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

  “That’s because there weren’t any. I saw where you tumbled and the ground was clear. Anyway, Jermyn the groundsman wouldn’t stand for extraneous objects sullying his pristine turf. He gets agitated enough when big, hairy forwards bleed all over it or rough it up during a scrummage.” Orlando scratched his chin. “You didn’t imagine this noise, in your state of shock?”

  “No, I did not. I’ve thought the matter through carefully—not a lot else to do seeing as I’m forced to lie here and twiddle my thumbs—and I’m certain I heard the sound as I hit the ground, so it predates any shock hitting me. It was a distinct snap.” Jonty tipped his head to one side, his like a bird listening for a worm thinking pose. “We could perhaps ask any other players in the vicinity whether they heard the same noise, although that would probably strike them as being a strange thing to enquire about. Unless we pretend it’s vital to a case.”

  Orlando snorted. “I know we’ve employed such undercover tactics in the past but I’m not sure I have the talent to manage that challenge. I’d know the intrinsic unimportance of the investigation I’d be undertaking.”

  “Intrinsic unimportance?” Jonty smote the bed covers in horror, although he wore a large grin. “Is the matter of me lying here going mad through forced inactivity and having this peculiar noise worrying me not important enough?”

  “I can fetch you your college work to go through or anything else you’d like from that bear pit you call your study.”

  “Not allowed to work at the moment. Forty-eight hours of doing nothing, the nurse has ordered me and I’m not brave enough to disagree with her. Would you be?”

  “No, thank you.” The most feared parade ground sergeant major would blanch at the prospect. “I’ll indulge you, then. Things that could have made this sound. Not a bone—assuming it wasn’t someone else suffering a fracture—not a twig, so where does that leave us? A noise in the distance, like a man shooting at pigeons that you mistook for close by?”

  “That falls at the first fence. You’d have heard it in that case, given your acuity of hearing. I did check my rugger shorts to ensure I hadn’t stuffed anything into the pockets that could have broken in the impact, but they were bare.”

  “It could have been an item in another player’s pocket. Two other chaps hit the grass when you did. The one whose boot you tried to avoid and another who merely tripped over the pair of you. Both men were whippet-thin so I suppose a broken bone might have been audible.” Easy enough to ask them if they’d been injured, assuming Orlando could find a plausible reason for doing so. “Of course—”

  His theory that the offending noise could have been something as trivial as a snapped bootlace, enlarged in Jonty’s mind to something out of all proportion, got left unspoken as a knock sounded on the door. Jonty’s cry of, “Come in!” was followed by the entrance of Dr Peters, the Master of St. Bride’s.

  He shook his head. “Dr Stewart. Is this not a disproportionate step to take to avoid reading the lesson at evensong tomorrow?”

  “You see right through me, Master. How else can a man avoid all those long and unpronounceable Old Testament names? Oh, thank you.” Jonty beamed at the bowl of apples Peters presented him with.

  “From the lodge’s orchard. A small variety but very sweet.” The master turned to Orlando. “I’m pleased to see you here, too, Dr Coppersmith. I may have need of your services.”

  “We’re always at your service, master.” Orlando tried to tone down the note of glee in his voice. “Is this a college matter or one that calls on our investigational skills?”

  “Both, although not our college. The match you played in this afternoon, against St. Thomas’s. There was a man called Dr Threlfall playing for them.”

  “There may well have been, although his name doesn’t mean anything to me. Does it you, Dr Coppersmith?”

  “I believe I’ve run across the name, Dr Stewart, but not to put a face to it. He certainly wasn’t one of their players today whom I could have named. What’s happened, Dr Peters?”

  “He’s been taken seriously ill. I understand Dr Scarrett was no sooner home from seeing you than he was called to St Thomas’s to attend Threlfall. The man had been found unconscious by one of his colleagues who’d been expecting to meet him for a glass of sherry and was alarmed when he didn’t turn up so went to his rooms. He assumed—not being a rugger man and having a strange view of what is likely to happen during a game—that Threlfall was perhaps suffering from delayed concussion and so called for medical aid. There was some evidence that he had been vomiting which added to his concern.”

