The Oxford Inheritance

by Ann A. McDonald

  Cassie swallowed back a lump in her throat. “Did you meet her?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “Oh yes.” Doris smiled. “Our Rose brought her around a couple of times, for Christmas, like, and at the weekends. She was American, like you,” she added. “So it was too far for her to go back just for the holidays. Lovely girl, smart too, like Rose. Those girls would chatter for hours, we couldn’t keep up.”

  Cassie nodded. This was another piece of her mother’s life, right here in this house. Moments that were gone, faded, as much a memory as Rose now.

  Charlie placed a reassuring hand on her knee as he leaned forward. “The thing is, Doris—I can call you Doris, right?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Well, the thing is, we’d love to chat to more of Rose’s friends. Find out more about her time at Raleigh.”

  “I’m sorry, love.” Doris shook her head. “It’s so long ago. And Margaret was the only one she brought round. I guess she was worried what they’d think. That lot are all so fancy,” she added. “But they were just wonderful after it happened. They gave her a beautiful service in that chapel of theirs. The whole college came out.”

  “I know,” Cassie breathed, remembering Evie’s service, still a raw wound in her chest. “When it happened . . .” Cassie paused. “Had you any warning at all? Some people can find the pressure a lot, the workload, the new environment.”

  Doris shook her head. “It was a shock to all of us, poor Margaret especially. She was just inconsolable after. She couldn’t go on there; she ended up going back to America. But Rose never said a word. Some people, maybe you can see the signs, but nothing seemed wrong. She was a little quieter, maybe,” she added, thoughtful. “I remember she came home for the weekend, just before. . . . She had a lot to think about, she said. They had exams coming up, and I think she’d had some kind of offer for a summer job she wasn’t sure about taking.”

  Cassie sat up, alert. “Did she say what kind of job?”

  Doris frowned. “I’m sorry, it was all so long ago. Maybe it wasn’t even a job, but an opportunity? Yes, that’s what she said. A life-changing opportunity, with important people.”

  Charlie scribbled in his notebook. “Is there anything else you can think of, anything she might have mentioned, any detail at all?”

  Doris let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, love, it was such a difficult time. I think we all tried just to forget. I’ll talk to our Pete, see if he remembers anything.”

  “Thank you,” Cassie told her, even as she felt a wave of disappointment. There was nothing new here, nothing that could steer them closer to any answers. She rose to her feet, and Charlie followed suit, grabbing the last few biscuits and stuffing them in his mouth. “You’ve been really helpful. I’m sorry to bring it all back.”

  Doris sighed. “It’s all right. I hope I can help with your research. Tragedy like this is just senseless. To lose a girl like that. . . . She had her whole life ahead of her.”

  She showed them into the entry hallway. Charlie passed her a slip of paper with his number. “If anything comes to mind,” he said.

  There was the sound of a key turning in the door. Doris turned, brightening. “That’ll be my brother now. Rose’s uncle. Maybe he can help.”

  The door swung open, and an older man ducked inside. “I can’t stay long,” he said, shaking out an umbrella, “They need me to cover the lodge tonight.” Then he looked up, and Cassie felt a shock.

  It was Rutledge, the porter from Raleigh College.

  26

  RUTLEDGE FROZE IN THE DOORWAY.

  “These nice people were just asking about Rose,” Doris explained, oblivious to his shock.

  “Is that right?” Rutledge cleared his throat. “Well, shame I can’t stay. Like I said, I have to be getting back.” He took a package of books from under his arm and gave it to Doris, avoiding Cassie’s gaze. “There you go, should keep you busy for the week.”

  “Thanks, love.” Doris leaned heavily on her walker. “Are you sure you can’t sit down a minute to talk? Your memory’s always been better than mine.” She turned to Cassie with a smile. “Practically photographic, this one. I swear, he can remember what we ate for tea in nineteen eighty-five.”

  Cassie’s head spun, but Rutledge didn’t linger to reply. “I’ll pop by tomorrow,” he said quickly, squeezing Doris’s hand. “Nice to meet you both.” He tipped his cap and then was gone, back into the rainy evening.

