The Oxford Mystery by Faith Martin

Author:Faith Martin [Martin, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books mystery and crime
Published: 2019-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Inspector Golder froze for a second, and then slowly reached out to take the piece of paper from the young constable’s hand, and read the message for himself.

‘I don’t speak scientific, but it seems clear enough,’ he said at last to his intensely interested audience. ‘One of the coffee cups contained nothing but coffee, milk and sugar, and the only potentially deadly thing in it was the usual amount of caffeine. The other had . . . er . . .’ Trevor squinted at the multi-syllabic chemical formula that the constable had conscientiously written down and grunted. ‘Says in the summary that it’s something that’s available on prescription and is usually given out to people, mainly the elderly it seems, with a certain heart condition. Administered in the form of a drug called digi . . . something or other.’

Jenny nodded, without surprise. She’d been about to say that she thought one of the coffee cups must contain some kind of poison, but she didn’t think that it was politic of her to say so now. Not only would it smack of boasting — a proclivity that had never been one of her favourite pastimes — but it wouldn’t do to interrupt the inspector in full flight.

However, she did need to tell Trevor Golder something very important and cleared her throat to get his attention. When she had it, she smiled briefly, almost as if in apology. ‘When I was at breakfast, I overheard Maurice Raines say that his mother had a bad heart condition,’ she said. ‘You might find it useful to contact her GP and find out if she was prescribed the same drug.’

‘You think Mrs Raines, the wife, I mean, might be in the frame then?’ Trevor said sharply. ‘She’d probably have access to her mother-in-law’s medication all right. Providing they were on visiting and speaking terms, that is,’ he modified, after a moment’s thought. Not all in-laws got on, as he well knew.

Jenny Starling opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it.

‘It makes sense in one way,’ the inspector carried on, not noticing the cook’s hesitation and waving the still-hovering and excited constable away. ‘The spouse and immediate family are always the first suspects when it comes to killing your nearest and dearest. But in this case, we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the lady,’ he added grimly. ‘And I would imagine that most of the conference-goers here probably know their chairman’s wife by sight and, if she had been sneaking around, surely she’d have been spotted?’

‘Not necessarily, guv,’ Peter Trent pointed out. ‘Not if she picked her time. When Maurice Raines was killed, everybody was out of the way doing their own thing, remember? The conference people at lectures and whatnot, and the college staff doing their cleaning rounds and so forth.’

‘Yes, but how would she know when the time was right unless she had access to some sort of timetable, or was holed up somewhere waiting for her opportunity?’ Jenny felt compelled to point out.

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