Every Contact Leaves A Trace (43 page)

He had woken one morning in a panic, remembering Rachel’s outburst on the South Bank about Anthony and wondering whether she really had been overreacting, as he’d thought she was, or whether he should have taken her more seriously. In an attempt to allay his concerns on all of the points that were worrying him, and having no one else to turn to, he telephoned Evie a day or so later and they met to talk things through. He told me that although the meeting had been fine, he’d come away with a sense that he’d failed, somehow, to communicate to her the precise nature of his reservations. She’d been pretty savage with him when he attempted it, calling him a fool and saying that he always had been a little precious about Rachel, and a little unbalanced in his assessment of her abilities, which were, when it came down to it, no more remarkable than anyone else’s in her field, and didn’t he know that she was married to a Worcester lawyer now and wasn’t it time he stopped following her around like a puppy? Anthony just wanted Rachel to say sorry, Evie said, that was all. He’d got over his crush on her years ago, it wasn’t about that any more, there was nothing malign in his fascination. He was a perfectly normal human being, she said. ‘I mean, Harry, he works in IT for goodness’ sake!’ she said. ‘How much more normal can you get?’ He was just aggrieved, she said, and whilst she had to agree that he had, in the past, occasionally let that sense of grievance get the better of him, it was all over now, couldn’t Harry see that? Harry tried to explain to Evie that his concerns lacked the specificity with which she was imputing them, and that it was just that there had been something about the way Anthony was that day in Judd Street, something slightly peculiar in the light behind his eyes. But when it became apparent that Evie would give him no quarter, he’d let it drop.

And then he raised the question of whether one of them might lose heart at the last and falter in their resolve, leaving them no
further
on than they were already, and he suggested that his and Evie’s presence might, on that score, be no bad thing. Evie told him he was being over the top, but she caved in in the end, looking in her diary and saying that she was due to take a visit to the collection at the Ashmolean, and she might as well do it that weekend as any other, and there would be bound to be some kind of fund-raiser on the Thursday she could get involved in as a cover story so Rachel didn’t get uptight about her being there. She couldn’t promise anything, not in any definite way, but she’d do her best. Harry thanked her, and suggested they kept in fairly close contact over the weekend, and could he have her mobile number?

In the end, he found that he was able to set his reservations on one side. In addition to Evie’s opinion, there was his own assessment of Anthony, whose story he had, after all, heard first hand, and there was also the fact that he was in a position to be able to maintain a greater degree of objectivity about the situation than Rachel was, being less caught up in it than her. And so it was that the plan had been laid, and Rachel and I had driven to Oxford on the afternoon of Thursday 21 June at about the same time that Anthony and Evie would have been making an identical journey. And so it was also that I was the only one of our number who was entirely ignorant of what lay ahead.

Harry said that it was at about two o’clock on that Thursday afternoon that Anthony had telephoned him again. He was in his rooms when the call came, sorting through some examination papers. It sounded from the background noise as though Anthony was calling on his mobile, but when Harry heard a series of beeps and the line went dead, he realised he was using a payphone. When Anthony called back a moment later, he told Harry straight away that he was due to meet Rachel at midnight, down by the side of the lake.

‘She said I had no choice. Take it or leave it. So I took it.’

‘But why there? And why then?’

‘She doesn’t want Petersen to know, that’s why. Stick to each
other
like limpets, those two. She’s just going to run down and see me and yeah, I mean that’s fine with me. I mean, it’s happening isn’t it. That’s what matters. He won’t know anything if we do it like this, she can just leave him for five minutes or something and we can talk.’

‘By the lake?’ Harry said. ‘Can you not meet in town tomorrow or something? Isn’t that a slightly unorthodox way—’

‘That’s Rachel for you, Harry. Anyhow, it’s fine. Actually I quite like it. Just like old times eh?’

‘And what about Evie?’ Harry asked. ‘Have you told Evie what you’re doing?’

‘No I haven’t. And no I’m not going to. Why should I?’

‘Why shouldn’t you?

‘She’s given me so much grief about the whole thing, Harry. She’s already fed me a pile of bullshit about some fund-raiser she’s going to at the museum so she’s just coincidentally going to be in Oxford. I mean, I know she hates those things. She’s always complaining about them. It’s such a lame excuse. She just wants to be hanging around finding out what’s going on. She’s giving me a lift, that’s alright, but that’s as far as it goes. She’ll just have to live with it, I’m not getting into that. I wasn’t going to tell you either but I thought Rachel would have told you anyway and, well, you know, I’m grateful. I mean, thank you. I’m glad it’s happening.’

‘Of course,’ Harry said. ‘Of course. You are welcome. I just hope it will bring about a resolution to things, I really do.’

And Anthony laughed and said he was sure it would work out, one way or another, and then suddenly he said he had to go. Just before he did, Harry said he’d appreciate a chat in the next day or so, just so he knew how it had gone, and they agreed to meet in his college rooms the following morning for coffee.

Harry carried on with his story, reminding me that he had invited Rachel and me to his rooms for 6.15 so that we could leave our things there and borrow a spare gown or two if we hadn’t brought our own, and have a glass of wine with him before going over to drinks in the Old Bursary. I remembered as he spoke that neither
of
us had had coats that summer night, and there was only Rachel’s bag in the end, and that she’d insisted on taking it to dinner with her, and had still had it with her when she’d gone down to the lake, and the police had never been able to find it.

At about five o’clock, Harry said, just as he was getting out some wine glasses and checking the Chablis was in the fridge, he decided he ought to let Evie know what was going on, having told her that he would. He didn’t see why Anthony’s reluctance to communicate with her should prevent him from doing so, and he felt at that moment that he needed her support. He tried her mobile but it went straight to voicemail, and looking at the clock he realised that there was just enough time for him to walk over to the Ashmolean and see if he could find her in her department. He sat at his desk and wrote her a note, passing on exactly what Anthony had told him, intending to leave it with her secretary if she wasn’t in her office when he got there.

