1: Oxford
9th September.
“Come to Papa, Mena. I won’t hurt you.”
He stood in the front foyer of their house, his own knife plunged hilt-deep into his stomach. His blood ran down over his shirtfront and dripped off the handle, which was pooling at his feet.
“Come to Papa,” he said softly, taking a step towards her. He reached down and pulled the knife from his stomach. “It won’t hurt.”
She backed away from him, straight into the banister. Her father was grinning madly, his eyes glinting. She shoved herself off the banister and began to run. Not on four-year-old legs, where six of her strides equaled only one of her father’s. No, this time she was grown-up, in her newly adult body. The house morphed, into a large vaulted room lined with bookshelves.
What is Papa doing inside the Bodleian Library?
She spun around, now alone in the silent library. The shelves seemed to grow taller all around her, tall enough to touch the ceiling. A noise from above made her look up. There he was, perched on top of a shelf with the same evil grin and the dripping knife held in his hand.
“Hello,” he crooned, then leaped, straight at her.
Philomena Lynton jerked herself awake, breathing hard and sweating profusely. One of her hands was clenched so tight on her notebook she’d torn straight through the top sheet, and the other had snapped the pencil she’d been writing with clean in half. She was indeed in the Bodleian Library, currently dark and silent except for where she sat – a mess of papers, notebooks, a textbook or two – in a small circle of yellow light thrown by the reading lamp on the table in front of her. But her father was not. He was dead. Had been for five years now.
He’s dead, she chided herself. Dead and gone. He can’t hurt me.
She scowled at the mess she’d made. She’d fully intended to come here after her lecture to finish some work that desperately needed to be done. But she’d been so tired from a week chock-a-block with papers, lectures, moving out of her single into a double room with Georgie. There wasn’t a single night lately where she had gotten to bed at a reasonable hour. She must have laid her head down for one moment, without ever meaning to fall asleep.
And now here she was, the distant clock stroking half-eleven, and she hadn’t even gotten a quarter finished. One glance at her watch told her she’d been here for four hours.
“B-bugger,” she cursed.
There was no hope for it now. She began busying herself with gathering everything into a stack, and midway through she heard footsteps, accompanied by the thump of a cane, heading her way. When she looked up, she could see the old librarian, Mrs Mobley, making slow but steady progress towards her.
“I do hate to push you out, Miss Lynton,” she said. “But I should have locked up a half-hour ago.”
“S-sorry,” Philomena said, trying to keep her voice steady. That strange dream she’d had made her skin prickle uncomfortably. “I was just leav-v-ving.”
She stood from her chair and it screeched across the floor, making her wince. Mrs Mobley was at her table now, hovering by the corner.
“Are you all right, my dear?” she asked, pushing her wire-rimmed glasses up her nose to look at her with concern. “You’ve gone white as a sheet.”
“I’m f-f-fine,” Philomena said. She wished her stammer didn’t give her away. It worsened when she was edgy, like now. “J-just t-t-tired.”
“I can imagine. You’ve been in here every afternoon this week.” The old woman’s brow furrowed. “Are they working you too hard?”
“N-no, ma’am. I’m…b-being too hard on mys-s-self…is all.”
“You must find a way to get some rest,” said Mrs Mobley, resting her hand on Philomena’s shoulder when she’d finally collected her books, switched off the lamp, and joined her. “I know how hard you have worked to get here. But you cannot work yourself to death.”
“Yes, m-ma’am.”
They left the library together, the old woman and the young. Philomena lingered near Mrs Mobley as she locked the creaking double doors, not wanting to be alone again just yet. But before she knew it, Mrs Mobley was turning to face her, having to crane her neck slightly to meet her eyes. That was something Philomena wasn’t used to – she’d always been small in stature and the shortest person in any room. And yet here was this diminutive old woman, looking up at her.
“Best get back quick, my dear,” she said, her soft frail hand once again on Philomena’s shoulder. “It isn’t safe for a young woman to be out alone at night.”
