Duh. Yes, we know that. And what flows logically from that?
The body was found at Legatum.
And what questions does that raise?
How did it get here?
Yes, good place to start.
“We need to figure out how Mr. Wiffle got onto campus,” she said.
“Yes,” said Simon. “Was he killed here or murdered elsewhere and brought here?”
“Let’s think about that,” said Amanda. “Would he have come here voluntarily and not let anyone know? Or maybe he came to see the murderer but didn’t tell anyone else.”
“We can check the guard gate records to see when he came through,” said Simon.
“Of course he could have snuck in,” said Amanda. She looked over at Clive, who gulped. He’d managed to get them by the security gates. Could someone else have done so as well?
“Unlikely,” said Simon. “It’s pretty difficult. To go through all that implies that he had some nefarious motive and didn’t want anyone to know. Otherwise he’d just go through the guard gate.”
“Yes,” said Amanda. “And if he did have an ulterior motive, what was it? Who could he have been coming to see? Not his son. That wouldn’t be cause for sneaking around.”
“No,” said Simon. “Before we do anything else, let’s check with the guard.” He looked at Professor Also, who nodded. He took his phone out of his pocket and rang the gate. Amanda could hear the guard’s voice. She checked to see if she had her listening device in, but no, he must just have been a loud guy.
“Hello, uh,” said Simon. “Is that Merlin? Oh, hi. This is Simon Binkle, first-year? Yes, uh huh. Sure, I wouldn’t mind showing you what I did to my board. It’s really smooth now. Yeah, you could use it in the fells as long as the path isn’t too steep. Listen, uh, would it be possible for you to check some records for me and Headmaster Thrillkill? No, he isn’t here right now, but if you’d like to speak to Professor Also . . .” He handed the phone to the history of detectives teacher.
“Yes, Merlin, how are you?” she said. “Yes, uh huh. Yes, do please give Mr. Binkle whatever information he asks for. On my authority, yes. So glad the technology is working properly. Those voice ID devices are very handy, aren’t they? All right, I’m giving you back to Mr. Binkle.”
Simon took the phone. “Hi.” He listened for a moment. “Sure, no problem. I’m looking for information on Wink Wiffle. Can you tell me the last time he was on campus?” He waited a moment. “Really? You’re sure?” Another pause. “Sure. How about tomorrow morning? See you then.” He hung up.
“I heard that,” said Amanda.
“Yeah, my ear hurts,” said Simon. “Nice guy, though.”
“Care to enlighten us?” said Professor Stegelmeyer. His hearing must not have been so good. Amanda figured you could hear Merlin all the way at the other end of the building.
“Sorry, Professor,” said Simon. “Merlin was just interested in my skateboard designs.”
“Not that, Mr. Binkle,” said Professor Stegelmeyer.
“Sorry, sir. The, uh, the records. Yes. Well, the last time Mr. Wiffle was here was January 6th, the day of the orientation.”
So Wink Wiffle had been alive on the day of the orientation. He’d probably come with David to see him off and hadn’t been back since, at least not officially.
“We need to tell Professor Hoxby,” said Amanda, getting out her phone.
“You mean so he can establish time of death?” said Clive.
“Exactly,” said Amanda. “We know Mr. Wiffle can’t have been murdered before January 6th. That means he may have been dead for more than three months, but it might be less than that.” She punched a text onto her screen and hit Send.
“Professor Hoxby’s estimate—and Ivy’s—does fall within that time frame,” said Simon.
“So it’s possible he got onto campus by coming for the orientation,” said Amanda. “No sneaking in.”
“We could work with that theory, see what we come up with,” said Simon.
“It makes the most sense, doesn’t it?” said Amanda. “Why would he sneak onto campus?”
“And if he was killed somewhere else, why would the murderer bring him here to bury him?” said Clive. “It isn’t logical.”
“To send a message, maybe,” said Amanda.
“That’s a lot of trouble just to send a message,” said Simon.
“But not impossible,” said Amanda.
