Blood Will Tell

by Jeanne M. Dams

  It should have been a lovely stroll to the Cam. St Stephen’s is not on the river, but many of the older colleges are, and the presence of Dr Everidge would have given us access to the boat landings normally off limits to the public. But we were in a hurry, and I was in no shape for a walk. We all piled into Alan’s car, drove as close as we could to the public landing near Trinity College and walked the rest of the way. Leaning heavily on Alan’s arm, I felt like an old lady, and was consequently in no sweet temper by the time we arrived at the boats.

  Or, rather, boat. A solitary punt was floating at the dock, or whatever the landing place was called. It was very low, the seats a bare few inches above the floor of the boat. The deck, I suppose. I looked at Alan. ‘I can’t possibly get into that thing,’ I said. ‘And even if I could, I couldn’t sit. My knees won’t bend that much. I’ll have to wait here for you.’

  But the boatman wasn’t about to let a customer get away. ‘Ah, madam, I have the perfect solution.’ From some recess behind him he produced a miniature chair, rather like the booster seats restaurants sometimes provide for children. ‘We’ll put you just here, in front of me, where you can see everything in perfect comfort. If these gallant gentlemen will assist me …’

  And before I could protest further, I found myself more or less lifted into the punt and seated on what was, amazingly, quite a comfortable perch. ‘Now, you’ll want to hold on to the gunwales – the sides of the boat, madam. You’re sitting above the usual level, and if some lout were to bump us – you see?’

  Alan seated himself next to me. What with the extra width of my chair, it was a tight fit for his solid bulk, but he managed. ‘I’ll keep her safe and secure,’ he said, reaching up to take my hand.

  My ruffled dignity was somewhat eased. It was plain I wasn’t the first feeble old lady he had transported. ‘Onward and upward, then,’ I said. ‘Excelsior!’

  Elaine and Dr Everidge took their places at the front of the boat. Before the boatman pushed off, the master said, ‘Unfortunately, we’re not here entirely for pleasure today.’

  ‘No, Dr Everidge, sir?’

  The ‘small world’ phenomenon again. Plainly, the boatman was a student, or a former student, and knew the bigwigs of the colleges.

  The master took it in his stride. ‘No, we’re looking for a pair of students, Terence Faherty and my daughter, Jennifer. Do you know them?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know many of the students who are up now. I took my degree several years ago. We’ll just head up the river, shall we, and see if you can spot them?’

  He pushed away from the landing place and began to pole the boat slowly upstream. It looked so easy; all the same, I wouldn’t have wanted to be standing there on the flat back of the boat, steering around the heavy traffic with nothing but his long pole – and his own weight, I suppose – for navigation.

  ‘You have a degree from one of the colleges here?’ I asked.

  ‘And what am I doing punting tourists for a living? It’s a reasonable question.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I didn’t mean it that way.’ But I had, I realized. ‘How very rude of me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. I often wonder myself. The truth is I read philosophy at King’s. Although I scan the adverts every day, there are very few openings for philosophers.’

  ‘And yet you stay here in Cambridge.’

  He shoved off a punt that was ready to collide with ours, with a word or two to the boatman (in this case, a woman), and poled a few yards farther up the river before he answered. ‘Yes, I stay here, doing odd jobs and still dreaming of real employment. I’ve not been giving you a proper tour, because Dr Everidge knows it all, and you’ve other things to think about. But look about you, and then ask yourself why I stay.’

  I looked. There, drifting past in utter serenity, was the incomparable King’s College Chapel. Across the river, a swathe of green looked like a bit of a child’s brand-new paint box. Overhead, the pale blue sky was rimmed with the bright new leaves of willows. We passed under a footbridge so beautiful it brought a lump to my throat. Everywhere, the sound of laughter vied with spring birdsong. For a little while I could forget the urgency of our errand. I had to clear my throat before saying, ‘Yes, I see why you stay. Even if it means surviving on beans on toast for a while longer.’

  ‘And beer. Don’t forget the beer. Yes, sir?’

