Natural-born Grillers (Australian Amateur Sleuth Book 2)

by Morgana Best

  Chapter 20

  I sat at the old table in the kitchen at the boarding house, directly across from Cressida’s cleaner, Susan Woods. She was sitting with her hands wrapped around a mug full of steaming English Breakfast tea. I had a mug of coffee in front of me, and I stirred in two spoons of sugar before either of us said anything.

  “I know you’ve been a big help to Cressida,” Susan finally said. “She’s told me as much. I was glad you suggested that we have a talk.”

  “Well, I’m new to this world of madness,” I said. I didn’t add that I asked her to have coffee simply because she was my main suspect. I did not know yet whether to believe Alec Steel’s story about Colin Palmer recognizing someone the night before he was killed.

  Susan smiled as well. “It’s been insane.”

  “You’ve only been here for two murders. I’ve been through three.”

  Susan nodded. “Yes, I know. Mr. Buttons told me all about the previous one.”

  I took a sip of coffee, only to look up and see that there were tears swimming in Susan’s eyes, threatening to spill over and run down her cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I knew Martin Bosworth,” the young woman said.

  I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly at first. “What?” I asked.

  “I used to clean at the university. I was under contract, and Martin Bosworth didn’t like me.”

  “He didn’t like you?” I repeated.

  Susan wiped her eyes, leaving streaks of mascara across her cheeks. “I don’t know what it was. He never did like me. He kept accusing me of stealing things from his room.”

  I wasn’t sure I should ask my next question, but I did so anyway. “Were you?”

  “No!” Susan said, her voice rising. “Of course not.”

  “Sorry.”

  Susan nodded and bent her head forward over her tea. “Okay, well no, I didn’t, but he reported me, and the university had a meeting with me. They seemed to believe me, but then they fired me, I think just to shut him up. And well, I couldn’t get work anywhere. This is a small country town, and everyone knows everyone else’s business. I expect everyone thought I really was a thief. I was on welfare until Cressida gave me a chance. And I hadn’t been here long, and who do I see? Martin Bosworth. And you know, I don’t think he even knew who I was.”

  I had no idea what to say, so simply nodded.

  Susan dabbed at her eyes more furiously. “And then, he’s gone. Dead. Poisoned, and here I am, afraid to say anything because, well, why wouldn’t I want to poison him?”

  I gasped involuntarily, and Susan continued hastily. “No, no, I didn’t do it. I’m just saying, to the police, it’s a motive, right? I have a motive. He got me fired—he lied and got me fired—and I’ve struggled ever since. That’s why I was afraid to say anything.”

  Susan had demolished her tissues, so she took a paper napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and dabbed at her eyes again. Her eyes were already red and swollen. “You have to believe me. He was a nasty man, and lots of people didn’t like him, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, figuring I should say something, but at a loss to find the right words. I took a sip of coffee, if only to have something to do. I studied the woman across the table as she wiped her eyes and then set down the napkin. She smiled then, a sad strained smile, and I returned one, still unsure of precisely what to say. A wave of sympathy for the woman washed over me. For the first time, I was beginning to doubt that she was the murderer.

  “I suppose I should tell the police before they find out for themselves,” Susan said, and she tried to laugh, but it wasn’t really a laugh, more like a choking sound.

  I could think of no way to ask politely, so thought I might as well come straight out and ask. “Someone said they saw you gathering hemlock plants on the side of the road a few weeks ago, out on Gostywk Road.”

  “Hemlock?” Susan repeated, frowning. “I collect aniseed plants out on Gostywk Road. It grows wild there, and that road’s rarely used, so the plants growing there aren’t polluted. Who said I was collecting hemlock?”

  I didn’t want to start a town fight, so I said. “I can’t say, but Susan, why were you collecting aniseed?”

  “I drink herbal teas,” Susan said. “Aniseed, rosemary, lavender, that sort of thing. I love the taste of aniseed tea.”

  “I wonder if aniseed plants look like hemlock plants?”

