He woke to the sight of Ramy looming above him. ‘Good God.’ He bolted upright, breathing hard. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘You really should start locking your door.’ Ramy handed him a cup. ‘Now that we’re – you know. Tea?’
‘Thanks.’ He took the cup in both hands and sipped. It was their favourite blend of Assam, dark and heady and strong. For just a blissful moment there, sunlight streaming through the window and birds chirping softly outside, all that had transpired in Canton seemed like a terrible dream before cold, twisting memory sank in. He sighed. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The girls are here,’ said Ramy. ‘Time to get up.’
‘Here?’
‘In my sitting room. Come on.’
Robin washed his face and dressed. Across the hall, Victoire and Letty sat perched on Ramy’s sofa as Ramy passed around tea, a burlap sack of scones, and a small pot of clotted cream. ‘I assumed no one felt like going to hall, so that’s breakfast.’
‘These are very good,’ Victoire said, looking surprised. ‘Where—’
‘Vaults, just before they opened. They always have yesterday’s scones out for a fraction of the price.’ Ramy had no knife, so he scraped his scone directly against the cream. ‘Good, right?’
Robin sat down opposite the girls. ‘How’d you two sleep?’
‘All well, considered,’ said Letty. ‘Feels strange to be back.’
‘It’s too comfortable,’ Victoire agreed. ‘It feels like the world should be different now, but it’s . . . not.’
That was how Robin felt too. It seemed wrong to be back among his creature comforts, to sit on Ramy’s sofa and have their favourite tea with scones from their favourite café. Their situation did not feel commensurate to the stakes. The stakes, rather, seemed to demand that the world be on fire.
‘So, listen.’ Ramy took a seat beside Robin. ‘We can’t just wait around. Every passing second is one that we’re not in prison, and so we’ve got to use them. We’ve got to find Hermes. Birdie, how do you contact Griffin?’
‘I can’t,’ said Robin. ‘Griffin was very adamant about that. He knew how to find me, but I didn’t have any ways to reach him. That’s how it always worked.’
‘Anthony was the same,’ Victoire said. ‘Although – he did show us several drop points, places where we left things for him. Suppose we went and left messages there—’
‘How often does he check them, though?’ Letty asked. ‘Will he even check if he’s not expecting anything?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Victoire, frustrated. ‘But it’s our only option.’
‘I do think they’ll be looking out for us,’ said Robin. ‘After what happened that night we were caught – I mean, there are too many loose ends, and now we’re all back I assume they’ll want to be in touch.’
He could tell from their expressions that this was no great reassurance. Hermes was finicky, unpredictable. Hermes might come knocking in the next hour, or they could go silent for six months.
‘How much time do we have, anyway?’ Ramy asked after a pause. ‘I mean, how long before they realize dear old Richard isn’t coming back?’
None of them could know for sure. Term was not due to start for another week, at which point it would be very suspicious that Professor Lovell had not returned to teach. But suppose the other professors had expected them all back earlier?
‘Well, who’s in regular contact with him?’ asked Letty. ‘We’ll have to tell some kind of story to the faculty, of course—’
‘And there’s Mrs Piper,’ said Robin. ‘His housekeeper in Jericho – she’ll be wondering where he is, I’ve got to call on her as well.’
‘Here’s an idea,’ said Victoire. ‘We could go to his office and look through his correspondence, see if there are any appointments he was due to keep – or even forge some replies if that buys us a little time.’
‘To be clear,’ said Letty, ‘you think we ought to break into the office of the man whose murder we covered up and rifle through his things, all while hoping no one catches us?’
‘The time to do it would be now,’ Victoire pointed out. ‘While no one knows we did it.’
‘How do you know they don’t already?’ Letty’s voice rose in pitch. ‘How do you know we won’t be clapped in irons the moment we walk into the tower?’
‘Holy God,’ Robin muttered. Suddenly it seemed absurd that they were having this conversation, that they were even in Oxford at all. ‘Why did we come back?’
‘We should go to Calcutta,’ Ramy declared abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s escape to Liverpool, we can book a passage from there—’
Letty’s nose wrinkled. ‘Why Calcutta?’
‘It’s safe there, I’ve got parents who can shield us, there’s space in the attic—’
‘I’m not spending the rest of my life hiding in your parents’ attic!’
‘It would only be temporary—’
‘Everyone calm down.’ Victoire so seldom raised her voice, it hushed them at once. ‘It’s like – like an assignment, you understand? We only need a plan. We only have to break this down into component parts, finish them, and we’ll be fine.’ She lifted two fingers. ‘Now, it seems there are two things we need to do. Task one: get in touch with the Hermes Society. Task two: accumulate as much information as we can so when we do reach Hermes, they’ll be able to do something with it.’
‘You forgot task three,’ Letty said. ‘Don’t get caught.’
‘Well, that goes without saying.’
‘How exposed are we?’ asked Ramy. ‘I mean, if you think about it, we’re even safer here than we were on the ship. Bodies can’t talk, and he’s not going to wash up anywhere. Seems to me that if we all keep quiet, we’re fine, aren’t we?’
‘But they’ll start asking questions,’ said Letty. ‘I mean, obviously, at some point, someone’s going to notice Professor Lovell’s not answering any letters.’
‘So we keep telling them the same thing,’ said Victoire. ‘He’s holed up in his house, he’s grievously ill, which is why he’s not answering letters or taking visitors, and he told us to come back without him. That’s the whole story. Keep it simple, don’t embellish details. If we all give the same account, then no one will get suspicious. And if we come off as nervous, it’s because we’re concerned for our dear professor. Yes?’
No one challenged her. They were all hanging on her every word. The world had stopped spinning out of control; all that mattered was what Victoire said next.
She continued. ‘What I think, though, is that the more sitting around we do – that is, the more cautiously we behave – the more suspicious we look. We can’t hide away and keep out of sight. We’re Babel students. We’re busy. We’re fourth years losing our minds from all the work we’ve been assigned. We don’t have to pretend we’re not mad, because students here are always mad, but we’ve got to pretend we’re mad for the right reasons.’
Somehow, this made complete and utter sense.
Victoire pointed at Robin. ‘You get the housekeeper sorted, then go and get Professor Lovell’s correspondence. Ramy and I will go to Anthony’s drop points and leave as many encrypted messages as we can. Letty, you’ll go about your daily routine and give the impression that everything is perfectly fine. If people ask you about Canton, start spreading the story about the professor’s illness. We’ll all meet back here tonight, and hope to God nothing goes wrong.’ She took a deep breath and looked around, nodding as if trying to convince herself. ‘We’re going to make it through this, all right? We just can’t lose our heads.’