The Oxford Inheritance

by Ann A. McDonald

  She thought she’d welcome the peace, a break from the demands of her academics and the whispers that still trailed her down the hallways, but instead, Cassie felt on edge with the silence, jittery and out of place. Her attic hadn’t felt safe since the day she’d discovered Evie’s body, and even though the streets outside in the city bustled brightly with Christmas lights and holiday shoppers, inside the Raleigh walls everything was ominous and still. She found herself escaping the college grounds as much as possible: lingering in the library after her shifts and staying in the café at Blackwell’s until closing time, nursing a cup of tea and working her way through thick stacks of books from the fiction department. Some days she didn’t see another soul around Raleigh aside from the porters and a few professors like Tremain, who scurried around the grounds with distracted expressions on their faces, no doubt buried in research.

  A week slipped by, and then two, until Cassie was closing up the library on December twenty-third for the Christmas break. Even the dedicated scholars of Oxford put their studies aside for a few days, although by the look of the reluctance with which they packed up their things and finally filed out of the building, they would have preferred to celebrate among the dusty books.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d catch you.”

  Cassie felt a shock of recognition at the voice even before she turned. Hugo was on the steps outside, his hands in his pockets, a chilled flush on his cheeks.

  She hadn’t spoken to him since spending the night at his house; she’d assumed the imposition was an event not to be mentioned again. “Hi,” she replied, awkward. “I didn’t know you were still in town.”

  “I just popped back up for the day. I had an appointment I couldn’t miss. And then I remembered you might be working tonight. Walk you back?” he offered. “Unless, of course, you have other plans.”

  Cassie shook her head. “No plans.”

  She fell into step beside him, heading back toward Raleigh. The streets were busier than usual, all the high street stores open late for last-minute shoppers. “I often wonder, what’s the point?” Hugo noted with a wry grin, watching a woman struggle under the weight of a clutch of paper bags. “Half this stuff is doomed to sit in the back of a cupboard somewhere, gathering dust.”

  “It’s the ritual of it all,” Cassie agreed. “Gift exchanges, dinner, the big game. In America, at least,” she added.

  Hugo smiled. “Here we have the Boxing Day football. Where everyone sits around getting drunk and bickering about old grudges until you all can’t wait to get out of the house.”

  “Is that what it’s like at your house?” Cassie asked, curious. For the last decade, her experience of holidays had always been as an observer, seeing flashes of other families as she worked overtime shifts in stores and restaurants.

  “Not quite,” Hugo replied. “This year, it’s all political strategy and planning. The general election’s coming up in May, and that’s the only thing on the agenda. Uncle Richard has half his advisory team camped out at Gravestone.”

  “Do you think he’ll win?” Cassie asked. It was odd to her, the way Hugo spoke so casually of his uncle’s campaign for the most powerful position in the country. A different world, where power was as automatic as breathing, something to be grasped, tangible, not a distant vague dream.

  Hugo let out a sharp laugh. “He better. Otherwise family occasions will be a nightmare.” He paused, then corrected himself. “No, I don’t mean that. Uncle Richard would be a good prime minister. He’s been working toward it as long as I can remember. Practically my whole life. And now it’s getting closer, do or die—you can understand why everyone’s a little on edge down there.”

  “What about Olivia?”’ Cassie asked, remembering the fire in her eyes when they’d talked about politics that night at the Union.

  Hugo sighed. “She loves it. She’s down there pitching in right now, image consulting, ideas for reaching out to the younger voters. I can’t think of anything worse.”

  “She’d trade places with you in a heartbeat, you know.” Cassie didn’t know where her words came from, but it was too late to take them back.

  Hugo stopped walking. His gaze met Cassie’s with a curious look of recognition. “I know,” he said slowly. “I’ve told them all a hundred times, she’s the one suited to carrying on the family name. She could run a small country; half the time I think she already does. But they’re all so set in their ways, they won’t even hear of it. Women have never been the ones to take the stage in our family. They make good marriages, then stay in the background, steering things from behind the scenes.”

