* * *
Rather to Roger’s surprise, it was pie. He wasn’t sure whether it was Claire’s skill at misrepresentation, or Dr. McEwan’s own preoccupation, but their bona fides went unquestioned. It didn’t seem to occur to the man that it was highly unlikely for scouting parties from Oxford to penetrate to the wilds of Inverness to make inquiries about the background of a potential graduate student. But then, Roger thought, Dr. McEwan appeared to have something on his mind; perhaps he wasn’t thinking as clearly as usual.
“Weeeel…yes, Mrs. Edgars unquestionably has a fine mind. Very fine,” the Director said, as though convincing himself. He was a tall, spare man, with a long upper lip like a camel’s, which wobbled as he searched hesitantly for each new word. “Have you…has she…that is…” He trailed off, lip twitching, then, “Have you ever actually met Mrs. Edgars?” he finally burst out.
“No,” said Roger, eyeing Dr. McEwan with some austerity. “That’s why we’re asking about her.”
“Is there anything…” Claire paused delicately, inviting, “that you think perhaps the committee should know, Dr. McEwan?” She leaned forward, opening her eyes very wide. “You know, inquiries like this are completely confidential. But it’s so important that we be fully informed; there is a position of trust involved.” Her voice dropped suggestively. “The Ministry, you know.”
Roger would dearly have loved to strangle her, but Dr. McEwan was nodding sagely, lip wobbling like mad.
“Oh, yes, dear lady. Yes, of course. The Ministry. I completely understand. Yes, yes, Well, I…hm, perhaps—I shouldn’t like to mislead you in any respect, you know. And it is a wonderful chance, no doubt…”
Now Roger wanted to throttle both of them. Claire must have noticed his hands twitching in his lap with irresistible desire, for she put a firm stop to the Director’s maundering.
“We’re basically interested in two things,” she said briskly, opening the notebook she carried and poising it on her knee as if for reference. Pick up bottle sherry for Mrs. T, Roger read out of the corner of one eye. Sliced ham for picnic.
“We want to know, first, your opinion of Mrs. Edgars’s scholarship, and secondly, your opinion of her overall personality. The first we have of course evaluated ourselves”—she made a small tick in the notebook, next to an entry that read Change traveler’s cheques—“but you have a much more substantial and detailed grasp, of course.” Dr. McEwan was nodding away by this time, thoroughly mesmerized.
“Yes, well…” He puffed a little, then, with a glance at the door to make sure it was shut, leaned confidentially across his desk. “The quality of her work—well, about that I think I can satisfy you completely. I’ll show you a few things she’s been working on. And the other…” Roger thought he was about to go in for another spot of lip-twitching and leaned forward menacingly.
Dr. McEwan leaned back abruptly, looking startled. “It’s nothing very much, really,” he said. “It’s only…well, she’s such an intense young lady. Perhaps her interest seems at times a trifle…obsessive?” His voice went up questioningly. His eyes darted from Roger to Claire, like a trapped rat’s.
“Would the direction of this intense interest perhaps be focused on the standing stones? The stone circles?” Claire suggested gently.
“Oh, it showed up in her application materials, then?” The Director hauled a large, grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face with it. “Yes, that’s it. Of course, a lot of people get quite carried away with them,” he offered. “The romance of it, the mystery. Look at those benighted souls out at Stonehenge on Midsummer’s Day, in hoods and robes. Chanting…all that nonsense. Not that I would compare Gillian Edgars to…”
There was quite a lot more of it, but Roger quit listening. It seemed stifling in the narrow office, and his collar was too tight; he could hear his heart beating, a slow, incessant thrumping in both ears that was very irritating.
It simply couldn’t be! he thought. Positively impossible. True, Claire Randall’s story was convincing—quite awfully convincing. But then, look at the effect she was having on this poor old dodderer, who wouldn’t know scholarship if it was served up on a plate with piccalilli relish. She could obviously talk a tinker out of his pans. Not that he, Roger, was as susceptible as Dr. McEwan surely, but…
Beset with doubt and dripping with sweat, Roger paid little attention as Dr. McEwan fetched a set of keys from his drawer and rose to lead them out through a second door into a long hallway studded with doors.
“Study carrels,” the Director explained. He opened one of the doors, revealing a cubicle some four feet on a side, barely big enough to contain a narrow table, a chair, and a small bookshelf. On the table, neatly stacked, were a series of folders in different colors. To the side, Roger saw a large notebook with gray covers, and a neat hand-lettered label on the front—MISCELLANEOUS. For some reason, the sight of the handwriting sent a shiver through him.
This was getting more personal by the moment. First photographs, now the woman’s writings. He was assailed by a moment’s panic at the thought of actually meeting Geillis Duncan. Gillian Edgars, he meant. Whoever the woman was.
The Director was opening various folders, pointing and explaining to Claire, who was putting on a good show of having some idea what he was talking about. Roger peered over her shoulder, nodding and saying, “Um-hm, very interesting,” at intervals, but the slanted lines and loops of the script were incomprehensible to him.
She wrote this, he kept thinking. She’s real. Flesh and blood and lips and long eyelashes. And if she goes back through the stone, she’ll burn—crackle and blacken, with her hair lit like a torch in the black dawn. And if she doesn’t, then…I don’t exist.
He shook his head violently.
“You disagree, Mr. Wakefield?” The Director of the Institute was peering at him in puzzlement.
He shook his head again, this time in embarrassment.
“No, no. I mean…it’s only…do you think I could have a drink of water?”
“Of course, of course! Come with me, there’s a fountain just round the corner, I’ll show you.” Dr. McEwan bustled him out of the carrel and down the hall, expressing voluble, disjointed concern for his state of health.
Once away from the claustrophobic confines of the carrel and the proximity of Gillian Edgars’s books and folders, Roger began to feel slightly better. Still, the thought of going back into that tiny room, where all Claire’s words about her past seemed to echo off the thin partitions…no. He made up his mind. Claire could finish with Dr. McEwan by herself. He passed the carrel quickly, not looking inside, and went through the door that led back to the receptionist’s desk.
Mrs. Andrews stared at him as he came in, her spectacles gleaming with concern and curiosity.
“Dear me, Mr. Wakefield. Are ye not feeling just right, then?” Roger rubbed a hand over his face; he must look really ghastly. He smiled weakly at the plump little secretary.
“No, thanks very much. I just got a bit hot back there; thought I’d step down for a little fresh air.”
“Oh, aye.” The secretary nodded understandingly. “The radiators.” She pronounced it “raddiators.” “They get stuck on, ye know, and won’t turn off. I’d best see about it.” She rose from her desk, where the picture of Gillian Edgars still rested. She glanced down at the picture, then up at Roger.
“Isn’t that odd?” she said conversationally. “I was just looking at this and wondering what it was about Mrs. Edgars’s face that struck me all of a sudden. And I couldn’t think what it was. But she’s quite a look of you, Mr. Wakefield—especially round the eyes. Isn’t that a coincidence? Mr. Wakefield?” Mrs. Andrews stared in the direction of the stair, where the thump of Roger’s footsteps echoed from the wooden risers.
“Taken a bit short, I expect,” she said kindly. “Poor lad.”