I upped the wattage of the smile a trifle and gave a coy little giggle. ‘Oh, dear, you must have me confused with Alan’s first wife. He was a widower when I met him, you know. Did you ever know Helen? I understand she was a lovely woman. I do feel so lucky to have found Alan after I lost my own dear first husband. Have you a family, Mr Andrews?’
‘Yes. Now, about this trouble you’re stirring up—’
‘Oh, how nice. Children?’
‘Three sons, grown now. I must tell you—’
‘Oh, but how wonderful. My first husband and I were never able to have any children, and we so wanted them. That means, of course, that I don’t have the blessing of grandchildren of my own, but I’ve become honorary grandmother to Alan’s, and I do enjoy them so much. Everyone says that the joy of grandchildren is worth every moment of the problems and worries of raising children, but I’m lucky enough to have the one without ever having suffered through the other. I’m sure you agree?’
‘My grandchildren live in New Zealand, Mrs Nesbitt. I have seen the oldest only once, the others never. You must understand, madam—’
‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. May I have your attention, please?’
The chief constable continued to talk, in a hoarse undertone, but I made a pretty shushing gesture and shifted in my chair so my back was to him, my attention directed towards the speaker at the front of the room.
It was the chairman of the conference. ‘In a moment we’ll go into dinner, ladies and gentlemen, and a splendid dinner it is, I assure you. However, before we go in, Dr Everidge, Master of St Stephen’s, wishes a word with us. Dr Everidge.’
He was wearing full academic robes. With their rich colours, he eclipsed the sombre black and white of the other men in the room. He wanted to impress the group, and he did.
‘I regret that I have been unable, since your conference began, to give it the attention I would have liked. I repeat now my delight that such a distinguished assemblage has honoured St Stephen’s with your conference, and I hope very sincerely that your time here has been both pleasant and productive. But it is on another subject – a distressing one – that I speak to you this evening. With such illustrious representatives of our police forces gathered together, I cannot help but enlist your aid.’
He leaned towards us to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say. ‘I’m sorry to say, ladies and gentlemen, that one of our students here at St Stephen’s has disappeared today under disquieting circumstances. We have tried without success to find him. I fully understand that there are rules about the designation “missing person” and that the disappearance of this young man does not fall under those rubrics. But because of various recent events, I believe that it is truly urgent that we find him as soon as possible, and I am asking your aid in doing so.
‘I’ve prepared a summary of the circumstances I mention. I’ve given your chairman enough copies for each of you, and I hope you’ll take them with you when you leave St Stephen’s, and will exert whatever efforts you can in our aid. I am aware that there will be a certain amount of unpleasant publicity for the college when some of this news becomes public. It can’t be helped. I know that you are all concerned with the interaction between the police and the community, and I trust you to do what you can to minimize the talk, but lives are more important than reputations. I will deal with whatever arises. Now, please accept my heartfelt thanks, my apologies for intruding on what should be a festive occasion for you all, and my wishes for a splendid evening.’
There was a startled hush when he’d finished, and then a movement towards the chairman, who started handing out the sheets of paper. I was a little startled at the prompt response.
‘They’re the police, love,’ Alan reminded me quietly. ‘They’re trained to deal with crises, and most of them love their work. They’ll want to get on this right away.’
Chief Constable Andrews was still at my side, looking as though someone had smacked him with a two-by-four. I smiled again. ‘But, Mr Andrews, I kept interrupting you. I’m so sorry. You were saying?’
THIRTEEN
‘You should have been a speaker at the conference, love,’ said Alan in an undertone as we headed for the dining hall. ‘You handled Andrews beautifully!’
‘It’s a good thing Dr Everidge spoke when he did. I was running out of things to drivel on about. Wasn’t his face priceless, though, when the master took the wind out of his sails?’
Our meal was superb, but I didn’t pay it the attention I should have. I was plotting my actions the minute we had finished eating. I was going to the Hutchins Building to help Elaine search.
Alan couldn’t come with me. He explained that he really had to stay for the closing panel. ‘I’m by way of being one of their star turns, you see. And then I want to pop over to the pub again and see if Terence has come up with any bright ideas. I may be late getting back.’
‘I understand. I’ll be fine, as long as Elaine and some of her minions are there, too. Now that I don’t have to fret about stepping on anyone’s toes, I can wander where I want and poke into anything I like.’
‘Bearing in mind, always, the rules about disturbing evidence.’
I just gave him a look.
It wasn’t so easy to get away after dinner. Dr Everidge had named Alan and me in his handout, and too many of the conferees wanted to ask us about what had happened. The questions were to the point, and we were glad they wanted to help, but I was glad when the chairman finally herded the last of the stragglers into the conference room and I was free to go.
Alan had asked – well, had bribed – one of the servers, a student, to go with me. I chafed under the restriction, but it was probably wise. Our progress was slow. I still couldn’t walk without some pain, and sitting through dinner on a straight chair hadn’t helped, but I had taken took another couple of pills and forged ahead. I did wonder for a moment what happened if one took too many ibuprofen, and then decided to stop wondering. I had more important things on my mind. Like whose blood I’d seen, and where Tom and Mahala were.
