Murder in Mayfair Read online

  Murder in Mayfair

  Cassie Coburn Mystery #7

  Samantha Silver

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Also by Samantha Silver

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Scalpel.”

  I held out my hand and one of the nurses placed the item in it, blade side down. I didn’t notice which one it was; I was intently focused on the patient below me. Thirty-seven-year-old Caucasian female, presenting with a gunshot wound in the upper left thigh.

  I had been paged, scrubbed up in record time, and was now going to pull a bullet wound from this woman, and repair her torn quadriceps tendon.

  X-rays had been taken, which were now on the wall on the far side of the operating theatre, so I knew exactly where I had to go to dig the bullet out. I also had to fix the tendon that was obviously torn given the patella’s position on the X-ray, and then I had to close the wound. She was lucky; the bullet had stopped less than an inch from her popliteal artery, the artery just south of the femoral. If it had gone in just a tiny bit to the right she would have bled out long before arriving at the hospital.

  Now, with the patient stabilized, it was my job to remove the bullet from her leg and fix the tendon.

  I didn’t know the circumstances that led to this woman ending up in my operating theatre. Had she had a fight with her boyfriend, and he took things way too far? Had there been another terrorist attack in London, and she was one of the victims? Had she tried to stop someone from committing a crime and ended up a victim?

  None of that mattered to me. I was a doctor, and the only thing I needed to know was the information relevant to getting my patient back to full health.

  This was what I was trained to do, and one hundred percent of my mental energy was focused on doing it.

  It was one of those big Hollywood common misconceptions that doctors always remove a bullet when people are shot. The reality is, most of the time, if the bullet isn’t going to cause any further issues, then doctors have a tendency to just leave it alone. The heat from the gun sterilizes the bullet in most cases, and the body generally builds scar tissue around the bullet to sequester it from causing issues in the rest of the body. But in this case, I had to go in and fix the tendon anyway, which meant I had the opportunity to remove the bullet. And if I could do so without causing any more damage, then why not?

  The quadriceps tendon was what connected the quadriceps—the muscles in the thigh—to the lower leg. It attached to the patella on the other end, the bone on the front of the knee. Because the tendon was torn completely—the bullet had gone up into the knee and lodged into the thigh—it needed surgery to fix.

  I used the scalpel to open the skin in front of the patella, exposing the bone and the torn tendon. I drilled holes into the patella to reattach the tendon. In recent years metal sutures had been developed as an alternative to drilling holes into the kneecap, but there wasn’t much information about them available, whereas there was a lot of information proving that drilling holes in the patella and suturing through those holes was an effective way to heal a tear.

  When the tendon was connected to the patella once more, I moved on to the retrieval of the bullet. It wasn’t lodged far in the leg, and I could see it no problem. This was going to be an easy removal.

  Using a thin pair of pincers, I reached toward the bullet, grabbing at it carefully. However, at the last second, my hand slipped. Ever since my car accident, my hand had never worked at one hundred percent, and just now it had failed me.

  The pliers slipped and pressed into the popliteal artery next to the bullet, puncturing it. Due to the immense pressure in that artery blood immediately squirted out toward me and began flooding from the wound.

  “No!” I shouted as the patient began losing blood at a rapid pace. I needed to cauterize the wound, but she was bleeding too fast. I couldn’t see where the cut was so I could close it. Was she going to die right here on my operating table?

  I woke up with a start, my sheets soaked in sweat.

  “It was a dream,” I said to myself aloud a moment later as I realized I was in my small apartment in London, not a hospital operating room. “It was just a dream.”

  It was a dream that I’d been having on and off for the past three weeks. It went the same way every time: I was in the operating room, I was taking care of a patient, and I inevitably messed something up because of my hand that didn’t quite work properly.

  I lay my head back down on the pillow and stared at the ceiling, but I knew by now it was no use. When I woke up from these dreams I never went back to sleep afterward. I probably needed to see somebody about them. The dreams weren’t healthy, but I knew where they stemmed from: I was finally a registered doctor, for the first time in my life, and I was absolutely terrified that I was going to screw something up.

  Of course, being a doctor didn’t mean being a surgeon. I was completely aware that the situation in my dream could be a real one, and that because of that I would never step into an operating room. It wasn’t safe, and I would never be able to be insured, anyway. But that didn’t stop my subconscious from apparently worrying about that situation a few nights a week.

  “Meow,” came a complaint from the end of the bed.

  “Sorry, Biscuit,” I whispered to my cat. “I promise you, I’m not doing this on purpose.”

  I got up and made my way to the kitchen, where I put on a kettle for a pot of tea. I was truly becoming more and more English by the day.

  Wrapping my hands around the mug and letting the warmth flow into my body, I made my way to the TV and turned it on. I had nothing to do except watch some bad television until the sun finally came up.

