Soon afterwards he joined me, bearing a bottle of wine and two plastic glasses.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so long — the barman couldn’t find his corkscrew. And I’m afraid he’s run out of sandwiches.” He sat down on the seat facing me and carefully filled the two glasses. “By the way, I hope I’m not imposing myself on you?” He spoke, however, with the cheerful confidence of a man accustomed to being liked.
I could well imagine that his company would not often prove unwelcome. It was not precisely a question of looks: his features, though of a style usually attractive to women, had not the perfection of regularity which provokes the resentment of men; his complexion was rather pale, accentuating the blackness of hair and eyelashes; his eyes very bright, of the colour generally called hazel; his mouth rather narrow, turning up at one corner and down at the other, as if in habitual scepticism. The attractiveness of his face lay rather in its expression — one of alertness and vitality, as if he expected life to be interesting and would encourage it, if necessary, with the occasional prod in the ribs, to come up to that expectation.
I myself, I confess, was already disposed to like the man: his liberality in the matter of the wine; his soundness of judgement in the matter of the Bursar; his presence on the train when I had almost despaired of it — these things combined could not fail to produce a favourable impression on me. I said with perfect sincerity that I was delighted to have his company.
We spent a pleasant few minutes exchanging, with sympathy and candour, our views on the character of the Bursar.
“He’s the sort of man,” said Bolton, “who somehow always makes me want to do the exact opposite of what he wants me to do. It’s rather a disadvantage in a fundraiser. As a matter of fact, I don’t in the least mind giving something for the upkeep of the Library or whatever it is, but I can’t stand him telling me it’s my duty. Why the devil should it be my duty?”
“The idea is,” I said, “that those who have benefited financially from an Oxford education have some sort of obligation to make repayment in kind. But perhaps you don’t feel that applies to you?”
The question seemed to amuse him, as if reminding him of some very private joke.
“As it happens, I could make out a fair case for saying that in my present circumstances, my Oxford education is a financial disadvantage.” He smiled and refilled my glass.
“You provoke my curiosity,” I said. “What are the present circumstances?”
“Well, if you’d like to hear about it I’ll tell you, but I must warn you, Professor Tamar, that it’s really a very simple story — you may find it tedious.”
I assured him that I would not.
“I must begin by explaining that I was born and brought up in Lancashire and educated at—” He named a grammar school well known to me for the excellence of its academic record. “Oh, you’ve heard of it? Yes, of course, we’ve always done rather well in the Oxford entrance exams. So you won’t find it at all surprising that in due course I got a scholarship to Oxford. I read PPE, concentrating on the Economics rather than the Philosophy or Politics. It was a bit of a toss-up between that and French and German — I’ve always had quite a good ear for languages — but my headmaster told me I could do those on my own and I took his advice.
“When I came up to Oxford, I spoke, as you’d expect, with a Lancashire accent. Of which, by the way, I wasn’t in the least ashamed — I didn’t make any conscious effort to lose it. But when I went home at the end of my first term, my mother nearly threw me out of the house for talking posh and giving myself airs. So after a while I got quite used to switching from one to the other — a Lancashire accent at home, and what southerners call an educated accent when I went back to Oxford.
“I began to be interested in the way people reacted to me, depending on which I was using. I wasn’t unduly surprised, of course, that they thought me better educated and of a higher social class when I was using my southern accent. What rather surprised me was that when I used the northern accent they were more inclined to trust me.”
Again he refilled my glass, brushing aside my protest that I was taking more than my fair share of the wine.
“After I graduated, I joined an investment bank which had its headquarters in Paris and for the next twenty years or so I mostly worked outside England — first there and later in New York. During that time, when I talked English it was with my southern accent — it came to me more naturally by that time, and the French and Americans can’t tell the difference anyway. But when I was dealing with the British, and wanted them to feel that I was a sensible, down-to-earth sort of chap who wouldn’t pull any fast ones, I used a rather mild version of my Lancashire accent.
“And then one day I was offered a job by an English company. I’d been involved in some negotiations with the Chairman and apparently he’d taken a liking to me. I was very keen to accept — it was a good job, and I wanted to get back to England. I never thought of there being a problem about the accent.”
I quite saw that if, when he first met the Chairman, he had spoken with one accent he could hardly, on taking up his new appointment, immediately begin speaking with another; but I would have supposed that over a period the northern accent could be imperceptibly eliminated.
“That’s what I meant to do. But I hadn’t realised, you see, how important it was to him — not the accent itself, but what he thought it signified. He assumed that someone who spoke with that accent couldn’t have been to University — not to Oxford or Cambridge, at any rate. I did mention that I’d been to grammar school, but he’s a public school man himself, of course — that simply made him think I was educationally deprived. He imagines me as a barefoot urchin walking the streets of Manchester, going without food to buy books and studying by candlelight after fourteen hours’ work in the mill.
“And he’d given the same idea to the people I was going to be working with, who happened to include a man I find rather irritating. He’s also a public-school man. He couldn’t resist sneering at me for being an ignorant working-class northerner and I couldn’t resist teasing him by living down to his expectations. So instead of toning down the accent, I found myself making it broader. And the worst of it was that I somehow developed a persona to match — I began to turn into a sort of caricature of the kind of person he assumed I was. I suppose I was trying to find out how far I could go before he realised I was teasing — but he never did. So the result is that I’ve turned myself into this appalling stereotypical northerner — I hate foreigners and I don’t hold with books and I probably beat my wife if she’s late getting my supper on the table. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde, and I simply don’t know how to get out of it.”
He did not appear, however, to be unduly cast down by the thought of this: indeed, he gave every sign of regarding it with the liveliest amusement. I reminded him that he had spoken of his Oxford education as a financial disadvantage.
“Well, it would be if the Chairman found out about it. You see how dangerous it would be to spoil his illusions. They’re not just illusions about me — they’re illusions about himself. He prides himself on having recognised my abilities in spite of my having no formal qualifications — it would take the gilt off the gingerbread if he ever discovered that I had quite a good degree from Oxford. Well, a First actually” He sighed. “If he found out, I don’t think he’d ever forgive me.”
He again refilled my glass. I protested again that he should not give me all the wine. I saw that his own glass, though he had not replenished it, was still three-quarters full.
“Oh, I can’t drink much this evening. I have an urgent meeting — with the Chairman, as it happens — first thing in the morning. It wouldn’t do to have a hangover. So you see what I mean when I say that my Oxford education, in my present circumstances, is a financial disadvantage rather than an asset? Absurd, isn’t it?”
“It would be going rather far to blame St. George’s.”
“Oh, certainly. Besides, St. George’s was not my College.”
“Wasn’t it?” I remembered a fragment of conversation reported by Ragwort. “I suppose you’re a Worcester man?”
“Yes, that’s right. How did you know? Oh, I was forgetting that you’re a detective.”
I was disconcerted, almost unpleasantly so. My renown in the field of criminal investigation is not so widespread that I could expect my name alone to be sufficient to inform him of my connection with it: I had supposed him to know nothing more of me than might have been gathered from our meeting and conversation that evening.
“I can lay no claim,” I said, “to any such description.”
“My dear Professor Tamar, you are too modest. Felicity has told me that you have successfully investigated
