Page 125 of Disturbing the Dead
“Good call.”
“Hugh is now speaking to his superiors. But, of course, that does not solve the murder of Sir Alastair. I am hoping that whatever you have to tell us will help with that.”
Isla and I tell Gray what we learned. As we explain, his brow furrows.
“And what does all that mean?” he says.
“I’m still working it out,” I say. “We presume that whoever killed Sir Alastair took the remains and tried to sell them as mummia. But that’s only a theory. Could someone else have found and taken the mummified remains, realizing their worth? Could it be sheer coincidence that someone reached out to the White Lady looking to buy mummia the day after Sir Alastair died? According to Emmett King, someone also reached out to Sir Alastair, but the penmanship and style were entirely different. For now, I can only suggest that we leave a letter at the cemetery along with police to apprehend anyone who comes for it.”
“All right then,” Gray says, his expression troubled. “I suppose that is indeed all we can do. Let me speak to Hugh. Do you wish to stay for that?”
I shake my head. “Isla and I should head back to the town house and think this through.”
“I will join you shortly. Please tell Mrs. Wallace that I may not arrive in time for supper.”
Gray doesn’t make it back in time for dinner. He does make it for dessert, though, and I’ll let him pretend that is accidental. It might even be accidental, given how distracted he is when he arrives. He settles in with Isla and me—McCreadie being busy at the police office—and proceeds to eat his lemon cake without a word to either of us.
“Hungry, I see,” Isla says. “Would you like another piece?”
Gray blinks up at us. “Hmm?”
He’s not hungry. He’s just so wrapped up in his thoughts that he’s eating on autopilot. Or maybe he’s ingesting sugar to fortify himself for what is to come, because after a half-dozen bites, he says, “I fear I have a new suspect, and I do not like it. I do not like it at all.”
“Florence King,” I say softly.
His eyes meet mine. “Yes.”
“Isla and I came to the same very uncomfortable conclusion. Florence knew what mummia was used for, and she is a woman with the medical knowledge to pen that letter.”
“Mrs. King seems guilty of trying to sell the remains,” Isla says. “And we hope that is all she’s guilty of. We cannot find a strong motive for her to murder Sir Alastair. I know Lord Muir accused her of doing it to stop Sir Alastair’s campaign against the female students, but as Mrs. King herself said, that is only stopping one person of many who oppose them. She would need a stronger motive.”
Gray wipes his mouth with his napkin, the move slow and deliberate.
“And you have one,” I say. “Damn, what did I miss?”
“A piece of evidence I had access to and you did not. One that has been troubling me since I first deciphered it.”
“The study notes? The ones her husband… Wait, the penmanship suggested it was written by a woman. I completely forgot that.”
“Because her husband took the blame for both the note and the key. Also, you did not see the deciphered notes, and even if you did, the significance might not be clear to someone who was not a medical student. As I said, it was a list of questions, the sort one might use for self-study.”
“Right. I used to do that. I’d write questions on one side of index cards and answers on the other so I could test myself. If Mr. King wanted something to practice his cipher with, he might use whatever was at hand, and that could be a list of self-study questions. As for why he’d hide it under his mattress—” I stop. “Shit. Was it only questions? No answers?”
“Only questions.”
“The sort one might expect on an exam?”
“Yes,” Gray says.
“A list of medical-exam questions, written in a cipher, hidden under the mattress along with a key to Sir Alastair’s office. Sir Alastair, who is a professor at the medical college. Wait. No. Mrs. King isn’t taking medical classes yet. She only did the matriculation exams last month with the others.”
I turn to Isla, who seems puzzled. “That list of questions could have been stolen from Sir Alastair’s office. The last thing we’d want is to discover that one of the Seven was cheating.”
“What about Mrs. King’s husband? He’s a year ahead of her, is he not?”
“He is,” Gray says, “and he is an inferior student. My fear is not that Mrs. King stole the questions to cheat on her own exams.”
“She stole them to help her husband.”