I was glad to see a constable still at the door, keeping people out. He had been given orders to admit me, though. ‘Superintendent Barker would like to see you, madam. She’s in the zoology laboratory.’
Of course. Where else? I sent my student escort on his way with thanks and went to the lab.
The room was a scene of purposeful activity. Figures in white suits and booties were doing mysterious things to various surfaces, including the floor. I stopped in the doorway, and Elaine came to join me.
My first question was ‘Any word from Tom?’
She shook her head.
‘We’ll hear soon,’ I said, meaninglessly. Elaine rightly ignored me, and I hurried on. ‘Have your people found anything yet?’
‘We won’t know for certain until they get back to the lab – the police lab – with samples. Certainly they found traces of blood in various locations, including the floor, but until it’s analyzed there’s no telling what it means. Animal blood is used in research here.’
I nodded. ‘You know what the master told us all tonight?’
‘He told me what he was going to say. None too soon.’
‘Indeed. Everyone was most interested. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but at least now we’re free to investigate as we will. I’ve come to ask your permission to roam around the building and see what I can find, if anything. I’m not trained in search procedures, of course, but I’m sometimes good at spotting odd things.’
‘And you know enough to leave those odd things as they are.’ It wasn’t really a question. She called one of her minions over. ‘James, get a set of gloves and boots for Mrs Martin. She’s going to do some snooping in the rest of the building.’
James looked startled. I was pretty sure he would have had something to say if the order hadn’t come from the big boss. He said nothing, but returned with the necessary items.
‘Will I be able to get
into the various labs and offices and so on?’ I asked as I put them on.
‘Everything is unlocked for the moment. Robert arranged that. Would you like someone with you?’
I considered that for a moment. ‘I’d rather go alone. I can think better that way. Surely the guard at the door is a guarantee of safety.’
‘There are no guarantees in a building like this. Too many cubbyholes. But we did a quick patrol before we started to work. It’s your choice.’
‘Then I’ll go on my own. Thanks, Elaine. I’ll report back if I find anything of any interest at all.’
I had, of course, no idea what I was looking for. Not knowing what was going on in these labs, I didn’t know what I should expect to find there, and what was peculiar.
But I had visited many laboratories with my father and Frank, and of course had worked in them in high school chemistry and physics. I knew the basics. I could have used Tom to show me around and tell me what was what, but the point of the exercise was to find and, if necessary, rescue Tom.
Slowly, bitterly regretting my age and present decrepitude, I climbed to the top floor to work my way down.
It turned out that the top floor was where most of the animals were kept. The first room I encountered was full of rats. I nearly screamed and slammed the door shut.
I pulled myself together. This would never do. True, I cannot like rats. Their pointed faces, their long sharp teeth, their beady little red eyes, those horrid pink naked tails … ugh! I’ve never even been able to bear opossums, which look to me like giant rats. And these rats seemed really big to my prejudiced eyes. But they were safely caged. They appeared to be asleep. They paid me not the slightest attention, anyway, as I sidled nervously into the room.
I didn’t turn the lights on for a moment. The corridor lights had been more than enough to show me the rats, and what was I afraid of, anyway? That the rats would rise up in revolt if they could see me?
There was probably nothing to see in here, but I intended to look. I turned on the light.
Once my heart stopped pounding, it occurred to me that I could usefully check to see if any cage was empty. I didn’t know, of course, the full complement of rats here, but an empty cage that showed signs of recent occupation might be interesting. That blood had to come from somewhere.
All the rats seemed to be there, however. Not hundreds, as my first fright had suggested, but a round dozen, one in each cage. Which was precisely twelve too many, but never mind. All the animals seemed to be in good condition. They were plump – very plump – and they truly were much larger than any I’d ever seen in a pet store. Their white coats were glossy. They were well kept, too, in clean plastic cages with full water bottles, clean bedding and no spilled food anywhere. There was little odour, amazingly.
Still no sign of interest from the rats. Good! I ventured farther into the room. Besides the two shelves of cages and a shabby wooden desk against one wall, there were two cupboards near the end of the room. I supposed they would contain food, water and bedding for the animals, and that, indeed, was what I found along with cleaning supplies and a box of disposable rubber gloves. Nothing out of order, nothing at all interesting. I took one last careful look at the sleeping rats, trying to spot any signs of injury. Nothing. Just clean white fur.
One of them had awakened. It looked at me with what I could have sworn was intelligent interest, and spoke briefly. At least I suppose it spoke. It opened its mouth, but if it squeaked, the sound was pitched too high for me to hear.
‘Shh!’ I said. ‘I don’t have anything for you, and you’ll wake the rest of the nursery. Goodnight.’
Gratefully, I turned out the light and gently closed the door, passionately hoping there were no more rats in the other rooms.
The inhabitants of the next room were much more to my liking – adorable, fluffy little guinea pigs. Unlike the rats, which had been isolated in their cages, these cute little critters were housed in groups of four. Their cages were of clear plastic, like those of the rats, but much bigger and a different shape, about twice as long as they were wide. And unlike the rats, the guinea pigs were all wide awake and talking.
