“There’s a way to get out. The ground-floor bathrooms. There are bars over the windows, but one of the windows . . . the screws that hold the bars on have been loosened. All you have to do is open the window, reach outside and give them a little turn, and they fall right out. Then you can push the bars back enough to get out of the window. I know about them because Charlotte was the one who developed that system. She loosened the screws. We can’t, though. We’d get expelled.”

“They said anyone caught leaving school grounds might be expelled,” I said. “It is school grounds.”

“Yes, but we can’t be in Aldshot,” Jazza said, her voice getting lower and lower. “That’s just as bad. Well, not just as bad, but bad . . .”

Maybe it was simply that I had flown all the way to England and then been locked in a building for a month. I really, somewhat bizarrely, wanted to see Jerome. Jerome with his floppy curls and goofy Ripper obsession.

Jazza prowled the space between her bureau and the closet, stoking some internal fire. I had to add more fuel, and quickly.

“Who’s most likely to catch us? Charlotte. And is Charlotte going to report her own vandalism? Is she really going to rat on someone using the exit she made?”

“Possibly,” Jazza said.

“Let’s set that possibility aside, then,” I replied. “Come on. You know it would burn her if you had the guts to use it and she didn’t. And you’ve been good forever. No one is going to suspect you of doing this. So you have to.”

Some emotion took Jazza over for a moment. She got up and clenched her hands together, then studied the arrangement of her books with great intensity.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s do it. Let’s do it now, before I back out. Tell him we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

First, there was feverish changing. We pulled off our pajamas and threw them to the floor. I put on my Wexford sweats, while Jazza put on a pair of black yoga pants and a dark hoodie. We both tied our hair back and wore sneakers. Action wear.

“Wait,” Jazza said as we were about to step out the door. “We can’t wear the shoes. We were just downstairs in socks. It’s going to look like we’re up to something. In fact, we should put our pajamas back on. We’ll change downstairs in the toilets.”