  “It sounds positively Elizabethan,” Cassie joked, as they started walking again. The bright lights of Ahmed’s kebab truck came into view, and without discussion they moved to take a place in the line.

  “I wish I was laughing.” Hugo gave a self-deprecating sigh. “Listen to me, complaining. I’m lucky, I know. I just wish . . .” He looked down at Cassie with a moment of sudden intensity. “Do you ever feel like the past has wrapped its chains around you and won’t let go? That everyone else’s decisions keep dragging you back, until you can’t even see which direction to turn?”

  “More than you’ll ever know,” Cassie replied with a ghost of a smile.

  Hugo paused. “I just wish I could be left alone to make my own mind up, for once.”

  “What would you do?” Cassie asked. She turned to the vendor and ordered, remembering Hugo’s choice from the last time and waving away his offer to pay. Food in hand, they walked back toward Raleigh. “I mean it,” Cassie continued, picking up the question she’d asked before. “If you had no parents, no family making demands. What would you do? Who would you be?”

  Hugo was silent for a moment—so long, Cassie wondered if she’d asked the wrong thing. “I’d like to travel,” he said quietly. “Not the way they do it, luxury hotels and tours, but just see the world for a while. What’s out there. I’d quit this stupid doctorate. I always thought . . . No, you’ll think it’s stupid.”

  “Go on,” Cassie urged him, strangely curious now. She wanted to know his answer, who he was hiding underneath the privilege and charm.

  “I wanted to be an explorer when I was younger.” Hugo looked bashful, more self-conscious than Cassie had ever seen. “There are still parts of the world where people have never stepped foot, can you imagine? Jungles and rain forests and mountain ranges. To go where nobody else has ever been, be the first to ever lay eyes on something.” For a moment, his face was lit up in the dark, full of youthful enthusiasm, and Cassie caught a glimpse of the boy he’d been once, wide-eyed and curious, before this sardonic, jaded persona had slowly taken grip of his soul. Then, just as swiftly, the self-deprecating mask slipped back into place. “I suppose it doesn’t take Freud to analyze that one,” he added. “Wanting to strike out to the ends of the earth, away from family and duty. It’s rather clichéd. What about you? Who would you be without family pressures? Or are you not so weak as to buckle under their grip like me?”

  They’d reached the Raleigh gates. Cassie stared at him, her mind going blank. He was trapped by the presence of family, but she was controlled by the absence of it. In a way, her mother’s legacy was just as stifling as the expectations Hugo was dealing with. Cassie felt she had no choice: from the moment she’d found the package pointing to Oxford, her destiny was set. She would chase down the truth until all was revealed to her; it wasn’t a choice so much as a calling.

  Again, the questions lingered in her mind: Who would she be when this was over? What would she have to hold on to, when there was no more chasing left to do? “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “This is all I’ve ever been.”

  “No,” Hugo corrected her, reaching out. His palm slid against her cheek, cupping her jaw, and he stared down intently into her eyes. “You’re so much more than you even know.”

  Cassie froze. She felt the shiver of sensation, his hand burning against her skin, but more than that, something in his eyes
: dark loneliness she recognized, because she felt it every day. A hunger, drawing her in.

  Hugo’s eyes darkened, and suddenly he was leaning in, closer, until she could feel the whisper of his breath against her skin. All she had to do was lift her lips to his, but she remained frozen in place, paralyzed, the hesitation strung in the air between them.

  What did he want from her? Cassie lurched back. “Good night,” she blurted, putting three feet of safe distance between them.

  Hugo straightened, blinking. “Uh, right.” He swallowed. “You’ll be okay—”

  “Fine.” Cassie said shortly. She clutched the paper bag of takeout and slipped backward inside the gates.

  “Wait,” Hugo called. “I . . . we’re having a New Year’s party. Down at Gravestone. A whole crowd. Come.”