  Orlando, knowing that he and Jonty wouldn’t have been summoned if this was merely a rugby injury and noting the serious expression Peters wore, said, “But it isn’t concussion?”

  “The story is that Scarrett is unwilling to entirely commit himself but appears to favour a diagnosis of poisoning.” Peters raised an elegant eyebrow. “More consistent with the symptoms, he says.”

  “But then, this is a case for the police, surely,” Jonty said.

  “It is. And no sooner had they been called in than I had Sergeant Cohen contact me to ask if you would make yourselves available to help. University business, university men.” Peters produced an uncharacteristically cheeky grin. “Although it appears it will have to be university man, given your current medical condition, Dr Stewart.”

  “I can still employ my brain even if I can’t run around. Dr Coppersmith will have to do the donkey work and let me apply higher logic to what he finds.” Jonty’s smirk was completely characteristic. “Anyway, my esteemed colleague has already had his chance to solve a mystery from his bed of pain. It’s my turn now.”

  “We’d be delighted to help in whichever way we can,” Orlando said hurriedly, not wanting to reopen the subject of The Woodville Ward. While it had been a triumph for his powers of deduction, it has also been a particularly painful part of a life that had known plenty of sorrows. Admittedly fewer of those now that Jonty was a chief part of his being. “You say that the estimable Sergeant Cohen contacted you. Has Chief Inspector Wilson not been called in?”

  “He has and delighted to be so, Cohen tells me. Wilson has been visiting his in-laws and this business has meant an early return to Cambridge for him, no later than tomorrow morning.”

  Orlando couldn’t imagine ever wanting to make an early departure from the home of Mr and Mrs Stewart, who were the nearest thing he’d ever have to parents-in-law. “I hope our good friend Wilson hasn’t turned to crime himself, in an effort to shorten his visit. I fear he’d make a master criminal if he turned his brain to such things.”

  “He’d be more than a match for us,” Jonty acknowledged. “Dr Peters, what are we required to do?”

  “Initially Dr Coppersmith can accompany me. I’m visiting the warden of St Thomas’s, at the behest of the police, to offer our services. I’ll be leaving straight from here.”

  “I’d be honoured to go with you. While we’re there, I’d like to get hold of a picture of Threlfall, if I may. There’s bound to be a rugby team photograph in which he features.”

  Peters, although appearing puzzled at the request, inclined his head. “Of course.”

  “It’s not simply morbid curiosity, Master. It would be useful to show people, so they know whom we’re talking about.”

  “I’d like to see it, too,” Jonty said. “To know which of the men we played against today was him. I have an idea already, but it depends on identifying him. And no, I shan’t elaborate until I’ve seen a photograph. No point in putting ideas into people’s heads unnecessarily.”

  With that enigmatic utterance he let his visitors depart.

  ***

  Orlando was back not an hour later. The meeting had been brief, he reported; the warden—a pragmatic man—had agreed to give Orlando his college’s full co-operation, so long as the St Bride’s men promised to exercise their usual discretion. He didn’t want to create a panic. A team picture was obtained and a brief visit made to Thre
lfall’s set of rooms, where a bustlingly efficient Sergeant Cohen and an extremely young-looking constable had been searching for evidence of what had happened. A mug of cocoa had been removed to have the dregs in it tested but the results wouldn’t be known for a day or two.

  The team picture, while slightly blurred—not up to the standard of St. Bride’s rugby photographs, Orlando remarked—proved clear enough to recognise Threlfall as the player whose swinging boot had caused Jonty to take evasive action.

  “Well, I’m jiggered. I’ve been wondering if it was him. As I said earlier, I have an idea.”

  “Oh, yes?” Orlando wore his I’ve learned to be wary of your ideas expression, although Jonty was certain the man had been mulling over what it might be.

  “The snapping noise we were discussing earlier. Could that somehow be connected to the delivery of a slow-acting poison?”

  “Would you care to elucidate on this bizarre suggestion?”

