Miles seemed quite enthusiastic about my idea. “Yes. That’s an excellent plan, Lucy. I was thinking it might be good to visit him too. I can take his books down for him. At least he can do some studying while he’s under house arrest.”
“The police didn’t do that, surely?”
“No. His parents.”
He’d said he would take Alex’s books to him. Did that mean he had a way into Alex’s room here at Cardinal College? I told him I thought that was a fantastic idea and perhaps we could go down together. Gabriel decided that he’d like to come too. I could tell that Hester was dying to come along, but she had no earthly reason to be invited. Thank goodness. A surly teenager of a vampire was the last thing I needed when I was trying to solve a murder.
As we were all walking out of the pub, I said quietly to Miles, “Do you really have a way to get into Alex’s room?”
He looked at me. “Yes. He keeps a key hidden. I do too. Sometimes it’s convenient.”
I didn’t inquire too deeply as to what was convenient about having keys to each other’s rooms. I looked at him. “You remember when we solved that murder during A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
He shuddered. “Don’t even talk to me about that terrible time. If it hadn’t been for you, Lucy, I really think I might have been blamed. I could be in jail even now.”
I didn’t want to boast, but I thought so too. I let that sink in. “I do have some talents in the area of solving crime. I know it’s unorthodox, but do you think I could go with you when you get Alex’s books from his dorm room?”
I could see him struggling with the right thing to do and, well, the right thing to do. Finally, he said, “All right. Just don’t tell anyone.”
I couldn’t imagine I’d ever tell anyone about snooping into an undergraduate’s room. Detective Inspector Ian Chisholm would have my head. Rafe would remind me that I was barging into the personal space of a possible murderer, and anyone else would just think I was a nosy snoop. I was a nosy snoop, but I didn’t particularly want to share that information too far and wide.
The next morning, I said good morning to the porter—who knew me by now, I’d been there so often—told him I was going to see Miles, and he let me through. Miles had an overnight bag already packed and said aloud, even though there was nobody in the corridor, “I’ll just go pick up Alex’s books then.” I nodded and followed him along the hall. We got into the room, and while he went straight to the desk, I simply stood there for a moment looking around.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. I had no idea whether Alex had had anything to do with Pamela’s death or whether she’d even been here. I tried to let my witch self take over, the part of me that was full of intuition and strange powers.
Miles was a bit of a distraction, picking up books and flipping through papers, but I forced myself to push him out of my consciousness. I focused and looked around the room again, more slowly. “Pamela,” I said silently, “were you here?”
Almost immediately, I knew that she had been. It was like a slight scent left behind when a woman wearing perfume leaves the room. Alex’s dorm room was one of the most luxurious I’d ever seen, with a double bed, heavy tapestry curtains over the beautiful old windows, a desk under the window, a couple of easy chairs, and even a full en suite bathroom, usually unheard of.
I slipped into it while Miles was packing up a few things. I knew that if I was going to find traces of Pamela anywhere, it would be in here. I shut the door behind me and let him think I was going to the bathroom and quickly opened all the drawers and the cabinet.
Again, I caught an elusive sense of her but nothing that would help me.
The room I needed to get into wasn’t Alex’s. It was hers.
I bit my lip. How to manage it?
I came out, and Miles had a handful of books and a file of papers. “Okay, this should be it.”
As we left, I asked Miles if he knew where Pam’s room was. He looked at me over Alex’s study materials. “Vaguely, but if she had a key hidden, I don’t know where it is.”
I sent him my cheekiest grin. Pulled one of the bobby pins from my hair. “Give me five minutes with this and a lock, and I’ll have us inside.”
“Won’t the police object?”
“They’ll have finished with her room by now,” I said, as though I had a clue. However, because Miles pretty much owed me his life as well as believing I was a bona fide detective, he went along with my summation.
“All right. But I will hide cravenly in the stairwell while you break and enter. I can’t afford to be sent down.”
“Understood.” I was delighted he wasn’t going to be standing there looking over my shoulder because I wasn’t going to use a bobby pin to open the room, obviously. I’d be using magic.
He led me to another floor and down a long hallway. He slowed and began to look from side to side at the doors, all of which looked alike. “It’s around here, somewhere,” he said vaguely.
Once more, I let my intuition lead the way. It was ridiculously easy to discover which room was hers. Having disliked