  Cassie swallowed. “I can’t,” she lied. “I have plans here. But thanks.” She didn’t wait for his response before she turned and walked swiftly away, as fast as she could manage without breaking into a run. But even as she strode through the dark courtyard, the night air frozen on her skin, she felt the burn of his touch on her cheek, felt the shimmer of something dark and alive twisting in her blood.

  She’d forced herself to forget their meeting in the courtyard, the sharp unease she’d felt at his presence. After Evie died, it had seemed to fade into the background, drowned with grief and guilt and the way that Hugo seemed to understand what she was going through. But now that panic flared to life again, a thunder of adrenaline in her veins. Fear, mixed with something even more dangerous.

  Desire.

  22

  CHARLIE CALLED ON CHRISTMAS DAY MORNING. CASSIE HAD been sitting around with nothing better to do than channel-hop old holiday movies, so she arranged to meet him at a pub on the outskirts of the city. When she arrived, she found him nursing a pint of beer in the cold of the empty garden out back.

  “Can’t we go inside?” Cassie asked, shivering. She was wrapped in her duffel coat and scarf, but her fingertips were almost numb from the winter cold.

  Charlie shook his head, glancing anxiously around. “This, you don’t want anyone to hear.”

  Cassie’s heart clenched. She’d almost given up on hearing from Charlie. After two weeks of silence, she wondered if he’d been avoiding her request, or he was just too busy with his regular life to take the time to check into Rose’s death.

  “It took me long enough to get to the files,” he began. “I said you were a researcher doing a story on student suicides, and I didn’t think it would be a problem; we get requests like that all the time. So I filled in the paperwork like usual.” He paused, his blue eyes searching hers. “The next morning, I get called in to see the inspector. He grills me for half an hour. Wants to know who you are, why those files. He tried to play it off like confidentiality, you know, respect for the families, but he was rattled. So I told him it was no skin off my nose. I dropped it.”

  Cassie tried to hide her disappointment. “Thanks all the same,” she said, already wondering how she could get access to those suicide files.

  “Wait a minute,” Charlie corrected her. “I’m not done. I told the inspector it was finished, and then I waited. I didn’t have a chance to get near the files for a while, everything’s kept on-site, you see, in a fancy new storage wing. People all over the place. But this week, it thinned out. Lots of sick days, people phoning it in for the holidays. I was able to get in there and have a good dig around.”

  “And?” Cassie’s hopes rose. The cold was forgotten, and the discomfort of the wooden bench. All that mattered was the sheaf of photocopied pages Charlie ceremoniously withdrew from his inside coat pocket.

  “And you’re right. Something’s off.” He fanned the pages out on the table, and Cassie grabbed the nearest one. “There wasn’t much on your friend Evie. The coroner’s report was straightforward. Asphyxiation by hanging, no foul play. But Rose Smith . . .” He sighed. “I read the investigation report back to front, and it just doesn’t add up. They said suicide, right? But nobody even saw her by the river that day. They found her coat on the bridge, and a note back in her room, but that’s it. Now, suicide is plausible, don’t get me wrong. But they didn’t even declare her a missing person. Just announced it, case closed. It was too clean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know how to read a report. The subtext, the stuff between the lines, and this . . . They wanted it tied up with a fucking ribbon, quick too. They dredged the river, found her things, and that was it. Usually an investigation will go on for months if they don’t have a body, but they closed this in a couple of days. And that wasn’t all.” Charlie took a breath. “It got me thinking, the reason they were all so quick to jump to conclusions about the suicide was there had been a whole rash of them that year. Five deaths in the previous couple of months. Stands to reason, right? If all those other kids topped themselves from stress and whatever, this girl must have done the same. So I looked into them, the other deaths.” Charlie reached out and pushed the other papers toward Cassie, a thick wedge. “They were just the beginning. In the years nineteen ninety to ninety-five, there were sixteen suicides reported at the university.”

