Murder in Reverse, Chapter 1

When I come in to my office of a morning, I tend to take my time, ambling down the corridor listening to my colleagues passing along the latest gossip and drinking in the smell of the first of the morning coffee. It sets me up for the day, with its reassurance that whatever may be going on in the world at large, here in what's left of the ivory towers all is much as it ever was. We may be greedy, selfish and vain but we also smile politely and obey the (largely unwritten) rules. It may not be the idyll you might imagine, but we know where we stand; which is why it was a bit of a shock to find myself standing over Professor Wilmot that morning. A very dead Professor Wilmot, lying on the floor in no position to lend me the marker pen I'd stopped in to borrow.

Wilmot, a bony, sallow streak of nothing topped off with a mane of dark (but lately slightly greying) hair was -- or rather, had been -- my successor as Head of Applied Physics here at the University of Winterford. He was an easy man to admire and his achievements were many (only the Nobel was conspicuous by its absence from his trophy cabinet) but he was hard to like. Brusque, officious and pernickety, he'd have been tossed out on his ear years ago if he hadn't also had a habit of being right. Remember, a few years back, when you could suddenly run your laptop all day and your phone for a week? Wilmot's new batteries. Spray-on solar panels? Wilmot. Self-charging GPS smart jackets? Wilmot. He'd put us on the map and his PhD students tended to finish in record time, but the rest of us tended to give him a wide berth. Except me: since I passed beyond the veil into the ranks of the emeritus I've been able to put all that behind me. We weren't in competition any more, and I wasn't one of the fools he failed to suffer gladly. Really, on a good day he could be almost human; it was a pity he'd never come this close again.

Someone must have called the police, and someone else doubtless helped me to a chair and pushed a mug of hot, sweet tea into my hand because the next thing I remember is looking up at a callow youth in a police uniform and claiming to be Inspector Merriwether. It didn't seem plausible but then again here I was drinking tea (something I hadn't done since the prehistoric days of the 60's) so it was obviously a day for firsts. And there did still seem to be a dead body lying behind him.

"What can I do for you, um, officer?" I said, slightly surprised that my voice still seemed to be in working order.

He smiled, a little too patronisingly for my taste, and grinned as if to show off the hint of stubble that proved he'd passed puberty. "Well, sir, we understand you were the first to find the body...?"

That settled it; not an exceptionally vivid dream, then. I told him what I could, realising even as I did so that I'd missed almost everything. Like how Wilmot died: shot, going by the bloody hole in his chest and the glint of a brass casing by the evidence marker on the floor. Then there was his expression: surprise, but not the terror you might expect of a man facing down the barrel of a gun. Someone -- presumably the killer -- also seemed to have closed his eyes; a curiously respectful thing to do, given the rather serious breach of protocol just committed.

The inspector seemed satisfied, muttered something about "clearing the crime scene" to one of his sergeants and I was promptly (though gently) escorted from the scene by a cheery WPC who reminded me a lot of my grand-daughter Fiona.



The hullabaloo seemed interminable, with platoons of police officers traipsing in and out, snapping this, recording that and interviewing half the department (most of whom had conveniently gathered around Wilmot's office to gawk). They'd even buttonholed Esme, the tea lady who brought my coffee and biscuits and brightened up my elevenses with a little geriatric flirting. (We were both happily married and entirely too arthritic to get up to anything even mildly scandalous, but the ritual seemed to suit us both.) That meant a simple choice: brave the coffee room and a million backslappers, eager to pump me for juicy tidbits of information and doomed to disappointment, or sit behind my desk and stare grumpily out the window at what would otherwise have been a rather fine spring day.

Just as I was settling in and working up a suitable head of resentment, there was a quick double-tap at the door, a slight creak and a merry "Halloo!" in the unmistakable tones of Mike Watson, formerly one of my first PhD students and now -- having proved unable to resist Winterford's charms -- a Senior Lecturer.

"Come in, come in," I said, smiling, "you know my door's always open. Especially since you've just opened it."

Mike ambled in, bearing a tray with two mugs and a plate of biscuits. "Thought you could possibly do with this, especially since I saw Esme getting the third degree down the hall. She was giving as good as she got, though, so I think your secret's safe. How are you bearing up?"

He put the tray down on my desk and looked dubiously at my visitors' chairs, as if weighing up the merits of laser fusion (the pile on the left chair) versus holographic storage (on the right). Deciding, no doubt, that the laser fusion research was at least ten years from yielding any tangible results and wouldn't be meaningfully held back by half an hour on the floor, he hoisted the pile out of the way, sat down and looked curiously at me. This was obviously his first murder.

"It's all a bit of a haze, to be honest, and I feel more numb than anything else. Not to mention fed up; I mean, dear old Wilmot wasn't exactly the life and soul of the party and everyone's first choice for Godfather to their unborn child, but murder?"

