Missing Susan (29 page)

“And after he meets the Gyrth’s heir in the book, Albert Campion has to protect this gold cup that has been hidden in the house since ancient times—”

Rowan stopped and looked at her. “What did you say?”

Susan repeated her summary of the Margery Allingham plot, in which the Gyrth family must retain and display an ancient golden cup of mystic significance in order to keep their lands.

When she had wound down, the guide smiled. “Well, Susan,” he said, “at last I am able to contribute something in your area of interest. Apparently your mystery author based her tale on the tradition of a house called Nanteos, near Capel Seion in Wales. Until recently its owners displayed an ancient wooden cup, said to possess miraculous healing powers. Now do be quiet.”

Susan opened her mouth and shut it again.

“What happened to the viscount of Minster Lovell?” asked Frances Coles quickly.

“I’m afraid he starved to death in his hiding place.”

“And where is the secret room?” asked Charles, fingering his camera lens.

“I’ve no idea,” Rowan replied. “There isn’t enough left of the building to tell us, either.”

“Too bad,” said Elizabeth, eyeing the still-prattling Susan.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Rowan.

   As they drove through Cumnor that afternoon, Elizabeth scoured the landscape for a sign of stately ruins—an old gatepost, perhaps, or a lone chimney—but Amy Robsart’s residence had apparently been swallowed up by modern developments, and she could find no trace of the scene of the crime. Her disappointment was short-lived, however, for twenty minutes later Bernard announced, somewhat unnecessarily, that they had arrived in Oxford.

He navigated the busy streets, clogged with rush hour traffic, and set them down in Beaumont Street, at the door of the Randolph Hotel. Susan was rattling on about Colin Dexter and someone called Inspector Morse, but everyone contrived to ignore her. Rowan drowned her out, explaining that the neo-Gothic hotel was built in 1864 and was named after Dr. Francis Randolph, a principal of Merton College. “In the Spires Restaurant, you will find the coats of arms of all the colleges,” he told them. “After I check you in, you are at liberty until tomorrow morning. I’ll take you on a formal tour tomorrow, but do go out exploring on your own this afternoon. The shops are open,” he added wickedly.

Twenty minutes later, as he pretended to study the notice board in the hall next to the lobby, Rowan saw most of the tour group troop out of the hotel, chattering among themselves.
Only the Warrens had not departed, which did not affect his plan in the least. Their whereabouts did not concern him. The important consideration was that Susan was gone, and with only four days left until the end of the tour, he could not afford to tarry any longer.

When the group disappeared from sight, Rowan strolled up to the registration desk and intoned in an impeccable Oxonian drawl, “I say, I wonder if you remember me from a quarter of an hour ago? Guide on the tour that checked in? One of the young ladies left her purse in the coach, and I’d like to put it in her room, if I may. I know you have bellmen who generally fetch and carry, but in this case I’d rather do it personally. The purse contains the young lady’s passport, you know, and a bit of cash. They
will
do it, these tourists. So careless. If I could just have the passkey to Miss Cohen’s room, I’ll pop right in with it and bring the key straight back.” His smile was dazzling. “Thank you
so
much.”

Fortunately the timid young thing at the desk did not notice that the guide was not carrying the aforementioned purse as he dashed off upstairs with the key to Room 307. He was, instead, carrying a screwdriver and a pair of needle-nosed pliers, but they were concealed in the pocket of his tweed jacket, well out of sight. Rowan had spent the weekend at home devising alternate, ever more bizarre and risky schemes for dispensing with Susan Cohen. He had returned to the tour, armed with various devices to implement those schemes—and a renewed determination to finish the task once and for all. A newly arrived stack of demands for payment and invective from yet another ex-wife had fueled this latest resolve to complete the contract—and thus to extricate himself from financial ruin.

