Chapter Seventeen
The moon had nearly gone to bed when Gin finished drafting the article after the play.
She had finally settled on the pen name Godiva but still had to live with the knowledge she’d written the horrid thing.
Hopefully, Oliver Whitby’s expectations for “human interest” from the piece were modulated by his knowledge that this was her first time attempting such a feat.
Gin rubbed her aching eyes and stretched, trotting briskly back and forth across the Persian rug.
If she could work up the willpower to review it again, it would all be finished, and she could have a lovely lie-in.
Perhaps Iris would even sneak her breakfast in bed and a whole pot of tea.
Gin perked at the thought of tea. One cup would set her up for success better than any attempts at exercise in her tiny domain. And the new kettle in the buttery heated water in record time, preferably before the housekeeper overheard her bumping around and came to investigate.
She threw on her robe and hastened out the door.
The stairs were cold in stocking feet, and Gin lightly tripped down to the common room.
The passage to the buttery required slipping by the housekeeper’s room, but she had become quite adept at evading the squeaky floorboards during nocturnal raids for biscuits.
Though the buttery was kept locked at night, upperclassmen had passed on their great and treasured knowledge: The spare key lived behind the hallway’s hideous painting of a fat dachshund.
The key secured, Gin slipped inside and shut the door.
The buttery was a long, narrow room that overlooked the back garden, with a wide counter for producing a full tea during normal operational hours.
Its best quality, however, was the large pantry stocked with a delectable array of biscuits and bread and marmalade, and the housekeeper was a kindly woman who only sighed when too many disappeared overnight.
While the water heated, Gin nibbled on a Lemon Wheel biscuit and admired the stars shining in the dark sky.
Such an awful lot had happened within mere weeks, but she finally felt on the cusp of …
something. Sidney was tolerating her overtures of friendship, and the Robert Crowne clue had boosted her confidence.
They would find their informant—their murderer—and poor Mr. Tolliver would not have died in vain.
Only there were still so many questions bothering Ginevra that she wished she could lay them out like puzzle pieces and sort them to complete the picture in a tidy manner—just like she used to with her mother.
A pang of strong emotion washed over Gin, and she closed her eyes.
Grief didn’t overwhelm her as often as it used to, but it always snuck upon her when she was alone.
It was why she’d thrown herself into her debutante season with such force, attended every party, and danced every dance.
Her mother would have wanted her to enjoy herself, true; but Ginevra also knew she would have withered into a deep melancholy without the charade of gaiety to maintain.
Her father was not the sort of person to help anyone.
But there was also too much at stake right now to let herself sink low with reminiscing.
Gin dashed the moisture from her eyelashes and grabbed a teacup from the cupboard.
Her fingers trailed across the metal tea tins lining the windowsill, searching for her favorite, when a flutter of movement beyond the window made her pause.
Someone slipped through the garden, hovering in the shadows, heading straight for the back door into the buttery.
Gin’s neck prickled. She too occasionally reentered the college after hours in a similarly furtive manner.
But she was also quickly realizing that her guard needed to be higher—much higher—and the hour was shockingly late.
Gin scooped up a rolling pin from the counter and stepped inside the pantry, closing the door just enough to watch whomever entered.
Minutes dragged by like hours. Finally, there was a soft rattle at the back door, and Gin’s fingers tightened around her makeshift weapon as a figure entered the room. They wore a soft cap pulled low over their face and shapeless, dark clothing.
The teakettle’s whistle made the figure leap back.
“Bloody hell,” a low voice grumbled. The intruder moved the kettle and turned off the stove, turning as though surveying the dark room. “It’s a bit late for a snack, isn’t it? Or early, I suppose…”
Gin flung open the door. “Sarita! What on earth are you doing?”
Sarita spun around, clutching at her chest. “What are you doing? It’s nearly three.”
“I’m making tea so I can finish my article. Not returning from a midnight stroll.”
