by H. Y. Hanna
“Seth, what happened last Friday night? How did you end up mixed up in this whole thing?” demanded Cassie.
He threw a glance at the police station behind him and hunched his shoulders. “Let’s not talk here. I’m desperate to get back and have a hot shower—wash the feel of this place off me.”
“Have you eaten?” I said.
“Not since lunchtime. And to be honest with you, I didn’t have much of an appetite.”
“Come on, we’ll drop you back at Gloucester College and then we’ll leave you to have a wash while we go pick up some takeaway—how does that sound?”
Seth gave me a tired smile. “Sounds fantastic.”
By the time we saw Seth again he was looking a lot more like his usual self. He had showered and shaved, and got a bit of colour back into his cheeks. We dished out the boxes of Indian curry and basmati rice, then hunkered down cross-legged around the coffee table in his spacious college room and tucked into the meal.
For a moment, I was transported back to the time when Seth, Cassie and I were all students here at Oxford and we had had many a night like this, sharing a takeaway curry while discussing the latest college gossip or moaning about our looming essay crisis. Well, okay, not Seth. He wasn’t the type to have an essay crisis—far too organised and conscientious—but for me and especially Cassie, lurching from one essay crisis to another had been our default state for most of the term.
Oxford was one of the few universities to still follow the quaint old “tutorial system” which meant that rather than classroom teaching, tests, and assessments, students were taught in private sessions of two or three by individual tutors who would assign a weekly essay. You were expected to research the topic thoroughly and then write a well-thought-out summary of the ideas on the subject, presenting the arguments for and against and analysing them critically. The idea was that it was better learning because you weren’t just being lectured to and fed information—you were being taught to think for yourself and question everything.
I suppose it was a great way to challenge you to use your own mind. Of course, it was also a great way to encourage you to procrastinate. I spent many a night when I was a student staying up till dawn, frantically scribbling, trying to complete the essay in time before the tutorial the next morning. Still, moaning about your essay crisis was part of student life at Oxford and, in a way, I almost missed it.
Then I heard Cassie ask Seth about last Friday night again and I came back to the present with a thump. I wasn’t just a student sitting around without a care in the world any more—I was here with my friend who had been accused of murder.
“Seth, you have to tell us everything!” Cassie was insisting.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why did you and Professor Barrow get into a fight at High Table? And what’s all this about the Domus Trust project? And what’s that note I removed from Barrow’s pigeonho—OWW!”
I stared at Seth in surprise. He had kicked me viciously under the table.
“What note?” said Cassie. “What are you talking about?”
I realised suddenly that I’d never mentioned the note to Cassie. Somehow, in all the fuss on Saturday morning with the solicitor and the Old Biddies and my mother’s sudden travel plans and the dinner with Devlin… and then Lincoln and the interviews this morning, it had slipped my mind. Which might have been a good thing since it was obvious that Seth didn’t want Cassie to know.
“What note?” Cassie said again, looking from me to Seth suspiciously. “What are you keeping from me?”
“It was nothing,” said Seth quickly. “Just some silly… uh… joke.”
“If it was just a joke, why can’t you tell me?”
Seth looked torn. Finally, he looked down, flushing, and said, “I… I did something a bit stupid.”
“What?” Cassie demanded.
Seth swallowed. “You know how after a fight, you always think of all the things you wish you had said? Well, when I got back to my room on Friday night, I was still really fuming. I kept thinking of all the things I hadn’t said to Barrow and how I wished I’d had the last word. I guess I should have just waited until morning and let things cool off… but I was too worked up. So I decided to write him a note with what I wanted to say and go back to leave it in his pigeonhole. I’d been planning to go back to search for my phone anyway, so it was like killing two birds with one stone.” He winced as he realised his choice of proverb. “Sorry, no pun intended.”
“I read the note,” I said.
Seth winced again and said hastily, with a glance at Cassie, “You see, it was just silly stuff, right, Gemma? No big deal, really.”
