This Private Plot by Alan Beechey Page A

attitude to sex, on the other hand, is positively infantile. But the British, as in so many things, are bang in the middle. They stay mired in their adolescence. They can’t stop thinking about sex, but they never get it right. That’s why the British can be funnier about their sex lives than any other nation.”
    Oliver took this in, gazing at McCaw’s bookshelves. On the subject of the British, she had been disturbingly close to home. Although the room he and Effie were sharing in Synne, sanctified by his mother as Oliver’s Room, bore no sentimental value for him, it was still his furtive ambition to carve at least one notch on the figurative bedpost of his late-teenage-years bed. Effie had been in better spirits the previous evening, so Oliver tentatively tried to resume the lovemaking that had been deferred since the Mallards’ arrival in the Shakespeare Race, two eventful nights earlier. He was starting to stroke Effie’s stomach, wondering whether to let his hand drift north or south, when a vixen’s blood-curdling screech from a nearby garden caused him to yell involuntarily, setting off a fit of laughter from Effie that completely destroyed the mood.
    Well, there was always tonight. But what role had sex played in Dennis Breedlove’s life? Surely none that would cause him, at the age of eighty, to kill himself at the first hint of exposure? And why are Dr. McCaw’s books all upside down?
    He blinked and looked again. And then he realized they were French books, novels mainly, the lettering on the spine running bottom to top, according to French publishing practice. When scanning a bookshelf, the French reader’s head tilts appropriately to the left.
    â€œYou like French literature, I see,” he remarked, drinking his tea.
    A puzzled expression crossed her face. “I should hope so, dear, since I teach it. My mother was French—my first name is pronounced the French way. Nobody gets it the first time.”
    â€œBut I gathered from my uncle that you’re an expert on blackmail,” Oliver stammered.
    â€œC’est bien vrai .”
    â€œSo I assumed you’d be a fellow in Law or maybe a Psychology lecturer, with a specialty in criminology or something.”
    She shook her head, gazing at him with amusement.
    â€œThen may I ask how you know so much about blackmail?” he persisted.
    â€œBecause I’m a blackmailer. Or I used to be, until your uncle arrested me for the first and last time.”
    â€œGood heavens!”
    â€œAh, he didn’t mention that? Well, it’s ancient history now, of course. Tim Mallard helped me see the error of my ways. Bit of a quid pro quo, you see. Or in my case, fifty quid pro quo, which was how much I was collecting each month from a fellow of Oriel. His shameful lust for one of the more sensitive male undergraduates in his tutorial group turned out, unbeknownst to moi , to have played a peripheral role in a particularly tricky murder. Timmy was only an inspector in those days, quite a dashing flic , but too fond of his wife, alas. In gratitude for my assistance, he dropped the charges, as long as I promised to go straight.”
    She took another gulp from the mug of cooling tea. “Rather a pity,” she continued. “The pickings had been fat around these parts. Before the Berlin Wall came down, I made several thousand pounds off a nervous New College don whose affection for the Soviet regime had been bruited around the bathhouses for decades.”
    Oliver smiled, making a mental note to take some revenge upon Mallard for not warning him.
    â€œStill, I was going to retire anyway,” McCaw continued.
    â€œGuilty conscience?”
    â€œDwindling opportunities, mon cher . You see, nobody’s ashamed of anything these days. When I started, I could hide in the bushes on Hampstead Heath with a torch and a notebook, and come up trumps every time. Today, ambitious young political