Misdsomer Demons

Chapter One

Dawn's Very Bad Morning

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

Guh? Who would be so presumptuous as to wake me up a the crack of, um, ten in the morning? Oh shit, shit, crap, sack of cat turds – I'm late!

I jumped out of bed and didn't notice that my foot was tangled in the sheets and fell flat on the floor:

KA-WHUMP!

Geez, klutz much? I managed to stand up, untangled my foot, threw on my bathrobe and a pair of comfortable flip-flops and stumbled down the stairs and, without a thought of whoever might be there, threw open the front door.

Whoa! Hello tall and gorgeous! Oh my god, my hair's a rat's nest! I have no makeup, I had grabbed my old threadbare bathrobe instead of the new one, my flip-flops are coming apart and I am not prepared for the world.

"Good morning miss, I am Detective Sargent Hathaway of the Thames Valley Police Department, Oxford CID. Are you Dawn Summers? Uh, Doctor Dawn Summers, perhaps?" He didn't appear convinced that I could be a doctor of anything. Well, I wasn't entirely sure either at that moment.

"Yeah, umm, well, yeah. Is something wrong?" I mumbled incoherently.

He looked at me, I mean really looked. I could feel his eyes boring into my skull. This was going to be a difficult man. Oh no, who died?

"Who died?" I asked, clutching my ratty bathrobe closer. The damp cool wind was trying to freeze my chest.

"Do you know a Donna Parkinson?"

"You mean Kitty? Kitty Parkinson? My research collaborator?"

"Yes, Donna 'Kitty' Parkinson, Classics Studies at St. Hilda's College."

"What happened to her?"

"I'm afraid I have some bad news, her body was found this morning."

"Oh no. Poor Kitty!"

The sergeant looked askance at my unthinking phrase. "What happened? Did she slip and fall during her parkour exercises? Was she in an accident?"

"Ah, neither. She was murdered."

"WHAT!?"

"Someone really didn't like her."

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god!" I turned from the door and stumbled to the kitchen, assuming Sargent Hathaway would follow me. I wasn't thinking as I automatically started pushing buttons on my absurdly expensive coffee machine.

"Do you want some coffee, sergeant? Or maybe an espresso? Oh I know, I bet you'd like a cappuccino. It's the right time of day for cappuccino according to the Italians, and I should know, I spent a couple of years in Rome." I couldn't stop myself from prattling on.

"No, thank you, Doctor Summers, I prefer tea, but nothing for now, thank you."

"You don't need to stand on formality, Dawn is fine."

A minute later I pulled two cups from the machine and asked, "Do you like plenty of foam on your cappuccino?"

"No thank you, Dawn, none for me, I've already had too much tea this morning."

I foamed enough for the two cups and handed one to the sergeant. He seemed puzzled by something. I sat at the counter while he stood, fiddling indecisively with his cappuccino.

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"I can't go into details as it's an ongoing investigation. But I would like you to tell me when you saw her last."

"Ah, well it had to be at the pub last night. We were at Furio's – you know, that new place just off the A420 not far from the Oxford Rotunda – with some friends, and maybe we got a little too rambunctious. Anyway, it was well past midnight when the proprietor cut us off, so we left."

"I see. And did you see where Miss Parkinson went after that?"

"Not really. Why don't you ask her boyfriend, David. He was with her." I felt a little like I was throwing David under a truck, but really, if I didn't tell the detective she left with him, someone else surely would sooner or later and then I would look like I was covering something up.

"Oh I will, as soon as we find him."

"Dave's missing? You know he's actually Sir David Wentworth? Baronet of Gosfield? Where've you looked?"

"At his flat, and his college. He would appear to be unaccounted for."

"Oh, no no no, not Davey too! He must be in trouble – he's is a stand-up guy, mostly. Even with that huge British stick up his ass – sorry – I know I should say 'arse' on this side of the Atlantic."

"The meaning of either form is clear," he said, with a tiny quirk of his lips, "even on this side of the Atlantic."

"Oh right, I can't think straight, sorry, sorry. I can't believe Kitty is gone."

"That's quite understandable. In the meantime, we are unable to locate David Wentworth and his girlfriend was found murdered. How do you think that looks to us?"

"I don't give a damn how it looks, he's innocent! Get out there and investigate some more!"

"Oh not to worry Dr. Summers, we are busy looking into all applicable corners. So, what direction did Miss Parkinson and Mr. Wentworth go?"

