Читать книгу Gaudy Night - Dorothy L. Sayers - Страница 7

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Thou canst not, Love, disgrace me half so ill,

To set a form upon desirèd change,

As I'll myself disgrace: knowing thy will,

I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,

Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue

Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,

Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong

And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

William Shakespeare

There are incidents in one's life which, through some haphazard coincidence of time and mood, acquire a symbolic value. Harriet's attendance at the Shrewsbury Gaudy was of this kind. In spite of minor incongruities and absurdities, it had shown itself to have one definite significance; it had opened up to her the vision of an old desire, long obscured by a forest of irrelevant fancies, but now standing up unmistakable, like a tower set on a hill. Two phrases rang in her ears: the Dean's, 'It's the work you're doing that really counts'; and that one melancholy lament for eternal loss: 'Once, I was a scholar.'

'Time is,' quoth the Brazen Head; 'time was; time is past.' Philip Boyes was dead; and the nightmares that had haunted the ghastly midnight of his passing were gradually fading away. Clinging on, by blind instinct, to the job that had to be done, she had fought her way back to an insecure stability. Was it too late to achieve wholly the clear eye and the untroubled mind? And what, in that case, was she to do with one powerful fetter which still tied her ineluctably to the bitter past? What about Peter Wimsey?

During the past three years, their relations had been peculiar. Immediately after the horrible business that they had investigated together at Wilvercombe, Harriet--feeling that something must be done to ease a situation which was fast becoming intolerable--had carried out a long-cherished scheme, now at last made practicable by her increasing reputation and income as a writer. Taking a woman friend with her as companion and secretary, she had left England, and travelled slowly about Europe, staying now here, now there, as fancy dictated or a good background presented itself for a story. Financially the trip had been a success. She had gathered material for two full-length novels, the scenes laid respectively in Madrid and Carcassonne, and written a series of short stories dealing with detective adventures in Hitlerite Berlin, and also a number of travel articles; thus more than replenishing the treasury. Before her departure, she had asked Wimsey not to write. He had taken the prohibition with unexpected meekness.

'I see. Very well. Vade in pacem. If you ever want me, you will find the Old Firm at the usual stand.'

She had occasionally seen his name in the English papers, and that was all. At the beginning of the following June, she had returned home, feeling that, after so long a break, there should be little difficulty in bringing their relationship to a cool and friendly close. By this time he was probably feeling as much settled and relieved as she was. As soon as she got back to London, she moved to a new flat in Mecklenburg Square, and settled down to work at the Carcassonne novel.

A trifling incident, soon after her return, gave her the opportunity to test her own reactions. She went down to Ascot, in company with a witty young woman writer and her barrister husband--partly for fun and partly because she wanted to get local colour for a short story, in which an unhappy victim was due to fall suddenly dead in the Royal Enclosure, just at the exciting moment when all eyes were glued upon the finish of a race. Scanning those sacred precincts, therefore, from without the pale, Harriet became aware that the local colour included a pair of slim shoulders tailored to swooning-point and carrying a well-known parrot profile, thrown into prominence by the acute backward slant of a pale-grey topper. A froth of summer hats billowed about this apparition, so that it resembled a slightly grotesque but expensive orchid in a bouquet of roses. From the expressions of the parties, Harriet gathered that the summer hats were picking long-priced and impossible outsiders, and that the topper was receiving their instructions with an amusement amounting to hilarity. At any rate, his attention was well occupied.

'Excellent,' thought Harriet; 'nothing to trouble about there.' She came home rejoicing in the exceptional tranquillity of her own spirits. Three days later, while reading in the morning paper that among the guests at a literary luncheon-party had been seen 'Miss Harriet Vane, the well-known detective authoress,' she was interrupted by the telephone. A familiar voice said, with a curious huskiness and uncertainty:

'Miss Harriet Vane?... Is that you, Harriet? I saw you were back. Will you dine with me one evening?'

There were several possible answers; among them, the repressive and disconcerting 'Who is that speaking, please?' Being unprepared and naturally honest, Harriet feebly replied:

'Oh, thank you, Peter. But I don't know whether ...'

'What?' said the voice, with a hint of mockery. 'Every night booked from now till the coming of the Coqcigrues?'

'Of course not,' said Harriet, not at all willing to pose as the swollen-headed and much-run-after celebrity.

'Then say when.'

