Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries)

by Maria Hudgins

  “Dr. Scoggin’s children are in good hands. We have a woman officer at the flat now looking after them.”

  “But still! They need someone they know.”

  I hoped Lindsey’s children would remember me. I’d seen them only once since I arrived and, before that, not since Christmas. These poor kids were already dealing with the breakup of their parents’ marriage and the insecurity of spending their summer in a foreign country. Now this. I knew Lindsey had tried to keep the custody squabble away from little ears, but children are so perceptive you can hardly ever keep them from sensing trouble.

  “Perhaps you’re right, Mrs. Osgood. Mrs. Lamb is not directly involved in this anyway.” He turned to me. “A couple of questions before you go. What is your relationship to Dr. Scoggin?”

  I told him. He asked me to tell him about the last time I’d seen Lindsey and if I could think of anyone who might want to kill her. Having nothing of value to tell him, I was allowed to leave. “One problem,” I said. “I’ll have to take a taxi to the apartment and I have no money. Lettie and I have both left our purses back at The Mitre.”

  Chief Inspector Child asked DS Gunn if there was a squad car here at the hospital. Gunn made a call on her radio and turned to me. “There’s an officer outside waiting to take you. He’ll also drive back into town and pick up your purses from The Mitre.” She returned to her radio and dictated the address of Lindsey’s apartment to the officer in the parking lot.

  Before I left, I looked carefully into Lettie’s eyes. I saw fear. I wished I could stay with her, but I knew she’d feel better knowing I was with her grandchildren.

  The apartment building was what the British call a “terraced property,” a single row of two-story apartments, each with a small, walled-in front yard and a somewhat larger space in the back. Lindsey’s place was conspicuous with the yellow crime scene tape strung across the front. A small front stoop stood between a large plate-glass window on one side and wood siding with an inserted air-conditioning unit on the other. Above, brown shingle siding with smaller, probably bedroom, windows and two more air-conditioning units.

  My police escort saw me to the front door and rang the bell. I tried to ignore the big pool of drying blood on the walkway, only a couple of yards outside the front door, but I turned and looked at it again while we were waiting for the door to open. “That’s where it happened,” I said.

  “Aye. We think she was just popping out to pick up the morning paper.”

  “Did the children . . . ?”

  The door opened and a policewoman showed me in. My driver tipped his checkerboard hat to us and turned to leave, but the policewoman stopped him. “I need to ride back with you,” she told him. “Just a moment. Won’t be a tick.”

  My heart thudded. In the living room ahead, I saw Lindsey’s two children, sitting side by side on the sofa as if they were in church, minding their manners and enduring a sermon they didn’t understand. Claire, the seven-year-old, was in pink shorts, blue T-shirt and flip-flops. Five-year-old Caleb looked as if he’d dressed himself. He wore a plaid shirt with only one button done, and Disney character pajama bottoms. White socks, but no shoes.

  “Hi, kids, remember me? Aunt Dotsy?”

  Both nodded their heads.

  “I’m going to stay with you a little while, but your Grandma Lettie will be here just as soon as she can.”

  “Are they taking the bullet out of Mommy?” Claire asked.

  “Oh, so you know.” I turned to the policewoman who was standing at the front door, one hand on the knob.

  “Hard to keep anything from those two. They seem to deal with fact better than fantasy. They know everything. I’ve given them their tea, so I don’t think they’ll want lunch before noon.”

  “Thanks. We’ll be all right now.” When the front door closed behind the policewoman, I told the children, “They’re taking the bullet out right now, and Grandma Lettie will be there to see her when she comes out of the operating room.”

  “Wheoh did the bullet hit huh?” Caleb asked.

  Oh golly! These kids go straight to the point. “It went in under her ribs, about here.” I stuck my forefinger into my own stomach at the approximate spot.

  “It hit her in the pancreas?” Claire said.

  “I don’t know. Is this where your pancreas is?” I knew it was, but I couldn’t believe a second grader could be so well-versed in human anatomy.

