Party Girls Die in Pearls

by Plum Sykes

  Ursula grabbed the duplicate volume of the Scottish Historical Review and put it into her satchel, noticing that her desk had been neatly reorganized by Alice. A large red cardboard folder containing her handwritten notes for the Cherwell article and her reporter’s notebook had been placed in the center. She opened the notebook and added her thoughts from her breakfast with Wenty:

  —If Wenty thought he heard India and Dr. Dave “shagging” (not knowing India was actually with Otto), could he have been angry enough to return to Dr. Dave’s staircase later that night and kill his girlfriend?

  Ursula tore off her new notes and left them inside the folder. Then she put her notepad in her satchel and dashed out, but not before picking up Vain Granny’s letter too—she’d read it later when she needed a break from the Scottish Covenanters.

  It was almost ten by the time she reached the library, where Ms. Brookethorpe, who was restacking shelves of ancient manuscripts, acknowledged her with a faint nod of the head. Nancy was already seated, frantically chewing the end of her pencil and sighing loudly as she pored over the master volume of the Scottish Historical Review.

  “I need help. What does this mean?” she whispered as Ursula settled herself at the next desk. Nancy pointed at a passage on page 157, which began:

  In “Doctrine, Discipline, Regiment, and Policie” the Scottish Kirk “had the applause of forraine Divines” and was “in all points agreeable unto the Word” until the crown had begun its policy of episcopal subversion.

  “It’s about the dispute,” Ursula started to say, “between the English and Scottish over Rome—”

  Before she had a chance to go on, Ursula realized the shadow of Ms. Brookethorpe was looming over them.

  “Silence in this reading room is nonnegotiable,” said the librarian grandly.

  “Sorry,” Nancy apologized.

  Ms. Brookethorpe nodded her acknowledgment and then, to Ursula’s surprise, said to her in a low voice, “Can you come into the office please? I need to . . . check something . . . on your library card.”

  Ursula followed her into the small office behind the librarian’s desk, a room that was humble in comparison to the rest of the Hawksmoor Library. A large photocopier dominated it, and rows of box files lined the shelves on the walls. In one corner was a tiny, rather grubby butler’s sink, next to which a kettle, a box of Yorkshire tea bags, and a pint of long-life UHT milk stood on the Formica countertop. Ursula started to hand over her library card, but the librarian gestured for her to put it away. She flicked the kettle on, and then stood stiffly facing Ursula, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

  “I hear you’re writing about the murder for Cherwell,” she said nervously. “You mustn’t mention me by name in your article. No one can know that I told you what I did. Dr. Erskine has a lot of . . . Well, I suppose you could say . . . he has a lot of influence over the History department in the university. I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize my work with the Bible fragments.”

  “I completely understand,” said Ursula as sympathetically as she could. “All my sources are anonymous.” (She imagined this must be how professional journalists reassured their sources.) “I’ll never mention your name, I swear.”

  Ms. Brookethorpe poured the boiling water from the kettle onto a tea bag in a mug and slowly stirred the brew as she spoke.

  “Thank you, that’s a relief. Now, I imagine you’ll be wanting to get back to those Apocalyptic Covenanters.”

  “Yes,” said Ursula. “But there’s just one thing I wanted to check first. About the night of the murder.”

  “Oh?” The librarian looked anxious.

  “Are you sure you saw Dr. Dave crossing Great Quad that night?”

  “I’ve already told you what I saw. So far the police haven’t asked to speak to me and I’m hoping it will stay that way. I don’t want to be caught up in all this.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “You really mean it when you say no one will know that I have spoken to you?”

  “I absolutely promise,” Ursula reassured her.

  “All right then. I suppose I did see someone else,” the librarian said finally.

  “Why didn’t you mention them before? When I spoke to you last night?” asked Ursula, a little annoyed.

  “It was late . . . I . . . I don’t know . . .” Ms. Brookethorpe was hesitant. “I must have forgotten. I didn’t think a couple of undergraduates skulking around college was important.”

  “Two?” asked Ursula. “Together?”

