Alice did not seem to have noticed his wince. She smiled. “He did admit he reads the penny dreadfuls he confiscates.” Then she sobered. “He now assumes that there has been a second attempt, and this time the wrong man...” She raised an eyebrow archly, waiting for Edward to complete the thought.
"Strewth! I always thought the old leek was one of the sanest men there. Why should anyone try to kill me, of all people? I have no money. Even if Holy Roly's left anything of the family fortune for me to inherit, it will be only a few hundred quid. I have no enemies that I can think of."
Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead.... Why had he thought of those lines? Oh yes, that weird dream of a Dickensian apparition claiming to be Mr. Oldcastle. Two nights ago, and yet it still stuck in his memory. Dear friends?
"Anyone can have enemies,” Alice said emphatically.
He thought of the letter, but he would not worry her with that until Mr. Oldcastle had commented on it.
"You refer to my brains, good looks, and personal magnetism, of course. Admittedly they arouse enormous envy wherever I go, but that's only to be expected. Rival suitors are the real threat. Seeing the burning love you bear me in every bashful glance, consumed with jealousy, some dastard seeks to clear me from the field. Who can it be, this wielder of spears who opens bolts from the wrong side of..."
Alice raised both eyebrows and he stopped, feeling stupid. She did not speak, but her eyes said a lot. Ginger must have his reasons. Explain one impossible intruder and you might be able to claim another? Did a bolted door in the Grange case make Edward Exeter the only possible suspect in the killing of Timothy Bodgley?
"It's an interesting problem,” she said, toying with her gloves. “What about the woman the boys thought they'd seen? Did they mention her before or after the unbolted door was found?"
"I have no idea! I can't believe you'd swallow any of this. You are usually so levelheaded!"
"Reliable boys?"
"Good kids,” he admitted.
"Mr. Jones said that perhaps you, as prefect, uncovered some hints that the masters didn't. Often happens, he said."
"Not in this case. Most of the chaps tried to blame the suffragettes. The Head was pretty steamed. He canceled a half holiday because no one would own up."
"Is that usual?"
"Communal punishment, or no one having the spunk to own up?"
"Both."
"Neither,” he admitted. And even rarer was the absence of any retaliation on the culprits by those who had suffered unjustly, but there had been none of that at all, or he'd have heard of it.
Into his mind popped a sudden image of solemn little Codger Carlisle, nervousness making all his freckles show like sand, babbling of a woman with long dangling curls and a very white face. He could have been describing that half memory from the Grange that still haunted Edward! Codger would never be capable of telling a convincing lie if he lived to be a hundred. It must be coincidence! Or else in his drugged stupor in the hospital Edward had remembered that testimony and converted one fiction into another.
He returned Alice's stare for a moment before he realized that she was genuinely worried. “Forget the silly prank, darling! It was months ago. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened at the Grange, the thing we mustn't talk about. Let's talk about us!"
"What about us?"
"I love you."
She shook her head. “I love you dearly, but not that way. There is nothing to discuss, Edward. Please don't let's go through all that again! We're first cousins and I'm three years older—"
"That matters less and less as time goes by."
"Nonsense! In 1993 I shall be a hundred years old and you will only be ninety-seven and still pursuing wenches when I need you to wheel me around in my Bath chair. I hope we shall always remain the best of friends, Eddie, but never more than that."
He heaved himself into a more comfortable position, although he had tried them all and none of them was really comfortable now.
"My darling Alice! I am not asking you for a commitment—"
"But you are, Edward."
"Nothing final!” he said desperately. “We're both too young to go that far. All I'm asking is that you consider me as an eligible suitor like any other young man. I just want you to think of me as—"
"That was your final offer. You asked a lot more than that when you started!"
Her fanning had grown more vigorous. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair. Ladies’ garments were even less suitable than gentlemen's for this unusually hot summer. In a way he was fortunate to be wearing only a cotton nightgown, but how could man woo maid when he was flat on his back with one leg in the air? “Then I'm sorry I was so precipitate. Put it down to transitory youthful impatience. You said you had no intention of making any final—"
"Edward, stop!” Alice slapped the newspaper noisily on her knee. “Listen carefully. Our ages don't matter very much, I'll agree with you on that. That is not the problem. First, I will never marry a cousin! Our family is odd enough already without starting to inbreed. Secondly, I do not think of you as a cousin."
"That's promising!"
"I think of you as a brother. We grew up together. I love you very much, but not in the way you want. Girls do not marry their brothers! They do not want to marry their brothers. And thirdly, you are not the sort of man I should ever want to marry."
He winced. “What's wrong with me?"
She smiled sadly. “I'm looking for an elderly rich industrialist with no children and a very dickey heart. You're a starry-eyed romantic idealist student and strong as a horse."
Edward sighed. “Then may I be your second husband and help you spend the loot?"
Eventually they found their way to happier ground, talking about their childhood in Africa. The whites they had known had all died in the massacre, of course, but their native friends had survived. They speculated on who would now be married to whom. They talked of all sorts of other things, but not what he wanted to talk about, which was their future together. He discovered several times that he was lying there like a dead sheep, smiling witlessly at her, just happy to be in her presence. And at last Alice glanced at her watch and gave a little shriek and jumped to her feet.
She clutched his hand. “I must run! Take care of yourself! Look out for Zulu spears."
He felt a heavenly touch of lips on his cheek and smelled roses. Then she was gone.
Later he looked through the books Ginger had sent and decided that they were definitely not the sort of thing he wanted to read in a hospital bed, and probably not ever. That came of being a romantic, starry-eyed idealist, he supposed. Most of them were suspiciously tatty, as if the old chap had read them many times, or they been passed around a lot. Then he chanced upon a flyleaf bearing an inscription in green ink:
Noël, 1897
Vous Inculper,
Avant de savoir ce lui qui est arrivée,
Gardez-vous Bien.
Every book contained a similar inscription, each in a different ink and handwriting. It was a reasonable assumption that Constable Heyhoe knew no French. Arranging the volumes in alphabetical order by title and reading the fragments as a single message, Edward translated:
"The back door was bolted on the inside; the door from the kitchen premises to the house was locked, but the key is missing. They cannot charge you until they discover where it has gone. Beware of admitting anything that may be used against you."