There was a knock at the door. “It’s Hoxby,” said the man on the other side.
Amanda looked at the teachers. Professor Stegelmeyer nodded. “Come in,” she said.
Professor Hoxby was so delighted to receive Simon’s news about the last day Wink Wiffle had been at the school that he turned a deeper shade of purple than usual. Amanda still had not got used to how ghoulish he was, but she had to admit that he was an excellent pathologist and kind of a nice person if you were able to overlook his weirdness.
He had taken Amanda’s text as an invitation to join the brainstorming group. Not that she’d meant it that way, but she guessed it wouldn’t hurt. She just hoped he wouldn’t talk about too many gory things. She still wasn’t used to the whole autopsy routine.
“Shame about Wiffle,” he said. “I imagine Thrillkill’s quite upset.”
“He went off to tell David,” said Amanda.
“He and Wiffle were like this,” he said, holding up two gnarled fingers.
“Really?” Amanda was surprised. She hadn’t imagined Thrillkill being close with anyone.
“Yes, they worked many cases together,” said Professor Hoxby. “He’s not going to rest until the murderer has been caught.”
“You don’t suppose it was one of Moriarty’s moles, do you?” said Simon.
“I surely do,” said Professor Hoxby. “Probably Mavis. I never trusted that woman. There was something shifty about her.”
Amanda thought it might not be such a great idea to remind the good professor that if he’d been suspicious of Mavis, he should have said something a lot earlier. If he had, her father might not have been kidnapped and Nick might be alive.
“She certainly had opportunity,” she said.
“The doctor too,” said Simon. “And the cook. And—” He looked at Amanda. She was sure he was going to say Nick but had caught himself. Unfortunately, Professor Hoxby was not so diplomatic.
“And that kid,” said the teacher. “What was his name? Ned?” The room went silent. Professor Hoxby looked around. “What? Did I say something?”
“It’s okay, Professor,” said Simon. “His name was Nick.”
“Let’s think about how we’re going to approach this now,” said Professor Also, butting into the conversation. “I think we need to search the moles’ rooms one more time.” What would that make it—four times? Five?
“I think we should also consider motive,” said Amanda relieved at the change in direction. “Why would someone kill Mr. Wiffle?”
“Revenge,” said Simon.
“Send a message,” said Professor Hoxby.
“Get him out of the way,” said Amanda.
“Steal something from him,” said Clive.
“Accident,” said Amanda.
“Punishment,” said Professor Hoxby.
“Isn’t that the same as revenge?” said Amanda.
“No,” said Simon. “Revenge involves resentment. Punishment is unemotional.”
“You think so?” said Amanda. “I thought they were pretty much the same.”
“Don’t think so,” said Simon. “Revenge leads to blood feuds. You kill someone in my family, I have to kill you. Then my relative has to kill someone in your family, then your relative kills someone in my family, and on it goes.”
“I see what you’re saying,” said Amanda. “Then punishment would be fining someone or something like that. Hey, do you think that’s what Ivy is doing to you and Amphora?”
“Yeah,” said Simon. “That’s punishment. There’s no emotion involved
. It’s just a price. It’s supposed to change our behavior. Isn’t succeeding though. I mean with me and Amphora.”
“So punishment changes behavior but revenge is emotional,” she said.
“Exactly,” said Simon.
“We’ve got a good list,” she said. “If we can put these motives together with the possible suspects, we should be able to figure out who the killer is.”
“Unless, of course, we have evidence,” said Professor Hoxby. “Then we don’t need a motive. Although it’s always better if you have one.”
“But we don’t,” said Amanda. “Have evidence, I mean.”
“I agree with Professor Also,” said Professor Stegelmeyer. “I think it’s time we tried again.
There was no way Amanda was going to return to Nick’s room. She was sure there was nothing else to be found there, but even if there had been, it was better to let someone else do it. The experience had been awful, and by the way, she still didn’t know why Nick had hidden that picture of her or the film they’d made. Not that she had any desire to think about them. In fact, up until this moment she’d completely forgotten about them.
