Death at the Alma Mater (27 page)

St. Just nodded. “For show. That speaks of a willingness to use people in rather a cold-blooded manner, does it not? Where is the victimhood in that? I think people tended to misread Lexy, on several levels. As I say, we were told by many that she brought Mr. Valentiano along to show Sir James she no longer cared. Now, just allow the possibility that she truly did no longer care.”

“I don’t follow,” said Hermione.

“It’s a subtle but important difference,” said St. Just. “If she really had lost all interest in James, if she’d given up the struggle to captivate him, it means we’ve been reading the situation wrong from the beginning. For all we know, she may have grown to actively dislike or even hate him.”

James’ eyes sought out his wife’s, beseechingly. She, this time, averted her gaze. Her face held a crushed, closed-in expression, as if it were all quite more than she could bear. Maybe, like Lexy, she wasn’t so much in love with him any more. Maybe she knew St. Just was right.

Besides, having a murderer in the family was going to be frightfully difficult to explain away, even despite the already low standards of the Bassett family. Hermione was right—they were all barking.

“Really,” said Sir James. Making an effort, he seemed to be recovering some of his aplomb, thought St. Just, perhaps thinking he was in trouble, but not trouble so deep a good barrister with a shovel couldn’t fix things. “It would make an entertaining case. If only you had witnesses. But we just saw your witness being carried out, didn’t we?”

Another little slip. Good. “First, what makes you think Saffron was a witness? But let’s talk about her now, shall we? Let me tell all of you what I think happened. Then you tell me if you agree. How’s that?”

Hermione, who had not taken her eyes off St. Just, nodded as if mesmerized.

“Saffron, it so happens, kept a diary, and on the night of the murder, having an almost unobstructed view from her room, she saw three people near the boathouse. Sir James, Geraldo, and Augie Cramb. She did a little ‘private investigating,’ and talked to all three of you. But only one of you was terrified enough at having been seen as to react as you did, Sir James. I think you misread her motives: You thought she was trying on a spot of blackmail.

“You went to see Saffron,” continued St. Just, “and you brought chocolates with you. Chocolates that had been poisoned with an overdose of Lexy’s tablets—the tablets you stole from her and later diluted for injection. I think you knew Lexy’s reliance on drugs—it was probably getting to be an open secret—and you wanted to keep her unbalanced this weekend, even send her into a downward spiral if you could. Take advantage of her vulnerability. We found traces of the needle marks in the remaining chocolates where you injected them, undoubtedly using one of the needles India required for her insulin.

“Now, the Master and Bursar and so on would not expect Saffron to open the door when she’d sported her oak—they would respect the tradition and not dream of knocking. The other visitors of this weekend were strangers to her. Only the police, or Seb, or the stepfather or mother of her beloved Seb, would she be willing to speak with. But it wasn’t Lady Bassett or Seb who had been seen talking with the fake Lexy. It was you. India had a real alibi for the whole time. So, as it happens, did Seb.”

“Oh, come on, Inspector. You’ll have to do better than this,” Sir James said, his eyes now cold with dislike.

“All right, I will,” said St. Just, smiling. “Would you get Saffron Sellers on your mobile, Sergeant?” he asked, his voice suddenly loud, filling the room.

The group exchanged glances, mystified. Had they heard him correctly? Sir James made a strange whickering sound, like a horse smelling smoke in its stables.

“But she’s dead,” said Hermione Jax, in a shocked voice. “We saw them … taking her … away.” Already outraged at the indecency of a criminal investigation taking place within the hallowed grounds of St. Mike’s, perhaps she believed St. Just quite capable of holding a séance in the SCR.

