Every night since the lighthouse, I’d watched the North Tower from the dorm window. Every night Dean Mordue arrived just a few minutes before midnight and headed inside.
Only now I realised she wasn’t just doing a quick security search. She stayed there for hours on end, usually reappearing around three in the morning.
Had she been there on the night of Poppy’s death?
Even if she wasn’t responsible, she must have seen something. And yet the police were all but certain it was suicide.
Then there was the strange dead space that the architectural drawings had confirmed the existence of. What was in that space? And was that space the reason for Mordue’s midnight visits?
Mordue was hiding something. And after seeing her at Renner’s lighthouse, I was convinced that that something had to do with the ritual book. Somehow, the book was the key to everything, and it was time to tie all those loose ends together into one knot that would both solve Poppy’s murder and free Alice and Hafsah from the confines of hell.
And so it was between those hours of midnight and 3 a.m. that I decided to break into Mordue’s office.
My reasoning was this: various other faculty members had, at the start of the semester, a copy of the key to the North Tower. Mordue told me that those keys had been revoked in the wake of Poppy’s death, and so she was the only one with access. She’d also told me that she kept her key on her person at all times. But what about all the other keys, from the other staff? Surely she wouldn’t have had them destroyed, because what if her own was lost or damaged?
Those keys must still be in her office, which was locked whenever she wasn’t in it.
But that locked office had a window. And windows could be broken.
As I left, I locked our dorm from the outside, taking Alice’s key and knife with me while she slept. I’d managed to distract her from her murderous crusade that evening by taking her to the Grandstand for a game of backgammon, but I couldn’t risk her waking up, finding me gone, and heading over to the library to stab Feathering in the chest. Just normal roommate things, you know.
A little after midnight, I smashed into Mordue’s office window with a rock I’d found in a flower bed. It made a dull crack, the window fissuring around a small, round hole shaped like a bullet wound. The second blow shattered it fully, glass tinkling around my feet. But the hole was jagged and treacherous and not large enough for me to climb through, and it took several more perilous seconds to remove the worst of the massive glass shards before I could haul myself into the room over the festive poinsettia garland laid along the windowsill.
Once I was inside, I peered back out from behind the brocade curtain, checking to see whether anyone had heard the commotion and come to investigate. But the night was still quiet; just the distant bass of the Refectory and a couple of pops of laughter hanging on the breeze. Hopefully if anyone had heard the shattering, they’d assumed it was a pint glass broken among the drunken festive debauchery.
The rubies in my throat thrummed with something like pleasure; almost as though Sister Maria was telling me I was close.
Mordue’s office was dark but for some final embers glowing orange in the fireplace. There was a street lamp just outside the window, so there was plenty of light to see by. I immediately began to rummage through every conceivable hiding spot for the keys, but found to my dismay that all of her desk drawers were locked, and there was no key handily taped to its underside. An old-fashioned Father Christmas figurine peered curiously at me from beside her computer, as though the fact I was anything less than jolly in the month of December was utterly incomprehensible.
Giving up on the desk, I crossed to one of the tinsel-decked bookshelves with cabinetry on its bottom half. The brass-handled doors opened to reveal a squat grey safe with a black, six-digit combination lock.
Fuck, I thought. If I had Alice’s encyclopaedic memory of all things Carvell, I would’ve had plenty of important dates to try: the date it first opened, the date of Mordue’s appointment as dean, the date of Sister Maria’s death. Mordue’s birthday and graduation date. I tried the dates of all of the North Tower murders, which I found I was able to recall, but they didn’t work.
Just as I was wracking my brains for other ideas, there was the sound of footsteps approaching the door to Mordue’s office.
And then, awfully, impossibly, the sound of a key in a lock.
She was supposed to be in the North Tower.
Quickly as I could, I slammed the cabinet door shut and tucked myself behind one of the thick brocade curtains like they did in movies, pressing my back as tightly to the window panelling as possible.
The door opened, and then came the crackle of breath hitching in a nervous throat.
‘Whoever’s there, I can see you behind the curtain.’ It was a shaky female voice I didn’t recognise. ‘Come out or I’ll shoot.’
Shoot??
Fear twisting in my gut, I stepped out.
It was Mordue’s secretary, wielding an enormous hunting rifle with trembling arms, a look of wild terror on her mousy face.
If I were Alice, I’d make a dry remark about how unnecessary and escalatory the gun seemed, but my voice box was paralysed. I held up my hands as though under arrest.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘I’ve already called the police.’
Oh god.
Desperation had led me down some reckless paths, and now I was about to pay heavily. The police would be here in minutes; any call from Carvell would be treated as an emergency.