Page 30 of The Devil in Oxford
Something about her words pricked my conscience. “Is she gone that often?”
“Now and again. Usually, I know when she’s not coming in, but this time…”
“Do you know where she is?”
Mary didn’t answer right away, focused upon the book before her. “I haven’t a clue. I went to Reaver himself this morning and he said he sent a boy around to check if she was well, but the lad returned and wouldn’t answer my questions. I thought I’d stop by her flat tonight and see how she fares. Perhaps she’s taken sick, there’s been a terrible fever going around town this winter. It could be that.”
I leaned against the doorway, crossing my ankles. How very strange. “Why wouldn’t the boy answer you? It seems a rather straightforward thing. She eitherisoris notat home.”
Mary sighed, placing her book away on the shelf, and began to file the scattered papers on her overburdened desk. “I don’t know. I worry it has something to do with that Julius Harker business. She and Professor Reaver had been discussing him when they didn’t think I could hear.”
“What about?” I laid my hand over Harker’s letters in my pocket. Not that Mary had any idea that they were in my possession.
“A collection of artifacts. At least that’s what it sounded like, but anytime I would enter the room they’d hush up right away.”
Then Leonamustknow more about the cache. A flicker of hope fluttered in my chest. It was a treacherous emotion, one not to be trusted, but it was all I had to go on. Hope and a smattering of letters. “Reaver doesn’t seem to have liked Julius Harker much. I was told they were constantly at odds.”
The woman let out a startled sound, brushing an ash-coloredstrand of hair back from her eyes. “He doesn’t. Can’t bear the sight of him, but that one—” She tilted her head toward the empty chair at Leona’s study desk. “She’d been spending too much time with him. Reaver had been lecturing her about how dangerous he was right up until Harker was found dead. I assumed Reaver meantdangerous to her profession… but now I cannot help but wonder if he meant something else altogether…”
As do I.
“Does Leona have many friends here?”
Mary tucked a leather-bound journal into her own carryall. “No. She keeps to herself mostly. No friends besides you and that girl she lives with. But from the way Reaver’s been behaving, I worry she’s gotten herself mixed up into something bad.”
“Have you mentioned your fears to anyone else?”
A door farther along the hallway closed loudly, followed by low laughter. I glanced down the narrow corridor, but the others were walking away from me.
She turned to face me, gathering up her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “Who would I tell? It’s little more than supposition. Leona hasn’t a mother to look after her. The rest of her family is still in Egypt. Then there’s her father, who might drop in now and then, reeking of liquor and throwing his military rank about before disappearing again. The point is, the poor girl hasn’t anyone at all in this town. And Professor Reaver works her to the bone. His concern with her is entirely her usefulness to him and nothing more. She’s up all hours here, locked in this reading room or in some storeroom with him when no good could happen to her.”
“Well… she has me. Whatever good that’ll do her. You go on home. I’ll stop by her flat, see how she is.” My true friends were few, and I wasn’t about to lose this one even if I had behaved abominably to her when she first came to ask for my help. I stepped out into the hallway, Mary following after.
“Are you certain it’s no trouble?” Mary locked the door to the reading room.
“No. No trouble at all,” I said with a faint smile before heading out of the museum and into the winter night. It had been scarcely five minutes after I left the museum when that same prickle of awareness returned. The sensation of not being alone. I turned in time to catch a glimpse of a man some thirty feet behind me, his hands shoved into his pockets. He wore a workman’s cap pulled low over his brow and a dark gray coat. His hair was dark, but I could not make out his face.
Realizing I’d caught him, he quickly turned, scurrying away in the direction of St. John Street. I wasn’t going mad at all. Someonewasfollowing me. I stood stone still, watching until he fully rounded the corner. Reassured of my sanity, I set off in the opposite direction.
Of course, now I had two problems instead of just one. First, who killed Julius Harker? And second, and more concerning at present, who exactlywasmy mysterious shadow and what did he want?
Damnation. That was three problems, not two.
IFOLLOWED THEmost circuitous path to Leona’s, careful to loop back once or twice, in hopes of throwing off my follower—if he even still was there. The whole ordeal took me three times as long as normal, and the evening air grew colder by the second. Flurries began to fall from the sky, making the night hazier than it had been when I set out. A snowflake stuck on my eyelashes, and I blinked it away before knocking again on Leona’s door. The cracked blue paint peeled from lack of attention. Her house lay on a quieter street, not far from the castle. One of a series of two- and three-story townhomes that all looked relatively the same, with different-colored doors. Initially built for families, over the years they’dbeen divided up into several smaller flats for students and other less-affluent laborers. I shivered, blowing into my bare hands for warmth.
The door opened at last, and a gust of warm air greeted me. “I told you before, you need to—”
Leona’s flatmate Annabelle stood before me, her words evaporating as she took me in. I’d met her a time or two since coming to Oxford—a slight creature, who’d only turned twenty last month. She kept to herself mostly, focusing on her studies, desperate to prove herself to her family who were apprehensive about sending a girl off to the University. Recognition dawned in her wide gray eyes.
“Oh. It’s you, Miss Vaughn.”
A car rumbled by on the street behind and I leaned closer, drinking in the warmth emanating from inside. Ordinarily, Annabelle would welcome me in, offer to pour me a couple fingers of whisky while I awaited Leona, but there was something in her face and the way she stood in the half-open doorway that told me that I would not be crossing her threshold tonight. A half dozen pairs of stockings lay drying atop the hall radiator along with Leona’s worn white jumper.
“I’ve come to see Leona. She didn’t show up at the museum today and Mary was worried for her.”
The girl’s eyes widened in surprise. “She didn’t?”
I shook my head, perplexed by Annabelle’s response. The girl wrapped her fingers tighter around the old brass door handle.
