Manda turned into St. Aldates and walked through the grand doorway of the town hall. It was a beautiful building—a hive of wood-panelled rooms, grand staircases, gothic archways, and stained-glass windows depicting the coat-of-arms of every Oxford college.

It had become a little shabbier since the police had adopted it as their Station. Manda got the feeling that Sam discouraged his officers from wiping their boots when they came in here. He liked to see fine carpets being walked over with contempt.

Unfortunately for Sam, disrespectful policemen had no more effect on this gorgeous building than a handful of disrespectful ants. Sam could kick at those gothic arches for the rest of his life and achieve nothing more than a broken toe.

And the thing that must have really infuriated him was how much he would have loved this, back in the old days. As a student at the University, he would have loved to carry out interrogations in wood-panelled rooms and appear dramatically in a gothic archway. And anything that reminded him of the kind of man he'd been then was guaranteed to make him gloomy.

Manda had been eighteen when she'd first met him—the night after she'd found Lily's body dangling from the ceiling in the apartment they rented together. They had been shopgirls back then, lodging in a draughty set of rooms above Ede & Ravenscroft, Purveyors of Academic and Clerical Robes to the Gentry since 1689.

***

It had been a hard day, so she was devoting the evening to hard liquor.

She had also, for some masochistic reason, picked up Lily's old letters and started reading them. Every sentence suggested to her some little warning-sign, some moment at which she could have realized what was going on and done something to help her friend. The past seemed to be honeycombed with these moments—they littered the road behind her like potholes.

At any rate, by the time the shop porter brought up news that a Mr Hastings was at the door—"drenched to the bone and a little bit the worse for drink, in my opinion, Miss"—she didn't feel like entertaining. Least of all Sam Hastings, the man who seemed right now to be even more to blame for Lily's death than she was.

True, he had never promised to marry Lily—he had never even claimed to love her. And Manda knew that Lily could be pushy and impulsive and persistent when she was in love. It was all that poetry she'd read. But he had still taken her to his bed, still exposed her to scandal and ruin. Of course, men didn't turn down passionate, impressionable young women who were in love with them, and Lily had probably offered herself on a plate.

But he had known—he must have known—that she was on the verge of suicide when he spurned her. He hadn't cared. That was not the sort of man she felt like consoling or sharing her gin with.

"Tell him I can't see him, Robert," she said. A spark of childish malice passed through her, and she added, "No—tell him I won't see him. Tell him not to call again."

"Very good, Miss."

Robert creaked his way down the stairs to deliver her message, and Manda went back to her seat, to stare morosely at another glass of gin. After a few moments, she heard Robert climb the stairs again, muttering about his arthritis, and she turned back to Lily's letters, half-listening to the raindrops spattering the windowpanes.

Ten minutes or so must have passed. She had certainly picked up a new letter, fumbled in her pockets for a handkerchief, given up, and wiped her nose on her sleeve—when the door to her room was suddenly flung open, and she looked up to see a man standing there, filling the whole doorway. He was dressed in black, with his greatcoat dripping rainwater onto the floorboards.

How had he looked back then? Well, always bigger than he'd wanted to look, that was certain. He had always stooped his head and hunched his shoulders, and been embarrassed at the amount of sheer, solid space he took up. But there had been something a little more reckless about his movements back then. His hair had been artfully tousled, to imply that he didn't have any interest in styling it, and he had worn a lot of black—layer upon sharp, sombre layer—to look as mournful and poetic as possible.

Manda recovered with as much grace as the gin would allow, and said, "What do you want?"

Sam stood for a few moments in the doorway, drenched and restless, and somehow sarcastic, even though he hadn't spoken a word. Then he said, in a voice that wasn't remotely apologetic, "I killed your friend."

"No, you didn't, Mr Hastings," she said, in a weary voice. "She was very ill. She'd been ill for years—"

Sam cut her off impatiently. Perhaps he hadn't been listening to begin with. "You've read those letters. You know what I did."

Manda heard a thundering on the stairs, and then Robert swung into view, with set jaw and narrowed eyes.

