Page 30 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

Olenev glanced up, bemused, and Sidney struggled to keep a straight face as he finally read the title. Caring for Your Infant: From Bottles to Nappies and Everything In Between! He paid the man and grabbed the brown paper bag, murmuring his thanks as he slunk toward the exit.

Watkins, he then realized, had not held a paper bag when she left.

After a few more days idling near the bookstore rather than revising for exams, luck turned Sidney’s way again. Dr. Neville appeared on Friday afternoon but slipped in and out faster than Sidney could approach. He watched the don hurry to catch a passing bus, cursing his decision to hide in a farther alleyway rather than the one across from the store. Such a short visit was certainly not a shopping excursion. Sidney scuffed the pavement and started to leave, but he hadn’t made it three paces when he noticed another figure on the pavement outside Olenev’s.

Lewis Hughes stood before the shop, his hat tipped back on his head. The American studied the building with a small frown, glancing up and down the street, and Sidney ducked behind a bus stop sign before the man looked back his way. They had spoken briefly after Watkins’s class the previous afternoon, for Hughes remembered Sidney hailed from the north and wanted to quiz him on vocabulary differences in British dialects. Today, however, Hughes did not enter the bookstore but sauntered off in the opposite direction of Neville.

Olenev’s was certainly not a tourist destination in Oxford for a foreigner interested in popular attractions, yet Tolliver must have seen Hughes visit the shop before to include him on the list of suspects. Why then had he not entered today? But that was twice now that Hughes had appeared where Sidney was rather than Sidney hunting him down for observation. He’d thought it convenient at the seminar. But were the American’s movements too convenient?

Sidney waited until Hughes was well in the lead, then fell in step behind him. The lonely street offered few excuses for his presence should the other man turn around, but Hughes reached the corner and turned right. Sidney quickened his pace to catch up.

It proved to be a dead-end street bustling with the patrons of a small café and a grocer. Sidney forced himself to a leisurely stroll as he surveyed the area for Hughes, but the man had seemingly disappeared inside one of the businesses. Rather than seek out his prey, Sidney stepped into an empty store’s front alcove and leaned on the wall. The American would have to reappear in due time.

From this spot, Sidney could see most of the street behind him reflected in the bay window opposite, the angled glass pane perfect for spying. After ten minutes straining toward the watery reflection, he saw Hughes emerge from the grocer and stride back down the street. Sidney tipped his hat over his eyes, slipped his hands into his pockets, and sauntered as though his life depended upon it.

To his relief, Hughes’s pace slowed, and Sidney allowed the man to stay farther ahead as he trailed him to a residential part of town in north Oxford where the cottages lined with tulips reminded him of his parents’ new home. It was very different from his childhood in Cumberland, a gray little pit village full of dirty-faced children and even dirtier-faced men. Sidney had never forgotten the shock of the first time he’d seen his father scrubbed pale as milk, nor the sooty, haunted reflection that had met him after his first day underground. For two years, Sidney had toiled in the mines after the war, but the long days without sunlight had only made the nightmares worse and deepened the tension between him and his parents. After learning of the ex-servicemen’s grants, Sidney had applied for Oxford, desperate for a path that would shake off the war’s shadows.

Hughes stopped, and Sidney quickly turned toward the house he was passing and approached the front door. He milled on the steps as though waiting for someone to answer his ring while Hughes studied a cottage five down from his own. The American entered the front garden, glancing up and down the street, and Sidney stood still. Though he couldn’t quite see what Hughes was doing, he seemed to be peering in the other house’s front windows. At last, Hughes withdrew and continued sauntering down the street.

Sidney was still puzzling over the man’s peculiar itinerary when there was the swish of a chain rattling, and the door before him swung open. A grizzled woman in a pinafore glared at him. “Do you need something, young man?”

Sidney retreated down the steps. “Sorry, I’ve got the wrong house.”

The woman sniffed as though she sensed the lie and started to close the door.

“Wait!” Sidney cried. The woman hesitated, squinting down at him warily. “That house over there—the one with the trellis over the gate. Who lives there?”

The woman’s distrust escalated to anger. “We’re a very conscientious neighborhood, young man. We look out for each other, and each other’s things. Even if he is dead, the place won’t be empty much longer. Someone from the family inherits, so don’t even think about pilfering.”

“Dead?” Sidney peered down the lane but there was still no sign of Hughes. “Are you sure?”

“As if I don’t know the status of my own neighbors’ mortal souls.” The woman huffed, her bosom heaving as she glared down at Sidney. “Mr. Tolliver died last month, and his niece is coming to clean out the place soon. So, you can scarper off now—go on then!”

She snapped a dish towel at Sidney, and he beat a hasty retreat down the pavement. At the corner he stopped, checking Hughes had truly disappeared, then searched for the nearest telephone box.

The Rook’s secretary answered on the third ring, and Sidney’s crumpet order was transferred. “I’m rather surprised to hear from you, Mr. Braithwaite,” the Rook said with dry amusement. “Whatever has transpired?”

“Hughes was outside Tolliver’s.”

There was a long pause.

“Is that it?” There was a note of impatience now, and the Rook cleared his throat. “Walking past someone’s house isn’t a crime—”

“He came from Olenev’s.”

Another pause, longer this time.

“Tell me everything.”

Sidney laid out what had happened that week: observing Watkins and Neville’s brief visits to the shop, Hughes appearing out of nowhere, their crosstown trip of cat and mouse, and discovering before whose cottage he had stopped. The Rook remained silent, and Sidney could imagine his face, that distant, calculating look when he absorbed new information and forecasted possible outcomes. “I realize these four are on the list because they’ve visited Olenev’s before, but Hughes traveling to Mr. Tolliver’s home right after seemed unusual,” Sidney concluded.

“Yes, you were right to call. If Hughes is our man, then he might be sniffing around to see what else Tolliver knew.” The Rook hesitated. “Could you break into the cottage?”

“Pardon?” Sidney pressed his ear more firmly to the receiver, sure he’d misheard. “Break in—?”

“The neighbor said Tolliver’s niece is emptying it soon, yes? I want a final sweep of the premises to ensure nothing sensitive was left behind. I can send another agent, of course, but if you can manage it…”

He trailed off, expectantly, and Sidney rolled his shoulders in an attempt to shift his annoyance.