Enigma

stroke.
    'Good heavens—morning—Mr Jericho—sir .. .'
    'Are there any letters for me, Mr Kite?' Jericho's voice was firm enough, but he seemed to sway slightly and held on to the counter like a sailor who had just stepped ashore after a long voyage. He was a pale young man, quite short, with dark hair and dark eyes—twin darknesses that served to emphasise the pallor of his skin.
    'Not as I've noticed, sir. I'll look again.'
    Kite retreated with dignity to the alcove and tried to iron out the damp envelope with his sleeve. It was only slightly crumpled. He slipped it into the middle of a handful of letters, came out to the front, and performed—even if he said so himself—a virtuoso pantomime of searching through them.:
    'No, no, nothing, no. Ah, yes, here's, something. Gracious. And two more.' Kite proffered them across the counter. 'Your birthday, sir?'
    'Yesterday.' Jericho stuffed the envelopes into the inside pocket of his overcoat without glancing at them.
    'Many happy returns, sir.' Kite watched the letters disappear and gave a silent sigh of relief. He folded his arms and leaned forward on the counter. 'Might I hazard a guess at your age, sir? Came up in 'thirty-five, as I recall. Would that make you, perhaps, twenty-six?'
    'I say, is that my newspaper, Mr Kite? Perhaps I might take it. Save you the trouble.'
    Kite grunted, pushed himself back up on his feet and fetched it. He made one last attempt at conversation as he handed it over, remarking on the satisfactory progress of the war in Russia since Stalingrad and Hitler being finished if you asked him -but, of course, that he, Jericho, would surely be more up to date about such matters than he, Kite . . . ? The younger man merely smiled.
    'I doubt if my knowledge about anything is as up to date as yours, Mr Kite, not even about myself. Knowing your methods.'
    For a moment, Kite was not sure he had heard correctly. He stared sharply at Jericho, who met his gaze and held it with his dark brown eyes, which seemed suddenly to have acquired a glint of life. Then, still smiling, Jericho nodded 'Good morning', tucked his paper under his arm and was gone. Kite watched him through the lodge's mullioned window—a slender figure in a college scarf of purple and white, unsteady on his feet, head bowed into the wind. 'My methods,' he repeated to himself. 'My methods?'
    That afternoon, when the trio gathered for tea as usual around the coke stove, he was able to advance a whole new explanation for Jericho's presence in their midst. Naturally, he could not disclose how he came by his information, only that it was especially reliable (he hinted at a man-to-man chat). Forgetting his earlier scorn about love letters, Kite now asserted with confidence that the young fellow was obviously suffering from a broken heart.

2

    Jericho did not open his letters immediately. Instead he squared his shoulders and tilted forwards into the wind. After a week in his room, the richness of the oxygen pummelling his face made him feel lightheaded. He turned right at the Junior Combination Room and followed the flagstone path that led through the college and over the little hump-back bridge to the water meadow beyond. To his left was the college hall, to his right, across a great expanse of lawn, the massive cliff-face of the chapel. A tiny column of choirboys was bobbing through its grey lee, gowns flapping in the gale.
    He stopped, and a gust of wind rocked him on his heels, forcing him half a step backwards. A stone passageway led off from one side of the path, its arch grown over with untended ivy. He glanced, by force of habit, at the set of windows on the second floor. They were dark and shuttered. Here, too, the ivy had been allowed to grow unchecked, so that several of the small, diamond-shaped panes were lost behind thick foliage.
    He hesitated, then stepped off the path, under the keystone, into the shadows.
    The staircase was just as he remembered it, except that now this wing of the college was closed and the wind had blown dead leaves into the well of the steps. An old newspaper curled itself around his legs like a hungry cat. He tried the light switch. It clicked uselessly. There was no bulb. But he could still make out the name, one of three painted on a wooden board in elegant white capitals, now cracked and faded.
    TURING, A.M.
    How nervously he had climbed these stairs for the first time—when? in the summer of 1938? a world ago—to find a man barely five years