Lessons in Following a Poisonous Trail: A Cambridge Fellows Mystery novella (Cambridge Fellows Mysteries) Read online

  Lessons in Following a Poisonous Trail

  By Charlie Cochrane

  Lessons in Following a Poisonous Trail © Charlie Cochrane, 2020

  Cover art by Alex Beecroft

  These are works of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or establishments, events or locales is coincidental. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cambridge

  October 1911

  Saturday

  A bright afternoon, with a gentle breeze. St Bride’s rugby pitch, the home team turning out against St Thomas’s college. A tight game, hard fought. Jonty, arms raised to charge down a drop kick from the opposition, stumbled over a churned-up piece of turf, found himself diving headlong towards a boot and took evasive action. It wasn’t his best decision.

  ***

  “What are you?” Orlando Coppersmith frowned so hard that his entire forehead resembled a linen shirt that had just been wrung.

  “Well, to give me my full title, I'm the Kildare Fellow in Tudor Literature.” Jonty Stewart put on a brave front but he knew that he would not stand a cross-examination. Especially when he was at the disadvantage of lying on a bed in the St. Bride’s college sickbay with the twin intimidations of his lover’s scowling presence in the room and the college nurse outside the door, cleaving her prow-bosomed way en route to the rest of her charges.

  “I don't refer to your paid employment, Dr Stewart, I allude to your conduct today. The conduct that brought you here.”

  Jonty sighed. “I know. I'm an idiot.”

  Orlando's mouth almost tweaked into a smile but he managed to restrain it. “I would have thought the Kildare Fellow would have been able to produce an adjective to go with the noun.” He sat back in the little wooden chair provided for visitors, his arms folded, awaiting the answer.

  “I'm a complete and utter idiot.”

  “That's nearer the truth. I can think of a few more terms but I'll excuse you them. Given your condition.”

  “I thank you for such small mercies.” Jonty changed position, easing his leg. Only a patchwork quilt covered his lower regions, hiding the fact that he wore neither shoes nor socks or indeed anything below the waist. Not that he’d been wearing trousers when the mishap had happened. His right calf had been bandaged up to within an inch of its life after his rugby shorts had been cut off him quite mercilessly by Orlando and the nurse, who had decided that, despite being baggy, they'd never come off in the normal way without causing more pain and damage.

  Jonty suspected that Orlando would have been happy to suggest that was exactly what they should do to teach him a lesson. He had huffed and puffed and complained all the way through the process, probably to cover up the fact that he was worried. Jonty could only hope he’d enjoyed it just a little bit. Getting their hands on each other’s flesh was usually a treat without comparison and one unlikely to be repeated any time soon, given the state of Jonty’s leg.

  Mercy had eventually triumphed over justice, so now he had been made comfortable, propped up with pillows to await the arrival of the doctor.

  “I bet you’re enjoying this.” Orlando had risen, to stare out of the small window across the college rooftops. “Being borne on a stretcher from the rugby pitch, into an invalid carriage and through St. Bride’s, like Queen Victoria in her pomp. Now having the prospect of being waited on hand and foot, with everyone fussing round you.”

  “That may appeal, but my leg hurts like billy-oh.” Jonty carefully smoothed over the quilt, which was said to be the product of Ariadne Sheridan’s fair hands. Back in the days she’d been Ariadne Peters and the chatelaine of the master’s lodge at the side of her brother, she’d crafted a series of beautiful covers for the sick bay. To provide, she’d said, a little touch of home comfort for the students—or fellows—who found themselves ensconced there.

  “One might say it served you right to be suffering.” Orlando, still in his muddy rugger jersey, kept his gaze fixed outside, possibly afraid that if he contemplated Jonty’s stricken frame his mood might soften. “What exactly did you do on that pitch?”

  “I scored one magnificent try and made another. Both of the kicks beautifully taken by—”

  “No Jonty. That wasn’t the question. What did you do to get yourself laid up like this?”

