I couldn’t deny it. I also remembered Alex frowning when I aired my doubts about the possible effects of the piece, and saying, ‘I get the feeling you disapprove.’ Perhaps she was wondering whether she would rise or fall in my estimation by confessing that she hadn’t written it. ‘Well, you may be right, I suppose,’ I said. ‘There’s no way of knowing.’
‘There’s internal evidence,’ he said. ‘The lexis of the piece is more English than American.’ He allowed himself a little moment of professional one-upmanship. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice that.’
‘Well, she was educated for a time in England,’ I said, piqued into defending myself. ‘It can have a permanent effect on a person’s writing style.’
‘True,’ he conceded. ‘But she really is completely untrustworthy. The only piece of written work I’ve managed to get out of her turned out to be largely cribbed from another source.’
‘What was it about?’ I asked, with a sinking feeling.
‘Oh, paragraph breaks in suicide notes. Two types, related to the subjects’ motivation. There was a brief footnote acknowledging the other article, in a psychology journal, but when I chased it up and read it, I found that almost everything she said was derived from it. It turned out that the author of the article was a former boyfriend. She said he wouldn’t mind - seemed to think that put her in the clear as regards plagiarism.’
‘I see,’ I said. I felt like a foolish dupe, and I suppose I must have looked it.
There was a tap on the door. Butterworth glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got a supervision,’ he said. ‘Look, Desmond . . .’ He leaned forward in his chair and spoke earnestly. ‘This girl is trouble, and I rue the day I ever took her on. I don’t need to tell you the pressure we’re under to take on eligible postgrads from abroad for their fees, and as you can probably imagine she gave a very plausible performance when I interviewed her, and her references looked OK. But it’s my belief that she’s not capable of completing a PhD, as much for psychological as intellectual reasons. My advice to you is not to get involved with her, or you’ll find yourself writing her thesis for her. And don’t trust a word she says.’
I thanked him for his advice and took my leave. Loitering in the corridor outside was the young man with the laptop who had been in the café.
I must find some way of severing relations with Alex without inviting retaliatory mischief. But how?
13th December. Something happened yesterday evening which in some ways made the Alex problem more manageable, and in other ways less so. Fred and I went to the press night for the Playhouse’s Christmas show, Peter Pan. It was nicely staged, with meticulous period detail, but had a black Peter Pan. The young actor playing the role was actually rather good, but I found his exotic appearance in the middle-class Edwardian milieu, which would certainly have excited comment from the Darling children, but which the text did not permit them to notice, a constant distraction. I might accept the socio-political case for colour-blind casting, as I believe they call it, if its proponents would admit that it often carries a certain aesthetic price, but they won’t. I was arguing about this with Fred in the foyer during the interval - she sits on the Friends of the Playhouse committee and was taking a contrary view - when to my dismay I saw Alex approaching us, with a smile of recognition on her face. She was wearing the same red silk blouse as when I first met her, but with a swift, almost imperceptible movement of her hand she did up the lower of the two buttons at her throat as she drew near.
‘Hallo, Professor Bates,’ she said.
I think I performed fairly well the part of an elderly, slightly absent-minded professor, mildly pleased to meet a presentable slight acquaintance in these circumstances and introduce her to his wife if he could only remember her name. ‘Oh, hallo!’ I said. ‘Fred, this is, er . . .’
‘Alex,’ she said, helpfully, playing her part, and shaking Fred’s extended hand.
‘Yes, Alex Loom, she’s a postgraduate at the University, in the English Department, I think I told you about her research project -’
‘I’ve seen you before somewhere,’ Fred said to Alex. ‘I know - at the ARC - you were talking to Desmond at a party, their last