Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries)

by Maria Hudgins

  Apparently other diners were doing the same thing, because I found we were going with the flow across the quad. Several people were swinging wine bottles by the neck as they approached the west side of the lawn. I explained that I needed to research the history of Glastonbury Abbey but I made it sound as if it was related to my dissertation topic, which it wasn’t.

  “Glastonbury Abbey?” Robin Morris paused. We’d come to a pair of doors, and our fellow walkers were stepping around us to enter. “I can help you with that, but actually . . .” he waved his wine bottle, which I now saw was half-empty, toward the door. “Let’s go in. We may be in time to snag a comfortable chair or two.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  The Senior Common Room looked as if it had been decorated by my great-aunt Clara—several patterns too many. The carved wood of the fireplace surround, the bookshelves, and the waist-high wainscoting were magnificent. The dozen or so oil paintings in the style of Turner and the tulipy Dutch tiles around the hearth would have been all the extras the room needed, but the walls above the wainscot were papered with a busy print, the floor carpeted in beige with blue dots, the furniture slip-covered in a blue and white vertical stripe damask. A couple of crystal chandeliers Great-aunt Clara would have loved hung from the exposed beams of the Tudor ceiling.

  About twenty of our fellow conferees had beaten us here and stood or sat around in conversational groups. On one wall a sideboard held a variety of wine bottles, glasses, and napkins.

  “This is the first time I’ve been here, but someone did tell me about the after-dinner gatherings in the Senior Common Room.”

  Robin Morris took my elbow and steered me toward the sideboard. “We bring in the wine we didn’t finish at dinner and put it here. The waiters also go around the dining hall and gather all the bottles that aren’t dead soldiers and bring them in. No need to waste good wine.”

  As he said this, a door swung open and a waiter backed in, holding his tray full of bottles clear of the doors. He set the tray on the sideboard and turned each of the bottles so the label faced outward.

  “These are fair game,” Robin said. “Whoever bought it has left it on the table, so if you find one that interests you, pour yourself a glass.”

  I chose a Chablis with a colorful label. We found two unoccupied chairs on one side of the fireplace and sat. I found a silver coaster on the small table between our chairs and set my glass on it. Robin crossed his legs in a way that American men consider effeminate, and rested the arm holding his wine glass on his knee. “About your research on Glastonbury Abbey. I suggest you come over tomorrow morning. Go in the door just behind the statue of the Earl of Pembroke. I’ll take you around Duke Humfrey’s Library. You’ll love it. Then I’ll walk you through the formalities, but I’m going to suggest you not do your work there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the material you want will most likely be right here.”

  “Here?” I felt a thud of disappointment. I wanted to do research at the Bodleian! I wanted to brag about it back on campus at UVa.

  “The Fellows Library here is also part of the Bodleian. We have branches all over town, but the one right here, coincidentally, is the best for historical documents and books dealing with England from earliest times up to the Commonwealth.”

  I felt a bit better knowing I could still brag that I’d done research at the Bodleian. I looked around the room. By now I had met and could have named perhaps half of the occupants. The doors swung open again and this time it was Larry Roberts, holding the door open for Claudia Moss. I lost track of what Robin was talking about as my gaze followed the pair to the sideboard where Larry poured two glasses of wine, and they walked together to a small settee in the far corner of the room.

  “. . . bring nothing with you but a pencil.”

  “I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that.” Larry and Claudia seemed to have buried the hatchet. I’d need to keep an eye on this because Claudia was a pretty woman and Larry, although a decade or more older than Claudia, was a handsome man. But he was married, and his wife was a friend of mine. I wondered if Claudia knew that.

  I stopped in at Mignon’s room on my way up the stairs. She opened her door for me, a plastic cup in her free hand. I caught a whiff of flint, like a struck lighter, as I walked by her. “Is that mead?” I asked.

  “Oh right. I should . . . Do you want to taste it?” She held out the cup. A lavender unicorn wrapped around its side.

