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By Root 484 0

mighty bollocking it deserved, not only poking holes in its logic and scholarship, but also implying that Haas knew better, on the evidence of his own earlier writing, and that he had produced this farrago merely to curry favor with the Marxists and feminists and whatnot who control, I am informed, all hiring at American universities. Not that I know a thing about it myself, barely passed my A-levels in the damned stuff, just a simple biologist really. Amazing that Andrew and I got on so well together; absence of rivalry perhaps, two halves making a whole. He used to read me bits in the evenings. Well, it was a great scandal, outraged letters back and forth to the TLS, screeds in the little journals, and I recall thinking at the time how happy I was to be in a business where you have actual data. It blew over, as these things always do, and when Andrew lost his reputation because of that awful little man, Haas was there with a stout defense, and later a job offer. As I recall, neither of us mentioned the earlier dogfight. We assumed that it had been forgotten, simply part of the usual give-and-take of academic debate. But it hadn’t been. Almost as soon as Andrew arrived in New York, Haas began to torment him. At first it was just sly digs, little things that could have been confused with some kind of bumptious American humor, but then it grew worse, petty acts of tyranny…”

“Such as?”

“Oh, he was promised a Shakespeare seminar, and some graduate courses, but instead he was given freshman composition sections, rather like a brain surgeon being asked to tidy up the wards, mop up the blood, and empty the pans. When he complained of this outrageous treatment, Haas told him he was lucky to have anything at all, he was lucky not to be on the dole, or selling watches on the street. Andrew called and told me about this gruesome business, and of course I demanded that he tell Haas what he could do with his bloody appointment and come straight home. But that he would not do. I think he felt it was a kind of expiation for his scholarly sin. And…you know I see that this will sound odd, as if Andrew were descending into some hell of paranoia, but he told me that he believed Haas was tormenting him in more underhanded ways as well. His salary cheques would go missing. Little items would vanish from his briefcase, from his room. Someone changed the lock on his office door. One day he came to work and found all his things in the hall. He’d had his office moved without notice. Classes he was meant to meet in one room were mysteriously scheduled for another room on the other side of the campus, and he had to rush to meet them in the heat of the summer. Those terrible New York summers, and he suffered so from the heat. Not used to it, you see, being from here. And his air-conditioning was always breaking down….”

“Did he blame Mickey for that too?” I asked unkindly.

“Yes, I see where you’re going and I confess I thought that as well. Is he running mad? But it was the weight of evidence, you see, I mean the accumulation of horrible details—could he possibly have made them up? Unlikely, in my opinion: poor Andrew wasn’t a fantasist, not in the least. We used to joke that he had no imagination at all, and then there’s what I saw when he returned last August.”

He paused here and drank some of his beer. His eyes looked wet to me, and I fervently wished for him not to break down about poor Andrew. I took on some of my own pint, my third.

“It’s difficult to describe. Manic and frightened at the same time. He had a young woman with him and insisted she had to stay in our house, although there are some perfectly adequate hotels nearby.”

“Carolyn Rolly,” said Crosetti.

“Yes, I believe that was her name. She was helping him in some research….”

“Did he say what the research was?” Paul asked.

“Not really, no. But he said it was the most important find in the whole history of Shakespeare scholarship, and dreadfully hush-hush. As if I would blab. In any case they were out and about. He seemed to have plenty of ready money, renting a car, staying