“Pursuits. That’s an interesting choice of words.”
“You know what I mean.” I probably reddened, but carried on. “And, again, I’m so sorry about Bram. I wish I could have known him longer.” My words echoed in my head like the drivel you hear in a reception line.
“Did you go to the closing ceremonies this afternoon?” she asked me. “The thousand pounds I need, not surprisingly, was not forthcoming from the academics, so I’ve turned to my real friends. We’ve put a collection jar on the counter and Simon has called his best customers to drop in for a drink and donate whatever they can. Help yourself to a glass of mead. It’s in the back room.”
I turned and located the curtain I already knew separated the back room from the front. Standing beside it was a spectacularly beautiful woman. Tall and willowy, she had hair as black and shiny as obsidian, cut in a wedge with bangs that drew attention to her large hazel eyes. She wore a crisp white blouse over a moss-green pencil skirt.
“That’s Bumps McAlister. Do you know her?”
I must have been staring. “No,” I said. This was the Grey Lady! “I’d like to meet her.”
Mignon introduced me to Bumps and to her husband, Simon, owner of the shop. Simon was short, withered, and going bald. I learned that Bumps was an actress, busy at the moment with a local production of Twelfth Night. While she talked, I saw John Fish walking toward us. I reached out and drew him into our little circle.
“So now you know the Grey Lady,” he said.
“Pardon?” Bumps tilted her head to one side. I wondered how she got her nickname, but decided it was best not to ask.
“You really did a number on us at St. Ormond’s the other night,” I said. “John told me you were the apparition that drifted by the doors at the party. You should have heard the speculation later, at dinner!”
Bumps laughed. “That was one of my easier roles. All I had to do was walk by and slip into the priest’s hole under the stairs.”
John Fish left us and stepped behind the curtain to pour glasses of mead for himself and me. Simon moved along the counter and I spotted the donations jar, about a quarter filled with folding money. An impulse grabbed me. I pulled out my wallet and extracted what was left of my spending cash, about £120. I already had my return bus ticket to the airport, and the only thing I could think of that I’d need money for was dinner tonight and a tip for the scout tomorrow. I put thirty pounds back in my wallet and stuck the rest in the donations jar.
Mignon gasped. “Dotsy! Thank you! Are you sure?”
“Sure. You need to get those bones out of hock.”
“But I thought you were one of them,” she said, her head bobbing in the approximate direction of St. Ormond’s.
“I am one of them.”
“Then why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you helping me? I’m going to prove that King Arthur was not a myth. It’s going to shake their beliefs to the very roots. Their ivory tower will come crashing down like a house of cards!” She trembled at her own words.
“Then so be it.”
Simon McAlister spoke up for the first time. “What do you believe, Mrs. Lamb?”
“I believe it’s always good to find the truth. Whatever it is.”
I quickly grabbed the glass of mead John Fish was holding for me and took a sip. Everyone was looking at me and a mouthful of liquid helped me resist the urge to light into a speech of Shakespearean proportions.
It was dark by the time I left The Green Man. I stopped at the King’s Arms Tavern for fish and chips, spending a good bit less than the twenty pounds I’d allotted for my last dinner in Oxford. Back out on the street, I stood under a streetlight and called Keith Bunsen’s cell phone.
“Mrs. Lamb,” he said, “I thank you for telling me about Georgina. I was able to get her released, and I’m sure you’ll be happy to know she’s home, safe and sound, with her parents right now.”
So we’re playing that game, are we? Rather than tell me the police released her after Keith told them she’d been with him all night, he’s skipping that part and going straight to “home, safe and sound.” Poor little Georgina. If Georgina was indeed home right now, I imagined she was in the middle of a tense family conference. Who would win? Georgina with her but I love him and you can’t stop me, or her parents? They’d be countering with, “He’s twice your age and you’re too young to know what you’re doing.” I’ve been through this before with my own daughter and, trust me, it’s no fun. Georgina was above the age of consent and she’d win in the end.
