Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer

away somewhere, would be released for more creative
employment.
    When the dossier was completed he went to
bed and fell into a deep sleep. He rose again early in the morning, walked
across the cloisters to a Common Room breakfast and helped himself to eggs and
bacon, coffee and toast. Then he took his dossier to the bursar’s office, where
he made four copies of every document, ending up with five dossiers in all–one
master of the originals and four copies. He strolled across Magdalen Bridge,
admiring, as he always did, the trim flower beds of the University Botanic
Gardens beneath him on his right, and called into Maxwells Bookshop, just on
the other side of the bridge.
    He returned to his rooms with five smart
files of different colours. He then made up the five dossiers in the separate
files and placed them in a drawer of his desk which he kept locked. He had a
tidy and methodical mind, as a mathematician must: a mind the like of which
Harvey Metcalfe had never yet come up against.
    Stephen then referred to the notes he had
written after his meeting with Detective Inspector Smith and rang Directory
Enquiries, asking for the London addresses and telephone numbers of Dr. Adrian
Tryner, Jean Pierre Lamanns and Lord Brigsley. Directory Enquiries would not
give him more than two numbers at any one time. Stephen wondered how, or indeed if, the GPO made any money at all. In the
States the Bell Telephone Company would happily have given him a dozen
telephone numbers and still ended with the invariable “You’re welcome.”
    The two he managed to wheedle out of his
reluctant informant were Dr. Adrian Tryner at 122 Harley Street, London, W.1,
and Jean Pierre Lamanns at the Lamanns Gallery, 17 New Bond Street, W.1.
Stephen then dialled Directory Enquiries a second time and requested the number
and address of Lord Brigsley.
    “No one under Brigsley in Central London,”
said the operator. “Maybe he’s ex-Directory. That is, if he really is a lord,”
she sniffed.
    Stephen left his study for the Senior Common
Room, where he thumbed through the latest copy of Who’s Who and found the noble
lord:
    BRIGSLEY, Viscount; James Clarence Spencer;
b 11 Oct. 1942; Farmer; s and heir of 5th Earl of Louth cr 1764 qv., Educ: Harrow; Christ Church, Oxford (B.A.); President
of Oxford University Dramatic Society; Lt. Grenadier Guards 1966-68;
Recreations: Polo (not water), Shooting; Address: Tathwell Hall, Nr. Louth,
Lines. Clubs: Garrick, The Guards.
    Stephen then strolled over to Christ Church
and asked the secretary in the treasurer’s office if she had a London address
for James Brigsley, matriculated 1963, in the records. It was duly supplied as
119 King’s Road, London, S.W . 3.
    Stephen was beginning to warm to the
challenge of Harvey Met-calfe. He left Christ Church by Peckwater and the
Canterbury Gate out into the High back to Magdalen, hands in pockets, composing
a brief letter in his mind. Oxford’s nocturnal slogan writers had been at work
on a college wall again, he saw. “Deanz meanz feinz,” said one neatly painted
graffito. Stephen, the reluctant Junior Dean of Magdalen, responsible for
undergraduate discipline, smiled. When back at his desk he wrote down what had
been in his mind.
     
    Magdalen College,
    Oxford.
    April 15th
    Dear Dr. Tryner,
    I am holding a small dinner party in my
rooms next Thursday evening for a few carefully selected people.
    I would be very pleased if you could spare
the time to join me, and I think you would find it worth your while to come.
    Yours sincerely,
    Stephen Bradley.
     
    Black Tie. 7:30 to 8 p.m.
     
    Stephen changed the sheet of letter paper in
his typewriter and addressed similar letters to Jean Pierre Lamanns and Lord
Brigsley. Then he thought for a little and picked up the internal telephone.
    “Harry?” he said to the head porter, “if
anyone rings the lodge to ask if the college has a member called Stephen
Bradley, I want you to say, ‘Yes, sir, a new Mathematics Fellow akeady