'I'm free to-night,' said Harriet, thinking that the shortness of the notice might force him to plead a previous engagement.

'Admirable,' said he. 'So am I. We will taste the sweets of freedom. By the way, you have changed your telephone number.'

'Yes; I've got a new flat.'

'Shall I call for you? Or will you meet me at Ferrara's at 7 o'clock?'

'At Ferrara's?'

'Yes. Seven o'clock, if that's not too early. Then we can go on to a show, if you care about it. Till this evening, then. Thank you.'

He hung up the receiver before she had time to protest. Ferrara's was not the place she would have chosen. It was both fashionable and conspicuous. Everybody who could get there, went there; but its charges were so high that, for the present at least, it could afford not to be crowded. That meant that if you went there you were seen. If one intended to break off a connection with anyone, it was perhaps not the best opening move to afficher one's self with him at Ferrara's.

Oddly enough, this would be the first time she had dined in the West End with Peter Wimsey. During the first year or so after her trial, she had not wanted to appear anywhere, even had she then been able to afford the frocks to appear in. In those days, he had taken her to the quieter and better restaurants in Soho, or, more often, carried her off, sulky and rebellious, in the car to such roadside inns as kept reliable cooks. She had been too listless to refuse these outings, which had probably done something to keep her from brooding, even though her host's imperturbable cheerfulness had often been repaid only with bitter distressful words. Looking back, she was as much amazed by his patience as fretted by his persistence.

He received her at Ferrara's with the old, quick, sidelong smile and ready speech, but with a more formal courtesy than she remembered in him. He listened with interest, and indeed with eagerness, to the tale of her journeyings abroad; and she found (as was to be expected) that the map of Europe was familiar ground to him. He contributed a few amusing incidents from his own experience, and added some well-informed comments on the conditions of life in modern Germany. She was surprised to find him so closely acquainted with the ins-and-outs of international politics, for she had not credited him with any great interest in public affairs. She found herself arguing passionately with him about the prospects of the Ottawa Conference, of which he appeared to entertain no very great hopes; and by the time they got to the coffee she was so eager to disabuse his mind of some perverse opinions about Disarmament that she had quite forgotten with what intentions (if any) she had come to meet him. In the theatre she contrived to remind herself from time to time that something decisive ought to be said; but the conversational atmosphere remained so cool that it was difficult to introduce the new subject.

The play being over, he put her into a taxi, asked what address he should give the driver, requested formal permission to see her home and took his seat beside her. This, to be sure, was the moment; but he was babbling pleasantly about the Georgian architecture of London. It was only as they were running along Guildford Street that he forestalled her by saying (after a pause, during which she had been making up her mind to take the plunge):

'I take it, Harriet, that you have no new answer to give me?'

'No, Peter. I'm sorry, but I can't say anything else.'

'All right; Don't worry. I'll try not to be a nuisance. But if you could put up with me occasionally, as you have done to-night, I should be very grateful to you.'

'I don't think that would be at all fair to you.'

'If that's the only reason, I am the best judge of that.' Then, with a return to his habitual self-mockery: 'Old habits die hard. I will not promise to reform altogether. I shall, with your permission, continue to propose to you, at decently regulated intervals--as a birthday treat, and on Guy Fawkes Day and on the Anniversary of the King's Accession. But consider it, if you will, as a pure formality. You need not pay the slightest attention to it.'

'Peter, it's foolish to go on like this.'

'And, of course, on the Feast of All Fools.'

'It would be better to forget all about it--I hoped you had.'

'I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done, but it has not yet gone on strike altogether.'

The taxi drew up, and the driver peered round inquiringly. Wimsey handed her out and waited gravely while she disentangled her latch-key. Then he took it from her, opened the door for her, said good night and was gone.

Mounting the stone staircase, she knew that, as far as this situation was concerned, her flight had been useless. She was back in the old net of indecision and distress. In him, it appeared to have worked some kind of change; but it had certainly not made him any easier to deal with.

He had kept his promise, and troubled her very little. He had been out of Town a good deal, hard at work upon cases, some of which trickled through into newspaper columns, while others appeared to settle themselves in discreet obscurity. For six months he had himself been out of the country, offering no explanation except 'business.' One summer, he had been involved in an odd affair, which had led him to take a post in an Advertising Agency. He had found office life entertaining; but the thing had come to a strange and painful conclusion.

