His fingers charted a lazy yet determined course along the inside of her dove-white thigh, the flesh warm and yielding, like new dough.

    She leaned toward him and kissed him, forcing her tongue between his lips.

    He tasted the cheap white wine and felt himself stir under her touch. His hand moved to her breasts, his thumb brushing over her nipples, the way she liked it.

    Sexual favors in return for blanket praise. Was it really that simple?

    He checked his thoughts, guilty that his mind was straying from the matter in hand.

    He needn't have worried.

    "You know," said Gloria, breaking free and drawing breath, "Hampshire it is. Screw the Battle of Britain."

    The note was waiting for him in his pigeonhole when he returned to college. He recognized the handwriting immediately. It was the same barely legible scrawl that adorned his weekly essays. The note read:

    Dear Mr. Strickland,

    Apologies for making this demand upon your busy schedule, but there is a matter I should like to discuss with you regarding your thesis.

    Shall we say 5 p.m. today in my office at the faculty? (That's the large stone building at the end of Trumpington Street, in case you've forgotten.)

    Warm regards,

    Professor Leonard

    Adam glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes to get across town. The bath would have to wait.

    Professor Crispin Leonard was something of an institution, not just within the faculty but the university as a whole. Although well into his seventies, he was quite unlike his elderly peers, who only emerged from their gloomy college rooms at mealtimes, or so it seemed, shuffling in their threadbare gowns to and from the dining hall, across velvet lawns whose sacred turf it was their privilege to tread. Few knew what these aged characters did (or had ever done) to justify the sinecure of a college fellowship. Authorship of a book, one book, any book, appeared to suffice, even if the value of that work had long since been eclipsed. For whatever reason, they were deemed to have paid their dues, and in return the colleges offered them a comfortable dotage unencumbered by responsibilities.