"Oi! I told you, the lady doesn't want to see you," he growled, grabbing Sam's arm, and twisting it behind his back. "Has 'e been bothering you, Miss? Shall I throw 'im out?"

"No—" Manda lifted a restraining hand. The gin was swirling ominously inside her. "No, that's all right, Robert. Let him speak. I'm sure, once he's said what he came here to say, he'll have the decency to leave."

Once his arm had been released, Sam turned to Robert, leaned much too close, and spoke with the kind of recklessness that only drunk undergraduates could manage. "I want to talk to her alone."

Robert raised his stubby eyebrows. "Oh, you do, do you?"

"That's fine," said Manda, sinking into a chair. "Really, Robert, I'll be fine. I'll ring the bell if he causes any trouble."

Robert looked dubious but didn't argue. He shuffled reluctantly to the door, then turned and fixed Sam with a glare—but he continued to speak to Manda. "I'll be right upstairs, Miss. You just shout if you need me."

"I will," said Manda, in a soothing voice. "Thank you, Robert."

There was silence after he shut the door. The creak of his footfalls on the stairs took a few moments to begin, and even longer to subside. But, when she was sure he'd gone, Manda said, "How do you know about the letters?"

Sam gave a shrug and started to pace around the room. "Just deduction, really. She never mentioned any other friends, and she didn't have a diary. A literate woman like that doesn't suffer in silence, so I knew she had to be writing to someone. Plus, I saw you stuff some paper under the cushions when I came in. And shopgirls have quick fingers, don't they? Especially ones who've lifted the key to their employer's drinks cabinet."

His eyes flicked to the half-empty bottle of gin on the table—which, Manda now realized, was much too expensive a make for a shopgirl to afford.

She gave a haughty sniff. "I suppose you think it's fine for a man to drink himself into insensibility over a woman he hardly knew, but, if a woman has a few drinks to get over the death of a girl who was like her sister—"

Sam cut her off. "I didn't say anything, Miss. And, if I had, I would have objected to the theft, rather than the drinking. I'd like to read those letters if you don't mind."

"Are they addressed to you, Mr Hastings?"

"And the last one," he said, making a kind of nervous, dismissive motion with his hand. "Especially the last one."

"What are you talking about? What 'last one'? She hasn't written to me for two weeks."

"No," said Sam firmly. "She wrote to you yesterday. She would have said goodbye."

"Well, she didn't," said Manda, folding her arms.

She saw him raise his eyebrows dubiously—and she'd had no idea, back then, how familiar that expression was going to become. She passed him the letters mainly because she was desperate to get those horrible, smug eyebrows to sink down again. Lily—because she'd been a careful, well-brought-up girl—had written the date at the top of each one.

Sam leafed through them eagerly, made an exasperated noise when he couldn't find what he was looking for, and passed them back to her without a word. His eyes were already scanning the room for possible hiding-places.

Manda sighed and waved her hand irritably, because it was obvious that he was going to go rummaging through her cupboards and drawers anyway, whether she gave her permission or not. "Go ahead. I've got nothing to hide."

She let him search. It seemed like the only way to calm him down. And she couldn't decide whether he was trying to cause as much offence as possible, or whether he was just distracted with misery, because he left her drawers half-open after he'd rummaged through them—in one case, with a pair of stockings still hanging out.

Manda went back to watching the raindrops burst against the windowpane. For a few minutes, she tolerated his provocation with stoicism. But, when he started shaking out her books, to see if the letter was wedged inside one of them, acting as a book-mark, she couldn't keep quiet any longer. It was a very personal thing in Oxford, to lay your hands on somebody's books.

"You're not a murderer, Mr Hastings, but in my eyes, you're little better. You took advantage of a girl you never had any intention of marrying—"

"And that's all me, is it?" said Sam, lifting the lid off a tin of cough drops and peering suspiciously inside. "It could never have been her decision too? I didn't lie to her—I didn't promise to marry her. Did she say I did?"

