It was nearly four o’clock when Poppy and Rosie arrived at St Aldates Street. They parted ways, with Rosie turning down Blue Boar Lane to the police station and Poppy crossing the road to the Post Office. Poppy had already decided – after her meeting with George Lewis – that there was sufficient reason to justify staying longer in Oxford, and her time with Rosie had confirmed it. Poppy, still circumspect, had not told the policewoman about Sophie’s suspicions of murder, but she had told her what George Lewis had said about there perhaps being more to the scientist’s death than met the eye, and that he feared that his predecessor at the paper – as well as the police – had failed to apply due diligence to the investigation. Rosie had agreed with her. She confirmed to Poppy that the police pathologist had been the worse for wear for drink when he arrived at the scene, and it hadn’t been the first time it had happened.
“He’s only got a year until retirement, so no one wants to challenge him,” explained the WPC. Rosie said that she had not personally attended the scene of death but had heard talk of it in the station. She said that she would try to get a look at June Leighton’s case file to see if there was anything that had been overlooked or not followed up properly.
Poppy was in two minds about Rosie’s offer of help. On the one hand, it would be very useful to have someone on the “inside”. Rollo, she knew, had a number of “tame cops” (as he referred to them), and Poppy had always felt uneasy about the ethics of it.
But she couldn’t deny that tame cops could be useful. She had just never thought that she would have one of her own. It made her uncomfortable. However, she trusted her instinct about people, and she honestly believed Rosie’s primary motivation for offering help was to vicariously pursue the type of career she had always dreamed of with the police, and which she realised would now never happen. There was, of course, the possibility that Rosie was a “plant” from the powers that be on the Oxford force, sent to befriend her, to find out what she was up to. But Poppy doubted it. She lived with actresses, and as far as she could see, Rosie was not playing a role. However, she could be wrong. And because she could not dismiss that possibility entirely, she had chosen not to tell Rosie everything.
She had also decided not to formally report the apparent tampering with her bicycle. Rosie was not happy with her decision and suggested that she would have to file a report anyway, particularly since she had already taken a statement from the man at the hotel who looked after the bikes. But Poppy asked her to delay doing so.
“If a report is filed, then someone will be sent to investigate, and it will probably not be you. Is that correct?”
Rosie had frowned her agreement. “Correct. They will take anything mildly interesting off my hands immediately. But I can’t pretend it didn’t happen, Poppy; then I’m doing exactly what we’re accusing my male colleagues of doing: sweeping things under the carpet.”
“A bit of vandalism is hardly the same as the death of a woman though, right?”
“But was it just a bit of vandalism? What if someone intended the death – or serious injury – of another woman? In other words, you.”
“Or it could have been some young scallywags having a lark.”
Rosie nodded. “It could have been. But even then, it could have had serious consequences and should be investigated. Even if it is to just give some young scallywags a rap over the knuckles.”
Poppy agreed but asked Rosie to hold out on filing the report for a while longer. Rosie reluctantly agreed. Poppy was relieved, but she knew she had only bought herself a bit of time. She also knew that Rosie was right; there was every possibility someone had done it deliberately and that she – specifically – was the target. But who could it have been? She reconsidered her movements of the morning. She had picked up the bicycle after breakfast and headed into town. The rain had got heavier, and by the time she reached Somerville College she was drenched. She had left her bicycle in the porter’s lodge while she interviewed Dr Fuller. She had been in there for around an hour: plenty of time for the porter, or someone else, to tamper with the machine. But who? From there she had ridden around the corner to the newspaper office. Again, she had spent around an hour inside. While she was there, she had left the bicycle leaning against a wall outside the entrance – once more, plenty of time for someone to do something. Although she wondered if anyone would be brazen enough to take a hacksaw to a bicycle in full view of passers-by. The same applied to the next stop she made: the Elliston & Cavell department store. The bicycle man had said that it looked like it had been only partly sawn through and had taken a while to break properly. Was that deliberate, to delay the inevitable accident, or because the culprit had run out of time to finish the job? She wasn’t sure. But if Rosie was correct and she had been specifically targeted, the question was, by whom? She had no doubt of the “why” – it was because she was sniffing around June Leighton’s death, which confirmed to her all the more that there was something worth investigating in Oxford.
She went into the Post Office and commandeered a telephone booth. She put in a call to the Globe office in London and waited for the operator to connect her. She smiled as she heard the friendly voice of the receptionist, Mavis Bradshaw.
“Mavis! Hello! It’s Poppy.”
“Poppy! You sound like you’re just next door. Good line. How’s Oxford?”
“Very interesting. I think there’s definitely a story to follow up here. Is Rollo there?”
“Sorry Poppy, he isn’t. He went out at lunch to meet someone in the Cock, then popped back in, briefly, to tell me he’d be out for the rest of the afternoon and didn’t know when he’d be back. He did say, though, if you rang, to tell you to carry on doing what you’re doing and that he’d try to get hold of you at your hotel this evening.”
