Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries) (26 page)

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.”

“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.”