If it had been safe I would have come and seen you before I left, but I thought it over and decided best not. You were kind when I was in trouble and I’m sorry I spoke as I did when you brought the papers about the scholarship for Sydney. I hadn’t got things straightened out then. Now I have. It would all take too long to write, so what I want to say to you now is, be careful. I don’t know how much you know, or if you realize what you are up against. Your accident should have warned you. And you know what happened to Wesley.

You can’t save Ethel, if that is what you’re thinking of. All you can do is look out for yourself, like I have.

I hope you won’t go showing this to anyone. I should know and it’d be the worse for you. I’ve broken with them, on account of the filth and the wrong ideas; but I always was a quick learner, and believe me, I know it all. They’re all in it and there’s nobody you can trust, so be warned by me and mind your own business, or better still get out of the place.

Yours sincerely,
Emily Frances Baines

Detached from its background it could have been a letter from someone slightly demented; as it was, it fell slickly into place, another little piece of the puzzle. With a quite ludicrous uplift of the heart, Miss Mayfield thought, I was right about her. She changed sides to save Sydney; she brought the intelligence and teachability which had enabled her to pass her professional examinations to bear upon the learning of the Black Arts. She had been disgusted by the ‘filth’. She wasn’t the convert they thought they had made.

In reverse, Emily Baines was rather like some of the Africans Miss Mayfield had known. Brought to the Mission by the yearning for education or the need for medical attention, they would learn the hymns, say the prayers, be baptized, take Christian names. Then, faced with a drought or some other disaster, they would relapse and go running to the witch doctor. But that didn’t cancel out what they had learned.

Emily Baines, a somewhat unwilling convert to the dark creed in the first place, had relapsed and deserted, but she had taken with her what she had learned. ‘I should know and it’d be the worse for you.’

Holding the neatly written sheet, she pursued the analogy. It was the letter of a Kikuyu, forced to take the Mau Mau oath and aware of its potency, who yet felt that he owed a little allegiance to some European who had been kind. She said it. ‘You were kind when I was in trouble.’

She looked again at the envelope. Her name and address were typed clearly, but not expertly or evenly. A two-finger job.