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introductory lecture on the Entitlement Curriculum, but that was to be expected. You didn’t get to be a Professor of Education by being witty, avant-garde or even relevant. In fact, she’d noticed that 90 per cent of the courses she’d attended over the last five years were, to say the least, tangential.
    Where was that book she’d bought? Oh, God, yes. Page thirty-one. She opened it, refreshed her memory on the last paragraph she’d read and closed it again.
    ‘Anthea Westinghouse,’ she said aloud, ‘with the antique pistol because George had foully abused her daughter.’
    The room was a witness now to her brave stab of logic at solving the murder puzzle in the book. It watched, breathless, while she rummaged. Where the hell was it? A frown darkened her pretty, kiddy’s face and she threw the thing down. ‘Well,’ was all she was prepared to tell the room, ‘one out of three ain’t bad.’
    Her sentence was punctuated by a knock at the door. That would be that noxious little turd Gary with some organizational/administration bollocks for the morning. Only it wasn’t, she realized as she opened it. It was that noxious little turd Jordan, God’s vicar on earth.
    ‘Er … hello,’ he said, ‘Sally, may I … er … may I have a word?’
    He’d had several words over dinner. It was one of those unfortunate things. Margot Whoever – Sally hadn’t caught her name in the ice-breaking session, but she remembered she was an Art teacher from Maidstone – looked like fun, but she’d been buttonholed by Michael Wynn. Maxwell was off mooning with his lost love like something out of Lochinvar and that lesbian dwarf Valerie Marks was making a beeline for her, probably to discuss the vagaries of needlepoint. So she’d ducked down a table to find herself wedged between a stand of artificial flowers and Jordan Gracewell.
    ‘Well,’ Sally’s arm crossed her portico diagonally with a rigidity of its own, ‘it is a little late, Jordan,’ she told him.
    ‘Oh, yes, yes. I know. Only, it’s Liz. Liz Striker. I still can’t find her.’
    This was the B side of Gracewell’s record of life. The A side was the altogether more gripping theme of the place of incense in the modern Catholic Church.
    ‘You’ve tried her room again?’
    ‘Oh, yes. It’s directly above this one, funnily enough. I know because there’s a strange little kink out here in the corridor.’
    ‘Yes, I know,’ said Sally, stone-faced, but the
bon mot
was lost on the young chaplain of St Bede’s.
    ‘It’s identical with the one upstairs,’ he told her.
    Sally was on the point of expressing amazement that Jordan had a twin, but suddenly thought better of it and dropped her arm. ‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘you’d better come in, then.’
    He almost ducked under her flat chest in an effort to avoid touching it as he swept past her. No, swept was too strong a word for it. Crawled would be better. How did this man survive in a girls’ school?
    ‘Oh, it’s rather like mine,’ he said, surveying the bed, the wardrobe, the en suite.
    ‘Fascinating,’ and she snatched up the discarded knickers she’d worn earlier, throwing them into a drawer. ‘Er … can I offer you some coffee?’ Ever regretted anything instantly? Like putting your foot on a garden rake? That was how Sally Greenhow felt at that moment as the padre parked himself like a coiled spring on the arm of her chair. ‘Oh, please,’ he said.
    ‘Let me guess.’ She looked at him. ‘White. Two sugars.’
    ‘No, no, indeed.’ He fluttered his hands around. ‘One.’
    ‘Oh, you gay dog!’ she chortled, regretting that instantly too, and busied herself with the kettle.
    ‘It’s just that … well, I don’t want you to think I’m paranoid or anything
    Sally raised her eyebrows. It was as well perhaps that he couldn’t see her face.
    ‘… but not only have I not seen Liz since yesterday, but no one else has either.’
    ‘Thursday?’ Sally checked. ‘But I thought the