Muffins and Mourning Tea (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 5)

by H. Y. Hanna

  Tanya saw me pausing on that photo. “You think Damian looks stupid, yes? Always, he wears that hat. All the time. Everywhere. He said it is his ‘lucky beanie’ but I think it is ugly and stupid—and so dirty! He never washed it.” She curled her lips back in disgust.

  I continued scrolling through the photos, noting that Tanya was right. Damian was wearing his beanie cap in every photo… and I remembered his Facebook profile photo, also with the same beanie cap.

  Then I realised that the photos on Tanya’s phone had changed. Instead of a rowdy party, the last few pictures showed a misty dawn sky, darkened figures walking along a street, and a tall structure I recognised, silhouetted against a pale sunrise. The great bell tower of Magdalen College.

  “Oh…” I said.

  Tanya’s face changed. “Those are photos from May morning,” she said, her voice going flat.

  I looked down silently at the last photo on the phone. It was obviously a selfie and showed Tanya and Charlie standing together on Magdalen Bridge, with Magdalen Tower partly in view behind them, and crowds of people milling around them. I stared hard at the picture but there was no one I could recognise in the crowd. I had had a sudden hope, of course, that I would see Pete Morrow, perhaps, lurking in a sinister fashion in the background of the picture. But it would have been too good to be true.

  “That… that is last photograph I have with Charlie,” said Tanya gruffly.

  I cleared my throat and hastily began to scroll back—then I froze.

  I stared at the photo.

  “Tanya,” I said urgently, “you said that the beanie cap was Damian’s special thing, right? You said he was always wearing it… so why is Charlie wearing it in this picture?”

  She looked at the picture in surprise, as if noticing the cap for the first time. “Oh… that. It was because Damian left it in my room after party. Maybe it fell off. He was drunk and he went back to his own room to sleep, and he forgot it. Charlie stayed with me that night and in the morning, when we were going out for May morning celebration, it was very cold. Charlie had no hat so he decided to wear beanie cap to keep his head warm. Then he can return to Damian later when we meet him on bridge.”

  “Oh my God—that’s it!” I cried, clutching her arm. “Don’t you see? That was the reason Charlie got killed! It was a case of mistaken identity!”

  Tanya stared at me in puzzlement. “Mistaken identity?”

  “Yes! Charlie was never supposed to be the victim—the killer was looking for Damian but in the crowd and in the dim light just before dawn, it was hard to see—all you can see is a sea of heads… The two boys were similar in height and build—and since Damian was well known for always wearing his ‘lucky beanie’—it was like his trademark—of course, anyone would assume that it was him when they saw the rainbow-coloured cap in the crowd. That would also explain why the murderer cried out ‘Wrong man!’—he realised after he stabbed Charlie that he had made a mistake!”

  Tanya looked even more bewildered now. “Wrong man? Who cried wrong man?”

  I didn’t bother to explain. My mind was feverishly working, fitting the pieces of the case together. Yes, it all made sense now. And that also explained the second murder: Damian hadn’t been killed because he knew something about Charlie’s murder, but because he was the original victim all along. The murderer had simply finished his job.

  But why did someone want Damian dead in the first place? Was it something that Damian had seen or heard? Some sensitive information that he knew and had been silenced for? He had been scared, I was sure of that. I remembered his nervous manner and his sudden desire to learn self-defence, and I thought back to the day I had followed him down that secluded path between the Cherwell River and Christ Church Meadow… In my mind’s eye, I played the whole scene again: Damian skulking in the ditch next to the meadow, groping around in the undergrowth… then whirling around, startled, and falling over backwards into the puddle with a splash… and then getting up, dusting off his jeans and hurrying off… his figure retreating into the distance…

  I frowned. There was something… something that had bothered me at the time and been nagging me ever since. Something I had seen? Something which hadn’t seemed right…

  I gasped out loud. I realised what it was: Damian’s jeans. As he walked away, I’d had a clear view of them and they had not been wet. And yet… if he had fallen into the puddle, they should have been soaking. So he hadn’t actually fallen into the water at the bottom of the ditch. But there had been a loud splash. I was sure of it. So what had caused that splash?

  It came to me suddenly: something had dropped into the water.

  Damian hadn’t been looking for something in the undergrowth—he had been trying to hide something that he already possessed! I remembered now the way he had held his left hand against his body—the way you would if you were clutching something. He had been wearing a short jacket that day and might have had something in an inner pocket. Something that had fallen out when he’d taken a tumble in the ditch. He had probably been hunting around for a good spot to hide it when I came across him. I remembered the way he had glanced quickly at the puddle after falling down—he must have been checking to see if any sign of the packet was visible and been relieved that it was completely covered by the water.

  With me standing there watching him, he had obviously decided that it was best to leave the packet submerged for the time being rather than call attention to it. So he had made some excuse and hurried off. In any case, if he was looking for a safe place to hide something, a puddle at the bottom of a ditch was as good a place as any.

  I have to get my hands on that packet and see what’s inside! I thought. But would it still be there, hidden in the puddle? Or would Damian have had a chance to return and move it?