“You saw something that looked like a woman’s body being stretchered out,” said St. Just. “My Sergeant, happily, was able to find us an alibi doll of our own, in one of the more risqué Cambridge shops this afternoon. Saffron, I am happy to tell you, is fine and is expected to make a full recovery. So fine, she was able to tell the police about the chocolates given her by Sir James, about what she saw … about everything she knew, in fact. The real Saffron, who was found by the bedder in good time to save her—and who was in any case on a slimming regime, so she tells us, and so ate only a few of the chocolates—was taken to hospital from a side entrance to the college earlier today while I kept the members of the media entertained in the main entrance hall.”

Sir James looked wildly round, as if the answer to his dilemma might be found hiding behind the sofa cushions or in the overhead chandelier. Finally, his eyes came to rest on St. Just’s face.

Sergeant Fear permitted himself a triumphant twang! of the elastic against his notebook. Got him!

It was difficult to say later exactly what happened next, but the slight sound seemed to galvanize Sir James. The mask of benign but exasperated tolerance vanished, and in its place his face held an expression of the purest malice, like one of the gargoyles overlooking the Fellows’ Garden. He made a move towards the exit.

Sergeant Fear stood and in one smooth unbroken movement threw aside his notebook and dove for the other man’s ankles. There followed a loudly chaotic scuffle involving what looked to be several sets of arms and legs, one set clad in the finest Savile Row had on offer, the other in dark blue from Marks and Sparks. A blue-clad arm swung wildly and a fist connected sharply, followed by an anguished shout, just as the kerfuffle of limbs was increased by four. This was St. Just adding his elongated bulk to the skirmish. A moment later found Sir James contained in a chokehold, still struggling but, against the two policemen, starting to give up the fight.

EPILOGUE

“All this over a
book?” asked Portia.

“I think that’s the part that pushed him over the edge,” replied St. Just. “I’ve had recent experience of writers and their egos, as have you. His book, all his hard work—the fruit of his genius, as I’m sure he thought of it—was finally being acknowledged, and this cursed woman he’d dumped years before refused to relinquish the rights. If it had been—I don’t know, a piece of furniture or something, silverware or a painting, it might have been different. But his book—a book which is suddenly in huge demand, with movie rights being fought over by the studios. It was his birthday present to her once, he’s finally admitted, and he thought the book was essentially worthless—worth a few thousand, at best. He’d actually, he says, forgotten all about it.”

“Until it—and its author—became famous.”

“Exactly.”

“Thank God, Saffron is all right. Couldn’t you have told me, though?”

“I’m sorry, darling.” He reached across the table to pour her a conciliatory glass of wine. They were in her rooms in college, eating another of the gourmet meals she’d managed to prepare in incremental stages, taking advantage of outbursts of quiet in the chaotic student kitchen and combining them with the use of her own tiny kitchen. She had called into service three hot plates, borrowed various implements from the college chef, and raced several times up and down the hall to the communal microwave. At one point she had returned to her rooms wailing, “That blasted cat nearly got away with my scallops!” before vanishing once again into her kitchen.

Now she surveyed with satisfaction the result of her labors. They would start with the rescued roasted scallops served with a vermouth sauce, moving on to slow-roasted lamb flavored with rosemary, fried zucchini, and scallion potato puree. To finish, a Tarte Tatin. She thought of it as her Inspector Nankervis Special.

“Sorry,” he repeated. “The murderer had to feel absolutely safe; cocky gets them every time.”

Portia gave him a mocking smile. “Don’t I know it?”

“It stood to reason that whoever stole Lexy’s tablets also tried to silence Saffron with an overdose of those same tablets. The idea being to stress Lexy out and leave her strung out, without her usual defenses. Maybe hoping to wear her down to where she’d sign back the rights to his book, so he could avoid having to commit the murder he’d already planned—just in case.”

“She did seem to be unraveling a bit as the weekend wore on.”

St. Just nodded. “He may also have intended the tablets as a backup—in case he couldn’t get her alone, he’d try an overdose made to look like accident or suicide. But in any event the tactic of stressing her out didn’t work; it may even have backfired, making her more stubborn and difficult to deal with.”

