Chapter Fifteen
Ginevra was hunched over her German textbook two days later when Sidney slid onto the opposite chair.
“Keep studying,” he murmured when she straightened. He clasped his hands on the table and surveyed the upper reading room of the Radcliffe Camera over his shoulder. “Pretend you’re explaining something.”
Gin had chosen a different study spot in the Bod to avoid people she knew, shunting away their investigation in the face of looming prelims, but Sidney’s appearance brought all her worries tumbling out again like an overstuffed closet set free.
She cast a wary eye over the rest of the library’s patrons, all of whom seemed far too stressed about revision to be spies, and swiveled her notebook toward him.
Sidney glanced over the page and took her pencil. “You’ve made a mistake right there.”
“This is the part,” she said brightly, “where I strangle you if you keep me in suspense too long.”
Sidney erased a line of her scrawl and rewrote it with painstaking precision, but the corner of his mouth was flirting with a smile when he returned the pencil.
It was an unprecedented, if minute, amount of good humor for the man, and an effervescent feeling brimmed inside Ginevra.
She had quickly realized he was not a chatty sort of person and did not engage in the jovial repartee of most Oxford men, but she now regarded his intense quiet like an iceberg.
While there was a great deal about Sidney she did not fathom, she was quite sure he would wreck anyone foolish enough to ignore his presence.
“I hadn’t noticed you’re left-handed,” she said.
Sidney rubbed at the back of his neck. “Despite my first teacher’s best efforts. She didn’t like how I shape the letters differently.”
Gin tilted her head. “It’s subtle, but I suppose I see it. It’s still much neater than mine.” She frowned, reading his correction. “You know German?”
“Enough to eavesdrop and decipher messages. The sound of it always appealed to me more than French.”
“You prefer guttural, phlegm-clearing noises to the most beautiful, romantic language in the world?”
“You’re studying German.”
“Yes, but I’m already fluent in French—”
“And very humble.” Sidney turned the notebook back around, and leaned forward. “The Rook wants to meet.”
“Here?”
“Wolvercote Cemetery, three o’clock.” His eyes flicked to her notebook. “I can go alone if you need to study.”
Gin rose in an instant, shoving her things into her satchel. “Absolutely not.”
The bus ride across town was uneventful, though it amused Gin greatly that Sidney insisted she sit on the top level while he remained below.
He disembarked last and pretended to tie his shoe on a nearby bench until he seemed satisfied that no one had followed them, but it left Gin milling about waiting for directions.
When at last he strode past her, hands deep in his pockets, she scuttled after him, tutting.
“Are you really worried about spies in Wolvercote?”
“We’re in Wolvercote.”
“But we’re not spies. We’re only helping out.”
“Which makes you an agent, no matter how you got drawn into this mess. If you’re interested in a proper job with the Security Service one day, you need to shift your mindset now.”
“Danger lurking around every corner, you mean?”
Sidney looked at her sidelong, his gray eyes dark with warning. “Sometimes.”
He led them across the road, and they entered a large cemetery ringed by fir trees.
A path through the tidy sections of gravestones ended at a small chapel in the heart of the graveyard where a spare figure in black holding a briefcase waited by the door.
The Rook regarded them with a censorious expression Ginevra well remembered from her Honoria House teachers.
The bus had made them only a few minutes late, but minutes might as well have been hours.
“I was beginning to worry about you,” the Rook said. “You’re sure you weren’t followed?”
“I’m sure,” Sidney said, which was good as Ginevra hadn’t the faintest idea. She had to give his observant eyes credit for excellent performance under pressure.
The Rook gave a clipped nod and ushered them through the chapel door.
The soft, ethereal light streaming through the leaded glass drew Ginevra back to the dreary day of Tolliver’s funeral and the discomfort she’d felt over his death.
Her intuition had been correct, if misplaced: His death wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
And while she might not have been able to stop his heart attack, she could find his murderer now.
At the Rook’s direction, Ginevra slid into a pew, and Sidney sank down beside her, the woodsy scent of northern pines accompanying him.
The rainy night outside St. M’s must have washed it away when she’d kissed his cheek, and she’d been too intent on her pique to notice when he swept her out of Malwyn Hall like a Byronic hero.
Though if she was being honest, his tender care for her wounded leg had stretched her pique till it was flimsy enough to pop at the slightest hint of apology.
