Deadly Misconduct

by R. J. Amos

  ‘Oh yeah, sorry. Lisa, this is my friend Alicia who has moved down to this backwater for a sea-change. Alicia, this is Lisa – I’ve just met her, she’s a PhD student with Professor Conneally in Cambridge.’

  ‘Hi Lisa, nice to meet you. Here’s a fun fact: did you know that Conneally started his research life here in Tasmania?’

  ‘No, really? That’s amazing! Wow! I mean, here?! That’s so awesome! I’ll make sure I have a good look around now!’

  ‘My friend Trudy (who should be turning up soon) works in the department where he used to work, she might be able to give you some insight into his character.’

  Lisa laughed, ‘I’m sure he was a party animal! Oh boy! A young Conneally, so much fun!’

  ‘He’s a party animal now,’ agreed Robbie, ‘especially during conferences – I remember being sucked into some late nights with the Conneally group, I even remember some Karaoke when we were in Osaka. I think he spent the whole conference wearing sunglasses, he was so hungover. Good times, good times.’

  ‘That sounds so great – Karaoke can be such fun!’ Lisa let out an empty-headed giggle. I wondered what there was in her skull to enable the study of a PhD. It looked more like she was aiming for the role of Baywatch Girl more than serious scientist. Still, I wanted her to have a good time while she was here.

  ‘I hope you can find something that’s as much fun as that to do while you’re in town. I can’t speak about Karaoke bars as such, no idea if there even is one here. I always tell people that you come here for the bushwalking and the nature rather than the clubs and pubs. But maybe that’s just me.’

  ‘We saw a sign about whisky tasting, didn’t we?’ Robbie asked.

  ‘Yes, on the way down here from the hotel. Don’t worry, if there’s fun, I’ll find it.’ Lisa said, and I could well believe it.

  I had left them to it then, and gone to try to find Trudy. She had managed to get herself caught up in a crisis on the way from home to the conference and was running late, that was pretty normal for her. She made it though, just before the first session, and we had all gone in together, laughing and chatting, to hear the plenary lecture.

  But now, this Friday morning, the conference venue had a completely different atmosphere. I wondered at first, as I looked around the empty foyer, if the rest of the conference had been cancelled. Then I heard a voice coming from the lecture theatre and realised that things were going on as planned. Duh, the foyer is always empty when all the conference delegates are in the lecture theatre listening to the talk.

  Not that I wanted to join them, I sat instead on an uncomfortable plastic chair and mused about Conneally’s strange death. Despite the coffee and the breakfast, I found myself dropping off to sleep. The lack of sleep the night before, coupled with the adrenalin draining away now that the emergency was over, meant that I was almost deep into dreamland when I was jolted back into the present by the sound of applause as the session ended.

  The day after the conference dinner is usually poorly attended at any conference, and I always had sympathy for the presenter who got allocated the first presentation – the audience was either missing due to sleeping in, or hungover and not taking anything in at all. Today would have been even worse I guessed, and the numbers coming out of the lecture theatre showed me to be correct. There were only about a third of the attendees that had been present the day before.

  Trudy was there though, and I pulled myself out of my chair to go and say hello.

  ‘Small crowd today.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t hear about Professor Conneally until I turned up this morning. They gave an announcement just before the first session.’

  I really felt guilty then. I should have rung her last night. What kind of friend am I leaving her out of the loop when something this big had happened?

  ‘Oh Trudy, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think to ring you.’

  ‘That’s fine Alicia, truly. It must have been awful being there. You would have been busy just coping yourself.’ Trudy gave me a hug and we wandered back to a table.

  ‘It wasn’t great. Have many speakers cancelled today?’

  ‘Not too many gaps, no. And we’re all staying to hear the people who want to speak anyway. Why should they miss out on sharing their work? Especially if they didn’t know Professor Conneally personally. It’s tragic, but it’s just one of those things. They’re going to name a prize after him.’ We sat in the uncomfortable plastic seats, as far away from the general crowd as possible.

