Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries)

by Maria Hudgins

  My main reason for coming here was not to see Lindsey, but to gain entrance to the research wing. I wanted to see St. Giles Bell’s lab again and I wanted to talk to Keith Bunsen. I knew Keith wasn’t in his rooms at St. Ormond’s, but he might still be talking to the police or he might be here. If he was here, he’d probably be in his lab. This presented a couple of problems. I couldn’t walk into the research wing without clearance. The only other time I’d been there, Lindsey had called ahead, given her name, and someone had buzzed us through.

  I started to tell a nurse at the station that I had a message from Lindsey for Dr. Bell and I needed to deliver it personally. That wouldn’t work now because I’d just expressed surprise that she wasn’t here, so when would she have given me this message? And if talk around this hospital was like most hospitals, every nurse in the building knew all about Lindsey, about St. Giles, and about Lindsey tagging Georgina as her shooter. They’d know Lindsey had given strict instructions that St. Giles was not to be allowed anywhere near her hospital room. So what excuse could I use?

  I retreated to a nearby visitors’ waiting area and pretended to make a call, then sauntered over to the station again, and called one nurse over. Whispering, I said, “I suppose you know that Dr. Bell and Dr. Scoggin were seeing each other?” I waited for an affirmative nod, but my confidant wasn’t willing to make that commitment. “Well, they were. And that set him up as the police’s prime suspect.”

  “But Dr. Bell was . . .”

  “In London. I know.”

  “But here’s the thing. Dr. Scoggin and Dr. Bell have had a misunderstanding. So sad, but she was so angry with him yesterday she never wanted to see him again.”

  “Wasn’t there another woman?” The nurse stiffened as if she’d revealed more than she’d intended—which she had.

  “Dr. Scoggin thought so, but that’s been cleared up. Anyway, I just called her. She’s at home now and she gave me a message to give Dr. Bell. It’s confidential, I’m afraid, but I promised I’d try to find him and give him the message personally.”

  “Why doesn’t she call him herself?”

  “I said the misunderstanding has been cleared up. I didn’t say she was ready to talk to him yet. She’s at home now with her mother and her children. She’s on pain meds and she’s simply had all the trauma she can deal with for the moment.”

  “I quite understand. One moment. I’ll see if Dr. Bell is in the building.” She pushed another nurse away from the phone, made a couple of calls, and at length I heard her say, “A Mrs. Lamb is here. She’s a friend of Dr. Scoggin and she has a message for you. May I send her down?” Hanging up, she told me, “He’s in his laboratory on ground floor. Take the elevator down and ask at the front desk. They’ll see you get there straight away.”

  A couple of white-coated assistants were working in Keith Bunsen’s lab across the hall from Bell’s lab. I saw them through the bulletproof glass wall, but I didn’t see Keith. On the opposite side of the hall, Bell’s door was closed. I peeked through the glass wall beside it wondering if I should knock or what. I knocked. A minute later St. Giles opened the door and ushered me in with more amiable hospitality than I deserved. I’d forgotten how attractive he was.

  “You have a message for me? From Lindsey?”

  “I’m afraid I misled the nurse upstairs. Actually, I want to talk to you about Lindsey.” The room smelled like a tidal mud flat, with oysters bathing in pans of toxic soup.

  “Come in, come in.” He looked around, ran his hand through his hair, and frowned. “There’s no comfortable place to sit here. Let’s go to my office across the hall.” He led me across to a door that was only a foot or so from the door to Bunsen’s lab, plied the knob with a key, and waved me in.

  I’d been here before. This was the same room in which I’d talked to Keith about Bram’s participation in the diabetes study. On that occasion, Keith and I had walked in from the opposite side of the room. I recognized the partition that separated this office space from Keith’s laboratory.

  “Dr. Bunsen and I share this. His work is on diabetes.”

  “I know. When I was here before, I talked to him and he brought me in here.” The two desks on opposite walls, each with its own computer, chair, and filing cabinets, made sense now. I grabbed the chair at Keith’s desk and turned it around. “By the way, I was talking to someone the other day about shellfish poisoning, and I recalled the work you told me about. What was the name of the chemical you are using?”