Fortunately no one suggested that she search Nick’s room, or anyone’s. After the meeting broke up the teachers took care of that themselves, although once David Wiffle had had a chance to digest the news, which he had taken badly, they asked him to come to Mavis’s room and look around. When he did he found a ring he recognized as having belonged to his father. This discovery tied Mavis and Wink Wiffle together. How, no one yet knew. Thrillkill, who’d been Wiffle’s close friend, had had no idea they’d known each other, if in fact they had. What Mrs. Moriarty would have been doing with Wink’s ring they couldn’t say.
Now that they had managed to associate the two, they probed Mavis’s background even more carefully. Astonishingly, her arrest record was clean, at least up until recently. Her school grades were exemplary, and she’d never even gotten a traffic ticket. She’d either been lucky, amazingly careful, or a late bloomer when it came to criminal activity. Seeing that she’d been married to Blixus for more than a dozen years, the last seemed unlikely. Nor did her family and former neighbors, social media presence, or mobile phone data shed light on the situation. The woman seemed a ghost, but unfortunately she was all too real.
Amanda was dying to know what the deal was with Thrillkill and Wiffle. There was no love lost between Thrillkill and Blixus Moriarty. The same was probably true of Wink Wiffle and Blixus. Perhaps Blixus had put Mavis up to the murder. Whether it was for revenge, to get the man out of the way, send a message, or whatever, she might have done it to please her husband, or to further his business interests. Thrillkill undoubtedly knew a lot more about the whole dynamic between the Moriartys and the detectives than the kids did. Without that missing piece of the puzzle it was difficult for them to speculate much further.
What they had come up with so far was all circumstantial. There was no murder weapon, no physical evidence pointing to the perpetrator, and no concrete motive. All they had was a bunch of stymied detectives and one devastated thirteen-year-old boy.
Then Thrillkill called the group to his office. “I know what happened,” he said. “The murder weapon.”
“What was it?” said Professor Hoxby. “I’m stumped.”
“Icicle,” said Thrillkill. There was a rush of breath as the kids gasped. The teachers, on the other hand, nodded their heads.
“It was January,” said Professor Hoxby. “Icicles.”
“Yes,” said Thrillkill. “And no evidence to find. It was brilliant. Just the kind of thing Moriarty would do, although of course, it couldn’t have been him personally.”
“No,” said Professor Stegelmeyer. “It was obviously Mavis.” Amanda was glad he hadn’t said Nick.
“Because of that business at Uamh Nan Claigg-Ionn, The Cave of Skulls,” said Thrillkill. “You know, that’s the deepest cave in Scotland.”
“Sorry, sir,” said Amanda, “but what incident are you referring to?”
“It was a conflict Wink Wiffle and I had with Blixus Moriarty,” said Thrillkill. “At the cave. Blixus has had it in for us for a long time, not only because of that, of course, but that was a bit of a watershed.” A frozen watershed, it seemed. Whatever had happened, it explained Thrillkill’s obsession with icicles and his habit of carrying a hair dryer so he could melt them. “I blame myself for this, though. The incident was my fault. If I’d handled it differently, Wink would still be alive.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Professor,” said Amanda. “Moriarty is evil. He enjoys making people unhappy.”
“I appreciate your support, Miss Lester,” said Thrillkill, “but in time you will see that there’s a lot more to him than that.”
“So what probably happened,” said Professor Stegelmeyer, “is that Mavis knew the orientation was coming up and she was able to check our files and see that David Wiffle was entering the school. That meant that Wink would be coming to campus and she’d have her opportunity to kill him. The date of the orientation was known. She’d have had plenty of time to plan.”
“But could she do all that alone?” said Simon. “I can’t believe she could lift the body and wall it up like that.”
“I suspect she had help from the doctor and the cook,” said Thrillkill. “We were all gone over the Christmas holiday. They would have had a chance to prepare the compartment then.”
