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

thought your research was at a lab outside of town.”
    “It is. I use the facilities at the Radcliffe Hospital. My laboratory is there but I do most of my paperwork here.” Keith’s head bobbed like a pigeon’s, with a rocking motion, when he walked. He paused when we reached the middle of the quad.
    This was a logical place for us to part, me to my staircase and him to wherever his rooms were, but I remembered a question I wanted to ask him. “Your research deals with diabetes, doesn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    Over breakfast on a couple of mornings, we had discussed the fascinating work he was doing on diabetes and I’d told him I was type one diabetic, having dealt with the condition since childhood. “Did you know Bram Fitzwaring, the man who died today, was diabetic?”
    “Was he now?” Bunsen tilted his head and looked toward Staircase Thirteen. “I think I m-m-may have known it, but until you mentioned it just now, I hadn’t made a link between that fact and the man who died today.”
    This confused me. “Did you know Bram? I don’t understand.” How could Bunsen know Bram without knowing his name, or alternatively how could he have heard about the death without hearing Bram’s name?”
    “Bram Fitzwaring may have been a part of the study I’m conducting. I say, ‘may have been,’ because I don’t have a list of my subjects by name.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “It’ll take a while to explain.” He looked at his wristwatch. “We have twenty minutes before dinner. Let’s go to my rooms.” Those rooms turned out to be across the way on Staircase Ten, where he had an office and a couple of rooms. We sat in his cozy book-lined office, but I could see through a doorway to a small sitting room beyond. I didn’t ask for a tour. It would have seemed too bold and besides, we only had a few minutes to talk. Bunsen indicated a brown leather wing chair for me and took the swiveling office chair for himself.
So this is what an Oxford don’s office is like.
I quickly scanned a few book spines and found they were medical books, chemistry books, and weighty tomes on statistics.
    The room was also cluttered with models of human insides, mouse insides, cell insides, and colorful DNA models. I realized this must be the office Bunsen used during the school term when he was teaching undergraduates. Obviously he kept his visual aids here between lectures. A scientist of his stature would hardly need a plastic model to tell him what was inside a cell.
    “I told you the other morning that my research deals with a promising new compound I believe will help to reset the biological clock of diabetics, and regulate the liver’s glucose production.” He plopped one thin ankle on the opposite knee and leaned back in his chair. “The liver is responsible for the production of glucose and, therefore, the amount of glucose present in the blood at any given time. The livers of diabetics get signals to produce glucose all the time, not just when it’s low. So when the production line should be shut down, it keeps cranking out more and more glucose.
    “We’ve already run tests in live mice and using human liver cells in vitro. The data is very promising. So now we’ve advanced to testing on human subjects.”
    “How exciting,” I said. “Can I be one of your subjects?” I was only half kidding. I knew I couldn’t, because I don’t live in England and the study, I assumed, was already underway.
    “Sorry, no. But with luck you may be able to benefit from the results.” He shifted in his chair. “A few years down the road.”
    I made the appropriate happy face.
    “You asked me if . . . wh-what was his name? Bram Fitzwaring? You asked me if I knew him or if I knew he was diabetic, and I said I didn’t know. Let me explain. I have two groups of subjects. A test group and a control group. The subjects in both groups are diabetic, all volunteers. The subjects come to our facilities at the Radcliffe Hospital at