  St. Giles blushed, then stammered, “Are you talking about saxitoxin?”

  “I think that’s it. A friend of mine died recently after showing symptoms oddly similar to shellfish poisoning, and after both he and I ate some mussels and got sick. I’m sure he didn’t eat enough to kill him, but with my visit here fresh on my mind, I wondered. Is it possible someone could have stolen this—what did you call it—saxitoxin and injected him with a strong dose?”

  “From my lab? No. I keep careful records.” He smiled bravely in spite of the fact that my question carried with it an accusation of sloppy record-keeping.

  “Of course. I didn’t mean that. But suppose someone broke in and stole some of your supply. Unless they left traces of the break-in, you wouldn’t know about it until you compared your supply with your records.”

  Was it my imagination, or did I see beads of sweat in his hairline?

  “Look. Here’s where I keep my supply.” Without standing, he swirled his wheeled desk chair around to a safe mounted under the counter near his own workspace. He blocked my view of the dial with his body and opened the thick metal door. I peered around him and saw several glass vials inside. “See? This is it. After I purify the saxitoxin in my oysters, I record it and put it in here. It’s a time-lock safe. After hours, even I can’t open this safe. Even on orders from the queen. And how many people know the combination?” He held up one finger. “Me. No one else.”

  “What about Dr. Bunsen?”

  “He has his own safe. It’s around the corner.”

  “But anyone who has ever watched you open it could have ...”

  “I’m careful, Mrs. Lamb.” His tone told me I’d taken this far enough. “I thought you wanted to talk to me about Lindsey.”

  “I suppose you’ve heard Lindsey told the police she thinks it was Georgina Wetmore who shot her.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know Georgina?”

  “No. The police have already interviewed me today. I told them I haven’t the vaguest idea who Georgina Wetmore is.”

  “Lindsey’s mother told me Lindsey found Georgina’s picture in your desk.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “The police asked me about her, but they didn’t mention a photograph.”

  “Didn’t they ask to see inside your desk?’

  “I was at home at the time.”

  I looked at the desks on both sides of this small room. “Which desk is yours?”

  St. Giles rolled himself back to the desk opposite the one at which I was sitting. “This one, but I also have a desk in my office upstairs and in my home office as well.” As he talked, he slid open the drawer above the kneehole space. “Bloody hell!”

  He pulled out a full color, eleven by fourteen photo of the lovely young woman who’d blown bubbles with Lindsey’s children. He turned it toward me and I couldn’t help noticing she was completely nude. I read the inscription: All my love forever, Georgina.

  “I swear to God, I’ve never seen this in my life!”

  “And this is Keith Bunsen’s desk?” I pulled out the drawer nearest my chair. Inside it lay a scattering of pens, rubber tubes, and USB cables. “It’s obvious what happened. Whoever put the photo in your desk—probably Georgina—got the desks mixed up.”

  St. Giles nodded, studied the photo, and tapped the face. “I’ve seen her, but I can’t think where.”

  “Right here, probably,” I said.

  Before I had a chance
to explain, the phone on St. Giles’s desk rang. I picked up my purse and, as I slipped out, heard, “How long? Yes, Chief Inspector Child, I’ll be here. I’ll tell the front desk you’re on your way.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  Lindsey was dozing, Lettie told me. At her flat, I found Claire and Caleb both in manic states, hugely relieved that their mother was home again, but also suffering from cabin fever. I promised I’d walk to the store with them after I talked to their grandmother.

  Lettie thought my news was important enough to wake Lindsey. She led me up the stairs and into a darkened bedroom. Lindsey was sleeping on her back, snoring softly. I imagined her throat was still raw from the breathing tube. When Lettie pulled the blinds open, her daughter moaned and squinted, smacking her dry lips as she raised her arm to shield her eyes.

  “Dotsy’s here,” Lettie said. “And she’s made a very interesting discovery.”