  “No, they weren’t together. I can’t be completely sure of the exact time, but about an hour after I noticed Dr. Erskine walking towards the Monks’ Cottages, someone ran across the lawn towards the JCR staircase from the direction of the Old Drawing Room.”

  If everyone was telling her the truth, thought Ursula, it must have been Otto who had run past.

  “Are you sure the person was running?”

  “Yes. I remember thinking it quite odd that he was in such a hurry at that hour. It must have been almost one a.m.”

  “He?”

  “It was definitely a man—I could see the silhouette of a tailcoat in the moonlight. I don’t know who it was, though, I’m afraid.”

  “Did he return to the Old Drawing Room?”

  “I don’t think so. The only other person I saw that night was another man coming across from the Old Drawing Room to the JCR. Another undergraduate in tails, this one with fair hair. It was around two a.m. by then.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I remember thinking how sleepy I suddenly felt and checking my watch. Bible fragments make you lose track of time, you know.”

  It seemed as though Wenty had been telling the truth. Ursula felt relieved.

  “How long do you think it was until the fair-haired boy returned to the Old Drawing Room?”

  “Neither of them returned to the Old Drawing Room,” said Ms. Brookethorpe.

  “Are you sure?” Ursula pressed her.

  “The only thing I saw after that was someone heading from the entrance of the JCR staircase towards the gate tower. It was definitely the same student.”

  She must be mistaken, Ursula told herself. Wenty had returned to his room after visiting Dr. Dave’s staircase.

  “How can you be sure?” she asked.

  “When I left and went down to the lodge, I said good night to the porter—Deddington’s boy—and left through the main entrance onto Christminster Lane. I saw someone riding away from college on a bicycle. I remember because I was amused to see him swaying from side to side along the lane. He must have been rather drunk.”

  “And you say you know for sure that it was the same person who had crossed the lawn a few minutes earlier?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m very good on hair, as you know. It was the blond one. Wentworth Wychwood.”

  * * *

  . . . though there be new out-casts betwixt Christ and Scotland, I hope that the end of it will be, that Christ and Scotland shall yet weep in one another’s arms . . .

  It was hopeless. The impact of the Scottish Reformation on the religious scene in the seventeenth century just couldn’t hold Ursula’s attention in the way that India’s murder could. She couldn’t concentrate at all, so she took out Vain Granny’s letter and read it.

  Dearest Ursula,

  I do hope you wear the Yves St. Laurent scent every day. It’s irresistible to young men—it smells of Paris. I am sure you are having a marvelous time, but please do not spend too much time in the library studying or you will turn into one of those ghastly bluestockings. Look at what’s happened to that poor woman Mrs. Thatcher. Went to Oxford, became prime minister, closed the coal mines, and is now the most hated person in the country! Do spare yourself that fate by going to as many parties as you can, flirting like mad, drinking masses of champagne, and missing at least half of your tutorials. Meeting your first few husbands while young and beautiful is imperative.

  Your most loving,

 
Grandmama Violette

  P.S. More ball gowns in attic if required.

  Grandmama! Ursula sighed. She did miss her a lot. What a character Violette was. She put the letter in her satchel and turned back to the Early Covenanters, rereading the impenetrable paragraph, but her mind drifted. It was no good. She pulled out her reporter’s notebook and jotted down more notes:

  —Either Brookethorpe is lying, or Wenty is. But why would Brookethorpe lie? Why would she make up a story about an undergraduate cycling out of college in the middle of the night? She wouldn’t. But then, why would Wentworth lie? Why would he have said he’d gone back to the Old Drawing Room when in fact he’d left Christminster?

  —Trott said, “It’s usually the husband or the boyfriend.” If Wenty is lying, is it because he was somehow involved in the murder? But if he had killed his girlfriend, would he really have cycled off out of the college straight afterwards, presumably covered in blood?

  Ursula’s analysis of her investigation was interrupted by Nancy’s manicured hand depositing a note on the open page of her book. The scrawled writing read:

  I’m freaking out. I cannot understand any of this stuff. I don’t know why they accepted me. I am not smart enough for Oxford. They’re gonna find me out soon and send me back. I’m gonna be like a return at Saks.

