The Warder at the Cambridge gaol was called Fletchley—and this morning, at least, he had no difficulty remembering it. When he made the tea for Sam and Jack, in the cold, white-tiled Warder's lodgings at the back of the prison compound, he spilled half of it over the table, and then mopped at it absent-mindedly, as though he couldn't remember whether puddles on the tabletop were a good thing or not.

He was no help on the subject of Ellini Syal. He thought she had been at the prison for seven years—but, on consulting the books, discovered that it had only been five. He thought she'd been no trouble: "a charming, quiet girl, who reminded me of my Mildred."

The Warder turned courteously to Jack and explained, "That was my fiancée, sir, who died of pneumonia when I was fighting the new brats in India—present company excepted, sir."

"Oh," said Jack, who seemed to be in far too good a mood to take offence. "What regiment were you in?"

"The 4th Bengal European Light Cavalry, sir."

"Very brave men," said Jack. "Caused us a world of trouble in Agra."

"Oh, god bless you for saying that, sir! The lads'll be so pleased! They always said you were a fair man, sir, even the ones who said you used to throw babies on the fire when you were low on fuel."

Jack laughed delightedly, and the Warder blushed. "They did have some rather lurid stories about you, I'm sorry to say, sir."

"More lurid than throwing babies on the fire?"

"Oh," said the Warder, waving a dismissive hand. "They're too silly to repeat, sir."

"No, please go on," said Jack. "I collect lurid stories about myself. I'm hoping to rack up as many as Napoleon."

The Warder leaned forward and lowered his voice, apparently oblivious to Sam's impatient sigh. "Well, I did hear one of the lads say as you used to bite virgins on the neck, sir, at the same time as making love to 'em."

"I've heard that one," said Jack, with a disconsolate shrug. "Seems like it would diminish the enjoyment of both activities."

The Warder's spluttering laugh was interrupted by Sam, who'd had enough. "Do you mind if we get on with this? I'd like to get back to Oxford in the next year, if at all possible."

Jack had been like this all day—gossiping, telling anecdotes, noticing everything. Sam supposed he was just excited to be outside the Faculty. He also supposed that Ellini Syal was—somehow—working her horrible brand of magic on him, because every time Sam grunted in response to one of his anecdotes, or told him outright to be quiet, Jack would complain that he wasn't as good at listening as Ellini.

"She's just so... flexible," he had said, during the interminable train journey. "Whatever conversational tangent you go off on, she'll follow you. If you start to create an imaginary scenario, she'll drop everything to help you build it. She doesn't care about getting to the point or following protocol. She just wants to play."

"She's hiding something," Sam said primly.

"Only if you're interested in the boring, factual stuff."

And, on top of this, Sam didn't actually know what he was doing here. Why was he in Cambridge, interviewing Ellini Syal's gaoler, when his murder had taken place in Oxford, and there wasn't the flimsiest shred of evidence to connect it to either Cambridge or Ellini Syal?

Of course, he didn't have any other options. That 'Charlotte Grey' clue provided by the Last Gasp Lass had come to nothing. According to the census, there were two Charlotte Greys in Oxford: a widow in Iffley, and a precocious female scholar at Lady Margaret Hall. Sam had been to see both of them yesterday afternoon. The widow had been deaf, and the scholar had been tedious, but neither of them had seemed to know anything about apple-sellers or demonic footprints, or why their name should be on the lips of a killer.

Warder Fletchley turned away from Jack with some reluctance and gave Sam a helpless shrug. "I don't know what else to tell you, sir. Miss Syal was here for five years, and she was no trouble."

"What about meals and exercise? You didn't let her out with the other prisoners?"

"Let me see... I think...No. Hah! You almost got me there, sir. It would have been irresponsible to let her out for exercise with the other prisoners, right enough, but we've got the separate system here, see?"

Sam's heart slipped down a notch. That was a familiar phrase—and he knew it was a bad one—but he couldn't immediately pair it up with any kind of meaning.

"When prisoners go out for exercise in the yard, they have to have their faces masked," Warder Fletchley went on. "And they're not allowed to talk to anyone or make a sound. It gives 'em a chance to think about what they've done."