  Dr Everidge pointed, and my nerves tightened again. ‘Can you put in here for a moment?’

  ‘Only for a moment, sir. I’m not allowed to moor on college grounds, and that proctor is giving me the evil eye.’

  A woman in a billowing academic gown was, in fact, walking purposefully along the riverbank, bearing down upon our punt.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dr Everidge. ‘Er – what is your name, by the way?’

  ‘Denton, sir. Sam Denton.’

  ‘Good afternoon, madam,’ he said to the approaching proctor. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind if my friend Sam allows us to stop here for a moment. The fact is I want a word with my daughter, and I believe I see her just through there.’

  ‘Of course, Dr Everidge,’ said the proctor icily. ‘He mustn’t tie up, mind.’

  ‘Certainly not.’ If he had been wearing a hat, he would have doffed it. The proctor stalked off, furious at being deprived of her lawful prey, and I was reminded of the hapless proctor in Sayers’s Gaudy Night. That was set in Oxford, and in the 1930s – almost another world – but some things remain the same.

  Sam jumped out and held the boat steady, since there was in fact no place to tie up, even if he had been inclined to ignore the regulation. The other three scrambled out; I stayed where I was. I wanted to hear what the master’s prospective son-in-law had to say, but there was no way I was getting out of that rocky boat.

  The pair who had caught the master’s eye were sitting on a bench by a green lawn. College buildings loomed in the background. I didn’t know which college, nor did I care. This boy might hold the key to all the distressing events of the past few days. I waited impatiently for everyone to come back.

  They were too far away and there was too much background noise for me to hear what they were saying, but it was plain from the body language that they were not eager to abandon their leisurely Sunday afternoon pursuits. However, the boy needed to be deferential to his fiancée’s father, and the girl was being pleasant enough about it. The little group walked down to the riverbank.

  Although dressed in the universal student grunge, the young couple were both attractive. The boy, even if his name had been Joe Smith, still could have been nothing but Irish, with abundant dark hair, a ruggedly handsome face, deep blue eyes, and the kind of light, clear complexion that any girl would kill for. The girl was slim and lithe, and as tall as her companion. Her soft, fine brown hair blew about her face in the slight breeze, flirting with her little upturned nose.

  They were near enough now that I could hear.

  ‘Our punt’s moored along there,’ said the boy, pointing upriver. ‘I’d better go and get it and then join you at your landing.’

  ‘I’d rather you came with us,’ said Dr Everidge firmly. ‘You can fetch your boat later. We’ll all fit in if you don’t mind close quarters.’

  I doubted that the two young people would mind close quarters.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Now, Terence,’ began Dr Everidge when we were all settled and on our way back down the river, ‘we seem to have misplaced one of our students.’

  ‘My nephew, Tom Grenfell,’ put in Elaine. She didn’t quite succeed in keeping the tension out of her voice. ‘You know him, I think.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Not well, though. I’m only in my second year, you know, and he’s working towards his doctorate. What do you mean, you’ve misplaced him?’

  ‘He met us at one of the labs today and went to his office to fetch some papers, and didn’t return. He sent no message, and we have been unable to reach him by phone. We hoped you might have some idea where to find hi
m.’

  Terence was facing me at the other end of the boat. I could see that he was bewildered. ‘I don’t really know him enough about him even to guess, Mrs – er, Ms—’

  ‘Barker. Elaine Barker.’

  Neither Terence nor Miss Everidge – Jennifer – showed any recognition of the name. Well, when I was their age, I certainly didn’t know the name of the chief of police in my small Indiana town. One usually doesn’t, unless one has been the victim, or the perpetrator, of a crime. I was finding it hard not to explain the whole situation to Terence, but Sam’s presence made that impossible. I wished I had an oar so I could speed the boat a trifle.

  However, progress down the river was quicker than up, especially as, with the afternoon wearing on and the air taking on a distinct chill, many of the punts had left the water, allowing Sam to steer a straight path to his landing place.