  By the way, you look super-duper cute today in that mini.

  Ursula scribbled a message back and handed it to her.

  Glad you approve of outfit. Let’s visit Dr. Dave later? He could help with Covenanters.

  P.S. I overheard Trott earlier. The autopsy’s happening this morning.

  Ursula saw Nancy’s eyes widening as she read the last sentence. “What are we waiting for?” she demanded, springing up from her desk. “Come on!”

  Chapter 24

  Tuesday, 1st Week: Midday

  “This is a really pretty place to be dead,” said Nancy, gazing admiringly at the classical stone facade of the Radcliffe Infirmary as they alighted from the Spree, having sped along the Woodstock Road to the hospital. Ursula had to agree that the hospital did look more like an ambassadorial residence than a medical center. Elegant stone pillars and wrought-iron gates separated it from the road, and a fountain featuring a stone figure of Triton bubbled in the center of the front lawn. The ambulances parked outside looked almost incongruous.

  “Nancy, we could get into terrible trouble,” Ursula warned her as they made their way through the main gates. “How on earth are we going to persuade them to let us inside?”

  “Hey, I’ve talked my way into Danceteria every Thursday night in New York since I was fourteen. This’ll be a breeze,” her friend replied.

  Did they Send Down students for gate-crashing autopsies? Ursula wondered. And did she really have the stomach to witness a human dissection, anyway? She started imagining all sorts of gruesome sights.

  Nancy marched boldly past the fountain and straight up the steps to the main entrance. Ursula had no choice but to follow. Inside, a matron and a junior nurse dressed in matching blue uniforms, white aprons, and stiff little white hats were sipping cups of tea at the front desk. Ursula was extremely surprised to see that they were talking with the creepy man who had been in the porter’s lodge earlier.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered to Nancy. “That’s the Daily Mail journalist again. Don’t say a thing to him, okay?”

  Nancy nodded.

  “I heard that Lady So-and-So was always going to come to a sorry end,” the younger nurse was telling him. “The mother was a drug addict . . .”

  Excited, Neil Thistleton scribbled violently on his notepad.

  Suddenly spotting the two interlopers, Matron nudged the younger nurse. She scolded her, “That’ll do, Jean.” Turning to Thistleton she said, “I’m sorry, sir, but you will have to leave now.”

  “Look, I know the autopsy’s going on in there—” replied Thistleton.

  “It’s time to go,” Matron cut him off.

  Ursula glanced around at the grim institutional interior of the hospital. The long corridor beyond the nurses’ station, painted a drab green, stretched on seemingly forever. Stretchers and wheelchairs were abandoned at intervals along it. Scruffy signs hanging from the ceiling announced, with false jollity, the name of each ward—“Primrose Ward,” “Daffodil Ward.”

  Nancy and Ursula approached the desk. Before either girl could say a thing, the matron barked, “Visiting hours don’t start till four!” She then turned back to Thistleton, saying, “We can’t have the general public wandering around the hospital. Please be on your way.”

  The journalist turned on his heel, irritated. As he did so, his beady gaze landed on Ursula.

  “You were there, this morning, at Christminster,” he said, eyeing her coldly.

  Ursula felt cornered, but managed to say, “I think you’ve made a mistake.”

  “No. I know about you. You’re the one who found her, aren’t you?”

  How on earth did he know? Ursula was staggered.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” he badgered.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied, turning her attention to Matron. “Excuse me—”

  “Visiting hours don’t start till four,” the nurse snapped again.

  “We’re not visiting a patient,” Nancy told her, leaning on the counter. “We are here to observe Dr. Rathdonelly’s autopsy today. For our . . . ahem . . . dissertations.” Nancy was a superb liar, thought Ursula to herself.

  “Oh, you’re medical students. Right, well, that’s different,” said Matron, suddenly smiling. “Go straight down to the end of the main corridor, turn left, third right. Look for the black double doors with opaque glass. There aren’t any signs to the mortuary. There are surgical overalls hanging on the pegs before you go in. Use those.”

