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Hugo was frowning. ‘Do you want my advice? Write to everyone, withdraw the letter, apologise before you provoke a reaction that might not be pleasant for anyone. I really think it would be best for everyone, including you. You look awfully run-down, you know.’
‘It’s been a hard few weeks,’ Jem said with some understatement, and felt his throat close suddenly. He pressed his lips together.
Hugo’s look of sympathy didn’t help. ‘Look, I’m here to manage a bit of business on the pater’s behalf, so I’ll be around tomorrow. Why don’t you sleep on it, and we’ll meet up and talk more? I am worried about you, Jem. I say that as your friend—I hope we can say we’re still friends?’
‘Yes. Yes, we can.’
‘And as your friend, I’d like to be sure you’re not running into trouble. I’ll stand by you, old chap, but don’t do anything else pig-headed. Are you staying at Anselm’s?’
‘Bascomb Stair.’
‘Ugh,’ Hugo said. ‘They put me in there once as a guest of honour, which is why I always have my secretary book the Randolph now. I shall find you there, since I will be in seeing the bursar, or you can leave a message for me here.’
Jem had only had a single glass of wine, but he felt its effects on his half-empty stomach as he walked into the darkness of Front Quad and headed for the far corner and the passage to Bascomb Quad. There weren’t many students about, though gaslight glowed behind curtains. He passed what had been Nicky’s set in the first year, with such a vivid memory of slapping the glass to attract attention that he could feel the wet chill on his palm.
He went on, under the archway. Bascomb Stair was unlit except for the gaslight leaking out the edges of the doorway, and the trees of Bascomb Wood loomed darkly out of the fog. There was nobody around, and the sounds of college life in the distance were extremely faint.
Silence, and shadows, and solitude. Jem hadn’t considered himself an overly imaginative man before, but the shadows were very deep tonight, and he stopped because he was afraid to go on.
Nicky. Aaron. Ella. Prue.
He’d been briefly warm at the Randolph, in Hugo’s understanding company. He was very cold now, and very alone. It was all too easy to picture some sinister form lying in wait for him, but he felt a momentary dizziness as he tried to give that form Aaron’s understanding eyes, or Ella’s cool grace, or Nicky’s smile.
He couldn’t go on like this, loving people and suspecting them at once. A human mind couldn’t do that without breaking.
He couldn’t just stand in the fog either. He set his teeth and made his way into the staircase and up the stairs.
It was awfully quiet, as was to be expected since Bascomb held only guests and visiting scholars. Jem would right now have appreciated a few rowdy undergraduates making their presence felt. It was also very dark since the gas was only lit on the ground floor. He felt his way up to the second floor, hearing his breath and his own footsteps, telling himself it was childish to be afraid of the dark. They ought to light the gas up here, though: it was unwelcoming.
There was an oddly chemical smell, too, and he wondered if the gas had simply gone out. He plodded up one more step, leaning heavily on the banister, and his good foot skidded wildly out and back from under him. He plunged forward, instinctively clutching the rail, pain from the sudden weight on his club foot stabbing up his leg, and his chest hit the edge of a stair with a thump that jarred the breath out of him.
He lay there gasping for a moment, splayed over the staircase, shocked and disoriented. There was something sticky and wet on his face and chest. He wondered for a panicked second if it was blood, if the pain of impact was masking something worse. His arm felt half wrenched out of its socket where it was twisted up behind him, still gripping the rail.
He had to get up. He put his other hand on the wooden stair, and felt it slide smoothly away from him. What the?—
There was oil on the staircase. Some unbelievably irresponsible fool had spilled oil at the top of a stair and not cleaned it up. It could have killed someone in this damned steep narrow building.
Especially a man with a bad limp.
Jem lay there for a moment more, taking that in. Then he pulled himself to his knees, feeling the stairs for dry wood, edging up with excruciating care. His chest hurt where he’d hit the stair edge.
The gas fitting in his corridor was just visible in the gloom. He propped himself against the wall because his hands were shaking, reached for the matchbox, struck one, and lit the gas.
Light bloomed out and showed him he’d been right. A pool of oil lay at the top of the stairs and coated the first three steps down. He contemplated that for a moment, then turned to his door, bringing the key out of his pocket. He put it to the lock, only registering as he did it that something looked wrong; the door swung a little ajar under the pressure.
Jem pushed it all the way. He might as well. If anyone was waiting for him in there, he didn’t stand a chance of getting away.
He lit the gaslight inside and looked around.
His clothes were thrown on the floor in a heap, and his bottle of ink had been upended over the bed. The room was littered with pages fromMurder at the UniversityandTheStAnselm Murder, ripped out and flung around. Everything had been swept off the desk, except for one piece of paper, placed carefully in the centre. When he came closer, he saw it was a page from Nicky’s pamphlet, the Anglo-Saxon translation.
‘Well, that’s a gentle hint,’ Jem said out loud, his voice thin in the stark, ruined room.
He couldn’t sleep in here, not with a broken lock and an ink-sodden bed. He vaguely wondered if he’d be charged for damage to the room: that was the last thing he needed.
Someone had tried to kill him.
He sat on the chair for a moment, gathering his strength, then he picked up his few vital belongings and the page of the pamphlet, and looked in the litter for his notebook, first slowly and then scrabbling through the drifts of paper and peering under furniture until he had to face the fact that it had gone.
