The Great Ellini (Book One of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Eight: John Danvers vs Alice Darwin

For a few hours that day, while the chores piled up, and the county cricket match went on without him, John Danvers sat at the kitchen table below stairs, staring at the glass of whisky he had poured himself, and wishing he couldn't remember his mother's lectures about 'the demon drink'.

He had never allowed himself to have more than the odd glass of sherry at the end of a meal, but now, it seemed, would be a good time to descend into drunken debauchery, if he could only forget his principles and lift the glass to his lips.

Like every sportsman, he had a horror of unfair contests, and, to his mind, contests didn't come much more unfair than John Danvers vs. Alice Darwin.

Despite what Dr Petrescu might think, Danvers wasn't stupid. He had never considered Mrs Darwin to be a harmless woman—just a good one. On all the numerous occasions when she might possibly have been insulting him, he hadn't decided she wasn't because he hadn't thought her capable of it. He knew how clever she was—and knew, too, that she was so far above him in grace, nobility, and intelligence that she was almost entitled to insult him. He had just always assumed that her goodness was as bountiful as these other characteristics.

And he still believed that, despite the things he'd overheard while he'd been stationed in the servants' corridor. Of course, it was hard to understand how a good woman could knowingly take away a man's memories of his loved one and refuse to give them back. Especially when the man in question was Jack—the most affable fellow you could hope to meet—and the loved one in question was the charming, timid Miss Syal.

But it was just as Dr Petrescu had said—she had seen something that she thought was more important than goodness. She had become so absorbed in her work that she had lost all perspective... and human decency...

Well, whatever she had lost, it didn't make her a bad person. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and all that. And surely the best way to atone for somebody else's sins was to ensure they didn't do any actual damage.

If Jack's memories of Miss Syal had been stolen away by chemistry, then presumably the solution also lay in chemistry—in some kind of potion or antidote. But how was he to even ask the University's chemists for advice, when Mrs Darwin was friends with them all? She would find out instantly if he started asking questions. And then perhaps she would steal away his memories. Or dispense with his services, which would be just as bad.

It wasn't until Sarah came in with a set of freshly laundered table linen, and started gossiping to the cook about Dr Petrescu's new research paper, that a kind of solution began to occur to him.

The academics were not the only people in Oxford who cared for science.

Sarah could gleefully name all the demon artefacts in Dr Petrescu's collection. All the scouts and porters in the city had an opinion on the research being carried out within the walls of their particular college. The servants often knew as much about a professor's work as he did.

And Danvers knew the servants at the Chemistry Faculty extremely well. In fact, he had run one of them out at a match last Saturday. There was no better way of getting to know someone than that.

***

Sundays in Oxford were neatly divided between heaven and hell. The mornings were for church, and the afternoons for the Little Mother.

There were no hymns or sermons. The new-breeds and their friends simply milled around the field in which Eve's glass coffin stood—gossiping, exchanging pleasantries, admiring each other's children, and insisting that they took after the human side of the family. Everyone dressed in their Sunday best and paraded around the field, showing off their frockcoats and pleated gowns to full advantage. It was the kind of solid, traditional, respectable scene which made Danvers feel heartily glad to be an Englishman.