Chapter 7: An Academic Death - Part 2

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The flashlight beams wobbled back towards the man slumped against the back wall. The water level had to be lower than usual as the don was lying on a strip of caked mud between the lake and the wall, his legs half-submerged in the water.

Ike rushed towards him and pressed her fingers into the clammy flesh of his wrists. The pulse was there, yet it was weak and erratic. She sat back on her haunches and whipped out her smartphone. "What's the local emergency number?"

"110. But phones don't work so well down here."

Unfortunately, the guide was right. The girl gave the impression she would keel over into the water any minute, her eyes huge in a blotchy face. The last thing Jessica needed was another dead weight on her hands.

"Do me a favour. Run outside and call an ambulance. I'll stay with the professor. Or no, hang on. Before you go, give me your Mackintosh, I'll try to shift his legs and cover him up."

The girl, shaken out of her trance by Ike's words, shrugged out of her anorak. With one arm still in the sleeve, she stopped. "Should we move him at all? If he's unconscious, he might suffocate?"

"I only want to turn him around and wrap him up to keep him warm. I'm not sure what his problem is, so I'd rather not move him."

As the guide splashed back to the entrance, Ike heaved the don's legs from the water onto the strip of mud and tucked the Mackintosh tightly around the man. His pinched face had taken on a ghastly pallor, blue shadows pooling over his closed eyes. She had never once asked for his name, and Hucks had not given it. The only thing she remembered was him being more reasonable than the rest of that abject lot.

"Can you hear me? You're safe. Help is coming. Please bear with me."

What a meaningless string of words, Ike scolded herself. But it was all her numb brain could throw out and perhaps the sound of a human voice would help, no matter what the message might be. Had the man heard their approach, unable to speak, capable only feeble whimpers that nobody heard? The sheer thought of it revived the spiders, who tickled her back in a rush as chilling as the mud she was kneeling on.

The snorting had become more pronounced, and she didn't like it one bit. The anorak was just window dressing, and she knew it. Once more she reached for her smartphone, clammy hands slipping across the display. First aid techniques were at her fingertips—if only she had a reception. But she didn't. The little icon kept circling and circling, leaving her alone and cut off from the world.

For a moment, Ike considered dragging the don onto the anorak and covering him in her blazer to keep him warmer. A move might harm him, but the ground truly was too chilly to lie on. She removed the garment, then hesitated. A man's life was at stake and she was supremely unqualified to help him. Compared to what she was facing here, her earlier disasters had been a fun-ride. She was ready to replace the Mackintosh when she spotted a white rectangle tucked into the side of the professor's tweed coat, now soiled and muddied.

It could have fallen from an inside pocket. But the way the card was peeping from the lapel convinced her it might have been placed deliberately, as if the professor had left a message for them.

She pinched the corner of the rectangle between thumb and index finger and carefully worked it free of the coat.

The card was blank, apart from two words.

"For Mary!"

The strange plea was written in a flowing blue script, thickening and blurred at the end of the first word as if a quill had stuttered and spilled the ink.

A quill? Not written by the professor then.

She was still staring at the odd little message when voices ripped apart the silence, accompanied by a heavy clanging and clashing. Finally, the promised help was becoming a reality.

Hastily, she placed the card back in its place, threw the anorak over the professor's chest and once more felt for his pulse. Still fluttery, still there.

As Ike listened to the sounds of many feet splashing towards her, hope dawned in the darkness. Perhaps, her guest might survive the trip after all.

"Hullo?" A male voice hollered from the central passage.

"Over here," Ike yelled back. "Don't come in through the side arch. The tracks might be evidence."

Now, why had she said something so idiotic? Evidence for what? In any case, a burly paramedic with a medical kit splashed up to her. More were hovering in the main passage, hopefully bearing stretchers and the other paraphernalia needed to save a life.

"Oh Verflucht," the paramedic said and waved at his colleagues to join him. "You go now, we take over, ja?"

Relieved of her duties, Jessica was glad to fade into the background and make her way back to the entrance. She figured it would take her a long time before she could face another rubber boot, let alone wear one.

Outside, a thin haze blanketed the skies as if the fog from the castle had found its way here. Jessica ran up the steps leading to the reservoir, then stopped to draw in a deep breath of air that was mercifully fresh, smelling of grass and soil, tainted only by the reek coming from the overflowing rubbish bin at her side. An ambulance was parked crossways on the gravel as if it had skidded to a halt. Otherwise, she seemed to be alone, even the guide had vanished. Instead, she spotted a blue and white police cruiser that rolled towards the ambulance and stopped behind it.