There had been an evening when he had turned up to keep a previously-made dinner appointment, but had obviously been unfit either to eat or talk. Eventually he had confessed to a splitting headache and a temperature and suffered himself to be personally conducted home. She had been sufficiently alarmed not to leave him till he was safely in his own flat and in the capable hands of Bunter. The latter had been reassuring: the trouble was nothing but reaction--of frequent occurrence at the end of a trying case, but soon over. A day or two later, the patient had rung up, apologised, and made a fresh appointment, at which he had displayed a quite remarkable effervescence of spirits.

On no other occasion had Harriet ever passed his threshold. Nor had he ever violated the seclusion of Mecklenburg Square. Two or three times, courtesy had moved her to invite him in; but he had always made some excuse, and she understood that he was determined to leave her that place, at least, free from any awkward associations. It was clear that he had no fatuous intention of making himself more valued by withdrawal: he had rather the air of trying to make amends for something. He renewed his offer of marriage on an average of once in three months, but in such a way as to afford no excuse for any outbreak of temperament on either side. One First of April, the question had arrived from Paris in a single Latin sentence, starting off dispiritedly, 'Num ...?--a particle which notoriously 'expects the answer No.' Harriet, rummaging the Grammar book for 'polite negatives,' replied, still more briefly, 'Benigne.'

Looking back upon her visit to Oxford, Harriet found that it had had an unsettling effect. She had begun to take Wimsey for granted, as one might take dynamite for granted in a munitions factory. But the discovery that the mere sound of his name still had the power to provoke such explosions in herself--that she could so passionately resent, at one and the same time, either praise or blame of him on other people's lips--awakened a misgiving that dynamite was perhaps still dynamite, however harmless it might come to look through long custom.

On the mantelpiece of her sitting-room stood a note, in Peter's small and rather difficult writing. It informed her that he had been called away by Chief-Inspector Parker, who was in difficulties over a murder in the north of England. He must therefore regretfully cancel their appointment for that week. Could she oblige him by making use of the tickets, of which he had no time to dispose otherwise?

Harriet pinched her lips over that last cautious sentence. Ever since one frightful occasion, during the first year of their acquaintance, when he had ventured to send her a Christmas present and she, in an access of mortified pride, had returned it to him with a stinging rebuke, he had been careful never to offer anything that could possibly be looked upon as a material gift. Had he been wiped out of existence at any moment, there was nothing among her possessions to remind her of him. She now took up the tickets and hesitated over them. She could give them away, or she could go herself and take a friend. On the whole, she thought she would rather not sit through the performance with a kind of Banquo's ghost disputing possession of the next stall with somebody else. She put the tickets in an envelope, dispatched them to the married couple who had taken her to Ascot, and then tore the note across and deposited it in the waste-paper basket. Having thus disposed of Banquo, she breathed more freely, and turned to deal with the day's next nuisance.

This was the revision of three of her books for a new edition. The re-reading of one's own works is usually a dismal matter; and when she had completed her task she felt thoroughly jaded and displeased with herself. The books were all right, as far as they went; as intellectual exercises, they were even brilliant. But there was something lacking about them; they read now to her as though they had been written with a mental reservation, a determination to keep her own opinions and personality out of view. She considered with distaste a clever and superficial discussion between two of the characters about married life. She could have made a much better thing of that, if she had not been afraid of giving herself away. What hampered her was this sense of being in the middle of things, too close to things, pressed upon and bullied by reality. If she could succeed in standing aside from herself she would achieve self-confidence and a better control. That was the great possession in which--with all his limitations--the scholar could account himself blessed: the single eye, directed to the object, not dimmed nor distracted by private motes and beams. "Private, indeed?" muttered Harriet to herself, as she smacked her proofs irritably into brown paper.

'You not alone, when you are still alone,

O God, from you that I could private be!'

She was exceedingly glad that she had got rid of the theatre tickets.

So that when Wimsey eventually got back from his expedition north, she went to meet him in a belligerent spirit. He had asked her to dine with him, this time, at the Egotists' Club--an unusual venue. It was a Saturday night, and they had the room to themselves. She mentioned her Oxford visit and took the opportunity to recite to him a list of promising scholars, distinguished in their studies and subsequently extinguished by matrimony. He agreed mildly that such things did happen, far too often, and instanced a very brilliant painter who, urged on by a socially ambitious wife, had now become a slick machine for the production of Academy portraits.

