One day when the food had been set before her, the Lady Elizabeth said, “Turnkey, am I still beautiful?”

And the turnkey answered:

“Not with the beauty in which I first saw you, Lady Elizabeth; for your cheeks are grown pale and your hair dull and coarse, and all your fair skin is blotched and dirty. Yet are you still very beautiful.”

“I have not seen my image for many months. Let me look in your eyes and see if I am still beautiful.”

So the turnkey thrust his face which was pock-marked and drawn with derision near to the face of the Lady Elizabeth; and there was desire in their eyes. And she put her hands in his hair and she leaned her breast against his and so the Lady Elizabeth, who had known the white arms of Antony, loved this turnkey who was ugly and low born. And Antony made no sound but lay in his corner burdened with his ague and the great chain which he could barely move; but in his eyes there was pain as is seldom seen in men.

And the turnkey said, “I will go and bring wine and we will make a feast for this new love which we have found.” And they spoke of this new thing which had come to them, and how they would entertain it; and the turnkey promised that she should leave the cell and live with him in his lodgings, where there should be water for her to wash herself and clean food for her to eat and a small courtyard to walk in, whence could be seen the tops of trees. And she cried, “O my love, return to me soon.”

Thus was she left with Antony.

And Antony was weak and burdened with his chain but there was pain in him which raised him from his corner; and he spoke no word but crept to Elizabeth, who had been his lover, silently, as the foul things on the walls. And she rose in alarm and made to escape him, but he caught at her ankle and drew her to the floor. And between his hands was the heavy chain and he stretched it across her throat and knelt on the two ends between his wrists so that the great links pressed into her neck. And Elizabeth, who had been his lover, struggled with him, but the pain lent him strength and he prevailed; and the struggling of her hands ceased and thus the Lady Elizabeth died.

And so the turnkey found them when he returned; and he uttered a cry and the flask of wine slipped from his fingers and scattered itself on the wet floor. And he ran to where the Lady Elizabeth lay and laid his hand on her breast and knew that she was dead. And spoke no word but left her with Antony and shut the great door and locked it and threw the key into the Castle moat. And he never returned to the cell to tend the body of Elizabeth, for he had known love there.

These things he told Cazarin, who had been educated at Paris, before the people of St. Romeiro killed him.

I have for a long time hesitated to tell this story of Edward. For six weeks past, since Edward late one evening interrupted my essay to grow expansive over my whiskey, I have done the manly thing and told no one—at least practically no one. But lately this wasting of “copy”—as all good journalists are wont to describe the misfortunes of their friends—has been for me a matter of increasing and intolerable regret; and now that I have learned from Anne “in a manner which it is not convenient to record,” much of which Edward and Poxe are ignorant, I find it wholly impossible to remain silent. I have obscured the identities of the chief actors so far as it has been in my power to do so. Edward at any rate I feel should be safe from detection.

The more I consider the nature of Edward the more incredible it all seems. He is to all outward showing the most wholly and over-masteringly ordinary undergraduate. Every afternoon, nearly, he may be heard ordering his tea down the Carlton Club telephone, “China tea, dry toast and butter and white cake, for one, please.” He is clothed in tweeds or flannels and usually wears an old Wykamist tie. No proctor would hesitate to recognize him as a member of the University.

Yet in this is Edward alone among all the other young men in Old Wykamist ties and the Carlton Club. Some few weeks ago he murdered his tutor, a Mr. Curtis. So very few people out of College were aware of Mr. Curtis’s existence that his sudden death was received without consternation. He was just no more seen, as undistinguished dons do disappear in large Colleges. After all it was to everyone’s interest to keep things quiet—Mr. Curtis’s sole relative, a brother with a large practice at Pangbourne, quite realized this when the Warden explained things to him. The police, I think, never heard of it; if they did it was quite soon forgotten. It was said by Poxe—though with how much truth I would not venture to judge—that pressure was brought on Cockburn to keep the affair out of the Isis (there was some doubt about his degree—the Dean of Edward’s College was examining it—but, as I say, I will not make myself responsible for anything Poxe says).

I do not know why Edward hated Mr. Curtis so much. I never had the privilege of meeting him but as I used to watch him moving about the quad, usually alone or with Anne, who is married to the Warden, I thought that he seemed, considering that he was a history tutor, a pleasant young man enough. But, however that may be, Edward hated him with an absorbing and unmeasurable hatred, so that at last he became convinced that Mr. Curtis’s existence was not compatible with his own. This was a state of mind into which any undergraduate might have slipped; where Edward showed himself essentially different from the other young men in Old Wykamist ties in the Carlton Club, was in his immediate perception that the more convenient solution was not suicide but murder. Most undergraduates would kill themselves sooner or later if they stayed up long enough, very few would kill anyone else.

Once decided upon, the murder was accomplished with the straightforward efficiency which one would expect from a student of the cinematograph and one who, until his second failure in History previous (through his inability to draw maps) had been a senior History scholar.

Mr. Curtis’s room was on the first floor just above the side gate. The side gate was closed at nine and the key kept in the porter’s lodge. The other key was kept in the Bursary. Edward knew that this was the key which he would have to take. He went into the Bursary at lunch time and found the Bursar there. The keys were hung on a nail by his desk. The Bursar sat at the desk. Edward began a story of a burned carpet; the Bursar became angry but did not move. He included the sofa; the Bursar stood up but remained at his desk. Edward threw a chair into the conflagration and then described how the three mini-max extinguishers which he had promised were all empty, “perhaps during the Bump Supper; you know, sir.” It was enough; the Bursar strode up and down thoroughly moved; Edward secured the key and hurrying to his room burned the carpet and the sofa and the chair and emptied the extinguishers in case the Bursar should come to investigate. His scout thought him drunk.

Edward then hurried to Mr. Curtis and secured an interview for ten that evening; he sent a note to the President of the Union desiring to speak that evening, it was on Thursday that these things occurred—and then feeling that he had accomplished a good work, lunched very quietly at the Carlton Club.

After lunch Edward set out on his bicycle and rode through much dust to Abingdon. There not at the first antique shop but at the smaller one on the other side of the square, he bought a dagger; at Radley he bought a stone and sitting under a hedge, he sharpened it. Returning with this in his pocket, he lay for a long time in a very hot bath. It was with considerable contentment that he sat down to eat dinner alone at the George—there were still several details to be thought out.