“If all the pens that ever poets held had had the feeling of their masters’ thoughts, they could not recite as much solid fact as you can hold in a pair of callipers.” He measured the heel of the slipper in both directions, and then turned his attention to the pile of the carpet. “She stood here, heels together, looking.” The callipers twinkled over the sunlit rectangle. “And here is the heel that stamped and trampled and ground beauty to dust. One was a French heel and one was a Cuban heel-isn’t that what the footwear specialists call them?” He sat up and tapped the sole of the slipper lightly with the callipers. “Who goes there? France -Pass, France, and all’s well.”
“Oh, I’m glad,” said Harriet, fervently. “I’m glad.”
“Yes. Meanness isn’t one of your accomplishments, is it?” He turned his eyes to the carpet again, this time to a place near the edge.
“Look! now that the sun’s out you can see it. Here’s where Cuban Heel wiped her soles before she left. There are very few flies on Cuban Heel. Well, that saves us a back-breaking search all over the college for the dust of kings and queens.” He picked the sliver of ivory from the French heel, put the supper in his pocket and stood up. “This had better go back to its owner, furnished with a certificate of innocence.”
“Give it to me. I must take it.”
“No, you will not. If anybody has to face unpleasantness, it shan’t be you this time.”
“But, Peter-you won’t-”
“No,” he said, “I won’t. Trust me for that.”
Harriet was left staring at the broken chessman. Presently she went out into the corridor, found a dustpan and brush in a scout’s pantry and returned with them to sweep up the debris. As she was replacing the brush and pan in the pantry, she ran into one of the students from the Annexe.
“By the way. Miss Swift,” said Harriet, “you didn’t happen to hear any noise in my room like glass being smashed last night, did you? Some time during or after Hall?”
“No, I didn’t. Miss Vane. I was in my own room all evening. But wait a moment. Miss Ward came along about half past nine to do some Morphology with me and”-the girl’s mouth dimpled into laughter-“she asked if you were a secret toffee-eater, because it sounded as though you were smashing up toffee with the poker. Has the College Ghost been visiting you?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Harriet. “Thank you; that’s very helpful. I must see Miss Ward.”
Miss Ward, however, could help no farther than by fixing the time a little more definitely as “certainly not later than half-past nine.”
Harriet thanked her, and went out. Her very bones seemed to ache with restlessness-or perhaps it was with having slept badly in an unfamiliar bed and with a disturbed mind. The sun had scattered diamonds among the wet grass of the quadrangle, and the breeze was shaking the rain in a heavy spatter of drops from the beeches. Students came and went. Somebody had left a scarlet cushion out all night in the rain; it was sodden and mournful looking; its owner came and picked it up, with an air between laughter and disgust; she threw it on a bench to dry in the sunshine.
To do nothing was intolerable. To be spoken to by any member of the Senior Common Room would be still more intolerable. She was penned in the Old Quad, for she was sensitive to the mere neighbourhood of the New Quad as a person that has been vaccinated is sensitive to everything that lies on the sore side of his body. Without particular aim or intention, she skirted the tennis-court and turned in at the Library entrance. She had intended to go upstairs but, seeing the door of Miss de Vine’s set stand open, she altered her mind; she could borrow a book from there. The little lobby was empty, but in the sitting-room a scout was giving the writing-table a Sunday morning flick with the duster. Harriet remembered that Miss de Vine was in town, and that she was to be warned when she returned.
“What time does Miss de Vine get back tonight? Do you know, Nellie?”
“I think she gets in by the 9:39, miss.”
Harriet nodded, took a book from the shelves at random, and went to sit on the steps of the loggia, where there was a deck-chair. The morning, she told herself, was getting on. If Peter had to get to his destination by 11:30, it was time he went. She vividly remembered waiting in a nursing-home while a friend underwent an operation; there had been a smell of ether, and in the waiting-room, a large black Wedgwood jar, filled with delphiniums. She read a page without knowing what was in it, and looked up at an approaching footstep into the face of Miss Hillyard.
“Lord Peter,” said Miss Hillyard, without preface, “asked me to give you this address. He was obliged to leave quickly to keep his appointment.” Harriet took the paper and said, “Thank you.”
Miss Hillyard went on resolutely: “When I spoke to you last night I was under a misapprehension. I had not fully realized the difficulty of your position. I am afraid I have unwittingly made it harder for you, and I apologize.”
“That’s all right,” said Harriet, taking refuge in formula. “I am sorry too. I was rather upset last night and said a great deal more than I should. This wretched business has made everything so uncomfortable.”
“Indeed it has,” said Miss Hillyard, in a more natural voice. “We are all feeling rather overwrought. I wish we could get at the truth of it. I understand that you now accept my account of my movements last night.”
“Absolutely. It was inexcusable of me not to have verified my data.”
“Appearances can be very misleading,” said Miss Hillyard.
There was a pause.
“Well,” said Harriet at last, “I hope we may forget all this.” She knew as she spoke that one thing at least had been said which could never be forgotten: she would have given a great deal to recall it.
“I shall do my best,” replied Miss Hillyard. “Perhaps I am too much inclined to judge harshly of matters outside my experience.”
“It is very kind of you to say that,” said Harriet. Please believe that I don’t take a very self-satisfied view of myself either.”
“Very likely not. I have noticed that the people who get opportunities always seem to choose the wrong ones. But it’s no affair of mine. Good morning.”
She went as abruptly as she had come. Harriet glanced at the book on her knee and discovered that she was reading The Anatomy of Melancholy. “Fleat Heraclitus an rideat Democritus? in attempting to speak of these Symptoms, shall I laugh with Democritus or weep with Heraclitus? they are so ridiculous and absurd on the one side, so lamentable and tragical on the other.”
Harriet got the car out in the afternoon and took Miss Lydgate and the Dean for a picnic in the neighbourhood of Hinksey. When she got back, in time for supper, she found an urgent message at the Lodge, asking her to ring up Lord Saint-George at the House as soon as she got back. His voice, when he answered the call, sounded agitated.
“Oh, look here! I can’t get hold of Uncle Peter-he’s vanished again, curse him! I say, I saw your ghost this afternoon, and I do think you ought to be careful.”
“Where did you see her? When?”
“About half-past two-walking over Magdalen Bridge in broad daylight. I’d been lunching with some chaps out Iffley way, and we were just pulling over to put one of ’em down at Magdalen, when I spotted her. She was walking along, muttering to herself, and looking awfully queer. Sort of clutching with her hands and rolling her eyes about. She spotted me, too. Couldn’t mistake her. A friend of mine was driving and I tried to catch his attention, but he was pulling round behind a bus and I couldn’t make him understand. Anyhow, when we stopped at Magdalen gate, I hopped out and ran back, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Seemed to have faded out. I bet she knew I was on to her and made tracks. I was scared. Thought she looked up to anything. So I rang up your place and found you were out and then I rang up the Mitre and that wasn’t any good either, so I’ve been sitting here all evening in a devil of a stew. First I thought I’d leave a note, and then I thought I’d better tell you myself. Rather devoted of me, don’t you think? I cut a supper-party so as not to miss you.”