Page 69 of Murder in the Family

MALCOLM SEVERN

I certainly do. Not least because I was questioned by the Metropolitan Police about it very shortly afterwards. I and most of the rest of my year group.

JJ NORTON

And do you remember Rupert being there that night?

MALCOLM SEVERN

I do. We were actually sitting fairly close together – we were all part of the same group of friends.And hard as it might be to imagine looking at us now, we were a pretty fast lot back then.

(laughs)

I remember the Dean had to send a message from High Table asking us to pipe down.

JJ NORTON

So there’s no way Rupert could have absented himself without you knowing?

MALCOLM SEVERN

Certainly not for the time it would have taken for him to get to London and back.

(hesitates)

Though I do remember him leaving the table at one stage—

JJ NORTON

Oh yes? When was that?

MALCOLM SEVERN

They’d just started serving the entrée so it must have been around 8.30. He was only gone about half an hour.

JJ NORTON

And when he got back where did he say he’d been?

MALCOLM SEVERN

(looking slightly flustered)

He said he had to make a call. Something about a minor emergency and needing something sorted out re DP.

JJ NORTON

DP?

MALCOLM SEVERN

Dorney Place. He’d always called it that, ever since I first knew him.

JJ NORTON

I’m confused – he said it was an emergency, which implies something that’s suddenly happened, so how did he know about it? Had someone called or messaged him during the dinner to say there was a problem?

MALCOLM SEVERN

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