Sarita twisted the cap in her hands. “I was at a party, and it went later than I expected.”
“On a Wednesday night? What sort of party? Do I know them?”
“Is this an interrogation?” Sarita asked sharply. “I do have other friends besides you and Tweety.”
Gin crossed her arms. “Just friends? Iris thinks you’ve taken a secret lover.”
“You two are ridiculous.” Sarita tugged at her sleeves, refusing to meet Gin’s eyes. “You’ll have to excuse me, dear, I’m tired and have heaps of revision tomorrow. Enjoy your tea.”
“Good night,” Gin said evenly.
Sarita left the buttery, and Gin leaned against the counter, confusion and panic warring inside her.
The sharpness in her friend’s voice and the tightness around her lips were nothing like her usual complacent manner.
Iris was the one who took offense easily, who squawked and protested and put the storm in the teacup.
Sarita possessed the kind of unflappability drilled into royalty.
But Gin realized with a chill she was also wearing the same style of boilersuit as the masked individuals who stormed Professor Leland’s book reception.
What the devil was Sarita hiding?
The next morning, Gin strode inside the Blue’s bustling office, nodded at Iris, who was banging at her typewriter, and crossed the room to Oliver Whitby. She presented her hard-won pages with a flourish.
“Not to me.” Whitby waved her toward a man hunched over a desk near Iris’s. “Give it to Sanders.”
Sanders took the sheets without a second glance, and Gin hesitated.
Out of habit, she scanned the room for any sign of Marion, but the young woman was absent.
The mood in the room, however, was even more tense than Gin’s last visit, with lots of nervous glances in Whitby’s direction.
Ginevra had noted from their first meeting that he was a slick and satisfied sort of person, and the fact that he had enough cash to buy out The Blue placed him in a certain echelon of Oxford men.
But today, Whitby’s hair was rumpled and his shirt in bad need of pressing, and the bags under his eyes betrayed long days and even longer nights.
Gin sidled up to Iris and sank against the edge of the desk. “Why does it feel as though you’ve all been scolded?”
Iris snorted, her red nails jabbing the typewriter keys with precision. “We’ve run afoul of the university administration, and Whitby’s threatening to sack the lot of us if we’re not on our best behavior.”
“Heavens, what happened?”
Iris gave a delicate cough and nodded toward a door in the corner. She stood, smoothing her dress, and picked up a thermos from her desk. “Going to have a cuppa in the closet, Sanders. If Whitby grouses about it, tell him I’m quitting.”
Sanders waved a dismissive hand, his nose buried in Gin’s pages. Knowing someone was reading the dreadful thing made Ginevra eager to get as far away from the vicinity as possible, and she followed Iris into the aptly named “closet,” which proved to be a small room lined with filing cabinets.
Iris pulled the door shut and exhaled. “It was Marion Kirk who led the protest that broke the windows in Malwyn Hall! Can you imagine?”
“Marion?” Gin stilled. The scene from the party swelled around her, the figure who had pushed Neville from the podium clearest of all.
Good God, how had she not recognized the girl?
She was quite sure she’d trodden upon the amorphous boilersuit while visiting her room.
“However did they figure it out? Did she confess?”
Iris pulled two chipped mugs out of a cabinet drawer and filled them from her thermos.
“It was partly your friend Audrey, I think. Something of Marion’s got mixed up with hers in the washing, and when Mrs. McKibbin put it back in Marion’s room, she saw that odd mask on the desk and grew alarmed.
” She raised her eyebrows. “Remember all those articles about the Damocles Club on the wall? I don’t think it was hard to piece together since she’s been so loud about her grudge against them. But she’s been expelled!”
“How dreadful.” Gin accepted a cup of warm, milky tea, and sank back, staring at the narrow rectangle of light filtering through a dirty window near the ceiling.
They would have to send word to the Rook and let him decide how to handle this information—if he wished to focus on Kirk at all after the evidence regarding Dr. Neville’s planned move to the Soviet Union.