'Sometimes, of course,' he went on dispassionately, 'the partner is merely jealous or selfish. But half the time it's sheer stupidity. They don't mean it. It's surprisin' how few people ever mean anything definite from one year's end to the other.'

'I don't think they could help it, whatever they meant. It's the pressure of other people's personalities that does the mischief.'

'Yes. Best intentions no security. They never are, of course. You may say you won't interfere with another person's soul, but you do--merely by existing. The snag about it is the practical difficulty, so to speak, of not existing. I mean, here we all are, you know, and what are we to do about it?'

'Well, I suppose some people feel themselves called to make personal relationships their life-work. If so, it's all right for them. But what about the others?'

'Tiresome, isn't it?' he said, with a gleam of amusement that annoyed her. 'Do you think they ought to cut out human contacts altogether? It's not easy. There's always the butcher or the baker or the landlady or somebody one has to wrestle with. Or should the people with brains sit tight and let the people with hearts look after them?'

'They frequently do.'

'So they do.' For the fifth time he summoned the waiter to pick up Harriet's napkin for her. 'Why do geniuses make bad husbands, and all that? But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?'

'I'm sorry I keep on dropping things; this silk's so slippery. Well, that's just the problem, isn't it? I'm beginning to believe they've got to choose.'

'Not compromise?'

'I don't think the compromise works.'

'That I should live to hear any person of English blood blaspheme against compromise!'

'Oh, I'm not all English. I've got some bits of Scotch and Irish tucked away somewhere.'

'That proves you're English. No other race ever boasts of being mongrel. I'm quite offensively English myself, because I'm one-sixteenth French, besides all the usual nationalities. So that compromise is in my blood. However. Should you catalogue me as a heart or a brain?'

'Nobody,' said Harriet, 'could deny your brain.'

'Who denies it? And you may deny my heart, but I'm damned if you shall deny its existence.'

'You argue like an Elizabethan wit--two meanings under one word.'

'It was your word. You will have to deny something, if you intend to be like Cæsar's sacrifice.'

'Cæsar's ...?'

'A beast without a heart. Has your napkin gone again?'

'No--it's my bag this time. It's just under your left foot.'

'Oh!' He looked round, but the waiter had vanished, 'Well,' he went on, without moving, 'it is the heart's office to wait upon the brain, but in view of--'

'Please don't trouble,' said Harriet, 'it doesn't matter in the least.'

'In view of the fact that I've got two cracked ribs, I'd better not try; because if I once got down I should probably never get up again.'

'Good gracious!' said Harriet. 'I thought you seemed a little stiff in your manner. Why on earth didn't you say so before, instead of sitting there like a martyr and inveigling me into misjudging you?'

'I don't seem able to do anything right,' he said plaintively.

'How did you manage to do it?'

'Fell off a wall in the most inartistic manner. I was in a bit of a hurry; there was a very plain-looking bloke on the other side with a gun. It wasn't so much the wall, as the wheelbarrow at the bottom. And it isn't really so much the ribs as the sticking-plaster. It's strapped as tight as hell and itches infernally.'

'How beastly for you. I'm so sorry. What became of the bloke with the gun?'

'Ah! I'm afraid personal complications won't trouble him any longer.'

'If luck had been the other way, I suppose they wouldn't have troubled you any longer?'

'Probably not. And then I shouldn't have troubled you any longer. If my mind had been where my heart was, I might have welcomed that settlement. But my mind being momentarily on my job, I ran away with the greatest rapidity, so as to live to finish the case.'

'Well, I'm glad of that, Peter.'

'Are you? That shows how hard it is for even the most powerful brain to be completely heartless. Let me see. It is not my day for asking you to marry me, and a few yards of sticking-plaster are hardly enough to make it a special occasion. But we'll have coffee in the lounge, if you don't mind, because this chair is getting as hard as the wheelbarrow, and seems to be catching me in several of the same places.'

He got up cautiously. The waiter arrived and restored Harriet's bag, together with some letters which she had taken from the postman as she left the house and thrust into the outer pocket of the bag without reading. Wimsey steered his guest into the lounge, established her in a chair and lowered himself with a grimace into one corner of a low couch.

'Rather a long way down, isn't it?'