  Lindsey tried to pull herself up while Lettie shoved a couple of pillows behind her back. After I spilled the whole story, Lindsey nodded, went silent for a long moment, then started to cry. “Oh, my God. It wasn’t Georgina at all. He doesn’t even know her. Oh, the poor man. I have to call him!”

  “Wait a minute,” Lettie said. “The photo may belong to Keith Bunsen, but that doesn’t mean you should go running back to St. Giles. There are still a few problems you need to consider before you do anything drastic.”

  “Calling him isn’t drastic! I owe it to him.”

  “It’s to Georgina Wetmore you owe an explanation,” I said. “She’s spent a most unpleasant day at the police station, defending herself against a murder charge.”

  Looking her daughter straight in the eye, Lettie said, “Did you actually see the shooter?” Lettie sat on the side of the bed and took Lindsey’s hand. I noticed she kicked a cell phone under the bed with the side of her foot as she sat. “Or did you assume it was Georgina because of that picture you found?”

  “I’m fuzzy on that.”

  “Understandably so,” I said. “But all is not well, Lindsey. You still have a bullet hole in your chest and the person who put it there has not been caught.”

  “I’ll leave that up to the police.”

  I could tell Lindsey’s had nothing on her mind but making up with St. Giles, and I said so to Lettie after we’d left Lindsey’s bedroom. “I don’t know if John Fish would qualify as a reliable source, but I think Lindsey should learn all she can about the death of St. Giles’s wife.”

  “What has he said?”

  “He told me St. Giles’s wife died last year after a fall down the stairs at her home. There were suspicious circumstances. I don’t know what they were, but John Fish refers to St. Giles as ‘the bastard.’ And I don’t think he means it in a nice way.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Find out when the wife died and learn all you can online. Then go to the newspaper office and get back copies from that time period.”

  “I’m on it!” Lettie tripped down the last few stairs and ran to the small alcove where Lindsey’s laptop sat on a dining table.

  “All right if I take Claire and Caleb for a walk?” I asked.

  Lettie was most appreciative since she could see for herself the children had sunk to entertaining themselves by picking their noses and showing each other what they found.

  The children led me past the neighborhood’s small playground and I stopped to let them burn a few calories on the equipment. While they played, I studied the layout of this relatively new subdivision. By climbing to the top of the slide, I got a better view. There seemed to be three or four parallel rows of two-story dwellings that in America might be called townhouses. Here, they were called terraced flats. The long streets running past the front yards led to a small cluster of businesses on one end: a grocery, probably a dry cleaner, a pizza place, the sort of places you’d find near any suburban housing. I spotted a sign for a movie rental store.

  In the opposite direction, I could see pastureland sprinkled with sheep. A parking area, barely visible behind a grove of trees, served, I figured, as guest parking. Each of the apartments had room for only one vehicle to park in front. Where would Lindsey’s assassin have stood in order to get a clear shot? Suddenly I couldn’t wait to take the children home so I could figure this out for myself. A neighbor had told the police they saw a person in a dark jacket, possibly an anorak, walking along a nearby path. From my perch on the next-to-top rung of the slide, I couldn’t see anything that looked like a path.

  The children and I walked as far as the grocery store where I bought each of them an ice cream on a stick. Walking home again, Claire said she was making a book of thoughts for her mother. “Not really poems or stories. Just things I’ve been thinking about while she was in the hospital.” Caleb, obviously jealous he hadn’t thought of it first, said he was making her a book, too. A book of pictures. A chunk of the chocolate shell on Caleb’s ice cream cracked and fell on the street. He seemed about to cry but considered it again and simply shrugged.

  Each flat we passed had a small front yard surrounded by a brick wall some four feet high. An opening in the exact middle of each wall led to a brick walk, which led straight to the front door. A small overhang above the doors displayed house numbers in brass. I noticed most of the yards were virtual works of art, more evidence of the English love of gardens, but a few needed tending. Lindsey Scoggin’s yard was neat but simple, with river rock and a few small shrubs. Nothing to mow.