  I declined the offer. “How was your party?”

  “It wasn’t a party. It was a gathering of friends. We broke bread together and remembered Bram.”

  “Of course. Sorry.” I hate dealing with this sort of person. The sort who make you feel like you’re a complete lunk. “Did you ever find all Bram’s things? His luggage and all?”

  “It was in the Porter’s Lodge. I asked them for it and they were about to give it to me, but Mrs. Wetmore came in and said she’d promised to have it delivered to The Green Man.”

  “To the store? Why?”

  “Simon—that’s the man who runs the store—knows Mrs. Wetmore. He called her as soon as he heard about Bram and asked her to send his belongings to the store. Said he’d see that they got delivered to Bram’s family.”

  “Didn’t you think that was strange?”

  “Rather. Then I realized Simon didn’t know I was here. If he’d known I was here at the college, he wouldn’t have worried about it.”

  “Worried about what?”

  “His things not just being thrown away.”

  I supposed that might make sense, but I wondered if there might be something important in Bram’s luggage. Something more than clothes and lecture notes. I shook my head when Mignon nodded toward the room’s only chair. She plunked herself down on the side of her bed with an audible grunt, the mead in her unicorn cup splashing over.

  “So Mrs. Wetmore knows the owner of The Green Man?”

  “Small town. Well, not really a small town, but you know how it is. The business owners and the college brass—they all know each other. Town and gown, they call it.”

  Back in my room, I made plans for tomorrow. First thing in the morning, I’d go to the Bodleian and meet up with Robin, get settled in at the library, and work until noon. Would I be able to find anything helpful? I wondered if the place would have an old card catalog or a computer. One of the few advantages of being over the hill was knowing how to use a card catalog.

  I wished I could spend the whole day in the library, but my own breakout session, the one I was to lead, was scheduled for one-thirty in room 106 of the building where Robin and Claudia’s had been held. My topic was “Shakespeare’s Historical Sources and References to Arthurian Legend in his Plays.” I pulled out my notes and made sure they were all there. Before I left home I had loaded a few photos onto my iPad, but would they be large enough to show to a group? I wished I had one of those projectors you can hook up to your computer like the one I use in my classroom back home. Wait a minute. Didn’t I hear someone else talking about finding the AV man? Surely I wasn’t the only one with this problem. I’ll ask around at breakfast.

  I took Bram’s little note to bed with me, looked at it again, and was immediately struck by its resemblance to something else I’d just seen. My own presentation notes! Why hadn’t I seen it before? This was probably the note Bram planned to have tucked in his hand when he delivered his address. If he intended to make use of projected images, he’d probably step to one side, away from the podium, to give the audience an unobstructed view. He’d want notes with him, nothing elaborate like his lecture notes, just the names and numbers he’d be most apt to forget. Items one through four could refer to four slides he intended to show.

  Item 2. bone 51.9 (×2.6+65) = 2m. I’d worked that out yesterday and it made no sense in either English or metric units. Maybe I’d done it wrong. Would a man, writing cheat notes to himself, worry about the order of operations that most of us haven’t thought about s
ince high school? Wouldn’t he more likely have written bone 51.9 then said, “What if they ask me how I got two meters? I’d better write down the numbers I used.”

  It’s funny how things you’ve learned in one part of your life come in handy in another. In my research for my ancient history classes, I’ve become fairly conversant in the field of archaeology. In fact, I’ve even worked on a dig. Somewhere along the way I’d seen a formula for calculating the height of a person from the length of the long bone, the femur. I punched up the calculator on my iPad, but this time I did the operations in order, ignoring the parenthesis:

  51.9 × 2.6 + 65 = ?

  I got 199.94. Rounded off, 200. Centimeters? If so, that would be two meters. How much would it be in feet? I turned back to my iPad and to Google, metric to English conversions. Found a chart. Two meters equal 6.56 feet or about six feet, six inches. This felt right. I knew it was right!

