‘Will Friday do?’ she said.

  ‘What, Mummy?’ asked Rebecca, suddenly anxious.

  ‘Nothing, darling.’

  Oh but it was, I thought. It was really quite a lot.

  When I got home I looked up Faure in the Oxford Companion. He didn’t write any piano sonatas, of course.

  ‘First of all, let me just say that everything I am going to tell you is the complete and absolute truth.’

  The little tea-shop was pleasantly uncrowded. Full Term had ended a fortnight earlier. The Easter tourists hadn’t yet arrived. For a few weeks Oxford seemed like a normal city instead of a theme park.

  ‘You sound so serious.’

  ‘It’s no joking matter, at least to me. But I suppose I also intend a warning.’

  Alison raised her eyebrows.

  ‘As in “this programme contains scenes which some viewers may find distressing or objectionable”.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When Karen broke the news of our marriage so crudely at Thomas’s party, and I saw the look on your face, I understood for the first time the force of that old cliche about wishing the floor would open up and swallow one. I could tell what you were thinking. You were thinking that I had married her for her money, and that she’d married me for … all the wrong reasons. You were wondering how long we’d been lovers. Perhaps you were even wondering about Dennis’s death. Did he fall or was he pushed?’

  ‘No!’

  Alison’s denial was so forceful it attracted the attention of a couple at a neighbouring table. Like a batsman rehearsing a shot after playing and missing, she repeated quietly, ‘No. That’s not true.’

  ‘I don’t mean to impute mean or vulgar opinions to you, Alison. But I saw judgement in your face, and it shattered me, precisely because I knew I must seem to deserve the very worst that anyone could imagine. And it wasn’t just anyone, it was you. That made it almost unbearable. Right from that very first day in France you made the most tremendous impression on me, Alison. When we met again at the funeral, I knew that I had to see you again soon. I said so at the time, if you remember. I looked up your number in the phone book. I was going to call you and …’

  I broke off. Alison refilled our cups and for a moment we took refuge in the polite rituals of milk and sugar.

  ‘A few days after the funeral,’ I said, ‘Karen phoned to ask if I’d come over and help her dispose of some of Dennis’s effects. She said she couldn’t face tackling the job on her own. The Parsons had been good to me. It was the least I could do to help Karen out now. We spent two or three hours bagging up clothes to take to the charity shops. Then Karen went downstairs to make some tea. When she came back … she didn’t have any clothes on.’

  Alison herself was wearing a rather shapeless dress made of some fabric suitable for curtains, which covered her body like a dustsheet draped over furniture. Her fingers twitched nervously at the buttons of the high collar.

  ‘The ridiculous thing is that I wasn’t remotely attracted to Karen. Those scrawny, neurotic women are not my type.’

  I allowed myself a brief glance at Alison’s ample contours.

  ‘That’s no excuse, of course. I knew perfectly well when I allowed Karen Parsons to seduce me that I was not acting rightly. I was simply too stunned to protest. I thought she must be unhinged by grief. It never occurred to me for a moment that she had planned it all in cold blood.’

  ‘I don’t find it particularly surprising that you allowed yourself to be seduced by her. What I do find surprising …’

  ‘Is that I married her.’

  She sketched a shrug.

  ‘It’s no earthly business of mine, of course …’

  I leant forward.

  ‘After what had happened I couldn’t face trying to contact you. I felt polluted, tainted, defiled, unworthy of anyone except Karen, who repelled me. I told her I didn’t want to see her again. She pleaded and begged me to change my mind, but I was adamant. Finally she dropped the bombshell. She was pregnant, she said, and I was the father.’

  Alison looked away out of the window at the facade of New College opposite. I sighed deeply.

  ‘I couldn’t see any other honourable way out. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned. Perhaps I should have been frank with her, admitted honestly that I didn’t love her and that if she insisted on marrying me she would be condemning both of us to a joyless union. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I honestly thought she loved me so much that she’d been prepared to get herself pregnant to trick me into marriage. However badly she’d behaved, it was my duty to stand by her and the child. Telling her the truth about my feelings, or rather the lack of them, would just have made our life together even more intolerable.’

