In shock after Robin kills Professor Lovell, Victoire and Ramy immediately pivot to logistics: keep the body hidden, claim contagion, and avoid crew scrutiny. Robin wants to confess, but Victoire argues they would all be condemned, and Ramy insists they stand together. Letty, pale but resolute, agrees to help.

They mop the blood, hide Lovell in a trunk, and at night haul it to the deck. Realizing the corpse will float, they lash weights by rope to the body and heave it overboard; it sinks, and Robin retches. The plan continues: for weeks they tell the crew Lovell is ill and dangerously contagious.

Maintaining the lie proves tense. A friendly cook accepts the story and offers ginger; Miss Smythe presses to examine Lovell, but Letty fends her off with propriety and “contagion.” Robin, consumed by guilt and fear, suffers sleepless nights and fleeting suicidal urges. When he tries to confess, Ramy stops him—slapping him back to sense—and argues that confession would doom them all. The crisis reconciles Robin and Ramy; Ramy offers moral solace without absolution.

They rotate breakdowns: Ramy catastrophizes gallows scenarios; Victoire needs calming at dawn; Letty proposes legal self-defence or help from her influential father. Ramy and Victoire reject these as dangerously naive, given who they are and whom they killed. Silence and consistency, they decide, offer the only safety.

After two months, London appears. They tell the captain Lovell went ahead to a physician and disembark unnoticed. They head to Lovell’s Hampstead house for the night, then plan to take the train back to Oxford. Though they briefly imagine fleeing abroad, they realize their lack of means, skills, and connections—and their deep dependence on Babel—binds them to return.