The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty: The Kraken Wakes

When Sam and Jack arrived at Girton College, they were ushered into a chapel and pointed down a flight of stone steps into a room which looked very much like a crypt. It had a beautiful fan-vaulted ceiling—which forced itself on Sam's attention by looming barely a foot above his head—and was lit by candles in iron brackets.

The room was so full of motion that it almost made him feel seasick. Shadows were constantly moving over the ceiling, and he got the feeling they couldn't all be accounted for by the flickering candlelight.

There was a desk at one end of the room, on a sort of raised platform which might originally have been designed for laying out the dead. But most of the space was given over to Madame Desault's collection—although the artefacts on show were so disparate that he couldn't immediately decide what it was a collection of.

The shelves were lined with Greek terracotta pots, painted with nymphs and gorgons, and strange, lumpy stone figures, the size of peg-dolls, with swollen breasts and bellies. There were also lots of icons of the Virgin Mary, their golden paint cracked, but sparkling like an open treasure chest in the candlelight.

Madame Desault herself bustled out of the shadows at the far end of the room like a woman with a purpose. She shook Sam's hand vigorously, and then dropped into the chair behind her desk with so much force that he could hear the chair-legs crunching against the floor. Just being in the same room as her bristling energy made Sam feel tired.

Most unusually, Jack lingered at the back of the room when they entered and didn't come forward to introduce himself. He wandered from shelf to shelf, admiring the artefacts and squinting at a collection of chalk symbols on the wall. It wasn't like Jack to pay more attention to objects than humans, but then, Sam supposed, there were breasts on show.

"Well, what can I do for you, Inspector?" said Fabienne Desault breezily. "What kind of crime are you investigating today?"

"At the moment, the mutilation of library books."

"Good heavens! Can you be hanged for it?"

Sam sighed. Jack was so much better at talking to these sorts of people. He decided to be resolutely factual, and hope that it rubbed off on her. "For reasons unknown, Madame, someone in Oxford has been removing chapter seventeen from every copy of your book."

"My book? Oh, well, then they should be hanged." She hesitated, and glanced at Jack, who was picking up and looking over every swollen stone goddess within reach. "Chapter Seventeen, you say? Is that why he's here?"

She raised her voice slightly. "How do you do, Mr Cade? I hear the business of warmongering isn't as profitable as it used to be?"

Jack gave her an absent-minded smile. "Not true, Madame. It'll always be profitable. Just not for me anymore."

"We think Jack's memory has been... tampered with," said Sam, interceding in case there was a fight. "He doesn't remember any acquaintance with Ellini Syal. We have reason to believe he's in Chapter Seventeen of your book, but somebody is going out of their way to prevent us from finding out."

Fabienne raised her eyebrows. "He doesn't remember Ellini Syal? Does he remember Pandemonium?"

Jack looked up from his inspection of a plaster saint, frowning. "Ye—no. I don't know."

Fabienne got up, the better to examine him. "Good heavens, you really have had the bailiffs in, haven't you? Did they leave anything behind in that head of yours?"

"No, wait," said Jack wildly. "It's in Edinburgh, isn't it? That big palace in St. Andrew's Square. I met Robin Crake there."

"But you don't remember Ellini Syal?"