A Spartan Murder

by L. A. Nisula

  “I agree. But I need more than you not liking him. Anyway, I found a notation in his calendar to see Professor Headly, but no blackmail.”

  “In his calendar? I didn’t see him in the department calendar.”

  Inspector Burrows looked up. “Interesting.” He pulled out a calendar and passed it to me.

  I flipped through it. “This is completely different. This must be his personal appointments. Does it line up with the blackmail in any way?”

  “Not so far, but I’m still looking into it.”

  I tapped my fingers on the table. “I wonder how Mr. Wilson got the money to cover Mr. Mayer’s shoplifting.”

  Inspector Burrows shrugged. “He could have a generous allowance.”

  “Or Professor Headly could have given Mr. Wilson the money to pass onto Mr. Mayer. I wonder... Perhaps it wasn't only Mr. Wilson giving him blackmail information, but the boys themselves. Could that be how he was able to entrap the other professors? Could he have been paying something for them as well?”

  “It’s possible. It certainly wouldn’t hurt for me to have another look at his accounts, in any case.”

  “You could ask Inspector Crawley for help.”

  “You realize he’s never solved a murder before, right?”

  “I assumed that was the case, yes.”

  “And he’s never dealt with a robbery more complex than the theft of the answer key to a final.”

  “Not surprising at all.”

  He smiled. “But he could still be useful. I’ll try to come up with something he can help me with.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to learn at the police station, so I returned to the guest house. I was half-hoping to find something I’d missed in my notes, although what that could be I had no idea.

  As I passed Mrs. Eggleston’s desk, she waved me over. I ran through anything I could think of as I approached. Could she object to me bringing the police investigation to her respectable lodging? Did she think I’d been throwing wild orgies in my room when she was sleeping? Was she hoping I would?

  “A letter came for you in the morning post. I have it under the desk.”

  I relaxed. I wasn’t about to be evicted, then. “Thank you.” A new set of worries, of course. Who even knew I was here and why would they be sending me a letter by post instead of mechanical bird?

  “I know it’s here somewhere. If you’re interested in taking dinner down here in the dining room, it will be shepherd’s pie tonight.”

  “Thank you, I’ll keep it in mind.” In mind if I wanted to send Professor Graham somewhere tonight.

  “I’m sure we’d enjoy having you. Here it is.” She held out a thick envelope that could have held a typing job.

  “Thank you. Are you still serving tea down here?”

  “Why yes, and Mrs. Gilbert has made a gooseberry fool.”

  That might get me out of dinner, then. “Then I’ll be down as soon as I’ve had a look at this.”

  “I’ll tell Maisie to have a table ready.”

  The first mystery was solved as soon as I sat on my bed and had a proper look at the letter. It was from Mrs. Albright. I recognized her handwriting at once, and the return address was also a good clue. Of course, that led to the mystery of why she’d written at all, let alone something so weighty. I carefully ripped through the top of the envelope with my finger and pulled out the paper inside. Another envelope fell onto the floor. I realized it had been wrapped inside the letter I was holding. I left it on the floor and turned to the letter. It was short and to the point and dated the previous day.

  “Cassie,

  This came for you in the morning post. I thought it might be related to your case. Once I saw the return address, I handled it as little as possible.

  Mrs. Albright.”

  I slid down to the floor and looked at the return address on the envelope. Professor Headly, Serringford College, Oxford. I used Mrs. Albright’s note to pick up the envelope without adding my own prints to it and slipped it into my handbag. Inspector Burrows would want to see what was inside, even if it was nothing. I made certain I had my gloves then went down to the lobby.

  Mrs. Eggleston was waiting for me by the door to the tea shop. I considered the options and decided Inspector Burrows could wait until I’d had some tea unless he wanted to brave the mystery of the shepherd’s pie in my place.

  Chapter 9

  Once I had enjoyed tea, sandwiches, and two slices of Bakewell tart provided by Maisie and Mrs. Gilbert, I made my way to the police station. Constable Winters was buttoning up his overcoat when I went in. “Good evening, Miss Pengear. I have your papers right here. I was going to drop them off on the way home. Need anything else before I slip away?”

  I had the feeling he wanted to be gone, so I said, “I'm here to see Inspector Burrows.”

  “Very good. He's at his desk. Inspector Crawley left for the night. Constable Hereford will be here in a minute if you should need anything. Although if it can wait until morning, I'll be back at eight. And you might want to make it wait until morning.”

  That seemed to explain why he was already half-in his coat. “I'll keep that in mind.” I let myself through to the back office and found Inspector Burrows hunched over the desk, looking through his notes. He glanced up when I came in. “Miss Pengear. So Constable Winters was preparing that folder for you. I had wondered”

  I slipped the folder behind my back so I wouldn't have to explain it and looked around for a distraction. I noticed a cot had been squeezed in between the desk and the wall.

  “Have you been sleeping here?”

  He glanced over. “It seemed prudent. After all, I am a dedicated officer of the law, and it is a murder.”

  “And you sleep at the Yard whenever you're solving a murder, hmm?”