  I looked up at my window, open to the night air, and felt like shouting out to the whole city, “It’s the leg bone of a man who was six foot six!” I jumped out of bed and did a dance reminiscent of the Mashed Potato. The “no exit” sign on my little window didn’t seem silly now, because in my present mood I was sure I could fly.

  I crawled back in bed when my ankle reminded me, sharply, of its delicate condition. Picking up the note again, I looked at item four, 450 CE. This would be a reasonable date for the death of King Arthur. That is, if he ever lived. Which, of course, he didn’t.

  Robin gave me a quick tour of Duke Humfrey’s Library, a part of the Bodleian more suitable for gawking than for research. He administered the mandatory oath: “I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; nor to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.”

  He called ahead to the Porter’s Lodge at St. Ormond’s to have someone waiting with the keys to the Fellows Library. He explained, “Most of the time, particularly in summer, no one is using the Fellows Library. Undergraduate students use the modern library in the Smythson building. I’ve told the porter you should be allowed to work any time and as long as you like. Only one caveat. They will lock the door when they leave you there. You can still open it from the inside, but you won’t get back in.”

  “I’d better use the bathroom before I go in.”

  “In case of fire, you wouldn’t want to be locked in.”

  “After the pledge I just made, you’ve pretty much eliminated the possibility of fire.”

  Robin laughed, and then added, “Remember, no biros, no highlighters, no crayons. Only pencil and paper—and don’t mark in the books even with your pencil.”

  Before sequestering myself in the Fellows Library, I dashed over to the wing of the Smythson building where classrooms filled most of its three floors. I found the room where I was to do my presentation and checked out its size, the number of chairs, and the location of outlets. I climbed the stairs to the top floor where I’d been advised I would find the audiovisual room. It was my lucky day. The AV room was open and the AV man was inside, applying a screwdriver to a computer keyboard.

  I introduced myself and asked if I could have a projector from one-thirty until two-thirty. The man, who told me his name was Pete, wrote my name and room number on a schedule sheet in the correct time slot.

  “I have another question. Did the speaker scheduled for Saturday afternoon, Mr. Fitzwaring, have any equipment reserved?”

  “The man who died?”

  “Yes.” I assumed an appropriately solemn tone.

  Pete had to look in his trashcan for Saturday’s schedule because they were kept on a tear-off pad. Luckily the trash hadn’t been emptied recently. He unfolded the sheet and spread it out on his workbench. “Here it is. Yes. He signed up for the projector for four o’clock. Looks like he was going to show some photos he had on his own device because he wanted an Apple VGA adapter as well.”

  “Oh! I’ll need one of those, too. One that will work with an iPad.” While he wrote this down, I asked, “Did you, by any chance, see the photos he wanted to show?”

  “No. I just set things up. He can show porn for all I care.”

  The Fellows Library was, like the dining hall, in the wing that separated East Quad from Middle Quad. After the porter locked me in, I pinched myself. It was as if I had walked into Hogwarts School. Ancient oak shelving on both sides of a long aisle were punctuated by a dozen or more cubbyholes also lined, floor to ceiling, with books. All the chairs were wooden and straight-backed, reinforcing the idea that you were not here to get comfortable.

  My first shock came when I scanned a few rows of leather-bound volumes and found they were all in Latin. Uh-oh. Given a Latin-English dictionary I could translate about two sentences an hour. Walking up and down the aisle, I eventually found a section dealing with British History and the volumes were in English. I selected a big book entitled Documents Regarding the Suppression of the Monasteries, 1539, and took it to a plain wooden desk beneath a modern fluorescent lamp.

  The next time I looked at my watch, I found I had almost missed lunch and realized how easily I could have also missed my presentation. I get into a zone sometimes when I’m looking for answers in books. I carefully placed the dozen volumes I’d consulted back in their proper spaces on the shelves and left, closing the door behind me. I checked to make sure it was locked.

