The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2576 by Angharad Copyright© 2015 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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“Let’s get this into some sort of order,” I said hoping inspiration would appear and some sort of intuitive analysis would follow. So far...

“You’ve just run through it and my head feels so muddled.”

“Go and have a lie down on the sofa.” As he went to do that I sat behind my desk with a sheet of paper to try and see if it made any greater sense by being manifest on paper rather than just floating round in my head.

It would help to learn if Gasgoine had died from natural causes or it had been accelerated by person or persons unknown. If so, they took a bit of a risk doing it in a hospice because these places are much more intimate and all the staff know each other, so strangers would be recognised and challenged. To my rather addled mind means either he died of natural causes, was killed by someone familiar at the hospice, or by someone who arrived at visiting time who did something which would have had a delayed effect. If he was on a drip shoving a large dose of insulin would have done it, or some other substance which would disperse in the drip but have a cumulative effect as time went on, depending how full the drip was.

I remember reading somewhere that a good place to inject some sort of poison would be in the webbing of the toes because it’s such an unlikely place some pathologists would miss it. Back to our vice chancellor, I really couldn’t believe he’d destroy the university for monetary gain, especially as he was quite ill and aware it was terminal. I began to wish I’d gone and seen him before he died, he might have had some ideas about the death of the lab technician and the auditor.

If the deaths were related, I couldn’t see it—but then I didn’t know how much we had or was missing. What if they were unrelated, just coincidence. The probability of winning the lottery was probably higher, but it could still be the case. I let my mind run with the second one—not the lottery win, pay attention—the death of the young auditor.

I was busy trying to think what use would killing him have, when Lorraine walked in with Lizzie. “I think she wants a top up and the fridge is empty.”

“Ma ma ma,” squealed Lizzie.

“She certainly knows her mother.”

“I’m her foster mother, actually.” I said holding my arms out to take the baby.

“Oh, I didn’t know...”

“Her mum died tragically a few days after she was born. I was still breast feeding Cate and so it seemed an obvious choice. Her parents were colleagues of mine and Phoebe is her auntie.”

Lorraine gave me a very confused look. “I adopted Phoebe when her mother died.”

She nodded though I’m sure it made slightly more sense than before. If I had time to explain it all later I would, if not someone else would or she’d pick it up as she went along.

I talked to Lizzie as she chewed on my boob—I’m sure my nipple was like the rose on a watering can. I threatened her with death and destruction if she bit me, she shrieked loudly then bit me, giggling to herself as she did it. Goodness didn’t it sting, little monster. I pulled her off me and held her up to me so we could speak eye to eye.

“Look here, you little monster, if you bite my tit again I’m going to give you to the kitten to play with.” Her answer was swift—another ear drum splitting shriek followed by being sick and I had both hands busy holding her—little *@%.

I wiped the wettest bit of it off me with some tissues and took her out to Jacquie who was talking with Lorraine and David. “Here, drown this one will you while I go and change.” Isn’t it strange that if a baby is sick over you it’s dreadful. If it vomits over someone else, it’s hilarious. The others seemed to think so, who was I to argue?

In stripping off and pulling on some old but moderately tidy clothes to wear round the house, I roused myself from the torpor my solipsistic reverie had induced. Sherlock Holmes might be able to sit and analyse data puffing on his pipe for a few days, I needed to see it before me because I worked on pattern recognition. It was how I solved crosswords, once I had a few letters I’d recognise letter or word patterns and then see which one fit the clue.

I made myself a fresh cuppa and returned to my study, thankfully the desk hadn’t been splashed with regurgitated baby juice so I was able to start looking for patterns or inspiration in my list of facts as we knew them—there weren’t that many.

Why would anyone want to kill a young accountant? I started to brainstorm: because he was going to do something or not do something he was supposed to do. Because he knew something or saw something. As an auditor, we’d assume it was to do with accounts or money and that he discovered something or tried to cover something up. Perhaps he wanted money to stay quiet. Hang on this is a university, there isn’t much money going spare—so what caused someone to kill him? It didn’t make sense. I almost felt like going to see his widow but it might be seen as an intrusion. Was she likely to have seen anything or thought of anything he’d said? If she had surely she’d have spoken to the police—wouldn’t she? Only if she recognised it as such—but that’s for the police to check on, which surely they would.

The earlier killing of Bernie Black, that was so different. Bashed on the bonce with something hard and sharp—from what I remembered, his head was smashed open like he was hit with an axe or iron bar. He was also hit from behind. It was done with tremendous force from what I recalled of it—so it was someone of significant strength—not a feeble female like me. Then I suspect most murders are carried out by men though women do kill as well, just not as often. At least I hoped that was the case. There was the possibility that the killer was still at the university which was quite scary given that staff and post grad students are often in the labs on their own, sometimes on weekends or late evenings doing experiments or observations, so could be vulnerable or perpetrators.

Jim snorted himself awake and I stopped playing detective because it was tiring my last remaining brain cell.