"No," said Manda, standing up so suddenly that the letters cascaded off her lap. "She wasn't a liar, and I know perfectly well she had a mind of her own! But she was ill! You knew that, didn't you? How could you not know it? She told you she hated herself. I know she even showed you where she cut herself!"

"But everybody—" Sam stopped and took a deep breath. He was twisting his fingers with absent-minded ferocity. "Look, you wouldn't understand." There was mockery as well as contempt in his voice now, but Manda couldn't work out who it was directed at. "A lot of artistic people hate themselves—a lot of young women injure themselves. It's an easy way to seem intelligent. We thought she just wanted attention."

"Of course she wanted attention!" Manda shouted. "She needed help, she was trying to ask for it!"

She stopped suddenly, heart in her mouth, and listened to the silence. There had been a creak on the staircase outside, she was sure of it. She needed to be calm and quiet, or something horrible was going to happen.

Sam looked up too. There was a strange, thirsty look in his eyes, as though he was dying for her shouts, and dying for Robert to come in and thump him.

"You can call him if you want, Miss," he said steadily. "I'm not going anywhere without that last letter."

She realized he wasn't defending himself with much conviction. It was as though he was just going through the motions, waiting for his words to elicit the kind of disgust in her that was thundering through his own veins. He seemed to want her to slap him, and Manda was sorely tempted to oblige.

"You don't understand," she said, forcing her voice down a few decibels, and trying to speak in a clear, reasonable tone. "I'm not expecting a suicide note. You don't know what her illness was like. The worst moments were always beyond words. This isn't a detective novel, Mr Hastings. You won't find a coherent and convenient note listing all her reasons for killing herself and naming the people responsible. She didn't die to make a point—and, difficult as I'm sure it is for a student of literature to understand, she didn't die for art or insight either. She died out of sheer desperation, because, all her life, nobody would help her, or hold her, or reason with her—"

"Don't—" said Sam, shaking his head.

Manda blinked the tears out of her eyes, the better to glare at him. "As if you care," she growled.

He made another of those nervous motions with his hand, as though he was trying to ward away a demon that only he could see. Manda realized he was swaying.

She passed a hand over her eyes, suddenly exhausted. "It wasn't your responsibility, Mr Hastings," she said, in a softer tone. "You're not a murderer, you're just a man. Look, take the letters," she added, pressing the bundle of papers into his hands. "They'll prove that she didn't blame you, anyway."

Sam raised his eyebrows again, trying to resummon the contempt he'd been radiating when he first came in. It didn't work.

***

It was strange—and so different to the way she saw him now—but contempt really had been the strongest impression she'd got from him that night. He had been drunk and anxious and gnawed-at by remorse, but mostly, she remembered the contempt. He thought other people weren't as clever as he was.

But those letters had changed him. He'd been expecting... what? Some gossipy stream of secrets? A few attacks on him and his honour—maybe even his manhood. He'd been expecting to torture himself with guilt for a few hours and then forget about her.

But Lily's letters were beautiful. She spun her despair into art. And he had never believed, in all the time he'd known her, that she was... well, what did they call it? There were so many pretenders to the throne of literature, as far as those students were concerned—so many writers they thought of as hacks. People who just paddled in the shallows of human experience or retraced the same path that Sterne or Shelley had trod—much more articulately—decades before.

But the letters proved to him that Lily was real. He had never thought of her as a human being until he had realized she was a good writer.

It was sad and sick and, if that had been all, Manda would never have fallen in love with him. But he realized all this—and the self-disgust he felt changed everything. He became distrustful of academics, and their artful ways of justifying their own prejudices. He stayed in Oxford, even though it was a place with very painful associations for him, because he knew there was no one else in the city who would question those loquacious hypocrites. Everyone else was too in love with words, too in love with cleverness. They forgot low concepts like kindness and fairness and basic consideration.

Sam stuck around to remind them that, just because something was clever, that didn't make it right. He embraced that as his everlasting penance. And there was nothing that melted Manda's heart like a penitent.

***

When she found him, looking tiny under the vaulted ceilings of the town hall—even though he was six foot three and wide as an oak—he was pacing up and down, shouting at poor Constable Gleeson about perfume.