  Susan shrugged. “Aniseed looks a bit like fennel. I know hemlock grows wild around these parts, but the cattle don’t touch it. Anyway, I have some aniseed plants here, drying.” She returned shortly after and showed me a plant.

  I got out my iPhone and googled aniseed. It was a spindly looking plant, with clusters of yellow flowers on the top, just like the one in front of me on the table. I googled hemlock, and saw that the plants did look similar, but the hemlock flowers were white, and the leaves were thicker than those of the aniseed plant. Okay, Susan was now off my list of suspects.

  I held my phone to show Susan, but she didn’t seem too interested.

  “So did you think I was the murderer?” she asked, looking somewhat offended.

  “Susan,” I said, “I know it wasn’t you, okay? I know it wasn’t Cressida, either. Like you said, Martin Bosworth had plenty of enemies.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said. “I’m glad you believe me. I know it looks bad, what with what Martin Bosworth did to me.”

  I sipped some coffee. “Go and see Blake Wessley. He’s a reasonable man, and a good cop. Tell him exactly what you told me, why you were afraid to tell anyone that you knew Martin Bosworth.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Sibyl.”

  I smiled and set the mug back down. “Susan, did Colin Palmer recognize you?”

  “What do you mean?” She frowned at me, her eyebrows knitting together.

  “I mean, you said Martin Bosworth didn’t even know who you were. Did Colin Palmer recognize you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “I worked as a cleaner at the university not all that long ago. I saw him the first day that the professors came to stay here. He greeted me warmly, but Martin Bosworth looked straight through me.”

  I ran one hand through my hair and sighed. “I heard that Colin Palmer recognized someone the day before he died. If it wasn’t you, then it could’ve been the killer. I mean, it makes sense that Martin Bosworth was murdered by someone who had a grudge against him, and then Colin Palmer was murdered by someone who recognized that person.”

  Susan jumped to her feet, and in doing so, knocked over her tea cup. Tea flew everywhere. I started for the kitchen sink to fetch something to wipe it up, when I saw that Susan was white and trembling.

  “Whatever’s wrong?” I asked.

  Susan clutched her stomach and bent over. “I know who the murderer is,” she said.

  A cold chill traveled over me. “Who?”

  “The gardener, David Bilderbeck.”

  “The gardener?” I repeated, thinking of the thin man who always wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled over his face, and always kept to himself.

  Susan hurried to look out the window, and then shut the door to the kitchen. “Yes,” she whispered. “Colin Palmer—oh, he was such a kindly man.” With that she broke off and cried into a fresh bunch of napkins.

  I wanted her to hurry up and tell me, but all I could do was wait for her sobs to subside.

  “The night before he died, I was in the library here, drinking hot chocolate and watching TV, when Colin Palmer came in. He often did that, to get away from the other philosophers.”

  I held my breath, waiting for her to come to the point.

  “That night, he told me about David Bilderbeck.” Susan paused, and looked at me.

  “And what did he say?” I prompted her, trying not to sound too impatient.

  “He said that David Bilderbeck was once a leading philosophy professor,” she said. “He said that Martin Bosworth got David Bilderbeck fired fr
om the university. He’d heard that David Bilderbeck left the state, and he hadn’t seen him since, not once in all the years since it happened.”

  “And David Bilderbeck is now the gardener here at the boarding house,” I said.

  “The very same.” Susan dabbed at her eyes again.

  “Are you sure?”

  Susan nodded furiously. “Oh yes, I’m sure. Poor Professor Palmer told me the night before he died. He said he was shocked to see David Bilderbeck in these parts, and that he’d changed so much. He said David had seemed angry that he had recognized him.”

  I wiped down the table, mopping up the spilled tea, and then looked up at Susan. “You have to go right now and tell the detectives or Sergeant Blake Wessley, right now.”

  Susan clutched at my arm. “What if David Bilderbeck’s outside? What if he knows we’re onto him?”

  “I can’t see how he would know, but how about we leave together? I’ll walk you to your car. If he’s there, don’t stare at him. Just act normal.”

