Some of the papers Colin had handed him were stuck together, no doubt because of Colin’s periodic examinations of his gobstopper, and most of them seemed to be, not the contact charts, but assorted memoranda from Finch: One of the heating vents in Salvin was stuck shut. The National Health Service ordered all inhabitants of Oxford and environs to avoid contact with infected persons. Mrs. Basingame was in Torquay for Christmas. They were running very low on lavatory paper.
“You don’t, do you? Think it will delay it?” Colin asked.
“Delay what?” Dunworthy said.
“The
“Ten,” Dunworthy said. He sorted all the memoranda into one pile and opened a large manila envelope. “It’s usually a bit late at Christmas because of all the parcels and Christmas cards.
The stapled sheets in the envelope weren’t the contact charts either. They were William Gaddson’s report on Badri’s and Kivrin’s whereabouts, neatly typed and organized into the morning, afternoon, and evening of each day. It looked far neater than any essay he’d ever handed in. Amazing what a salutory influence a mother could have.
“I don’t see why it should be,” Colin said. “I mean, it’s not as if it’s people, is it, so it can’t be contagious? Where does it come, to the hall?”
“What?”
“The
“Porter’s lodge,” Dunworthy said, reading the report on Badri. He had gone back to the net Tuesday afternoon after he was at Balliol. Finch had spoken to him at two o’clock, when he had asked where Mr. Dunworthy was, and again at a little before three, when Badri had given him the note. At some time between two and three, John Yi, a third-year student, had seen him cross the quad to the laboratory, apparently looking for someone.
At three the porter at Brasenose had logged Badri in. He had worked in the net until half-past seven and then gone back to his flat and dressed for the dance.
Dunworthy phoned Latimer. “When you were at the net Tuesday afternoon?”
He blinked bewilderedly at Dunworthy from the screen. “Tuesday?” he said, looking around as if he had mislaid something. “Was that yesterday?”
“The day before the drop,” Dunworthy said. “You went to the Boleian in the afternoon.”
He nodded. “She wanted to know how to say, ‘Help me for I have been set upon by thieves.’”
Dunworthy assumed by “she” he meant Kivrin. “Did Kivrin meet you at the Bodleian or at Brasenose?”
He put his hand to his chin, pondering. “We had to work until late in the evening deciding on the form of the pronouns,” he said. “The decay of pronomial inflections was advanced in the 1300’s but not complete.”
“Did Kivrin come to the net to meet you?”
“The net?” Latimer said doubtfully.
“To the laboratory at Brasenose,” Dunworthy snapped.
“Brasenose? The Christmas Eve service isn’t at Brasenose, is it?”
“The Christmas Eve service?”
“The vicar said he wished me to read the benediction,” Latimer said. “Is it being held at Brasenose?”
“No. You met with Kivrin Tuesday afternoon to work on her speech. Where did you meet her?”
“The word ‘thieves’ was very difficult to translate. It derives from the Old English
This was useless. “The Christmas Eve service is at St. Mary the Virgin’s at seven,” he said and rang off.
He phoned the porter at Brasenose, who was still decorating his tree, and made him look up Kivrin in his log book. She hadn’t been there Tuesday afternoon.
He fed the contacts charts into the console and entered the additions from William’s report. Kivrin hadn’t seen Badri Tuesday. Tuesday morning she had been in Infirmary and then with Dunworthy. Tuesday afternoon she’d been with Latimer and Badri would have been gone to the dance in Headington before they left the Bodleian. Monday from three on she was in Infirmary, but there was still a gap between twelve and half-past two on Monday.
He scanned the contacts sheets they had filled out again. Montoya’s was only a few lines long. She had filled in her contacts for Wednesday morning, but none for Monday and Tuesday, and she hadn’t listed any information on Badri. He wondered why, and then remembered she had come in after Mary gave the instructions for filling up the forms.
Perhaps Montoya had seen Badri before Wednesday morning, or knew where he’d spent the gap between noon and half-past two on Monday.
“When Ms. Montoya phoned, did she tell you her telephone number?” he asked Colin. There was no answer. He looked up. “Colin?”
He wasn’t in the room, nor in the sitting room, though his duffel was, its contents spread all over the carpet.
Dunworthy looked up Montoya’s number at Brasenose and rang it up, not expecting any answer. If she was still looking for Basingame, that meant she hadn’t gotten permission to go out to the dig and was doubtless at the NHS or the National Trust, badgering them to have it declared “of irreplaceable value.”