  There was only one way to find out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I became aware of my name being called and came back to myself to find Tanya looking at me with a mixture of confusion and impatience. I realised I must have been standing there, lost in thought for several minutes, while she waited for me to answer her question.

  “I’m sorry, Tanya!” I glanced at my watch. It was just past seven. There would still be at least an hour of light. “I haven’t got time to explain but I’ve got to get to Christ Church Meadow and find something! It could be the answer to the whole mystery!”

  I rushed out of the kitchen door—only to collide with the Old Biddies, who had been huddled together on the other side with their ears pressed to the door.

  “Oomph!” I staggered sideways, leaning on my crutch to steady myself.

  “Gemma—what on earth—?”

  “I can’t talk now!” I gasped as I saw a bus through the tearoom windows. It was the bus for Oxford and it was pulling up at the stop on the opposite side of the street.

  Leaving the Old Biddies staring after me, I hobbled like mad out of the tearoom and across the road, getting on the bus just in time. As I settled down in a seat at the back, I thought suddenly of Devlin. I should really let him know about the latest twist: that Charlie had been killed by mistake and that Damian had probably been killed for something he knew—maybe something he had—which he had hidden. But as I groped in my pockets, I realised that I didn’t have my phone with me. Argh. I remembered now; I had taken it out to use the calculator function when I was doing the accounts and must have left it on the counter in the tearoom in my rush to leave.

  I sighed with annoyance. Never mind. There would be more than enough time to fill Devlin in on all the details later. The important thing now was to get to Christ Church Meadow and find that packet.

  The journey into town seemed interminably slow—the bus seemed to stop every ten minutes—and I was twitching with impatience by the time it finally set me down at the top of the High Street. I took the shortcut down past Merton Street to the lane which led to Dead Man’s Walk and the access to Christ Church Meadow. A sense of déjà vu swept over me. I felt like I had been hurrying th
rough this route over and over again the past few days…

  It was a quarter to eight now and the light was starting to fade. I hobbled faster, not wanting to be stuck out on the Christ Church Meadow Walk when the sun finally went down. There were no lights along the path or by the meadow or the river, and it would soon be pitch dark. In the distance, I could hear faintly the sounds of cars and the hum of the city, but here, by the meadow, it was quiet—almost eerily so. There was only the whisper of the breeze through the tall grass and the occasional low rumble from the herd of English Longhorn cattle in the distance.

  At last, I came to the turn in the path that I remembered, where the river curved around a jutting section of the bank. It was just past here, I recalled, that Damian had veered off the path and down into the ditch at the edge of the meadow. I followed in his footsteps, straining my eyes in the failing light for any sign of that large puddle… Aha! Yes, there! I saw the glimmer of water and hobbled closer, sinking to my knees by the water’s edge. I peered at the surface but could see nothing in the muddy water. Pushing my sleeve up, I reached into the puddle, making a face as the cold water swirled against my skin.

  “Ugh…” I muttered, groping around in the puddle and stirring up mud everywhere. It was deeper than it looked—there must have been a hollow in the ground, which was probably why rain had collected here and formed this stagnant pool.

  Then I felt it: the edge of a slim, smooth object. I pulled it out, water dripping off the edges as I held it up to the light. It was small, flat, and rectangular, wrapped in several layers of plastic. I stood up and, leaning against my crutch, carefully began unwrapping the packet. It had been sealed very securely with duct tape, which required quite a bit of effort to rip off, although this meant that it had also been protected from the damp. I peeled off several layers of plastic to find a brown manila envelope, still completely dry. The paper rustled as I pulled the flap open and shook the contents out.

  They were photographs, I realised. Then, as the fading light caught the gleaming contours of a bare arm, a long smooth leg, the shadowy curve of a naked breast, I felt my face flushing as I realised what kind of photographs they were. Oh, they were very artfully done in black and white, with clever lighting so as never to show too much, but nevertheless, they were not the kind of erotic nude images that you wanted plastered over the tabloid newspapers. Especially if you were the daughter of a prominent Russian billionaire.

  I stared down at Tanya Koskov’s wide grey eyes as she looked out at me from the topmost picture, wearing nothing but a black choker around her neck. And something came back to me… something I had read that day I had been stuck at home and doing “internet investigation”. Amongst the newspaper and magazine articles about Tanya’s latest designer handbag and Tanya’s possible pregnancies was one about Tanya’s nude photo scandal. Pictures of the Russian girl had appeared suddenly on the internet—and then disappeared just as mysteriously. I remembered the article because it had been recent; in fact, maybe only a month old.

  I looked down again at the photographs in my hands. Surely it was too much of a coincidence? There couldn’t be two sets of nude photos… which meant that Damian had probably been involved—maybe even responsible—for that scandal. I remembered Kate, the sweet blonde girl I had chatted with in the Haverton College J.C.R., saying: “…I think he liked to live the rich life and, you know, being around Charlie… well, I suppose he felt like he had to keep up with his friend…”—and I wondered suddenly if Damian had somehow got hold of these photos and tried to use them as blackmail fodder. After all, Tanya was wealthy and Damian would have seen her as fair game. Had he tried to get money out of her by threatening to expose these photos? Maybe he had even put one online as proof of what he was capable of—which would have explained why a photo had appeared briefly and then disappeared.