  I must admit, I was relieved that there was no sign of David Bilderbeck when we left the house and walked to the parking area. Susan clutched my arm all the way to her car. After she drove away, I hurried back to my cottage, keeping an eye out for David Bilderbeck.

  My cockatoo greeted me as I walked through the door. “Hello, stinky!”

  I sighed and put him outside, and then sat down on my sofa and tried to clear my head. If Susan was correct and Martin Bosworth had gotten David Bilderbeck fired from the university, then David Bilderbeck had a motive. It also tied in with the fact that Colin Palmer recognized him the very day before Palmer was pushed down the stairs.

  I would have to drive to the university at once and search their records. If I could prove that David Bilderbeck was a professor there at the same time as Martin Bosworth, and that Bosworth had indeed had him fired, that would surely go a long way to clearing Cressida’s name.

  I reached for my purse, when the vision came upon me.

  I was at the Olympic Games, watching the Men’s Floor Exercise session.

  “After a slow start on the floor, this team is untouchable,” a commentator said. “Oh yes, there’s his salto with the minimum one twist.”

  I watched as various men made their way across the floor apparatus, while the commentator described their actions: double saltos, backward jumps with half turn to salto forward, backward jumps with a quarter turn and a side flip, and an Arabian double front with double twist.

  I came out of the vision, and found myself standing in the dismount position, with my arms in the air. Surely I hadn’t done any of those moves while having the vision? I looked around the room. Nothing was disturbed, and from where I was standing facing the corner, there was no room to do even one gymnastic move, let alone a series across the floor. Besides, I’d never even been able to touch my toes, let alone do the splits.

  I had no idea what the vision meant. It didn’t make sense.

  Chapter 21

  I sighed and glared at the machine’s screen as I rubbed my temples in frustration. Ten years. If the internet was just ten years older, I might have been able to go through the student and faculty records in minutes. But no. It was just my luck that these people were working before the university put their records online.

  Now I was in the basement of the university library. To make matters worse, a librarian was continually glaring at me while I scanned through microfiche records. What could I possibly do to the three hundred pound machine? Stuff it in my purse?

  It was taking me a long time to sort through the student records and staff rosters. The garish fluorescent lights flickered on and off above me, raising my irritation levels to the maximum. I turned back to the machine. If there were microfiche machines that had a search option, this old clunker wasn’t one of them.

  I let out a long sigh and checked the time. I had already been here for two whole hours. Five years down, goodness knows how many more to go. Martin Bosworth had a long teaching career and much of it was pre-internet.

  I glared at the machine. Why couldn’t the university have put these records online so I could search at a WiFi spot like normal people? At least the WiFi zones would have let me have coffee.

  Finally, I found Colin Palmer’s name on a faculty list, and right there in the same department was Martin Bosworth. Now I was getting somewhere. My mental exhaustion and coffee cravings evaporated as I wrote down the year and the list of staff.

  I shuffled my notes to find the current staff list for the Philosophy Department. As I checked the names, I was not surprised that no one I had talked to had mentioned David Bilderbeck by name. There had been a complete staff change since his time as a professor.

  I turned my attention back to the list, and squinted at the blue screen. “Yes,” I squealed, when the name of David Bilderbeck appeared.

  “Silence, please,” came a stern voice from the corner.

  I looked up to see the librarian glaring at me. I didn’t care. Now I had proof that David Bilderbeck was teaching at the university at the very same time as Martin Bosworth and Colin Palmer. As far as I knew, the detectives were unaware of this information.

  I approached the mean-looking librarian and asked how and where I could print out a microfilm.

  “In the Microform Room.”

  I was puzzled. “Isn’t this the Microform Room?”

  The librarian shot me a withering look. “This is the Microfiche Room. You need to print out microfiche and microfilm in the Microform Room. There’s a charge,” she added, “twenty cents a page.” She pointed to an old, wooden door, on which was suitably written, “Microform Room.”

