Gaudy Night

“That was frightfully kind of you,” said Harriet. “What was the ghost dressed in?”

“Oh-one of those sort of dark-blue frocks with spriggy bits on it and a hat with a brim. Sort of thing most of your dons wear in the afternoon. Neat, not gaudy. Not smart. Just ordinary. It was the eyes I recognized. Made me feel all goose flesh. Honest. That woman’s not safe, I’ll swear she isn’t.” “It’s very good of you to warn me,” said Harriet again. “I’ll try and find out who it could have been. And I’ll take precautions.”

“Please do,” said Lord Saint-George. “I mean, Uncle Peter’s getting the wind up horribly. Gone clean off his oats. Of course I know he’s a fidgety old ass and I’ve been doing my best to soothe the troubled beast and all that, but I’m begi

“I’ll tell you what,” said Harriet. “You’d better come and dine in College tomorrow and see if you can spot the lady. It’s no good this evening, because so many people don’t turn up to Sunday supper.”

“Right-ho!” said the viscount. “That’s a dashed good idea. I’d get a dashed good birthday-present out of Uncle Peter if I solved his problem for him. So long and take care of yourself.”

“I ought to have thought of that before,” said Harriet, retailing this piece of news to the Dean; “but I never imagined he’d recognize the woman like that after only seeing her once.”

The Dean, to whom the whole story of Lord Saint-George’s ghostly encounter had come as a novelty, was inclined to be sceptical. “Personally, I wouldn’t undertake to identify anybody after one glimpse in the dark-and I certainly wouldn’t trust a young harum-scarum like that. The only person here I know of with a navy sprigged foulard is Miss Lydgate, and I absolutely refuse to believe that! But ask the young man to di

It was borne in upon Harriet that things were coming to a crisis. “Take precautions.” A nice fool she would look, going about with a dog-collar round her neck. Nor would it be any defence against pokers and such things… The wind must be in the south-west, for the heavy boom of Tom tolling his hundred-and-one came clearly to her ears as she crossed the Old Quad.

“Not later than half-past nine,” Miss Ward had said. If the peril had ceased to walk by night, it was still abroad of an evening.

She went upstairs and locked the door of her room before opening a drawer and taking out the heavy strap of brass and leather. There was something about the description of that woman walking wild-eyed over Magdalen Bridge and “clutching with her hands” that was very unpleasant to think of. She could feel Peter’s grip on her throat now like a band of iron, and could hear him saying serenely, like a textbook:

“That is the dangerous spot. Compression of the big blood-vessels there will cause almost instant unconsciousness. And then, you see, you’re done for-”

And at the momentary pressure of his thumbs the fire had swum in her eyes.

She turned with a start as something rattled the door-handle. Probably the passage-window was open and the wind blowing in. She was getting ridiculously nervous. The buckle was stiff to her fingers. (Is thy servant a dog that she should do this thing?) When she saw herself in the glass, she laughed. “An arum-lily quality that is in itself an invitation to violence.” Her own face, in the drowned evening light, surprised her-softened and startled and drained of colour, with eyes that looked u

She wondered whether her lover had seen it like that, through that hot unhappy year when she had tried to believe that there was happiness in surrender. Poor Philip-tormented by his own vanities, never loving her till he had killed her feeling for him, and yet perilously clutching her as he went down into the slough of death. It was not to Philip she had submitted, so much as to a theory of living. The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.

Could there ever be any alliance between the intellect and the flesh? It was this business of asking questions and analyzing everything that sterilized and stultified all one’s passions. Experience perhaps had a formula to get over this difficulty: one kept the bitter, tormenting brain on one side of the wall and the languorous sweet body on the other, and never let them meet. So that if you were made that way, you could argue about loyalties in an Oxford common-room and refresh yourself elsewhere with-say-Vie

The door rattled again, as a reminder that even a little boredom might be welcome by way of change from alarms. On the mantelpiece, a solitary red pawn mocked all security… How quietly A

Nevertheless, Harriet was uneasy. From her window she could not see whether any lights were on in the Library Wing. She unlocked the door and stepped out (yes-the passage-window was open; nobody but the wind had rattled the handle). A few dim figures were still moving at the far end of the quad as she passed along beside the te

Harriet went into the building. The door of Miss Burrows’s set stood open, and the lobby was dark. Miss de Vine’s door was shut. She knocked, but there was no answer-and it suddenly struck her as odd that the curtains should be drawn and no light on. She opened the door and pressed down the wall switch in the lobby. Nothing happened. With a growing sense of disquiet, she went on to the sitting-room door and opened that. And then, as her fingers went out to the switch, the fierce clutch took her by the throat.