Actually, it had been closer to a death threat, but I realised suddenly that Seth didn’t want Cassie to know about the note’s contents. I’d long suspected that Seth harboured a secret crush on Cassie and it was obvious that he was embarrassed about her seeing him in a bad light. He gave me an urgent look and I took the hint.
“Uh… yeah, it was a bit childish, really. I just chucked it,” I said, much to Seth’s relief.
However, Cassie was no fool. She frowned. “If it was that silly and unimportant, why would you have called Gemma in the middle of the night to go and get it?”
“I… I just didn’t want the police to find it and jump to conclusions,” said Seth lamely. “You know what they can be like. Anyway, forget the note—it’s not important.”
Cassie didn’t look convinced but Seth rushed on before she could say anything else. “I don’t even know where to begin telling you both what happened. The whole thing just seems so surreal. I felt like I was standing there watching everything happen to me from afar, you know? I mean, you never expect to be arrested for murder!”
“What was going on between you and Barrow?” I said. “Why do the police think that you have a motive to want him dead?”
Seth set his jaw. “Barrow and I didn’t see eye to eye on the Domus Trust housing project. The man was a tosser! He had no pity for the homeless and was really opposed to the college donating the land to the Domus Trust to build affordable housing. He was one of those pompous, elitist misogynist types who thinks that Oxford should still be an exclusive men’s club where women aren’t allowed and only sons from certain families can be admitted! Bloody hell, which century did he think he was living in?” He shook his head in disgust. “Can you believe it—he actually told me that charitable giving is a waste of time! That it’s just a waste of money and resources and teaches people to beg or rely on welfare—”
“Was this what you were arguing about at High Table?”
Seth blew out a breath of irritation and nodded. “I got invited over to Wadsworth for dinner by Ron Bertram—he’s the Tutor for Admissions there; we play squash together and we often go over to each other’s colleges for dinner afterwards—and I ended up sitting opposite Barrow at High Table. He was being really obnoxious and I just couldn’t keep quiet any longer. We got into an argument and I guess it just sort of snowballed. He wasn’t willing to back down and neither was I.” He gave us a sheepish look. “I suppose we both had a bit too much to drink… I probably said a few things I shouldn’t have. The thing is, Barrow was being such a prat! I mean, he actually said homeless people are all lazy drug-addicts and criminals, who deserved to be chucked out in the streets! It made me livid. I threw a glass of wine at him, just to wipe that smirk off his face, and I guess I must have got up and reached across the table without thinking…”
“Devlin said the Steward separated you,” I said.
“Yeah. But then I saw him again in the S.C.R. after dinner and we got going again. I was trying to keep it civil this time—you know, have an academic debate about it—but it’s like trying to reason with a pig! In fact, calling Barrow a pig would be an insult to swine! We ended up outside the SCR, really yelling at each other, and then that head porter fellow—Clyde Peters—came up and separated us.”
“What time was that?”
Seth shrugged. “Dunno… about 11:4
0? Maybe a quarter to twelve?”
“And you went back to Gloucester after that?”
“Yeah… I got back to my room but I was still pretty worked up… and then I realised that I didn’t have my mobile phone. I thought I must have dropped it when Barrow and I were having that last argument outside the SCR, so I went back… Of course, I’d barely stepped into the Cloisters when I stumbled across Barrow’s body.”
He passed a hand over his face at the memory.
“Was he still alive?” asked Cassie, her eyes round.
Seth grimaced. “No. But he was still warm. And I didn’t realise that he was dead. I could barely see anything—those old lamps in the Cloisters hardly give off any proper light—and I didn’t even realise that it was Barrow. I thought it was someone who had passed out or something; I mean, you just don’t expect to come across a dead body! So I was groping around and then I felt the hilt of a knife and I just pulled it out without thinking… and the next minute, there was this light in my face and the head porter, Peters, was there staring at me like he’d seen a ghost… and I looked down and saw all this blood on me and Barrow lying there dead on the ground… and then Peters was saying something to me but I couldn’t think… I just kept staring at the dagger and the blood on my hands… and then… and then I started yelling back at Peters, telling him to call for an ambulance…” Seth drew a shuddering breath. “I guess, even then, I didn’t really want to believe that Barrow was dead.”