  “It’s not bizarre. Let’s imagine the murderer slipped a phial of something nasty into the pocket of Threlfall’s shorts before the match, on the principle that if he took a tumble, which he was bound to do, it would break and administer the toxin?” Jonty nodded, as though the suggestion alone was proof conclusive.

  Orlando, sighing, shook his head. “When I murder you, it won’t be in such a haphazard manner. What guarantee would there be that Threlfall wouldn’t notice the phial in his pocket and simply throw it away? Or that the thing wouldn’t remain unbroken or, if it broke, poison someone else in the process? Like you, if he landed on top of your burly buttocks. And, while I hate to add insult to injury of your beautiful theory, I’m not even sure it’s possible for the chemical employed to be administered through the skin. Let alone seeping through a pocket on the way.”

  “Thallium acts through the skin. Dr Panesar told us all about it once, in the Senior Common Room.”

  “If you recall, he also told us that Thallium was slow acting.”

  “Spoilsport. That was such a lovely piece of deduction of mine.” Jonty stuck out his lower lip. “Even if my idea falls by the wayside, I’d bet five pounds on that noise being linked to the murder.”

  “I’ll take you up on that.” Orlando leaned over to solemnly shake hands.

  “Do they know yet what poison was used?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. Cohen says if he were a betting man, he’d have his money on aconitine or something similar.”

  “I shall have to ask Dr Panesar if that can be administered through the skin.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to simply wait to hear the medical report rather than jumping to conclusions about what chemical—if any—was used?”

  “They’re the only things I can jump to, Orlando. Conclusions. Been banned from anything else of a physical nature, including visiting the lavatory. It’s all too depressing.” Jonty, sighing, lay back on his pillow. “The only recompense I have in this whole mess is to make the most of the St. Thomas’s connection and indulge in memories of you disgracing yourself there. Overabundance of stout and champagne and an unwonted desire to dance naked in the fountains. I wouldn’t have stopped you had I known what a spoilsport you’d turn into.”

  “I was wondering when that incident would get mentioned.” Orlando dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Back to the case. Threlfall’s a mathematician. Not one I know well as he’s only been here a year or so. I’ll have to make subtle enquiries tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I suppose it’s escaped your memory, your brain being entirely focussed on your leg, but there is a small gathering arranged at lunchtime for among those of an applied mathematical bent.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten, I was just temporarily unable to connect the two strands.” Jonty grinned. “You’re meeting in that rather nice pub by the river for beer and Boolean algebra. Emphasis on the former because it’s more enjoyable than the latter. Squadrons of groundsmen with wheelbarrows to be dispatched to transport you all home afterwards.”

  Orlando snorted. “The groundsmen will all be far too busy trying to locate your brain cell, which appears to have fallen out when you took your tumble.” He narrowed his eyes. “You look tired and it’s getting very late. Before Nurse Hatfield comes to throw me out, I’ll take my leave. Behave yourself.”

  “I have little other choice,” Jonty beckoned his lover closer, then squeezed his hand. “You look tired, too. Get a bit of a lie-in tomorrow and don’t worry about visiting me before you go out for luncheon. Then you can tell me all the gossip. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Now who’s fussing?” Orlando gave him a fleeting peck on the cheek, then backed out of the door, leaving Jonty to face the prospect of an uncomfortable and lonely night in a bed more suited to undergraduates than college fellows of a more mature nature.

  Sunday morning

  Breakfast in bed raised Jonty’s spirits, as did the sounds of church and chapel bells ringing out throughout the city. He’d had a better night’s sleep than anticipated, the leg appeared to be in no worse a state than the day before, and the arrangements of a private nature he’d fretted about—put in place given that he wasn’t allowed to walk to the lavatory—hadn’t been quite as unpleasant as he’d expected. Orlando would have been horrified by them, which was a gratifying thought and filled his mind with images of his lover laid up with his dodgy Achilles’ tendon and having to use a bedpan.

  After breakfast, Nurse Hatfield performed a series of medical manoeuvres, the results of which appeared to please her, then left him to read one of the novels Orlando had brought.