Mike looked at me sympathetically. "They're sure it's murder, then?"

"Unless he somehow managed to run out and hide the gun before staggering back and expiring of massive blood loss, it's hard to see how it could be anything else. I know it's a cutthroat world out there now, but really! Anyway, he was the backbone of the department; whoever takes over will only get to be the captain of a sinking ship." I shook my head in bewilderment.

"Come now; we still have you! You were in charge for years and somehow managed not to run the ship aground. You could do it again. In fact, I suspect you'll have to, at least until they can get a replacement sorted out."

I smiled wanly. "Ah, that's just the star-struck student in you coming out, Mike. Whatever I was once, I'm superannuated now. Over the hill and only fit to be wheeled out at fundraisers to press the flesh and tell a pithy anecdote or two. And frankly, that's the way I like it. I can dabble," I said, waving expansively at the comforting clutter of paper covering every flat surface in sight and narrowly avoiding knocking my mug over, "but it matters to no-one but me. There are no targets to meet or grants to apply for, but I can still blag a conference invite on sheer star-power. It's a good life, and not one I'll give up without a fight. But bless you, anyway, for warming the cockles of an old man's heart." As I said this, I hunched over, clutched at my heart and put a crackle in my voice, just to make the point.

Laughing, Mike said, "Okay, okay, I get it! But the police are still going to want a suspect."

Pretending to be deep in thought, I said, "Well, logically, the best suspect is the one with the most to gain. Now, Wilmot wasn't rich and I don't think he was married. He was never much of a one for small talk, but even he would have mentioned it. So that just leaves advancement: the next in line wanted to move up a spot, sinking ship or no. What about it Mike? Do you want the top job that badly?"

Mike did a double-take, then smiled and held his hands up. "You got me! I did it, and I'll go turn myself in right away." Sobering, he said, "So, no clue then?"

"None. But if you hear anything on the grapevine, be sure to pass it along. And thanks for stopping by and returning a bit of sanity to the world."

We drank the last of our coffee, and Mike rose, gave me a last wave from the door and headed off and prepare for his next lecture. Meanwhile, I took another look at that spring day and decided it was growing on me. Shrugging into my coat, donning my hat and swinging my scarf round to a jaunty angle I headed off into the sunshine and took the long way home. When they're not paying you any more, they can't object when you decide to take a half day now and again.



Feeling much calmer, due partly to the fresh spring air and partly to two (entirely medicinal) doses of gin and tonic, the sound of the phone ringing through the empty house wasn't quite able to make me jump out of my chair. To be fair, though, it did have a jolly good try and round three came within an ace of slopping over; I'd give it a solid B+. Oddly pleased that I still had reflexes quick enough to save the day, I reached over to pick up.

"Jim! I'm so glad I caught you!" came a breathless voice, soon identified as that of June Roberts, Lecturer at Winterford and my sometime collaborator. Of late I'd become little more than her sounding board and a name to impress the referees of her papers, but she kept me on my toes and had an agreeable habit of holding our meetings in the Three Feathers, the faculty's hostelry of choice. I don't think I'd ever seen her so agitated.

"What's up, June? You sound as if the world's crashing down around your ears!"

"It just might be! You know that baby-faced Inspector they sent?"

"Merriwether? What's he been up to to upset you so?"

"Doing his job a little too well. He's asked anyone with a gun to come forward, 'for elimination purposes'. Though why he thinks the murderer would be stupid enough to fall for that one, I don't know."

"Quite, but so what? You've never struck me as a pistol-packing mama."

June laughed, as I'd hoped she might. "No. Can't stand the things. But that doesn't mean I haven't got one; it's a relic Dad brought back from the war. Hasn't been fired since the 40's, but it's still in a drawer somewhere and I don't have a license for it. Or a gun cabinet, come to that. What if he finds out?"

"You mean you don't plan to tell him? He looked the fiercely efficient type to me; better come clean now and get it over with. Besides, yours can't be the only war souvenir in the area, and it obviously hasn't been recently fired. In fact, I imagine it would take quite the cleaning job to even get it working again."

"Oh, I'm not worried about that. I was in Budapest at the time, anyway, unwinding in the bar after my talk on low-dimensional superfluids. I stopped in to drop off some papers and found the place in an uproar. Poor Wilmot. I never liked the man, but he didn't deserve that."

"So what, then? I doubt Merriwether is liable to trouble himself over an unusable unlicensed gun; bigger fish, and all that. You might get a wag of the finger, and you might have to turn it in, but that's likely to be about it."

"You think?"

"I do. Just get it over with and then you can stop worrying about it."

"Thanks, Jim." She sounded relieved. "And take care."

"You too."