  To harmonize my body language with Alison’s, I turned to look out of the window. As our eyes met in the glass, I realized that she was not admiring the flaking stone blocks opposite but using the window as a mirror. It was me she had been looking at all that time, but secretively, like a girl.

  ‘It was Karen’s idea to keep the wedding quiet,’ I went on. ‘She claimed people might be shocked at her remarrying so soon after Dennis’s death. The real reason was that she was afraid of what I might find out. She couldn’t know who Dennis might have told, man to man, after a few drinks. If I had learned her secret before the marriage was legal, all her devious schemes would have come to nothing.’

  ‘What secret?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘In my worst moments I thought everyone knew, except me.’

  ‘Knew what, for heaven’s sake?’

  I fixed her eyes.

  ‘That Karen has had a hysterectomy.’

  Alison looked suitably appalled.

  ‘Two weeks after we were married, I asked how her pregnancy was going. She turned red and started stammering. Then she burst into tears. I tried to comfort her. She said she’d lost the foetus. It sounded as though she’d left it on a bus or something. Then she started laughing at the top of her voice. I thought it was just hysteria. Living with her, day in day out, I was beginning to realize how unstable she is. Her mood swings quite frighten me sometimes. Anyway, to calm her I said not to take it so hard, we could always try again. It was then that she told me about the hysterectomy.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Like a fool, I told her that the only reason I’d married her was because she’d told me she was pregnant. You can imagine the reaction that got.’

  ‘But she had deliberately deceived you!’

  ‘Exactly! She tricked me, Alison. That little bitch tricked me! Forgive my language, but I think I have every right to feel bitter. Not only am I forced to share bed and board with a woman for whom I feel nothing but disgust, but for my pains I have been branded a disreputable opportunist by all and sundry. And worst of all, I have lost the respect of the person I hold most dear in all the world.’

  I fell silent, my head bowed in exhaustion and despair.

  ‘I’ll divorce her, of course. But it will take time. She’ll fight every inch of the way. She’s crazy about me, for some reason. And what will everyone think? They’ll say I took advantage of a widow’s grief to marry her for her money, then cold-bloodedly ditched her as soon as I had a chance. It’s all so hopeless! Why on earth did this have to happen to me? What have I done to deserve it?’

  This sort of feeble whining goes down a treat with women like Alison. They like their men to be useless. It gives them a purpose in life.

  ‘Well it’s not for me to advise you, of course …’

  ‘On the contrary! If I thought that I might be able to count on your friendship, despite all that’s happened, then … Well, that would make an enormous difference. It would make all the difference.

  ‘Then I think you should separate as soon as possible. The sooner the situation is clarified, the better for everyone concerned.’

  She gathered her shopping together.

  ‘And now I must be going. I have to collect my youngest from Phil and Jim.’

  Outside in the street I took her hand for the first time.

  ‘It’s been such a comfort talking to you, Alison. You don’t know how it’s helped. Will you …?’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can,’ she said, freeing herself.

  I nodded meekly.

  ‘Don’t look so glum!’ she added. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’

  And off she went to collect her son from St Philip and James Primary School.

  Strange the tricks that life plays, I mused as I drove home, popping the tape of madrigals into the player. A few days earlier I had been thinking of calling my doctor to assess the chances of having my vasectomy reversed in order to save my marriage to Karen. Now I would be calling a solicitor to see how I could get it dissolved on the best possible terms. The last thing I wanted was to make some hasty move which might invalidate my claims to a large share of our joint estate. But these were mere details. The main thing was that my intuitions about Alison had been confirmed. She was far from indifferent to me, I felt sure of that, but neither would she contemplate carrying on an affair with a married man. That was fine. I didn’t want to have an affair with Alison. My intentions were entirely honourable. Whoever would have guessed it, though? What a tease life was, to be sure! What a little caution. With a fol-rol-rol and a hey-nonny-no.

