A Scone To Die For (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 1)

by H. Y. Hanna

  “Oh God, Gemma, I’m sorry,” Cassie groaned. “I never thought my words would be misinterpreted like that—”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said quickly. “If it hadn’t been that, they would have dug up something else.”

  “Yeah, what’s all this about poison?” said Cassie, looking back down at the article in disgust. “Now that is totally made up! It’s no wonder people are afraid to come here! You should sue the paper for libel!”

  I sighed. “The problem is, I’m sure they’re used to avoiding legal action with the kind of articles they write. Look at all these phrases: ‘sources report that…’ and ‘a patron claims…’—I’m sure you’d never be able to get them for anything if it came to court.”

  “Poxy liars,” Cassie muttered, tossing the paper into the bin.

  “Well, maybe it’ll blow over,” I said with false cheerfulness. “Maybe people will realise it’s just a load of tabloid gossip and sensationalist rubbish.”

  I didn’t want to show her how worried I really was. My little tearoom was only just getting on its feet. It wasn’t established enough to weather this kind of bad press, nor did I have the kind of capital to sustain continuous losses. A week of no customers like today would be enough for the business to fold. My heart lurched uncomfortably in my chest as I thought of all my savings that had been poured into this place, not to mention all my hopes and dreams…

  They needed to find the real murderer, I thought. That would put an end to all the speculation about my tearoom and the safety of its offerings. It would have helped if the police actually released more press statements about the case, to give the tabloids something else to latch on to, but Devlin was playing his cards very close to his chest. So far, the official position from Oxfordshire CID was that the investigation was “ongoing”.

  Fat lot of good that’s doing me, I thought gloomily as I eyed the empty dining room again. They needed to make some progress on this case, solve the mystery behind Washington’s death, and find the real person responsible.

  I paused. No, wait.

  Not they needed to make progress on this case and solve the mystery.

  I did.

  I needed to find the murderer. I couldn’t just rely on waiting for the police—for Devlin and his smarmy sergeant—to make the connections and solve the case. My business could have been ruined by then.

  No, I had to do something myself. I’d never been the kind of person to just sit back and wait for others to solve my problems. And this time, I knew I could make a difference. Like Mabel Cooke said, I was on the ground, I was local, I had a foot in the world of Oxford University, and I could find out things the police couldn’t access… My visit to High Table at Gloucester College, for example, had provided valuable intel which the police would never have known…

  My phone rang suddenly, startling me out of my thoughts. I groped in my pocket and glanced at the screen before I answered. It was my mother.

  “Darling!” she trilled. “I’m just at Debenhams with Helen Green and we’re trying to remember the name of the actress who played the ex-wife in the film His Girl Friday…”

  “And…?” I said, bewildered. “I don’t understand—what does that have to do with Debenhams?” Or me?

  “Oh, we’re in the kitchenware department and I thought the lady who’s serving us looks just like her. But I can’t remember her name.”

  I took the phone from my ear and stared at it to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I still didn’t understand why she was calling me. I put the phone back to my ear.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t know who it is either. Um… do you have your iPad with you? Why don’t you look it up online? I’m sure if you just search the internet for the details of the film, you’ll find it.”

  “Oh, but that’s exactly why I was ringing you, darling! You don’t happen to remember my Apple ID password, do you? I thought it was ‘gemmarose’ but it’s not working.”

  “Mother,” I said, trying not to raise my voice. “I’ve told you a million times already. You need to capitalise the first letter of the password. Did you do that? If you didn’t type a capital ‘G’, that’s why it won’t work.”

  “Oh…” There was the sound of rustling and my mother whispering bossily, “Don’t tap it like that, Helen! You have to keep your fingers upright”—then she came back on the line. “Oh, it’s worked, darling! How marvellous! Right, must dash. They’re just bringing out the new Breville mixer and I must get to the front of the queue. Bye!”

  I lowered the phone and stared at it again, feeling like I just had an out-of-body experience. Cassie was grinning next to me. Well, at least my mother’s phone call had improved her mood.

  “Maybe you should get it tattooed on her head or something,” she suggested, chuckling. “What you need is to think up some jingle—or maybe a famous quote or something—you know, like a mnemonic, which would help her remember.”

  “Yeah, and then she’d be ringing me all the time, asking me what the quote was—” I broke off suddenly as I thought of something.

  “What?” Cassie looked at me.

  I stood up, a crazy idea stirring in my mind. “Listen, Cassie—can I leave you to look after things for a bit? I need to pop back into Oxford.”

  “Well, it doesn’t look like I’m at any risk of being overwhelmed, does it?” said Cassie, casting a dark look around the empty room. She glanced back at me curiously. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back. It’s just an idea… it might not work.”

  I left Cassie starting a new sketch and wheeled my bicycle out of the courtyard. Before I got on it, however, I pulled out my phone and called Seth. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Listen, Seth—would you know the students that Professor Hughes is tutoring at the moment?”

  “You mean the First Years? Yes, I think I know them… Why?”