  And it would also explain something else! I thought back to that fight between Charlie and Damian: Charlie had been furious and accused Damian of “taking advantage of a vulnerable girl”. That wasn’t because Tanya had been offered a bit of marijuana, as Damian claimed—it was because Charlie had found out that his best friend was trying to blackmail his girlfriend!

  And it also gave Tanya Koskov the best reason to murder Damian, I realised. Perhaps these photos had been a youthful indiscretion in her teens—they looked like the kind of thing an aspiring model might be tempted to do if seduced by a smooth-talking photographer—and now she regretted them. Or perhaps she didn’t regret them; perhaps she was proud of them and had kept them, maybe even shared them with Charlie. What she hadn’t planned on, however, was Damian finding out about them and, even worse, getting hold of them. So by killing him, not only did she remove the threat of the photos, but also his power to blackmail her. Someone as proud as Tanya Koskov would never have submitted to blackmail. In fact, I could see her taking revenge on Damian just for daring to think that he could control her. Was this what she had meant when she said she would “make him pay”?

  But… if Tanya was the killer, why had she murdered Charlie? Surely she couldn’t have mistaken him for Damian, because she knew Charlie was wearing the beanie cap and, anyway, he was standing right next to her. I frowned. It didn’t make sense…

  I stuffed the photos back into the envelope. It didn’t matter—the important thing now was to get back, find a phone, and tell Devlin what I’d discovered. Clutching the envelope to my chest, I began to hobble back towards the lights of the city. I realised suddenly that I had a more urgent problem: to get out of Christ Church Meadow before I was locked in. Its several gated entrances were always shut at sundown. I had scaled them once when I was student and sneaked into the Meadow after dark with some friends, but it was a precarious climb over spiked metal railings and I didn’t fancy trying it again, especially with a crutch.

  I glanced worriedly at the sky: the sun was just visible on the edge of the horizon. I doubled my pace, hobbling faster. The kissing gates leading into Rose Lane at the east end of Dead Man’s Walk were the closest. Twilight was falling and it was getting so dim now that it was hard to make out the shapes around me. Trees and buildings blurred into dark forms in the distance and the path became a hazy band stretching in front of me.

  With some relief, I saw the junction up ahead where Christ Church Meadow Walk joined up with Dead Man’s Walk and merged into the path that led to the kissing gates. At this distance, I couldn’t see if they were still open… but they looked open. In fact, it looked like there was a figure standing by them. My spirits lifted. It was probably the Meadows groundsman locking up. I’d made it just in time.

  “Hey! Wait!” I called, trying to hobble faster.

  A few moments later, I arrived breathlessly at the gates and tumbled through them.

  “Oh, thank goodness! Thanks for waiting for me—I thought I was going to get locked in for the night—” I gasped.

  Then I stopped as I recognised the figure.

  “Oh! It’s you. I thought you were… What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” said Mikhail Petrovsky, whipping something out of a coat pocket and stepping close to me.

  I looked down and caught my breath as I saw the sudden, sharp gleam of a knife.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “I have been waiting for you a long time,” said Mikhail in a conversational tone. “I did not want to reveal myself by following you down to the river—it is too exposed there—but I knew you were likely to come out via this gate so it was a simple matter of waiting here. Like a spider waiting for a fly.” He laughed softly. It was not a pleasant sound.

  I stared at him, noticing that he was no longer speaking with a thick Russian accent. Oh, the accent was still there, but it was much fainter and overlaid with an “American” tone. It gave him a totally different persona—younger, smoother, less the dry, pompous Russian academic… which I realised now must have been a disguise.

  “Who are you?” I asked hoarsely.

  “You can still call me Mi
khail,” he said with a smile. “That name is as good as any.”

  “What do you want?” I demanded.

  He nodded towards the packet still clutched against my chest. “Ah… I want what you found. I suspect it is what I have been searching for—what that kozyol, Damian, tried to hide from me.”

  “Tanya’s photos? But why should you wan—?”

  Understanding dawned and I stared at him with new horror. “It was you, wasn’t it? It wasn’t Tanya—it was you who stabbed Charlie on the bridge. And it was you who strangled Damian, probably with that neckerchief you’re wearing now! That’s why you jumped to confirm that Tanya was in the J.C.R. the whole time between ten and midnight—not to give her an alibi but to give yourself one! You were pretending to protect Tanya but actually using her to protect yourself—by saying you saw her in the J.C.R., you were telling the police that you were with her during that time and therefore couldn’t have been going up to Damian’s room. But actually, that was exactly what you did, wasn’t it? As soon as Tanya left the J.C.R. at 11:40 p.m., you slipped up to Damian’s room and murdered him.”

  He gave me a mocking look. “Bravo. You have brains—more brains than the English police, it seems.”

  “And that also explains Charlie’s murder. Tanya wouldn’t have made that mistake between the two boys—but you did! Because you were in a hurry, you only saw Charlie from the back—and you knew that Damian was meeting them—so when you saw his rainbow beanie cap, you assumed that it was Damian. You stabbed him, then realised your mistake. That’s why you cried out.”