'It's all right when you get there. Sorry to be always presenting myself in such a decrepit state. I do it on purpose, of course, to attract attention and awaken sympathy; but I'm afraid the manœuvre's getting rather obvious. Would you like a liqueur with the coffee or a brandy? Two old brandies, James.'

'Very good, my lord. This was found under the table in the dining-room, madam.'

'More of your scattered belongings?' said Wimsey, as she took the post-card; then, seeing her flush and frown of disgust. 'What is it?'

'Nothing,' said Harriet, pushing the ugly scrawl into her bag.

He looked at her.

'Do you often get that kind of thing?'

'What kind of thing?'

'Anonymous dirt.'

'Not very often now. I got one at Oxford. But they used to come by every post. Don't worry; I'm used to it. I only wish I'd looked at it before I got here. It's horrible of me to have dropped it about your club for the servants to read.'

'Careless little devil, aren't you? May I see it?'

'No, Peter; please.'

'Give it to me.'

She handed it to him without looking up. 'Ask your boy friend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup. What did you give him to get you off?' it inquired, disagreeably.

'God, what muck!' said he, bitterly. 'So that's what I'm letting you in for. I might have known it. I could hardly hope that it wasn't so. But you said nothing, so I allowed myself to be selfish.'

'It doesn't matter. It's just part of the consequences. You can't do anything about it.'

'I might have the consideration not to expose you to it. Heaven knows you've tried hard enough to get rid of me. In fact, I think you've used every possible lever to dislodge me, except that one.'

'Well, I knew you would hate it so. I didn't want to hurt you.'

'Didn't want to hurt me?'

She realised that this, to him, must sound completely lunatic.

'I mean that, Peter. I know I've said about every damnable thing to you that I could think of. But I have my limits.' A sudden wave of anger surged up in her. 'My God, do you really think that of me? Do you suppose there's no meanness I wouldn't stoop to?'

'You'd have been perfectly justified in telling me that I was making things more difficult for you by hanging round.'

'Should I? Did you expect me to tell you that you were compromising my reputation, when I had none to compromise? To point out that you'd saved me from the gallows, thank you very much, but left me in the pillory? To say, my name's mud, but kindly treat it as lilies? I'm not quite such a hypocrite as that.'

'I see. The plain truth is, that I am doing nothing but make life a little bitterer for you. It was generous of you not to say so.'

'Why did you insist on seeing that thing?'

'Because,' he said, striking a match and holding the flame to a corner of the post-card, 'while I am quite ready to take flight from plug-uglies with guns, I prefer to look other kinds of trouble in the face.' He dropped the burning paper on to the tray and crushed the ashes together, and she was again reminded of the message she had found in her sleeve. 'You have nothing to reproach yourself with--you didn't tell me this; I found it out for myself. I will admit defeat and say good-bye. Shall I?'

The club waiter set down the brandies. Harriet, with her eyes on her own hands, sat plaiting her fingers together. Peter watched her for some minutes, and then said gently:

'Don't look so tragic about it. The coffee's getting cold. After all, you know, I have the consolation that "not you but Fate has vanquished me." I shall emerge with my vanity intact, and that's something.'

'Peter, I'm afraid I'm not very consistent. I came here to-night with the firm intention of telling you to chuck it. But I'd rather fight my own battles. I--I--,' she looked up and went on quaveringly, 'I'm damned if I'll have you wiped out by plug-uglies or anonymous-letter writers!'

He sat up sharply, so that his exclamation of pleasure turned half-way into an anguished grunt.

'Oh, curse this sticking-plaster!... Harriet, you have got guts, haven't you? Give me your hand, and we'll fight on until we drop. Here! none of that. You can't cry in this club. It's never been done, and if you disgrace me like this, I shall get into a row with the Committee. They'll probably close the Ladies' Rooms altogether.'

'I'm sorry, Peter.'

'And don't put sugar in my coffee.'

Later in the evening, having lent a strong arm to extricate him, swearing loudly, from the difficult depths of the couch, and dispatched him to such rest as he might reasonably look for between the pains of love and sticking-plaster, she had leisure to reflect that if fate had vanquished either of them it was not Peter Wimsey. He knew too well the wrestler's trick of letting the adversary's own strength defeat itself. Yet she knew with certainty that if, when he had said, 'Shall I go?' she had replied with firm kindness, 'I'm sorry, but I think it would be better,' there would have been the desired end of the matter.