  “Thanks so much,” Cassie said quickly, lunging for the door. She could hear Charlie make his apologies behind her, but she didn’t pause for Doris to see them out. It had fallen dark while they’d been talking and now the streets were cold and damp, but up ahead, she made out the swiftly moving figure hurrying away. “Wait!” she called, her feet pounding after him on the pavement. “Please, wait!”

  Rutledge didn’t slow. She chased him to the end of the street, grabbing his arm and pulling him back around to face her. “You knew Rose?” she demanded, panting.

  He tried to pull away, looking around fearfully. “Lower your voice, girl. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Then what’s going on?” Cassie cried in frustration. “Why won’t you talk to me? What do you know?”

  “Let it be, love.” Rutledge gave her a desperate look. “You don’t want to see where this leads.”

  Cassie struggled to keep her temper down. “Just tell me!”

  Footsteps sounded on the pavement behind them, and then Charlie drew level, looking back and forth between them.

  “He knows,” Cassie told Charlie, desperate. “He works at Raleigh. He’s Rose’s uncle. He knows something.”

  Rutledge made to leave, but Charlie blocked him. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, a warning note in his voice. “We’ve been chasing shadows around this bloody town for too long.”

  A car’s headlights cut through the dark, slowly driving down the street. Rutledge flinched, turning his body away from the car and hiding low under his umbrella until it had passed. “I don’t want any trouble. You shouldn’t have gotten Doris mixed up in this.” He watched the car disappear, clearly shaken. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “But you do.” Charlie stepped in closer, looming above Rutledge. “Angie’s Caff, on Wiltmore Street,” he murmured, so quiet only the three of them could hear. “Be there in half an hour, or I’ll come knocking on Doris’s door every day this week. If the people you’re so worried about haven’t noticed her yet, they will soon. Come on,” he added, turning back to Cassie.

  “But—” she protested. “We can’t just—”

  “He’ll be there,” Charlie promised. “Won’t you?”

  Rutledge looked between them and finally gave a nod. “I wondered when you’d come looking,” he said to Cassie with a resigned look. “But then, you’re your mother’s daughter, aren’t you? Too clever for your own good.”

  His words haunted her as they walked back into town. “He won’t come,” she said, pulling her coat around her to protect from the cold. The streets were eerily empty of tourists and pedestrians, the city still half bare and sleepily recovering from New Year’s revelry.

  Charlie was walking fast, his head down. “We know where to find him. He’ll come.”

  Angie’s had one of the only Open signs on the street. It was the place Cassie had met Charlie before: steamy windows and fried food, and a bored-looking waitress who waved them to the back corner booth with barely a second glance. Cassie slid into a seat as Charlie checked around them. Save for an elderly couple drinking tea and a couple of middle-aged men reading the sports pages, they were alone.

  “I can’t believe he knows who I am.” She reached up to touch the cracked pendant at her throat, the lone memento from her mother. “All this time, he was right there. He could tell us everything.”

  “Are you sure you want to know?” Charlie asked in a careful voice.

  Cassie looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You saw the
guy,” he continued, looking uneasy. He glanced around them. “He was scared out of his mind. Jumping at the smallest sound. What you saw at Gravestone . . .”

  “I don’t know what I saw,” she protested.

  “You know it wasn’t good. Look, Cassie.” He reached across the table, catching her hand. “I’ve been looking into this for weeks now, and you know what I’ve found? Bodies.” His voice dropped. “Dozens of them. Hundreds, even. Maybe more we don’t even know about. Whoever they are, whatever they’re doing, they’re not fucking around.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  They broke apart. Rutledge was standing by their table, his expression set in a cautious grimace. He took a seat, falling silent until the waitress had taken their orders for tea. “Well then,” he said after she had departed, meeting Cassie’s eyes, “here I am.”

  She took a breath, not sure where to begin. “You know who I am. Who my mother was?”