  I had learned a lot. I had learned that a man named Frederick Bligh Bond in the early twentieth century had allegedly excavated the bones of Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey. Bond, it seems, was an archaeologist but also a psychic, so I automatically put his work inside a mental parenthesis, knowing that I couldn’t mention him among my peers without precipitating a chorus of jeers and snide remarks. But bones had been dug up, and I wondered how they could have belonged to Richard Whiting, since that good man had been beheaded and the rest of his body chopped into pieces for exhibition throughout the realm. The execution took place on Glastonbury Tor in 1539, but what would have remained for burial at the Abbey?

  Richard Whiting was given no notice he was about to be arrested and the Abbey destroyed, yet he must have had a suspicion. If he had a suspicion, wouldn’t he have hidden the Abbey’s treasures? I found a reference to the possibility that he had, and that his hiding place was in nearby Sharpham. Bingo! Sharpham was a name on Bram’s note. If so, what else would he have hidden? What did the Abbey have that would’ve been more precious than silver or gold?

  The bones of King Arthur.

  Or at least bones they thought were those of Arthur and Guinevere. I learned that the Abbey burned down in 1184, and during its reconstruction in 1191, monks discovered bones deep down and inside an oak log. Several feet above the bones they found a stone slab and under it, not visible to anyone standing at ground level, they found a leaden cross inscribed, Here lies the famous King Arthur and his second wife, Guinevere, buried in the Isle of Avalon.

  The exact wording varied according to the source, and its authenticity had been roundly challenged through the ages. The cross itself hasn’t been seen since the early eighteenth century.

  As for Arthur’s and Guinevere’s bones, when the Abbey was finally rebuilt about a hundred years later, King Edward I had them placed in a black marble coffin under the high altar of the new church. Every aspect of these events had been challenged, ridiculed, accepted, and disproven by scholars and clerics from that time until now.

  Legend has it that Arthur was a giant. People in fifth century Britain were short, not due to genetics, but to diet, to frequent illnesses, and to the challenges of just staying alive. So a man could have grown to six feet six if he came from genetically tall stock, if he led a charmed life, and if he had a good diet from birth to adulthood. But in western Britain in those days, a man six and a half feet tall would have looked like a giant.

  He
ading for the dining hall, I seriously considered skipping the afternoon session and holing up in the Fellows Library. If I hadn’t been in charge of it, I would have.

  Lunch was cold meats and cheeses. We were to make our own sandwich at the buffet table and sit anywhere we wanted. I saw some people walking out with sandwiches wrapped in paper napkins, heading for the lawn. I found Larry, Claudia, and Harold sitting at the end of a long row of tables and joined them. They were finished with their sandwiches, but lingering over their plates.

  “Eat up, Dotsy.” Larry tapped his watch. “It’s ten after one. Your presentation starts in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ve been working in the Fellows Library all morning. Lost track of time.”

  “How did you get in?” Harold Wetmore looked at me over the rims of his glasses.

  “Robin Morris. He swore me in and everything.”

  Larry glanced at Harold, then quickly back to me. “Why are you working in the Fellows Library?”

  “I’m trying to find out exactly what Shakespeare’s sources would have said about King Arthur.”

  “You already know, Dotsy. You’ve been reading nothing else for the past year!” Larry’s face was redder than it should have been upon discovering his student was reading more than necessary.

  I saw Claudia’s arm move as if she had laid a hand on Larry’s knee, but I couldn’t see under the table. Harold Wetmore frowned and rubbed the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand.

  “But I’ve only been reading about Shakespeare’s sources that related to Macbeth. This afternoon thing is about Shakespeare and the Arthur legends.” I took a big bite of my sandwich.

  “Like, what did Willie know and when did he know it?”

  Claudia said.

  “Exactly,” I mumbled through the food in my mouth and swallowed sooner than I should have. “What? Don’t look at me like that, Larry! My God, you’d think I was researching fairies and crop circles.”

  Larry wasn’t expecting that. I’d never talked to him like this before. His jaws clenched. “You could just ask your friends from Glastonbury. They can tell you all about such crap.”