  “Ah. Yes. Well.” The dreaded question to which the questioner knew the answer and was using it to make the recipient squirm. Jonty took a deep breath. “Well, I started to charge down this drop kick and then I saw a boot coming straight for my face. At which point I thought Mama wouldn't want to see her lovely boy disfigured so I twisted out of the way and...” He tailed off. The rest must have been obvious at the time, from the awful way his leg had gone awry as he hit the ground to the howl of pain that he had given. He was sure he’d heard a breaking noise, as well, but perhaps best not to mention that at present. “It was better that my leg copped it, surely, rather than me lose my good looks?”

  Orlando snorted, although his bravado couldn’t conceal the emotion inside. White as a sheet since the accident, with face drawn, he must have been worrying about how bad things could have turned out. A broken neck rather than a potentially broken bone in the leg. “You need to learn to take more care of yourself. Talking of your mother, what will she say when I tell her how you had to be carried up here by two of the porters? In fact, I know exactly the sort of things she’ll say.” He turned, face cracking into a grin. “I should make you deliver the news yourself and get the dressing down that follows. That would be punishment enough for the moment.”

  “That’s hitting a man below the belt. And I can’t defend myself in that region, given I only have the covers to protect my modesty until someone can supply me with undergarments. Anyway, the stratagem to employ with Mama is simple. Tell Papa, who’ll be entirely sympathetic to any injury sustained in the cause of St Bride’s rugby team and let him deliver the news. Cowardly maybe, but effective.” Jonty smoothed the covers again. “They’ll be relieved I’m not here for the same reason as I was earlier this year.”

  “Thank heaven for small mercies,” Orlando forced out. He’d still not entirely recovered from Jonty being attacked, here in his own college.

  It seemed an opportune time to ask for a favour. “Any chance you could get hold of some clothes for me?”

  “I suppose I’d better. Although I really should let you lie there squirming for as long as possible. Suffering a bit might knock some sense into you.” Orlando had left his position by the window as he spoke, although he’d only made it as far as the door before he paused, clearly dithering.

  “You appear to be standing upon the order of your going, old chum. Is there a problem?” Jonty could have hazarded a guess at what was going on beneath those unruly dark curls but what fun would it be if he didn’t get his lover to confess it aloud?

  “Yes. I need to fetch your things but I also want to be here when the doctor sees you and not even Dr Panesar has been able to work out how to be in two places at once.” Orlando shifted from left foot to right and back again.

  “Then you could ask one of the porters to do the honours. Nip up to Forsythia Cottage on his bike, or slip him some money to take a cab both ways. Mrs Ward would be able to lay her hands on what’s required.” Jonty jabbed his finger vaguely in the direction of their home. �
��Although this might all be a moot point. The doctor could very well sling you out when he arrives. He may not appreciate an audience and not everyone is as understanding of our relationship as Nurse Hatfield.”

  “Ah, yes.” That clearly added to Orlando’s dilemma. “Perhaps I’d better run the errand myself.”

  “That seems wise. I suppose you’d better pack a small case of things for me. Who knows how long I’ll be confined to this prison cell?”

  “For longer than you think, if you carry on in that manner.” The nurse’s voice sounded round the door, heralding the appearance her grinning face. “Although that might be making a rod for my own back. Dr Scarrett will be here imminently, although his progress across the court appears to have been interrupted by the chaplain. They’ve known each other since they were schoolboys, apparently, and they always have a chinwag.”

  “I’ll see you later.” Orlando gave an agitated wave, then left.

  “I’ve not seen him in such a state for a while. He must have seen rugby injuries before and it’s not as if you’ve broken your neck.” Nurse Hatfield twitched the covers into order.

  “You know how he fusses about, like a mother hen. You’d have thought he’d played the game long enough to understand that getting a cracked shin is pretty commonplace.” Jonty shifted the body part in question, which hadn’t appreciated the nurse’s straightening of the sheet.