‘Are you talking to me or each other?’ I asked one in the nearest cage. That increased the noise level in the room. ‘I can’t feed you, you know. I don’t know how much you’re supposed to get, or when, and I’d be in deep trouble if I disrupted your schedule.’
The squeaking died down a little. I wondered if the little fur balls realized the human voice was unfamiliar, not the one by whose hands they were usually fed.
‘I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, so you can rest easy,’ I said as I walked around the room counting cages and inhabitants. Small animals in motion can be surprisingly hard to count, even only four at a time, and each cage had a sheltered area that I had to investigate carefully to see if it was or was not tenanted. I went around twice, coming up with a different count the second time, then twice more, writing down the results this time. The last three times agreed.
And they were one pig short.
Twelve cages. Forty-seven guinea pigs. Not forty-eight.
That could mean something, or nothing. Maybe there had never been four of them in that top cage nearest the window. Maybe the missing one was in some lab somewhere, engaged in furthering scientific knowledge for the benefit of mankind.
I didn’t want to think about the alternative. I would, I think, have been more or less unmoved had I thought a rat had died. The thought of a guinea pig being murdered, though …
I scolded myself. What, after all, was the difference? The guinea pigs were cute – that was the difference. Beauty is a great thing in this world, but it’s not the main thing. Rats are just as much God’s creatures as their more attractive cousins, I thought piously, and are, I believe, more useful in the lab because of their relatively high intelligence.
I still grieved for the missing guinea pig.
But it might well have been a cat. Had been a cat, as far as I knew. Furthermore, and at the top of the importance scale, Tom was missing. That galvanized me. Time was getting on, and I’d better do the same and hunt for anything else to report to Elaine. ‘Goodnight, babies,’ I said, very glad there was no human around to hear me talking to lab animals, and resumed my rambling.
In and out of storage rooms and offices, labs and cage rooms. One set of cages held snakes. It was warm enough in there that they were awake, blinking at me and darting their forked tongues. I was in and out of there in record time. Count the snakes, check out the storage cupboards, escape.
I had finished the second floor (as the English reckon them; the third, to me) and had made my way down to the next before I found anything else significant, and then I nearly missed it.
It was in one of the labs. This one was labelled Pathogens in use. No admittance.
There had been, in one of the storage areas, a box of surgical masks, or at least face masks of some sort. I went back and put one on, feeling very silly, and opened the door of the ‘no admittance’ lab.
To my untutored eye, it didn’t look much different from any of the other labs. There were work stations with hoods along one wall, presumably for working with the aforementioned pathogens or other dangerous substances. There were two cupboards very much like those in the other labs and the animal rooms, except one of these was locked with both a key and a sturdy padlock.
I was beginning to tire, and growing less and less hopeful of finding anything of any importance. That locked cupboard, for example. If I had something I needed to hide, what better place than among nasty microbes? It would take a braver heart than mine to open that door, even if I had the keys.
But the point, as I hitched one hip up on a high stool and thought about it, wasn’t to find something hidden. The forensics people would do that, far more efficiently than I could even attempt. No, I was looking for something wrong – that was the only word I could come up with. Something that didn’t fit, that wasn’t right. That missing guinea pig,
perhaps.
I wished I could find him, or her as the case might be. I devoutly wished I could find the cat. I didn’t want either of them to be the source of the blood in the lab. More than anything else, I wished I, or someone, could find Tom.
Maybe the students Terence was talking to, at the pub, would come up with something. Maybe Terence would come away with nothing but bitter regrets, tomorrow morning, about all the beer he’d drunk.
Maybe it was time I stopped dilly-dallying and continued my self-appointed task. Just this one more search, I promised myself, and then I’d ask one of those nice policemen to escort me back to my room and my comfortable bed.
A quick look around the room showed me nothing that seemed out of place or out of the ordinary, assuming I had known what ‘the ordinary’ was here. Wearily, I went to the unlocked cabinet and opened it. Storage, as I had expected. Neat shelves of rubber gloves and face masks like the extremely uncomfortable one I was wearing. A small stack of clean Petri dishes – good grief, I hadn’t seen those since college biology classes. Didn’t know they even still used them. These looked a little different somehow, though. There was a sign propped in front of them reading NOT STERILE, so I ventured to touch one with my gloved fingertip. Aha! Plastic, not glass. I wondered how they went about sterilizing them. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they just bought them sterile and threw them away after they’d been used. But in that case, why these non-sterile ones in here?
Was that enough of an anomaly that I should mention it to Elaine?
Probably not, but one never knew.
Spurred by finding one thing of possible interest, even if it wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, I ventured to explore that cupboard a little further. There was a shelf full of chemicals in bottles and boxes. All were neatly labelled, but most had only the chemical symbols, not English words. I’d forgotten, years ago, all the chemistry I ever knew. Anything more complicated than H2O or NaCl defeated me, and most of these labels were very complicated indeed.
Elaine and her crew would sort those out. Next shelf. Assorted lab glassware. Test tubes in half-full boxes. A few flasks. Rubber tubing in various lengths. Top shelf. Miscellaneous cleaning supplies.
Blood Will Tell Page 11