“Yes m-ma’am,” Philomena said again. It was a bit of a trek, from here to Somerville’s boardinghouse – and she’d likely missed the curfew already. And had it been daylight, she would have taken the long way back – a meandering route that took her past the Ashmolean, the Worcester Lake, and the Oxford University Press. She and Georgie had spent many revising sessions by that lake on warm days, spreading out a blanket and sometimes bringing a picnic.
But now, there was no time to wander. It was nearing midnight, signalled by the stroke of the bell. Reluctantly she parted ways with Mrs Mobley and began to walk quickly up Catte Street, which she knew would turn into Parks Road as soon as it crossed Broad Street and would take her all the way up to Somerville.
However, somewhere outside Wadham College, she had to slow down. A pebble had gotten into her shoe, and she found herself limping. She detoured, intending to lean up against the wall and get it out.
But she never got there. Her foot caught on something soft and yielding directly in her path and she went pitching forward, her hand flying out to catch herself. She was rewarded with a skinned knee, a scrape up the side of her hand, and her book bag bursting open. Almost everything flew out in a cascade of paper.
“No!” She scrambled to her feet and tried in vain to chase it all down, but the stiff breeze blew the stray paper further and further away. “Nonono…p-please…”
She had to give up as the distant clock tolled midnight. She cursed and spun around, wiping at her face as she stomped back to her book bag. Things seemed to have gone from bad to worse – especially because she was fairly certain that had been the paper due tomorrow afternoon.
But as she shoved what she’d been able to recover into her bag, the obstacle she’d tripped on caught her attention: big and human-shaped. She seemed to have stumbled over an arm, where it had sprawled out on the ground.
“Excuse me?” Philomena inched up to the figure – a man’s, given the broadness of the shoulders – and bent down to nudge his hand. She was startled by how cold and stiff it was, not at all what a human hand usually felt like. “S-sir?”
She prodded him again, this time further up his arm, and that was how she saw his head – or what was left of it. The entire thing had been crushed like a melon, the skull flat and dented in the back and lying cheek-down in a dark, slowly coagulating pool of blood.
With a yelp Philomena pulled back from the body, stumbling over her bag. She’d seen plenty of bodies in her twenty years of life, the first two being her parents. Her reaction, however, was no different.
“Oh c-cr-cr—”
She didn’t finish. Her stomach heaved, bending her double, but nothing came up. She clutched at it with one hand and used the other to catch the wall as the heaves kept coming, each one hurting more than the one before.
When she could stand up straight, she wobbled over to her book bag and picked it up, holding it tightly to her chest. Then she began to walk. Quickly at first, turning into a hard run a few yards later. She didn’t stop until she’d thrown herself through the boardinghouse door, where she collapsed onto the floor, trembling uncontrollably.
“Is she all right?”
“Breathing, in’t she?”
“Honestly, Georgie, coma patients breathe. That doesn’t mean everything’s fine.”
She recognised Janine’s voice with that last comment. When you got past the hard outside layer, she really was a good-natured girl, with honest, genuine intentions.
Philomena opened her eyes, finding three girls bent over her: Georgie, Janine, and a first-year girl called Heida or Hattie. She couldn’t remember.
“How are you feeling, Philomena?” Janine knelt down next to her – and how had she ended up on the floor, she wondered – and felt her forehead with the backs of her fingers.
“F-fine, j-just…” Philomena tried to sit up, unused to all the attention. But her head spun so suddenly and severely she was collapsing again in a second, caught by Georgie.
“Nasty bump there,” said Georgie, nodding at the throbbing spot above her right eye. “Found you jus’ a minute ago…sprawled out all limp, like.”
“I’ll get a glass of water,” said Heida or Hattie, running from the common room.
Philomena reached up to rub the ache on her forehead, and Janine caught her wrist. “How’d you do this to your hand?”
