Free Lessons in Discovery by Charlie Cochrane Page B

hand in great detail, and his conclusion was that Richard III had committed the deed.” It was a known fact in the college
    that the only thing the Master’s sister and her great rival Nurse Hatfield had in common was a fondness for the house of York and
    particularly for its most notorious member.
    “But that’s ridiculous!” Jonty spluttered. “He died in 1485,
    long before Charles Shaa disappeared.”
    “Indeed he did, cut off in his glorious prime, but Ramsey
    didn’t believe that fact for one moment. As far as he was
    concerned, Richard had ridden away from Bosworth with his tail
    between his legs and hidden in the priory at Thetford. From there he finally emerged to start taking revenge on his Tudor
    adversaries and any Woodvilles who remained for him to get his
    hands on. The queen being seemingly untouchable, he killed her
    ward to spite her. Stuff and nonsense of course, but not unusual among the sort of things that Woodville Ward theorists come up
    with.” Miss Peters snorted and drained her glass, which was
    straightaway refilled with champagne.
    Orlando was impressed. “Now that’s novel. I’ve not come
    across that in any of the library’s papers. If asked for my most ridiculous theorem I’ll ignore the one that puts Shaa as a woman.
    As if you would find one of those at Bride’s!”
    Jonty started to choke on his drink. Miss Peters slapped his
    back and Orlando went red, mortified at his faux pas. “Oh I say, I didn’t mean to insult you, Miss Peters. I regard you as almost one of us, I mean—”
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    Lessons in Discovery
    “Dr. Coppersmith—” the lady’s cheeks were flushed with
    suppressed laughter, “—I must go home and get my excavating
    tools so that you can dig an even bigger hole for yourself. I’ve taken no offence at your remark nor do I intend to. Please carry on.”
    Orlando gathered his thoughts. “In the library there’s a paper
    dating from 1821 written by a Lord Exbury. He appeared to
    believe that Shaa had been the victim of a predatory admiral, or whatever the equivalent medieval rank was, who’d visited the
    college in early 1497, taken a shine to the lad and been rebuffed.
    Exbury said the admiral took such umbrage at the refusal that he belted Shaa over the head in his own room with his own cutlass
    and carried him bodily to the well at dead of night, being
    possessed of muscles like Dr. Stewart here.” He stopped,
    embarrassed.
    “I can appreciate that. I saw Dr. Stewart on the rugby field
    when he was an undergraduate and he was built like the
    Dreadnought then.” Miss Peters smiled a rather wicked little smile, assumed a look of innocence, then continued. “Why should
    he have been so offended at being refused, this admiral or
    whatever he was? What suggestion had he made?”
    Jonty regarded his guest out of the corner of his eye. The
    hussy, she’s doing this deliberately to wind Orlando up. Who’d have thought the old girl had such a spark of mischief in her?
    Recognising that Orlando was floundering, he leapt to the rescue.
    “Miss Peters, I suspect that if you have to ask the question, you might not understand the answer. Suffice it to say I’ll warrant it was a proposal of an intimate nature and that Shaa would have
    been mortally offended. Seems rather farfetched though.”
    “It does indeed.” Orlando was slowly regaining his
    composure. “Especially as the college had a rule for the first
    ninety years of its existence that no sailors of any sort were
    allowed through its portal, our foundress not liking the breed at www.lindenbayromance.com 63
    Charlie Cochrane
    all. That’s probably part of the reason why she was so loath for her ward to go to sea and why he was so keen to get going, to be spiting her. I think there was some friction between Shaa and
    Queen Elizabeth.”
    “Well it’s not outrageous as theories go, Dr. Coppersmith,
    but it certainly qualifies as being ridiculous on the grounds of lack of