institute. His bank is one of the sponsors. He shook Hornberger’s hand! Can you imagine that?”
“Wine?” Giles isn’t interested in Nick Hornberger. He is offering me his glass, and I can see that he is shy about it, which in turn rouses my maternal instincts. Amongst others. If I kissed him now, the tangy aroma of the wine would be on both our lips and tongues.
“Oh, and the other mind-blowingly surreal thing that happened today: I caught Hornberger going through my desk! No idea where he got the key to my office, but he has one. So it probably wasn’t Corvin who broke in before, but Hornberger!”
Now he is interested. More, even, than in coming on to me.
“Did he threaten you?”
“Um…obliquely, I’d say. I didn’t know what he was looking for, still don’t, but he didn’t believe that. But one of the alums at the reception, I think she’s a professor at Tulane, told us that he raped someone, a friend of hers, when he was a student here. Allegedly raped someone,” I correct myself.
Giles gazes at me, waiting. His eyes are very bright and warm.
“What? What?” I nudge him.
“Do you really not know what he was looking for?”
“No! Something to do with the allegations, but—”
“I thought we’d found it. Tessa found it. And it was in your office.”
All I can remember when I think back to that day is Giles in his white shirt, and his shirtsleeves, and how he stumbled when—
“The folder. God! I’m thicker than shit in the neck of a bottle!”
Giles laughs. “Yes—the folder. The file that went missing when Nick was hired. DeGroot was held responsible, because he was Dean of Studies back in the seventies and had done his utmost to sweep the case under the rug. It explains why Nick was dead against the idea of a Homecoming reception at the English department. But Ruffin and a few others carried it; they may not even know why Homecoming is Nick’s most hated event in the calendar. Too many ghosts!”
“And the allegation? Did he really rape the girl back then?”
Giles shrugs and offers me the glass again; I shake my head.
“No idea,” he says. “His case isn’t in the file. Corvin must have taken it out, maybe taken it home. If you want to know what I think—”
“I do.”
“I think he did it. Then and now.”
“You have reason to think badly of him.”
“Badly, but not the worst. He didn’t hold a knife to Amanda’s throat.” Giles’s jaw clenches and relaxes. “Hornberger gets off on bending people to his will, but brute force isn’t the kind of triumph he wants. I’m sure he calls it seduction, but he messes with their heads. It’s part of his fun that the women afterward hate themselves even more than they hate him. I’m sure he hates women.”
He inhales as if he had a load of boulders on his chest. Who knows what scenes were played in the affaire Saunders-Hornberger-Cleveland. If Giles was a friend of mine, I would advise him not to tell his colleagues about Amanda and Hornberger. What purpose could it possibly serve? Dancey has the chair between his teeth now and won’t let go. Giles can take over from him when Horny Horn has had his horns clipped.
“Not Hornberger!” I exclaim, jumping with the sudden recollection. “Giles, where’s the file?”
“Why? What is it?”
“You do know he wasn’t called Hornberger then, don’t you?”
He stares at me, very still. Giles becomes very still when he is startled. “What can you mean?”
“He took his wife’s name when he married! He was called Eagleson! Is there a Nicholas Eagleson’s case in the file?”
Giles is still staring, thinking fast. “I only checked for Hornberger.”
“Well, come on then!” I draw him up by his hand—surely in an emergency, innocent physical contact is allowed?—and to my surprise he holds on to it.
“I don’t want you involved in this,” he says.
“I am involved! He rifled my desk for it!”
“That’s incidental.”
“Giles!” I fairly shout at him, all excited and impatient to have at least one of my Ardrossan mysteries solved.
“It’s no use yelling at me. Do what you like when you’re tenured, but for the next five years you must be as untainted by scandal as a newly hatched spring chicken!”
The implications of this harsh statement hit me as if one of the stone statues had been knocked against the back of my head. But this is a piece of his mind that I will have to chew in private, and not in the