He dragged his thoughts away from this unsavoury topic and tried to concentrate less morbidly on the damned man's death. 'I'm still afraid that the evidence, while undoubtedly enough to convince me, is nevertheless circumstantial, altogether too circumstantial to persuade officialdom to take further action at this late stage. Unfortunately, as you well know, bureaucrats are most tiresome…'

'Nobody knows better than I do how obstructive bureaucrats can be, Mr Lapline. I need no telling.' She paused and leant forward. 'Which is precisely why I have decided on an entirely new course of action.'

She paused again to let Mr Lapline wonder what this course of action might entail for him. She hitched her chair forward. 'I intend to create the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellowship at Porterhouse. For this purpose I shall donate six million pounds to the College. Don't interrupt. Six million pounds. Very well, they will undoubtedly accept it, and you will make the necessary arrangements. You will ensure that no one knows that I am the benefactress and the sponsor of the Fellow I will choose. You will find the applicants for the post…'

For the next twenty minutes Mr Lapline listened and the state of his stomach grew worse. It was clear she had every intention of choosing just those qualities in the successful applicant that would make the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow exceedingly, unpopular in Porterhouse. Even if the man failed to prove conclusively that Sir Godber had been murdered, and Mr Lapline couldn't see how he could do anything else, his enquiries were bound to have the most alarming effect on the Senior Fellows.

'I shall do my best, Lady Mary,' he said gloomily when she had finished. 'I shall do my best.'

Lady Mary bared her teeth in a smile. 'My best, Lapline, my best,' she said. 'And you will act expeditiously. I will interview each applicant you think suitable and I don't want any mistakes. I am sure you take my meaning.'

Mr Lapline did. He left the house in Kensington gripped by a sense of despair. Once back in the offices of Lapline & Goodenough, Solicitors, The Strand, London, he took another pill and went to the extraordinary and almost unheard-of lengths of consulting his partner. It was not something he liked doing. Goodenough's expertise lay in helping the firm's less respectable clients, particularly those with problems that involved the Inland Revenue or, worse still, the police. A number of titled bankrupts continued, thanks to Goodenough's efforts, to live in remarkably unreduced circumstances and a number of gentlemen Mr Lapline would have preferred behind bars remained at liberty. Mr Lapline did not approve of Goodenough. For such a very respectable firm he was too facile.

'My dear chap, you mustn't take such threats at face value,' Goodenough said when Mr Lapline told him what Lady Mary had demanded. 'The fact that she is so evidently demented as to continue a vendetta against the Dean and Senior Tutor should be a source of great satisfaction to you.'

'Goodenough,' said Mr Lapline severely, 'the gravity of the situation calls for something more constructive than flippancy. She undoubtedly means to go to another firm unless I follow her instructions to the letter. What are we to do?'

Goodenough considered that note of appeal and was gratified. It was about time Lapline learnt to respect his contribution to the firm. 'Well, in the first place we must humour her,' he said.

'Humour her?' said Mr Lapline. 'Humour her? She's not someone you can humour. She is demanding action and speedily.'

'Then we'll give it to her. We'll find some dreadful fellow she'll be bound to choose and let the brute loose on Porterhouse.'

Mr Lapline shuddered. 'And what possible good do you think that is going to do? Except to stir up a hornets' nest of scandal and lead to the most appalling series of actions for defamation.'

'Precisely,' said Goodenough. 'Nothing could be better. If the Dean and Senior Tutor and so on can be provoked into taking legal steps against the beastly woman, we will have her eating out of our hands. You have no idea how the issuing of writs and the likelihood of enormous damages endears a client to his, or in this case, her legal advisers. She will come to depend on us to get her out of the mess.'

Mr Lapline fastened pedantically on the verb. 'Endear? Endear? Your use of words is as indefensible as your ethics. I find your attitude frankly alarming.'

'Of course you do,' said Goodenough. 'That is why we are such excellent partners. I, in my own exemplary way, deal with the horrid realities of our profession while you maintain our reputation for professional rectitude. I am merely pointing out that if we wish to retain Lady Bloody Mary as a client we must give her what she wants.'

'But she can't possibly want to be sued by a whole host of furious dons who have been accused of murder.'

'I can't see why not,' said Goodenough. 'From what you've told me there isn't a hope in hell of re-opening the inquest on her husband after all these years, whereas a case for criminal slander would give her the opportunity to prove her point. It is known in common parlance as putting the cat among the pigeons. And think of our fees, Lapline, think of our fees.'

'I am thinking of our reputation,' said Lapline, 'for probity. What you are suggesting is entirely contrary to-'

'Come off it, old chap, come off the high horse. And don't talk to me about probity. After a long day dealing with tax-evading morons who wouldn't know probity from the back end of a bus, I am not in the mood for a dose of professional self-righteousness. Either you want to keep the Lacey account or you don't. Make up your mind.'

But Mr Lapline already had. Lady Mary and the Lacey account were by far the most important concerns of his professional life. The Lacey fortune was not a vast one. It didn't compare with the really big ones, but it was substantial. Mr Lapline appreciated that. And besides, it was old money and fitted in very nicely with his own views on what was right and proper. To that extent he felt it was real money as opposed to the other sort, the unreal money that Goodenough seemed to understand. Unreal money drifted about the world from one country to another and in and out of currencies and tax havens in the most unseemly fashion. Mr Lapline disapproved of it in much the same way that he disapproved of Goodenough. In his opinion they both lacked substance. The Lacey money didn't. It was safely invested in solid British institutions, in land and in well-run industries. It was not to be trifled with. But above all Mr Lapline needed to represent it. The Lacey account was the touchstone of his professional reputation.

'Oh well, so be it,' he said. 'I'll have to leave it to you. My stomach…And in any case I wouldn't know where to look for the sort of so-called scholar she would accept as the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow.'

'I'm sure I'll find someone,' said Goodenough. 'You leave it to me. And if I were in your position, I'd have that wretched gall bladder out.'

Mr Lapline sighed and shook his head sorrowfully. 'It is all very well to talk,' he said. 'My wife won't allow it. Her mother died during a gall-bladder operation. It's a damned nuisance' He got up to go. And do please bear in mind that there must be nothing shady about this business. Our responsibility lies in protecting Lady Mary from herself.'

It was a remark calculated to annoy Goodenough. 'Of course it does,' he said. 'The fact that the old bird is dotty is beside the point. Half my clients are off their trolleys, but I still manage to keep them solvent and out of jail. Ask Vera.'

But Mr Lapline preferred not to. Goodenough's secretary possessed physical attractions that were rather too obvious for Mr Lapline's taste and were, he suspected, used in part to distract the Special Income Tax investigators from concentrating at all closely on the dubious accounts of Goodenough's clients. He chose not to speculate on the other uses his partner might put them to. He went back to his office and thought wistfully about having his gall bladder out after all.