  I hadn’t noticed the door before. I made my way to it, and pushed it open. A wave of musty air hit me in the face, and I immediately looked up at the ceiling for signs of mold. While I didn’t see any, the ceiling was painted a most unattractive shade of yellow, and the paint was cracked and peeling. I figured I was the first person in the room in quite some time. After all, the demand for printing out ancient records of microfiche and microfilm couldn’t be too high.

  I found a machine with the label, Self-Service Micrographic Scanner. Insert twenty cents. I doubt it had been used for ages, given the horrible grinding sounds it made. It emanated repulsive fumes that smelled of insidious chemicals. I expected it to burst into flames at any moment.

  Several dollars later, I had a wad of scanned microfiche records in my hand. Now I just needed proof of the motive. I scanned the old staff lists again to see if there was anyone still at the university who had taught back then. To my delight, there was one name: Ellen Tilley. What were the chances she would be on campus today?

  I stood and gathered my notes. At worst I would have to come back. I was regretting my complaints about Socrates being boring: boring was good. I was beginning to like boring. Boring was safe. Once I had solved these murders, I would look forward to a boring, and hopefully long, life.

  After I climbed a lengthy flight of stairs to get to the main level, I asked directions at the front desk. Professor Tilley’s office was in the old education wing.

  It took me some time to navigate the campus, but I eventually found the office. I could scarcely believe my luck; the door was open and someone was at the desk.

  Professor Tilley’s office was old and worn. Other than the computer in the middle of the desk, the setting was mid-century. Framed prints of lighthouses and English gardens lined the walls, along with cherry bookshelves filled with texts and handbooks. The desk was stacked with files and neatly stapled papers.

  A small woman was sitting there with a red pen in hand, carefully studying the report in front of her from behind thick spectacles. Professor Tilley looked to be around Martin Bosworth’s age. She wore a high-collared black blouse and a white scarf. An oversized cross covered in glass gems lay against her chest. Her white hair was cut into a short, feathered style that curled around her ears.

  Before I could knock on the door to announce my pr
esence, the elderly woman looked up and smiled in acknowledgment. “Good afternoon. May I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you.”

  “Not at all.” Professor Tilley’s voice was pleasant. She closed a stack of papers and waved a small hand toward a chair.

  “My name is Sibyl Potts. I have a few questions about a Professor David Bilderbeck.”

  The woman’s brows furrowed as she leaned back in her chair, her thin fingers interlacing as she studied me. “I am afraid there is no Professor Bilderbeck, Sibyl.”

  “Professor Bilderbeck was teaching here years ago, at the same time as Martin Bosworth and Colin Palmer, in the Philosophy Department,” I said, hoping that would jog her memory. “You see, both Professor Bosworth and Professor Palmer were found dead…”

  “I know the story, Sibyl.” Professor Tilley’s demeanor had changed abruptly. “I don’t speak to journalists,” she said, reaching out a thin finger to wag at me in warning.

  “I’m not a journalist!” I said, shaking my head for emphasis. “I found Colin Palmer’s body. They were both murdered at the boarding house, which is owned by a friend of mine, Cressida Upthorpe. I rent a cottage on the property. You see, I’m afraid that Cressida will be charged, and she’s not guilty. David Bilderbeck is the gardener who works on the grounds, and I saw that he and Martin Bosworth used to work together here at the university. Did you know David Bilderbeck?”

  Professor Tilley’s expression softened. She sighed and removed her glasses to rub the bridge of her nose. “We were acquaintances, many years ago. He and Professor Bosworth were both the top professors in their field. There was always a rivalry between them.”

  “What happened?” I was keen to know the answer. According to Cressida, David Bilderbeck had been doing odd jobs around town for years before she hired him as the gardener.

  “Some years ago, the head of their department retired. Just like everything else, they both competed for the position. Both were more than qualified, of course, but Bilderbeck was well published, whereas Bosworth was not. And they both gave it their all. Bilderbeck was liked by the faculty as well, which worked in his favor.”