Oh. Right. There was a scrape there, from her fall. Not the one in the entryway, the one outside Wadham College. When she’d tripped over that body.
The body.
“I have t-t-to—” She started up from the chair they’d set her in, her knees immediately turning to water and giving way beneath her. Georgie and Janine caught her just in time and eased her back into it.
“Steady on, Philomena,” Georgie said. “Reckon you’re not in a fit state to go anywhere. Not ’til you got somethin’ down you an’ some good colour back.”
Heida or Hattie returned just then, with a glass of water. Janine took it from her and pressed it into Philomena’s hand.
“Drink this,” she ordered, just like the many nurses Philomena had met in the hospital. She’d spent too much time in hospitals during the course of her life, and would have liked to see the last of them at the end of the last school term.
But obediently, she did. And once she finished, Janine shooed the younger girl off for a second one.
“When was the last time you had anything to eat, Philomena?” Janine asked her then, her concern clinical and businesslike. “You’re too peaky-looking for my liking.”
“I d-don’t rem-m-member,” she answered honestly. Eating was the last thing on her mind most days.
Janine sighed and looked at Georgie, who shrugged.
“Georgie’s right,” she said then. “You’ve got to get something down you before we do anything else. You skip any more meals, you’ll shrivel up and blow away. Or snap clean in two.”
Philomena said nothing. Janine sounded very much like Lady Canterbury, Miles’s mother, and even looked a little like her too in that moment, peering at Philomena with concern and a reprimand.
Heida or Hattie returned a second time, and again Janine took the water glass and shooed her away. And again, Philomena finished the entire glass like a good girl.
“Now, then.” Janine stood from where she’d perched on the arm of the chair. “How about some breakfast?”
Everything tasted like sand, or sawdust, or a combination of the two. She couldn’t take more than a few bites of her breakfast, just to appease the other girls when they were watching. But her mind kept flashing back to the body on the ground, head bashed in, life probably entirely bled away by the time she’d found it. And when she realised the killer could have been close by, maybe even watching, she felt sick to her stomach and she tasted sand again.
As soon as they were finished and leaving the dining hall, she made up a stuttering excuse and then walked quickly up to the intersection of Woodstock Road and St Giles’, where she could wave down a cab. Once she’d managed that, and asked the driver to take her to the closest police station – it didn’t matter which one – she sat back against the cab’s bench seat and tried to order her thoughts. She clenched handfuls of her skirt in her fists, staring out the window without really seeing any of it. The other girls would say she was being rash, and Miles would have told her to wait. Make sure everything was actually the way she remembered it. But now she was here, on her way, and there was nothing anyone could say to stop her.
“‘Ere yer are, miss,” said the cabbie, interrupting her thoughts. “Coppers jus’ up there.”
He was nodding at a plain white building across the street. It didn’t look like much – nothing like Scotland Yard back in London. She composed herself for a moment with a couple deep breaths. Surely they could help her just the same. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t London.
She thanked the cabbie, dug out two notes – a ten and a five – and handed them over the back of his seat. Then she was out of the cab before he could make his change, darting quickly across St Mary’s Road.
It certainly was just as overwhelming when she entered the station. Coppers of every rank bustled around her, and the whole place buzzed with activity. And not one of them paid her any attention except for the sergeant at the desk, who looked up when she approached.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked, cordial and polite as you please, sitting up straighter. He was unexpectedly handsome – strong chiselled features, sandy hair and moustache, intelligent gaze.
“Yes, I…” Philomena swallowed against the dryness of her throat. How did this work? “I n-need to…report a m-murder.”
“You’ve witnessed a murder?” The sergeant’s pale blue eyes widened.
She nodded. “I n-need to…speak t-to s-someone…please, I d-didn’t know…where else to g-go…”
“Fortunately, we are trained to deal with murders,” said the sergeant. When all she gave him in reply was a blank look, his humour dropped. “Come with me, miss. There’s someone here who can help.”
