Page 33 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

“Ah, your room is probably lovely. I visited last year to study with a girl.” Audrey gave a wistful sigh. “This place isn’t so bad, but McKibbin makes us help with chores. I wish there’d been space in the college proper.” She extended a hand to Iris and gave a vigorous shake. “Sorry, Audrey Tuttle. Ginevra was like my little sister at finishing school.”

“Iris Finchley.” Iris sighed at her wristwatch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to dash.”

“Oh!” Gin exclaimed. “Could you help us? We’re trying to get into Marion Kirk’s room. Iris needs to fetch something for The Blue—they’re both on the paper, you see. Your landlady was being most draconic, and Iris is on a tight deadline.”

“Gosh, any other girl, I’d take you right over, but Kirk keeps her door locked. However…” Audrey spun toward the chest of drawers and rummaged inside. “They have to be here somewhere … ah!” She turned, holding up a pair of fine-tipped instruments, and grinned at Gin. “I don’t think I’ve used my lockpicks since we were caught in the buttery and earned detention scrubbing the lav. I still think those tarts were worth it.”

“You really don’t mind?” Iris said. “I’d be ever so grateful. And if you ever need a favor…”

Audrey waved her off. “The walls around here are awfully thin, and Kirk has done herself no favors pounding away on that typewriter at all hours. It will be my pleasure.”

She led them across the hall and knelt before Marion’s door. “If McKibbin swarms up here, you two will defend me, yes?”

“To the hilt,” Iris said fervently. “You’re a godsend.”

Audrey slipped the instruments’ delicate tips inside the door’s lock. “I doubt God approves of breaking and entering, but perhaps he’d make an exception for Kirk.”

“Do you not like her?” Gin asked.

Audrey gave Iris a knowing look. “You work with her on the paper, yes? Do you like her?”

“When she turns in her articles on time, sure,” Iris said, rolling her eyes.

Audrey snorted at this, shifting the position of the tools. “Kirk’s an odd duck. The rest of us here are quite chummy, but she keeps to herself and rebuffs any attempts at friendship.”

“Mrs. McKibbin implied she has a lot of visitors,” Gin said.

Audrey pulled a thoughtful face. “I don’t know about that … though there was an old man last month. He seemed very genteel, otherwise I don’t think McKibbin would have let him into Kirk’s room.”

Iris pulled a face. “Golly, I hope no one lets strange men paw through my things.”

“He said he was after a book that shouldn’t have been loaned out.” Audrey grinned. “A very careful librarian seems trustworthy enough.”

Tolliver, Gin realized with a rush of shock. Only what might he have been searching for among Marion’s possessions? Snooping the same as her?

Audrey gave the tools a sharp twist. “I think it’s only us girls Kirk chooses to ignore. On several occasions, some of us have sighted her in the alley around the corner meeting with a great number of people.”

“What sort of people?” Gin asked.

“I’ve never lingered for an introduction, for they seem like an angry lot. The girl down the hall thinks Marion is in a cult, but that seems rather silly.” There was a soft click, and the doorknob rotated at Audrey’s touch. “There you are, dear. Let me hide the evidence of my delinquent past before McKibbin catches me, and I shall stand watch in turn.”

“A cult?” Iris whispered to Gin as Audrey returned to her room. “Do you think I ought to mention this to Whitby?”

“I’m sure it’s an exaggeration,” Gin said, pushing the door open. “Cults aren’t as common as the sensationalist rags would have us think.”

Only she choked on her words at the sight of Marion’s room.

The scene before them was one of surprising squalor: Clothes lay heaped upon the floor, the bed linens were in disarray as though just vacated, and loose paper covered the desk. But the wall over the desk was plastered with newspaper clippings and paths drawn between them with lengths of twine.

Iris yelped. “Good lord. What is all that?”

Gin edged closer, stepping over a tea tray piled with dishes and half-crumbled biscuits. She skimmed the closest clipping and traced a finger to the connecting article. “Perhaps we dismissed the cult idea too quickly.”

Audrey strolled in behind them and sighed. “God, the state of this place! Mrs. McKibbin’s a tolerant enough woman—only closed her eyes and backed out of the room when I spilled ink all over the sheets last year—but this would make her apoplectic. I’m sure Marion keeps the place locked up to avoid her ire. Best find your article before we’re caught.”

Iris turned toward the mountain of papers on the desk in despair. “Now I think it will take a miracle.”

Or a partner eager to snoop, and Ginevra happily busied herself sorting through the mess while cataloging the room’s contents for her own investigation. She wasn’t surprised to find copies of The Daily Worker, but it was the stack of booklets titled The British Road to Socialism that excited her: They seemed identical to the ones she’d found hidden in Grigor Olenev’s desk. If Marion was distributing Communist literature for him, that would certainly explain her visits to his shop and speak to closer, political ties.