  “Wait! You two are going to Lady India’s autopsy?!” protested Thistleton. “Why can’t I ‘observe’?”

  Matron smiled superciliously at the journalist. “Observing a dissection is a privilege limited to members of the university,” she informed him.

  “But—!”

  “Please leave now, sir.”

  “Bloody privilege,” Thistleton cursed as he finally left.

  * * *

  The girls nervously approached the morgue via a long corridor. They could soon hear the sound of Doc’s distinctive Scottish tones echoing from the other end of the passage.

  “. . . are you writing this down? I know Trott wants my report ASAP. My first conclusion, on examination of the neck injury, is that the murder weapon was most likely the missing portion of the broken champagne saucer found clutched in the victim’s hand . . .”

  The double doors to the morgue swung back and forth as a stream of visitors—technicians, nurses, and police officers—rushed in and out. The girls took green surgical overalls off the pegs outside the morgue and put them on over their clothes. To Ursula’s amazement, no one took the least bit of notice of her or Nancy as they changed. They carried on listening to Doc’s analysis while they did so.

  “. . . On inspection, I have found a small shard of glass measuring three millimeters by one millimeter lodged inside the left edge of the slash wound. Its slightly curved character leads me to believe that it is a tiny piece of the aforementioned missing portion of the broken champagne saucer found in the victim’s left hand at the scene.”

  “Killed with her own champagne saucer,” said Nancy. “That’s horrible.”

  “I know,” Ursula agreed.

  Three junior doctors in white coats strolled into the morgue, and Nancy quickly tagged along behind them, Ursula on her heels.* Once inside the room, the girls hung back close to the door, trying to be discreet.

  The morgue was glittering in its brightness. Everything was white, shiny, glaring—white tiles on the floor, white tiles on the walls, dazzling steel benches, steel sinks and taps on hoses. A set of X-rays was illuminated on a light box on the far side of the room.

  “Ugh!” Ursula gasped
suddenly.

  Close by, on a small dissection table, sat a pair of hands, just hands, nothing else attached. A technician, wearing rubber gloves, picked one hand up and gently lifted one finger, pressed it onto a pad of ink, and then pressed the same finger onto a sheet of paper, producing a print. Ursula recognized the dark red polish on the nails. The hands belonged to India.*

  Ursula’s eyes soon came to rest on the porcelain slab in the center of the room. There lay India, naked, blueish white, only she didn’t look much like India anymore. Her chest had been cut open in a Y-shape, from the side of each shoulder to her abdomen. Her organs had been placed in clear plastic tubs, arranged neatly on a metal trolley, and variously labeled “Stomach Tub,” “Liver Tub,” and so on. Her scalp and a section of her skull had been removed to retrieve her brain, which had been placed on another small table near her head. Of course, she had no hands. Had Ursula attempted to imagine a scene of such sterile horror, she couldn’t have.

  “Ee-ee-e-ew—this is terrible,” wailed Nancy into her ear.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Ursula said sadly.

  She was amazed by how crowded the room was. There was a uniformed policeman with a Dictaphone recording Doc’s every word. A medical secretary stood next to him, scribbling down the report in shorthand. Various doctors and medical students in white coats looked on, transfixed. Lab technicians dashed around cleaning large knives and saws that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a butcher’s. Nurses wandered in and out, replenishing the staff with instant coffee. In death, as in life, India attracted quite an audience.

  At the center of the scene was Doc, rubber-booted, gloved, and covered in a green operating gown and cap. In one hand he wielded an elongated pair of tweezers, in the other a steel ruler. His chomped on a cigar jammed in one corner of his mouth in the manner of a man relaxing at his club rather than dissecting another human being. Everyone listened intently as he went on, cigar in situ, saying, “For the record, please state that I am defining the wound as a ‘slash’ wound of the type typically produced by the exquisitely sharp edge of a piece of broken glass. The slash is twelve and a half centimeters long. It is longer than it is deep, and the wound is deeper on the left side of the neck than the right.”