  Rutledge gave a sharp nod. “Not at first, but, aye, I put the pieces together. You weren’t too careful, running around like that. Only one person I know would be interested in Margaret Madison’s files.”

  Cassie sat back, her mind racing. “The photo of them in my pigeonhole,” she whispered, “the School of Night quote on the back . . .”

  “We thought it was time you started looking in the right direction,” Rutledge said. “Knew who your friends really were.”

  “We?” Charlie picked up on the word. “Who else is a part of this?”

  Rutledge paused, giving Charlie a wary look. “Who’s this?” he asked.

  “He’s with me,” Cassie replied.

  Rutledge sized him up. “You trust him?”

  “You can say whatever you need, mate,” Charlie answered for her, scowling. “I’m not the one hiding anything here.”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Rutledge said calmly. His gaze flicked back to Cassie. “You too. You need to think about what you’re digging up here. Old bones, bad blood. Some things are better left buried.”

  “It’s too late to say that,” Cassie exclaimed, frustrated. “You’re the one who’s been sending me in circles for months now!”

  Rutledge frowned. “It wasn’t supposed to be you. It was Maggie we needed. They wanted her back here to end it all.”

  “Who are they?” Cassie demanded. “What are you talking about? Please,” she added, exhaling in a rush. “I need to know what’s happening. About the Mandevilles, and the society. Everything. You don’t know what this means to me. I’ve been looking for the answers for so long. I need to know the truth.”

  Rutledge searched Cassie’s expression, and he finally gave a nod. “They’ve always been here,” he began, leaning in so only they could hear. “Before my time, before any of us. It’s in the foundations, see. When they founded the college, they built it on something dark, some power, blacker than anything. They wanted knowledge, Raleigh and the rest, and they struck an unholy bargain to get it. I don’t know how it works,” he added, before Cassie could ask the question. “And I don’t want to. It’s safer that way.”

  “Safer?” she repeated. “People are dead!”

  “Aye, and my Rose is gone too.” Rutledge scowled at her. “So don’t you go judging me. I’ve paid the price for their wickedness, more than anyone.”

  Cassie fought to control her temper. “You said they wanted my mom to come back. Who did? And how did you even find her? She changed her name when she left, she never said anything.”

  “Who do you think helped her leave?” Rutledge gave her a sad smile. “But you’re getting ahead now. If you want to know the whole story, you need to hear everything.” He waited for the waitress to deliver their tea before he began. “I’ve been working at Raleigh since I was a lad. My father, he worked there before me, and his father too. It’s the same with a lot of the staff, we go back just as far as they do. You don’t notice us, the staff,” he added, with a twisted smile. “You all just take it for granted we’ll be there. Cleaners, groundskeepers, mailmen. We disappear into the background, but mark my words, we notice you. We see everything. Well, it wasn’t long after I started that I heard the stories. A society, hidden at the college. The School of Night. Taking things that weren’t theirs to take, doing things that went against man and God. Nobody said anything, not right out, but we all knew something wasn’t right. All those deaths. Suicides, they said. I found one of them myself. A boy what hung himself, took a belt to the back of the door frame.” He shook his head, pausing before he continued. “There was a rhythm to it, I saw it after a while. A few years would pass, and we’d wonder if this time it was over. But then, just when things got settled, the darkness would come again.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Cassie couldn’t help but interrupt. “If you saw . . . If you knew . . .”

  “And tell who?” Rutledge gave her a bitter look. “They’ve got the police in their pockets; everything gets swept under the rug. Besides, what is there to say? It’s open and shut, no evidence, nothing. And that’s our livelihood on the line.” He sighed, a scowl of self-loathing on his face. “It’s a devil’s bargain, it is. I watched, and I didn’t say a word. Until Rose.”

