Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries) (12 page)

I reviewed my short tour of the diabetes research lab and decided I’d been lucky. I hadn’t wanted to run into Keith, but since I had, I found out what I wanted to know anyway. I found out that Bram Fitzwaring was part of his study. What were the odds that a subject in a study, from a town a hundred miles away, would die only a few yards from the residence of the man who heads the study? What was I thinking? What possible reason could Keith Bunsen have for wanting to bump off any of his subjects, especially when he was worried about having too few, not too many? And if Bram was in the control group, his death couldn’t be attributed to anything Keith had done. Bram had been receiving nothing but a placebo from him.

I recalled the smell of the neurology lab on the other side of the hall—a mixture of ozone and ocean. Not exactly ocean. Sea bed. Shellfish. Oysters. In my mind’s eye I saw the pan of live oysters happily sucking up the foul-looking soup St. Giles Bell had them bathing in. What did he call it? Saxitoxin? A poison.

I rested my head against the seat back. Scotland! It popped into my head so suddenly I almost said it out loud. But why was I thinking about Scotland? A few years ago Lettie and I had spent part of a summer there. We stayed in a drafty old castle near Loch Ness and became almost a part of the Sinclair family, the castle’s owners. Lettie and I had both loved Scotland.

I almost drifted off while the taxi purred its way down the A420 toward town, my mind wandering across the gentle rolling hills of central Scotland. Mushrooms! There was the connection! Almost against my own will, I forced myself to review a horrible time when a half-dozen people’s lives were put at risk so one person could be murdered. The sheer evil of it boggled my mind at the time, and now, years later, it still boggled my mind. I could only think it took a special kind of stupidity to come up with such a scheme. Surely if one thought it through to the end, one couldn’t possibly go through with it. Any normal person would go back to the drawing board and try to come up with a better idea.

Poison mushrooms and poison shellfish. I recalled the tray of canapés Georgina had offered around at the cocktail party in the Master’s Lodgings. Scallops and mussels—I had eaten one of the mussels. I couldn’t remember seeing oysters, but I hadn’t paid that much attention. I had been sick later that evening and Mignon had, too. Bram Fitzwaring had died with a trashcan on the floor beside his mattress.

Surely any toxin taken up by oysters would also be taken up by mussels or clams and concentrated in their tissues as time passed. All were filter-feeders in coastal waters. I had a sickening feeling of déjà vu. Bram Fitzwaring had been murdered. I was sure of it.

“Excuse me?” I lowered my swollen ankle to the floor and leaned forward. “I’ve changed my mind. Take me to the police station.”

“Which one?”

“Whichever one is closest to St. Ormond’s College.”

The cabbie let me off on St. Aldate’s Street in front of the Thames Valley Police Station. A bronze plaque donated by the Inspector Morse Society proclaimed the building as a site seen in many episodes of that wonderful BBC series.

Once inside, I lost my nerve.
What the hell am I doing here?
I had expected a large lobby with a desk manned by uniformed cops. I had vaguely imagined myself hobbling bravely across a polished floor, up to the desk, and announcing I was here to report a murder. But the room I found myself in was no more than a wide spot in the hall. Two uniformed officers stood behind a desk five feet from the door and there was no way I could turn and leave without being noticed. Both put down their work and looked up when I opened the door.

“Yes?” one of the officers, a small black woman with her hair pulled back in a bun, asked me.

“I’m . . . I’m . . . oh, dear, you’re going to think I’m crazy.” I know my face was red. I felt like melting into the floor.

“I doubt it, madam,” the other uniform said. “We see crazy every day and you don’t look like it.”

Bless his heart. That helped. “I’m from America and I’m here attending a history conference where one of our members has died under circumstances that I’m sure aren’t entirely natural.”

“You’re suggesting that someone had a hand in it?”

“I am. That is, I think so, but no one will believe me, I’m sure.”

“Let us have a go at it.”

“Okay.” I took a breath. “This is all happening at St. Ormond’s College on Staircase Thirteen. I’m staying there, and so is the deceased, a Mr. Bram Fitzwaring—was, that is. From Glastonbury.”

