Deadly Stuff (10 page)

And with that, she dashed off.

‘Oh yeah,’ Trevor said, meeting Peter Trent’s astounded look. ‘They all warned me about that too.’

‘What, guv?’

‘Miss Starling’s first priority is always food, apparently.’

The next morning, Jenny was back in hall for breakfast. The forensics team had still been at work there last night, leaving the college staff to put on dinner as best as they could in the JCR. It hadn’t been an ideal arrangement, what with mismatched tables and chairs and less than piping hot food, but the conference-goers had got into the spirit of the makeshift nature of it, in the true Dunkirk spirit.

The SOCOs must have worked through the night to clear the hall for business as usual now she mused, and wondered if the bursar had been bending someone’s ear on the need to get back to normality as quickly as possible. She wouldn’t put it past Glover-Smythe to have friends in high places. Either way, it was a relief to have the place back in use. Luckily, all traces of the tragedy that had occurred there had now vanished.

She smiled at the scout standing in the doorway who took her order, a tall, motherly-looking woman who seemed to regard Jenny rather too closely for a few seconds. Jenny hesitated, wondering if she wanted a word about something, but when the other woman simply nodded and turned away, she glanced around the large room and saw Glover and Trent seated at a table for four near the back wall, nearest the toilets. No doubt they’d taken the worst table to be both as polite and as unobtrusive as possible. She wondered if the imperious bursar would ever get to know about such scruples, let alone appreciate them, and somehow doubted it.

In a fit of proletariat solidarity she went to join them, noticing that as she did so, the scout who’d taken her order watched her go all the way.

‘Inspector. Sergeant.’ She indicated the warm sunny weather
outside the sash windows. ‘What another lovely day it is,’ she greeted them warmly. She was always happy to have more people to feed. ‘I hope you like the breakfast here. My speciality today is the porridge – it’s made the traditional Scottish way, cooked slowly overnight with mainly water, then cream added in the final stages, but I’ve added a sort of museli-like undertone with sultanas and raisins soaked in sherry overnight. You have to try it and tell me what you think.’

Trevor, who hadn’t eaten porridge since he was a kid, and had vague memories of a glue-like, grey-tinged substance, smiled rather less than enthusiastically. ‘Sorry,’ he said mendaciously, ‘I’ve already ordered the full English.’

‘Me too,’ Peter Trent added hastily.

Jenny, who knew all about men and their ways, smiled sweetly and said that it was no bother, she’d ask a scout to bring them the porridge first. And proceeded to do just that. She had no doubts at all that they’d thank her for it later.

‘So, what’s new?’ she asked brightly, returning to the table and reaching for the coffee pot.

Glover, resigned to the porridge, sighed heavily. ‘Not much. The victim’s laptop is currently with our computer nerd, who found a few encoded or encrypted files on it, and is currently trying to break in or find the password, or whatever it is that they do with them,’ he said, proving himself to be something of a technophobe. ‘And we found the victim’s mobile phone in his pocket so we’ve been tracing all his previous calls and text messages. Nothing stands out so far – it’s mostly business-related, and the few personal calls were all benign.’

‘So no traces of him having an affair or being blackmailed then,’ she said matter-of factly.

‘No,’ Trevor said drily, not sure whether to be amused or shocked by her
savoir-faire
. ‘Not so far anyway.’

‘I’ve heard several people mention that he was a bit of a ladies man,’ Jenny said gently.

‘Yes, we’re getting that vibe too,’ Trevor agreed. ‘But so far nobody’s willing to come out and name names or to point any fingers at their fellow conferencees. Or perhaps he’s just been careful not to, er, fish in waters too close to home as it were, and had wisely decided not to look for his extra-marital activities within the Great Jessies.’

‘Either that, or he and any of his amours have been very discreet,’ Jenny said with a twinkling smile that made Peter Trent hide a quick grin.

Trevor pretended not to notice. Let his sergeant fall for the cook’s charm if he so chose. He himself, was going to keep to a strictly professional stance with the lady.

‘One thing of note, perhaps,’ he continued smoothly, ‘we haven’t yet been able to trace his wife. Apparently, she’s gone off on a little jaunt of her own, whilst her husband was away.’