“Saffron told you what she’d seen,” said Portia. “What exactly was it she’d seen?”

“She saw three people walk to the boathouse that night. She knew one of them was the killer. She just didn’t know which one.”

“What was she after? Was it a spot of blackmail?”

“No, I really don’t think that’s in Saffron’s makeup. The realization she held the key to a real-life crime was what sent all common sense flying out the window. She wanted to investigate on her own and come to the police with a fait accompli. Does this sound like anyone you know?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Portia.

“Really. Anyway, both Augie and Geraldo now admit she approached them. They didn’t want to say anything because they’d not told the police they’d been near the boathouse, and Saffron’s evidence would, they knew, make them look guilty. They just couldn’t decide whether to own up to what was actually just a little walkabout for fresh air, or to stay quiet. Maybe they’d both have paid for her silence if asked; we’ll never know. We’ve found Seb, by the way. Rather, he turned himself in when he saw the reports and the camera footage on the telly—he thought he’d had a hand in driving Saffron to suicide. He had no idea it was a murder attempt by Sir James, trying to silence her. If the bedder hadn’t come by when she did, if Saffron had taken even a slightly larger dose, he’d have succeeded. That is what’s frightening to contemplate.”

“It was awfully handy, having all those television crews out there, just as her ‘body’ was being carried out.”

“Hmm.” He took a sip of his wine. “Reporters got wind of the story somehow. Gosh, I wonder who tipped them off? Surely not Gwenn Pengelly? Anyway, the news footage drove Sebastian to make a clean breast of things—he’d already admitted he was running a private distillery, and making a tidy sum from supplying undergraduate parties. He also broke into Lexy’s room, by the way: He hadn’t realized the weekend visitors would be given those rooms, and some of his equipment was stashed in there. He had to retrieve it. He was so shaken he probably thought he’d had something to do with Lexy’s death as well, but we soon convinced him otherwise.

“It’s a shame, really. Seb was not so much a bad kid as a foolish one. His mother’s gone into overdrive to get the authorities to overlook the whole episode—it may be the first real attention she’s shown him in years. We shall see …”

“I’ve been thinking of what you said,” said Portia. “We all got it so wrong, didn’t we? We saw exactly what we saw, but our interpretation was off. For example, I told you Lexy’s eyes kept following Sir James. Absolutely true. But quite possibly she was trying to recall what she had ever seen in him in the first place.”

St. Just nodded, smiling. “I really choose to believe Lexy, for all her silliness and wiles, would have changed, given time. Finally prying herself away from Sir James was a sign she was headed in the right direction. If only someone had realized her unhappiness, not to mention her addiction, and gotten her some real help. Geraldo was useless for that role, but if she’d lived, who knows? She might have met someone who didn’t view her only as an attractive, rich, advantageous match, however temporary.”

“Sir James—he took an awful chance.”

“Not really. He planned things to the minute, and I think we’ll find he did a bit of research on establishing time of death.” He paused, thinking of Malenfant’s grisly little lecture from France—breaking away from his game of boules or his café lounging or his mistress—on the temperature of the brain and how the eyes of a dead person are the first to “go.” He had rattled off something about Rouleaux or boxcar formation in the eyes, as well as a mention of potassium levels.

“Suffice it to say,” St. Just said aloud, “time of death cannot be determined precisely to the minute, although I daresay scientists are working on that. Sir James could easily have gotten away with pretending she was alive when she had in fact been dead about twenty minutes.”

Outside, although well after nine-thirty, dusk was just showing at the edges of the day. It would be Lighting Up soon—a phrase he’d never hear again without thinking of Lexy Laurant, the woman who could light up a room. A shadow emerged from the trees just then, resolving into the forms of India and Geraldo. She was leaning against the wide trunk of an old shade tree, head flung back in accepted romantic heroine fashion, as Geraldo leaned in close, murmuring something—no doubt sweet nothings—his arms pinning her in place. She didn’t seem to mind.

