Chapter One

On Disappearing Professors

I had intended to spend the afternoon in splendid isolation among the stacks of the Bodleian. I had cleared my schedule of all responsibilities and even informed my friends and landlady I would be out of town for the day. I spent the night before in a state of mild anxiety, sure that Damocles' sword would descend and bring a telegram from Holmes dragging me into the dark streets of London or, more probably, some foreign land far from my books.

When sunrise brought neither telegram nor husband, I set out with enthusiasm, only to have all my plans come to naught when I was intercepted by Miss Lily Stephens, an undergraduate from my college, five steps from the Bodleian doors.

"Oh, Mary, you've got to come see this." Lily latched onto my arm and dragged me away without breaking her stride. "You won't believe it. It's incredible."

I dug my heels in and said, "Would you mind explaining first?"

Lily adjusted her coat, which was sliding off one shoulder, and ran a hand through her perpetually untidy blonde hair. "The professor's gone." She gasped, winded from running. "They say he blew himself up!"

"What? Who?" I cried, momentarily taken aback

"Professor Jensen! They're all saying that an experiment went wrong and he blew himself up!"

I thought for a moment. I had barely a passing acquaintance with Professor Jensen. Though brilliant in his field, Professor Jensen had no great aptitude for teaching or for the world outside the rarefied air of Oxford academia, and therefore taught only introductory classes in order to justify his salary. I had managed to absorb a startling amount of chemistry from Holmes before I entered the University and I often skipped his class for more useful (to my mind, anyway) activities.

However, since I had heard no explosions or police sirens that morning, I thought I might go see for myself. Lily's assessment turned out to be excessively melodramatic, but what actually happened proved to be far more fantastic.

When we arrived at the Chemistry building, a small crowd had begun to gather, attracted like moths to a flame by the presence of the police vehicles. It was growing by the minute as more passers-by stopped to see what everyone else was looking at.

"Perhaps we should try another route." I said to Lily when I saw the crowd and we circled around to the side entrance.

There was a police constable standing in the hall, ensuring that no one could trespass on the scene. I strode directly up to him, trying to think of a subterfuge that would get him to let us pass. Judging from the granite look on his face, I did not think it would be easy.

Luck, however, was on my side, for at that moment Inspector Lestrade exited the side room, talking with another officer. He caught sight of me and hailed.

"It is Mrs. Holmes, isn't it? Let her through, Jimmy." The constable stepped aside reluctantly.

"You know the chap, then?" He asked, looking askance at Lily. She gaped in amazement at my connections among the higher echelons of law enforcement.

"He was an old professor of mine. Has he really disappeared?"

"Seems like it. He's only been missing since last night. Normally we would wait a bit longer before initiating a missing person investigation, but we have some unusual circumstances."

"Unusual circumstances indeed." I agreed. Professor Jensen's lab was one of many crammed into the building with more of an eye toward immediate use than long-term planning. Even tenured professors were restricted to lab space that was hardly bigger than a small office. No doubt the growing crowd outside contained a dozen or so scholars, incensed at being denied access to their labs.

The first thing I saw on entering the lab was the scorch mark. They formed a thin line encircling the entire room, as if someone had drawn them with a pencil. The source of the blast was immediately apparent. The shattered remains of a beaker lay in a small pile on the table underneath a ring stand. The flame of the Bunsen burner was still lit.

"Did you move anything?" I asked. Lestrade barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

"Of course not, and neither have any of my men."

"What did happen here?" I asked, examining the scorching. Lestrade flipped open his notebook and began to recite.

"Last anyone saw of Professor Jansen, he was in this lab, finishing an experiment. None of his students or his assistants know anything about it. Apparently he was very private about that sort of thing."

"He lost a fellowship once to a lab partner who stole his notes." Lily volunteered. I glanced around at her, a bit surprised. Lestrade was not only surprised, but he peered at Lily with deep suspicion.

"It's made him a bit paranoid." She added hesitantly. Lestrade jotted down a note and continued.

"One of his assistants bid him good night on the way out and locked up the rest of the building. When the assistant returned in the morning she found the lights still on and the door locked. The only people with a key are Professor Jansen and another professor who is at Edinburgh for a conference of some sort. The assistant attempted to rouse the professor and getting no response and fearing for his health, she called for help in forcing the door. A few male students answered and the door was forced. Upon finding the room empty, they called the police and naturally the case found its way to me. And damned if I know where he went."

"And you've checked his home, I suppose?" I asked.

"His wife said he hadn't come home last night and that we should check at his lab. According to her, he disappeared into thin air."

"I think that's rather unlikely." I said drily, and Lestrade made a noise halfway between a grunt and a chuckle.

"I'd like to know what caused this scorching, though." I said. It looked like a simple burn, with a similar colour and appearance to burns found in labs where the chemists are careless with the Bunsen burners. But the placement was too regular for it to be caused by a normal explosion and there were no void marks from where a person might be standing, indicating that the room was empty when the scorching occurred. Admittedly, the laboratory only slightly larger than a smallish bedroom, but it still must have been quite a lot of smoke to send soot all around the room. Aside from the scorching, it seemed that nothing had been disturbed.

"It does look rather odd, but I expect it was caused when the beaker exploded. The burn mark is on about the same level as the Bunsen burner."

"But if there was an explosion there would be glass fragments all over the room." I argued. "If the Professor left the flame on, he was probably intending to come back. So why lock the door behind him?"

"It's possible that he simply forgot about the gas being on." Lestrade offered. "Really, we're only here because the wife was so insistent and the local constables thought a missing persons case would be better handled by the Yard."

"Hmm." I had picked up the professor's notebook and was leafing through the last few pages. They were covered with formulas and equations. I could make no immediate sense of it, but lab notes are rarely as neat as one would wish. "I think you're right. I would send a man around to the hospitals, just in case."

"Thank you very much, Miss Russell. I am ever so glad to have your approval on this case."

"No problem at all, Inspector." My grin matched his. "Do you mind if I hold on to the professor's notebook? For safekeeping."

Lestrade threw up his hands. "Can't see as it will make any difference. You'll let us know if you find a note saying where he went?"

I promised that I would, and Lestrade rounded up his men, leaving the laboratory in peace. I shooed Lily off to class over her protests that she could help me search for the professor. I was tempted to remain in the laboratory myself, searching for some clue, but I could hear the Bod calling to me. I shut the notebook firmly, wedged it into my own bag between a treatise on recent archaeological discoveries in the Holy Land and a book on religious conflict in Spain, and set off in search of my manuscripts.

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.•´¨•»¦«•Kerowyn•»¦«•´¨•.