“What did she say happened?”

“Why, she was putting away the deck chairs in the loggia about half-past nine, when somebody seized her round the neck from behind and frog’s-marched her off to the cellar. She said it was a woman, and very strong-”

“She was,” said Harriet. “I can bear witness to that. Grip like steel. And a most unfeminine vocabulary.”

“Annie says she never saw who it was, but she thought that the arm that was round her face had a dark sleeve on. Annie’s own impression was that it was Miss Hillyard; but she was with the Bursar and me. But a good many of our strongest specimens haven’t got alibis-particularly Miss Pyke, who says she was in her room, and Miss Barton, who claims to have been in the Fiction Library, looking for a ‘nice book to read.’ And Mrs. Goodwin, and Miss Burrows aren’t very well accounted for, either. According to their own story, they were each seized at the same moment with an unaccountable desire to wander. Miss Burrows went to commune with Nature in the Fellows’ Garden and Mrs. Goodwin to commune with a higher Authority in the Chapel. We are looking rather askance at one another today.”

“I wish to goodness,” said Harriet, “I’d been a trifle more efficient.” She pondered a moment. “I wonder why she didn’t stay to finish me off.”

“Lord Peter wondered that, too. He said he thought she must either have thought you were dead, or been alarmed by the blood and finding she’d got the wrong person. When you went limp, she’d probably feel about and she’d know you were not Miss de Vine-short hair and no spectacles, you see-and she’d hurry off to get rid of any bloodstains before somebody came along. At least, that was his theory. He looked pretty queer about it.”

“Is he here now?”

“No; he had to go back… Something about getting an early ’plane from Croydon. He rang up and made a great to-do, but apparently it was all settled and he had to go. If any of his prayers are heard, I shouldn’t think anybody in the Government would have a whole place in his body this morning. So I comforted him with hot coffee and he went off, leaving orders that neither you nor Miss de Vine nor Annie was to be left alone for a single moment. And he’s rung up once from London and three times from Paris.”

“Poor old Peter!” said Harriet. “He never seems to get a night’s rest.”

“Meanwhile, the Warden is valiantly issuing an unconvincing statement to the effect that somebody played a foolish practical Joke on Annie, that you accidentally slipped and cut your head and that Miss de Vine was upset by the sight of blood. And the College gates are shut to all comers, for fear they should be reporters in disguise. But you can’t keep the scouts quiet-goodness knows what reports are going out by the tradesmen’s entrance. However, the great thing is that nobody’s killed. And now I must be off, or the Infirmarian will have my blood and there really will be an inquest.”

The next day brought Lord Saint-George. “My turn to visit the sick,” he said. “You’re a nice, restful aunt for a fellow to adopt, I don’t think. Do you realize that you’ve done me out of a dinner?”

“Yes,” said Harriet. “It’s a pity-Perhaps I’d better tell the Dean. You might be able to identify-”

“ Now don’t you start laying plots,” said he, “or your temperature will go up. You leave it to Uncle. He says he’ll be back tomorrow, by the way, and the evidence is rolling in nicely and you’re to keep quiet and not worry. Honour bright. Had him on the ’phone this morning. He’s all of a doodah. Says anybody could have done his business in Paris, only they’ve got it into their heads he’s the only person who can get on the right side of some tedious old mule or other who has to be placated or conciliated or something. As far as I can make out, some obscure journalist has been assassinated and somebody’s trying to make an international incident of it. Hence the pyramids. I told you Uncle Peter had a strong sense of public duty; now you see it in action.”

“Well, he’s quite right.”

“What an unnatural woman you are! He ought to be here, weeping into the sheets and letting the international situation blow itself to blazes.” Lord Saint-George chuckled “I wish I’d been on the road with him on Monday morning. He collected five summonses in the round trip between Warwickshire and Oxford and London. My mother will be delighted. How’s your head?”

“Doing fine. It was more the cut than the bump, I think.”

“Scalp-wounds do bleed, don’t they? Completely pig-like. Still, it’s as well you’re not a ‘corpse in the case with a sad, swelled face.’ You’ll be all right when they get the stitches out. Only a bit convict-like that side of the head. You’ll have to be cropped all round to even matters up and Uncle Peter can wear your discarded tresses next his heart.”

“Come, come,” said Harriet. “He doesn’t date back to the seventies.”

“He’s aging rapidly. I should think he’d nearly got to the sixties by now. With beautiful, golden side-whiskers. I really think you ought to rescue him before his bones start to creak and the spiders spin webs over his eyes.”

“You and your uncle,” said Harriet, “should be set to turn phrases for a living.”

22

Thursday. A heavy, gloomy and depressing Thursday, pouring down uninteresting rain from a sky like a grey box-lid. The Warden had called a meeting of the Senior Common Room for half-past two-an unconsoling hour. All three invalids were up and about again. Harriet had exchanged her bandages for some very unbecoming and unromantic strappings, and had not exactly a headache, but the sensation that a headache might begin at any moment. Miss de Vine looked like a ghost. Annie, though she had suffered less than the others physically, seemed to be still haunted by nervous terrors, and crept unhappily about her duties with the other Common Room maid always closely in attendance.

It was understood that Lord Peter Wimsey would attend the S.C.R. meeting in order to lay certain information before the staff. Harriet had received from him a brief and characteristic note, which said:

“Congratulations on not being dead yet. I have taken your collar away to have my name put on.”

She had already missed the collar. And she had had, from Miss Hillyard, a strangely vivid little picture of Peter, standing at her bedside between night and dawn, quite silent, and twisting the thick strap over and over in his hands. All morning she had expected to see him; but he arrived only at the last moment so that their meeting took place in the Common Room, under the eyes of all the dons. He had driven straight from Town without changing his suit, and above the dark cloth his head had the bleached look of a faint water-colour. He paid his respects politely to the Warden and the Senior dons before coming over and taking her hand.

“Well, and how are you?”

“Not too bad, considering.”

“That’s good.”

He smiled and went to sit by the Warden. Harriet, at the opposite side of the table, slipped into a place beside the Dean. Everything that was alive in him lay in the palm of her hand, like a ripe apple. Dr. Baring was asking him to begin and he was doing so, in the flat voice of a secretary reading the minutes of a company meeting. He had a sheaf of papers before him, including (Harriet noticed) her dossier, which he must have taken away on the Monday morning. But he went on without referring to so much as a note, addressing himself to a bowl filled with marigolds that stood on the table before him.