  ‘Yeah, I thought they might do something like that. Well, it’s definitely a conference dinner that will go down in history. I’m not sure that it’s limited to being just a tragic death, either’ I mused, half to myself.

  Trudy sat up, ‘Alicia, what are you saying?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Forget I said anything.’ I hadn’t really intended to say it out loud, and I was surprised to hear the words coming out of my mouth. But something was coalescing in my brain, an idea that wouldn’t go away.

  ‘Tell me everything, how did it happen?’

  Quietly, in murmurs, I described the scene at the restaurant the night before. And as I repeated the story, and thought about how healthy Conneally was, my suspicions crystallised. Surely there was more to this death than just a tragic health issue. There was something wrong. Just what I was supposed to do with my hunch, though, I didn’t have a clue. And as the coffee wore off, I found it harder and harder to think at all.

  The bell rang for the start of the next session and Trudy asked if I was coming back in as I failed to stifle a yawn.

  ‘No, I won’t. I think you’re doing the right thing, but I can’t face this right now. In fact, I think the thing I need to do is go home and get a bit more sleep. I’ll catch up with you soon.’

  I gave her a hug and wandered back to my car, my home, and my bed.

  I lay in bed, trying to nap, but I couldn’t sleep. It was totally unfair. I felt so tired, but as soon as I laid my head on my pillow a thousand thoughts came rushing at me. The picture of Conneally grabbing his chest and falling backwards, his weeping wife, the reactions around the rest of the table.

  It came to me that there were some strange reactions when you thought about who was sitting at that main table. For example, there was Brasindon, the other big-name professor. He had known Conneally since their undergrad days. You would have thought he’d have shown some concern, but when things happened, he looked on with an almost blank face, he was not upset at all.

  But then, the two professors weren’t the best of friends. Misaki had told me that there was history between them that went way back.

  You see, Misaki had completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, as had Brasindon and Conneally years before. And Misaki (being the super student that she is) had won a university medal. She had looked up who the previous winners were and had found out that both Professor Brasindon and Professor Conneally had won a medal in the same year. She told me that the talk around the university was that they had been in competition ever since.

  And now I came to think of it, Conneally’s talk also showed that friction.

  His lecture had been the first talk of the conference, a position of eminence. And he was an excellent choice for first speaker. He had woven applications to every day life into the text, given heaps of acknowledgement to his students and postdoc staff, and peppered the talk with interesting anecdotes about various big names at the conference. He began his talk with a photo of his group in Hobart ten years ago. He pointed out key people that were still working at the uni – not many names I recognised but that made sense – he was biochemistry after all, I was chemistry. Trudy was nodding though – Ken Jones, Joshua Hume, she was laughing at how much they’d changed.

  The next photo was an even older photo of Brasindon and Conneally from their undergraduate days. From where I was sitting I could see Professor Brasindon grimace when the photo came on the screen – it was obvious that while Co
nneally had aged gracefully, Brasindon had not. Conneally still had all his hair, and was looking pretty slim and stylish. Brasindon, on the other hand, had changed to become dumpy and bald (with that really un-stylish ring of longish grey hair around the back of his head) and, well, you know, beige. And he did not appreciate the joke at his expense.

  Professor Brasindon’s lecture after morning tea that day had been a complete change from the Conneally lecture. I had lost interest in the first five minutes, ate about fifteen mints with the accompanying competition with myself as to how quietly I could open each wrapper, thought through my life plans and wondered whether I really wanted to get back into academia if it meant sitting through any more talks like this, ran over the list of academics at the conference I wanted to talk to, tried to stop multiple yawns (unsuccessfully), and basically lost forty five minutes of my life. I decided that every conference talk I sat through in the future would be measured for boredom on a scale from Brasindon to Conneally.