  “Apparently one of them confirmed Hughes’s alibi for Saturday morning. His name is Tom Rawlings. I wanted to ask him a few questions. Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Hmm… you could try the college library. I think I’ve seen him there in the afternoons—does a couple of hours of study before he goes off to the river at 5 p.m. Tom’s on the college rowing team,” Seth explained. “If you look in the library, you can’t miss him. Big tall chap, with ginger hair and freckles.”

  “Great, thanks!”

  I found Tom exactly as Seth had said, sitting in a quiet corner of Gloucester College library, hunched over an enormous biochemistry textbook. I went up to him and said in an undertone, “Tom Rawlings?”

  “Yes?” He looked up in surprise.

  I sat down next to him and spoke with as much authority as I could muster. “I understand you provided a statement confirming Professor Hughes’s alibi for last Saturday morning? I just need to check a couple of details in your statement.”

  I held my breath, hoping that my bluff would work. I was counting on the fact that CID detectives didn’t wear uniform and that, if I sounded natural and confident enough, he might just assume that I was a member of Devlin’s team. Of course, if he asked to see my warrant, the game was up, but I was banking on my own memory of myself as a Fresher and hoping that he would be equally naïve and trusting.

  My bluff worked. He nodded amiably. “Yeah, that’s right. They wanted to know if the prof was in his room like he said.”

  “And he was?”

  Tom nodded again. “Yeah, I went to see him to ask him a question about my essay that’s due this Friday. I was going to knock on the door, but then I heard him inside, talking on the phone.”

  “Do you know with whom?”

  “No idea. It sounded like they were having some kind of debate.”

  “About what?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. He was just going on about there being no absolutes. That’s one of his pet peeves—that people are always thinking there is one ‘correct’ way to do things and he always insisted th
at there isn’t, that there’s a multitude of different ways to approach a problem.”

  “Can you remember his exact words?”

  He looked at me in surprise. “I don’t know. Is it important?”

  “It could be,” I hedged. “Could you try?”

  “Well…” he furrowed his brow in concentration. “I think he was saying that he had his way and the other person had theirs and neither of them were correct… or something like that…”

  I quoted slowly: “‘You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist’—is that it?”

  His mouth dropped open. “Yeah, yeah… that’s exactly what I heard! How did you know?”

  “I… er… I guess I’m used to Professor Hughes’s way of speaking,” I said lamely.

  Thankfully, he didn’t question me further and, after thanking him, I left the library, my thoughts whirling. There was a reason I knew the exact words Tom had overheard—it was because they were a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche. Suddenly I had an idea of how Hughes could have had a rock-solid alibi, but not actually been in his room at the time. I pulled out my phone and dialled a number, then asked to be put through to Professor Hughes’s room. I listened for a moment, then ended the call and smiled to myself.

  The pieces were starting to come together at last.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I walked slowly through the cloisters back to the main quad, deep in thought over what I should do next. The logical thing was to contact Devlin and let him know. He would want to investigate Hughes further. And he ought to give his sergeant a severe reprimand for not checking the alibi better, I thought wryly. This new revelation completely changed things—especially Hughes’s importance as a suspect…

  Then I froze as I saw a tall, balding figure come out of the Porter’s Lodge and head towards the staircase in the north western tower. Geoffrey Hughes!

  I hesitated a second, then darted after him. I caught up with him just as he was climbing the first flight of stairs. He had a bunch of envelopes in his hand and had obviously just picked up his mail from the Porter’s Lodge.

  “Professor Hughes…!”

  He turned around. I saw recognition flicker in his eyes.

  “Ah… Miss Rose, isn’t it? We met at High Table the other night.”

  I nodded, climbing the few steps until I reached his level. “Can I have a word with you? In private?”

  He looked for a moment as if he would refuse, then he nodded and led the way up to his room. I hadn’t thought of how I was going to tackle Hughes. I had acted on impulse and didn’t really have a plan. Now, as I stepped into his room, I decided that the best plan of action was attack. Immediately. Before he got a chance to get on the defensive. So as soon as he had shut the door, before he could cross the room and put the hulking barrier of his big mahogany desk between us, I launched straight into it.

  “You lied to me the other night at High Table, Professor Hughes.”

  He looked taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  “You told me you didn’t know Brad Washington when, in fact, you knew him very well. He was a friend and a fellow student here with you at Oxford—isn’t that right?”

  His face was expressionless. “Yes, I told this to the police. Washington and I were graduate students together, doing a DPhil in Pharmacology.”

  “And you saw him on Friday afternoon, the day before he was murdered.”

  He gave a reluctant nod.

  “So why did you lie?”

  He looked down his long, narrow nose at me. “Not that it’s really any of your business, but I just thought it would be easier.”

  “Easier?”

  He made an impatient movement. “Yes, I saw the news of the murder on TV and I knew that things would probably get… ‘messy’ with the police. I didn’t really want to be involved in a murder investigation and I certainly didn’t want the rest of the SCR gossiping about me. So I thought it was easier just to pretend that I didn’t know him. After all, as I told Inspector O’Connor, my meeting with Washington had no relevance to the murder anyway.”