'I wish,' she said to the friend of the European trip, 'he would take a firm line of some kind.'

'But he has,' replied the friend, who was a clear-headed person. 'He knows what he wants. The trouble is that you don't. I know it isn't pleasant putting an end to things, but I don't see why he should do all your dirty work for you, particularly as he doesn't want it done. As for anonymous letters, it seems to me quite ridiculous to pay any attention to them.'

It was easy for the friend to say this, having no vulnerable points in her brisk and hardworking life.

'Peter says I ought to get a secretary and have them weeded out.'

'Well,' said the friend, 'that's a practical suggestion, anyway. But I suppose, since it's his advice, you'll find some ingenious reason for not taking it.'

'I'm not as bad as that,' said Harriet; and engaged the secretary.

So matters went on for some months. She made no further effort to discuss the conflicting claims of heart and brain. That line of talk led to a perilous exchange of personalities, in which he, with a livelier wit and better self-control, could always drive her into a corner without exposing himself. It was only by sheer brutal hacking that she could beat down his guard; and she was beginning to be afraid of those impulses to savagery.

She heard no news of Shrewsbury College in the interval, except that one day in the Michaelmas Term there was a paragraph in one of the more foolish London dailies about an 'Undergraduettes' Rag,' informing the world that somebody had made a bonfire of gowns in Shrewsbury Quad and that the 'Lady Head' was said to be taking disciplinary measures. Women, of course, were always news. Harriet wrote a tart letter to the paper, pointing out that either 'undergraduate' or 'woman student' would be seemlier English than 'undergraduette,' and that the correct method of describing Dr. Baring was 'the Warden.' The only result of this was to provoke a correspondence headed 'Lady Undergrads,' and a reference to 'sweet girl-graduates.'

She informed Wimsey--who happened to be the nearest male person handy for scarifying--that this kind of vulgarity was typical of the average man's attitude to women's intellectual interests. He replied that bad manners always made him sick; but was it any worse than headlining foreign monarchs by their Christian names, untitled?

About three weeks before the end of the Easter term, however, Harriet's attention was again called to college affairs in a way that was more personal and more disquieting.

February was sobbing and blustering its lachrymose way into March, when she received a letter from the Dean.

My dear Miss Vane,

I am writing to ask you whether you will be able to get up to Oxford for the opening of the New Library Wing by the Chancellor next Thursday. This, as you know, has always been the date for the official opening, though we had hoped that the buildings themselves would be ready for habitation at the beginning of this term. However, what with a dispute in the contractors' firm, and the unfortunate illness of the architect, we got badly held up, so that we shall only just be ready in time. In fact, the interior decoration of the ground floor isn't finished yet.--Still, we couldn't very well ask Lord Oakapple to change the date, as he is such a busy man; and after all, the Library is the chief thing, and not the Fellows' sets, however badly they may need a home to go to, poor dears.

We are particularly anxious--I am speaking for Dr. Baring as well as myself--that you should come, if you can manage to find time, (though of course you have a lot of engagements). We should be very glad to have your advice about a most unpleasant thing that has been happening here. Not that one expects a detective novelist to be a practical policeman; but I know you have taken part in one real investigation, and I feel sure you know a lot more than we do about tracking down malefactors.

Don't think we are getting murdered in our beds! In some ways I'm not sure that a 'nice, clean murder' wouldn't be easier to deal with! The fact is, we are being victimised by a cross between a Poltergeist and a Poison-Pen, and you can imagine how disgusting it is for everybody. It seems that the letters started coming some time ago, but at first nobody took much notice. I suppose everyone gets vulgar anonymous communications from time to time; and though some of the beastly things didn't come by post, there's nothing in a place like this to prevent an outsider from dropping them at the Lodge or even inside the College. But wanton destruction of property is a different matter, and the last outbreak has been so abominable that something really must be done about it. Poor Miss Lydgate's English Prosody--you saw the colossal work in progress--has been defaced and mutilated in the most revolting manner, and some important manuscript portions completely destroyed, so that they will have to be done all over again. She was almost in tears, poor dear--and the alarming thing is that it now looks as though somebody in college must be responsible. We suppose that some student must have a grudge against the S.C.R.--but it must be more than a grudge--it must be a very horrid kind of pottiness.