  I had a hard time getting out of the boat, even with strong arms to help. My knees had stiffened in the confined quarters, and my various bruises were all screaming. Why is it, I thought resentfully when I finally landed safely on my feet, that Miss Marple never seemed to have any of these troubles? She was at least as old as I. And stayed that age for many years.

  I hobbled to the car. Without any discussion, Elaine and young Terence climbed in with Alan and me, leaving Dr Everidge and his daughter to walk back to the college.

  ‘All right, Terence. You’re wondering what this is all about, and why we dragged you away from your pleasant afternoon with your girl. My name is Dorothy Martin, by the way, and this is my husband, Alan Nesbitt. We’re staying in St Stephen’s for a conference.’

  The light began to dawn on Terence’s face. ‘A police conference. I’ve seen the signs. Are you all with the police, then?’

  ‘I am,’ said Elaine, not mentioning her rank. ‘Mr Nesbitt is a retired chief constable, and Mrs Martin is’ – she hesitated for a moment – ‘has been deputized for a special problem. It concerns St Stephen’s, and particularly my nephew and others in the biological sciences.’

  ‘I told them!’ Terence began, and then shut his mouth firmly.

  ‘Yes. Exactly. I can understand that you have no wish to betray your friends, but this has become a police matter, and I’m afraid I have to ask you to tell us what you know about any … er … unusual activities recently at the Hutchins Building.’

  I turned around, wincing, to look at the boy. His face had taken on that blank aspect that I knew so well from my years in the classroom. I had taught sixth-graders, but the ‘I don’t know nothin’, I ain’t sayin’ nothin’’ expression doesn’t change with added years. I said, ‘Terence, we do understand. But you need to know this. Tom Grenfell is missing and may be in great danger. I myself was subject to a painful attack yesterday, perhaps intended to be murderous. We must get to the bottom of this, and the sooner the better. If you can help at all, I hope you will.’

  It hung in the balance. If Terence hadn’t been engaged to the daughter of the master of his college, he might have held out. But he was, so his personal as well as his academic future was at risk.

  ‘Oh, hell!’ he said at last. ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll tell you what I know. But could we go someplace besides the college? I wouldn’t want …’

  ‘To be seen talking to the police,’ Elaine finished. ‘I understand. Alan, could you find a place to park? Go on, Terence.’

  Alan said, ‘Just a moment, Terence. I think it will be useful if my wife tells you what she knows about this affair. It’s her story, for the most part, although it certainly has wider implications.’ He headed the car out of the city centre and found, by some miracle, a place to stop and talk.

  I concentrated on remembering accurately. ‘It began on the day we arrived at St Stephen’s – last Wednesday. Alan took off for the conference rooms, and I got lost looking for him and ended up in the Hutchins Building, in one of the labs.’

  ‘Oh! So it was you …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘So you do know something about that. You know what I found there?’

  ‘I’ve heard rumours,’ he said cautiously. ‘Tom was asking questions in the break room, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know. At least, he wasn’t exactly asking questions, was he?’

  ‘No, he was skating around it, but we were all pretty sure what he was talking about.’

  ‘We were afraid of that,’ said Alan with a sigh. ‘He may not be quite a subtle as he likes to think.’

  ‘Fool boy!’ said Elaine explosively. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I suppose you know that it began as a student prank. There’ve been some good ones in Cambridge over the years, but nothing really memorable lately. And we’re all scientists, and reasonably bright, so we wanted to do something scientific, not just something stupid like what’s been done before. So, as we’re in the biological sciences, we thought of perhaps doing something pretty spectacular along the lines of bringing the dead to life.’

  ‘I’d have thought,’ said Alan mildly, ‘that sort of thing would be more appropriate to one of the theological colleges.’

  Terence flushed. I’d have bet that he did that easily, with that almost transparent skin, and that he hated it. ‘It wouldn’t have been real, you know. We thought we’d use a lab animal. We could concoct something that would make the rat or guinea pig seem dead. No vital signs at all.’

  ‘Shades of Romeo and Juliet,’ I murmured.