He leaned back against the couch, looking exhausted from his narrative. “It wasn’t until later—when the police arrived and started asking me questions, and then said they were taking me down to the station—that I realised how it looked, that I was being arrested for murder…”
CHAPTER TEN
I sat back and pondered what Seth had recounted so far. There was something he had said—something that seemed odd—but I couldn’t grasp the thought and then it was gone, like smoke dispersing into the air.
“What about the murder weapon?” Cassie was asking. “Gemma told me that it belonged to some female don at Wadsworth?”
“Yeah, Dr Gaber—Leila. She’s an Associate Professor at the Department of Ethnoarchaeology and a colleague of Barrow’s. Actually, an enemy of Barrow’s would be a better description.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Enemy?”
Seth laughed. “Well, maybe that’s too strong a word but she’s been gunning for him ever since she arrived in Oxford. She’s been trying to get him to step down as head of the Ethnoarchaeology Department.”
“With her taking over the position instead?” I said.
“Well, she never said that… but now that you mention it, I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Seth. “She would be so much better than him too. She’s a real powerhouse and I think she’d be exactly what the department needs. Breathe some life into the place, have some vision for the future… not like Barrow, who’s one of those types that just wants to uphold the ‘old boys’ club’ and get the glory of being the leader without actually getting off his arse to do anything,” said Seth disgustedly.
“So was Leila Gaber actually trying to discredit Barrow?” I said.
“Well, I don’t know if she’d mounted a public campaign against him or anything; I think it was more that she was gathering evidence to put a case together. It was how I got to know her, actually—she asked to speak to me because I’d had dealings with Barrow. I think she was planning eventually to take the case to the University authorities to show them that Barrow was unfit for the role.”
“Did she have a case?”
Seth shrugged. “Well, if all she needed to prove was that Barrow was a major plonker, there would have been no problem. Plenty of people happy to stand up and support that. But I think she was actually going for something more concrete.” He paused, then said, “There were a lot of rumours going around that Barrow was an alcoholic.”
Cassie chuckled. “You could probably say that about a lot of dons at Oxford, based on the amount they drink!”
Seth laughed as well. “Yeah, I know. Drinking has always been a big part of the academic life at Oxford. But I don’t mean a glass of sherry before dinner or port in the S.C.R. afterwards—I think in Barrow’s case, it was getting out of control. My friend, Ron, told me stories of Barrow turning up drunk to tutorials and even getting into a drunken brawl in a couple of the town pubs.”
Cassie made a tutting sound. “So if Leila Gaber could prove that Barrow’s drinking problem was impinging on his work and his judgement, she might have been able to force him to step down as head of department.”
“Ambitious woman, isn’t she?” I said.
Seth gave a laugh. “You have no idea. I’m actually glad I’m not in her department—I’d hate to get on her wrong side.”
“Well, now that Barrow is dead, she won’t even have to worry about gathering a case against him, will she?” said Cassie. “How can the police not be treating her as a suspect? After all, the murder weapon actually belonged to her!”
“Devlin said that he questioned her about that and she claimed that you borrowed it…?” I looked at Seth questioningly.
“Yes, I did borrow it. I was giving a tutorial on T-shaped molecular geometry on Friday and I happened to see the dagger letter opener on her desk and I thought—with the hilt across the blade like that—it was the perfect way to demonstrate T-shaped geometry and its relation to the trigonal bipyramidal molecular geometry for AX5 molecules with three equatorial and two axial ligands. And you know they think that trifluoroacetate anion is possibly the first example of an AX3E3 molecule, which is really exciting because—”
“Seth…!” I interrupted him
He stopped and gave a sheepish grin. “Sorry. Got carried away… Yeah, about the dagger… I finished the tutorial and put it back in Leila’s pigeonhole, just like we’d agreed, and that was the last I saw of it.”