  “The woman who stayed with you last night,” I said to the children. “Where does she live?”

  “There.” Claire pointed to the house directly across from Lindsey’s.

  I walked past Lindsey’s yard, still thinking about where the shooter would have stood, when Claire brought me back to reality with a tug on my hand. “Whoops!” I said, backtracking. “Ready to go in?” I watched the children until Lettie opened the door for them, then trekked on to the north end of the street where it dead-ended in a bush-covered hill. I picked my way through the bushes to the top of the hill and found the parking area I’d spotted from atop the slide at the playground. Only a few cars were parked in it now.

  Beyond the parking area was pastureland set off by hedgerows. A road from somewhere beyond entered the parking area on the west side, and I surmised it probably connected to the A-road I had recently travelled by taxi. With nothing else of interest nearby, the parking lot had to be for visitors to the terraced flats. Did Lindsey’s shooter park here? If so, where did he or she stand to do the deed? Turning, I had a bird’s-eye view of the street with its continuous row of dwellings on both sides, but I was seeing it from an odd angle. The walls obscured my view of most of the yards. Turning all the way around, I spotted a dirt path. It skirted a stand of trees along the top of the slope.

  Picking my way carefully through the deep hardwood mulch around the shrubbery, I reached the path and followed it down and around a bend. Maybe this is why they call it Belle Glen, I thought. Beautiful glen. Waist-high woodland flowers lined both sides of the path. This had to be where the person in the anorak was walking when spotted by a neighbor down below.

  Certainly the crack of gunfire from here would have made anyone outside or standing near a window or door that morning turn this way—unless it produced an echo. The nearest homes backed onto the slope. I was looking at back yards with clotheslines and barbecue grills. Beyond, the next row of houses, of which Lindsey’s was one, faced the street. By the time a neighbor hearing the shot located the path up here, the shooter would have been leaving.

  Looking down the slope again I wondered which unit was Lindsey’s. How to tell? At once I knew because I was looking through a front gate, up a perfectly straight, paved walk to a front door, which, by its frosted-glass tracery, I recognized was Lindsey’s.

  This was the spot where the shooter stood. This would’ve been perfect. Fairly well concealed in a dark jacket by the dark trees behind, the assassin could have stood here until
Lindsey came out, as she would have had to do if she was parked in front and if she was working that day. The shooter could have stood right here and waited, gun at the ready. From this distance, I figured I could hit a human target myself. Maybe. And a skilled marksman? No problem.

  Had the police figured this out? Had they come up here already and reached the same conclusion I had? If they hadn’t, might there be a shell casing still lying around? I looked carefully, found nothing, but wasn’t surprised. Any reasonably competent hit man would know to pick up shell casings, and if the Thames Valley Police were any good, they’d have already looked.

  Somewhere on my way back down the hill, it hit me. Who the shooter had to be. Unfortunately I didn’t know I knew until much later that night.

  In the taxi motoring back to St. Ormond’s, my mind returned to Mignon and the closing ceremony. I felt sorry for her. Right or wrong, she felt she knew the truth and no one believed her. For the first time, I considered a whole new possibility. Had Bram been murdered by a thief? He had £1,000 tucked away somewhere in his room, and it wasn’t there now unless he’d found a really clever hiding spot. This idea was much simpler and much more likely than anything I’d considered so far.

  But how mundane! How ordinary. A thief? How disappointing.

  The day’s last rosy rays warmed the limestone walls on the High as my taxi passed The Green Man, a few blocks from my destination. Its green front door stood open to the street and its lights were still on.

  “Excuse me! I need to get out here.”

  “You sure?”

  My driver swung the cab into the bike lane while I paid him and hopped out. I heard voices now. It sounded as if The Green Man was having a party. I took a deep breath and walked in, expecting something like the bar scene from Star Wars but seeing mostly normal-looking folk. Of the fifteen or so people in the store, the only one I knew was Mignon, and she seemed to stiffen a little as I approached her.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow, Mignon, but I just wanted to tell you I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and I wish you luck with your pursuits.”