  I spent a fair bit of the talk people-watching. Most of the rows were crammed full and most of us were making ourselves as small as possible so as not to impinge on the personal space of our neighbours. People were curling up in a ball so they could make notes without jutting out an elbow, or stacking bags in front of their feet and destroying their already tiny foot space. But just in front of me was someone taking up three chairs. It’s not that he was in any way overweight – it wasn’t the obese type of spread – he was just very relaxed. His arms reached out over the backs of the neighbouring chairs on each side and his legs spread wide, even his hair was taking up more space than it should – some women would kill for full bodied hair like that. I wondered if he came in early to reserve the chairs for himself, and whether his ego was as large as his hair.

  A few seats over from the guy with the abundant hair was a stressed-out post doc, trying to write a paper on his laptop unobtrusively while pretending to listen to the talk. He was glancing up at the professor or the big screen every now and then but his fingers were going all the while and his concentration was elsewhere. I didn’t blame him. When a deadline was looming, a week spent listening to others’ research was a bit much. There was no harm done there.

  Looking to the left past a few dedicated note takers, there was a professor checking his email. He was obviously not listening at all. Sitting in the lecture theatre was the level of courtesy he was willing to offer, listening would be too much to ask. He was a busy man who was at the conference to network and talk about his own research, not to listen to anything out of field. I wondered whether Prof Brasindon would do the same thing himself. He seemed like that kind of guy – full of his own importance.

  I turned my attention back to the front. Was there anything interesting being said? No, not that I could tell, and also, I’d lost the thread now, I didn’t have the background information to make sense of any of the talk anymore.

  ‘So as you can see here, the longer side-chain makes the difference and with the new set you can see the overlap here. Compared to the information on the previous table ...’ my attention drifted again.

  Just then I noticed someone creeping in through the side entrance, down the front of the auditorium near the stage. It was pretty late to be coming in, the session was nearly over. I looked at him unthinkingly for a while. If people came in during a talk they did tend to stand there rather than interrupting the talk by finding a seat, but then, they also tended to look at the speaker. This guy was scanning the audience, like he was looking for someone.

  Behind his shoulder, someone else turned up. A little blonde slip of a girl. He was pointing someone out to her – I couldn’t tell who it was from that angle. Did he have a friend at the conference? My curiosity well and truly piqued I made a mental note to look them up in the meal break and ask.

  I was just telling myself, ‘only question time to go, just a few more minutes of questions and then you can get out of here, just hold on – coffee is only moments away’ when Trudy raised her hand to ask a question. I’m not kidding. She had actually listened to the talk and digested it enough to ask something about it. I roused myself and tried to force my slack-jawed sleepy countenance into something looking intelligent and aware – Trudy was sitting right next to me and the attention of the whole room was now focussed my way. Not a good time to let what I was feeling show on my face.

  ‘This may be a stupid question, but what was the control used for the experiments on slide seven?’

  That was impressive – Trudy had managed to make her way past the formidable boredom of a bad speaker to find the fruit of the talk, or so it appeared to me. Professor Brasindon was not of the same opinion.

  ‘That’s a first year undergraduate concept, I will not bother to answer, you can ask someone at your institution later.’

  Trudy’s face turned beetroot-red. I didn’t need to feign alertness anymore. You could hear the collective gasp echo across the room. No one could believe that he had been so rude. Even if they agreed with what he said, there was no need to say it like that. The general rule, followed in polite society, was that you answered politely and then talked to your friends about how bad you thought the question was afterwards. You never said anything so insulting out loud. Even the chair of the session was taken aback.

  ‘Um, ok,’ he stuttered, ‘are there any other questions?’

  Needless to say, there were no more questions. Who would dare?

  I was anxious for Trudy, ‘Are you ok?’ I asked as we waited with the crowd to leave the room.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, I didn’t mean to be so stupid.’

  We edged our way out of the row of seats and progressed slowly, pushed along with the rest of the crowd down the steps to the exit.

