Page 53 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

Gin flung open the door. “Sarita! What on earth are you doing?”

Sarita spun around, clutching at her chest. “What are you doing? It’s nearly three.”

“I’m making tea so I can finish my article. Not returning from a midnight stroll.”

Sarita twisted the cap in her hands. “I was at a party, and it went later than I expected.”

“On a Wednesday night? What sort of party? Do I know them?”

“Is this an interrogation?” Sarita asked sharply. “I do have other friends besides you and Tweety.”

Gin crossed her arms. “Just friends? Iris thinks you’ve taken a secret lover.”

“You two are ridiculous.” Sarita tugged at her sleeves, refusing to meet Gin’s eyes. “You’ll have to excuse me, dear, I’m tired and have heaps of revision tomorrow. Enjoy your tea.”

“Good night,” Gin said evenly.

Sarita left the buttery, and Gin leaned against the counter, confusion and panic warring inside her. The sharpness in her friend’s voice and the tightness around her lips were nothing like her usual complacent manner. Iris was the one who took offense easily, who squawked and protested and put the storm in the teacup. Sarita possessed the kind of unflappability drilled into royalty. But Gin realized with a chill she was also wearing the same style of boilersuit as the masked individuals who stormed Professor Leland’s book reception.

What the devil was Sarita hiding?

The next morning, Gin strode inside the Blue’s bustling office, nodded at Iris, who was banging at her typewriter, and crossed the room to Oliver Whitby. She presented her hard-won pages with a flourish.

“Not to me.” Whitby waved her toward a man hunched over a desk near Iris’s. “Give it to Sanders.”

Sanders took the sheets without a second glance, and Gin hesitated. Out of habit, she scanned the room for any sign of Marion, but the young woman was absent. The mood in the room, however, was even more tense than Gin’s last visit, with lots of nervous glances in Whitby’s direction. Ginevra had noted from their first meeting that he was a slick and satisfied sort of person, and the fact that he had enough cash to buy out The Blue placed him in a certain echelon of Oxford men. But today, Whitby’s hair was rumpled and his shirt in bad need of pressing, and the bags under his eyes betrayed long days and even longer nights.

Gin sidled up to Iris and sank against the edge of the desk. “Why does it feel as though you’ve all been scolded?”

Iris snorted, her red nails jabbing the typewriter keys with precision. “We’ve run afoul of the university administration, and Whitby’s threatening to sack the lot of us if we’re not on our best behavior.”

“Heavens, what happened?”

Iris gave a delicate cough and nodded toward a door in the corner. She stood, smoothing her dress, and picked up a thermos from her desk. “Going to have a cuppa in the closet, Sanders. If Whitby grouses about it, tell him I’m quitting.”

Sanders waved a dismissive hand, his nose buried in Gin’s pages. Knowing someone was reading the dreadful thing made Ginevra eager to get as far away from the vicinity as possible, and she followed Iris into the aptly named “closet,” which proved to be a small room lined with filing cabinets.

Iris pulled the door shut and exhaled. “It was Marion Kirk who led the protest that broke the windows in Malwyn Hall! Can you imagine?”

“Marion?” Gin stilled. The scene from the party swelled around her, the figure who had pushed Neville from the podium clearest of all. Good God, how had she not recognized the girl? She was quite sure she’d trodden upon the amorphous boilersuit while visiting her room. “However did they figure it out? Did she confess?”

Iris pulled two chipped mugs out of a cabinet drawer and filled them from her thermos. “It was partly your friend Audrey, I think. Something of Marion’s got mixed up with hers in the washing, and when Mrs. McKibbin put it back in Marion’s room, she saw that odd mask on the desk and grew alarmed.” She raised her eyebrows. “Remember all those articles about the Damocles Club on the wall? I don’t think it was hard to piece together since she’s been so loud about her grudge against them. But she’s been expelled!”

“How dreadful.” Gin accepted a cup of warm, milky tea, and sank back, staring at the narrow rectangle of light filtering through a dirty window near the ceiling. They would have to send word to the Rook and let him decide how to handle this information—if he wished to focus on Kirk at all after the evidence regarding Dr. Neville’s planned move to the Soviet Union.

“It’s bad enough for her, I suppose,” Iris said ruefully, “only they sent someone over here to read Whitby the riot act. If there’s another whiff of insubordinate behavior, it’ll be his head on the block next for not ‘keeping us in line.’” She snorted. “Whitby’s a Scrooge at the best of times. This has turned him into a right dragon. He said if any submission has the slightest hint of politics, we’ll be on immediate probation.” She sniffed. “Of course, what he means are politics other than his own.”

“Whitby did say something about her Commie nonsense the last time I was here. Did Marion discuss politics around the office?”

Iris screwed up her face, thinking. “No,” she said, drawing out the syllable, “though she was very active with the student Labour club. I’ve gone to a few meetings too, and she never seemed like someone who’d lead a protest and break windows.” She sighed and refilled her mug. “She’s a farmer’s daughter, but she was never overawed by the grandeur of Oxford—I certainly was when I arrived. She was bold about pressing issues and speaking out on things that angered her. Like fighting with Whitby to write more substantive articles. I wish I had the nerve to say half the things she yelled in his face. I asked her once how she could speak her mind without worrying about getting in trouble, and she told me, ‘It was hard work to get here, and I won’t waste the opportunity by being passive now.’”

“She certainly wasn’t passive,” Gin murmured.

“Tenacious to a fault.” Iris clinked their mugs. “Cheers, Marion.” She drained the rest of her tea and checked her wristwatch. “I should go powder my nose and get back to work. This was nice, though. I feel like you haven’t been around for a good goss.”

Working for the Rook had kept her busy that term, and Gin regretted that she could not share the truth with one of her best friends—especially when Tweety was unwittingly aiding her own investigation. It made Gin feel guilty, and she resolved to set aside time that week to spend with the girls alone. No ulterior motives, no toiling over Russian or digging for clues. And perhaps Sarita would finally confide whatever she was hiding.

As the pair exited the closet, they bumped into another woman coming in. She held something bulky under her cardigan, her eyes wide with panic.