  “Why did that puhson shoot my mommy?” Caleb asked.

  “I thought they had strict gun laws in the United Kingdom,” Claire said.

  I found an armchair on the other side of the coffee table and sat. “As a matter of fact, Claire, I was thinking the same thing myself on the way out. I don’t think individuals are supposed to have handguns here.”

  “Maybe it was a rifle.”

  “Or a shotgun.”

  “Well! I think the very best thing for us to do is whatever you normally do this time of day. What would that be?”

  “Sometimes Grandma takes us to the store with her.”

  “How do you get there?”

  “We walk. But that’s when we need some groceries,” Claire said, “and we don’t need any right now.”

  The children, it turned out, wanted to talk about it. I don’t think they’d felt they could talk freely to the policewoman, but they did talk to me. They’d both been asleep when it happened. Claire thought she heard a pop. Caleb heard nothing. Claire had hopped out of bed and run to her window when she heard a neighbor from across the street shout.

  “I ran down the stairs but I couldn’t get past the front door because Mrs. Champion from next door was already there and she wouldn’t let me go out. But I saw Mommy lying on the sidewalk and she was bleeding. I think she was still awake but I can’t be sure because Mrs. Champion was hiding my eyes and the man from across the street was kneeling over Mommy.”

  “Did you hear anyone say anything about seeing the shooter?”

  Both children shook their heads.

  “Is Mommy going to be all right?” Caleb asked.

  Claire slapped him on the back of the head. “Of course she’ll be all right, stupid!” Her voice quivered a tiny bit, and she raised her small chin, as if swallowing had suddenly become difficult.

  A half-hour later a squad car pulled up in front. An officer got out and handed me my purse. “Any word from the hospital?” I asked.

  He hadn’t heard anything, but now I had my cell phone and I had money. My phone had Lettie’s number on speed dial. “I hate to use you kind people as a taxi service, but if you’re going back into town, could the children and I go with you? We want to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum.” I stepped back inside, set Claire to the task of finding the keys to the apartment, and sent Caleb upstairs for shoes and outdoor pants. These children were so amazingly mature for their ages, I found myself treating them as if they were teenagers.

  The Pitt Rivers Museum, with its stuffed dodo bird and other extinct animals, enthralled both children. I asked a docent where they kept the shrunken heads I’d heard about and tried to steer the children away from that aisle, thinking it too gory to be age appropriate. But Claire found them anyway, and backed off, saying, “Uhhgg!” and “You don’t need to see this, Caleb. Are they real, Aunt Dotsy?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how do they do it? Does the skull shrink, too?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go outside. I want to call your grandma.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  * * *

  We found a bench on the lawn outside the museum and I called Lettie. The mercury was climbing toward ninety and Caleb was starting to act cranky. I reminded myself that, prodigy though he might be, he was still only five years old. It was nearly one o’clock and he was probably hungry.

  Lettie answered on the second ring and told me Lindsey was still in surgery. “I’m scared. They should have finished by now.”

  “They may be holding her in the recovery room,” I said.

 
Claire grabbed my arm with both hands, and looked up at me, expectantly.

  “They said they’d let me know as soon as she was out of surgery. I’m waiting in the room they’re supposed to bring her to when she’s out. If she were in the recovery room, they’d have told me,” Lettie said. “The police are lurking.”

  “Lurking?”

  “Like they’re ready to pounce on her with a million questions.”

  “It’s their job, Lettie. Besides, we want to know who did this, don’t we?”

  “Absolutely! But I wonder if Lindsey will remember anything.”

  I held the phone to my ear for several seconds after Lettie had hung up, hoping to think of the right words to report to the children. Claire still held my arm, waiting. Caleb, his head down, looked at me sideways, as if he was afraid to ask. As if he knew the news wasn’t good. I had to tell them something, and I knew these kids were too perceptive not to intuit a lie. When I could delay no longer, I hit the end call button on my phone.

  “Your mom is still in the operating room, but Grandma says to tell you she’ll call the minute she’s out.”

  “It’s been more than two hours,” Claire said.