  Rutledge took a long gulp of tea. The cup shook as he placed it back on the saucer. “Aye, I knew things weren’t right. I begged that girl to apply somewhere else, anywhere but Raleigh. But she didn’t listen. She’d visited me there, see. She’d been picturing it since she was a kid, wouldn’t hear it any other way.” He sighed. “Even so, I thought maybe . . . It had been a quiet few years. Normal, like. But all that changed. There was a crowd of kids that year, there always is one: the top families, the ones who go way back. Your lot, it’s those Mandeville kids. Back then, it was their father and his crowd. Aristocracy, they used to be, and some of them still are. Rose got mixed up with them, your mum too. Parties, late nights, trips away—” Rutledge broke off to take a ragged breath. His eyes were watery. “By the time we realized, it was already too late. Rose was in deep, worshipped the ground they walked on. They had her thinking like she could be one of them, move in those circles. Your mom was the sharp one,” he added, giving Cassie an approving nod. “She worked out something wasn’t right with them, came to me to help. But still, Rose was too stubborn. She wouldn’t listen, not until . . . Not until it was too late.”

  “What do they do?” Charlie leaned in. “To make people kill themselves like that. I checked all the files; they’re clean. It’s suicide, every time. Nothing suspicious about it, nothing to raise any red flags.”

  Rutledge sighed. “I’ve seen a lot of things over the years. Had a lot of time to wonder. How someone can just lose her mind like that. Lose track of who she is, why she needs to stay alive. But maybe they didn’t lose their minds.” He paused, looking at them carefully. “Maybe someone took them.”

  Cassie caught her breath, remembering the group in the maze. The way the air shimmered around them, the energy that seemed to pulse. Away from their victims, toward Olivia and the rest. It was beyond science and logic, beyond anything she’d believed could exist.

  “They’re feeding off their minds, somehow?” Charlie creased his forehead in a frown.

  Rutledge shrugged. “These kids . . . It’s like someone takes something away from them and sends them spinning off the edge.”

  “Evie wasn’t herself,” Cassie said slowly. “Before . . . before she did it. She crashed so hard; one minute she was fine, the next it was like she was falling apart at the seams.”

  Rutledge nodded. “Rose too. They took something from her, she’s never been the same. Never was the same,” he corrected. “That’s why I helped your mum. Got her away from them before they could ruin her too. She knew too much; they would have never just let her go, not with you coming too. Running was her only hope.”

  If he’d known her mother then, helped her, she might have confided in him. Cassie’s heart sped up. “And my father?” she asked hopefully.

  Rutledge sighed
. “I never asked, and she never said.”

  Charlie fixed Rutledge with a stare. “So what do you want with Cassie? If you wanted to protect her all those years ago, why not just tell her the truth now?”

  “I didn’t want you here.” Rutledge looked to Cassie. “Let sleeping dogs lie, I say. But the others . . . The staff, they’ve had enough. It’s here again, the deaths. The cycle. They’re building to something big.”

  “The rising,” Cassie whispered.

  Rutledge looked at her sharply. “Where did you hear that?”

  “At the party. Olivia said ‘the rising is soon.’” Cassie shivered.

  Rutledge nodded. “From what we’ve figured out, that’s what it’s about, every twenty-five years or so. Some kind of ceremony or ritual, a time they come together and renew whatever unholy business they’re a part of. Seal the bond for the new generation, so they can go out into the world, and do . . . God knows what else.”

  His words sank through Cassie like a rock. She’d been so focused on this city, these few names, she hadn’t even begun to think about the bigger picture. “You mean, it’s not just Oxford?” she asked, her heart sinking.

  “They’re everywhere.” Rutledge gave her a sharp look, like she should have known better. “What do you think these people do once they graduate? Mandeville’s just the beginning. These people, they run companies, governments, all the world over. And this rising . . . it’s what gives them the power. We noticed that’s when the deaths start, around this rising ritual, like they’re building their strength, taking more than they should.”

  Cassie remembered what else Olivia had said. They needed an offering. Someone who would do anything for them.

  Rutledge cleared his throat. “The rising’s coming. That’s why we wanted your mom. She was one of the only people strong enough to get away from them. She resisted them, I don’t know how. That’s why we sent her that package, to make her come back and finish this for good. We’d almost given up hope when you arrived, asking questions, making a mess of things. Why didn’t she come?”