Free Silent Noon by Trilby Kent

on the labour camps to which Robin had referred during their walk.
    “I didn’t have you down as a swot, Holland,” said a voice. Barney poked his head around the shelf to find Ivor Morrell moving a leather-bound tome onto a nearby desk. He left
it open before joining Barney behind the stacks. “It’s rare to see a Lydian with his nose in anything but the latest Dan Dare. What have you got there?” Not waiting for a response
he took the pamphlet, sliding a finger between the pages that Barney had marked with his thumb. He lighted on the picture of a witches’ coven. “Smutty. The one on the left looks like
old Baggage.”
    He flipped through the pages, but his attention seemed elsewhere. “How is she?” he asked.
    “Who?”
    “Flood Junior.” He looked at Barney. “It’s not every day a girl discovers a dead baby on school grounds, is it?”
    “Do you think the police will tell us, when they find out whose it is?”
    “I doubt it. I should tell your friends in the Second that they might as well forget about the whole thing.” He returned the pamphlet to the stacks without checking the shelf number,
then went back to the book waiting on the desk.
    “
The Secret History
,” he said. “Despite having a bear tamer for a father and a mother who was hardly better than a prostitute, Theodora managed to become Empress of
Byzantium by the time she was twenty. Women’s charms and all that.” A look of distaste. “Procopius saw through it all, of course. Without power she’d have just been a whore.
Here, read this.”
    The text was dense, the paper almost translucent.
    Often, even in the theatre, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst; then she would sink down to the stage floor and recline
     on her back. Slaves would scatter grains of barley from above into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would pick the grains one by one with their bills
     and eat.
    Barney looked up to find the older boy waiting for a reaction. “What’s a calyx?”
    Ivor snapped the book shut. “I shouldn’t be keeping you like this. Junior prep ends soon, if I’m not mistaken.”
    “At eight.”
    Ivor was tracing lines scratched into the desk with his fingernail.
    “I’m going to follow her tonight,” he said. “I thought you might be interested.”
    “Why should I be interested?”
    “I didn’t say you should. I said you might. To judge by the way everyone’s been going on about the mummy, I’d have thought you’d be up for a little
sleuthing.” He sounded irritated. “Apparently, I misjudged.”
    Barney swallowed. “Let me come with you.”
    “I don’t know,” Ivor said. “You’ve made me think that I’ll probably come to regret it.”
    “I won’t tell anyone.”
    “Not even Littlejohn?”
    Barney nodded. Ivor scooped his book under one arm and wandered over to the window. “It might be useful to have an extra pair of hands,” he said. “And no one ever suspects the
unpopular lad – do they, Camden Town? That’s what they call you, isn’t it?” Barney didn’t reply. “Meet me at Tern,” he continued. “Do you know where
the bins are kept, under the stone hutch? Don’t bother with a torch – she always brings one. Come at eleven.”
    ~
    Lights-out was at half-nine. After that, there would usually be somebody who had forgotten to brush his teeth, and tonight it was Percy fumbling through the darkness towards the
basins. One boy was always left to listen at the corridor in case of a raid from one of the other dormitories. This week that boy was Opie, who had moved his pillow to the foot of his bed to catch
any movement in the sliver of light under the door.
    Fortunately there would be no questions from Robin, who was in the San with a sore throat. After the last of the whispering between the beds had died down, Barney sensed the others slowly
retreating from consciousness until the only sound was of water