He stood from his chair and motioned for her to follow him. She did, across the bustling bullpen and up a short flight of stairs to a narrow, wood-panelled hallway. Then all the way down to the end, where he stopped at a set of polished doors bearing a plaque that read DCI J. M. Hendrickson.
“Chief Inspector?” said the sergeant. “I’ve got a young woman here who’d like to speak with you.”
“Oh, all right,” a voice, slightly annoyed, answered. “Come in.”
The sergeant opened one of the doors and made a ladies-first gesture. She gave him a small smile as she passed him, instantly liking his friendly, respectful manner. Which could not be extended to this Chief Inspector Hendrickson. He was a big man, with broad shoulders and large hands – which made his head, probably normal-sized, look tiny. The chief inspector squinted at her, and she saw a corner of his mouth twitch in an odd way.
“You may go, Sergeant Bleecker,” said the chief inspector, waving a dismissive hand. “I expect this won’t take long.”
Philomena furrowed her brow. What was that supposed to mean?
“Sir, the young lady seemed afraid—”
“You have a desk to attend to, Bleecker,” said Hendrickson, interrupting.
“Of course, sir.” Sergeant Bleecker backed out, and the door clicked shut behind him.
“Well,” said Hendrickson, turning to Philomena. “It isn’t every day I see pretty things like you in here. What’s the trouble then, miss? Did the gingerbread escape the oven again?”
Was he serious? “I want t-to…re-report a m-murder. Sir.”
“A murder?” He steepled his fingers. “We are a sleepy hamlet, Oxford. We haven’t had a murder in years.”
“Well, n-now you have one.” Philomena heard how her words sounded coming out, cold and clipped. But how could they not? The man hadn’t even invited her to sit down.
The chief inspector sat forward and folded his hands on his desk. “What are the details, miss? Perhaps we’ll start there.”
She began to recount what she remembered, doing her best to tame her stammer. Except when she reached the part about tripping over the body, he raised a hand to stop her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking very much like he was trying not to smile. “You say you tripped over the victim? And he was lying face down on the ground?”
“Yes, s-sir,” she said, confused. She had just told him that, hadn’t she?
“Are you certain he wasn’t just trolleyed?” He raised an eyebrow. “We’ve got a lot of those about, the drunks…go on a bender and pass out in the oddest of places.”
“No, sir. He wasn’t d-drunk. He…was d-dead. His head was b-bashed in. Lying in…a pool of his own b-bl-blood.” Philomena swallowed hard. As the memory came back, she felt a sour taste rise in the back of her throat. She would not vomit here. She would not.
“And you were out…around midnight, you say? What exactly were you doing out that late, young lady?”
“Walking b-back to my hall, sir. I…was at the l-library and m-must have dozed off…I h-hadn’t meant to s-stay out so late, but I-I’ve been so…s-so exhaus-s-sted lately…”
“So you were tired. Out late. In a hurry. You’re sure you hadn’t just stumbled because you haven’t been sleeping properly?” His tone was patronising, and it annoyed her.
“N-no, sir.” She held up her scraped hand. “I fell. D-didn’t just trip. And…I p-p-panicked. Ran…all the way b-back to my hall…I d-don’t see many b-bodies, sir, I…”
“All right.” He stopped her again, clearly sensing her distress now. “Yes. I see how that could cause your reaction. I can send a couple uniforms back with you, to have a look at where you found the body.”
Philomena nodded. “You b-believe it?”
“Provided it was truly a murder, yes,” he said. Now he was pulling a pad of paper and a pen towards him. Finally. “May I get your name, miss?”
“Ph-Philomena Lynton, s-sir.”
He stopped writing midway through. “Lynton? You’re the Butcher’s girl?”
She winced at that word choice. The Butcher’s girl. “Yes. S-sir.”
“And what on earth are you doing here in our fair city?”
“I’m in school, s-sir…Oxford. S-Somerville.”