  Biscuit jumped off the bed and onto the couch, curling up into a ball next to me. I placed a hand on him and he purred contentedly; he always seemed to know exactly when I needed him. “You’re a good cat,” I muttered as I flicked aimlessly through the different TV channels.

  Maybe I should find a therapist and make an appointment. I obviously had issues I needed to work through, issues I had never fully come to grips with when I had originally been hit by a car and injured my hand. The thing was, there was no real functional difference between my life now, as a registered doctor, and my life before. I still was never going to do surgery. I knew that. I actually still had no idea what I was going to do. And I was fine with that. I would probably eventually choose something. Maybe I would love teaching; I could help other medical students live out their dreams, even though mine had been snuffed out before I’d had a chance of achieving them.

  Maybe I would find my passion in another area. I wasn’t sure yet. But at least I was now a doctor. I was registered with the General Medical Council, and I had options, if I decided that was where I wanted to go in the future.

  I just wished those dreams would disappear.

  I looked at my phone. I knew Jake was working the night shift at the coroner’s office right now; one of the other pathologists had just undergone surgery for a hernia and was off work for about six weeks, which meant Jake and the other pathologists were working crazy schedules for a little while just to make sure the coroner’s office was covered while their coworker recove
red.

  A part of me wanted to text him, but at the same time, I didn’t want to worry him. Jake knew I was having these dreams, and he kept trying to convince me to get professional help, but as much as I knew he was right, I just didn’t want to. Not yet, anyway.

  Eventually I must have drifted back off to sleep because the next thing I knew it was just after eight in the morning, the show on the TV had changed, and Biscuit was now pawing at my leg, meowing to let me know he was starving and would soon expire if I didn’t get up and open a can of cat food for him straightaway.

  Chapter 2

  I yawned as I fed my cat and tried to decide if I could get away with having a nap in the middle of the day. After all, it wasn’t like I had anything scheduled today. Suddenly, my phone binged. I had a text message.

  It was from Violet. I am in Mayfair, and I need your expertise. Come immediately.

  I sighed. I was so not in the mood to look at a dead body today. But on the other hand, if I actually left the house I’d be able to stop and grab a coffee on the way, and nothing sounded more appealing to me right now than a large hazelnut latte that I could wrap my hands around and enjoy in the cool late-winter morning.

  Plus, what else was I going to do? Sit around and feel sorry for myself while my brain thought about the dream all day? No, that wasn’t a good idea. So while a part of me was tempted to ignore Violet’s text and just crawl back into bed, I grabbed the phone and replied.

  What’s the address?

  She sent it a moment later, and I looked it up on Google Maps.

  Mayfair was one of the fanciest neighborhoods in London, and was where the victim’s body was located. At least, I assumed there was a body. Given my role in the medical profession, Violet was unlikely to ask for my help regarding anything else.

  I gave Biscuit a quick pat—but given as he was whiskers-deep in his breakfast, I’m not sure he even noticed—and scrambled to get myself dressed and looking somewhat human. Ten minutes later I was walking toward the nearest Underground station. Green Park Station—the closest to Mount Street, my destination—was only a few stops away on the Piccadilly Line from Gloucester Road, and I quickly found myself walking along the gorgeous redbrick buildings of Mayfair.

  I passed by the beautiful green space of Berkeley Square then turned onto Mount Street, quickly spotting my destination. Blue and white police tape cordoned off the area in front of one of the buildings on the south side of the street. At the ground level was a real estate agent’s office, but I knew I had to go up to the fourth floor. I approached one of the policemen guarding the tape, and as soon as he saw me he nodded and lifted it for me so I could pass underneath more easily.

  That was one advantage of working with Violet so often: instead of a constant battle for access to crime scenes, a lot of the cops here now knew me on sight, and knew that they were better off letting me through no questions asked if they didn’t want to get yelled at by an angry French woman later on.

  I walked up the dim, narrow steps of the building to the fourth floor, where another policeman guarded the front door to the apartment. He stepped aside to let me through, and I pressed myself against the door to let past a crime scene investigator who looked a little bit harried.

  The apartment I stood in was small, probably a one bedroom. To my right was a tiny kitchen, with a peninsula and a breakfast bar, and a living room with a slanted ceiling that led to a bay window. To the left was a doorway to the bathroom and bedroom. The whole place must have been around six hundred square feet, but in this part of London I was sure it was still worth probably close to two million pounds.

  In the middle of the living room, lying on the floor, was the body I was here to look at. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties, with a bushy mustache and a few crow’s feet around his eyes, which stared blankly up at the ceiling. A bullet hole in the middle of his head betrayed the cause of death.

  Violet was standing, looking at the wall.

  “I think someone shot him,” I deadpanned, and she turned to look at me, a wry smile on her face.