Under these circumstances, it was not my problem and none of my business so I decided to let Keith continue the ruse. “I’m so glad,” I said, “but I need to talk to you anyway. Are you free right now?”
“I’m at St. Ormond’s. You know how to find my room. Come on up.”
Keith Bunsen was in shirt and tie, bedroom slippers, and an old holey cardigan. He reminded me somehow of Mr. Rogers and the way he used to start every show by changing his shoes and jacket but leaving his tie in place. Keith led me to his small office at one side of his sitting room.
“I know why the police think Georgina shot Dr. Scoggin,” I said, taking the guest chair.
“Thought,” he said. “Past tense. They know now that she couldn’t have.”
“Right. I know why they thought it.”
“Something about a picture found in Dr. Bell’s desk, I believe. It made no sense. Georgina told me she hardly knows Dr. Bell.”
“Georgina meant to put it in your desk in the research wing. Your desk is three feet away from his.” I paused, and then added, “I visited Dr. Bell there this afternoon.”
I saw the blood rise from his collar to his face. The tops of his ears turned bright red. “I-I-I thought they said it was in the desk at Bell’s home.”
“Confusion due to Lindsey Scoggin’s state of mind when she came out of the medically induced coma.”
“I see.”
I let him mull that over.
“So I guess there’s no use pretending.”
“That you and Georgina are in love? No.”
Now it was relief that flooded his face.
“You and Georgina should take care to appreciate how her parents are feeling right now. Until you have a daughter yourself, it’s hard to imagine.”
“Oh, I know. You make a good point.”
I hoped he would take my words to heart. “Keith, you know Dr. Bell pretty well, don’t you? Does he ever talk to you about the death of his wife? I understand it happened earlier this year.”
“He never mentions it. At the time, I know he was under suspicion, and the police were watching every move he made. I think he considered our lab a place of respite—the only place where he could get away from the police a-a-and the press. They were even worse.”
“So you let him have a bit of peace? You didn’t ask questions?” He nodded and I went on, “Did he know about you and Georgina?”
“Oh, no! We told no one.”
“How often was she inside the room you share with Dr. Bell?”
“Never, that I know of. I can’t recall her ever going in there, but I’m not sure.”
“I see. One more question. Have you deleted Bram Fitzwaring from your study?”
“I told my assistant to do that. I assume she did.”
“Have you ever known anyone to turn over furniture right before dying from hypoglycemia?”
Keith was sitting in his desk chair, his hand resting on its arm. At that question, his fingers clamped around the leather padding. It was a subtle reaction, but I caught it. “It would be rather unusual. Hypoglycemia tends to make them spacey and vague. If they get no help, they drift off into unconsciousness.”
“That’s been my experience as well.”
“But one should never say ‘never’ in medicine. As soon as you say a particular thing can’t happen, it happens.”
“When I visited St. Giles this afternoon in your office, I couldn’t he
lp noticing the safe in the corner. He told me he keeps his dangerous chemicals, the saxitoxin he uses in his nerve studies, in there. Do you also keep things there?”
“It’s St. Giles’s safe. I don’t know the combination.”
St. Giles had told me the same thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
* * *
I needed to pack everything except what I wanted to wear to the airport tomorrow, but I had no will to do so. I pulled out my large suitcase from the floor of my closet, set it on my bed, tossed in some lecture notes and underwear, then quit. I slid the suitcase onto the floor, lay down on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. Pale yellow light from the street lamps down Sycamore Lane crept through my tiny window past the decal warning me this was No Exit.
What was I to do? What would happen if I cancelled my plane ticket? My ticket, I recalled, was nonrefundable. I couldn’t afford to waste it. I pulled myself to my feet, retrieved my blood glucose monitor from my purse, and checked. My blood sugar was okay.