  Much to my surprise, Karen greeted me at the front door with a glass of champagne in her hand and, still more unusual, a smile on her face.

  ‘Guess what?’ she said archly.

  Not best pleased at being awakened from my reveries, I shrugged impatiently. Karen threw her arms round my neck, spilling champagne everywhere.

  ‘I’m pregnant!’ she shrieked.

  PART THREE

  A dense mental fog, known locally as a Kidlington Particular, grips the city, casting its Lethean spell over Members and non-Members of the University alike. Stupefying vapours shroud the environs of that ubiquitous old hostelry ‘The Temporary Sign’. Within, a throng of potential witnesses studiously ignore the two men huddled in furtive confabulation. One is short, swarthy and stout. He wears a filthy poncho, a wide-brimmed hat and spurred boots. Cartridge belts criss-cross his chest and he picks his teeth with a razor-sharp dagger. The other man is tall and saturnine, with brilliantined hair and a cruel smile. He is dressed in a white double-breasted suit and slip-on patent leather shoes and is smoking a Turkish cigarette in an ivory holder.

  I — you have of course penetrated my feeble disguise — drawl languidly, ‘I want you to kill my wife.’

  ‘Si, senor!’ grins Garcia (for it is he).

  Bundles of greasy banknotes change hands and both conspirators disappear into the night. The next moment the pub itself has vanished, together with its faceless regulars and anonymous landlord. Only the fog remains, an impenetrable wall of obscurity and confusion, dense, dim and very, very thick.

  What do you mean, you don’t believe this? Are you aware that no lesser an authority than Her Majesty’s Home Secretary has given this scenario his seal of approval, and that it forms the basis of the extradition proceedings currently before this court? What’s that? You find no mention of a poncho? Very well, I’ll waive the poncho. Strike the poncho from the record. The fact remains that I am accused of conspiring with a person or persons unknown to murder my wife.

  There is one point which needs to be made right away, which is that instead of providing me with a motive for murder, the discovery that Karen was pregnant removed any interest I might otherwise have had in her death. So far from the jealous fury wished on me by the press, my feelings were of quiet satisfaction. Had I not been wondering how to rid myself of Karen without prejudicing my financial position? Now all my problems were resolved: I had Karen exactly where I wanted her. She was no longer the woman who had been taken advantage of, but a common adulteress. I was no longer a ruthless and cynical adventurer, but the deceived husband. Since I was demonstrably not responsible for inseminating Karen, all I needed to do was find out who was. Once the identity of the lucky donor was revealed, I could start divorce proceedings. The proof of my wife’s treachery was alive and kicking in her belly, and a paternity test would prove beyond a shadow of doubt that Mr X was indeed the proud father. After that, the hearing would be a mere formality. Karen would be packed off to make the bed she had lain in while I wept all the way to the bank.

  It should thus be clear to the meanest intelligence that even if I could have disappeared Karen without the slightest risk to myself, it would not have been in my interests to do so. As always, I stress my interests, because in them you can trust. I make no claims about what I might have done in other circumstances, I simply assert that those circumstances did not in fact arise. And legally, gentlemen, as I need hardly remind you, that is all I need to do. This court is not required to decide whether I am a nice person, but whether there is reasonable evidence that I committed the crime named in the extradition request. But it was simply not in my interests to commit such a crime. It was a fact against my interests.

  What were those interests, by this time? When I first met the Parsons they had been very simple. I wanted the lifestyle which other people of my age and education enjoyed but which I had forfeited because of the wayward direction given my life by the humanistic propaganda I was exposed to in my youth. I didn’t crave fabulous riches or meaningless wealth, I simply wanted my due. Now I had achieved that, and I had also met Alison. She was my equal, my complement, my destined mate. The time and effort I had spent cultivating Mrs Parsons had not been wasted, however. While I had had no qualms about courting Karen without a penny to my name — she was bloody lucky to have me, never mind money as well! — I couldn’t have approached Alison on those terms.

