Deadly Stuff (8 page)

It might even still be possible, after all, to save something
from the wreckage. If Laura had a plan in mind, or answers that made sense.

Into his mind flitted the image of the Oxford college. Beautiful stonework, leafy green gardens. But then….

He shook his head, and the images away. That way lay panic and desperation. He had to keep a clear head. He had to think.

And if he had to toss Laura to the wolves in order to save his own skin, then of course, that’s what he’d do.

Up ahead, the signpost told him that he was only ten miles from his destination. He began to pray that Laura would have an explanation. That somehow, despite how things looked, there was a way out for him.

It had been a long time since Simon Jenks had prayed that hard.

Peter Trent had found the JCR easily on the ground floor of one of the larger residential buildings. It looked like a cross between something like a boating or sports club, a town pub, and an old-fashioned gentlemen’s reading room.

The room itself was large, and stuffed with odd bits of furniture that the college probably didn’t want elsewhere. There was a long, fully functioning bar along the back wall, and a vast fireplace that looked as if would be worth a fortune in a reclamation yard, on the facing wall. In between were three pairs of French windows leading out to a croquet lawn. Solid wooden tables with buttoned leather armchairs were scattered around the room, with one wall dedicated to bookcases and their various tomes.

At the moment however, it was full of people standing about with plates of party food and holding pints of beer, and all agog at the news that Peter and his two young colleagues had brought. So far the consensus between the police officers was that the majority of people seemed to be either amazed or uneasily excited, rather than shocked. And nobody seemed to
be feeling a particular sense of sorrow or loss.

‘So, you were there when Mr Raines unveiled the stuffed bear,’ Peter said. It was his fifth quick interview of that lunchtime, and he was getting more or less the same answers from everybody.

‘That’s right. He had it in a crate. Impressive specimen,’ the interviewee, a woman in her late sixties, nibbled a rather soggy-looking salmon canapé.

‘And when was the last time you saw Mr Raines, madam?’

‘Oh, about half past eleven or so. I’d finished setting up my table, and he chivvied me and George about not missing the free lunch down here. George, that’s my husband, made some joke about there being no such thing as a free lunch and we came away.’

Peter nodded. A few of his other interviewees had said much the same thing. He’d have to check with the two uniforms, but he was beginning to get the impression that the victim himself had been intent on having the hall to himself for some reason or other.

Like Jenny Starling, he too had noticed that there had been two cups of coffee on the table next to the body. He was beginning to think that maybe Maurice Raines had been meeting someone, and wanted to have a little privacy whilst he did so. He’d have to put his theory to Trevor when he had a minute.

He thanked the sixty-something, who was now tucking in to a little sausage roll, and wandered over to one of the uniforms. A few quick words confirmed his thoughts, he told them to carry on, and then went back upstairs to find his guv’nor.

Trevor Golder was still in the corridor outside the entrance to hall, but now there was a little, balding man with him. Over the top of the newcomer’s head, he saw Trevor catch sight of his approach, and raised a querying eyebrow. Was he to approach, or give his boss some time alone with the new witness?

‘Ah, Sergeant,’ Trevor said, beckoning him over, ‘this is Mr
McIntyre, the assistant bursar. Mr McIntyre, Sergeant Trent.’

‘Sir,’ Trent said politely.

‘Mr McIntyre was just wondering when the body was going to be removed,’ Trevor said, deadpan, ‘and I was just explaining to him that it’ll probably be a few hours yet. Our forensics people have to give us the go-ahead first, Mr McIntyre.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Art responded unhappily, and looked again at Jenny Starling. He’d been surprised to see the new cook sitting down in the inspector’s company, and he was mindful of Julius’s edict. ‘Miss Starling, Dr Glover-Smythe would like to see you as soon as possible.’

‘Miss Starling will be along shortly,’ Trevor said, with a gentle smile. ‘But since we have you here, Mr McIntyre, what can you tell us about the deceased?’

‘Mr Raines? Nothing,’ Art squeaked in surprise. ‘I mean, we had correspondence with the society, naturally, but I talked mostly over the telephone with Mrs Voight.’

‘But you’d met Mr Raines?’ Trevor pressed.

Art’s pulse rate rocketed. ‘Oh, only in passing. To say hello to. I saw him last night, after dinner, I think. But only to say hello to.’

