Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries) (21 page)

“It’s critical that we find out who had a motive for trying to kill Lindsey. So far we have nothing. Dr. Bell, as her frequent social companion, is the most likely suspect, but he was apparently in London at the time of the shooting. Do you know of anyone else? Even if it seems far-fetched, we need to know. Anyone who had argued with her? Anyone who might consider her a rival?”

“A rival for the affections of St. Giles Bell?”

“Any sort of rival. Or anyone who might want to keep her quiet. About anything at all.” CI Child was casting his net as widely as possible.

“I’m sorry, no. But there is something. On Sunday I went to the police station myself and made a report.”

He sat up. His hand went to his jacket pocket and drew out small notepad.

“This was on Sunday just after Lindsey and I had toured the hospital together. The day before, one of my fellow conferees, a man named Bram Fitzwaring, was found dead in his room shortly before he was to have addressed the entire conference. His room was on the same staircase as mine but below it. His death was ruled natural and due to hypoglycemia. He was diabetic, and so am I. That’s why I think his death
wasn’t
natural. He managed to wreck his room before he died. With hypoglycemia he’d have died quietly in his sleep. And several of us who ate the mussels at the party earlier that night had gotten sick. Dr. Bell’s research involves a potent shellfish toxin called saxitoxin. In fact, in his lab I actually saw a pan of oysters in water laced with saxitoxin.”

Inspector Child marked through a line he’d just written in his notepad, held his scratchings at arm’s length, and shook his head. “You are suggesting that Dr. Bell killed Mr. Fitzwaring? With a toxin he keeps in his lab here at the hospital?”

“No. I’m suggesting that someone did. Someone who had access to his lab.”

“Such as Lindsey Scoggin?”

“No!” This was not going right. “Of course not. What motive would she have had?”

“What motive would
anyone
have had?” Child made a hand gesture that I took to mean
Go on. You started this.

“I’m not accusing anyone, but some of the people at the conference didn’t think Fitzwaring should be there, and they certainly didn’t think he should be delivering a paper on the first day.”

“Why not?”

This brought up the whole thing about King Arthur as legend vs. King Arthur as real man. It would have taken me hours to do the subject justice and to relate all the various comments I’d heard from other conferees. Bram’s top two opponents, and, by extension, the most likely suspects, would be Harold Wetmore and Larry Roberts. I made up my mind that I would not, under any circumstances, mention either man’s name. Chief Inspector Child could do this dirty work himself.

“Can you be more specific about who didn’t want him there?”

“Not really. I heard some comments from people I don’t even know.”

“Might anyone have had a more personal reason? I have a hard time believing someone could commit murder for purely academic reasons.”

“You don’t know these people.”

“I’ve lived in Oxford all my life. I believe I do.”

“Of course. As for a more personal reason, he and a friend, Mignon Beaulieu, both came here from Glastonbury. They were friends with the owner of The Green Man on the High.”

“I know the place.”

“I think there’s a larger group of friends that might be called New Agers. They’re into magic and ancient rites and Celtic stuff.”

“Did this companion, Mignon, say anything that led you to think she or anyone else might have wanted to do away with Mr. Fitzwaring?”

“Not at all. No. But there is something going on that I don’t understand.” I immediately wished I could take that back. If he didn’t already have me mentally measured for a straightjacket, he would if I mentioned King Arthur’s bones.

“Like what? Explain.”

“I can’t explain because I don’t know. But you could talk to Mignon yourself. She’s still in town.”

“And you say you reported this on Sunday?”

“At Thames Valley Police Station on St. Aldate’s. You can check.”

It seemed to me that Child had weighed in his mind the benefits of referring me for counseling versus the possible benefits of treating me like a well-informed consultant, and the latter won. “Is this”—he looked at his notes—“saxitoxin, a chemical that would show up in autopsy?”

“If a fluid sample from the body was chemically analyzed, it might, but Fitzwaring’s body has already been cremated.”

“The body was autopsied
before
it was cremated, I’m sure.”

“Yes, but the medical examiner put down hypoglycemia as cause of death.”

