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Overview
Dorothy Martin isn’t overly enthusiastic when her husband, retired police detective Alan Nesbitt, invites her to accompany him to a conference in Cambridge, picturing cramped student accommodation. But St Stephen’s turns out to be recently renovated, and, bolstered by en suite facilities, Dorothy is looking forward to exploring the historic and beautiful city. It is not long, though, before disaster strikes: lost in the maze of college buildings, Dorothy stumbles into a laboratory . . . and is shocked to find what looks like a pool of blood on the floor. She flees, to fetch help, but when Alan checks it out, there is nothing to be found. Was she mistaken? Or has a terrible crime been committed? Dorothy, who can never resist a puzzle, determines to find out.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780727885555 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Severn House |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2016 |
| Series: | Dorothy Martin Series , #17 |
| Edition description: | First World Publication |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Blood Will Tell
A Dorothy Martin Mystery
By Jeanne M. Dams
Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2015 Jeanne M. DamsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84751-664-0
CHAPTER 1
'But this is beautiful! Clean and modern and comfortable, and our very own bathroom!'
Alan laughed at the surprise in my voice. The only other time I'd stayed in an English university was years ago at a Dorothy L. Sayers Society convention. My first husband and I were living in England for an exchange year, and he was busy lecturing somewhere, so I went alone to Somerville College at Oxford. Somerville was Sayers's college, and I was full of romantic ideas about the City of Dreaming Spires.
Oxford turned out to be a busy, crowded city with a perpetual traffic jam. Some of the colleges were beautiful and some were ugly. Somerville was very attractive, and very much like Sayers's fictional Shrewsbury College in the book Gaudy Night. We had our meals 'in hall', and that part was all I had expected. The lectures and presentations themselves were great, and I made a number of fast friends.
The accommodations, however, were what one might charitably call basic. I had a small single room with a narrow bed and, as I recall, no closet or even wardrobe for my clothes, only a drawer or two and an exposed rod. No hangers.
But the worst part was that the bathrooms, and toilets, were down one flight of stairs. I was a lot younger, of course, but even then I usually had to get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, and padding downstairs barefoot in an unfamiliar place at three in the morning isn't my idea of fun. So I hadn't been overly enthusiastic when Alan asked if I wanted to go with him to a conference at Cambridge.
I had been wrong, and I now admitted it handsomely. 'I'm so glad you invited me along, love. This is great!'
'St Stephen's is one of the newer colleges. The earliest buildings went up in Victoria's time, but, as you see, they're all built in the Georgian style. And this block of guest accommodations was renovated quite recently – hence all the modern amenities, including en-suite facilities.'
'These rooms are only for guests, then?'
'Yes, which is why the college can host conferences year-round. I believe students used to live here, but when the new student wing was built, the college officials worked out that they could turn quite a nice profit by housing guests in and out of term. So here we are.'
I hadn't, when I agreed to come with Alan, figured out what I'd do while he was busy at the conference. It was a five-day symposium on law enforcement, concentrating on the interaction of the police with the community, and he'd been invited to speak about some of his experiences during his many years as chief constable of Belleshire. I find it hard to remember that Alan is still a Very Important Person in the world of policing, and his opinions and expertise were sought not only all over Britain but in other parts of the world as well. I was very proud of him, but I couldn't imagine that the sessions would have any particular interest for me, though I'd been courteously told I'd be welcome.
However, Cambridge is a beautiful place that I've visited far too seldom. I decided I'd spend most of my days just roaming. I could wander along the Backs (the backs of the colleges), bordering on the river Cam. Maybe I'd take a ride down the river in a punt. I'd certainly go to Evensong at King's College and at St John's. There would be plays and art exhibits and concerts at the various colleges, and I could shop to my heart's content in the wonderful outdoor market in the city centre.
The only part I hadn't looked forward to was living for several days in college rooms, and now that worry had vanished.
'OK, now we're here. Do you need to be someplace immediately?'
Alan looked at his watch. 'I should go over and register. The first session isn't for nearly an hour, but there'll be people to greet, people I haven't seen for some time – you know how these things go.'
'I do. Do you know where you're going?'
'More or less. And I can follow the crowd.'
'Then leave me your map, and I'll unpack and follow in a bit to do the "wife-of-dignitary" routine.'
He grinned and gave me a peck on the cheek, and sailed out the door.
I soon stowed our belongings conveniently in the generous drawers and wardrobe (with plenty of hangers). Picking up my purse, the college map and the keys to our room and the staircase door, I sallied forth.
I was immediately lost. Unlike the ancient colleges, built around a quadrangle, St Stephen's looks more like an American college campus, with buildings here and there, now in long rows, now at right angles, with additions jutting out oddly.
And they're all built of the same pale stone in the same Georgian style, so they all look alike.
