“It just happened, and no one saw it coming.” Miriam was fumbling in her pocket. She brought out the crumpled letter and read: “ ‘The suppliers have simply been so unreasonable, and although Daddy has been to Latakia again and again, he can’t find a good source anywhere—apparently the big medical companies are buying everything up before anyone else can—there’s absolutely nothing one can do—it’s too awful….’ ”
“Suppliers of what?” said Lyra. “Roses?”
“Yes. They buy them from the gardens over there and distill them or something. Attar. Attar of roses. Something like that.”
“Won’t English roses do?”
“I don’t think so. It has to be roses from there.”
“Or lavender. There’s lots of that.”
“They—I don’t know!”
“I suppose the men will lose their jobs,” Lyra said as they turned into Broad Street, opposite Bodley’s Library. “The men whose clothes smelled of roses.”
“Probably. Oh, it’s awful.”
“It is. But you can cope with it. Now, when we sit down, we’ll make a plan of what you can do, all the options, all the possibilities, and then you’ll feel better at once. You’ll see.”
In the café, Lyra ordered bacon and eggs and a pint of tea. Miriam didn’t want anything except coffee, but Lyra told George to bring a currant bun anyway.
“If she doesn’t eat it, I will,” she said.
“Don’t they feed you in that college?” said George, a man whose hands moved faster than anyone’s Lyra had ever seen, slicing, buttering, pouring, shaking salt, cracking eggs. When she was young, she’d greatly admired his ability to crack three eggs at once into a frying pan with one hand and not spill a drop of white, or break the yolk, or include a fragment of shell. One day she got through two dozen trying it herself. That had earned her a clout, which she had to admit she deserved. George was more respectful these days. She still couldn’t do the egg trick.
Lyra borrowed a pencil and a piece of paper from George and drew three columns, one headed Things to do, the next Things to find out, and the third Things to stop worrying about. Then she and Miriam, and their two dæmons, filled them in with suggestions and ideas as they ate. Miriam finished the currant bun, and by the time they’d covered the paper, she was almost cheerful.
“There,” said Lyra. “It’s always a good idea to come to George’s. St. Sophia’s breakfasts are very high-minded. As for Jordan…”
“I bet they’re not austere like ours.”
“Socking great silver chafing dishes full of kedgeree or deviled kidneys or kippers. Must keep the young gentlemen in the style to which they’re accustomed. Lovely, but I wouldn’t want it every day.”
“Thank you, Lyra,” said Miriam. “I feel much better. You were quite right.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“Go and see Dr. Bell. Then write home.”
Dr. Bell was Miriam’s moral tutor, a sort of pastoral guide and mentor. She was a brusque but kindly woman; she’d know what the college could do to help.
“Good,” said Lyra. “And tell me what happens.”
“I will,” Miriam promised.
Lyra sat there for a few minutes after Miriam had gone, chatting to George, regretfully turning down his offer of work in the Christmas vacation, finishing her pint mug of tea. But eventually came the time when she and Pan were alone again.
“What did he tell you?” she said to him, meaning Miriam’s dæmon.
“What she’s really worried about is her boyfriend. She doesn’t know how to tell him because she thinks he won’t like her if she isn’t rich. He’s at Cardinal’s. Some kind of aristocrat.”
“So we spent all that time and effort and she didn’t even tell me the thing she was worried about most? I don’t think much of that,” Lyra said, gathering up her shabby coat. “And if that’s how he feels, he’s not worth it anyway. Pan, I’m sorry,” she said, surprising herself as much as him. “You were just going to tell me what you saw last night, and I didn’t have time to answer before.” She waved to George as they left.
“I saw someone being murdered,” he said.
Lyra stood still. They were outside the coffee merchant’s, by the entrance to the Covered Market, and the air was full of the smell of roasting coffee.
“What did you say?” she said.
“I saw two men attack another man and kill him. It was down by the allotment gardens near the Royal Mail depot….”
As she walked slowly out into Market Street and headed back towards St. Sophia’s, he told her the whole story.
“And they seemed to know about separation,” he said. “The man who was killed and his dæmon. They could do it. She must have seen me on the branch, and she flew straight up—well, with an effort, because he was hurt—and she wasn’t frightened or anything, I mean, not frightened of me being alone, like most people would be. And he was the same.”
“And this wallet? Where is it now?”
“In our bookshelves. Next to the German dictionary.”
“And what was it he said?”
“He said, ‘Take it away—don’t let them get it—it’s all up to you and your…’ And then he died.”
“All up to us,” she said. “Well, we’d better have a look at it.”
* * *
* * *
They turned on the gas fire in her study-bedroom at St. Sophia’s, sat at the table, and switched on the little anbaric lamp, because the sky was gray and the light was gloomy.
Lyra took out the wallet from the bookshelf. It was a simple one-fold wallet without a clasp, the whole thing little bigger than her palm. There had originally been a raised grain in the leather, like that of morocco, but most of that was worn away to a greasy smoothness. It might once have been brown too, but it was nearly black now, and marked in several places by Pan’s gripping teeth.
She could smell it: a faint, slightly pungent, slightly spicy smell, like that of a man’s cologne mixed with sweat. Pan waved a paw in front of his nose. She examined the outside carefully for any mark or monogram, but there was none.
She opened the wallet and again found it perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary. There were four banknotes, six dollars and a hundred francs in all—not a large sum. In the next pocket she found a train ticket for the return journey from Paris to Marseilles.