“You don’t understand. Fluid samples are sent to a lab. The lab would have no reason to test for a strange poison like saxitoxin. They’d only test for common things like oxycodone. But they don’t throw these samples away immediately. They hold on to them for a time.”

“You’re right! I hadn’t thought of that. His blood could be tested
again.
”

Lettie and the children returned, somber and subdued. She said, “I’m going to take Claire and Caleb home and see that they’re taken care of for the night. They tell me they’ll be all right if a neighbor stays with them, as long as they can call me anytime they want.”

I told her I’d be glad to stay with them, and their new friend, Georgina, had also volunteered. Georgina must have been waiting out in the hall, because at that moment she stepped through the door and confirmed my words.

While Georgina talked to the children, Lettie pulled me aside. “Before I took the children to the ICU, I worked with the staff down there to rearrange the equipment around Lindsey and hide some of it under the bed. All the kids saw was the breathing apparatus.” She put the back of her hand up to the side of her mouth and added, “I also brushed her hair and added some blusher to her cheeks.”

“They let you do that?”

“I explained how important it was.”

On the taxi ride back to town, I reviewed the events of the last few hours in my mind. When Lettie said the children would be well cared for by Lindsey’s neighbors, I felt relieved because I needed the evening to follow up on questions that the day’s events had brought up. Why was Mignon still here? If the Grey Lady was actually Bumps McAlister, wife of the owner of The Green Man, did that mean Mignon and Bram were also in on the stunt? What about my second sighting of the Grey Lady? Was it Bumps again? This was probably not important, so I reminded myself to stick to the important matters, the death of Bram Fitzwaring and the shooting of Lindsey Scoggin.

Were the two related? I couldn’t see how, but I knew they were. The connections were tenuous at best. Shellfish, poison, Staircase Thirteen. Shellfish in Dr. Bell’s lab and shellfish served at the cocktail party. Lindsey’s mother and Fitzwaring both staying on Staircase Thirteen. Fitzwaring, a participant in a study conducted by a man who lives only yards from Staircase Thirteen and has a lab only feet from Dr. Bell’s lab where saxitoxin, potent shellfish poison, is stored in quantity. None of this connected up but somehow, taken all together, there were too many threads not to indicate some sort of cloth.

I knew Lettie had my cell phone number, but I drew my phone from my purse and called her to make certain. The children were settled in for the night, and a neighbor they trusted was with them. Lettie was just climbing into Lindsey’s rental car to return to the hospital when she answered my call. Remembering Lettie’s poor driving record in countries where they drive on the left side of the road, I cautioned her. We’d had a wreck at a roundabout in Scotland that resulted in Lettie driving a pencil through the roof of her mouth.

I browsed through the contacts on my phone, then tapped on the photos. I hadn’t taken any recently, and the first ones I saw were those I took that day in Bram’s room after they’d taken his body away. They gave me a little shiver. I shielded the phone display from the fading afternoon light and saw a picture of Bram’s open closet door, another of his bare bed frame strewn with clothes and shoes, and a third of the tea tray on his table. Beside the tray stood a plastic water bottle. I recalled he had been using it as a sharps container. How many used syringes did it hold? I couldn’t see clearly because of the label on the bottle.

I expanded the photo on the display and zeroed in on the bottle. Three. I thought I could make out the barrels of three syringes resting, needle-end down and at varying angles, in the bottle. That would be about right, I thought. He arrived at St. Ormond’s that day and may have taken an injection of insulin about that time. Another before dinner or, more likely, before the cocktail party. Then the third—when? Before bed? No. He was showing signs of hypoglycemia then because he had eaten nothing at the dinner, and must have realized the situation because there were cookie wrappers, tea bags, and empty sugar packets in his trash, I recalled. He wouldn’t have taken another dose of insulin under those circumstances.

Unless he was confused.

I know too well the confusion brought on by low blood sugar. But he would have had to go back down the stairs to the fridge beside the bathroom on the first floor, retrieve a syringe, and return to his room. He had followed me up the stairs and left me at the level on which his room was located, so he would have had to go
back
down to get his insulin and, given the state he was in at the time, he couldn’t have made it.

I thought. I couldn’t be sure.