“It’s bad enough for her, I suppose,” Iris said ruefully, “only they sent someone over here to read Whitby the riot act. If there’s another whiff of insubordinate behavior, it’ll be his head on the block next for not ‘keeping us in line.’” She snorted.
“Whitby’s a Scrooge at the best of times.
This has turned him into a right dragon.
He said if any submission has the slightest hint of politics, we’ll be on immediate probation.
” She sniffed. “Of course, what he means are politics other than his own.”
“Whitby did say something about her Commie nonsense the last time I was here. Did Marion discuss politics around the office?”
Iris screwed up her face, thinking. “No,” she said, drawing out the syllable, “though she was very active with the student Labour club. I’ve gone to a few meetings too, and she never seemed like someone who’d lead a protest and break windows.
” She sighed and refilled her mug. “She’s a farmer’s daughter, but she was never overawed by the grandeur of Oxford—I certainly was when I arrived.
She was bold about pressing issues and speaking out on things that angered her.
Like fighting with Whitby to write more substantive articles.
I wish I had the nerve to say half the things she yelled in his face.
I asked her once how she could speak her mind without worrying about getting in trouble, and she told me, ‘It was hard work to get here, and I won’t waste the opportunity by being passive now. ’”
“She certainly wasn’t passive,” Gin murmured.
“Tenacious to a fault.” Iris clinked their mugs. “Cheers, Marion.” She drained the rest of her tea and checked her wristwatch. “I should go powder my nose and get back to work. This was nice, though. I feel like you haven’t been around for a good goss.”
Working for the Rook had kept her busy that term, and Gin regretted that she could not share the truth with one of her best friends—especially when Tweety was unwittingly aiding her own investigation.
It made Gin feel guilty, and she resolved to set aside time that week to spend with the girls alone.
No ulterior motives, no toiling over Russian or digging for clues.
And perhaps Sarita would finally confide whatever she was hiding.
As the pair exited the closet, they bumped into another woman coming in. She held something bulky under her cardigan, her eyes wide with panic.
“What’s wrong, Susan?” Iris asked.
“I found this while cleaning out Marion’s desk!” Susan pulled back her red cardigan to reveal a copy of Professor Leland’s new memoir. “I’m trying to hide it from Whitby. I don’t want him to see anything that reminds him of Marion’s protest, or he’s sure to lecture us all for another hour!”
Iris grimaced. “God, I wonder if she stole that from the party? Yes, let’s get it out of here quick—” She grabbed Gin’s arm. “Would you drop it by her flat? Do you remember where it is?”
“Yes,” Gin said. “I can do that.” It was bitterly ironic that the perfect excuse to snoop on Marion should present itself when the investigation was leading elsewhere.
But it would be good to see Audrey again at the very least. Reminiscing about their escapades at finishing school would always brighten her day.
“And if she’s already left town,” Susan said, “I have her forwarding address.” She shoved the book into Gin’s hands and scampered back to her desk, returning with an index card. “Thank you,” she whispered fervently. “I shall have a breakdown if Whitby yells at us again.”
“If Whitby yells at us again, I’m quitting,” Iris muttered.
“Consider the book vanished.” Gin took the index card and departed, turning down the road toward Mrs. McKibbin’s. But when she scanned the forwarding address, she lurched to a stop on the pavement.
Marion Kirk
c/o Patricia Crowne
Telford Avenue, Ellesmere, Shropshire
Ginevra blinked at the address in disbelief. The Rook had said Robert Crowne came from Shropshire, she was sure of it. If this Patricia Crowne was possibly the same family of Crownes …
Her mind spinning, Gin wheeled about on the pavement and strode in the opposite direction as quickly as her pumps allowed.
If Marion was related to Robert Crowne, then Mr. Tolliver’s whispered die Krone before he died might very well have been a reference to his murderer’s infamous relative.