One can scarcely call in the police--if you'd seen some of the letters you'd realise that the less publicity the better, and you know how things get about. I dare say you noticed there was a wretched newspaper paragraph about that bonfire in the quad last November. We never discovered who did that, by the way; we thought, naturally, it was a stupid practical joke; but we are now beginning to wonder whether it wasn't all part of the same campaign.

So if you could possibly snatch time to give us the benefit of your experience, we should be exceedingly grateful. There must be some way of coping--this sort of persecution simply Can't go on. But it's an awfully difficult job to pin anything down in a place like this, with 150 students and all doors open everywhere night and day.

I am afraid this is rather an incoherent letter, but I'm feeling that put about, with the Opening looming ahead and all the entrance and scholarship papers blowing about me like leaves in Vallombrosa! Hoping very much to see you next Thursday,

Yours very sincerely,

Letitia Martin.

Here was a pretty thing! Just the kind of thing to do the worst possible damage to University women--not only in Oxford, but everywhere. In any community, of course, one always ran the risk of harbouring somebody undesirable; but parents obviously would not care to send their young innocents to places where psychological oddities flourished unchecked. Even if the poison campaign led to no open disaster (and you never knew what people might be driven to under persecution) a washing of dirty linen in public was not calculated to do Shrewsbury any good. Because, though nine-tenths of the mud might not be thrown at random, the remaining tenth might quite easily be, as it usually was, dredged from the bottom of the well of truth, and would stick.

Who should know that better than herself? She smiled wryly over the Dean's letter. 'The benefit of your experience'; yes, indeed. The words had, of course been written in the most perfect innocence, and with no suspicion that they could make the galled jade wince. Miss Martin herself would never dream of writing abusive letters to a person who had been acquitted of murder, and it had undoubtedly never occurred to her that to ask the notorious Miss Vane for advice about how to deal with that kind of thing was to talk of rope in the house of the hanged. This was merely an instance of that kind of unworldly tactlessness to which learned and cloistered women were prone. The Dean would be horrified to know that Harriet was the last person who should, in charity, have been approached in the matter; and that, even in Oxford itself, in Shrewsbury College itself--

In Shrewsbury College itself: and at the Gaudy. That was the point. The letter she had found in her sleeve had been put there in Shrewsbury College and at the Gaudy. Not only that; there had been the drawing she had picked up in the quad. Was either, or were both of these, part only of her own miserable quarrel with the world? Or were they rather to be connected with the subsequent outbreak in the college itself? It seemed unlikely that Shrewsbury should have to harbour two dirty-minded lunatics in such quick succession. But if the two lunatics were one and the same lunatic, then the implication was an alarming one, and she herself must, at all costs, interfere at least so far as to tell what she knew. There did come moments when all personal feelings had to be set aside in the interests of public service; and this looked like being one of them.

Reluctantly, she reached for the telephone and put a call through to Oxford. While she waited for it, she thought the matter over in this new light. The Dean had given no details about the poison letters, except that they suggested a grudge against the S.C.R. and that the culprit appeared to belong to the college. It was natural enough to attribute destructive ragging to the undergraduates; but then, the Dean did not know what Harriet knew. The warped and repressed mind is apt enough to turn and wound itself. 'Soured virginity'--'unnatural life'--'semi-demented spinsters'--'starved appetites and suppressed impulses'--'unwholesome atmosphere'--she could think of whole sets of epithets, ready-minted for circulation. Was this what lived in the tower set on the hill? Would it turn out to be like Lady Athaliah's tower in Frolic Wind, the home of frustration and perversion and madness? 'If thine eye be single, the whole body is full of light'--but was it physically possible to have the single eye? 'What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?' For them, stereoscopic vision was probably a necessity; as for whom was it not? (This was a foolish play on words, but it meant something.) Well, then, what about this business of choosing one way of life? Must one, after all, seek a compromise, merely to preserve one's sanity? Then one was doomed for ever to this miserable inner warfare, with confused noise and garments rolled in blood--and, she reflected drearily, with the usual war aftermath of a debased coinage, a lowered efficiency and unstable conditions of government.

At this point the Oxford call came through, with the Dean's voice sounding full of agitation. Harriet, after hurriedly disclaiming all pretence to detective ability in real life, expressed concern and sympathy and then asked the question that, to her, was of prime importance.