  “Is that a lot?” Cassie asked, trying to understand this new direction.

  Charlie gave a grim nod. “Double the national average.”

  “But Oxford is a stressful environment,” Cassie said slowly, repeating what Thessaly had told her in their counseling session.

  “Sure, but then you’d expect the rates to stay steady,” Charlie argued. “Instead, look.” He pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket, neatly folded. It was a rough timeline with Xs marked along the years. “You get clusters. And going back too—I searched the records for all mentions of suicide going back as far as I could. It’s the same. The rate is steady, a few people every year, then every twenty-five years or so, a big new cluster. In the midsixties, they had ten bodies show up in the space of five months.”

  “Why didn’t anyone notice?” Cassie asked, her mind racing.

  Charlie shrugged. “Who’s going to connect the dots?” he asked. “The deaths don’t get investigated on our end: once it’s a suicide, that pretty much wraps it up. The families are too focused on their own grief. Occasionally, you’d get a researcher or someone talking about the epidemic of tragedy, so the colleges would launch a mental health campaign, or some kind of help line, but that’s it. People move on, you see: students, staff—nobody stays in the same place here for long. They leave, a new crop of students arrives, and everyone forgets what happened before.”

  Cassie stared at the diagram, the tiny crosses marking so many lost lives. “These are all students?”

  “Mostly.” Charlie nodded. “Some locals too. But they didn’t get such a fuss. Not so high profile.”

  “And you’re sure it’s not just a coincidence,” Cassie tried. This wasn’t just two deaths that didn’t add up, but dozens, stretching back half a century at least. This was way over her head. “College attracts brilliant, unstable people. They get fixated on the work; any kind of failure can set them over the edge.”

  “Look at it,” Charlie said, tapping the paper. “Does that look like a coincidence to you?”

  The timeline was impossible to ignore. Cassie traced the line, trying to imagine all those unexplained deaths, how anyone could turn his head and look the other way for so long. “What do you think it is?” she asked. “A serial killer? More than one?”

  Charlie shook his head slowly. “The timeline is too spread out. Most killers will strike within ten or twenty years. This goes back to the nineteenth century, at least.”

  “So it’s bigger than just one person.” She shivered. “What do we do next?”

  Charlie pulled his coat closed. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I need to get home. My mum’s got a Christmas roast in the oven, and if I’m not back to peel the spuds, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Cassie blinked in disbelief. He’d delivered her proof that there we
re dozens of unexplained deaths at Oxford, and now he was talking about holiday meals? He must have caught her anxious expression because he sighed. “Look, there’s something here. I believe you. We need to figure out what’s been going on. But there’s nothing we can do today. It’s Christmas. Go home, relax, we’ll pick this up next week.”

  “Home,” Cassie echoed. As if she could simply put this aside now, when it was so much bigger than she’d ever imagined. “Sure. Right.”

  She got up to leave, but Charlie paused. “Where are you celebrating, anyway?”

  Cassie was still thinking about the cluster of Xs and stumbled out her response. “Um, nowhere. I don’t really do the holidays.”

  “You don’t do . . . ? Right, come on.” Charlie beckoned. “My mum would string me up if she knew there was a stray wandering around.”

  “I’m not a stray!” Cassie protested. “And I’m fine, really. I’ll get takeout and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Fine, see?” She forced a smile, but Charlie just rolled his eyes.

  “You’ll sit around obsessing over this lot, you mean. Come on,” he said again, softer this time. “What’s the harm? We’re a loud, obnoxious bunch, but it’s Christmas. Everyone should be with family, even if it’s not your own.”

  Cassie felt a pang. Her last Christmas with her mother had been a good year, her mom stable enough to remember presents and a tree. She’d baked cinnamon cookies and played Christmas songs while Cassie watched from the kitchen counter and tried desperately to remember this: the safety, the comfort and joy. She’d known she might not get another Christmas like that; she just hadn’t known she would never get another at all.