disappeared.”
“Indeed he did, cut off in his glorious prime, but Ramsey
didn’t believe that fact for one moment. As far as he was
concerned, Richard had ridden away from Bosworth with his tail
between his legs and hidden in the priory at Thetford. From there he finally emerged to start taking revenge on his Tudor
adversaries and any Woodvilles who remained for him to get his
hands on. The queen being seemingly untouchable, he killed her
ward to spite her. Stuff and nonsense of course, but not unusual among the sort of things that Woodville Ward theorists come up
with.” Miss Peters snorted and drained her glass, which was
straightaway refilled with champagne.
Orlando was impressed. “Now that’s novel. I’ve not come
across that in any of the library’s papers. If asked for my most ridiculous theorem I’ll ignore the one that puts Shaa as a woman.
As if you would find one of those at Bride’s!”
Jonty started to choke on his drink. Miss Peters slapped his
back and Orlando went red, mortified at his faux pas. “Oh I say, I didn’t mean to insult you, Miss Peters. I regard you as almost one of us, I mean—”
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“Dr. Coppersmith—” the lady’s cheeks were flushed with
suppressed laughter, “—I must go home and get my excavating
tools so that you can dig an even bigger hole for yourself. I’ve taken no offence at your remark nor do I intend to. Please carry on.”
Orlando gathered his thoughts. “In the library there’s a paper
dating from 1821 written by a Lord Exbury. He appeared to
believe that Shaa had been the victim of a predatory admiral, or whatever the equivalent medieval rank was, who’d visited the
college in early 1497, taken a shine to the lad and been rebuffed.
Exbury said the admiral took such umbrage at the refusal that he belted Shaa over the head in his own room with his own cutlass
and carried him bodily to the well at dead of night, being
possessed of muscles like Dr. Stewart here.” He stopped,
embarrassed.
“I can appreciate that. I saw Dr. Stewart on the rugby field
when he was an undergraduate and he was built like the
Dreadnought
then.” Miss Peters smiled a rather wicked little smile, assumed a look of innocence, then continued. “Why should
he have been so offended at being refused, this admiral or
whatever he was? What suggestion had he made?”
Jonty regarded his guest out of the corner of his eye.
The
hussy, she’s doing this deliberately to wind Orlando up. Who’d
have thought the old girl had such a spark of mischief in her?
Recognising that Orlando was floundering, he leapt to the rescue.
“Miss Peters, I suspect that if you have to ask the question, you might not understand the answer. Suffice it to say I’ll warrant it was a proposal of an intimate nature and that Shaa would have
been mortally offended. Seems rather farfetched though.”
“It does indeed.” Orlando was slowly regaining his
composure. “Especially as the college had a rule for the first
ninety years of its existence that no sailors of any sort were
allowed through its portal, our foundress not liking the breed at www.lindenbayromance.com 63
Charlie Cochrane
all. That’s probably part of the reason why she was so loath for her ward to go to sea and why he was so keen to get going, to be spiting her. I think there was some friction between Shaa and
Queen Elizabeth.”
“Well it’s not outrageous as theories go, Dr. Coppersmith,
but it certainly qualifies as being ridiculous on the grounds of lack of research. Who was this Exbury? A historian?” Miss Peters
rolled her eyes every time she mentioned the name of the
untouchable caste, as she called them.
“As I understand it he was a distinguished admiral himself,”
Jonty suddenly chipped in, astounding them all with his
knowledge. “Probably had muscles like mine as well, if the stories about him are anything to go by. Very courageous, if not sound on his medieval history.”
“Ah,” said Miss Peters wistfully, “a sailor. How delightful.
Then I can forgive him anything.”
“And what is this theory you have come across that is so
outrageous it had to be told last? Little green men from Mars
wafting Shaa away with them and leaving a changeling in
return?” Orlando had indulged in a second glass of champagne
and was becoming bold.
Jonty carefully emptied the rest of the bottle equally between
his guest’s glass and his own. Any more for Orlando and the man
would be wanting to strip his clothes off again. Jonty had a
suspicion Ariadne Peters might insist on staying and witnessing
the show.
“Not quite as bad as that, but pretty close. There was a lad
here when I was an undergraduate, a
zoologist
, you will note, Miss Peters, who was convinced, utterly certain, that the
Woodville Ward had been killed by William Shakespeare himself
and that the death is alluded to in the master’s works.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Two voices chimed in unison.