Alan's conference was assembling, I thought, in Newton Hall. I peered at the map. It was a photocopy of a photocopy. The tiny letters identifying the buildings were blurred, and the explanatory legend not much better. I searched for NH. Was this it, here in the corner? No, surely that was HH.
On a mid-afternoon in late April, there would surely be some student around that I could ask. I looked up and saw not a living soul.
We had come in past the porters' lodge. That had to be here, right by the main entrance gate. It was in the opposite direction from where I thought all the main college buildings were, but I didn't have too many options. I trudged off, only to find a notice on the door: Back at 3.30.
It was now twenty past three. Drat! I looked again at the map and decided that really was Newton Hall, right there. So that long building with all the separate entrances to the various staircases leading to rooms – the building where we were housed – was this one here, and if I walked down this long pathway and then took a sharp left past this oddly shaped building apparently labelled PQW (surely not!) and then right again, that should get me to the conference site.
When I found what I thought was the right building, it too had several entrances. Each door had a letter incised in the stone lintel: A, B, C, and so on. I hesitated. The building that was to be our home for five days had similar markings, though ours were numbers. This couldn't be the right place; it must be a block of students' rooms.
I was looking for someone who could direct me. I would just go in and ask.
I couldn't go in. I'd forgotten that the staircase doors were locked.
This was ridiculous! I was beginning to panic, which was even more ridiculous. I was lost, not in a place far removed from civilization, not in a wild wood, or a sinister desert, but in college grounds, a college belonging to one of the oldest and most revered universities in the world, a place where the very word civilization might have been invented. There would be someone, somewhere, whom I could ask. Or, if not, I'd simply enter every building in turn until I found the right one. There weren't more than a dozen or so of them.
I turned around slowly, looking in every direction. That building was certainly the chapel. I could eliminate that one. And there were the two residence blocks. Very well, then. That building over there looked promising. I marched down a path and tried the first door I came to.
It opened. That was a start. I went in and found myself in a back hallway. No lights were on, and the only window was the small one in the door, so I couldn't see much. I edged along, feeling my way, and found another door, which opened into a well-lit passage. I could hear no voices anywhere, so apparently this wasn't the meeting place.
I could go on in hopes of finding someone to ask, or I could go back and try another building. Reluctant to face that dark, claustrophobic hallway again, I went through the passage to the door at the other end.
I saw that this was a building dedicated, at least in part, to the sciences. I had walked into a gleaming laboratory, a temple of spotless steel tables, microscopes and other equipment I didn't recognize, a bank of computers along one wall, all brilliantly lit by overhead fluorescents.
The cold, sterile atmosphere made the pool of red on the floor that much more shocking.
As my eyes took it in, and I gasped, I heard a slight noise and looked up to see the tail of a white coat disappearing through a closing door at the other end of the room.
I suddenly had no desire to speak to anyone, at least not to a person who had just left a room with a pool of blood on the floor.
Maybe it wasn't blood. There was certainly no person or animal bleeding in the room. There was, now, no one but me, and I was very much alive, as my rapid breathing and pounding pulse testified. But that faintly sweet, faintly metallic smell ...
I heard a sound as of rubber shoes on a linoleum floor. I turned and fled the room before my brain made the decision, and I charged through that dark hallway with senses heightened by fear. It must have been that fear instinct, too, that led me straight to Newton Hall and a convivial group of people just about to get themselves organized for their first lecture.
I stopped for a moment to slow my breathing and compose my face, and then walked straight across the room to Alan and touched his hand.
He turned and smiled at me, and then took a closer look. 'Excuse me a moment, won't you, Halsey?'
He led me to a corner. 'What's wrong?'
My face must not have been as composed as I'd intended. 'Alan, can you leave for a minute?'
'Yes. Let's go outside.'
When we had achieved the needed privacy, I told him. 'I walked into the wrong building – that one over there. There's a fancy lab, with a big puddle of blood on the floor. And someone left the room just as I came in, someone in what looked like a lab coat.'
'What did you do?'
'Got out of there with indecent haste and came straight to you.'
'Good. Did the person in the lab coat see you?'
'I don't know. I didn't see him, or her. Only the tail of the coat as the door closed.'
'Are you all right?'
'I am now.' I smiled at him.
'Good,' he said again. 'In that case, I can leave you for a bit. I want you to come inside. I'll introduce you to one or two people, so you can mingle while I round up a couple of friends to look into this. Which building did you say?'
I pointed. 'I went in a back door on the other side. Then it's through to a passage, and the first door you come to. It's obviously a science building; maybe someone will know a better way to get to the ground-floor lab.'
I went in as Alan had directed. I mingled. I waited for Alan to return and raise a general outcry.
