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Jem remembered Professor Hartley, an intimidatingly odd man with eyebrows like marching caterpillars. ‘Is he still here? Not retired, I mean?’
‘Not yet. I trust he’ll go on for another decade, enraging the Master and sublimely unaware of it. He was my strongest advocate during the period after it all happened; couldn’t see why people were giving me so much trouble. I occasionally wondered if he was actually aware of the business.’
Jem couldn’t quite laugh. Nicky spooned tea into the pot. ‘And here I stayed. What about you?’
‘Wait a moment. You must have done something in ten years apart from Anglo-Saxon.’
‘Such as what? Marriage and children?’
‘You might have met someone,’ Jem said a little breathlessly.
‘I might have,’ Nicky said. ‘I didn’t. I think I have learned my lesson as to intimacy.’
‘Yes. So did I.’
‘I thought you might have married.’
‘I’ve nothing to offer a woman. And I haven’t cared to try.’ Not women, not men, not anyone. He’d had a few desperate, anonymous encounters in dark rooms; anything more had horrified a soul that clung to isolation as its only defence. ‘I’ve nothing to offer anyone.’
‘Jesus,’ Nicky said. ‘We really did ruin your life, didn’t we?’
They fell into silence. Nicky watched him, stirring his tea mechanically, not drinking. The spoon clinked against china.
‘You were always the best of us, damn it,’ Nicky said at last. ‘Your place was here. If there was anyone who didn’t deserve it—Ah, God. You were probably right about not having this delightful little chat.’
‘We can’t talk to each other as we did, because we’re not as we were,’ Jem said. ‘I’ve spoken to everyone except Ella, and it has been horribly wrong every time. We’re all still suffering for what one of us did.’
‘And who do you think did it?’
‘You tell me.’
Nicky leaned back in his chair. ‘Hugo had no reason to kill Toby. Aaron is a gentleman. He might act with violence when pushed—and by God he was pushed—but he wouldn’t have let the rest of us live under suspicion, and in my case arrest. I feel sure he would have confessed rather than be a coward in his own defence. Ella…’ He paused. ‘I am not persuaded by her committing a crime that left her and Aaron in such an invidious position. She’s ruthless but not stupid. Pruemighthave found the physical strength required for the blow, but I’d need to see it to believe it.’
‘That leaves me,’ Jem said.
‘It wasn’t you,’ Nicky said. ‘Of us all, I’d say you are the only one not capable of murder. Your response to insult is to castigate yourself for what you must have done wrong. If you had attacked anyone that night, it would, and should, have been me, but it didn’t even cross your mind to throw your beer in my face. It wasn’t you.’
Jem couldn’t find a response. Nicky drained his cup and put it down. ‘So: all of us could have, none of us would have, one of us did. It resembles one of those immensely tiresome riddles.’ He stood, towering over Jem in the chair, all lean hips and long legs. ‘Were you fool enough to commit yourself to dinner at High Table?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Come on. Get your coat.’
THIRTEEN
He followed Nicky into the library, through the painfully familiar dark walls, weaving between the desks and the pools of gaslight, to the door at the back, and was at once incredulous and barely surprised when Nicky produced a key.
‘I can’t believe you still have that,’ he hissed, once the door was safely shut behind them.
‘I’m now authorised.’
Let someone know where you’re going, Aaron had said. He was going up to a rooftop with a murder suspect far fitter and nearly a foot taller than himself, in the dark, and nobody knew that at all.
It was insanely reckless. But then, everything to do with Nicky had been that, always. So he didn’t stop, but he did leave a couple of steps between himself and Nicky, as though that might do any good.
Nicky opened the door at the top with a scrape of metal, and shut it again behind Jem. Jem stood, breathing more deeply than he’d have liked. It was almost dark now and very cold. He sat on the stone perch, huddled in his coat, and stared out over Oxford. Spires black against the near-dark sky, the yellow glare of gaslight rising from streets or streaming from bright rectangles in the dark mass of stone. A swooping movement in the sky told him the bats were out.
Nicky sat by him, not as close as last time. Not touching. Jem was still vividly aware of him, the warmth of his long body, engulfed in a heavy chesterfield with a velvet collar.