“Wait. Before you go further, can we take care of the formalities?” The woman officer had grabbed a notepad and pencil. “Your name and address? Local address and home address, please.”

The formalities took a couple of minutes, after which there was absolutely no chance I could make a fool of myself anonymously. I forged bravely on, telling the whole story as succinctly as I could and with a concerted effort to appear sane. It was useless. I heard myself talking as if through a tunnel. My real self stood safely at the other end, disconnected from that crazy woman.

They took notes and asked a few questions politely, no trace of a grin on either of their faces, but when my story ground to a halt, the man said, “Thank you, Mrs. Lamb. We will pass this information along and, if necessary, we will contact you at your college.”

“I don’t suppose you’d let me talk to one of your detectives?”

“We’ll make sure one of them sees this. And thank you again for coming in.”

I found myself back on the street, but without wheels. It wasn’t far from here to St. Ormond’s, but after walking less than one block, my ankle protested. I flagged down another taxi.

My taxi couldn’t take me all the way to St. Ormond’s main gate because a limousine was blocking the narrow street in front. I could see a chauffeur behind its wheel, calmly reading a newspaper. My driver sounded his horn but must have had an attack of timidity halfway through the action, because his honk came out as a short peep.

“I can walk from here.” I paid him and started down Cobbler’s Lane toward the side gate, then decided I’d rather go through the front gate, so I could get a better look at the limousine and possibly discover what notable personage was paying us a visit. The chauffeur glanced at me as I walked by and returned to his
Daily Mirror.

Inside the gate, the porter’s station appeared to be on red alert. Normally there would be one attendant visible through the window and he, as likely as not, would glance up as I passed, nod at me, and go back to whatever he was doing. Now I saw two porters practically standing at attention behind the window. I could see no one in the quad beyond.

I stuck my face up to the little round hole in the window and asked, “What’s happening?”

“Lady Attwood is visiting the Wetmores.”

“Is this a problem?”

“No. Certainly not.”

The finality with which he answered told me not to ask any more questions. In the East Quad, three gardeners with weed baskets and rakes knelt around the perimeter, working like elves before Christmas. It was the first time since I’d been here that I’d seen more than one gardener at work. Climbing the stairs to my room, I heard Mignon Beaulieu call my name. Her door was open. I found her sitting on her bed, barefoot and with a notepad on her lap.

“I got the autopsy report,” she announced.

“And?”

“They called me a few minutes ago. They said they’d already called his family.” She heaved a sigh. “It was hypoglycemia, as we suspected.”

“They’re sure?”

“Sure. They said his blood glucose level was thirty-two.”

“That would do it,” I said. “Did they say anything else?”

“He had some bruises, but they assume he got them from banging around in his room. He probably got delusional before he passed out, and banged around trying to get out of the room or find a snack or something.”

“That makes sense,” I said, but I was thinking,
the banging noises I heard were at two a.m., long after he should have been out cold from hypoglycemia.
“What happens next? Will his family come here?”

“Bram will be cremated. It’s in his will. His lawyer in Glastonbury keeps a copy of the will in his office, so I called him. Bram wanted his ashes scattered over Glastonbury Tor.” Mignon laid her notepad aside on the bed cover and stood. “I also called his mother a little while ago. She didn’t know about the will or about his wish to be cremated, but she didn’t seem to have any objection to it. To the cremation. But she said she wants the ashes. She’s his next of kin, so I don’t know how they’re going to work it out.”

“If his will is legal and it says ‘scatter,’ they’ll have to scatter.”

“We have a big group of friends in Glastonbury who will want to perform our ancient ritual. It will enable him to pass through the Star Gate. That’s what Bram wanted.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I haven’t had lunch yet.”

“I’ve had lunch, sorry. I’d go with you and keep you company but there’s an afternoon session I can’t miss. Let’s go to dinner together.”

Back in my room, I let out a scream of frustration. Cremation would wipe out any trace of murder, and I had no way to stop it.

The gardeners had dropped an obstacle course of hoses, sprinklers, and tools in the walkway around the quad. I saw no way to avoid violating the “Don’t walk on the grass” sign.