“Yes,” said Professor Also. “She probably anticipated Wiffle’s movements based on the orientation schedule. He’d take David to his dorm room, then go to the dining room and get a cup of tea. As he was leaving the chapel after the orientation, she’d have lured him to the back of campus. Her accomplices would have been waiting and they could have killed him there. They might even have got him to go into the gardening outbuilding so as to avoid being seen.”
“But if I may ask,” said Amanda, “how do you kill someone with an icicle?”
“It would take some planning,” said Professor Hoxby. “The best way to do it would be to immobilize him first. Maybe cosh him on the head with something—probably a large icicle so there would be no trace of the weapon. Then take a sharp one and stab him. It might take a few tries. They may have prepared the icicles ahead of time and stashed them in the outbuilding. With the temperature as cold as it was, they wouldn’t melt. Then they’d have to hide the body, but with all the activity that day, it would be easy to do that relatively unnoticed. In fact they may have left him in the building and come back later. I suspect they walled him up that night. They selected an obscure place so no one would hear or smell anything.”
“But we did,” said Amanda. “That first day. Ivy and I heard something in the bathroom outside the chapel. We always thought it was the cook messing around with the sugar, but it could have been Mavis with the body.”
“That is possible,” said Professor Hoxby. “We have no proof of any of this, of course, partly because the body was so badly damaged that I couldn’t find the icicle wounds.”
“It sounds like a plausible scenario,” said Thrillkill. “Obviously there are others. But it’s a useful working hypothesis. And it makes it all the more critical to find out what that ring was doing in Mavis’s room.”
31
Scapulus Holmes, Dreamboat
That evening Amanda got a call from her mother. Her father was not doing well at all, and she thought maybe speaking to his daughter would cheer him up and boost his immune system. But when she tried to hand the phone to her husband, Lila couldn’t get him to talk. He claimed he was meditating and couldn’t be interrupted.
Amanda didn’t take offense at his rejection. Rather, she was worried about him. He had not only failed to recover from his kidnapping, but he was acting like a whole different person. The idea of her father meditating was ludicrous. He wasn’t an emotional person. Neither of her parents was. She’d probably never know what horrors he had endured and didn’t want to. She just hoped that given time he’d work through th
e trauma and become himself again.
What was upsetting her so much that she couldn’t stop thinking about it was Holmes. She was furious with him for refusing to help with the virus. Yes, the hacking problem was important, but if the Moriartys turned the crystals into weapons, a lot of people could lose their lives. She didn’t understand how he could fail to see that. She hadn’t gotten anywhere by appealing to his sense of right and wrong, so now she would have to play dirty. Seeing how much he supposedly liked her, she would try to be his girlfriend as Simon had suggested. She wouldn’t tell Simon, though, because he’d act all judgmental. She’d keep the whole thing to herself as long as she could, not even telling Ivy.
She found Holmes in the Cyberforensics classroom as usual. He was staring at his screen with such a look of puzzlement that she almost backed out the door for fear of interrupting something important, but he must have seen her because he looked up, breaking the spell.
“How’s it going?” she said.
“Not good,” he said, picking up a pencil and fiddling with it. “I can’t find anything. I’m no further along than when I started.”
“I think you’re working too hard,” she said.
“There is no such thing as too hard when the stakes are so high,” said Holmes.
“Sometimes it helps to take a break,” said Amanda. “How about a cup of tea?”
Holmes dropped the pencil. It clattered to the floor, bounced a couple of times, and lay still near his foot. He froze for a second, then reached down to retrieve it. Amanda could hear it rattling around as he kept trying and failing to pick it up. Finally he gave up and sat back in his chair.
“A cup of tea?” he said. “You and me? Now?”
“Sure,” she said in her best flirting voice. Not that she thought she had one, but it was probably time to see if she did. “I’m buying.”
He eyed her suspiciously, then seemingly satisfied that she wasn’t putting him on, stood up and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
As they made their way to the dining room, Amanda said, “How are you?”
Amanda Lester, Detective Box Set Page 65