  But if personal insolvency would have created awkwardnesses du cote de chez Alison, the violent death of my wife would have been still less desirable. ‘We have already missed three trains,’ Wilde’s Lady Bracknell observes. ‘To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.’ As always, Oscar is right on the money when it comes to the English gentry. To be exposed to comment was still the nightmare of Alison and her kind, and whatever the other disadvantages of murdering one’s wife, it does inevitably tend to make one an object of some general interest. If the previous husband of the wife in question has also died in mysterious circumstances not long before, with the result that one has inherited the couple’s entire estate, then one may expect to attract a very lively class of comment indeed.

  Quite apart from the not-inconsiderable risks of plotting to kill Karen, I thus had two excellent reasons not to do so. Dead, she would have proved a considerable social embarrassment. Alive, and carrying another man’s child, she guaranteed both my financial future and a smooth transition to life with Alison, who would welcome me with the sympathy due someone who had tried in vain to make an honest woman of a deceitful slut. True, I would have to reconcile what I had told Alison about Karen’s hysterectomy with the news that she was pregnant, but that could easily be made to seem like one more strand of the wool which had been pulled over my innocent eyes. As long as Karen was alive, I had nothing to fear and everything to hope for. So far from hiring someone to kill her, I would, if I’d known how, have striven officiously to keep her alive.

  What I did need to do was find out the identity of my stand-in. I lacked both the patience and the experience to do this myself. I needed an outsider, a professional. Money was a problem, however. Our bank accounts were in both our names, but since love’s sweet song had ceased to work its magic, Karen had taken to scrutinizing the statements with an eagle eye and demanding explanations for every penny I withdrew. In common with all middle-class householders, we received a large amount of junk mail practically begging us to borrow money from them for any purpose whatsoever. I now replied to one of these offers, from a financial institution with which we had no previous connections, and had no difficulty in securing a loan of?5,000. I planned to use the capital to meet the monthly repayments until the divorce settlement came through, then repay the principal in full.

  I still hesitated to call a private detective agency, though. To make my situation a matter of record with a third party who was subject to various legal constraints wasn’t necessarily in my interests. Suppose Karen’s paramour turned out to be married, with cash on tap and a reputation to lose. In that case it might well be advantageous to make a settlement out of court, the terms to be arranged after mutual consultation between the interested parties. I didn’t want any officially accredited ex-policeman limiting the options available to me, eg blackmail. Ideally I needed someone who was himself compromised, someone marginal and transient, with no leverage on the mechanisms of power. It was just a matter of time before I thought of Garcia.

  Trish had given me a brief account of the allegations against him, but just to be on the safe side I phoned Amnesty International, posing as a researcher for a TV current affairs programme. Their response was unequivocal, a detailed catalogue of union leaders, students, newspaper editors, civil rights workers, Jews, feminists, priests and intellectuals tortured and murdered, a whole politico-socio-economic subgroup targeted and taken out. I was dismayed. With a record like that, Garcia might well regard the menial task I had to offer him as beneath his dignity.

  I needn’t have worried. In the event Garcia proved only too eager to co-operate in any way, as long as there was money in it. The mysterious rendezvous where we hatched our devilish scheme, incidentally, was a roadside cafeteria near Eynsham called The Happy Eater. I bought Garcia a hamburger and chips and listened to him bewail his situation. It did sound rather bleak. His student visa ran out in a month and he couldn’t renew it without proof of re-enrolment at the school. Clive had stoutly resisted the teachers’ attempts to have Garcia blacked, but his idealism did not extend to forgoing the fees. Garcia’s funds were almost exhausted, and he couldn’t replenish them without putting his student status in jeopardy and risking instant deportation. Nor was his persona particularly grata outside the United Kingdom. No other country in Europe would take him, and, much to Garcia’s disgust, neither would the United States.