'Not at all, my dear chap,' said the General. 'Know just how you feel. All that damned grease and this fellow Osbert still on the premises. Ghastly business. Mangled too, according to the Praelector here. And the Senior Tutor sitting there chatting away cheerfully and acting perfectly normally. First thing I heard about it was from the Chaplain.'

The Praelector addressed the Dean sternly. 'I told you not to mention it to anyone. And there was the Chaplain practically shouting the odds from the house tops. Fortunately no one takes much notice of what he says.'

It was the Dean's turn to look decidedly uneasy. 'I can assure you I haven't said a word to the Chaplain. Last person I'd tell. You don't think…'

'I don't know what to think,' said the Praelector. 'All I know is that someone's been talking.'

The General tried to take command of the situation. 'Now then, you fellows, we're not going to get anything done nattering about it. We've got to think how to protect the College reputation. If it got out that we were sheltering a murderer, the gutter press would have a field day. And the broadsheets too. Letters to _The Times_ and television programmes. We've got to be practical and find some way of keeping the police out of it. The best way of doing that is to get the body off the premises. Where is it at the moment?'

'Well, at a rough guess,' said the Praelector, now convinced that Sir Cathcart was a great deal drunker than he looked, 'at a rough guess I'd have to say it was still in the Crypt. Of course I haven't been down to have a look lately but that's where they're usually kept.'

'The Crypt, eh? Well, I suppose it's as good a place as any. Not many people go down there. Probably kept locked in any case.'

'Invariably,' said the Dean. 'I can't see that it matters much. The really important thing is to get Skullion out of the Master's Lodge. Now he has already threatened to tell the world he killed Sir Godber if we even think of having him shifted to the Park and-'

'Excuse me,' said Sir Cathcart, sliding slowly into an armchair. 'I don't feel awfully well. Must be that damned duck, though how the hell all that fat can affect the brain so quickly I'm damned if I know. You don't think I'm having a Blue, do you?'

'A Blue? Oh no, no,' said the Praelector. A Porterhouse Blue always attacks the speech first. You wouldn't be making any sense if you'd had a Blue.'

'And how does it affect the hearing? I mean, I'm not hearing any sense half the time. I thought I heard the Dean say Skullion had threatened to tell the world he killed Sir Godber Evans.'

'Quite right too. That's what I did say,' said the Dean. 'What's wrong with that?'

Words failed Sir Cathcart. Slumped in the old leather armchair he looked pucely up at them and shook his head. 'I don't understand,' he muttered. 'I don't begin to understand.'

'We none of us do,' said the Praelector. 'That is one of the problems but it's not one we can get to grips with now. We have to take immediate action. No matter how many threats he makes Skullion must go, if necessary by force. We simply cannot afford to have a murderer as Master.'

'Of course we can't but don't you see he may say something to the Press,' the Dean said anxiously.

But Sir Cathcart D'Eath had overcome his temporary lapse. The words 'immediate action' and 'force' had reawoken his military spirit, and the clear statement that the Master of Porterhouse was a murderer had driven all other considerations out of his mind. The Senior Tutor's killing of Dr Osbert was by comparison a minor misdemeanour. He got to his feet and stood with his legs apart in front of the empty fireplace. 'Right, the first thing is for one of us to go and explain the situation to him,' he said. 'Now I've known Skullion a long time and I think I can say with some confidence that he trusts me. I shall speak to him man to man, soldier to soldier, and…'

'Oh for God's sake,' muttered the Praelector but the General ignored the interruption, '…and I shall put it to him that his duty now is to go. He has always been a loyal College servant and I daresay the action he took, however regrettable, against the late Sir Godber Evans was done for the sake of Porterhouse. Frankly I have a great deal of sympathy for the old boy and, speaking as a military man, I have little doubt that in the same circumstances I would have done the same thing. Can't say fairer than that. We had to put some of the Watussi Rifles down in Burma one time and I can say with some confidence that I did not shrink from putting my hand to the wheel. Now you chaps just wait here and I'll go and look Skullion up. Daresay I'll find him on sentry duty by the back gate.'

And before either the Dean or the Praelector could say anything to stop him he strode from the room and could be heard clattering down the staircase into the night.

'Did he have an awful lot of pressed duck?' the Dean asked.

The Praelector shook his head. 'Hardly any, unfortunately. Hardening of the arteries is an occupational hazard that seems to affect cavalrymen in particular. We'll just have to wait and see what this charge of the heavy brigade results in.'

29

Out in the darkness under the old beech tree by the back gate Skullion followed the General's progress across the lawn and round the rose beds by the occasional glow of his cigar. Sir Cathcart had lit it almost as soon as he was in the open air partly to give him time to think what he was going to say but also to give Skullion warning that he was coming. 'No point in alarming the old bugger,' he'd said to himself.

But Skullion wasn't alarmed. He'd known this would happen sooner or later. He'd given the Dean his marching bloody orders and the Dean wasn't ever going to forgive him for that. Given him a nasty shock into the bargain telling him about killing Sir Godber Blooming Evans. Only done it because he was drunk and pissed off. But what was done was done and in some ways Skullion didn't regret it. He'd had enough of being called Master and them not thinking of him as the Master. Somehow the Bursar's telling that bloody Yank not to call him a Quasimodo update but the Master had cleared the air and let him see his position in the College in a new light. There wasn't any pride in being Master of Porterhouse and being helpless in a wheelchair. The fact that he'd missed sitting by the bed and gobbledygooking the Yank had told him that too.

It had been different when he'd been Head Porter. He'd had real power then even if he did have to hide it and call the young wet-behind-the-ears 'Sir'. He'd learnt that lesson in the Royal Marines from watching the sergeants saluting young wet-behind-the-ears officers and calling them 'Sir' to their faces and then seeing to it they didn't lead them into any trouble. In France Skullion had seen a Corporal put a bullet through a 2nd Lieutenant who'd wanted to be a hero and get them all killed taking on a company of Panzer Grenadiers waiting for them in a sunken lane. He'd heard the Corporal mutter, 'Him or us. And it ain't going to be us,' just before he shot the officer. And at Lympstone-or was it Deal?-Sergeant Smith had asked him one wet afternoon standing in the drill shed, 'What's your most important job in this bloody war, boy? I'll tell you what it fucking is. To kill the fucking enemy. And to do that you've got to be alive, see? So keep your swede down and remember your blooming mother wants to see you again even if I don't and she ain't going to do that if you're a dead Marine and some fucking Jerry's done to you what you're being paid to do to him. And what are you fucking smiling at, boy? Tell your ruddy uncle here because I'm sure we all want to share the joke.' And 3rd Class Marine Skullion PO/X127052 had said sheepishly, 'It's just that a dead Marine is an empty bottle, isn't it, Sarge? Like a bottle of beer.' And even Sergeant Smith had almost smiled for a moment. 'Well, you're going to see plenty of both where you're going, and for your sake I hope you live to drink plenty of the one and aren't one of the others.' That had all been such a long time ago, but Skullion had never forgotten it nor what he'd seen in France. And people like General Sir Cathcart D'Eath talked about having a Good War. As if being cold and wet and hungry and shit-scared was fun. And hearing someone screaming wasn't fun either even if it was a bloody wounded Jerry.