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“Even
I
know that Shakespeare couldn’t have been alive
then.” Orlando rolled his eyes in disbelief. “He must have been
born fifty years later.”
“Nearer seventy, but that didn’t matter to Kit Vincent. You
see he didn’t believe that the man we know as Shakespeare had
written the plays at all. He was certain that the Master of
Elizabeth Hall in Shaa’s time, a Doctor Deboyne, had written all the works then hidden them away for a future generation to
publish. All stuff and nonsense of course but relevant to his
theory.”
“And what, I dread to ask, constituted the references to the
Woodville Ward’s murder? ‘To be or not to be’ and all that?”
Miss Peters had a glint of mischief in her eye again. She
remembered Stewart’s japes when he was a student—the chances
were this was another one.
“The first piece was the title of the play
All’s Well That Ends
Well
, a pun of course on where Shaa’s body was deposited.
‘Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear’ is a line from it, and Kit pointed out that the Master had been very eloquent in lamenting the loss of such a talented pupil when Shaa first
disappeared.”
“That’s a bit thin. There must have been more, surely?”
Jonty had the feeling his guest knew exactly what he was up
to and was egging him on to greater heights, or depths, of
silliness. “There were many references, or so Vincent assured me when he bored me stiff one wet Sunday afternoon. There was
Richard III
.” Jonty was warming to his subject and the pace was stepping up. “‘So wise so young, they say, do never live long’
was supposed to be an obvious reference to his victim, and of course the whole play had been written to please the Tudors.”
“And how did this Doctor Deboyne write
Henry VIII
? Was
he a clairvoyant?”
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Charlie Cochrane
Stewart blanched then stopped in his tracks, amazed at how
quickly Miss Peters had come up with this little dart. He’d never anticipated such a question when he’d begun his little charade and some quick thinking was required. “Kit always alleged that
Henry
VIII
was the only play that Shakespeare
did
write, which is why it is so lacking in grandeur compared to the others. Not a
collaboration, as so many assert, but the work of a lesser
playwright. A poor thing but his own.” Jonty smiled in relief at having taken the fence so nimbly.
Ariadne Peters burst into her hearty laugh. “Dr. Stewart, I’ll
have to tell that to Lemuel once he’s home. The real Shakespeare indeed. You are such a wag!”
Orlando looked from one to the other, his face a picture of
bewilderment. It was a face Jonty could read like a book from
almost the first time they’d met and now the book said plainly that Orlando had taken everything he’d said at face value. It then
seemed to strike him that his friend was putting one over on his guests. Jonty was frightened at what his reaction might be—if
Orlando had no memory of their larking about, their joshing each other, he might respond in the same aggressive way the Orlando
of a year previously would have done. Much to Jonty’s relief,
Orlando simply laughed and cuffed his shoulder, with no doubt as hard a blow as could be construed as friendly but still show the man’s displeasure. Clearly many traits of the ‘new’ Orlando
hadn’t been lost alongside his memories, and Jonty was very
grateful for the fact.
“Now, my dear friends,” Miss Peters’ cheeks were flushed
from champagne and laughter, “I must leave you. I don’t want to
interrupt your work.” She indicated the Woodville Ward papers,
which had been sorted, marked and awaiting attention. “The
honour of the college is at stake.”
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“We’ll try our best not to fail you. No one wants to see the
glory going
there
.” Jonty pointed vaguely in the direction of the vile establishment next door.
“Lemuel would be so grateful. So would I.” A sudden,
unaccustomedly serious look came into Miss Peters’ eyes. “I’m
not one to bear a grudge—”
Jonty wondered whether Nurse Hatfield would agree with
that statement.
“—but I have good reason with Dr. Owens. He…he…”
Orlando had never known his guest lost for words. “You
needn’t tell us if you don’t wish to. It’s enough to know that we’ll be serving your honour as well as St. Bride’s.”
“Dr. Coppersmith, you make me feel like a maiden in a fairy
tale, and you’re my knight in shining armour.”
Not only did Jonty agree with the sentiment, the blush it
produced on Orlando’s face was the highlight of his day. The
party broke up in good humour, leaving the men to look rather