Hollier explained. The sketch was signed; it was a Varley. Had Francis Cornish bought it, or had he taken it at some low point in Varley’s life, hoping to sell it, thereby getting some money for the artist? Who could tell? If Cornish had not bought it, the sketch was now of substantial value, belonged to the dead painter’s estate. There were scores of such problems, and how were we expected to deal with them?

That was when we found out why Arthur Cornish, not yet thirty, was good at business. “You’d better query any living painter who can be found about anything signed that’s here; otherwise it all goes to the National Gallery, according to the will. We can’t go into the matter of ownership beyond that. ‘Of which I die possessed’ is what the will says, and so far as we’re concerned he dies possessed of anything that is in these apartments. It will mean a lot of letters; I’ll send you a good secretary.”

When he went, he looked wistfully at the little Varley. How easy to covet something when the owner is dead, and it has been willed to a faceless, soulless public body.

During the first ten days after Parlabane settled himself in Hollier’s outer room I went through a variety of feelings about him: indignation because he invaded what I wanted for myself; disgust at having to share a place which he quite soon invested with his strong personal smell; fury at his trick of nosing into my papers and even my briefcase when I was elsewhere; irritation at his way of talking, which mingled a creepy-crawly nineteenth-century clerical manner with occasional very sharp phrases and obscenities; a sense that he was laughing at me and playing with me; feminine fury at being treated mockingly as the weaker vessel. I was getting no work done, and I decided to have it out with Hollier.

It was not easy to catch him, because he was out every afternoon; something to do with the Cornish business, I gathered. I hoped that soon the mysterious manuscript of which he had spoken would be mentioned again. But one day I caught him in the quadrangle and persuaded him to sit on a bench while I told my tale.

“Of course it is tedious for you,” he said; “and for me, as well. But Parlabane is an old friend, and you mustn’t turn your back on old friends. We were at school together, at Colborne College, and then we went through Spook together and began academic careers together. I know something about his family; that wasn’t a happy story. And now he’s down on his luck.

“I suppose it’s his own fault. But I always admired him, you see, and I don’t imagine you know what that means among young men. Hero-worship is important to them, and when it has passed, it is false to yourself to forget what the hero once meant. He was always first in every class, and I was lucky to be fifth. He could write brilliant light verse; I have some of it still. His conversation was a delight to all of our group; he was witty and I’m most decidedly not. The whole College expected brilliant things from him, and his reputation spread far beyond the College, through the whole University. When he graduated with the Governor General’s Medal and top honours of all kinds, and whizzed off to Princeton with a princely scholarship to do his doctoral work, the rest of us didn’t envy him; we marvelled at him. He was so special, you see.”

“But what went wrong?”

“I’m not much good at knowing what goes wrong with people. But when he came back he was immediately grabbed by Spook for its philosophy faculty; he was obviously the most brilliant young philosopher in the University and in the whole of Canada, I expect. But he had become different during those years. Medieval philosophy was his thing—Thomas Aquinas, chiefly—and all that fine-honed scholastic disputation was victuals and drink to him. But he did something not many academic philosophers do; he let his philosophy spill over into his life, and just for fun he would take the most outrageous lines in argument. His speciality was the history of scepticism: the impossibility of real knowledge—no certainty of truth. Making black seem white was easy for him. I suppose it affected his private life, and there were a few messes, and Spook found him too rich for its blood, and by general consent he moved on, leaving rather a stink.”

“Sounds like too much intellect and too little character.”

“Don’t be a Pharisee, Maria; it isn’t becoming either to your age or your beauty. You didn’t know him as I know him.”

“Yes, but this monk business!”

“He does that to spook Spook. And he was a monk. It was his latest attempt to find his place in life.”

“You mean he isn’t a monk now?”

“Legally, perhaps, but he went over the wall, and it wouldn’t be easy for him to climb back again. I had lost touch with him, but a few months ago I had a most pathetic letter saying how unhappy he was in the monastery—it was in the Midlands—and begging for help to get out. So I sent him some money. How could I do otherwise? It never entered my head that he wouldturn up here, and certainly not in that rig-out he wears. But I suppose it’s the only outfit he owns.”

“And is he going to stay forever?”

“The Bursar is getting restless. He doesn’t mind me having a guest overnight, now and then, but he spoke to me about Parlabane and said he couldn’t allow a squatter in the College, and he’d refuse to let Parlabane charge meals in Hall unless he had some assurance that he could pay his bill. Which he can’t, you see. So I shall have to do something.”

“I hope you won’t take him on as a permanent responsibility.”

“Ah, you hope that, do you Maria? And what right have you to hope for any such thing?”

There was no answer to that one. I hadn’t expected Hollier to turn professor on me—not after the encounter on the sofa which had now become Parlabane’s bed. I had to climb down.

“I’m sorry. But it’s not as if it were none of my business. You did say I was to work in your outer room. How can I do that with Parlabane sitting there all day knitting those interminable socks of his? And staring. He fidgets me till I can’t stand it.”

“Be patient a little longer. I haven’t forgotten you, or the work I want you to do. Try to understand Parlabane.”

Then he stood up, and the talk was over. As he walked away I looked upward, and in the window of Hollier’s rooms—very high up, because Spook is nothing if not Gothic in effect—I saw Parlabane’s face looking down at us. He couldn’t possibly have heard, but he was laughing, and made a waggling gesture at me with his finger, as if he were saying, “Naughty girl; naughty puss!”

Try to understand him. All right. Up the stairs I went and before he could speak I said: “Dr. Parlabane, could you have dinner with me tonight?”

“It would be an honour, Maria. But may I ask why this sudden invitation? Do I look as if I needed feeding up?”

“You pinched a big block of chocolate out of my briefcase yesterday. I thought you might be hungry.”

“And so I am. The Bursar is looking sour these days whenever I appear in Hall. He suspects I shall not be able to pay my bill, and he is right. We monks learn not to be sensitive about poverty.”

“Let’s meet downstairs at half past six.”

I took him to a spaghetti joint that students frequent, called The Rude Plenty; he began with a hearty vegetable broth, then ate a mountain of spaghetti with meat sauce, and drank the whole of a flask of Chianti except for my single glass. He wolfed a lot of something made with custard, coconut shreds, and plum jam, and then made heavy inroads on a large piece of Gorgonzola that came to the table whole and was removed in a state of wreckage. He had two big cups of frothed coffee, and topped off with a Strega; I even stood him a fearful Italian cigar.