Death in an Ivory Tower (Dotsy Lamb Travel Mysteries) by Maria Hudgins

tea bags, and a couple of long paper tubes filled with granulated coffee. Bram had placed his trashcan close to the mattress on the floor, just as I had placed mine near the head of my bed last night. I shivered at the similarity. Had he been nauseated, too? I peered into the trashcan and found three cellophane biscuit wrappers, but these said Chocolate Kreams. The ones the scout had been leaving me were Bourbon Kreams. Same logo and same brand. A couple of soggy tea bags and several empty sugar packs, a disposable razor, some used tissues, a couple of cash register receipts. I pushed the trash around with a pencil from the desk and then dropped the pencil in with the rest.
    A blood glucose meter similar to my own lay on the table near the tea tray, along with a couple of used test strips, cotton swabs, and used syringes. These last stood inside a plastic water bottle. I kept a travel-sized sharps container on the back of my sink. I had already noticed his insulin was, like mine, stored in the tiny fridge on the landing outside the loo.
    A Celtic cross hung from the gooseneck lamp on the desk. In a metal incense burner, a couple of spent sticks stuck up at odd angles. I spotted one of Bram’s huge rubber-soled sandals atop the bare wooden bed frame, the other one lay under the sink in the far corner.
    I scratched through my purse for my cell phone and snapped a few shots of the room from various angles. You never know what will come in handy.
    I paused at Mignon’s door on my way down, but decided not to knock. She said she wanted to be alone. I could check on her later. I completed my descent and headed for Smythson Hall, thinking I could slip into the back and hear the last of Claudia Moss’s paper, but I met Daphne coming out as I was going in.
    “I told Harold.”
    “How did he react?”
    “At first he said we shouldn’t tell anyone until after the day’s lectures, but I reminded him that the next lecturer is not going to be there because he’s dead. Oh, I’m sorry. That sounded crass, didn’t it?”
    “So what did he decide?”
    “Harold? He said he’d tell them what happened and say that he’d have more news at dinner tonight. Until then they were on their own, and he’d make a few suggestions for how they could spend their afternoon.”
    “Is there anything I can do?”
    “Aren’t you nice to offer?” Daphne took my arm and looked up at me. She was a good half-foot shorter than me. I’m five-five, so she was under five feet. “I’m going to see if poor Miss Beaulieu is all right, then I’ll sort out what to do next.”
    “Actually? I don’t think you should. She told me she wants to be alone in her room for a while.”
    “Oh!” Daphne seemed taken aback. We had walked through the archway and into the East Quad but weren’t, as far as I knew, headed anywhere in particular. “Okay, perhaps I’ll wait a bit. Meanwhile . . .” She didn’t seem to have an end for that sentence.
    She turned, stopped in front of the bench I had recently vacated, swiped at the seat with her bare hand, and sat. I sat down beside her. This was a pretty good vantage point, I thought, from which to watch comings or goings on Staircase Thirteen and, if a call came into the Porter’s Lodge, they could easily find us.
    My bench mate heaved a huge sigh.
    I asked, “Did you and Harold know Bram Fitzwaring before this conference?”
    Daphne’s neck muscles tensed. “No. I’ve never seen either of them before. They’re from Glastonbury.” She looked at me as if I should know what that meant. “I believe it was your mentor, wasn’t it—Dr. Roberts—who suggested Fitzwaring as a speaker?”
    Uh-oh. It might have been me who actually made the suggestion.
I chose my next words carefully. “We, that is, Dr. Roberts and I, did receive email from him in the early spring. I was staying on campus at the University of Virginia while we collaborated on my dissertation topic, and I ended up handling much of his email for