Jenny caught on at once. ‘Oh. They had that sort of a marriage, did they? Let me guess – the kids are grown and out of the nest, and Mrs Raines finally got fed up with Maurice’s little peccadilloes and decided that what was good for the goose, etc.’

‘Isn’t human nature a wonderful thing?’ Trevor agreed drily.

As Jenny helped herself to a second cup of coffee, the motherly-looking scout returned with three steaming bowls of porridge. She placed them down gently, her eyes carefully averted, and left.

Jenny watched her go, thoughtfully.

The two men stared down at their bowls and at the glutinous looking, off-white mess within, then with almost identical long-suffering sighs picked up their spoons and took a taste.

Jenny, who’d come straight from the kitchens, and already knew just how it tasted, watched them with twitching lips. Peter Trent caught her eye first and saluted her with the spoon and promptly tucked in. The inspector made no comment or gesture, but was the first of the three of them to polish off his
portion, Jenny noticed, with approval.

Once the porridge was dispatched with all proper reverence, Jenny glanced around the room. Not surprisingly perhaps, their table was the centre of attention, although most of the conference goers were acting as if they didn’t exist.

She could well imagine that the gossip mill was going at full tilt, with everyone having their favourite pet theories, and she was going to make it her business today to talk to as many of them as possible and see which way the consensus was leaning.

‘So, I take it the conference is going to go ahead? They’re not cancelling it?’ she asked, and Trevor nodded quickly.

‘Oh yes. I forgot to tell you. I had a word with Mrs Voight yesterday, and told her that I would prefer it if everyone stayed in college for the next few days anyway, and since that was the case, she said that she didn’t see why the conference shouldn’t go ahead. She’s going to make the announcement about it after breakfast, I think.’

‘No doubt she’ll say something along the lines that that would be what Maurice Raines would have wanted, I should think,’ Peter added. ‘It’s what they usually say in circumstances like this.’

‘Whereas, what Maurice Raines would really have wanted and expected was for the world to come to an end and for everyone to weep buckets over him, and not possibly be able to go on,’ Jenny said drolly.

‘That’s how he struck you?’ Trevor said, and nodded. ‘Yes, that generally seems to be what we were picking up on yesterday. Oh, a lot of them admired him as a taxidermist, apparently. And he had his fans, usually amongst the women. One or two even admitted he was good for the society, but nobody really
liked
him. I doubt that anyone was feeling so cut up about it that they wanted to pack up their bags and go home.’

Jenny sighed. ‘Sad, isn’t it. Still, you don’t get murdered because you’re not liked, do you?’

‘Not in my experience, no,’ Trevor said flatly.

‘And whoever did it, presuming it was a Great Jessie,’ Jenny mused, ‘wouldn’t want to stand out from the crowd by kicking up a fuss and demanding that the conference stop, or that they should be free to go home.’

‘Nothing so obvious,’ Trevor agreed glumly. ‘I got the feeling that most of them were either curious or excited about what’s happened. One or two seemed a little scared or squirrelly,’ he admitted, ‘but on questioning them a bit further, it seems that they were more worried that there might be a murdering maniac in their midst. Someone who had it in for taxidermists apparently, and that they might be next on the list, rather than out of any fear of being accused of doing the crime.’

‘So, I take it you’ve come across no real motives yet then?’ she asked diffidently. ‘I mean, apart from any possible love/sexual jealousy angle, which, let’s face it, has hardly been proven yet. The victim’s womanizing reputation might just be all idle gossip, or even something that Maurice Raines himself was careful to cultivate.’

But before the policeman could reply, their plates were removed, and the full English was set down in front of them. After that, they all tucked in and conversation waned. Neither police officer was used to being fed like this on the job, and both were more than happy to make the most of it. Eventually however, over toast and orange juice, they got back to business.

‘Has it occurred to you just how lucky the killer was to find Maurice alone in the hall? And how lucky they were again, not to be seen or caught?’ Jenny mused. ‘I mean, why not kill him in his room, late at night, when you could be sure that he was alone and when you could sneak about under cover of darkness without being seen?’

Trevor nodded. ‘Yes. We have a theory about that though.
According to Mrs Voight, Maurice Raines did several things yesterday that were, shall we say, not really in character.’

