Edward had remained at Fallow, but there he had raised the banner of liberty and manned the barricades, a staunch upholder of his father's skepticism, fighting his guerrilla war at long distance. He had not set foot in a church since the Nyagatha memorial service.
The corridors had gone quiet again. Was she not coming? Had she been forced to return to London, or had he merely dreamed her presence yesterday?
Were I a praying man, I should pray now.
Most girls made him squirm and shuffle and stutter. With Alice he could just stand and smile for hours. His face ached after being with her, just from smiling.
He had not seen her since her birthday. He had obtained a somewhat irregular exeat to attend the celebration—irregular in that his guardian had neither requested it nor known of it. Ginger Jones had stuck his neck out there, but the shrewd old housemaster had known for years how the wind blew.
The three years’ age difference had dwindled now. In Africa it had represented the gulf between big child and small child. In England between boy and young woman. Now she was twenty-one, but he was a man in all but legal status. He was five feet, eleven and three-quarters inches tall.
In the spring he had even grown a mustache. It had not been wholly satisfactory, and Alice had obviously not thought much of it, so he had shaved it off when he got back to Fallow. The principle was what mattered.
Feminine heels clicked in the now-silent corridor. He held his breath.
Alice walked in. The sun came out and birds sang. She could always do that to rooms now, even drab brown hospital rooms.
She walked straight to the bed and for an intoxicating moment he wondered if she would kiss him, but she raised her eyebrows archly and handed him a string shopping bag full of books. He laid them on the bed.
She dressed very well, considering her limited means. She was wearing dove gray, to match her eyes—masses of striped cotton, from wrists to ankles, with a broad sash around her waist. Heaven knew what else ladies wore underneath. She must be cooked on a day like this, and yet she did not seem so. She removed her rose-bedecked hat, laying it and her parasol on the foot of the bed. Then she pulled up the chair. Her eyes were assessing him.
He realized that he had been staring at her like a stuffed stag. “Thank you for coming."
"I had to promise we will not discuss the case.” She flicked a thumb at the open door and mimed someone writing. “You are much better!” She smiled. “I'm glad."
"Actually the treatment of choice in such cases is a kiss."
"No, that's a discredited superstition. Kisses overexcite the patient."
"They are good for the heart and stimulate the circulation."
"I'm sure they do. Seriously, how are you feeling?"
"Bored."
"Doesn't your leg hurt?"
"Throbs a bit once in a while. No, I'm in tip-top shape."
"You shaved off your mustache!"
"Actually that gale in early June did for it."
Alice glanced over the floral display with appreciation. “Impressive! Are all of them from barristers and solicitors or are some of them personal?"
She was not conventionally beautiful. Her hair was a nondescript brown, although bright and shiny. Her teeth were possibly on the large side, her nose might have been better had it been a thirty-second of an inch shorter. Overall, her face could almost be described as horsey—although not safely in Edward's hearing—but she had poise and humor and he would rather gaze at her than any woman in the world.
"Has Uncle been to see you?"
"He has. Have you got your money out of him yet?"
"These things take time,” she said confidently.
"Till the Nile freezes? He's spent it all on his lousy cannibals! He's brought light to the heathen by burning your five-pound notes!"
"I think it's just his very muddled accounting."
She shrugged and glanced at the watch on her slim wrist—his present for her twenty-first, bought with money saved out of Mr. Oldcastle's regular donations. “We'll see. Let's not waste time talking about the Black Death. Mrs. Peters has been a love, but I absolutely must catch the 3.40. Tell me what happened the weekend before Whitsun."
"Before Whitsun? By Jove, that was when I took the most gorgeous girl in the world out to the park and explained—"
"Not in London. At Fallow.” Again she glanced warningly at the door, where the copper must be writing all this down. “I was tracked down at the hotel by your Ginger Jones. He gave me those books for you. He wants them back. I gather they're all racy French novels he didn't dare let you read when you were a pupil."
"They don't sound like my cup of tea."
She grinned momentarily—that intimate, secretive grin that had meant mischief in their childhood and now hinted at vastly more magnificent possibilities. Or at least he hoped it would, one day soon.
"You're a big boy now. You're going to be even taller if that leg stretches much, you know. Do you suppose the other one will reach the ground? The weekend before Whitsun you got an exeat and while you were gone there was a burglary at Tudor."
Why was this important, when they had only an hour to be together and the entire future threatened to crumble in ruins?—his personal future, the Empire, Europe.... Why talk about a nonsensical schoolboy prank? But her expression said it was important, and he would not argue with her.
"Ginger knows more about it than I do. He never really convinced anyone else that it was a burglary. The bobbies listened politely and yawned. The front door was still bolted on the inside. Some chaps in Big School were in on the wheeze, whatever it was, but their door was bolted, too. A couple of juniors claimed they saw a woman wandering through the dorms, but they couldn't have been very convinced at the time, because they just went back to sleep. It was dodgy, all right, but no one ever did work it out.” He stared at her doubt and then said, “We are discussing a community of three hundred juvenile males. Do you expect sanity?"
Alice reached for the Times on the bed and began using it as a fan. “He said something about a spear."
"Oh?” Ginger had mentioned that, had he? “A Zulu assegai from the Matabele display in Big School was left in my room in Tudor. That seems to have been the whole point, if you'll pardon an obscure pun. Possibly there had been scandalous rumors about what I was doing in town that night. Prefects sometimes make enemies, if they wallop a little too hard or too often, although I had been remarkably self-controlled for weeks before that, in anticipation of seeing you. Apart from that, nothing was missing or ... What's wrong?"
"Where exactly was this spear when you found it?"
"Ginger found it. He made a complete search. He has keys to all the rooms, of course."
"Thrust right through your mattress?"
"So he said. Why is he riding this hobbyhorse again?"
Alice glanced at the door, giving him a view of her profile. She looked best in profile, rather like Good Queen Bess in her prime.
"Mr. Jones is wondering now if you were supposed to be present when the spear was rammed through your bed. Your name was on your door, right? Whoever it was broke into Big School and located your house in the files—someone had been rummaging there, too, he said. Then the intruder pulled two steel brackets off the wall to get the assegai, went across to Tudor and found your room. You were missing, and in a fit of frust—"
Edward started to laugh and jarred his leg. “Bolting and unbolting doors from the wrong side? A lock is one thing, but a bolt is another! The old coot's off his rocker!"