  “Well, they offered to put me up at a police residence, which happened to be where Inspector Crawley is living at the moment.”

  “And you thought in-laws and the London man would be too much.”

  “He has in-laws too? Poor man. But I take it you didn't come here to review my temporary living arrangements.”

  “Of course not.” I pulled out the letter. “Mrs. Albright sent me this. It was waiting for me at the guest house. The return address is from Professor Headly.”

  Inspector Burrows opened the desk drawer and pulled out a pair of cotton gloves. “Have you handled it?”

  “No, and Mrs. Albright said she didn’t once she saw who it was from.”

  “Of course it came through the post so the envelope will be rubbish for prints.” He put on his gloves and took the envelope from me. “You waited to open it.”

  “I thought you’d want to see it.”

  Inspector Burrows turned the envelope in his hands. “And you weren’t expecting anything from him?”

  “Not at the moment. I’d done some typing for him, so there should have been a bank draft or a check or something coming soon. But I hadn't sent the invoice yet, so I wasn't waiting for it.”

  “Is there anything else he could have been sending you?”

  “Another typing job, I suppose. Or he could have sent payment. Some do from the quote in the initial letter.”

  Inspector Burrows held up the envelope. “Rather large check.” He glanced at my gloves—which I had not yet removed—then took a paper knife from the desk and offered it to me handle first.

  I took the envelope and the knife. “I suppose it could be another typing job. It’s the right size.”

  “There’s one way to find out.”

  I slid the knife under the edge of the envelope and sliced it open. I pulled out the papers inside. It was a stack of handwritten tinkering diagrams. I held them out for Inspector Burrows to look at. “Tinkering notes and gray coats.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “That's what I keep running into in this case. Tinkering notes and gray coats.” I leaned over the papers. “That isn’t his handwriting.”

  Inspector Burrows looked ov
er the papers. “The diagrams are quite well drawn. Unless he’s equally skilled in tinkering, these aren’t his.” He flipped through the pages. “Now, this is in a different hand. Do you recognize it?”

  I took the paper from him. “Yes, that’s Professor Headly’s writing. But it doesn’t make any sense.” I handed it back.

  “‘You forgot these here yesterday. JH’ Had you ever met him?”

  “No, and those don’t look like anything I could be typing up, either. They’re diagrams, not many words at all. That looks like some kind of a spindle. And that’s some kind of vehicle. I wonder what he was up to.”

  Inspector Burrows picked up the envelope and looked at it again. “It’s definitely addressed to you.” He put it back on his desk. “Maybe this explains why he telephoned.”

  “You mean he realized his mistake and wanted to tell me?”

  “Something like that. I’ll have another look at his desk and see if I can figure out what he was supposed to be sending you. Maybe it’s still on his desk. How much did he owe you for the typing.”

  “£3.”

  “I’ll be on the lookout for it. Do you mind if I keep these?”

  “Not at all. I don’t think they’re mine to begin with.” I put the papers back on his desk. “What is that noise? Did they get a guard dog?”

  “Just Constable Hereford. He does that for twenty minutes every hour.” Inspector Burrows sighed. “How I'll get any sleep is another mystery. Constable Winters said there was a back door.”

  But I was curious. “I'll brave this one.”

  “As you like. Don't forget your folder.”

  I grabbed the folder from the chair. “I wonder why they keep him on.”

  Inspector Burrows shrugged. “Maybe he's all they could find. Overnight shift is not fun at the best of times, and with so little chance of promotion here, away from the bulk of the cases, it can't be easy to find someone willing. I'll let you know if I find your check.”

  “And I'll let you know if I find any clues. Have a good evening.”

  Constable Hereford didn't look much older than most of the students I'd seen. He was sitting in Constable Winters's chair with his legs propped up on the desk, blocking the path between the back office and the gate out. I could feel Inspector Burrows watching me from behind as I contemplated the puzzle, eventually deciding it was easiest to climb over the desk to escape.

  Back in my room at Mrs. Eggleston’s, I sat on the bed and spread all of the lists I’d made out in front of me. Constable Winters had managed to find information on four of the students, all of them arrested for shoplifting. I scanned through the notes he’d made. Tommy Higgins was on top, and the story fit well enough with I’d been told. Under it was a report on Joe Wilson. He’d also been caught shoplifting, books as I’d been told. Constable Winters had first written the notes without mentioning the titles, then had added them, then scratched them out again, and finally had written them very small and very fast, like he was trying to mumble them with his pen so I wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t told me but also preventing me from understanding them. I squinted at the words until I could make them out and grinned. The shop that sold those could be in just as much trouble for selling them as Mr. Wilson would be for stealing them. Definitely not the sort of thing one spoke of in mixed company. But then it didn’t seem to be the sort of thing a young man would be too upset about having found out. I put that case aside and went on to the next.

  Marcus Johnson had been brought in for fighting with another student. I wondered if it was the same Marcus who had been pushing Bailey around at the cricket practice. Apparently someone pushed him back. The fight had been broken up by a professor before the police arrived, but the other boy had decided to press charges. The professor had left before the constable had arrived, and both boys claimed not to know him, so there hadn’t been sufficient evidence of who had started the fight, and they were both sent back to their dormitories. As I set that case aside, I wondered if both boys had told the truth about not knowing the professor or if the one in the wrong had known and lied, hoping to get the charges dropped. If the professor was Professor Headly, then the one in the wrong had to be Marcus Johnson.