“Oh,” said Poppy, disappointed. “I was hoping he’d be in. And I’m going out this evening so won’t be at the hotel.”
“Oooooh, anywhere nice?”
“A dinner dance.”
“How lovely!”
Poppy then went on to tell Mavis about the new dress she had bought but declined to mention the accident that had nearly lost the dress before she’d had a chance to wear it. After giving Mavis a few more details about the hotel – what her room was like, the view, the social standing of her fellow guests and so on – she turned the conversation back to the business at hand.
“So that’s all Rollo said? That he’d try to call me later and that I should carry on doing what I’m doing?”
“That’s it, I’m afraid. Oh, and he asked me to pass on a message to Ivan too.”
“Oh?”
Mavis chuckled. “The message was for Ivan, not for you, Poppy.” Ivan Molanov was the archivist at The Daily Globe. He kept files of every story covered by the newspaper in its thirty-year history. He also kept records of other newspapers. If there was any background research needed by Globe journalists, Ivan was the man to ask.
“Oh, come on, Mavis …” Poppy teased.
“All right. It’s to do with your story anyway. He asked Ivan to find anything he could on the Leighton family. Seems like they own a jewellery shop in Mayfair.”
“Really? Now that is interesting.”
“Speaking of jewellery, would you like to speak to your fiancé? He’s just walked in.”
“Oh yes, please!” said Poppy, flushing with excitement. “But first, would you mind asking Ivan to do something on my behalf too?” Poppy opened her notebook to the notes she’d taken at the newspaper office. “Can you please ask him to do a search for anything on the Sanforth Foundation or anyone connected to it? They are funding some scientific research in Oxford, but I don’t know anything else about them. Anything he can find will be appreciated. Oh, and Mavis, can you get him one of those chocolate cakes he likes from the bakery to sweeten him up? I’ll give you the money when I get back.”
Mavis chuckled as she took down Poppy’s instructions, then passed the telephone to Daniel. “Your lady awaits.”
“Thanks Mavis … Hello sweetheart, how are you?”
“Missing you,” said Poppy, and she then went on to give Daniel a sanitised precis of her adventures – excluding, of course, her accident on the bike.
“Golly,” said Daniel, “it does sound like there’s more to this than meets the eye. Anything yet that confirms Sophie’s suspicion of murder?”
“Not yet,” said Poppy. “And there may never be. But I think there’s more than enough to suggest that her death wasn’t properly investigated, and that in itself is a scandal.”
“Yes, it is. Do be careful, Poppy, won’t you?”
“Of course!” said Poppy, feeling a pang of guilt that she had failed to mention that someone might have tried to injure her earlier in the day. But best Daniel didn’t know. He’d be up to Oxford like a shot, and while it would be lovely to see him, she didn’t want him trying to stop her doing her job because he was worried about her. It had always been an issue between them. In fact, they had broken off their courtship once because of it: he, in her mind, being overprotective, and she, in his, being reckless. Since he’d returned from South Africa, he had made much more of an effort to not restrain her. But she hadn’t been involved in a potential murder investigation since he’d been back. This was quite a different kettle of fish.
Instead, she told him about the dinner dance that evening and that she was going as Dr Fuller’s partner. “Best you only dance with Dr Fuller then,” he said teasingly. “I don’t want you swept off your feet by an amorous gentleman scholar.”
Poppy laughed. “Don’t worry, amorous gentlemen scholars are not my cup of tea.”
He lowered his voice. “But amorous gentlemen photographers are?”
She lowered her voice in turn. “I can think of only one.” Poppy could almost feel his glow down the telephone line. They spoke until her money ran out and the operator called time.
“Give my love to the children. And tell Rollo to call me tomorrow morning at the hotel, not this evening.”
“Come home soon, darling,” said Daniel, and then they were cut off.
Poppy held the receiver to her ear even after the line was dead, trying to keep the connection with her fiancé for as long as possible, but a knock on the side of the booth and the realisation that someone else was waiting in line shook her out of her reverie. She apologised and withdrew.
Poppy visited the tea shop next door – succumbing once more to the full cream tea – and dreamed for a while about wedding dresses. However, after her second cup, she put thoughts of her upcoming nuptials aside and turned once more to the case at hand. It was time to meet Sophie in the churchyard to bring her up to date with the investigations and to tell her about the dinner that evening where she hoped to meet Dr Bill Raines and his assistant, Miles Mackintosh. She had of course failed to tell Daniel that Gertrude Fuller had suggested she might be “just the type of woman they would be attracted to”.
She also wanted to ask Sophie what she knew about the Sanforth Foundation and its connection to the laboratory, and what the former editor’s note about them “being at it again” might mean. However, when Poppy got to St Giles’ Church, Sophie wasn’t there. She waited for half an hour, but the lab assistant didn’t show up. Poppy considered going to Sophie’s house but then realised that she didn’t have her address. And the Post Office was now closed, so she couldn’t look it up in the directory. Oh well, thought Poppy. I’ll just have to try to find her tomorrow. Now I have to get back to the hotel to get dressed.