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t take two hours to remove a bullet.”

  “A bullet in the chest has to be treated carefully. I’m sure they want to check everything and make certain—”

  “There’s no internal bleeding.” Claire finished my sentence for me.

  “Will they sew up her pancreas?” Caleb said.

  “I’m sure they will, if it needs to be sewn up.”

  I felt as if I was walking on eggshells. These poor children’s lives were threatened and they—at least Claire—knew it. What would happen if Lindsey didn’t make it? I pushed the thought from my head and tried to smile. “Let’s get some lunch.”

  With Caleb on one side of me and Claire on the other, I ushered them down Museum Road to the Eagle and Child Pub, known to locals as the Bird and Baby. “We’re going to the same pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien hung out and drank beer when they were in school here.”

  “Who?” Caleb asked.

  “Have either of you read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? How about The Hobbit?”

  “I have. I’ve read three of the Narnia books,” Claire said. “But can we go to a pub? Will they let children in?”

  “In England, pubs are open to everybody, kids included.”

  “Can we get beer?” Caleb danced sideways, looking up at me.

  The Eagle and Child had a children’s menu. Once fed, we took to the street and I called Lettie again. She was still waiting for the first word from the operating room. I told her, “I’m taking the kids back to St. Ormond’s for a while. If she wakes up and wants to see them, I’ll bring them out to the hospital. Otherwise we’ll head back to Lindsey’s apartment.”

  By the time we entered St. Ormond’s gate, Caleb was whining about his legs hurting. I took them up to my room. Caleb flopped down on my bed and immediately went to sleep. I had to wake him up to explain things to him. “If Claire and I go outside for a while will you be all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to wake up and wonder why you’re in this strange place?”

  “No. I won’t be scared.”

  “Good boy. We’ll be back soon. You’ll probably still be asleep when we get back. If you do wake up and we’re not here, you can stay here, or you can go down the stairs to the Porter’s Lodge. Do you remember? It’s where you waved to the man in a round hat a few minutes ago. He can help you find us.” Fortunately with my own grandchildren in various stages of childhood, I never really get out of practice talking to young children. You have to keep it simple and tell it in little steps. Having raised five children, I’m good at it.

  Claire and I walked the perimeter of the East Quad, surveying the flowerbeds. Claire, I thought, was feigning more interest in the flowers than she really felt, and I knew her mind was on her mother. When we’d made a complete loop, we ran into Harold Wetmore heading for his own lodgings along the north wall of the quad. He bent and shook hands politely with Claire when I introduced them.

  “Just popping back for a few minutes before the last afternoon session,” he said. “I believe Daphne is having a few people in for tea. Would the two of you join us?” To Claire, he said, “We have some lovely raspberry jam and scones. Would you like that?”

  His tone was entirely too infantile, but Harold had no way of knowing how mature Claire was, and Claire was too well-mannered to roll her eyes. We accepted the invitation and found a half-dozen of my fellow conferees already there, milling about in the Wetmores’ library with their teacups rattling on little saucers. One of those present was Larry Roberts. I supposed it was time to smooth our troubled waters.

  Pretty Georgina Wetmore, Harold’s niece, led Claire to the sideboard full of goodies and I wondered if the poor kid would be able to force anything else down, given the hamburger and fries she’d put away at the Eagle and Child less than an hour ago. Unlike the other guests, Georgina was wearing grunge casual today. Distressed jeans, thin yellow T-shirt, and flip-flops. Her blond hair was pulled back in a red rubber band.

  Larry Roberts stood in a corner, alone with his teacup, so I had him trapped. Approaching him, smiling, I said, “Can we call a truce, Larry? We seem to have forgotten we really like each other.”

  That got to him. He was expecting me to challenge him, to apologize, or to grovel. He wasn’t prepared for an appeal to his humanity. His teacup jittered on its saucer and for a minute I thought he was going to cry. That would be horrible. Before he embarrassed us both, I knew I’d better steer the conversation onto a more intellectual track so I said, “Isn’t scholarly discourse, disagreements included, what conferences like this are all about?”