“I see,” he said. “The women’s college.”
She didn’t like the way he said women’s college. As if the idea was repulsive. “Yes.”
“And what are they teaching you at the college, Miss Lynton?”
“S-sorry?” She didn’t see how that was relevant.
“What are you reading?” he asked, slowly, like she was a child who didn’t understand.
“Maths. I’m g-good with numbers.”
“Maths?” His eyebrows went up. “It’s not often I hear of a woman in a maths curriculum.”
“A lot of firsts t-today,” Philomena said, her tone edged in ice. Then again, she hated being condescended to.
“Thank you for your report, Miss Lynton,” he said, clearly finished here. “We’d best get you back to school, hm? With those two constables I promised you. So that you might show them the scene of the crime?”
“Yes,” she said tightly, although she knew the real reason he was doing this. The Butcher’s girl has finally lost her mind. Now she sees dead bodies everywhere.
The ride back to Oxford was nearly silent. The two constables sat in the front seat, and she in the back, almost like she’d committed the crime herself. They only asked her two questions: Where did you find the body, miss? and Where should we drop you off when we’ve finished?
“There,” she said, when they passed Wadham College, sitting up straight and tapping on the window. “He was th-there.”
The constable at the wheel slid into an empty spot at the kerb. The three of them got out, and she led them along the pavement, recognising the tree she’d passed, and the corner window. But no body. It was just a stretch of clean pavement, like the rest of the street. No body, no bloodstain, no nothing. She even knelt down at the spot she thought she’d seen it, almost right up against the wall. There was no evidence that anything had happened. Not even a trace of blood in the crack.
“It was h-here!” Philomena heard the desperation in her voice, saw the pity in the coppers’ eyes when she straightened. “I s-sw-swear!”
“Miss Lynton,” said one, the handsomer one. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ve had a long day. Overtired, underfed, and hardly any sleep, I’d bet. We’re going to take you back to Somerville, all right? Maybe you can get your rest. We’ll canvas the area. But we can’t guarantee anything, understand?”
“D-don’t.” She clenched her fists, throwing off his hand. “Don’t t-t-try to make excuses…for me. I know what I s-saw. I’m not…m-mad.”
“Of course you’re not, Miss Lynton,” said the second constable. “But we should ask…were you with anyone last night? Did you speak to anyone?”
“No,” she said, flicking her eyes between them. “Why?”
“We need an alibi, of course,” said the first constable.
She shook her head. “You can’t p-possibly…you d-don’t think…I d-did this, do you?”
“We must follow all possible situations,” said the constable. “And you were the only one around in the same window of time.”
“I d-d-didn’t…” She heard her stammer worsening with a vengeance. “I f-f-found him! H-h-he was…al-l-lready d-dead!”
“Miss Lynton, calm down, please…”
“D-d-don’t!” she hissed viciously, hating their sympathetic expressions. Poor traumatised child. “Don’t t-tell me…to c-c-calm d-down! I’m not h-h-him! I’m n-n-not!”
“Miss Lynton.” The handsome constable caught both her shoulders, his grip firm. “No one is accusing you of anything. Every one of us in the police force knows what you have been through. And we know it was a terrible, ungodly act of a man who clearly had evil in his blood. We’re just trying to understand the events leading up to…this. Now one more time: who were you with last night? Who did you speak to?”
“I was at the l-library,” she said, hearing her voice crack and sudden tears welled in her eyes. “Mrs M-Mobley…she was walking m-me out…sh-she had to lock up. She c-can…t-tell you I was there all afternoon, I s-sw-swear…”
“Good,” said the constable, like she was a dog who had done a trick. “We’ll speak to her first. Anyone else we should know about? When you ran from the scene…did you come across anyone?”
“No,” Philomena whispered. She wiped at her damp cheeks.