  “Yes, that appears to be obvious.”

  “Then why am I here?” I asked, a little bit annoyed. I’d gotten caught up in coming to see the body and forgotten to grab a coffee after all.

  “Because you were up in the middle of the night, you are still having bad dreams, and you need something in your life to distract you.”

  A part of me wanted to know how Violet knew I was up in the middle of the night, and also how she knew about the dreams—I hadn’t mentioned them to her since I knew she would recommend I see a therapist—but I just didn’t have the energy.

  And to be honest, getting my mind off things with a murder wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, either.

  “Alright,” I said, nodding. “Who is this?”

  “Professor Andrew Silverton,” Violet replied. “A professor of ancient history at King’s College. He was a specialist in the artifacts of Ancient Rome.”

  “I guess that explains the décor,” I said, looking around. There wasn’t much; this was very much a bachelor pad in terms of styling, but a bust of Julius Caesar sat on top of the fireplace, and a picture of ancient ruins hung crookedly on the wall. “I assume he lived here alone?”

  “Yes,” Violet replied. “He was shot last night, likely around nine o’clock.”

  “So twelve hours ago,” I said, looking at the time on my phone.

  “Eleven,” Violet corrected. “It is the last Sunday in March. We just moved to daylight saving time.”

  “Right,” I said, nodding. I’d completely forgotten about that. “Did anyone hear the shots?”

  “According to a uniformed officer, the woman living in the flat below heard gunshots a little bit after nine o’clock last night; she knew the time as she was watching television. She assumed that Mr. Silverton was simply watching a program on television and thought nothing of it until she saw the officers this morning. We will go and speak with her next to confirm the story.”

  “How was the body found?”

  “While the professor was not scheduled to teach any classes on Sunday, the classics department at King’s College had a staff meeting. When he did not appear he was phoned, and knowing that he lived alone and had a history of heart problems, one of the other professors came by himself when he did not answer. He was the one who found the body and phoned the police. He has been taken to the hospital, suffering from shock.”

  “So he was killed at nine o’clock last night,” I mused. “Do you know anything about the killer?”

  That was a stupid question. Of course Violet knew about the killer.

  “I do not know as much as I would like,” Violet said, surprising me, “but I still do not believe it will be difficult to find her. The killer is likely a female, wearing shoes that are a size 41, or what you in America would call an eight. She is approximately one hundred and seventy centimeters tall, owns a Cardigan Welsh corgi, and was wearing a dark red down jacket.”

  I stifled a yawn. Violet’s deductions were impressive, but I just did not have the mental energy to want to know how she had figured this all out already.

  “Wow,” I said. “So you have this all under control. You don’t really need me, after all.”

  “Just because I do not need you here does not mean I do not want you here,” Violet said, and guilt immediately flooded me. Of course, this wasn’t all about me. Violet didn’t have many friends. Heck, I was pretty sure Violet didn’t have any friends apart from me.

  “How do you know about the corgi?” I asked. “The rest of it, I can guess: you found a shoeprint somewhere, and a feather from the down jacket that had a tiny piece of thread left in it. I could even understand figuring out that the killer owned a dog. But the breed?”

  This time, a smile flittered across Violet’s face. “Yes, I am quite proud of that deduction, you know. For the last year I have been devoting some of my time to the intense study of dog breeds and the identification of their different coats
. I discovered three dog hairs on the victim, including one which was on top of the wound, meaning it had to have come into the apartment after his death. Obviously, Professor Silverton did not own a pet, and therefore it must have been brought in either by the killer, by the man who discovered the body, or by the initial responders. However, the latters have assured me that they do not own, nor have they recently been in close proximity to, a Cardigan Welsh corgi. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the hairs were brought in by the killer. The fur of this particular corgi has a texture unique to the breed, and there were samples of both the overcoat and undercoat of this dog, which is normal as the undercoat is usually shed in the spring and the autumn season.”

  “You need a normal hobby,” I muttered, shaking my head.

  “This particular hobby may help us to find a killer,” Violet retorted.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Anyway, I believe I have seen everything I need from here. It is time to go downstairs and speak with the woman who heard the gunshots. Detective Chief Inspector Williams is down there now.”

  Chapter 3

  “Cool,” I said, following after Violet as we made our way back down the narrow staircase. There was one question at the back of my mind that I asked as we headed down. “Why is it that you’re here? Nothing about this case seems particularly, well, interesting.”

  Violet looked at me. “No, that is true. In fact, I expect that we will likely have a suspect by the end of the day, perhaps by tomorrow if we take our time. But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that there are not many interesting crimes happening in London at the moment. The modern criminal has become too sheltered; they are afraid of going out at night when it is cold. But I suppose with the advent of spring the flowers will bloom, and the criminals will leave the sanctity of their warm homes once more soon enough.”