Smiling, she asked, “What is it?”
He glanced over his shoulder, and for a moment, she caught a glimpse of how he might have been before the war: a young man full of mischief. It was gone in an instant.
“Dr. Crawford isn’t bad,” he said. “But that Burnwell doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“He doesn’t?” Saffron asked, curious.
“He’s rude,” he said. “And always smoking, even in the lab.”
Saffron swallowed a groan. “Is Burnwell—he’s not Victor Burnwell, is he?”
Joseph straightened up and regarded her with wary surprise. “You know him?”
Victor Burnwell had been her classmate for years, and a foul man he was. Competitive, acerbic, and with disgusting habits he’dleveraged against her and the others in their classes. He’d lick his finger before turning each page in a report and spit into the eyepieces of microscopes to polish them, then scoff when others didn’t want to use them. She’d caught him flicking the butts of cigarettes into the greenhouse beds on more than one occasion.
“I do know him,” she said, barely refraining from wrinkling her nose. She hoped she was gone from the Path Lab before she had to cope with his odious presence again. “Forgive me for saying so, but I almost wish it had been Botany to lose its members rather than Horticulture.”
It was a crude, thoughtless thing to say, but it made Joseph’s mouth hitch up into half a smile and that snort of a laugh break free again. “Think you might be right, miss. Burnwell’d yell at Mary—or anyone else—when they told him to keep to the safety protocols. Refuses to wear a mask or gloves. Coughs and spits and smokes all the time. I told the director he’d burn down the building with those damned cigarettes of his. Burnwell is a right git.”
“No disagreements here.” She sighed. “I ought not to have said that, though. I can’t believe the horrible luck, to have both the chief and assistant of Horticulture die so unexpectedly. I almost worry for myself.”
Joseph merely shrugged as he returned to sweeping the bricks. “Nothing to worry about. Keep up with the safety protocols, and it’ll be fine.”
CHAPTER27
That evening, Saffron compiled all the information she’d found for Nick. He’d mentioned his intention to drop by the flat to catch up with her, but she had plans that night. She’d just give him the notes and be on her way to the university to meet up with Alexander. He’d telephoned the previous evening saying he wanted to see her. She was rather excited.
She forsook reading one of Elizabeth’s old copies ofThe Sketchmagazine, where she’d been catching up on installments of Agatha Christie’s latest mystery on each train ride to and from London, and jotted down all her thoughts about Harpenden’s Path Lab. She sketched out the characters of each of the staff members, including what she knew of Victor Burnwell. She half wished the wretched man was involved in this plot, but he and the chief of Botany had been away at another research station for almost a month. While she was confident Petrov had been suffering longer than that, according to the Path Lab staff and his autopsy, Wells had appeared not to have such a long illness prior to his death. It would be hard to prove the botanists had anything to do with their deaths from their post in Northumberland. Burnwell was a perfect villain, crude and disgusting. Mary Fitzsimmons’s cheeks had flushed an angry red when Saffron mentioned the man during lunch earlier that day. It appeared Saffron and Joseph were not alone in their dislike of him.
Elizabeth was not home when Saffron arrived, nor half an hour later when she was preparing to leave, so she wrote her a quick notesaying she was off to meet up with Alexander. She left behind her notes for Nick and asked her to pass them along if he showed up.
Anticipation made it hard to draw a full breath as the bus approached the stop. She and Alexander had stepped out a few times before his departure for Brazil in the spring, but now that they seemed to be a couple, it felt different, important. This date marked a change in their relationship, she was sure. A chance to start anew.
It did not bode well, then, that he was nowhere to be seen at the bus stop where they’d agreed to meet. She looked all around the circular drive surrounding the memorial statue and considered going into the train station to see if he’d sheltered from the misty rain. It was cold enough to make her fingers hurt within her gloves as they clutched her umbrella.
She didn’t believe he would have stood her up. She did believe he could have lost track of the time while working, however, so she made for the U.
The Quad’s pavement glistened gold in the glow of the lamplights. She hopped up the step and into the North Wing, peering around the entry to see if anyone was lingering. The place was empty.
She darted up the stairs, slipping slightly on the damp tile, and saw Alexander’s office light was on. She opened the door.
Just as she had in the nightclub, Saffron thought it was Alexander standing with his back to the door, looking out over the Quad. But she recognized Adrian after only a moment, for his bearing had not the strength or the quiet confidence of Alexander’s. He grinned widely as he turned toward the door, which made his identity more obvious.
Alexander was sitting on the couch just inside the door. He, too, smiled at her, but it was a smaller, more secretive smile. She loved it.
“Hello,” the brothers said with such synchronicity that she burst into laughter.
“Hello, Ashtons.”
“I was just leaving,” Adrian said. He was in front of her in a moment, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing the air above it with a cheeky wink. “It has been a true pleasure, Miss Everleigh.”
“Saffron, please,” she said. “And don’t hurry away on my account.”
“But I must, alas, or I will miss my train.”
“Your train?” Saffron repeated, glancing between the brothers in question.
“Adrian was told today that he could return home,” Alexander said evenly.