  “Ah, but other people’s cracked shins aren’t yours, are they?” With a knowing smile, the nurse slipped out of the room to fetch the doctor, whose gentle Scottish lilt was sounding from the hallway. Some fevered whispering ensued, which couldn’t be heard clearly. Vexatious when medical folk were discussing your bodily parts at a volume insufficient to be made out.

  At least the doctor wore a smile as he came into the room. “Ah, Dr Stewart. Overexertion on the rugby pitch?”

  “Over-enthusiasm and self-preservation, I’d say, although those who observed the incident may have taken a different view of things.”

  “In a lot of pain?” Scarrett unpacked his bag as he spoke, preparatory to the usual routine of pulse taking and temperature reading.

  “Not as much as when it happened and mainly when I move the offending limb. I did hear a worrying crack when I hit the ground.”

  “Ah.” The doctor raised his eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound promising.”

  Any response Jonty would have liked to make was prevented by the thermometer being inserted in his mouth. When Scarrett had satisfied himself that Jonty wasn’t burning up or freezing down, the object was removed and the patient could say, “I felt so myself. The sound being not promising, I mean.”

  “Well, we’ll soon find out.” Scarrett exposed the leg, then began a series of pokings, proddings and other medical torments involving demands for the limb to be moved this way and that. Jonty winced but remained brave: there were students in the other rooms and what would they think to hear him shout at the pain? Eventually the torture finished. “I believe you’ve got away with it lightly, Dr Stewart. No bones broken, I believe, although a very bad sprain. We’ll soon know one way or another. I’d recommend a couple of days’ bed rest with perhaps some elevation and an ice pack.”

  “Ice pack?” Orlando was going to love that. Fitting penalty for causing trouble.

  Scarrett grinned. “Just for today, on and off. We don’t want you getting hypothermia as well as your injury. You may not be grateful for the ice at first, but you will in time, when it speeds recovery. Keep your leg moving gently and let me know if there are any problems when you start to put weight on it. I am fairly confident there is no break but if there’s a hairline fracture it may not have made its presence known as yet.” He set to packing his bag. “I will leave something with Nurse Hatfield to help you sleep. Otherwise the best medicine is time.”

  “Thank you.” Jonty settled back into the pillow, telling himself that it could have been much worse.

  As Scarrett opened the door to leave, he turned back. “You mentioned you heard a breaking sound when you fell?”

  “Yes. I assumed it had to be my tibia or fibula, or whatever those things are called, cracking. Perhaps it was the aural equivalent of an optical illusion.”

  “Perhaps.” Scarrett didn’t appear convinced. “More likely you did hear the noise and it was something else. There might be another rugby player waiting for medical help, somewhere.”

  “Quite possibly.” Although Jonty wasn’t persuaded that was the explanation. The player whose boot had been headed for his face had certainly taken a tumble, although he’d got back up again and appeared to be mobile. “Well, it’ll have to remain a mystery.”

  “That would be grist to your mill, then. Give you something to think about while you’re stuck in that bed for the next two days.”

  That was an excellent point. It would also give Orlando something to think about other than Jonty’s leg, although unfortunately The Case of the Mysterious Cracking Noise was not likely to be linked to a murder or a coded manuscript or anything else Orlando particularly enjoyed getting his teeth into.

  He sighed, closed his eyes and tried to grab forty winks, although as he dropped off, he imagined he heard that distinct snapping sound again. No doubt it would haunt him until they established exactly what had caused it.

  ***

  Orlando cycled home in both a physical and emotional lather. The nagging voice of worry in his head, suggesting unhelpful things like Jonty’s wound becoming gangrenous and his leg having to be amputated, could only be quelled by focussing on the practical. The mental checklist he was building up of items for his lover to be stuffed into an ever-increasing size of bag, suddenly made him wonder what had happened to the things they’d left in the changing room, abandoned due to the medical emergency. Including his wallet, in which was the note from Jonty—very dog-eared now but still bearing in his unmistakable handwriting the message Idiot XXX—that was too precious to be lost.

