The Victim in Victoria Station Read Online Free Page B

other—where are you from, what do you do, are you married, do you have children, et cetera. He was from California. I remembered that, because I have family there. And he worked in—
    Of course! He worked in Silicon Valley somewhere, and he worked with computers! My memory grudgingly released details, a few at a time. Bill’s concern was, specifically, computer software. He was a partner in a small but growing company. That much I had understood. He had told me in great detail exactly what his company’s software did, and why it was so wonderful, and how the tiny two-man operation had grown so rapidly into an international concern. That part hadn’t made sense to me even at the time, so of course I couldn’t remember much. I know very little about computers, which fascinate and scare me at the same time. I did remember, though, that he had told me he’d come to England to look into problems in the London office. Had he used the phrase “growing pains,” or was that simply the impression I’d gained from what he did say?
    I sat back, rather pleased with myself. I not only had a few facts in front of me, dredged up from my uncooperative mind, but I had an idea. Its name was Nigel Evans.
    Nigel Evans was a graduate student at Sherebury University and a good friend of mine. I’d met him my first Christmas in Sherebury, when I’d been instrumental in saving him from something pretty unpleasant. He’d often said he wished he could do something for me. Well, now was his chance.
    For Nigel, at age twenty-something, was a shark at computers. He was doing research in history, but he also worked part-time in the university’s Computer Centre. He had at one time told me exactly what he did there, but of course the jargon had gone in one ear and out the other. I did know, because his delightful young wife, Inga, had told me, that Nigel subscribed to virtually every computer magazine known to man, and knew more about what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were doing than he did about their neighbors. Inga, greatly to her amusement, had had to explain who Gates and Jobs were.
    Nigel was my source of information. And Nigel was the son-in-law of my favorite pubkeepers, the Endicotts at the Rose and Crown, just on the other side of the cathedral. I looked at the kitchen clock. Nearly noon, and I’d had no breakfast. All right, there was no time like the present. I picked up my umbrella and my purse, plucked a rainproof hat off one of the pegs in the hallway, and headed for the gate at the end of my street that led into the Cathedral Close.

3
    D espite the rain, I dillydallied a bit on the walk to the cathedral, through it, and out again to the Rose and Crown. My leg ached enough that a slow pace seemed wiser, especially over rain-slick paving stones, but then I always like to take my time in and around the cathedral. I still have to pinch myself now and then to make sure I’m not dreaming, that I really do live next door to all that age and beauty and magnificence. I never want to get used to it, take it for granted.
    It wasn’t a good day for pausing outside to look up at the buttresses and pinnacles, but once I was inside the church, I followed my usual practice of wandering idly for a few minutes, trying to find some lovely detail I hadn’t noticed before. Today a small stained glass window in the south aisle caught my eye, and I was puzzling over it when the Dean’s wife appeared at my elbow.
    â€œHe’s very gorgeous, our Satan, isn’t he?” she said.
    â€œAlmost too gorgeous,” I said, looking at the feathers of purple and scarlet and gold that were flying from the deposed angel’s wings as he fell headlong from heaven. “He actually looks very attractive, if it weren’t for those eyes.”
    â€œOh, but Satan
is
attractive! Proud and bold and beautiful—the angel of the morning, you know. Evil always has to be gaudier and more