  I took a step forwards. “But that isn’t the only thing you’ve lied about.”

  He pushed past me and went to his desk, putting it between us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady.”

  “I’m talking about your alibi for Saturday morning. You said you were here at the college, in this room, marking some essays…”

  He dropped the envelopes on his desk, then made a great show of shuffling some papers, his long fingers rifling through the pages. “Yes, that’s what I was doing. Look, I already went through all this yesterday, first with the detective sergeant and then Inspector O’Connor in the evening. I really don’t know why you’re raking all this up again.”

  “Because you didn’t tell Inspector O’Connor the truth,” I said. “You weren’t here at the college at all on Saturday morning. Your alibi was false.”

  He looked up angrily. “Now just a minute, Miss Rose! Who do you think you are, coming in here and throwing accusations around like that? I have a perfectly good alibi which the detective sergeant has already checked and verified. One of my students vouched for my being in this room.”

  “I know. I spoke to him just now.”

  He eyed me warily. “You did?”

  “Yes, and he told me something very interesting. You see, unlike the sergeant, I asked Tom Rawlings to describe in detail what he had overheard. He said you were on the phone, arguing with someone—having a debate on your favourite topic: the ambiguity of absolute right and wrong. The thing is…” I moved forwards to lean across the desk. “What he overheard wasn’t you, Professor. What he overheard was your answering machine.”

  “My what?”

  I nodded. “I recognised the words Tom heard you say. It’s a Nietzsche quote. And I remembered what the other dons had said about you at High Table—that you were obsessed with Nietzsche and his teachings. In fact, I remember one of them making fun of you and saying that you even had Nietzsche’s quotes on your answering machine.”

  Hughes said nothing, although he had gone very pale.

  “‘You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist’,” I quoted. “That’s part of your answering message, isn’t it?” I glanced at the answering machine next to the phone on the corner of his desk and I saw his eyes travel in the same direction. “When the police asked for your alibi, you bluffed and made up something about being here at the college. It was pure luck that Tom happened to come up to your door just at the time that someone called you and your answering machine switched on. It really was one of those rare lucky coincidences which let you off the hook. And when you heard, you must have been delighted. All you had to do was keep quiet and let everyone assume that Tom’s account was the truth.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blustered. “This is all nonsense! Utter fabrication! You can’t prove anything!” His eyes slid again to the answering machine on the corner of his desk and I knew what he was thinking.

  “Oh, no, don’t think you can erase the message as soon as I’m gone,” I said. “I rang the college and asked to be put through to your office, just before I saw you. I have the recorded message—in your voice—and I’m sure if Tom Rawlings is asked again, he would be happy to confirm that that is exactly what he heard. It’s right here—recorded in my phone.” I held up my mobile. “And I’d be happy to pass it on to the police.”

  Hughes looked as if he was going to argue again, then he seemed to deflate like a balloon, right in front of my eyes.

  “What do you want?” he asked dully.

  “I want the truth. Where were you on Saturday morning? Why did you lie about your alibi?”

  He sank into his chair, his expression defeated. “All right. I wasn’t here in college that morning. I was in Meadowford-on-Smythe.” He grimaced as he saw my expression. “Yes,
I was at your tearoom. Or rather, I was supposed to meet Brad there. We had a meeting on Friday afternoon, just as I told the police, and Brad wanted to meet up again, to… to discuss things further. He suggested your tearoom because he had enjoyed the food there and it was close to his hotel. It suited me as I didn’t really want to be seen with him at some café in Oxford. We were supposed to meet at 8:15 a.m. and I got there around ten minutes late. When I walked into the courtyard, he was already dead.” He shook his head. “I panicked. It was such a shock, seeing him like that. Then I saw that folder on the table. I… I don’t think I was thinking very clearly. I just had some vague idea of not wanting to be connected to him in any way. So I grabbed the folder and ran.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

  “But if that’s all, why didn’t you tell this to the police?”

  “Are you joking? There’s no way they would have believed me! I didn’t want to get involved in a murder investigation! I knew I wasn’t the one who had killed him—he was already dead when I arrived—so I knew I didn’t have anything to do with it. I thought the easiest thing would be if I removed the folder and pretended our meeting never existed.”

  “But… it makes no sense,” I said. “If you didn’t kill him, why would you be scared of the police knowing that you were supposed to meet him?”

  He made an impatient sound. “Oh, for God’s sake, haven’t you ever watched any of those crime dramas on TV? The fact that I was supposed to meet him at the same time that he got murdered would have made me a prime suspect already, never mind me discovering his body! It was simpler all round if I just… ‘erased’ my presence. If the police knew that I was supposed to meet Brad, it would just confuse matters and push the case in the wrong direction. They would waste a lot of time investigating me when they should be after the real culprit.”

  I frowned. In a way, what he said made sense, although I couldn’t get over the feeling that I was missing something.