Brenda didn't speak. Geoffrey had obviously seen through the cunning attempt to betray him into indiscretion, and likewise kept quiet. Ivor said he'd like to be told.
'All right.' Ed looked through a ring-spine notebook, drew the telephone towards him and began to dial. While he was doing so he said without looking round, 'Ivor, go tell the folks we'll be starting late, like fifteen minutes. We're having .... administrative problems. That'll hold 'em..... Good morning, I'm inquiring after a Miss Gambeson, a Miss Janet Gambeson who was admitted as a casualty around five o'clock this morning..... No, I'm afraid I don't.' He turned towards Jake. 'Her name isn't Kelly. I doubt that it's Janet either. Or Gambeson. Not that it matters worth a damn what she calls herself..... Yes?..... Thank you.' He rang off. 'She's still unconscious. Just like we said.'
Ivor had come back in time to hear this. 'Well, that's something.'
After a pause, Ed said pleasantly, 'That's all we need you for, Brenda, but we'd like Jake to stay.' When she looked inquiring, he added, 'There's a little bit of digging we'd like to do about Kelly.'
'I wouldn't mind staying for that too, unless you....'
'No no, fine, you stay if you want, you'll probably be able to help. Now Frank, do you want to carry the ball for a bit?'
'Thank you, Ed.' Rosenberg did want to. He didn't actually grasp the lapels of his unsightly cream-coloured linen jacket, but his tone made up for that. 'Now as some of you may know, when a person of this kind enters a suicidal situation there are two main aims or objectives. One is to arouse attention and concern, the so-called cry for help. The other objective is to carry out an act of revenge on some other person, usually for a sexual or family reason, to make that other person feel guilty, anxious and so on. An invariable accompanying feature is that the subject takes very careful precautions against dying. If that does happen, it's an accident. Something has gone wrong—the person in the next room doesn't smell the gas, the rope round the neck doesn't break.'
Jake had now identified the subject of the window. The curved wand was a bow, its bearer was Artemis, the portico was that of her temple at Tauris, the girl was Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the beast was the deer supernaturally substituted for her by Artemis to forestall her sacrifice at Aulis. Shockingly rendered, but then. For a moment he felt pleased with himself.
'Now I strongly suspect,' continued Rosenberg, sounding very Irish for some reason, 'that that was what happened in this case, but I don't know what went wrong. If that second person, the one on whom an act of revenge was intended, if he exists, who is he? He might be somebody we don't know of, somebody who was supposed to telephone at midnight, say, but telephones are too unreliable and I just don't believe it. Since this happened here, I strongly suspect that the second person—if he exists—is also here. Here in this room. I've .... eliminated Lionel.'
'I'm your man,' said Jake at once. 'She asked me to come and see her some time after midnight to be shown what she called a kind of letter. Which it was in a sense. I talked it over with my wife and decided it would be safer not to go.'
There was silence. Ivor looked incredulous, Geoffrey puzzled for once in his life. Brenda glanced at Jake and gave him an approving nod and smile. Ed did the same in his thank-Christ-quite-different manner and said,
'Good, Jake. Excellent. I hope you're not feeling bad about it? We all understand why you didn't go along. None of us would have—I hope. You were absolutely right not to.'
'How can you say that after what's happened? 'Of course' I'm feeling bad about it.'
'Jake, you mustn't, you mustn't!' Ed spoke with great and impressive earnestness. 'Can't you see, you idiot, it's what she wants, it's her malice and her awful..... You're falling for it, you're playing it her way by feeling bad. She's 'sick' Jake, it's not like you've mistreated some normal human being as we all do all the time and pay the penalty. See it for what it is, a vicious child's game with you cast as loser. Have the flexibility to.... oh, God.'
'She won't die, darling,' said Brenda. 'You can be quite certain of that. I'm sure there are accidents as Dr Rosenberg says, but Kelly isn't going to have one, she's too bright in the way she's bright. You said last night, I mean earlier this morning, you said she'd have found out about the dose. Indeed she would, she'd have found out what was a completely safe dose, and it doesn't matter to her if it's a laughably safe dose and everybody knows it was that 'afterwards'. She'll have had her hour and made her point and be on to something else by then.'
'Right, Brenda. Very good.'
For a moment Jake tried to push out of his mind the memory of a weeping face, then stopped trying. He had wondered at the time what Kelly had been 'expressing' at Mr Shyster's; now he knew. Hatred. Of whom or what? Of self. But there could be no such thing: all that could be meant was the hatred felt by one part of the self for another. Perhaps in her that hating part was powerless, able to do no more than look on aghast at the acts the other displayed and to grieve at them. How dismal, if true.
'Er, may I ask a question?' This was Geoffrey. He was frowning. 'There's something I'm afraid I can't quite follow.' (Like the arrow to the Gents, you sodding moron, thought Jake.) 'If, er, if Kelly was revenging herself on Jake, what was she revenging herself for, I mean because of what? Had Jake offended her or something?'
'Yes I had. She tracked me down in my rooms in Oxford and offered herself to me, Christ, bloody well tried to rape me, and I .... fended her off in a very ungraceful, ungracious way, and she called me every filthy name she could lay her tongue to and said everything she could think of that she thought might hurt me....' He turned to Brenda and said, 'I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, I wish I had. I was going to and then it sort of got too late.'
'I understand perfectly.'
There was an edge to her tone he didn't much care for but he forgot about that when Ed, who had been nodding slowly and sapiently in time with Rosenberg, butted in by saying,
'Then I guess we got the hysterics and tears and self-reproaches bit, right?'
'Right, I mean yes. And then, I suppose it was the pathetic bit.'
More nodding. Geoffrey held up his hand like a schoolboy. 'Er..... It must have been a very unpleasant experience for you.'
'Good, I'm glad I managed to get that across.'
'Well then, why did you come here when you must have known you'd be bumping into her?'
'Because she asked me to,' said Jake, raising his voice. 'Because she came round and saw me and did her
