Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Sixteen: Madness Without Madness

Oxford, 1876:

Constable Sam Hastings – still four years away from enjoying the rank of Inspector, and the unqualified fear of all Oxford's inhabitants – stood at the corner of Cornmarket and Broad Street, waiting for the Bulldog.

They weren't as scary as their name implied, although, heavens knew, they did their best. They were really just glorified college servants in bowler hats, who strolled through the streets at night, accosting drunken undergraduates who were out after curfew. Sam understood how it worked, because he had been one of the undergraduates accosted. They asked for your name and college, and then went away and decided whether your parents were important enough for the offence to be overlooked, or whether they would be obliged to report you to the proctors. Sam had always been reported to the proctors.

Oxford being Oxford, these sanctimonious snobs were empowered to act as police officers within the University precincts, and all areas of Oxford within four miles of the University. Even now that Oxford had its own City Police Force, you still had to treat the Bulldogs with caution.

And today he had to meet one of them. He didn't know which one it was going to be, but some gloomy, fatalistic part of his brain told him that it would be one he already knew – and, worse still, one who knew him as a student rather than a policeman.

He was not disappointed. Just visible through the crowds of Broad Street was Jenkins, the Bulldog from Sam's old college, looking steely-eyed and silver-haired beneath his bowler hat.

"Constable Hastings," said Jenkins, briefly tipping his bowler. If Sam had been the son of an Earl, this courtesy would have been a lot less brief.

"Jenkins," said Sam warily. "Is this going to be important? I've got a busy morning."

"I daresay, sir." 

Sam didn't know what this meant, but was quite sure it was an insult. "Where are we going?" he said, with ostentatious patience.

"To see a prisoner, sir. We've got 'im in the Senior Common Room at New College." And, with this, Jenkins turned on his heel and marched back down the Broad, leaving Sam to trudge resentfully behind him.

"I was quite content to trust your colleague, Constable Jones, with this matter," said Jenkins, over his shoulder. "But he insisted we summon you as well. He says this prisoner requires someone with a degree."

Sam winced at this, but Jenkins swept on, doing a very good impression of a man who was oblivious. "Of course, I told him you never actually received your degree, sir – that you unaccountably abandoned your studies in your third year."

Sam closed his eyes and prayed for patience. He wanted to say, 'Well, I had just killed someone – that makes it rather difficult to concentrate on your Finals.' 

But Jenkins wouldn't have understood. To him, a suicidal shop-girl was not a worthy obstacle to stand in the way of learning. Besides, Sam had no doubt that town-girls broke their hearts and killed themselves over the more aristocratic of Oxford's students all the time. The young Earls and Dukes and MPs-in-training probably ruined five or six girls a week, and it had never prevented them from graduating.

He turned his attention back to Jenkins just in time to hear him say:

"Have you been following the progress of the war, sir? Know anything about the last battle at the Delhi Cantonment?"

Sam gave a surly shrug. "Nobody seems to. I just heard it was a victory, but a scandal. The penny-weeklies are saying that the Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow caught Jack Cade in bed with his wife and hacked the adulterous pair to pieces with a machete."