"That's Sir David Wentworth; he's quite particular about it. An oddity in an otherwise reasonably nice person."

"Yes, well, you're an American so perhaps it doesn't make sense to you. Although I'll have to check to be sure, but if memory serves I believe the Gosfield line is extinct, so I am not at all certain how he can make the claim to be a baronet."

"Uh, really? Extinct? I really, really, wanna be there when you tell him that!"

"Erm, right then, we'll sort that out later. Where do you think he might have gone last night?"

"Towards his flat. They usually ended up there most every night for the last couple of months. They were studying the Kama Sutra, you see."

"Well, yes I see, perhaps." He paused in thought for a moment, then hesitantly asked, "Do you mean a formal academic study? Or is that a euphemism for, ahhh..."

"Both, actually. David is quite the expert in bed." Dawn looked a little saddened. "Purely second-hand information on my part, in case you were wondering."

"I wasn't, actually."

"Oh, good."

The sergeant continued, "So, as far as we have been able to ascertain, they didn't get to his flat last night. That being the case, where could they have ended up?"

"Perhaps kidnapped? A kidnapping for ransom gone horribly wrong?"

"That sounds a bit, erm, fanciful. Why do you suggest it?"

"Well, David works for the same organization as me and my sister, and we're thought by many to be wealthy, but really we're just fairly well-off."

Hathaway looked around at the modern kitchen and the rooms he could see through the openings and doorways. "So, ah, do you have any roommates?"

"No, none. This house is owned by our company – Council Antiquities – and my sister and I own quite a bit of the company stock. So the house is a nice perk as long as I'm living in Oxford. And I quite like my privacy – so no roommates, although I often have friends staying here. In fact, Kitty stayed here often enough that she moved some of her things into a guest room. She stayed overnight maybe once or twice a week."

"I see," said the sergeant as he wrote something in his little notebook. "I happen to know that this neighborhood – all of Oxford actually, but particularly any housing within walking distance of any of the colleges – is unreasonably expensive. And a house like this: a very large stone house complete with a proper slate roof, well-equipped, stately, venerable, imposing and old but clearly well maintained over the centuries and remodeled as required to stay up-to-date with all the mod cons, but still historically accurate at least on the exterior, next to the river with it's own private dock… Surely you see why I think 'well-off' may be an attempt at charming understatement?"

"Hmph, I guess I won't show you what's in the garage. But it's not like we're aristocrats or anything."

"You needn't be defensive, Doctor Summers, I'm just trying to fill in the blanks, talk to the friends and acquaintances of the deceased. It's how we figure out what happened. And there's no law against being beautiful, intelligent and wealthy."

"Don't forget educated."

"I surely won't."

"So when you asked me about last night, you already knew. You were checking on me, right?"

"Of course, that's what we do."

"Mmm, yeah, I can see that. Say, you should talk to Professor Bathurst. Kitty said something to me the other day about discovering something about his ethnosemantic theory that the Professor wouldn't like."

"Do you know what it was?"

"Not a clue. Kitty said it would be a big unwelcome shock to the prof."

"Ethnosemantics sounds a little rarefied to me."

"Oh it is. Professor Bathurst's main contribution to linguistic theory involved cultural linguistics tied together with his work in ethnosemantics and the ethnography of speaking, especially concerning the family of Proto-Indo-European languages."

"Yeah, that does sound awfully specialized. Is that what you're studying?"

"Not exactly, I studied Classical Languages, Modern and Classical Linguistics, and a bunch of other stuff about, mostly dead languages. These days I'm working at original research in ancient languages with respect to rebuilding unwritten languages. So you see I'm already one of the relative handful of people in the world who understands Professor Bathurst's work. And that's why I am burning with curiosity about Kitty's supposed discovery."

"I thought I was educated, but I'm suddenly feeling a bit dim," said Sargent Hathaway.

"What's your field?"

"I studied theology and biblical philology at Cambridge, but I think you're out of my league."

"So you must know the words to 'I am the Very Modelof aModern Biblical Philologist', sung to Gilbert and Sullivan?" *

"Of course! I can belt it out with the best of 'em, and accompany it on my guitar."

"We need to go down the pub, drink a few pints, and sing that one publicly."

"That would be something, but I don't know if my superiors would appreciate the humor of it."

"Then let's make sure none of them are there when we sing it."

His smile was a little anemic. I guess he really didn't want his boss to hear him singing.