‘You mean arranging a free meal for all the vendors?’ Jenny said. ‘Yes, I already know about that.’

‘Of course you do,’ Trevor said flatly. ‘But he also failed to take one of the prime lecture spots for himself. Normally, the first lectures of the conference are the most sought after, apparently, and lecturing at them is where most of the kudos lies. Always before, Maurice’s lecture was the most popular of the lot. He may well not have been particularly liked, but everybody admits that he was a top man in his field, and he liked to demonstrate it to all and sundry.’

Jenny’s gaze sharpened. ‘But not this time?’

‘No. This time he gave his spot to someone else.’

Jenny slowly put down her cup. ‘So, he arranges for the hall to be empty of the vendors, and that he himself should have his agenda free and clear. He was meeting someone, wasn’t he?’

Glover nodded. Well, he’d been warned that this cook was quick. And sharp. And she was clearly going to live up to expectations.

‘But who?’ Jenny said. ‘If, as you say, all the Great Jessies were at lectures and things, who was he planning on meeting? You have checked that everyone was where they said they were, right?’

‘Yes, and it’s being double-checked right now,’ Trevor said sharply, biting back a comment primarily involving grannies and sucking eggs, and nodding instead at the constables who were moving around the room, stopping at every table to have a quick word.

‘It has to be a woman, don’t you think?’ Peter Trent said cautiously. ‘I mean, given his rep, and how careful he was to arrange the free time.’

‘But not with a Great Jessie apparently,’ Jenny said. ‘Could it be someone in college? Someone working here? I know from
listening to the gossip, that it was Maurice Raines himself who specifically chose St Bede’s,’ she said. ‘I think a lot of them wanted to go to Edinburgh or somewhere this year.’

‘So you’re saying that he wanted to be here, specifically here, I mean,’ Peter Trent tapped the table, ‘for a reason?’

‘Could be,’ Jenny said cautiously. ‘You need to find out if he had any previous contact with the college, or with Oxford maybe. Perhaps he’d just found himself a woman who lived locally, and only needed to be generally geographically close,’ Jenny pointed out. ‘I mean, the college is open to the public after all. She could just walk in. But then again, if that was the case, surely they’d meet up in his room?’

‘Perhaps they intended to,’ Trevor said. ‘They could have planned to go on to his place from hall. If the woman came in from outside, and didn’t know St Bede’s well, it might be easier for her to find the hall than one specific room in one of the residential houses. This place is a bit of a maze.’

‘Did you find any Oxford numbers on his mobile?’ Jenny asked.

‘No. Only the college number itself. He phoned Art McIntyre’s number several times for instance. But that’s not surprising, given that he was fixing it up to have his conference here, and that McIntyre is in charge of accommodation and all the arrangements.’

‘Right,’ Jenny agreed absently. And noticed, once again, that the motherly-looking scout kept shooting curious glances at her as she served at a table nearby. Jenny wondered what it was she wanted, and how important it might be, but she knew better than to try and find that out whilst she had the police in tow.

She reached for the jug of orange juice and thoughtfully poured herself another glass.

As Jenny sipped her orange juice, in a converted Victorian
house just off Keble Road, with a pleasant view of Keble College itself, Art McIntyre watched his wife spooning out scrambled eggs from the saucepan onto a dish and sighed.

It was a generously proportioned and spacious flat, and therefore correspondingly expensive, with three bedrooms, a kitchen-diner and large windows throughout, and was mortgaged, of course, up to the hilt. Nor was the nice flat his only expense: his two children seemed to demand and gobble up an ever-increasing amount of cash. Luke, his 10-year-old son, was currently into fencing, and the lessons and equipment needed weren’t cheap. And his lovely little Hermione, although only six, was going to be the next great British ballerina, and if Art thought a fencing master was expensive, it was nothing to the fees charged by Madame Nostrova and her dancing academy.

‘Do you want two or one?’ Barbara, his wife of the last fifteen years, held up the toast freshly burnt from the toaster, and Art smiled weakly. ‘Just the one, I think,’ he said, ruefully patting his rotund tummy. ‘Must try and cut back a bit,’ he said, making Hermione giggle.

But the truth was, he didn’t have much of an appetite nowadays. Why did life have to be so bloody difficult all the time?