Page 82 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

Leland paled at this, his mouth falling ajar, and he sank lower beneath Ginevra’s withering gaze. “Well, I don’t know who the devil this Olenev person is.”

“He owns a bookstore in south Oxford,” Gin said, studying the honest confusion in the professor’s face. He was a terrible liar and had likely only escaped the truth of Vosburg for so long because his version had been so swiftly accepted. “Everyone else here does know him.”

“Everyone here?” Leland blinked as though trying to fit incompatible puzzle pieces, but then his eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Good God—are you suggesting—”

“Yes,” Gin said. “Someone here is very determined to see you imprisoned for your crimes and went to the trouble of forging new ones if the old ones couldn’t be proved. Which means someone knew the truth about Vosburg before you confessed and has been feigning ignorance…”

Her breath hitched, for there it was: the simple lie woven into the elegant plan framing Leland. It was so subtle that she might have missed it without comparing the whole sweep of the pattern. But with one tug, she could now unravel the entire scheme.

Gin crossed her arms and surveyed them all, until a thick, uncomfortable silence had settled over the room. When Sidney caught her eye this time, the message was clear: The endgame was in her hands.

“Everyone,” she continued, measuring her words, “has insisted they didn’t know about your lie in Vosburg. But for one person, I have observed evidence to the contrary. Indeed, they’ve lied on several points.” She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Isn’t that right, Dr. Watkins?”

Watkins, still kneeling beside Neville and the recording case, startled. She stared at Gin like an animal caught in the headlamps. “I beg your pardon?”

“Last night in the Foxley Hall drawing room, you told Marion Kirk that you didn’t know Robert Crowne nor any details about Vosburg, and you reiterated that again tonight,” Gin said. “And yet, at Leland’s book party, I heard Donald badgering you to ask the professor again about the German error in the book. That wasn’t the first time you’d heard of it. You’d had plenty of time to realize the truth and devise a plan to use it against Leland.”

“That’s absurd,” Watkins protested. “You are mad, Miss Bishop, if you think I have the time or energy to care about every student’s petty crusade.”

“A fair point,” Gin said. “As someone who did make the fatal mistake of ignoring Donald’s grumbling over this error, I could see how you might have also ignored him—if that information were not extremely precious to you. Because despite your protests to Marion, I think you also knew Robert Crowne.”

“What?” Marion straightened, her head whipping toward Dr. Watkins. “How?”

Gin studied the lines of the older woman’s face, searching for any sign of yielding, but Jacqueline Watkins was far too disciplined. Tolliver’s hidden documents had revealed her time as a nurse before coming to Oxford, how beloved she was at Ellesmere Cottage Hospital—that sort of dedication in two different, difficult fields spoke to a resilience and determination that would not easily surrender at the first hurdle. If Gin had only connected Ellesmere to the Shropshire town where Marion’s aunt lived, this whole thing might have been much simpler.

“You worked as a nurse before returning to Oxford to teach, didn’t you? Which isn’t unusual in itself.” Gin paused, watching for any reaction. “Only it was the hospital nearest Marion’s childhood home, and I would wager where Robert Crowne drove the ambulance during that same time. I can’t think of an innocent reason to lie about knowing him except to conceal it from Leland.”

The fob watch pinned to Watkins’s lapel ticked in the silence, and a muscle quivered in the don’s jaw. Gin recalled Mr. Tolliver’s newspaper photograph of the woman leaving her job at the hospital, the same watch pinned to a black jacket, the matching black skirt and close-fitted black hat—the blank eyes staring at the camera as though they felt nothing.

“I saw the picture taken at the hospital before you left to join Lady Margaret Hall as a tutor,” Gin said quietly. “I believe it was the same year Robert died, and you were dressed in mourning. Was he perhaps a sweetheart or a fiancé?”

Marion gasped. “Robert used to talk about marrying, but my parents scoffed at the idea since he hadn’t worked long enough to have much set aside.”

There was a flutter of strong emotion across Watkins’s face, but the don remained silent.

“You must have eventually realized some of your colleagues knew Robert too,” Gin continued, “that they were intimately connected with the events at Vosburg. Only Donald’s revelation changed everything, and you devised a scheme to make Leland pay for his crimes by turning traitor and framing him for your actions. The truth coming out at the party must have been quite a bonus to your plan, but I don’t think you would drop all your hard work now. You want Michael Leland buried so far in the muck there’s no chance of a quiet pardon.”

Gin could see the cogs whirring in Watkins’s mind as she calculated how she might yet wriggle free while the theory was a string of connections with no real proof. Provoking a confession from someone with more backbone than Michael Leland would take a deeper twist of the knife. Gin crossed her arms. “Naming the leak Cassius, though, was especially clever, Dr. Watkins. I was momentarily distracted to discover Dr. Neville held that role in the recent production of Julius Caesar. Only, it wasn’t his part, was it? He took over Leland’s role—the role Leland has played in every production since his undergraduate days.”

A muscle quivered in Watkins’s jaw, but she was resolute in her silence. Gin took a step closer, lowering her voice.

“Did it needle you that Leland should play the leader of the conspirators against Caesar, the one who turns Brutus against his friend? Was Dr. Neville next on your list of vengeance? Or were you satisfied to get your pound of flesh from Leland—”

“Enough.” The word shot out of Watkins in a rough voice Ginevra almost didn’t recognize. The don’s expression had hardened into a mask, but there was a delicate crack around the eyes that spelled guilt. “Sam is also a victim of Leland’s treachery. I have no doubt if the truth were discovered sooner, Leland would have pinned the idea on him.”

Neville choked on a gasp. Sidney made an almost imperceptible nod, and Gin felt like she’d earned a medal.

With calm deliberation, Watkins rose and crossed her arms. “How very clever you are, Miss Bishop. Yes, I met Robert Crowne at the hospital while finishing my degree. We fell in love and wanted to marry, but then the war broke out. There were few available teaching positions, and it seemed smarter to continue as a nurse until after the war.”

“I knew he had a sweetheart,” Marion breathed. “He was so much happier for a bit, before he went away…”

The lines around Watkins’s mouth tightened. “Robert wouldn’t even see me when he returned, and he broke off the engagement. I accepted he was the traitor because I didn’t know what else to believe, but reconciling that with the man I’d known was a bitter pill to swallow. When I heard he’d died, I came to Oxford and threw my grief into teaching.”

“When did you start spying for the Kremlin?” Gin asked. “Was it before or after you started stealing your colleagues’ books and selling them to Olenev?”

Watkins’s cheeks pinked. “The books came first,” she said stiffly. “Olenev could see I was hard up, and he’d hint about other avenues for income … if I heard things, if I knew the right people—interesting people. I ignored him at first. I was embarrassed enough to be selling the books.” She cleared her throat. “And then everything fell into my lap, neat as a present.”

“You realized the truth about Leland when Donald started complaining about mistakes in the book,” Gin clarified.