I rounded up my shower things, slid my feet into my flip-flops, and flapped down the stairs to the bathroom. As I passed the window over the little refrigerator, I glimpsed a large shadow from the corner of my eye. Rising to tiptoes, I got a better look through the window. Since that first night when the same sort of shadow had spooked me, I had studied the lights on my side of the quad. A lantern-style lamp hung beside the entrance to Staircase Thirteen, and three low-wattage lights, stuck in the ground, were trained on the border plants. Only the lantern by the entrance would cast light across the quad, and the shadows produced by anything passing along this side appeared greatly magnified against the stone on the far side. Greatly magnified and moving faster than it actually was. It could be scary if you didn’t know what you were seeing.
In this case, however, the shadow of the passing form was easily identified as Harold Wetmore. I saw the top of his head with its fringe of white hair as it passed beneath the window. I wondered where he was going alone and at this time of night.
Opening the refrigerator, I studied my insulin supply. It was too soon to remove it. I’d do that tomorrow just before leaving. But something was wrong. I stepped back and tried to figure what it was. I kept two kinds of insulin: one fast-acting and one slow. The slow-acting kind was in a squat vial and I had an extra one, still in the box. The fast-acting kind was in a longer, thinner vial. To save trips upstairs, I also kept some syringes in a box beside the medicine. What was wrong? It took a minute for the light to dawn, but when I saw it I wondered why it took me so long.
I always left the long, thin vial lying on its side because, upright, it was unstable. It fell over at the slightest disturbance. This vial was standing upright. I’d never have left it like that. I picked up the vial with the slow-acting insulin, the kind I use most often, and recalled that, this morning, it had been almost empty. The paper label kept me from seeing the liquid level inside, but, by turning it sideways, I could see through the space between the top of the label and the neck of the vial.
It was almost full.
I went cold all over. Not only was it almost full, the liquid within was the wrong color—a cloudy tan I didn’t recognize. Steadying myself against the far wall, I pondered what to do next. I checked the top of the box on my extra vial and found it still securely sealed with the manufacturer’s glue. So I did still have insulin for tomorrow morning, but if I’d used the open vial I was certain it would’ve killed me. Who would have access to this refrigerator? Anyone! This space was never locked and access from the quad was wide open.
Who did this?
I filled a new syringe from the tampered vial, wrapped it in my face cloth, carried it carefully up to my room, and placed it on the shelf above my clothes rack. Common sense told me that my would-be killer would check on me before dawn because they couldn’t know exactly when I’d next take an injection and if I was still alive tomorrow morning, that wouldn’t do. I’d be flying home with all the pieces I needed to solve two murders. I figured my killer was, at that moment, agonizing and wondering how long it would take me to sort it out. Wondering if I was already dead.
I set my chair as close as I could to the hinge side of my door, grabbed my tiny battery-operated book light and attached it to the Elizabeth Peters paperback I’d brought from home. Donning the same pants, shirt, and shoes I’d worn all day, I turned off the overhead light and sat, the only illumination now coming from the high, small window and from my book light. I did my best to concentrate on reading, but there was no way. I jumped at every noise. From the alley outside the window, from the water pipes beneath my basin, from places somewhere below. I couldn’t tell if those sounds, like doors squeaking or floor boards groaning, came from the hall, from Lettie’s room, or from Mignon’s. What if Lettie or Mignon came up to visit? Of course they’d knock, wouldn’t they? The person I was waiting for would not knock.
I looked at my watch every few minutes, tried not to, but failed. It seemed as if a building as old as this one should make more sounds. At times it felt as if I was inside a tomb and, in a way, I was. Around me, only stone that had long since settled into the earth beneath. No wooden rafters, no walls with aging insulation between dry wall and siding, nothing to pop or creak or go bump in the night except water pipes and late-night strollers outside, or someone coming up the stairs. Noises with actual causes.
