Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Twenty Eight: Persuasion

Jack wanted to help – oh god, how he wanted to help! He shifted impatiently from foot to foot and tried to work his way to the edges of the crowd. But Alice held an arm out in front of his chest and told him to stay where he was.

If he hadn't hated her already – for the remark about Joel – he would have hated her for this. Her voice rooted him to the pavement while every instinct in his body screamed at him to be over there, where the fight and the blood and the broken glass was.

But now it was over – now that Professor Burgess was allowing Sam's colleagues to herd him warily in the direction of the station – Alice removed her arm and slipped through the crowd to the spot where Burgess stood.

Jack followed in her wake, feeling extremely disconnected. This wasn't like Oxford – all the blood and shattered glass and raised voices. It would almost have been a relief, if Burgess hadn't bitten Sam.

At the edge of the crowd, Constable Jones was trying to shoo everyone back, but his efforts didn't hamper Alice. He took one look at her and decided that the crowd needed controlling somewhere else. She was able to get right up behind Burgess, where he stood between his two police escorts.

"You've disappointed me," she said, in a low voice.

Burgess, walking between the two policemen, half-turned to look at her. He couldn't quite get her in his eye-line, but he obviously recognized the voice, because he turned pale and grew very still, as if straining to hear her.

Alice lowered her voice still further. "You will not hurt anyone else. You will co-operate with the police in every way until they leave you alone in your cell for the night. And then you will kill yourself."

Burgess let out a long, slow breath, as though the death-blow had already fallen. And, in a way, it had. With Alice, sentence was the same as execution. He was a dead man already, and he seemed to know it, because his head drooped between the two policemen, and they were obliged to half-carry him down the street into the waiting cab.

Jack wasn't surprised to find, on coming down to breakfast the next morning, that Burgess had hanged himself in his cell during the night. But the news still settled in his stomach like a lead weight. What was the point in looking for her weakness? What was the point in planning anything? Alice could order the world just the way she liked it without lifting a finger. 

He was slightly cheered by the news that Sam had survived. But following close on the heels of this were two further suicides. And, this time, he wasn't sure – that was the worst part of it. Gibson was dead, along with another of Burgess' co-workers at the Radcliffe Infirmary. And they might have done it out of panic or shame, or in an attempt to avoid justice.

But, equally, Alice might have paid them a visit – or even sent them a telegram. Would her terrifying powers of persuasion work in writing? Or did she have to physically be there? The idea that she could kill you with a hastily-scrawled note gave him a few sleepless nights in the coming year.

How did you defend yourself against a power like that? Worse still, how did you defend someone you loved against a power like that?

There were two certainties he took away from that night. The first was that Alice Darwin was the most dangerous person he'd ever met, and the second was that Sam could disobey her. They both influenced his actions when he was told, a year later, that Ellini would be coming to Oxford.

***

The amulets were the first things Sam saw when he finally felt brave enough to open his eyes. Bright gold discs and mystic symbols hanging by long ribbons from the ceiling. There was no breeze, but they were swaying hypnotically, and his eyes followed one of them – a Chinese dragon that had formed its body into a loop – for what could easily have been an hour.