The conference attendees had nearly all gone upstairs where the sessions were to be held before Alan came back with his minions. He clapped his friends on their backs as they turned to the stairs, and came over to me. 'You're quite sure it was that building?' he said in an undertone. 'It's easy to get confused around here.'
I frowned. 'Quite sure. Why? What happened?'
'Most of the rooms in that building are kept locked. We were told by a student that they are off limits to anyone except those working there, because some of the experiments going on are sensitive to interference, and some involve pathogens. We were able to see the laboratories where classes were being taught, or other work was going on, including a large one on the ground floor that I take to be the one you were talking about. There was no blood or other untoward substance on any floor we saw, nor any sign of foul play. As for someone in a white lab coat ...' He paused.
I waited.
'Every single person we saw in that building was wearing one. There was no way to tell which one you might have seen.'
CHAPTER 2I stayed with Alan for the first session, after all. Somehow I didn't want to leave his side. I don't remember a word of what the lecturer said. I was back in that lab, seeing what I had unmistakably seen.
We strolled back to our room after the lecture was over. The schedule had left time for attendees to browse the literature tables and chat before changing for dinner. We chose to spend the time mulling over the puzzle – in low tones, since the large window in our room was open wide to the spring evening and to the path just outside.
To give him credit, Alan didn't hint that I was delusional. 'I'm sure you saw a puddle of something, love. The lights in those labs would do credit to a Hollywood sound stage, and the floors are white. You couldn't possibly have mistaken a shadow for a pool of red. I'm suggesting that it could have been some quite innocent substance, and that the white-coated person you saw simply came back, mopped it up, locked up the lab and went home.'
'Some quite innocent substance. Like what?'
'Wine?'
I shook my head. 'Wine is translucent and dark red. Burgundy-coloured, in fact. This stuff was thick and the bright red of arterial blood. Anyway, what would anyone be doing with wine in a laboratory?'
'Drinking it? But I take your point. Some chemical, then, used in whatever work they're doing in there. I'm not an expert in such things, but there are people here who are. I can ask.'
'Alan, it smelled like blood!'
He frowned. 'But that would mean that it was very fresh, Dorothy. Are you quite sure about that?'
'Quite sure. I wish now I had taken a closer look, but I got scared when I heard that person coming back, or thought I heard him. I didn't want him to catch me in there.'
'That was sensible. But think, Dorothy! If that was blood, where was the wounded person or animal? Were there any further splatters or tracks to indicate something had been dragged or carried away?'
'No sign of dragging, or not that I saw. I could have missed that, I suppose, in the shock of the moment. But the puddle was smooth, with maybe two or three small splashes around the edges.'
'Hmm. I was going to posit a nosebleed, but that would create lots of splashes.'
'And no one's nose bleeds that copiously. I'm not good at estimating amounts, but that pool had to be almost a foot wide at the widest part.'
Alan gave it up. 'I'll make some enquiries tomorrow. Meanwhile, do you want to shower first, or shall I?'
On our way across the college grounds to our dinner, I asked Alan, 'Are there any Cambridge police here?'
'Of course, my dear. Several, in fact, from both Cambridgeshire and the City of Cambridge. Why?'
'I thought I'd like to meet them. Just in case,' I added hurriedly. 'Do we have assigned seats for dinner, or may we sit where we like?'
'I've no idea, but there's sherry before we sit down. I can introduce you then. But Dorothy —'
'I know. I'll be discreet. I just want them to know who I am, so if I need to talk to them about anything ...'
He grinned at me. 'You're incorrigible, you know. You can no more keep away from a puzzle than a cat from cream. Even if it turns out to be something quite ordinary.'
'I have a lot in common with cats, and with the elephant's child. But this isn't going to be anything ordinary. I saw what I saw, Alan.'
It took a visible effort, but he nobly refrained from saying, 'Yes, dear.'
I was pleased to note that there were several people I knew in the anteroom where the conferees were gathered for pre-prandial libations – senior police officers I had met when Alan headed a training course, years ago. I waved to them, but stuck close to Alan as he led me in the direction of a small group of people I didn't know at all.
'Dorothy, I'd like you to meet Superintendent Barker and DCI Smith of the Cambridge City police, and Chief Constable Andrews. My wife, Dorothy Martin.'
I'm used to some slight reaction when I'm introduced, as my last name is not the same as my husband's – he's Alan Nesbitt. Ultra-conservatives will frown slightly; liberals will smile and be a little extra-friendly. I wasn't prepared for the broad grin from Superintendent Barker.
'Oh, we've all heard of the celebrated Dorothy Martin,' she said. 'The American super-sleuth, the Miss Marple of the twenty-first century. Delighted to meet you!'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blood Will Tell by Jeanne M. Dams. Copyright © 2015 Jeanne M. Dams. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
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