Ten o’clock, ten thirty, eleven o’clock, eleven thirty, midnight. I was so tired of sitting. Twelve-o-five, twelve ten, twelve thirteen. Noises. I closed my book. False alarm. I decided it was Mignon returning to her room below. I could, of course, run down to Mignon’s room and take refuge there, but that would ruin the trap I’d set. How terrifying it was to know someone wanted you dead. Someone wanted me to die! I realized that neither Bram nor Lindsey had prior warning of their attacks and would never have felt what I was feeling as I sat in the dark, waiting. Twelve twenty, twelve thirty, twelve thirty-four. Metal scratched against the keyhole in my door. Trembling, I switched off my book light. I almost dropped it.
The door eased open without a sound, and I stood. I brought the electric coffeepot down as hard as I could onto whatever it was coming through. A gun clanked to the floor. She had a gun! I never imagined she’d bring a gun, but I’d unwittingly disarmed her. Thank God!
I tossed the duvet from my bed over her head, wrapped my arms around the ghost-like form, and forced it to the floor. Screaming and kicking, my bundle struggled to break free but it was no use because I was bigger. Daphne Wetmore, tiny woman that she was, was no match for my five-foot-five inches of aging sinew and muscle.
I hadn’t previously considered what to do next, so I sat on her until I figured it out. I set the chair across her midsection and, with my knees on the chair seat, flipped on the overhead light. The gun lay near my nightstand. A bungee cord I’d brought with me to lash my luggage together served as an arm restraint but only temporarily. I knew she’d get out of it soon enough. I grabbed the gun, closed the door, and called 911 on my cell phone. What was wrong? Duh. In the UK, the emergency number is 999. I called it and told them to send police to St. Ormond’s, Staircase Thirteen, ASAP.
While I waited for the police, I looked at the gun in my hand. It was obviously old. This was the gun that almost killed Lindsey Scoggin. I wondered how you fired it. The trigger was obvious, but was it locked? I had no idea how to tell except by actually squeezing the trigger, and I couldn’t afford to let Daphne know I’d never fired a gun in my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
* * *
I missed my plane, but it didn’t matter. The next morning Chief Inspector Child said the police would need my help with their enquiries—I love that phrase—for a couple of days. I pled poverty, and he used the awesome power of the Crown Prosecution Service to arrange a Saturday flight on Virgin Atlantic for me.
I saw Larry Roberts off at the bus terminal as he scrambled to catch our previously scheduled flight. He wanted to stay behind and hear the whole story becaus
e he knew nothing about the night’s events until I showed up at the terminal and told him I wasn’t leaving with him. He had a million questions and, I suddenly realized, a bit of apprehension about flying home alone. His wife had put me in charge of keeping the absentminded professor from getting lost.
“Here are your car keys,” I said, dropping them into his hand. “Here’s the ticket for the long-term parking lot. You’re in the green lot near shuttle stop eighteen. Here’s the card I picked up to remind me where we were parked.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it. When will I see you again?”
I could tell he really didn’t want to go now that things were getting interesting, but I left him there and took a cab back to college. En route, I called my son Brian and told him to keep my dog until I could pick her up on Sunday. I called a neighbor and asked her to water my tomato plants and my houseplants for two more days.
Lettie was waiting for me in the quad. The news had got around somehow, in spite of police orders to keep a lid on it. I had said nothing to anyone but Larry, and he’d had no chance to blab because he’d been ready to board the bus when I told him. Lettie bounced from her seat on the bench—the same bench I’d shared with Bram Fitzwaring that first night—and ran to me.
I said, “It was Daphne. It was all Daphne.”
“But why?”
“Long story. I’ve been at the police station all night. It feels like I’ve been wearing these same clothes for a week.” I looked up at Keith Bunsen’s window in the North Wing and saw the curtain pulled back, a face looking down. I waved to him and pointed toward the Middle Quad. If the Senior Common Room was open, I thought we could gather there. “If Mignon is still here, I think she should hear the story, too.”
Lettie ran up to check on Mignon, and I waited for Keith, who lurched through the entrance to his staircase a minute later. He suggested we could get a scout to open the SCR for us, but when we arrived at the door we found the room already open, a scout inside vacuuming the rug. Lettie and Mignon joined us around the fireplace.
Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries) Page 21