"Send someone up to the offices of the Oxford Times in Oseney. I want a warning printed in their next edition, stating that this perfume is dangerous, and no one is to go out wearing it."

Manda stepped forward, but Sam waved her impatiently into silence.

"And get someone to search Ellini Syal's room at the Faculty of Demonic Speculation. You're looking for a bottle of scent that smells like sandalwood, but bring me anything else that seems unusual—letters, books, personal belongings, that kind of thing."

"Mrs Darwin won't like it, sir," said Constable Gleeson.

Sam glared at him. "Would you rather be in trouble with her or in trouble with me?" He barely gave Constable Gleeson a chance to draw breath before adding, "Don't answer that. And send someone to the Bodleian. I want information on a medieval manuscript called 'The Book of Woe.'"

"That doesn't sound like a very cheerful read," said Manda, when he paused long enough for her to get a word in.

Sam rounded on her, looking fierce and embarrassed at the same time. "Manda, you like men, don't you?"

"I'm sorry?"

Sam shut his eyes, as though praying for patience. "Given the choice between marrying a man and marrying a woman—supposing the latter was legal—you would choose the man, yes?"

Manda, torn between collapsing into giggles and teasing him still further, met his eyes and relented. He was looking at her with blushing defiance, as though he would rather be sorting through his mother's underwear drawer than having this conversation but was determined to stick it out to the bitter end.

"Yes, I'd choose the man."

"Then I need you to talk to my prisoner."

"Oh," said Manda, light dawning at last. "You mean Helen of Troy! You wanted to make sure she wouldn't turn my head!" Manda lowered her voice and leaned forward eagerly. "Sam, I'm the girl for the job, and not just because of my romantic preferences. I've been finding things out—"

She stopped, because Jack Cade had just emerged from the stone corridor that led to the interview room. He was lighting up a cigarette with the kind of urgency that suggested he hadn't been allowed to smoke for fifty years. He gave her a lazy wave and said, "How are you, cry-baby?"

He always called her 'cry-baby'. It was affectionate, as far as she had ever been able to tell.

"Good morning, Jack," she said, in the vague hope that being formal would persuade Sam that she had something relevant to say. She turned back to him, and said, "Look, Inspector—"

Sam waved her into silence. His eyes were still—rather accusingly—fixed on Jack.

"Has she said anything yet?"

Jack took an aggressive drag on his cigarette. "Lots of things, but probably not the kind you're interested in."

"Well, what the hell are you doing back out here when she hasn't told me everything I need to know?"

"She told me everything I needed to know."

"Sam—" said Manda, lifting her veil, in case it was getting in the way of her words. Sam's eyes widened, as though she'd done something indecent.

"What are you doing?" he protested, gesturing at Jack, who gave a soft laugh.

"You know, I've seen women's faces before, Sammie. It's more or less what I'm used to. Our little cry-baby's very pretty," he added, with a courteous nod in her direction, "but her face would be unlikely to drive me over the edge, even if I was in possession of all my faculties."

"Why?" said Manda, momentarily distracted. "Which faculty are you missing? Chemistry? Philosophy? Engineering Science?"

Jack smiled. "Chemistry would be the nearest thing, I reckon."

Perhaps this was too close to flirting for Sam—or perhaps they'd just wandered too far from the subject of his precious investigation—because he stepped between them hurriedly.

"Manda," he said, in a very grave, serious voice. "I need you to talk to the prisoner. There isn't enough time to explain the situation, but I need you to get her to tell you everything she knows about a woman called 'Charlotte Grey'. Have you got that?"

Manda rolled her eyes. "Yes." She rummaged in her satchel and produced the book she had prized out from under the flagstones in her cell, pressing it into his arms as though it was their baby. "And, while I'm doing that, you can be doing something for me. Get this translated—particularly the page I've marked."

"What is it?"

"Your salvation. Just do it," she added when he opened his mouth to speak. "And then be prepared to lavish praises on me. Maybe Jack can give you a few hints on that. Now, if you'll excuse me," she said, pushing him out of the way. "I have a case to solve."