Mr Morris found Mariana a room. He was the head porter.

Mariana was surprised to meet him at the porter’s lodge. She remembered old Mr Morris well: he was an elderly, avuncular man, popular around college, famously lenient with undergraduates.

But this Mr Morris was young, under thirty, tall and powerfully built. He had a strong jaw and dark brown hair, parted on one side and slicked down. He was dressed in a dark suit, a blue-and-green college tie, and black bowler hat.

He smiled at Mariana’s look of surprise.

‘You look like you were expecting someone else, miss.’

Mariana nodded, embarrassed. ‘I was, actually – Mr Morris—’

‘He was my grandpa. He passed away a few years ago.’

‘Oh, I see, I’m sorry—’

‘Don’t worry. Happens all the time – I’m a pale copy, so the other porters often remind me.’ He winked and tipped his hat. ‘This way, miss. Follow me.’

His polite, formal manners seemed to belong to a different age, Mariana thought. A better one, perhaps.

He insisted on carrying her bag, despite her protestations. ‘That’s the way we do things, here. You know that. St Christopher’s is one place where time stands still.’

He smiled at her. He seemed entirely at ease, with an air of total assurance, very much lord of his domain – which was true of all college porters, in Mariana’s experience, and rightly so: without them to run the college on a day-to-day basis, everything would quickly fall apart.

Mariana followed Morris to a room in Gabriel Court. It was the same courtyard where she had lived as a student in her final year. She glanced at her old staircase as they passed it – at the stone steps she and Sebastian had run up and down a million times.

She followed Morris to the corner of the courtyard – to an octagonal turret built from slabs of weathered, stained granite; it housed a staircase leading to the college guest rooms. They went inside, and up the oak-panelled circular stairs – up to the second floor.

Morris unlocked a door, opened it, and gave Mariana the key.

‘There you go, miss.’

‘Thank you.’

She walked in and looked around. It was a small room – with a bay window, a fireplace, and a four-poster oak bed with twisted barley-sugar bedposts. The bed had a heavy chintz canopy and curtains all the way around. It looked a little suffocating, she thought.

‘It’s one of the nicer rooms we have available for old students,’ said Morris. ‘A little on the small side, perhaps.’ He placed Mariana’s bag on the floor by the bed. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable.’

‘Thank you, you’re very kind.’

They hadn’t discussed the murder, but she felt she needed to acknowledge it in some way – mainly because it was constantly in her thoughts.

‘It’s a terrible thing that’s happened.’

Morris nodded. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘It must be extremely upsetting for everyone in college.’

‘Yes, it is. I’m glad my old grandpa didn’t live to see it. Would have finished him off.’

‘Did you know her?’

‘Tara?’ Morris shook his head. ‘Only by reputation. She was … well known, let’s say. Her and her friends.’

‘Her friends?’

‘That’s right. Quite a … provocative group of young women.’

‘“Provocative”? That’s an interesting choice of word.’

‘Is it, miss?’

He was being deliberately coy, and Mariana wondered why.

‘What do you mean by it?’

Morris smiled. ‘Just that they’re a little … boisterous, if you take my meaning. We had to keep a firm eye on them, and their parties. I had to shut them down a few times. All sorts of goings-on.’

‘I see.’

It was hard to read his expression. Mariana wondered what lay beneath his good manners and genial demeanour. What was he really thinking?

Morris smiled. ‘If you’re curious about Tara, I’d talk to a bedder. They always seem to know what’s going on in college. All the gossip.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, thank you.’

‘If that’s all, miss, I’ll leave you in peace. Good night.’

Morris walked to the door and slipped out. He closed it silently behind him.

Mariana was alone at last – after a long and exhausting day. She sat on the bed, drained.

She looked at her watch. Nine o’clock. She should just go to bed – but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She was too agitated, too upset.

And then, as she unpacked her overnight bag, she found the slim volume of poetry Clarissa had given her.

In Memoriam.

She sat on the bed and opened it. The years had dehydrated the pages, warping and stiffening them, leaving ripples and waves. She cracked open the book and stroked the rough pages with her fingertips.

What had Clarissa said about it? That she would have a different perspective on it now. Why? Because of Sebastian?

Mariana remembered reading the poem as a student. Like most people, she was put off by its immense length. It was over three thousand lines long, and she’d felt a huge sense of achievement just to have got through it. She didn’t respond to it at the time – but she was younger then, happy and in love, and in no need of sad poetry.

In the introduction by an old scholar, Mariana read that Alfred Tennyson had an unhappy childhood – the ‘black blood’ of the Tennysons was infamous. His father was a drunk and a drug addict, and violently abusive – Tennyson’s siblings suffered from depression and mental illness, and were either institutionalised or committed suicide. Alfred fled home at the age of eighteen. And like Mariana, he stumbled into a world of freedom and beauty in Cambridge. And he also found love. Whether the relationship between Arthur Henry Hallam and Tennyson was sexual or not, it was obviously deeply romantic: from the day they met, at the end of their first year, they spent every waking moment together. They were often seen walking hand in hand – until, a few years later, in 1833 … Hallam suddenly died from an aneurysm.

It was arguable that Tennyson never fully recovered from the loss of Hallam. Depressed, dishevelled, unwashed, Tennyson gave in to his grief. He fell apart. For the next seventeen years, he grieved, writing only scraps of poetry – lines, verses, elegies – all of it about Hallam. Finally, these verses were collected together as one enormous poem. It was published as In Memoriam A.H.H. and quickly recognised as one of the greatest poems ever written in the English language.

Mariana perched on the bed and began to read. She soon discovered how painfully authentic and familiar his voice sounded – she had the strange, out-of-body sensation this was her voice, not Tennyson’s; that he was articulating her inexpressible feelings for her.

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

Just like Mariana, a year after Hallam’s death, Tennyson made the trip back to Cambridge. He walked the same streets he had walked with Hallam; he found it ‘felt the same, but not the same’ – he stood outside Hallam’s room, seeing ‘another name was on the door’.

And then Mariana stumbled on those lines that had become so famous they passed into the English language itself – coming across them here, buried amongst so much other verse, they retained their ability to sneak up behind her, take her by surprise, and leave her breathless:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

’Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all …

Mariana’s eyes filled with tears. She lowered the book and looked out of the window. But it was dark outside, and her face was reflected back at her. She stared at herself as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Where now? she thought. Where are you going?

What are you doing?

Zoe was right – she was running away. But where? Back to London? Back to that haunted house in Primrose Hill? It was no longer a home – just a hole for her to hide in.

Zoe needed her here, whether she admitted it or not; Mariana simply couldn’t abandon her – that was out of the question.

She suddenly remembered what Zoe had said outside the chapel – that Sebastian would tell Mariana to stay. Zoe was right.

Sebastian would want Mariana to stand her ground, and fight.

Well, then?

Her mind went back to Professor Fosca’s performance in the courtyard. Perhaps ‘performance’ was a good word. Was there something a little too polished about his delivery, a little rehearsed? Even so, he had an alibi. And unless he had persuaded six students to lie for him, which seemed unlikely, he must be innocent …

And yet—?

Something didn’t add up. Something didn’t make sense.

Tara accused Fosca of threatening to kill her. Then … a few hours later, Tara was dead.

It wouldn’t hurt to stay for a few days in Cambridge, and ask a few questions about Tara’s relationship with the professor. Professor Fosca could certainly bear some investigating.

And if the police weren’t going to pursue him, then perhaps Mariana – as a debt of honour to Zoe’s friend – could listen to this young woman’s story … and take her seriously.

If only because no one else did.