  He was on the verge of turning the bicycle through one hundred and eighty degrees when he remembered that Dr Panesar, who’d been an enthusiastic if slightly bewildered spectator at the game, had promised he’d gather their things and put them in the porters’ lodge for safekeeping. With a sigh of relief, Orlando gathered speed again, or as much speed as his weary limbs could summon up.

  Once home and having given Mrs Ward the housekeeper a full briefing about the state of the invalid, he’d succumbed to her insistence that he have a bath and change into some decent clothes before returning to college. Jonty, she told him, was no doubt being well looked after and an extra twenty minutes having to wait for his things wouldn’t hurt him. Perhaps it might even teach him some sense in future although they both felt that miracle was beyond expectation.

  The bath proved both warming and relaxing, Orlando’s eyelids drooping as he soaked, to the point he realised he’d need to get out or risk drowning. As he emerged from the bathroom, Mrs Ward called up that she’d asked the lad next door to take a bag of clothes down to St Bride’s so that Dr Stewart’s dignity could be rescued. All Orlando needed to take with him now was Jonty’s washing and shaving set. And, as there was no hurry for those, it wouldn’t hurt for Orlando to have a cup of tea and a rest before he set off again.

  Grateful once more for their housekeeper’s discretion and good sense, Orlando dressed leisurely, enjoyed his tea and took a short nap in front of the fire before heading back down the Madingley Road towards St Bride’s.

  On arriving at the sick bay, laden with both toiletries and a cake—from Mrs Ward to the nurse, with a note saying she would need all the fortification she could muster to deal with such a patient—Orlando was delighted to find Jonty looking chipper. The mud had been scrubbed off him and he’d been decently presented in his pyjama top and quilted smoking jacket, his bottom half presumably now being ensconced in underwear beneath the cover.

  “What news?” He asked, warily eyeing the lower portions of the bed.

  “No break that Dr Scarrett can see,
although he says if it’s just a small one it may not be obvious until I’m up and about. Which I’m not allowed to be for forty-eight hours.”

  “Your students will no doubt be grateful for small mercies.” Orlando waggled his thumb in the direction of what appeared to be some lumpy contraption in the bed. “What’s all this?”

  “Elevation of the offending object and torture in the form of an ice pack. To take the swelling down, allegedly, although I think it’s simply spite.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when I move it. So long as I don’t move it more than a quarter of an inch, all is well. Please thank Mrs Ward for sending all my clothes down. I was feeling quite obscene prior to that. Worse than wearing a kilt. Here,” Jonty pointed at his distal regions, “I hope I can get my trousers on, these next few weeks. What if I have to take to the tartan because my leg’s all swathed in bandages?”

  “Behave.” Orlando, in a mixture of relief at the lack of pain and alarm at the prospect of Jonty having to get his kilt out, observed, “I suppose you’ll be finding ways to get into mischief, even though you’re stuck here.”

  “I already have. If you count conundrums as mischief.”

  Orlando, who’d been contemplating the elevation arrangement around Jonty’s leg, glanced up. “Oh, yes?”

  Jonty nodded. “I have something for you to ponder over, as well. I didn’t tell you at the time, because you were in enough of a state, but I heard a distinct snap when I hit the ground.”

  “A snap?” Orlando eyed the leg again. Was he being told the whole truth and nothing but concerning the state of Jonty’s leg? Perhaps some interrogation of Nurse Hatfield was called for.

  “Yes. Not quite like this,” Jonty snapped his fingers, “but close enough. Obviously, I thought it had to have been one of my bones, but Dr Scarrett says he doesn’t think it was. So what did I hear? I don’t recall there being any large twigs or branches on the pitch where I took my tumble that I could have broken on the way down.”