Gin caught herself leaning toward him and hastily fussed with her gloves when Sidney’s head began to turn.
Acknowledging her partner’s pleasant smell and broad shoulders was all well and good, but had she not given herself a lecture about unnecessary distractions mere weeks ago?
Working for the Rook was an opportunity she did not want to squander, and she would do well to remember that—no matter how nice a man smelled.
Ginevra cleared her throat and sat straighter.
The Rook entered the next row and turned to face them. “You two have been very busy.”
“Is that not what you wanted?” Gin asked.
The corner of the Rook’s mouth twitched. “Of course. Only I must admit you’ve worked even more efficiently than I anticipated.”
More efficiently than he anticipated given Sidney’s stubbornness at their last meeting. Ginevra bit back a smile.
Sidney lounged back against the pew and shrugged. “It’s all about the proper motivation.”
“Of course,” the Rook said, giving them both a measured glance. He placed his briefcase on the pew, clicked it open, and pulled out a wide envelope that he handed to Ginevra. “That’s for you.”
She slid out a pair of photographs: one of a group of uniformed officers and the other of a man leaning against a car. This one, the Rook tapped.
“Meet Robert Crowne, or Die Krone to those inside Vosburg.”
The man wore a soft white polo shirt and beamed at the camera as though laughing at the photographer. Dark hair fell over his face, and he had been captured mid-motion, fingers sweeping across his forehead.
“Who was he?” Gin asked.
The Rook shrugged. “A lad from Shropshire. He entered Oxford in 1925 to read Greats and joined the Damocles Club, but he was sent down in 1927 over an incident involving a student’s death.”
Sidney leaned closer to the photo. “He killed someone?”
“Not exactly.” The Rook held up a newspaper clipping, the same one from Marion’s room and Tolliver’s hidden cache of documents.
“I wasn’t sure of this article’s significance when you sent it last week, Mr. Braithwaite, but I can tell you now: Robert Crowne was the student expelled over this affair.
He was found with the dead boy in Hollywell Cemetery but claimed it was a sconcing incident gone awry. ”
“Sconcing?” Gin echoed.
“It’s a stupid game where lads penalize each other for silly mistakes,” Sidney said. “I was sconced as a first-year for using the wrong Latin phrase. Usually, you down a couple of pints in one go, and that’s it.”
“In this instance, the boy who died drank a great deal of vodka, but his parents later informed the police he couldn’t consume anything that contained grain without becoming very ill.
” The Rook set down the article, shaking his head.
“The coroner corroborated that a violent allergic reaction was the likely cause of death.”
“And Robert was expelled for an accident? That seems unfair,” Gin said.
The Rook shrugged. “The dead boy’s family raised quite a stir. They had just promised a handsome donation to Christ Church, and there was fear it would be rescinded if the punishment meted out wasn’t harsh enough.”
“Sounds about right,” Sidney muttered.
“After that,” the Rook said, “Robert fades from records for about ten years. He turns up as an ambulance driver back in Shropshire, and then he enlisted in 1938.” He paused as though ensuring he had their attention.
“Samuel Neville had already been conscripted from his position at Oxford to work in intelligence on the front lines. He requested that Crowne become his orderly.”
“Is that like a valet?” Gin asked.
“It’s part valet,” Sidney said, “part driver, and part errand boy. An orderly’s life is easier than that of a foot soldier, and you can be promoted faster.”
Ginevra sank back, pondering this. Dr. Neville would have known Robert Crowne very well indeed then.
“Their unit was imprisoned in Vosburg from 1940 to 1943,” the Rook continued.
“It was Neville who overheard the Germans talking about their new stool pigeon, die Krone. Michael Leland was his senior officer at the time, and their unit held an informal tribunal inside the prison. Crowne was not hung,” the Rook said carefully, “but handed over to the Germans for keeping elsewhere inside Vosburg. When everyone was released in ’43, the army dismissed him with disgrace.
Crowne returned to Shropshire until his death six months later when he took his own life. ”
“Golly,” Gin breathed. “That’s all rather tragic. I could see why Marion might be interested in the story about the boy’s death, given how much she hates the Damocles Club. She told me they turn to rot everything they touch.”
“But what does that story have to do with Tolliver and our leak now?” Sidney asked.