  ‘You were not stupid!’ I exclaimed. ‘He didn’t explain himself well enough, he was a dreadful speaker. Anyway, anyone has the right to ask a question and be answered – he had no right to treat you so badly.’ And on and on I raved as we nudged our way out, proclaiming loudly what a horrible little man he was.

  Eventually (far too late) I noticed the horror dawning on Trudy’s face. I turned, and there, right behind me, was Professor Brasindon. His eyes met mine, he must have heard what I said, but he didn’t comment. I turned back to Trudy, grabbed her hand and forced our way through the crowd into the foyer, my face was now the one burning with embarrassment.

  Once we were safely away Trudy laughed at me.

  ‘Alicia! You pick your times.’

  ‘Well, he needed to hear it.’ I stated, much braver now that he wasn’t anywhere around. ‘I stand by what I said, he was rude. Come on Trudy, we’re going for coffee, I’ve had enough of this for now, we can come back for the afternoon session, but right now it’s a good time for a break.’

  We grabbed Robbie and Misaki as we passed through the foyer and headed to The Lemon Tree for a decent coffee and debrief.

  They all agreed with me on the way to the café. Brasindon (we didn’t think he was worthy of the appellation of ‘professor’ any more) was the rudest man we had met. And the worst speaker. We had no idea what he was trying to say in his talk. Misaki even proposed that he didn’t understand the work himself and was trying to hide his incompetence. And we all agreed that he must have felt like he was being shoved into Conneally’s shadow.

  As I lay in my bed the day after the dinner, the afternoon sunshine pouring through the window, the whole situation became clear. Brasindon worked in a Biochemistry Department in a university – he could have made some poison that would have killed Conneally. Brasindon hated the man – that much was clear. And Brasindon was sitting at the same table – he could have easily dropped something into Conneally’s plate.

  Maybe that’s why I felt like something was so wrong. Maybe it was just possible that Conneally was poisoned. That his death wasn’t a natural thing that happened because of a blood clot or whatever. Maybe Brasindon, spurred on by the laughter in the lecture, decided now was the time, and that Conneally had to die.


  I needed to talk to Nate.

  ‘It has to be Brasindon.’

  ‘Who? What? The love of your life?’ Jan had answered the door to my fierce banging and answered my statement with a cheeky smile, but I was not going to be dissuaded.

  ‘No, the murderer.’

  ‘Alicia, come in, sit down, and tell me what you’re on about. Would you like a drink? Can I get you anything to eat?’

  I did as I was told. And once I was safely ensconced in Jan’s comfortable red leather recliner and she had brought us both some sparkling water, she asked again what was going on.

  ‘So is this the death of Professor Conneally that you’re thinking about?’

  ‘Brasindon did it, I’m sure.’

  ‘That, Honey, is a major conclusion jump. Let’s start at the beginning. Why do you think it’s murder, again?’

  ‘Right, well, everyone thinks it’s a heart attack, right? What do you need to have a heart attack?’

  ‘I guess most of the time you’ve eaten fatty foods, not exercised, and you get blocked arteries.’

  ‘Exactly. But he had talked about how much he had exercised and how healthy he was.’

  ‘He could have been boasting. Lots of people make stuff up like that.’

  ‘Ye... es,’ I considered that for about two seconds, ‘but Trudy said that he looked much more healthy than he had before. No I think he was really healthy. So why did his heart stop? And why so suddenly? He must have been poisoned.’

  ‘Hun that’s still a bit of a jump.’

  ‘Why else would he die so suddenly? I wish I could get my hands on some evidence – do some scientific tests or see a scan or something. But I’m sure he was poisoned. The more I think about it the more sure I am.’

  Jan was silent, so I took her silence for consent and continued to think out loud.

  ‘So which poison do we think? If it were cyanide, his lips would be blue, arsenic would have given him stomach cramps, vomiting and other symptoms you don’t want me to mention. Potassium chloride would have stopped the heart, but it would have to be given intravenously – a little difficult in the restaurant situation. Maybe a pesticide? Some sort of nerve agent? It’s not something common, that’s for sure.’