The other constable whipped out a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her. She took it and hurriedly wiped her face. She wasn’t a crier and never had been. But she hated to admit that maybe the constable was right: she was overtired, operating on a near-empty stomach and a fitful night’s sleep. She was allowing her emotions to get the better of her.
“We’d best get you back to Somerville,” said the constable who’d lent her his handkerchief. “Undoubtedly it’s been an eventful day for you already.”
They didn’t believe her. Of course they didn’t. And why would they, when she’d gone in there with no proof, no evidence, not even a crime scene to show for it? Not to mention she’d made a scene on the street, shouting at them and all but bursting into tears. Hysterical, they might have called her, when they’d returned to the station. Beside herself.
But instead of dwelling on it, she stayed in her room and feverishly re-worked the problems that had blown away in the breeze last night. Most of it had survived, fortunately, but this instructor was stricter than Mrs Cooper. If she made a failing mark, she could fail the entire lecture.
Georgie came back sometime during that time, barging inside and making Philomena jump. The expression on her face made her stomach twist.
“You wanna tell me what that was about this mornin’?” she said, dropping her book bag to the floor with a thud and sitting down on her own bed with a whump. “Pullin’ that little stunt an’ then runnin’ off?”
“What st-stunt?” Philomena was unused to the anger in Georgie’s voice – usually she was pretty friendly.
“I’m sorry, weren’t you there?” Georgie’s eyes narrowed. “Or were you just fakin’ that faintin’ spell?”
“No, I really c-couldn’t stand up.”
“Good to know,” she said coldly. “Where’d you get off to after breakfast, then? Haven’t seen you since. An’ then I come back here an’ there you are, like a magic trick.”
“Georgie,” Philomena said. “L-let me explain…”
“’Cause you know what?” Georgie went on. “Tracked down Miles, y’know. ’E said ‘e hadn’t seen you since term started. An’ I went t’ the library too, just ‘cause I know you like it there…an’ who do I run into but coppers, talkin’ to poor Mrs Mobley, thought she was gonna have a heart attack…”
“Georgie,” Philomena said again, firmer this time. The other girl stopped and looked at her in surprise. “Listen. P-please. I didn’t…s-say where I was going b-because it was…the police st-station.”
“Police station?” Georgie’s brow furrowed. “What the bleedin’ hell were you doin’ there?”
“I…” She swallowed hard. “I f-found a…a b-body. Last night, coming b-back from…th-the library. Outside Wadham Co-College.”
“Really?” Georgie’s eyes widened. “What happened? Did you see?”
“The afterm-m-math,” Philomena said. “His head was b-bashed in. B-bl-blood…everywhere.”
“Cor,” said Georgie. “So…all o’ that was real?”
She scowled. “Of c-course it was. I…c-can’t act. You know that.”
“Can I see? Where you found ’im?”
“Nothing to see.” Philomena bit her lip. “Those c-coppers…they w-were c-canvasing the area. T-that’s why…th-they were there. Even though…they d-didn’t believe me. None of them d-did.”
“You reckon they were indulgin’ you? ’Cause of…?” Georgie let the sentence trail off, and she nodded.
“The Ch-Chief Insp-p-pector…he was th-the worst…he was s-so con-cond-cond-d…bugger…” She tossed her pencil aside and dropped her head to her hands. The thought of the Chief Inspector made her agitation rise and her stutter worsen, and the hill that had formed in her mind had been impossible to get over this time.
“Hey.” The bed sunk as Georgie sat next to her, gently rubbing her back. “It’s all right. Coppers’re prime examples of toxic masculinity. Insulting, innit?”
“Th-they all think I’m mad…” She clenched her fists. “And all they s-see…is what my father d-did to me…”
“Well, lemme say one thing, Philomena. You’re not what ‘e did to you. It’s somethin’ that happened to you. Even though they refuse to see it. ’Cause you’re so much more’n that. Yeah?”
She nodded and leaned into Georgie, who put an arm around her. She wished they could stay this way for ever afterward.
