Deadly Stuff by Joyce Cato Page B

knowingly. The people who discovered bodies were always very closely looked at, in any investigation. Often the killer took the chance on reporting the dead body, because they thought that it would account for any forensic evidence they might have left behind. ‘Her clothes didn’t looked stained to me, guv,’ Peter said thoughtfully.
    ‘No. And her shoes were clean as well. But I asked the WPC to make a thorough search of her room after she’s changed. Though I doubt, if she is the killer, that our Miss Starling would have been stupid enough to leave her bloodstained clothing inher room for us to find. But it has to be done. We’ll also need to get search warrants for the public areas of college. I’d like to get a warrant to search each and every conference attendee’s room as well, but I doubt we’d find a judge to go along with that.’
    Peter nodded gloomily. ‘So what do you want me to do next, guv?’
    ‘Call in some more manpower. I want to know where every member of the Society of Stuffers were between eleven-thirty, when we have plenty of witnesses who saw our vic alive and well, and twelve noon, by which time we know he’s dead.’
    ‘Guv,’ Peter sighed. ‘That’s a lot of timelines.’
    ‘Yes it is, Sergeant, so you’d better get cracking,’ Trevor said, with little sympathy, but a wide grin.
     
    Ian Glendower looked up from the table where his class were busy practising his preferred treatment for mole skins, and glanced at the clock. He was surprised to see that it was nearly one o’clock, and time for the lunch break.
    He looked around and scowled when he failed to find Pippa’s lovely face gazing back at him from anywhere in the room.
    He’d been allocated, in the same building as hall, a large, pleasant room for his first lesson/lecture, which was clearly used as a residential room for a student in term time. But it had a usefully large square table, with plenty of light coming in from the sash windows, and so had been just right to accommodate both himself and the half-a-dozen or so newbies who’d signed up for his lecture.
    At first he’d grumbled about it, but, in fact, it had turned out to be quite a satisfying experience, with none of the pupils ever having handled the exquisite mole pelts before. He’d started off by giving a quick lecture on the use of moleskin in fashion – not strictly in a taxidermist’s remit that, but it proved that he was a Renaissance man – before demonstrating how best to goabout preserving such a luxurious hide before mounting it on a plaster cast of a mole.
    There had been a time whilst he was demonstrating how best to get a perfect finish during the mounting process, when everyone had been gathered around in a tight, rapt circle, making him feel a bit like a magician demonstrating his powers. And he was sure that one of the two girls in the group rather fancied him, not that he was interested of course.
    All of which meant that the time had simply flown by and Pippa, damn her, had taken advantage of his absorption to sneak off. Perhaps she was pouting because he hadn’t been paying much attention to her, he mused. She could be remarkably jealous and petty sometimes. But he didn’t really mind that, since it only proved that she was much more needy than most people thought. Strangers saw only her big baby blue eyes, her long, luscious hair and gorgeous figure, and assumed that she was confident and hard-bitten. It made him feel protective of her to know differently.
    He dismissed the class, who actually seemed reluctant to leave, which soothed his somewhat battered ego a little more, and smilingly promised them that the afternoon’s session, when they actually got to make a tableau with the pelts, would be even better.
    Once they’d gone, he left the makeshift classroom quickly and walked back to his own room. He was so sure that it would be empty, and that Pippa would be absent for the rest of the day just to teach him a lesson, that when he