As he hurried upstairs, he scarcely noticed the churchlike windows and the ornate ceiling designs above the Randolph’s main staircase. His mind was focused on the task at hand.
God knows it will need concentration
, he thought.
Electronics is hardly my forte.
He stopped in front of Room 307 and looked up and down the hall to make sure that no one else was lingering. Satisfied that he was unobserved, he slipped the key into the lock and let himself into the room. It was a small, nondescript single room with a view of an alley. The private bath was nearly half the size of the room itself. Barely glancing at the luggage still piled in the corner, Rowan took out his tools and headed for the bathroom.
The light fixture over the sink
, he decided.
It’s the only thing she’ll be sure to touch.
Carefully, he reached up and unscrewed the protective cover over the light. After several minutes’ tinkering with the wires, he was satisfied that he had made the correct modifications. Hurriedly he replaced the metal cover, wiped his fingerprints off everything with a hand towel, and left the room. Once downstairs, he waited until the clerk was talking on the telephone, with her back to him, before he strode over and placed the key on the counter. He was gone before she turned around. Perhaps she wouldn’t remember him at all, he thought—with more hope than conviction. Sighing in relief to have it over with, Rowan Rover wandered away in search of Chapters Cocktail Bar, where he would await further developments in a haze of cigarette smoke and double Scotches.

It was nearly six o’clock before the light faded and the shops closed, driving all the stragglers back to the safety of the hotel to plan their evening’s entertainment. Elizabeth MacPherson had met Kate Conway on Broad Street, in a gift shop specializing in Oxford sweatshirts, and they walked back to the hotel together.

“Maud went to Evensong with Alice MacKenzie and Frances Coles,” Kate told her. “Martha is seeing a friend from Oxford this evening, and Susan is still shopping.” She giggled. “You know that beautiful navy-blue coat of Martha’s?
I saw Susan buying one just like it at Laura Ashley. She’ll probably wear it, too. I wonder what Martha will think of that.”

“Plenty, but she’s too well-bred to say anything,” said Elizabeth. “Dinner is out of our own pocket tonight, I suppose?”

Kate nodded. “Do you think Rowan would like to join us?”

“We could ask him. What time are you planning to go out?”

“In about an hour,” said Kate, glancing at her watch. “Shall I come and get you when we’re ready to leave?”

“Yes, do. I’m in Room 307.” She made a face. “Susan, being her usual impossible self, insisted that we change rooms because there’s a light outside her window that she was sure would disturb her sleep.”

Kate wrote the number on the back of the sweatshirt bag. “Okay, 307. Got it. I’ll see you around seven. Where do you suppose Rowan is?”

Elizabeth paused at the foot of the stairs. “Try the bar.”

   After dialing the guide’s room and surveying the lounge where cream teas were served, Kate did indeed extend her search to the downstairs bar, where she found Rowan Rover seated at a tiny wooden table, blowing smoking rings like the Wonderland caterpillar.

“Hello, there!” said Kate, blushing a little at the memory of their last solitary encounter. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” he said graciously, glad for any distraction from the scenario in his mind.

“We were wondering if you’d like to go out to dinner with us in about an hour.”

Rowan raised his eyebrows. “We?”

“Yes, Maud and I. And Elizabeth. We thought you might
be able to recommend a good restaurant. We thought we’d treat you to dinner.”

This enabled Rowan to recollect any amount of acceptable restaurants in the vicinity of Oxford. He spent several cigarettes detailing the virtues of each establishment and recounting stories of escapades at many of them during his student days. Kate listened with a wide-eyed expression of awe that he found almost as gratifying as the Scotch. Perhaps, he thought, if the Susan problem resolves itself neatly, I can forego my vow to Mrs. Thatcher after all.

As he finished his recital of restaurants, Kate glanced at her watch. “Golly!” she said. “It’s twenty to seven and I still have to change. Would you mind going up to get Elizabeth? I promised her we’d stop by, but I’m running late.”

“Certainly,” said Rowan, mellowed by the pleasant interlude with his favorite sedatives. “What is her room number?”

Kate’s lovely face went blank. “I forget. But I wrote it down somewhere.” She picked up her packages and began to examine them for pencil marks. “Let’s see … I met her in the sweatshirt shop. Here it is! Room 307.”

“Right. I’ll go and get her,” said Rowan, striding briskly away, as he wondered why that number sounded vaguely familiar. Finally, recognition overtook him and he stood for one frozen moment to let the calamity sink in. An instant later he was running down the hall toward the stairs, trying frantically to remember the first-aid treatment for electrocution. And what should he do if he knocked on her door and received no answer? It would look awfully suspicious to panic on so little provocation. He couldn’t ask for the passkey again.

