“Mercy!” said the Dean, “what’s that?”

“My cigarette-case,” said Harriet. “I thought I’d lost it. I remember now. I hadn’t a pocket yesterday, so I shoved it into the sleeve of my gown. After all, that’s what these sleeves are for, aren’t they?”

“Oh, my dear! Mine are always a perfect dirty-clothes bag by the end of term. When I have absolutely no clean handkerchiefs left in the drawer m scout turns out my gown sleeves. My best collection worked out at twenty two-but then I’d had a bad cold one week. Dreadful insanitary garment. Here’s your cap. Never mind taking your hood-you can come back here for it. What have you been doing today?-I’ve scarcely seen you.”

Again Harriet felt an impulse to mention the unpleasant drawing, but again she refrained. She felt she was getting rather unbalanced about it. Why think about it at all? She mentioned her conversation with Miss Hillyard “Lor‘!” said the Dean. “That’s Miss Hillyard’s hobby-horse. Rubbidge, as Mrs. Gamp would say. Of course men don’t like having their poor little noses put out of joint-who does? I think it’s perfectly noble of them to let us come trampling over their University at all, bless their hearts. They’ve been used to being lords and masters for hundreds of years and they want a bit of time to get used to the change. Why, it takes a man months and months to reconcile himself to a new hat. And just when you’re preparing to send it to the jumble sale, he says. That’s rather a nice hat you’ve got on, where did you get it?’ And you say, ‘My dear Henry, it’s the one I had last year and you said made me look like an organ-grinder’s monkey.’ My brother-in-law says that every time, and it does make my sister so wild.” They mounted the steps of the chapel.

It had not, after all, been so bad. Definitely not so bad as one had expected. Though it was melancholy to find that one had grown out of Mary Stokes, and a little tiresome, in a way, that Mary Stokes refused to recognize the fact. Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead-still less because one had once liked them very much. Some happy souls could go through life without making this discovery, and they were the men and women who were called “sincere.” Still, there remained old friends whom one was glad to meet again, like the Dean and Phoebe Tucker. And really, everybody had been quite extraordinarily decent. Rather inquisitive and silly about “the man Wimsey,” some of them, but no doubt with the best intentions. Miss Hillyard might be an exception, but there had always been something a little twisted and uncomfortable about Miss Hillyard.

As the car wound its way over the Chilterns, Harriet grinned to herself, thinking other parting conversation with the Dean and Bursar.

“Be sure and write us a new book soon. And remember, if ever we get a mystery at Shrewsbury we shall call upon you to come and disentangle it.”

“All right,” said Harriet. “When you find a mangled corpse in the buttery, send me a wire‘-and be sure you let Miss Barton view the body, and then she won’t so much mind my haling the murderess off to justice.”

And suppose they actually did find a bloody corpse in the buttery, how surprised they would all be. The glory of a college was that nothing drastic ever happened in it. The most frightful thing that was ever likely to happen was that an undergraduate should “take the wrong turning.” The purloining of a parcel or two by a porter had been enough to throw the whole Senior Common Room into consternation. Bless their hearts, how refreshing and soothing and good they all were, walking beneath their ancient beeches and meditating on ‘όν χαί μή ’όν and the finance of Queen Elizabeth.

“I’ve broken the ice,” she said aloud, “and the water wasn’t so cold after all. I shall go back, from time to time. I shall go back.” She picked out a pleasant pub for lunch and ate with a good appetite. Then she remembered that her cigarette-case was still in her gown. She had brought the garment in with her on her arm, and, thrusting her hand down to the bottom of the long sleeve, she extracted the case. A piece of paper came out with it-an ordinary sheet of scribbling paper folded into four. She frowned at a disagreeable memory as she unfolded it.

There was a message pasted across it, made up of letters cut apparently from the headlines of a newspaper.

YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN’T YOU

ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?

“Hell!” said Harriet. “ Oxford, thou too?” She sat very still for a few moments. Then she struck a match and set light to the paper. It burned briskly, till she was forced to drop it upon her plate. Even then, the letters showed grey upon the crackling blackness, until she pounded their spectral shapes to powder with the back of a spoon.

4

There are incidents in one’s life which, through some haphazard coincidence of time and mood, acquire a symbolic value. Harriet’s attendance at the Shrewsbury Gaudy was of this kind. In spite of minor incongruities and absurdities, it had shown itself to have one definite significance; it had opened up to her the vision of an old desire, long obscured by a forest of “relevant fancies, but now standing up unmistakable, like a tower set on a hill. Two phrases rang in her ears: the Dean’s, ”It’s the work you’re doing that really counts“; and that one melancholy lament for eternal loss: ”Once, I was a scholar.”

“Time is,” quoth the Brazen Head; “time was; time is past.” Philip Boyes was dead; and the nightmares that had haunted the ghastly midnight of his passing were gradually fading away. Clinging on, by blind instinct, to the job that had to be done, she had fought her way back to an insecure stability. Was it too late to achieve wholly the clear eye and the untroubled mind? And what, in that case, was she to do with one powerful fetter which still tied her ineluctably to the bitter past? What about Peter Wimsey?

During the past three years, their relations had been peculiar. Immediately after the horrible business that they had investigated together at Wilvercombe, Harriet-feeling that something must be done to ease a situation which was fast becoming intolerable-had carried out a long-cherished scheme, now at last made practicable by her increasing reputation and income as a writer. Taking a woman friend with her as companion and secretary, she had left England, and travelled slowly about Europe, staying now here, now there, as fancy dictated or a good background presented itself for a story. Financially the trip had been a success. She had gathered material for two full-length novels, the scenes laid respectively in Madrid and Carcassonne, and written a series of short stories dealing with detective adventures in Hitlerite Berlin, and also a number of travel articles; thus more than replenishing the treasury. Before her departure, she had asked Wimsey not to write. He had taken the prohibition with unexpected meekness.

“I see. Very well. Vade in pace. If you ever want me, you will find the Old Firm at the usual stand.”

She had occasionally seen his name in the English papers, and that was all At the beginning of the following June, she had returned home, feeling that after so long a break, there should be little difficulty in bringing the relationship to a cool and friendly close. By this time he was probably feeling as much settled and relieved as she was. As soon as she got back to London, she moved to a new flat in Mecklenburg Square, and settled down to work at the Carcassonne novel.