“Stop! Stop it I say!”

I froze in my tracks. Turning slowly, because the command had not come as a shout but as an angry hiss, I wondered what I was in for. I found Daphne Wetmore right behind me, but she wasn’t hissing at me. She ran to one of the gardeners, snatched the hose from his hands, and narrowly avoided spraying herself with water.

“This is no time to be watering!”

“But you told us . . .”

“I told you to pull the weeds. You should have done it last week. This is Sunday, for Christ’s sake.”

“But you called . . .”

“I know I called. But Lady Attwood will be coming through here any minute. Pick up your gear and get out of here!”

“Go home? But we . . .”

I supposed I was seeing the sharp side of Daphne Wetmore. I’d never have thought she could speak that way to anyone. What was so horrible about gardeners watering flowers? This was a Sunday. Was that it? Was Daphne’s sister, Lady Attwood, super-religious? Would she be scandalized at the sight of men working on the Lord’s Day? That didn’t fit with what Lettie had told me about her assorted scandals involving horses, taxes, and rumors of murder on tropical islands.

I crossed Middle Quad and followed my fellow conferees to the building where we’d had our general sessions, but now they were all heading for a different door.

The afternoon event I couldn’t afford to miss was a small breakout session, scheduled to run concurrently with several others and titled, “Treasures from the Bodleian.” The session leader was Robin Morris, and they were going to show us actual documents from the Elizabethan period. Would they bring us something in Shakespeare’s own hand? That would be exciting, but the most important reason I wanted to be here was to fill a gaping hole in my own knowledge of history. I teach ancient and medieval history and, since I went back to teaching some eight years ago, have had to concentrate on the time from about 3000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. The course I teach ends with the War of the Roses. From the Tudors onward, it’s the Modern Age. Shakespeare’s plays, to the amazement of most high school students, are considered modern English.

When my dissertation topic veered from “Macbeth, King of Scotland” to “What did Shakespeare know about Macbeth and when did he know it,” I found myself trapped in unfamiliar territory. This was all Larry Roberts’s doing. He told me, probably correctly, that my topic was too broad. I tried to narrow it down in several different ways but he pushed me into my present box. Shakespeare was partly influenced by the writings of Holinshed and Boece, but most importantly, by James I, who was also James VI of Scotland and keen to reinforce his own legitimacy on the Scottish throne which, since he was of the house of Stewart, meant painting Macbeth as a usurper.

I was out of my field when it came to the Tudors and the Stewarts, but I was doing my best.

I found both Robin Morris and Claudia Moss waiting for us, cotton-gloved to protect their treasures from contact with bare hands, and standing behind an array of documents and items that were not under lock and key, not behind glass, but simply
there.
They assumed we knew how to behave around priceless artifacts. About ten other people, one of whom was Larry Roberts, also drifted in and took seats.

Robin explained that most of these items would eventually be on permanent display in a new part of the Bodleian Library, currently under construction, but now kept in a place that was closed to the public. We all murmured our gratitude for this rare privilege.

Robin said, “Since this conference deals with the Elizabethan era and also with Arthuriana, I’ve brought items that relate to both. It seems that good old Henry VIII, while doing his best to impoverish the kingdom, nevertheless did us academics a bit of a favor. By sending Thomas Cromwell forth to dissolve the monasteries, and to hang, draw, and quarter the inhabitants, he also confiscated the considerable wealth hidden behind the monastery walls. No one knows what happened to most of the booty. It must have been a huge treasure trove, but thankfully, some of it has come down to us.”

“Just like the Elgin Marbles, right, Claudia?” This rude interruption came from Larry Roberts, who apparently thought his comment was funny.

I cringed. Larry was referring to the marble reliefs taken from the Acropolis in Athens by Lord Elgin, and now in the British Museum where Claudia worked. Greece wanted them back.

Claudia’s gloved hands turned into fists for a second before she regained her composure and, with the stiff upper lip of her heritage, said, “Dr. Roberts, you should visit the Acropolis today and see the state of the marbles Lord Elgin
didn’t
take. We did them a favor.”