I had to find that plastic bottle. Where was it now? Our scout would have taken it away when she cleaned the room. Then what? As soon as the cab let me out in front of the college gate, I flew in and asked the porter, “What do you do with sharps?” This made no sense to him, of course, so I explained.

He nodded and told me, “We have a container where the scouts put sharp objects like needles. Once every week or so, the city picks it up and leaves us an empty one.”

“When was the last time it was picked up?”

“I don’t know. To tell the truth, they don’t really pick it up that often. More like once a month, I’d say.”

What luck! “Where is the container?”

“They keep it in the broom cupboard . . .” He pointed to a wall of the Porter’s Lodge where I could see no door, then realized he was indicating a broom closet you had to enter from the quad. “Who is your scout?” he asked.

“Patricia,” I said. “But I can’t wait until she comes in tomorrow. This is urgent. Don’t you have a key? Please?”

He mumbled and fumbled around with the papers on the small ledge on his side of the window. “We’re not to mess around with the sharps container. Regulations.”

“I just want to see it.” Not true. I wanted to open it, but one thing at a time. The porter grabbed a key and led me into the quad where he stopped at the first door on the left and opened it. Inside, scores of brooms, buckets, rags, and the distinctive smell of dirty mops. A bright red sharps bin sat on the floor near the back wall.

“There it is, but it’s against the law to open it.”

“May I pick it up and shake it?”

I took his silence as permission. The bin looked large enough to hold several weeks’, if not months’, worth of sharp instruments discarded in a place like this. I picked it up and shook it, listening.

“It’s empty.”

Two possibilities. The city had picked up hazardous waste in the last three days or our scout hadn’t put the syringes in the bin at all. I’d have to wait now and talk to her tomorrow morning. I prayed she’d remember what she did with them—and that she’d tell me. Given the black market for used syringes among addicts, I couldn’t count on it.

Climbing the stairs as far as Mignon’s room I knocked, expecting no answer, but she surprised me by opening the door. “Would you like to go to dinner with me?” I asked.

This was the night before the end of the conference, and I figured the dinner would be a good one. I hoped they’d have pheasant again. Mignon seemed glad of the invitation. “I was thinking of going out to eat, but this is already paid for, isn’t it?”

“Certainly. Why waste food we’ve already bought?”

After a quick change and freshen-up, Mignon and I walked to the dining hall together. I was wearing my last clean blouse and Mignon sported the long, blue, crushed-velvet dress she’d worn the first night.

Before we walked in, Mignon stopped me with a hand on my arm. “I need to tell you something.”

We shifted sideways, away from the dining room doors, so diners wouldn’t have to swerve around us. I didn’t want to miss a word of whatever Mignon had to tell me. She looked into my eyes so directly and intently it was a bit uncomfortable.

“You were right about the bones,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “About us having Arthur’s and Guinevere’s bones. That TVRA you saw on Bram’s notes? It stands for Thames Valley Radiocarbon Accelerator. They do carbon dating. They’ve tested the bones Bram found in Sharpham and they date to four hundred fifty A.D., give or take, so we know they are Arthur’s and Guinevere’s. The size of that leg bone, they figure, would have made the man nearly seven feet tall! Who else could it be? The problem now is that I don’t have money to pay for the lab work, and they won’t give me the bones until I pay them. They ran five tests and I owe them a thousand pounds.”

“How did Bram plan to pay for it?”

“He had the money in cash, but I don’t know where he put it after he got here. He must have hidden it, but I’ve searched his room with a fine-tooth comb.”

“What about Bram’s mother? Did you ask her?”

“She would’ve laughed at me.” Mignon made an ugly face. “I’ve put the problem to my friends and they’re with me. We’re trying to raise the money, but until we do, I can’t leave Oxford. I can’t leave the bones of our immortal king with people who don’t know or care about their sacred power!”

I passed over the oxymoron,
bones of our immortal king,
and asked, “Where in Sharpham did Bram find these bones? How did he know where to look?”

“Well now, that’s for later. It’ll all come clear in good time.”

She was refusing to tell me! Saving it for a press conference, I didn’t doubt. Or a book deal.