Nancy, meanwhile, was fretting. ‘I shouldn’t have waited. She was out there. Hurt. Alone.’ Dulcie longed to comfort her – and to question the professor. But even as she was talking to voice mail, they heard a car pull up and suddenly the large detective was filling the doorway. Within minutes, he had gotten the basics and was sitting down with the professor to take her statement. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ she was telling Rogovoy. He had folded his ungainly body onto the sofa next to her and tried to banish the students and Nancy from the room. They had retreated as far as the open doorway, where they now stood, listening. ‘That’s what’s so maddening,’ Showalter was saying. ‘The last thing I remember was crossing the Common. I know I shouldn’t have – the concierge warned me. The moon was so bright, though. It was like daylight, and I thought it would be safe.’ Raleigh shook her head. They’d all been warned as undergraduates: the city Common, once used to graze cattle, was larger than it first appeared.