  His face brightened. “You’re right. As usual.”

  “Can I have that in writing?”

  He laughed as if a weight had been lifted. “Where were you this morning? I hoped you’d come to my breakout session, but when you didn’t show, I said to myself, ‘I think I’m getting the cold shoulder but I guess I deserve it.’”

  “Oh! You haven’t heard.” It hadn’t occurred to me that no one here knew Lindsey had been shot. No one here even knew who she was and wouldn’t have recognized the name Dr. Lindsey Scoggin if they had heard about a shooting in another part of town. For the first time, it dawned on me that the shooting would have already been all over the TV. In a town like this a shooting, especially when it involved a doctor, would be huge news. But the conference members were, by and large, staying in rooms without TVs. Those who, like Larry, were staying in hotel rooms wouldn’t make a connection between the victim and our group even if they heard Lindsey’s name.

  I started to explain, but Claudia Moss walked in at that moment and Larry looked toward the door, saw her, and waved her over. I felt a tug at my elbow.

  “Aunt Dotsy? Come over here. Georgina and I want to show you something.” Georgina stood by a glass display case nestled beneath the tall, mullioned, east window. I got a chill when Georgina greeted me. The last time I’d heard that voice it was coming from the second floor of the faculty wing and it was saying, “If looks could kill, I’d be dead!” I hadn’t recognized her voice when I was standing beneath the back windows of the faculty rooms, possibly because I’d never really talked to her long enough to register its tone.

  “Look at these guns, Aunt Dotsy. Aren’t they great? Georgina says this one was used to kill Catesby in the Gunpowder Plot.” I wondered if Claire knew anything about the Gunpowder Plot or if she was merely repeating what Georgina had told her. The glass top of the display case wasn’t far below Claire’s eye level.

  I looked at the one Claire indicated, a long pistol in burnished wood and engraved steel. It lay on a green felt mat with perhaps ten other firearms. All of them looked very old. I wondered how Claire could so casually look at guns while her own mother lay in the hospital suffering
from the result of one’s use.

  “Uncle Harold loves old guns,” Georgina said. “He inherited some of these from a former master of the college, and he bought some of them himself. Each one is probably worth thousands.”

  “Since Harold’s field is Anglo-Saxon England, I’d have thought he would collect swords and spears,” I said.

  Claire spoke up. “I asked Georgina how her Uncle Harold could have these if the United Kingdom doesn’t allow people to keep guns and she said gun collections like this are allowed.”

  “I don’t imagine your average criminal would know how to fire one of these even if he managed to get in here and smash the glass,” I said.

  “I can shoot,” Georgina said, then added, “clay pigeons.” She closed one eye and aimed a pretend shot at the ceiling with her forefinger.

  Claire’s face screwed up.

  “Not real pigeons,” I told the child. “Clay pigeons are just small discs people use to practice shooting.”

  “Oh.”

  When Claire and I left the party, Georgina went with us. I sent Claire up the stairs to check on Caleb and asked Georgina to sit with me on the bench in the middle of the quad. This was the same bench Bram Fitzwaring and I had shared on his last night alive, and the same one Daphne Wetmore and I had shared while we waited for the EMTs to emerge from Bram’s room.

  The Elizabethan “serving wench” of our first night’s party in the Master’s Lodgings was gone, replaced by a typical—albeit prettier than average—college student. Georgina wore no makeup. Straight brows above China blue eyes and a tiny space between her two front teeth lent a touch of character to a strictly symmetrical face. Her gaze lingered on the entrance to the staircase into which my young charge had disappeared. “I like Claire, don’t you? She’s clever for her age.”

  “Very,” I said. “Did she tell you about her mother getting shot this morning?”

  “Bloody hell!” Georgina recoiled as if she herself had been hit.

  “Her mother was shot this morning, coming out of their flat out near the Radcliffe Hospital.” I told her the story and ended with the fact that Lindsey Scoggin was still, as far as I knew, in surgery.