Free Death at the Alma Mater by G. M. Malliet Page A

some advice?”
    Sir James, guessing at the topic, said quickly, coldly, “I’d much rather you didn’t.”
    “Yes, I suppose when one can guess at the advice already, one would rather not hear it. An observation, then. You’ve already crossed the Rubicon with regard to Lexy, you know. Years ago. There’s no going back.”
    Sir James arranged his silverware, which was one centimeter out of true.
    “There’s always a way back when it’s a question of forgiveness,” he said gruffly. “Otherwise we’d all be … doomed.”
    “A bit melodramatic that, what?”
    Lowering his voice still further, although it was highly doubtful his wife could hear them over the din, he said, “I should say it depends on how many lives you think you have. I believe I have only this one, and I’ve made a right cock-up of … a few things. I won’t have a million chances to put it right. This weekend is it.”
    Hermione, being in many respects an intelligent woman, forbore to ask what his wife would make of this new resolve of his. She could guess, only too well.
    –––
    As the alumni dinner ended, Sebastian was still moving with practiced speed along the river, his sculls cutting rhythmically through the dark water, the sky as it deepened towards night making him feel both invisible and invincible. It was nearly Lighting Up, and he was reluctant to stop when his strength was nowhere near exhausted, but he didn’t want to be too flagrant about bending the rules. To be selected only for the second boat, which Sebastian regarded as a fate worse than death, was one thing. To accumulate so many fines he was forbidden the river altogether was unthinkable.
    Minutes later he slowed as he approached the college; leaning onto the outside scull, he turned the boat until it was parallel to the bank. As he stepped out and lifted the boat from the water, his head was filled with the future glory of winning a Blue and the imaginary applause of onlookers, which is why he never noticed the lumpen pile of black cloth to one side of the boathouse doors. He might not have seen it at all in the light ground mist but that a slight disturbance caught his ear, causing him to turn towards a rustle in the undergrowth. Some small animal making its way to shelter before total darkness fell, perhaps. It was then to the left of the boathouse he noticed a shadow, nothing more. He went to investigate. There was a scull lying on the ground, next to that lumpen pile.
    If someone had forgotten to put away the college’s equipment there’d be hell to pay, he thought. Was all this stuff lying there when he’d set out? He wasn’t sure…he hadn’t been looking in that direction.
    One year, during May Bumps, a group of undergraduates had thrown a plastic dummy in the water dressed in Queens’ colors. Intimidation of their chief rival was the goal. It was the kind of harmless rag that went on all year, usually in the run-up to the Bumps. So Sebastian didn’t hesitate, but poked at the lumpen form with the tip of one of his oars.
    That didn’t feel right, he thought. He couldn’t have said why it wasn’t right, but the form was softer and more yielding and yet heavier than he, in his limited experience of dummies and lumpen forms, would have expected.
    No. No sirree. That couldn’t be right.
    He stepped a foot closer, peering into the darkness. Then, dropping his oars with a loud, jumbled crash, he ran.

THE PARTY’S OVER

    St. Just sat eighteen miles away in another suicidally boring meeting at Hinchingbrooke Park, Huntingdon—headquarters for the Cambridgeshire Constabulary. The meeting had convened some hours ago in a building that looked like a prison, only with larger windows, in a room that resembled a classroom in a particularly underfunded comprehensive school.
    It was an unusually late meeting, even by the standards of the new Chief Constable, who would accept nothing less than the one-hundred-percent proven devotion of her team. These after-hours