The sounds of Big Ben came from her pocket, followed by a series of pings. Her smartphone had reconnected with the world and she could not resist a quick peep at the messages.

One was from Brigitte, who had dutifully informed His Lordship about the status quo. Two from the lord and master himself, his level voice belying the urgency behind the words.

Fair enough, if she were grounded with an arthritic foot, or whatever it was the bloke was suffering from, she too would want to know what was going on. Expecting the ambulance crew to return any minute, she turned towards the park, her fingers ready to make the call, when heavy footsteps thumped towards her.

"Entschuldigung? Are you Mrs Wordsworth?" An overweight man in jeans, a pullover and a leather jacket had plonked himself straight in her path and thrust his ham-like fist towards her. "Kommissar Stoffelhaut, pleased to meet you." She shook his hand and regretted it at once as her fingers got squeezed by a vise.

Surreptitiously, she tried to shake out her bruised hand. "Kommissar? You're police right?"

"Correct. My colleague is down in the reservoir checking what's going on. I thought I had better have a chat with you, given that you saw everything. Is that correct?"

"Uh, no. Not really. I mean, I found the poor bloke together with our guide, but otherwise, I have no clue how he came to be where he was."

Amazing really, that the police were already on site. Unless this was standard procedure when one called an ambulance in Germany, but she doubted that. "I didn't expect the cops to show up."

Stoffelhaut regarded her with an unreadable expression on his unshaven jowls. "A member of your group rang us. Said one of his colleagues was missing and you weren't doing anything about it."

"What?" Indignation so hot it could have boiled the water back in the reservoir flushed her cheeks.

"No need to get upset. With adults, we normally wait a bit. I was in the area anyway and got curious when I spotted the ambulance racing into the park."

The Kommissar tapped his nose and grinned. "Logical conclusion: There's a connection to the mis per case. Ah, here's Harry," he said to a young man in jeans, trainers and hoodie who had popped up behind him, a latter-day genie.

The German police appeared to favour a somewhat relaxed dress code. Either that, or real cops were paid too badly to afford the suits and posh cars favoured by TV inspectors such as Barnaby from the Midsomer Murders brigade.

"Can we tell our friends to close the call, then?" Stoffelhaut asked.

"Not really." Harry raised his chin at the paramedics clomping up the steps. Their faces looked beaten, worn. One of them carried a folded stretcher.

The spiders were back again. "Where's the professor? Shouldn't they take him to a hospital?"

Harry turned towards her, a guarded look on his intelligent ferret face. It made her want to check every misdemeanour she had ever committed to work out which one was most likely to get her into trouble.

"You're the guide? I'm afraid I've got bad news for you. The professor just died."

The words fell between them and, like in the underground reservoir, rippled away. Nothing more was spoken. The two policemen were watching Jessica while she was searching the void between her ears for a suitable response.

The Kommissar reached for her arm. "You better come with me."

Alarm bells ringing in Ike's head, she pulled away. "Am I arrested? I've done nothing!"

"Please. All I want you to do is sit down. You're shivering. Yes, I need your statement, but let's go to the car. Or we take a park bench if you insist. But the car is warmer."

Dazed, Ike let the cop guide her towards the backseat of the unmarked police vehicle. Harry scrunched away again, issuing orders into a Walkie-Talkie.

"What happens now?" Ike asked when the Kommissar had deposited his bulk next to her with a groan, filling the car with his presence and a jumbled aroma of junk food and leather, a trace of male sweat lurking underneath.

Ike tried to shift her haunches away from the meaty thighs of the policeman, but there was a lot of him and not much manoeuvring space left.

"You need to tell me what happened this evening. Everything from the moment the tour started to the point when you realised somebody was missing. Then I need to know about the scene of the crime—sorry: the place where you found your guest. How he was lying and all that jazz. You moved him apparently?"

"I wanted to shift his legs from the water. He must have been freezing." It reminded her of something she should have asked when Harry dropped his little bomb. "What killed him? I saw some blood, but it wasn't much."

The Kommissar tutted. "Let's leave that for later. It might even have been an accident. We don't know yet. Just tell me what you remember. And I mean everything."

All the time Jessica was recalling this evening's horrors, the image of that card lay at the back of her mind as if it was waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Do let me know if you have questions or comments on my novel. Constructive suggestions and feedback are always welcome! And thank you for reading. In doing so, you give my writing a purpose.

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Music is Evanescence with My Immortal. Yes, I used this before but I love that song. This chapter is dedicated to XayalaX, thank you for reading and voting on the Avebury Witches cozy mysteries.

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