Trevor smiled briefly. The little man was almost jumping with nerves. But was that due to anything in particular, or was he just naturally a little manic?

Jenny was wondering much the same thing, although having been interviewed by him, was more inclined to think that it was more a crisis of nerves than anything else. But then, as she knew only too well, in a situation like this, who could ever really say?

Certainly, she could think of no reason why the assistant bursar of St Bede’s would want to kill a relative stranger. Surely, the inspector would be looking for the killer primarily amongst the society members themselves? Didn’t statistics prove that most people were killed either by their family
members, friends or personal acquaintances?

Trevor, who was also wondering why Art should be so nervous, nodded at Peter Trent. ‘If you could just give my sergeant your particulars, Mr McIntyre, we won’t keep you. Or you either, Miss Starling. I dare say you’ll be wanting to go and see Dr Glover-Smythe.’ And made a mental note to find out just who he was when he was at home.

Jenny, who had no real desire to find out what it was the Bursar wanted, smiled stiffly, and rose to her feet. Her height, at something close on to six feet, took Trevor by surprise, but he was careful not to show it.

‘If you don’t mind, madam, I have a WPC standing by. It would be very helpful if you wouldn’t mind going back to your room and changing your clothes first. We need them for forensic evidence. To rule you out of the investigation, that is.’ He said it politely, as a request, but they both knew it was no such thing.

‘Of course,’ Jenny said, without rancour. They probably want to check for blood spatter, she thought. Whoever had stuck a fleshing tool into Maurice Raines’s neck must have got blood on them, surely?

‘Then you can go about your normal business, I think,’ Trevor said congenially.

‘Thank you, Inspector,’ Jenny said, somewhat drily, smiled briefly at the still perspiring Art, and then joined the WPC who was waiting for her at the end of the corridor.

Trevor watched her go, listened as his sergeant took down his notes from Art McIntyre, then shook hands with him and watched him leave also.

The little man looked very happy to be going.

‘Bit jumpy, the little bald chap, isn’t he?’ Peter noted neutrally.

‘Yes. What did you learn from the group in the JCR?’

Succinctly, but leaving out nothing relevant, Peter Trent
filled him in on what he’d been told, and what he surmised.

‘The coffee cups? Yes, I noticed those too. Forensics have taken a sample for testing, naturally. But from what I could see, they hadn’t been drunk from. With a bit of luck though, we might get some worthwhile fingerprint evidence from them. You think the vic had arranged to meet someone there?’

Peter Trent nodded. ‘According to a fair number of the stallholders, it was Raines himself who made sure that they were all out and gone, by the very latest at around about twenty to twelve. Why would he do that unless he was expecting someone?’

‘Hmm. And whoever he arranged to meet killed him.’

‘Could be.’

‘Make sure and ask the scouts if any of them served the victim with the coffee. I rather think, though, that Maurice Raines, or perhaps his killer, made the stuff themselves in the little kitchenette just off there.’ He nodded to a door opposite. ‘I’ve asked forensics to check it out when they’re finished at the main crime scene.’

‘OK, guv. You have something in particular you want to do?’

Trevor nodded. ‘Perhaps. I’m going back to the station for a half an hour or so. I want to run a trace on our very helpful first-finder. There’s something about her attitude that’s niggling away at me.’

The sergeant nodded knowingly. The people who discovered bodies were always very closely looked at, in any investigation. Often the killer took the chance on reporting the dead body, because they thought that it would account for any forensic evidence they might have left behind. ‘Her clothes didn’t looked stained to me, guv,’ Peter said thoughtfully.

‘No. And her shoes were clean as well. But I asked the WPC to make a thorough search of her room after she’s changed. Though I doubt, if she is the killer, that our Miss Starling would have been stupid enough to leave her bloodstained clothing in
her room for us to find. But it has to be done. We’ll also need to get search warrants for the public areas of college. I’d like to get a warrant to search each and every conference attendee’s room as well, but I doubt we’d find a judge to go along with that.’

Peter nodded gloomily. ‘So what do you want me to do next, guv?’

‘Call in some more manpower. I want to know where every member of the Society of Stuffers were between eleven-thirty, when we have plenty of witnesses who saw our vic alive and well, and twelve noon, by which time we know he’s dead.’