  A little reading and a small nap later, Jonty was just turning his mind towards the prospect of lunch when the nurse popped her head around the door.

  “Dr Langer is here to see you, if you’re accepting visitors,” she said.

  The chaplain? Jonty hastily put aside a thought that his injury was more serious than anyone was telling him and that Langer was here to administer whatever the Anglican equivalent was of the last rites. “Tell him I’m at home to him at any point.”

  “It’ll break the boredom. Dr Coppersmith warned me that you would be getting fractious if not kept occupied.” With a grin the nurse slipped out and the chaplain made his entrance.

  Langer was a handsome man—when he and Peters walked along Kings Parade together, female heads turned—with a deep, sonorous voice, ideal for reading the gospel. “How’s the patient?”

  “Frustrated at being confined to barracks, but trying to keep my spirits up. I appreciate you taking time out of your busiest day of the week to make a pastoral visit.”

  “It’s my pleasure, although I confess that I always drop into the sick bay on a Sunday. I used to bring consecrated wine and bread to offer communion, although that appeared to have a detrimental effect sometimes. The students had a habit of assuming they must be at death’s door.”

  “I had a similar thought myself,” Jonty replied, sheepishly.

  “Don’t indulge in too much thinking. Not healthy when the body is confined to bed. Stick to reading.” Langer, who’d taken a seat, eyed the novels on the bedside table with an approving nod. “I suppose you’ll be feeling particularly irritated given the circumstances. The poisoning, I mean and the investigation into it.”

  “The word has got around about that?”

  “The master mentioned it at high table last evening. Explaining how Dr Coppersmith’s services had been called on again and how that should be viewed as an honour to the college. And your services had been called on, too,” Langer added hastily, “despite your being hors de combat. I wish I’d known what had happened to poor Threlfall when I saw Dr Scarrett yesterday, but we were both oblivious at that point. He sent me a note about it this morning.”

  “You are old schoolfriends, I believe?” At the chaplain’s surprised expression, Jonty continued, “You were espied by the nurse, when you were chatting to him yesterday. One can have no secrets in the courts of St. Bride’s.”

  Although the bed
rooms hid a few. Secrets that would have horrified Langer, no doubt. The clergyman took the phrase at face value. “Yes. A very close community and we all fall into the trap of gossiping.”

  “Excuse me if I’m being slightly dense—denser than normal, Dr Coppersmith might say—but how can Dr Scarrett have told you about Threlfall then? He couldn’t have known about the poisoning at that point, surely?”

  “I’ve not made myself clear, I’m afraid. To answer your first question, yes, we’ve known each other since school.”

  “That perplexes me when I hear your contrasting accents.”

  Langer grinned. “Scarrett’s family moved to England when he was a boy, you know. His accent had almost faded by the time he’d finished his schooldays but it strengthened again when he went to study at St Andrew’s.”

  “Aha. All is plain, thank you.”

  The chaplain continued his account. “Threlfall was in the same house as we were, although not in the same year. We were very friendly with his elder brother, who was a contemporary of ours. Before he died at far too young an age—consumption, that awful disease—he asked us to take Threlfall minor under our wings, to fulfil the role he’d have had otherwise. Which we did.”

  “A good thing all round. Schools can be terribly cruel places.” Jonty suppressed a shudder in recollection of his own benighted schooldays. The memories didn’t hurt him so much anymore, not since he’d met Orlando and turned both their worlds upside down, but those days could never be completely forgotten. “You’ll be dreadfully upset at what’s happened to him. As will his parents, if they’ve already lost a child.”

  “He only has a father still alive. I hear Mr Threlfall is arriving today to be at his son’s bedside. I will see him tomorrow to see what service I can offer.”

  “That’s the best any of us can do in the circumstances. That and pray.”

  “I’ll take him out for a meal, I think. Threlfall, Scarrett and I always used to eat at the Blue Boar, but now we’ve changed our allegiance to the Bishop’s Cope.” Langer smiled. “The steak and kidney pudding lives up to the reputation you and Dr Coppersmith have given it.”