“Hello. Rowan! Yoo-hoo!”

With a sigh of exasperation the guide turned around. “Not now,” he began. “I’m in a hurry.”

“All right,” said Elizabeth, waving him on.

Rowan stared. “It’s you!” To cover his gaffe, he said the next thing that came into his head. “You look ghastly.”

“So would you if you’d just been zapped by a light switch,” she murmured. She was about three shades paler than usual. She looked as if she might fall down at any second. “I came down to report it to the desk clerk.”

“Go and sit down,” said Rowan. “I’ll see to it.”

Later that evening at dinner, Elizabeth told the story of the vicious light switch to her table partners with considerably more aplomb and self-deprecation than she had felt at the time. “And to top it all off, it wasn’t even my room!” she concluded with a laugh. “It was Susan’s, but she made me swap with her because she didn’t like the view. Just my luck!”

No, thought Rowan with a heavy heart. Just
mine.

   The next morning, Rowan endeavored to be cheerful during breakfast, but his thoughts were elsewhere. His face was beginning to show the strain of too much planning and too little success. He had got very little sleep, and he made only a perfunctory show of paying attention to the conversation of his breakfast partners, the Warrens. Fortunately, since they were pontificating about their children, his long lapses into silence went unnoticed.

At ten o’clock he downed his coffee and signaled for the last of the stragglers to finish their meals and prepare to depart. “You will need coats today,” he warned them. “It’s rather windy.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” said Frances Coles, scooping up the uneaten pastries from beside her plate.

Eyeing Frances’ slender figure, Nancy Warren sighed. “Where does she put it all?”

“In her bag,” snapped Rowan.

A short time later the troop marched down the front steps of the Randolph and set off to see the dreaming spires of
Oxford. To everyone’s quiet amusement, Susan had appeared wearing her newly acquired navy coat, identical to Martha Tabram’s. As predicted, however, Martha appeared oblivious to the occurrence, although she did manage not to walk in the vicinity of Susan.

Oxford really was a perfect town for a tour, Rowan reflected, as he led the procession: compact, picturesque, and with historical associations for every taste. There were plenty of photo opportunities for Charles. Mystery readers like Susan could visit Balliol College, alma mater of Peter Wimsey, and scour the campus for scenes from the Edmund Crispin novels. Elizabeth MacPherson could see the cross in the street marking the place where the martyrs were burnt, and the church where Amy Robsart was buried. For Kate, the TV buff and moviegoer, he could offer vistas from
Brideshead Revisited
and
Dreamchild.
The intellectuals would enjoy the descriptions of the various colleges and a brief look at the Bodleian Library. And for the rest—the easiest tour of all: the Oxford of
Alice in Wonderland.
The two-hour tour of the city that he conducted that morning was a skillful blend of all these, as he walked them from college to college, reeling off anecdotes dredged up from his prodigious memory. All the while his mind was busy on another track altogether.

He marched them out to Somerville College, which boasted Dorothy L. Sayers among its graduates. That venerable institution for women was not located in the cluster of other colleges, but was a good distance away from the city center—and scarcely worth the walk when supplemented by Susan’s droning recital of the plot of
Gaudy Night
in meticulous detail.

“And it wasn’t her best book to begin with,” muttered Maud Marsh.

They admired the Radcliffe Camera and the Sheldonian Theatre, while Rowan fantasized about the possibility of
throwing Susan out a window of either one. They walked through the Bodleian courtyard and into the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin, where Elizabeth instituted a search for the final resting place of Amy Robsart. A clerk in the church gift shop told her that a small plaque in the chancel was the only trace of the ill-fated lady of Leicester.

Susan kept saying that she didn’t see how students could get any studying done at Oxford, since all the colleges bordered on streets that hummed with incessant traffic. The others contrived to ignore her remarks.

“It isn’t like the American university system,” said Rowan. “Traditionally, tutors made assignments entirely on an individual basis.”

“But suppose you don’t want to learn anything?” asked Elizabeth.

“Then you don’t,” Rowan replied.

Elizabeth considered it. “What about graduate school? Did it take you two years to get your master’s?”