The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty Seven: Just a Man

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.