As if reading his thoughts, a talent Portia seemed to have developed rather quickly in their relationship, she said, “I wonder how India’s going to cope? Stiff upper lip and all that, but that can carry one only so far. The scandal is what’s going to kill someone like her.”

He turned from the window and smiled, lifting his glass in a toast.

“Oh, I daresay she’ll get over it.”

–––

It was late afternoon on a cold Spring day—freezing cold, the sun a silver-white disc against a sky nearly stripped of clouds by a steady wind. The river was choppy enough for there to have been discussion of postponing the race, but in the end it was decided to carry on regardless. Crowds, the largest on record, lined the Thames for the University Boat Race from Putney to Mortlake.

Sebastian Burrows was in the Blue Boat. What he couldn’t get over, what he couldn’t quite believe himself, was that not only was he in the Blue Boat, he was the stroke. All the months of training had finally led to this. All the early-morning practices, where he had often passed couples in dinner jackets and long dresses just coming home from a night of partying. All the weekends spent freezing on the Fens, enduring the bleak monotony of training on the River Great Ouse. All the punishing sessions on the erg. Before the race was over, he knew his lungs would be searing, his brain scrambling for oxygen, his legs surging with lactate. It wasn’t uncommon for rowers to pass out at the end of a race.

Augie Cramb, he knew, would be waiting on the bridge to see Cambridge “beat the bejesus out of Oxford,” as Augie put it. Augie had probably been standing on the bridge all day to keep his place. His mother said she couldn’t make it. But never mind that. That much Sebastian was used to.

He knew he was lucky. Far, far luckier than he deserved, and he was smart enough to be thankful. They hadn’t sent him down, for one thing. That Inspector had fixed it, but only, he’d said, because Seb had turned himself in. Because he’d come back for Saffron’s sake. The whole scheme with the alcohol he’d now put firmly in his past. The Inspector said it would stay that way if Seb kept out of trouble—otherwise St. Just would come down on him like the hounds of hell. Seb believed him. That expression about the iron hand in the velvet glove: That, he thought, was St. Just.

They were getting ready to start the race. The Light Blues were heavier than their rivals this year. The heavier boat was thought to have an edge, but that wasn’t a given. They were good this year, thought Sebastian. Really, really good. They could do this. Barring an accident, barring a clash. If the wind would cooperate. He flexed his arms, resettled his hands on the oar. He stole a sideways look at Oxford. God, but those guys were tall. Then, remembering what the coach had said about positive thinking: Wimps! he telegraphed. Wankers!

The noise was deafening, the excited crowd already screaming in anticipation. Television helicopters roared overhead. A flotilla of assorted support vessels bobbed about, ready to add to the cacophony. All his senses were on high alert as he waited, trying to focus on nothing but the first stroke.

He looked at Saffron, sitting behind the cox-box. She looked back calmly, adjusting her microphone, waiting for the signal. Suddenly the wind pushed the boat about and her hand shot up to warn the umpire they weren’t ready. The boat straightened, she lowered her hand.

Into the microphone she said, “Okay, we’re straight. Oxford’s hand is up … Now his hand is down. Boys, we’re ready.”

She gave Seb a slow wink. She’d broken off with him in Michaelmas Term and he’d spent most of Lent Term trying to win her back. She had changed, or perhaps he had, but the events surrounding the murder of Lexy Laurant seemed to have fundamentally altered Saffron. She was less girl, more woman now. And to possess her seemed to Sebastian the only thing in life worth achieving.

Sometimes, as just now, he thought maybe he was still in with a chance, but then he’d see her walking down Jesus Lane or King’s Parade with some tall, handsome bloke or other. She was suddenly very popular, was Saffy. It was driving him crazy.

Don’t think about that now.

He took a deep breath.

Concentrate on the first stroke.

He heard the umpire shout, “ATTENTION … GO!”

And they were off.

The End