He added a bit more to the note, writing that he hoped Evie would be able to slip away from the fund-raiser before it was over, and why didn’t she come into College and wander down in the direction of the lake at about that time, just to keep an eye on them. He’d written a postscript giving her directions for the secret garden and telling her that Haddon was definitely coming to dine on High Table and wouldn’t be in his cottage, and why didn’t she slip into the secret garden for about half past eleven? Haddon never locked his door when he was at dinner, Harry wrote, and he always stayed late at coffee afterwards, so she could easily hide herself away to watch from there and slip back out of College again without anyone knowing. He told her he intended to pop up to the Old Library after dinner and watch the events unfold from up there, so he’d give her a quick call on her mobile once he’d seen Rachel setting off towards the lake. He walked over to the Ashmolean but he hadn’t been able to find Evie, so he’d pushed the note under her door, almost certain she’d leave her things in there before the fund-raiser.

By about ten past six he was waiting in his rooms for us to arrive
when
he had a last-minute panic about whether she would actually get the note, and he tried her mobile again. It was switched on this time but it rang and rang and he heard us coming up the staircase and there we were, trying on gowns for size, and he was pouring us our Chablis and the evening had begun. There wasn’t the opportunity for him to talk to Rachel in private, and he didn’t dare raise the subject in my hearing after what she’d made him promise on the South Bank. It was odd that evening over dinner, he said, picking up little signs in her behaviour that might have given her away had Anthony not already told him what had been arranged. She was excited somehow, even a little nervous, and Harry saw her looking at her watch again and again and checking her mobile under the table on more than one occasion. He noticed also her insistence that she had to take her bag with her to dinner, rather than leave it in his rooms, and he could only think that this had something to do with what was inside, something he’d discovered by accident when we’d arrived and he’d taken it through to his side room only to drop it and see the little book of Browning fall out.

Everything went as planned, he said, when he managed after dinner to go up to the Old Library without our realising. We’d said our goodbyes and he told us he had to go back to his rooms for something. As soon as our backs were turned, he slipped up the spiral staircase. He was half sure at that point that Rachel would waver, it having seemed that we’d been about to let ourselves out of College, but a few minutes later, standing by the window, he saw her walking down the side of the quad. He pulled his phone from his pocket to call Evie only to find that there wasn’t a signal in the Old Library. He knew it wasn’t essential, but all the same, he was annoyed at finding himself confronted by this little problem, and so he did the first thing that came into his head and picked up the lamp from the table in front of him and switched it on and off a couple of times, thinking that Evie might be looking up towards the library windows. There was no way someone that far away would actually have been able to see him flashing the lamp, but he did it anyway, for his own satisfaction.

He was amazed when he saw a light flashing in response from somewhere in the direction of the secret garden, although it looked to be coming from slightly beyond that point and further towards the lake. And he was even more amazed a moment or two later to see a second light, closer this time, flashing in what he thought must be the secret garden. He was confused then, and a little scared, until he realised that the first light must have been some kind of trick played on him by his own eyes, caused by nothing other than a reflection of his own lamp in the glass he stood in front of, and that the second light must have been Evie after all.

Just after the lights stopped flashing, Harry saw the porter emerge from the alcove beneath the library. He watched him stand on the quad’s north terrace looking about himself for a moment or two and glancing up at the clock before carrying on along the terrace, disappearing into staircase number 6 and embarking on his night-time rounds. Everything seemed now to be going ahead in the way Harry had hoped it would and it was with a slight sense of relief that he walked back down the spiral staircase, thinking that it would all be over and done with before too long. Having passed me sitting in the shadows where I had dozed off while waiting for Rachel, he’d walked out on to the terrace and headed towards his rooms to fetch his things, intending to watch from his window for Rachel coming back up from the lake. And that, of course, was the moment that he heard her scream and he knew that something had gone wrong after all and that she and Anthony must be having some kind of a fight. He found himself frozen to the spot with the shock of it, absolutely unable to move, or even to think, and then he saw me running and stumbling down the steps and he turned his head slightly to see the figure, who he realised must be Evie, running up the quad and passing me on the steps and disappearing towards the entrance to the college, the whole thing taking no more than a minute at most.

When Harry felt the sensation of strength coming back into his legs, he stumbled back along the terrace and went straight to the lodge to report what he’d seen and to tell the porter that there was something going on down by the lake. But when he got there he
found
the place empty. Then he remembered seeing the porter setting off on his rounds and realised that he would have heard the scream as well and would have run to see what was going on. He felt certain that between the two of us, the porter and I would have been able to break up the fight, or whatever it was that was happening. He thought of what Haddon had told him about Anthony attacking Cissy on the night of the Ball and he was concerned, not being at all confident that Rachel would share Cissy’s aptitude for self-defence. But at no stage did he actually think that anything serious could have happened, given that I would have reached her so quickly and would have been able to intervene.

At that point, Harry told me, he realised he had a number of options. He could either go down to the lake and see what he could do to help, or he could go back to his rooms and watch from his window, or he could simply go home and wait. He was annoyed with Evie for having run off like that, since she must have known he’d want to talk to her and find out what she’d seen. And he was rueful about the fact that things seemed to have gone wrong, feeling for Rachel and knowing she’d have had an awful lot of explaining to do when I’d got there and broken up whatever was happening. In the end, concluding that he would be of no use to anybody if he stayed, he decided to go home, so exhausted that he was barely able to put one foot in front of the other as he walked over to Gloucester Green to find a taxi, trying Evie’s phone one more time only to hear it ring and ring again.