  Terence flushed again. ‘You mean, it’s all been done before. But that was just a sleeping draught, and fictional. Juliet would have had a pulse – slow, perhaps, but detectable. Anyone with any sense would have seen through the ruse, even if she was in a tomb. This, though, would really have worked. At least, we thought it would. We’ve come up with a chemical that puts the animal in such a deep coma that there isn’t a heartbeat, or not one that can be heard or felt. We thought we’d put him in a cooler for a while so he’d feel cold to the touch, and for realism we’d fake some sort of injury and splash some blood around.’

  ‘Blood,’ I said, suppressing a shudder.

  ‘Where were you planning to get the blood?’ Elaine sounded a lot like a suspicious Rottweiler.

  ‘Make it, of course! It wouldn’t be real blood. Kensington Gore isn’t that hard to make, and it’s very realistic. But …’ He wound down again.

  ‘But something went wrong,’ I said. ‘What I saw … and smelled …’ This time I couldn’t stop the shudder.

  ‘Yes. The smell. That doesn’t matter on the stage, and obviously not in the movies. But up close, someone would notice. So one of the students, a guy named Mahala, wanted to use chicken’s blood. He knew where he could get a chicken. He’s from West Africa somewhere, and they sometimes—’

  ‘Use chicken’s blood in their religious rituals,’ I said. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘If that’s what you call it,’ said Terence dubiously. ‘He told me a bit about it, and it doesn’t seem much like religion to me.’

  ‘You’re Catholic, of course.’

  He nodded.

  I thought fleetingly about getting into a discussion about the Mass, and the Body and Blood of Christ, but instantly dismissed the thought. This wasn’t the time for abstract theology. ‘So your friend brought a chicken to the lab,’ I prompted.

  ‘He said he would. I wasn’t very happy about that. Fake blood is one thing. Killing a real chicken, just for the sake of a prank … I’m a vegetarian, you see. I don’t believe in killing animals for food, or any other reason, really. So when he said he couldn’t get the chicken, and brought a cat to the lab instead—’

  ‘A cat!’ Alan and I spoke together. ‘But that’s insufferable,’ I said. ‘He killed a cat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Terence. ‘That’s when I told them I would have nothing more to do with the project. I guess in his country cats are nothing, but I like cats. Even a chicken was bad enough, but a cat … I like cats,’ he repeated, with a slight air of apology. In this Sceptred Isle, the dog is the reigning specie
s, followed closely by the horse. Cats are pleasant enough creatures, but less highly regarded than their canine and equine friends. Alan and I – and, apparently, Terence – feel differently.

  ‘Did you do anything to stop it?’ Elaine was growling again.

  ‘Actually, I … I tried to steal the cat and set it free. Mahala had brought it in a cage, and I thought it would be easy to let it out. But I couldn’t find even the cage. I don’t know what he did with it, or with the cat. And I don’t actually know anything about the blood in the lab. Except when I heard about it …’

  I swallowed hard, hoping I wasn’t going to be sick.

  ‘When did you try to find the cat?’ Elaine’s tone had moderated a bit.

  ‘What’s today? Sunday? It would have been sometime last week. Tuesday night, that was it. Because I worked late that day in the lab, and was almost the last person to leave the building. When I’d seen the cat, it was in its cage in the break room. That door is never locked, so when I left the lab, I went in and looked everywhere. The cage wasn’t there. I couldn’t get into any of the other labs, of course, but I did just look in the animal rooms – where they’re kept, you know – and the lecture rooms. No cage, no cat. So I thought perhaps Mahala’d thought better of the whole thing and taken the beast home, or wherever he found it. But then …’

  ‘So we still don’t know the source of the blood in the lab,’ said Alan. ‘It’s a great pity it was cleaned up before it could be tested. However, that can wait. What’s important now is to find Tom Grenfell. Terence, this is what we’re thinking. We had planned a conference, since the attack on my wife had made this officially a matter for the police, and we wanted to poke around the place, see what we could find, plan a strategy.’

  ‘Wait. The attack on your wife. You’ve said that before? What attack? When?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ I said. ‘I was pushed down the stairs at the Fitzwilliam. That doesn’t matter now. Go ahead, Alan.’