In the circumstances, Sam thought he dealt with his frustration remarkably well. He didn't shout, or shake the old man by the shoulders, or gnaw on his own fist until he drew blood. He just passed a hand across his forehead and said, "Please tell me you saw her face at least once in her five-year incarceration here."

It had always been like this. It always would be. It wasn't the cleverness of the criminals that thwarted him at every turn, but the idiocy of the other law-enforcers.

"I saw 'er when she came in, sir!" the Warder protested. "Nervous, skinny little thing with black hair."

This was such an accurate description of Ellini Syal that, for a moment, Sam was placated.

"I mean," the Warder mumbled resentfully, "you put a nervous, skinny little girl into a cell, and who do you think is going to come out for exercises, mask or no mask? She can't get out of the cell, is what I'm saying, sir. And, even if she could, where's she going to get a replacement black-haired girl who's happy to spend five years in a prison cell?"

Jack raised his eyebrows. "He's got a point, Sam."

Sam ignored them both. "I would like to see her cell now."

***

Warder Fletchley led them through clean, well-scrubbed corridors lined with locked doors. Ellini Syal's room was at the end of the longest corridor, and the warder unlocked it with some ceremony, as though he thought the contents would be a marvellous surprise.

It was certainly larger than the other cells—which, through the wire-mesh windows, had seemed just wide enough for a single bed and a quantity of doleful shadow.

Miss Syal's cell had windows on three walls, which would have provided a wealth of sunlight if they hadn't been overgrown with ivy. Spiders had been allowed to make their homes, unmolested, in every corner of the ceiling.

"She asked us not to prune the ivy or dust for spiderwebs," said the Warder, as though he thought he might be reprimanded for the untidiness. "Strange girl, she was, but never any trouble. If prisoners are quiet and respectful, we tend to let them have their little ways. It's better than rioting, I always say."

Besides the ivy and the spiderwebs, there was a narrow bed and a small bookcase, stuffed with battered volumes on chemistry, new-breed physiology, and—to Sam's surprise—mysticism.

There was also a trapdoor in the flagstoned floor. No effort had been made to conceal it. No rug had been thrown over it. Dust had collected in its edges, making it stand out even more.

Sam looked up at the Warder with ostentatious patience. "So, she couldn't have got out—for example—through there?" he said, pointing down at the trapdoor.

The Warder laughed. Sam had to plunge his hands in his pockets to prevent them from wandering in the direction of the old man's throat.

"God bless you, no, sir! That's always been there! These are the old Warder's Lodgings. Well, we couldn't give her a regular cell, you know, because she hadn't committed any crime. The Warder's Lodgings have always had a secret door built into them, in case of a revolt, or a dangerous prisoner breaking out of his cell. There's one in my rooms, under the sink. But she couldn't have got out through there. I keep it locked, and I've got the only key. I assure you, it's very well-hidden. In my sock drawer."

***

Sam was silent as they walked from the prison—which was located in the whimsically-named suburb of Cherry Hinton—to Girton College, where the mysterious author of 'Helen of Camden' could be found.

Of course, silence was too much to expect from Jack, who plunged his hands into his pockets, whistled, and listed all the many things that puzzled him about Ellini Syal.

They puzzled him in an interesting way. In fact, Ellini Syal seemed to puzzle into nothingness. Jack said she was too skinny to be pretty, too timid to be charming, and too nervous to be attractive, but also that she was too warm to be unattractive, too witty to be boring, and too mysterious to be ignored.

Mostly, he talked about her in terms of the dark—and Sam had known him long enough to remember that this was a particular obsession of his. He was always complaining that it never got properly dark in Oxford. The smog and the damp and the refracted light of the gas-lamps created a kind of yellowish barrier between the streets and the stars.

According to Jack, the darkness in India was quite different. He said it was like ink. It filled your lungs, disseminated itself through your veins, and rewrote you—or gave you the power to rewrite yourself.

Sam, annoyed by all this enthusiasm, asked him why he didn't just marry India. Jack made no reply to this. But he did mutter something indistinct about how it seemed to be darker in Oxford now that Ellini was there.

"I agree with you," said Sam, kicking at a cobblestone. "And I hate being in the dark."