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as it approached, and the footboard connecting the platform to the carriage, into which they were energetically hoisted by a passing porter in a uniform with bright buttons. The effect of it all was that they were in a stateof effervescent delight until the very moment when calm returned, the whistle blew once again and the porter arrived to close the door, which separated them from their mother. Only then did the beginnings of dismay appear upon their little features, but there was no time to react, for the door clunked shut upon them, and I was left alone, feeling guilty and sorrowful, and infinitely grateful for knowing that after myself, nobody in the world could care for them better than Sarah.
    I could not accustom myself to the separation, the first of more than a few hours since their birth. I boarded my own train, to London, and sat in it nostalgically recalling all the months during which I carried them within me, full of hope and astonishment and dawning suspicion, reliving the hours of pain and ecstasy which brought them forth, and remembering Arthur’s face when the nurse finally opened the door to allow him entry to the bedroom, and confronted him proudly, carrying two little snugly wrapped bundles, one in each arm.
    These things are the pearls hidden at the heart of the outwardly dull-seeming oyster.
    And yet, there have been moments – many of them – when I have felt imprisoned by the walls of domesticity, and yearned for something more. Since I gave up teaching to be a respectable matron, it has happened to me, on occasion, to be submerged with ennui. More than once, since then, I have been saved from this state by people who, referred to me by other people in a quietly expanding chain, have brought me strange little problems to solve: a man who readhis wife’s diary and found himself cold with fear at what he saw there; a lady who slipped out of her own life, leaving no trace behind; a woman who lost her emerald, and never recovered it – for when I realised who had taken it and followed her onto the boat on which she meant to depart forever, she saw me approaching, understood instantly and, slipping it out of her pocket, flung it impetuously into the flashing waves.
    But murder is something that I have not encountered since the strange case of Mr Granger’s death before my marriage. My mind roved into the past, remembering the facts of that case, and then, four years earlier, those other murders through which I first met Arthur. Eight years! It is hard to believe. My mind wandered on to Emily and the telegram I had just received from her. She was just a child of thirteen back then. I remember her so well, already grave and intelligent far beyond her years, a penetrating intellect and an innate, unswerving sense of justice. I have not seen her much since my marriage, and not at all since last summer, when she shocked her mother by announcing her intention to continue her studies at the University of London.
    Cambridge, of course, does not allow women to obtain doctorates, even if they
do
achieve Wrangler status at the Tripos. One of the best young women students of mathematics in Cambridge ever, Grace Chisholm, who had completed her undergraduate course of study at Girton three years earlier than Emily, was obliged to leave for Germany in order to obtain a doctorate. I had thought thatEmily would follow in her footsteps, but she has other ideas. Having discovered that women may earn a doctorate at the University of London by enrolling at Queen’s College, she has decided to follow this path. Indeed, she has realised that although this college itself is actually destined for the training of highly educated governesses, enterprising young women may manage to follow courses or receive tutoring from professors at King’s or at Cambridge, and thus proceed to the highest levels of study. Certainly few girls have accomplished this feat as yet, but Charlotte Scott of Girton did it more than ten years ago,