“If it was in her pigeonhole, anyone could have got hold of it,” said Cassie.
“That’s what I told Devlin,” I said. “I mean, for all you know, Leila could have retrieved it herself and was simply lying when she said she never got it back.”
“Does she have an alibi for the time of the murder?” asked Seth. “I tried to find out from the police but they wouldn’t tell me.”
“She was supposed to be in the college library,” I said. “Which adjoins the Cloister… I know the main library entrance opens onto the Walled Garden—is there a door on the other side of the library, which opens into the Cloisters?”
Seth frowned. “Yeah, actually there is. Not a public door, mind you, but a sort of service entrance at the back, leading from the library storage room out into the Cloisters. Ron mentioned it to me once. It’s really more for the librarians to use if they want to bring something in or out of the storage room and don’t want to have to lug it through the front of the library.”
“Well, apparently Leila had been given special dispensation for a set of keys to the library, so that she could work in there after the official closing time. Maybe the librarians gave her a tour and showed her the back door.”
Cassie sat forwards suddenly. “Maybe she framed you, Seth! She knew that you and Barrow were at loggerheads with each other—maybe she wanted a way to get rid of him and she saw an opportunity when you asked to borrow the dagger—she knew then that the murder weapon could be linked to you.”
“I guess…” said Seth, looking a bit uncomfortable.
I realised that he didn’t really want to consider Leila a serious suspect. He liked her. Oh, not romantically—but obviously as a person and a friend. I found myself suddenly curious to meet this woman who possessed so much charm that others were willing to overlook her possible ruthlessness.
“Maybe it’s not anyone from the college,” suggested Seth. “That head porter’s been going on lately about college security and suspicious types lurking about. He’s a bit of a gossipy old woman but he might be right. And didn’t Kent College have a burglary last week? S
ome things were stolen from one of the undergraduate rooms, I heard. Maybe this was also an attempted robbery or a mugging gone wrong.”
“Funny place to lie in wait to mug someone, in the cloisters of an Oxford college,” I said dryly. “Not exactly a lot of foot traffic, is there? Unless students are going to the college chapel. Although, being serious, Devlin did tell me that the CCTV footage in front of the college picked up a strange man lurking on the street opposite the front gate.”
“They never told me that!” said Seth, sitting up straighter. “Have they identified him?”
“They think it might be a tramp.” I described the figure caught on camera.
“Hmm… tall… red hair… sounds like Jim…” mused Seth.
“Jim?” I looked at him.
“Yeah, he’s one of those living rough on the streets. I actually met him through the Domus Trust; he’s been acting as a sort of… well, ‘consultant’, I guess, to the architects and designers, and also as a liaison between the charity and the homeless community in the city—you know, canvassing the other street persons for their opinions on the project. He’s only come to Oxford recently and the charity are delighted to have him because he’s literate and better educated than a lot of the other drifters; probably had a white-collar job at one time, poor sod, and lost it.”
“So if this housing project got approved, Jim would have the chance to have a roof over his head?” I said
Seth nodded. “He would have had first dibs, especially given his work on the project.”
“That would be a big deal for someone like him—a chance to get off the streets at last. And Barrow was going to block it…” I looked at Seth. “Does Jim have a history of violence? Any arrests?”
Seth shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s not the kind of thing you’d ask a man, is it? I have to admit, Jim doesn’t make much attempt to be pleasant and I’ve seen him get pretty surly, especially with figures of authority. He’s got a temper. But that’s pretty understandable. A lot of the homeless have had awful things happen in their past—you know, domestic abuse, mental illness, terrible tragedies… I know one girl who was being used by her stepfather as a prostitute for his friends and another young man who lost everything he owned in a fire; Jim lost his family in an accident, I think, and then his job, like another tramp down by Carfax who was framed by his boss for fraud and lost his job and his credit rating too… it’s terrible what some of these homeless people have suffered. It’s not surprising that they end up going into a downward spiral. And then with all the disadvantages and frustrations they have to deal with now, living rough on the streets, it’s hardly surprising that they feel resentful!”
