Page 17 of The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies

“A bit.” Sidney frowned at the page, tapping his other knee with the pencil to keep track of the shifting letters as he increased the amount. It was harder to focus in the greenhouse than his bedroom, Bishop’s perfume mixing with the lilies’ aroma in a heady concoction that blunted his ability to process. Sidney loosened his tie and drew a breath of fresh air.

And then he saw it. It was an eleven-letter shift, and relief welled up as he scratched out a name. Kirk.

“You did it!” Bishop grabbed his shoulder but then released him, primly tucking her hands back to her sides. “Do you think it’s a first name or last?”

Her enthusiasm was infectious, and it propelled him to press on. Sidney removed his jacket and hat and rolled up his sleeves, unknotting the tie completely to drape loosely around his neck. “Let’s do another and see.”

With Bishop’s prodding, he worked at the list for another two hours. None of the other gibberish words responded to the eleven-letter shift, so starting over each time prolonged the exercise. Sometimes it felt impossible, and he paced around the lily pond to keep his brain churning, snatching after the right numbers before they slipped away. The result of his labor was four names, each one shifted by a different number.

Kirk. Hughes. Neville. Watkins.

Sidney frowned at the paper. “Dr. Samuel Neville and Dr. Jacqueline Watkins are both Classics tutors. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“The Rook said the informant was using the code name Cassius,” Bishop breathed. “Perhaps there is a Classics connection.”

“True,” Sidney said, reviewing the names and faces he’d encountered in lectures or met at department events. “There’s a Lewis Hughes and a Miss Kirk among the postgraduate students. He’s American.” He scratched the pencil against his temple. “She tried to poll me for one of the student papers earlier this year.”

“Marion Kirk?” Bishop’s eyes brightened. “I’m quite sure she writes for The Blue with one of my friends. Iris whinges about her all the time. Goodness, that’s most convenient that you know all of them.”

“Very,” Sidney muttered. Tolliver had probably already worked out the informant’s departmental connections, and the Rook had obfuscated that information to seem more desperate. It was yet another link drawing Sidney into the case, making him more useful than he wished to be—but he would not be so easily ensnared. He started to fold the paper, ready to depart and clear his head, when Bishop’s hand fell upon his. Gently, she drew the list from his grasp.

“If these are the final suspects Mr. Tolliver was going to send to the Rook before he died, then did one of them murder him?”

“Possibly,” Sidney said, “but it’s out of our hands now. We’ll pass it on to the Rook, and his team will take care of the matter.”

A shadow darkened Bishop’s face, and Sidney’s suspicions about the real reason for the meeting resurfaced. Something stronger than an eagerness to decipher notes made the set of Bishop’s chin one he feared would be difficult to cross.

“I know you made your position clear at the library,” she began slowly, “but I’m asking you to reconsider.” She looked down, picking at a crack in the bench between them. “I telephoned the Rook last night, and he agreed to double his original stipend offer.”

Sidney drew back in surprise. He’d known at first glance Bishop was the sort of person used to having her way, but he hadn’t expected the Rook to push over so easily. A stipend wasn’t guaranteed as a field agent, and the Security Service must be truly desperate to increase the incentive—but he had already declined money once. “I said I won’t be bribed into this.”

“Think of it as payment for services rendered. You will simply take up a different side job.”

“Worked a lot of side jobs, have you?”

Bishop’s nostrils flared, and he expected a stinging retort. But her restrained calm was more unnerving. “I have not, which is why I am so eager to accept his offer. You might be able to pick up work as you please, but I cannot, Mr. Braithwaite. I need this money.”

There was a hunger in her eyes Sidney hadn’t realized someone who’d likely never known an empty belly could feel. “Can’t you ask your father?”

“No.” The word was a cold, hard thing that fell with the weight of a hammer. Bishop frowned at something across the greenhouse, her profile sharp against the light. Her pale skin glowed like his mum’s porcelain cameo brooch, a woman gazing off at something unseen. As a young lad, he’d stared up at it during church, wondering what the woman saw that made her so sad, wishing she would look at him instead. Only when Bishop looked back at him, it burned.

“My father is responsible for my present predicament. In short, he has decided someone outside our family shall inherit the estate, and I wish to dispute the matter in court.”

It sounded like problems of the rich, but the anger dancing across Bishop’s delicate features made Sidney hold his tongue.

“My father has never cared for me,” she continued, her voice tight as though controlling something fighting to escape. “My earliest memory of him is when he boxed my ears after I broke his favorite pipe. I was four. My mother sent me out of the room, and I don’t know what she said or did, but he never touched me again. Neither to strike nor to embrace me.” She hesitated, toying with her string of pearls. “Mostly, he ignored me, and neglect was preferable to his attention, which was usually comments upon my ungainliness. Mother shielded me from it all, even taught me herself instead of hiring tutors—Greek and Latin, chess and knot-tying, how to ride and how to shoot. But finally, at sixteen, I was sent to finishing school. She died while I was away.”

The hollow between Bishop’s collarbones gave a small heave at this, and she fell silent. She wasn’t wearing her usual red lipstick, and the lack of color made her seem more vulnerable; as though it were the armor she usually wore in public, and she had purposefully chosen to meet without it. There were new shadows under her eyes, and a drawn quality to her cheekbones—signs Sidney recognized only too well of restless nights with thoughts that wouldn’t leave.

“I say this not to prey upon your pity,” Bishop said, “but so that you’ll understand. I don’t want to help the Rook because I am bored or a busybody. A future job does interest me, but I need money now.” She closed her eyes and drew a quiet breath. “The Rook has offered me the means to fight, and the Security Service is an employer I trust to keep my work secret. My father can’t bluster in and try to cow them into firing me like any old shopkeeper. It is a coincidence I cannot ignore.”

“It’s not a coincidence,” Sidney said. “The Rook probably has a dossier on your family and knew you might need the money.”

Bishop laughed bitterly. “I don’t really care, Braithwaite. One day, I am going to lose the memories I have left of my mother. They’ll fade, like all memories do.” She turned toward him on the bench and laid a deliberate hand on his forearm. “The house should be mine by right, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep it. I won’t let Father take my mother too.”

Though her touch scorched Sidney’s skin, it immobilized him like ice. All his reasons for declining—the panic, the nightmares—rose up his throat in a choking wave. But there was no way to put all that into words; he would have preferred to rip open the old scar in his side rather than make it plain to her why he could not help the Rook. The whole point of going to Olenev’s was to avoid this very situation.

Only he hadn’t counted on feeling a prick of sympathy for Ginevra bloody Bishop.