‘Guv,’ Peter sighed. ‘That’s a lot of timelines.’

‘Yes it is, Sergeant, so you’d better get cracking,’ Trevor said, with little sympathy, but a wide grin.

Ian Glendower looked up from the table where his class were busy practising his preferred treatment for mole skins, and glanced at the clock. He was surprised to see that it was nearly one o’clock, and time for the lunch break.

He looked around and scowled when he failed to find Pippa’s lovely face gazing back at him from anywhere in the room.

He’d been allocated, in the same building as hall, a large, pleasant room for his first lesson/lecture, which was clearly used as a residential room for a student in term time. But it had a usefully large square table, with plenty of light coming in from the sash windows, and so had been just right to accommodate both himself and the half-a-dozen or so newbies who’d signed up for his lecture.

At first he’d grumbled about it, but, in fact, it had turned out to be quite a satisfying experience, with none of the pupils ever having handled the exquisite mole pelts before. He’d started off by giving a quick lecture on the use of moleskin in fashion – not strictly in a taxidermist’s remit that, but it proved that he was a Renaissance man – before demonstrating how best to go
about preserving such a luxurious hide before mounting it on a plaster cast of a mole.

There had been a time whilst he was demonstrating how best to get a perfect finish during the mounting process, when everyone had been gathered around in a tight, rapt circle, making him feel a bit like a magician demonstrating his powers. And he was sure that one of the two girls in the group rather fancied him, not that he was interested of course.

All of which meant that the time had simply flown by and Pippa, damn her, had taken advantage of his absorption to sneak off. Perhaps she was pouting because he hadn’t been paying much attention to her, he mused. She could be remarkably jealous and petty sometimes. But he didn’t really mind that, since it only proved that she was much more needy than most people thought. Strangers saw only her big baby blue eyes, her long, luscious hair and gorgeous figure, and assumed that she was confident and hard-bitten. It made him feel protective of her to know differently.

He dismissed the class, who actually seemed reluctant to leave, which soothed his somewhat battered ego a little more, and smilingly promised them that the afternoon’s session, when they actually got to make a tableau with the pelts, would be even better.

Once they’d gone, he left the makeshift classroom quickly and walked back to his own room. He was so sure that it would be empty, and that Pippa would be absent for the rest of the day just to teach him a lesson, that when he burst in and

Pippa looked up at him from the bed, he stopped dead on the threshold. He stared at her blankly for a moment, then slowly walked in and shut the door behind him. Pippa looked up from the magazine she’d been reading, her face blank and innocent. ‘Well, finally,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d
never
finish. Listen, Ian, you’re never gonna believe what’s happened.’ She sat up, crosslegged on the bed, and
irritably swept off a long lock of hair from her cheek.

Ian opened his mouth to ask her where she’d been, when Pippa carried on, ‘Maurice Raines is dead. Someone’s actually
killed
him. Can you believe it? There are coppers swarming all over hall.’

Ian, aware that he was still standing there with his mouth open like a gaping fish, snapped his jaws shut and then frowned. ‘Are you having me on?’

‘No, honest.’

‘Maurice is dead?’

Her beautiful, large blue eyes watched him carefully. ‘Ian, you haven’t done anything daft, have you?’ she asked, sliding to the side of the bed now and standing up in one lithe sinuous movement. She nonchalantly ran her hand along the top of the beside table, as if checking for dust, but he could see her watching him from beneath her lowered lashes.

Ian stared at her. ‘No! What do you mean?’

Pippa laughed, a shade uncertainly, he thought, and made a show of dusting off her hands. ‘Oh, you know.’ She shrugged one shoulder prettily. ‘You know how you are sometimes.’

His face hardened. ‘No. Just how am I?’ he challenged.

Pippa sighed. ‘Well, all intense. Like you are now, in fact,’ she pointed out, putting her hands on her hips. ‘My mum always says to be careful of you, ’cause you’re so thin-skinned, and you know she’s right. You always do seem to feel things more than anybody else. I mean, the things that other people just shrug off, you seem to take to heart and brood on. You must know that’s true. You get het up about things that are like water off a duck’s back to the rest of us. Come on, Ian, you know you do,’ she cajoled, laughing lightly.