'How are the letters written?'

'That's just the difficulty. They're mostly done by pasting together bits out of newspapers. So, you see, there's no handwriting to identify.'

That seemed to settle it; there were not two anonymous correspondents, but only one. Very well, then:

'Are they merely obscene, or are they abusive or threatening too?'

'All three. Calling people names that poor Miss Lydgate didn't know existed--the worst she knows being Restoration Drama--and threatening everything from public exposure to the gallows.'

Then the tower was Lady Athaliah's tower.

'Are they sent to anybody besides the S.C.R?'

'It's difficult to say, because people don't always come and tell you things. But I believe one or two of the students here have had them.'

'And they come sometimes by post and sometimes to the Lodge?'

'Yes. And they are beginning to come out on the walls now, and lately they've been pushed under people's doors at night. So it looks as though it must be somebody in college.'

'When did you get the first one?'

'The first one I definitely know about was sent to Miss de Vine last Michaelmas Term. That was her first term here, and of course, she thought it must be somebody who had a personal grudge against her. But several people got them shortly afterwards, so we decided it couldn't be that. We'd never had anything of that sort happening before, so just at present we're inclined to check up on the First Year students.'

The one set of people that it can't possibly be, thought Harriet. She only said, however:

'It doesn't do to take too much for granted. People may go on quite all right for a time, till something sets them off. The whole difficulty with these things is that the person generally behaves quite normally in other respects. It might be anybody.'

'That's true. I suppose it might even be one of ourselves. That's what's so horrible. Yes, I know--elderly virgins, and all that. It's awful to know that at any minute one may be sitting cheek by jowl with somebody who feels like that. Do you think the poor creature knows that she does it herself? I've been waking up with nightmares, wondering whether I didn't perhaps prowl round in my sleep, spitting at people. And my dear! I'm so terrified about next week! Poor Lord Oakapple, coming to open the Library, with venomous asps simply dripping poison over his boots! Suppose they send him something!'

'Well,' said Harriet, 'I think I'll come along next week. There's a very good reason why I'm not quite the right person to handle this, but on the other hand, I think I ought to come. I'll tell you why when we meet.'

'It's terribly good of you. I'm sure you'll be able to suggest something. I suppose you'll want to see all the specimens there are. Yes? Very well. Every fragment shall be cherished next our hearts. Do we handle them with the tongs for the better preservation of finger-prints?'

Harriet doubted whether finger-prints would be of much service, but advised that precautions should be taken on principle. When she had rung off, with the Dean's reiterated thanks still echoing from the other end of the line, she sat for a few moments with the receiver in her hand. Was there any quarter to which she might usefully turn for advice? There was; but she was not eager to discuss the subject of anonymous letters, still less the question of what lived in academic towers. She hung up resolutely, and pushed the instrument away.

She woke next morning with a change of heart. She had said that personal feeling ought not to stand in the way of public utility. And it should not. If Wimsey could be made useful to Shrewsbury College, she would use him. Whether she liked it or not, whether or not she had to put up with his saying 'I told you so,' she would put her pride in her pocket and ask him the best way to go about the job. She had her bath and dressed, glowing all the time with a consciousness of her own disinterested devotion to the cause of truth. She came into the sitting-room and enjoyed a good breakfast, still congratulating herself. As she was finishing her toast and marmalade, the secretary arrived, bringing in the morning's post. It contained a hurried note from Peter, sent off the previous evening from Victoria.

Hauled off abroad again at a moment's notice. Paris first, then Rome. Then God knows. If you should want me--per impossibile--you can get me through the Embassies, or the post-office will forward letters from the Piccadilly address. In any case, you will hear from me on April 1st.

P. D. B. W.

Post occasio calva. One could scarcely bombard the Embassies with letters about an obscure and complicated little affair in an Oxford college, especially when one's correspondent was urgently engaged in investigating something else all over Europe. The call must have been urgent, for the note was very ill and hastily written, and looked, in fact, as though it had been scribbled at the last moment in a taxi. Harriet amused herself with wondering whether the Prince of Ruritania had been shot, or the Master-Crook of the Continent had brought off a fresh coup, or whether this was the International Conspiracy to Wreck Civilisation with a Death-Ray--all those situations being frequent in her kind of fiction. Whatever it was all about, she would have to carry on unaided and find consolation in a proper independence of spirit.