  The final case was about Malcolm Stewart. The name sounded familiar. I pulled out my lists and found he was the leader of the boys from the Sanskrit room. He’d been arrested for drunk and disorderly and breaking curfew. He’d been found wandering in the high street after midnight without his trousers and attempting to break into a shop using a rock to the window, claiming he wanted to replace them. Since the shop happened to be a tobacconist, he’d been brought in to sleep it off. Embarrassing, but was it worth killing over? Was it even worth blackmailing over? It seemed like the kind of story that would have gotten all over town before he’d been released in the morning.

  I stacked the papers together and retrieved the original list to return it to my handbag. I could always ask Mr. McAvery if he knew any more details about any of these cases. Maybe seeing the reports would trigger a memory. But I didn’t see anything there worth murdering over, unless there was more to one of the cases. But that put me right back where I’d started.

  ~*~*~

  The next morning, I went downstairs to find Mrs. Eggleston deeply engrossed in conversation with what looked like a messenger boy, so I was able to avoid the discussion of breakfast and go straight through to the tea shop.

  As I tried to repeat my earlier escape from Mrs. Eggleston after breakfast, she called to me from the front desk. “Miss Pengear, that London man wants to see you at the police station.” She managed to say “London man” with such scorn, I knew she was annoyed, although with delivering the message or what she had managed to learn from the messenger—clearly that was who she had been speaking to before breakfast—I couldn’t tell.

  “I’ll get my hat and go right down. Thank you for taking the message.”

  “I had to give the boy a penny for bringing it.”

  “Please let me repay you.” I pulled out my wallet and put a shiny penny on the desk. I was quite certain Inspector Burrows had paid the boy when he’d sent him, so the fault wasn’t his but the enterprising messenger’s, although he probably considered it just remuneration for the information he’d given. It was also a small price to pay to make a hasty escape.

  ~*~*~

  Constable Winters looked up when I entered the station and opened the partition to let me through, but he didn’t greet me until I said, “Good morning,” and then it was only a nod. Inspector Crawley didn’t give me that much as he brushed past me and hurried out of the station. Clearly Inspector Burrows had done something more than normally irritating, and I was being considered an accessory.

  Inspector Burrows didn’t look up when I approached his desk. He didn’t look up when I greeted him. In fact, he didn’t look up as he spoke to me. “Miss Pengear, I need the letter.”

  “You don’t actually think that Professor Brookwald and Mr. Langley...”

  “Please don’t make this any harder than it is. I need the letter.”

  “Inspector...”

  He finally looked up at me. “Miss Pengear, I’m going to arrest Mr. Langley.”

  “What?”

  “Please don’t yell; I’m not happy about it either, but he bought a train ticket to London the day Professor Headly was murdered, only a few hours before it happened.”

  “But there are millions of reasons to go to London that have nothing to do with murder.”

  “Then why didn’t he go?”

  “He could have gone and come back.”

  “He did not leave from the Oxford station. That was the first thing I checked. Why leave from a different station if he had nothing to hide? And why didn’t he tell anyone he’d gone?”

  “What about the other victims of the blackmail? Don’t they all have motives too? And isn’t it ridiculous to think he’d buy a ticket under his own name if he were going to use it to move the body? And you say he didn’t go, then ho
w did he get to London?”

  Inspector Burrows sighed. “I appreciate that you want to help Mr. Langley. It is sort of what I asked you to do in a very unofficial way. But grasping at straws isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

  “What if they aren’t straws?”

  “Miss Pengear.”

  “Will you listen?”

  “If you can give me something to work with, of course I will. But I need evidence, not just the feeling that there’s something odd going on. Especially if I’m letting a good suspect go.”

  He really was upset. I could tell from the way he stopped arguing almost at once. The best I could do was delay. “It’s back at my flat in London. I’ll have to go and get it.”

  “Miss Pengear, I know perfectly...” Then he sighed and stood up. “All right. Bring it to me as soon as you have it.”

  That didn’t seem to deserve an answer, so I turned and flounced out of the office.

  Apparently our argument had been loud enough to be heard in the outer office. At least Constable Winters managed a smile for me as I passed his desk and wished me good luck as I went to the door. I was too irritated to answer. I left the police station and went straight to the college offices. I needed to find something helpful, and I needed to find it quickly. Beginning at the beginning seemed like a logical step. And that was the scene of the crime.

  Chapter 10

  I had been poking around Professor Headly’s office, trying to search for anything Inspector Burrows might have missed while simultaneously being sure not to disturb anything that might be a valuable clue, for less than half an hour when Professor Graham wandered by the open door. “Miss Pengear, how are you?”

  I put the book I’d been looking through down. I really did not like to be disturbed when I was poking around a murder scene I might or might not be allowed to be in. “Hello, Professor Graham. Were you looking for something?”