Free A Scone To Die For (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 1) by H.Y. Hanna

across the street. Cassie and Fletcher had both already left. I had no plans of my own and had nothing more exciting to look forward to than recounting the morning’s events to my mother. The bus for Oxford was pulling up outside the school and I made a run for it. I managed to get in just before the doors shut and collapsed onto the first seat.
    “What’s going on at the tearoom?” asked the bus driver, turning around to peer out of his window.
    I followed his gaze, seeing the police cars parked haphazardly outside the tearoom and the crowd of people milling in the street. There were constables circling the building, putting up crime scene tape, and already I could see what looked like a reporter with a cameraman arriving on the scene. It looked like something out of a TV show, not a corner of a quiet Cotswolds village. The news would probably be all over Oxfordshire by evening so I doubted I’d be giving anything away. Quickly, I told the driver what had happened.
    “Blimey!” he said as he eased the bus away from the curb and started on the road to Oxford. “I can’t believe it—he was only on my bus yesterday!”
    “Really? Did you take him into the city?”
    The driver nodded. “Aye, just after lunch, it were. He asked me to drop him somewhere near the K.A.”
    My ears perked up. “The K.A.? Did he ask specifically for the K.A.? He didn’t say the King’s Arms?”
    The driver shook his head. “No, he asked for the K.A. Got out at the bottom of Broad Street. That was as close as I could get him.”
    I was silent, thinking hard. The King’s Arms was one of the most popular pubs in Oxford, but its nickname—the K.A.—was used mainly by students. The fact that the American had referred to it as such confirmed my suspicions that he had once been at Oxford as a student himself.
    As the Victorian townhouses of North Oxford came into view, I made a sudden decision. Leaning forwards, I said to the driver, “I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll pop down into the city—get some shopping done.”
    He nodded and bypassed the stop near my parents’ house, continuing down the road to the heart of the city.

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
     
     
    I alighted at the same place on Broad Street that the American had and wandered around aimlessly for a bit. This was the heart of the University—as close to a “campus” as most foreign tourists could hope for—and where most of the famous landmarks of Oxford were collected. There was Hertford College with its distinctive bridge—often called the Bridge of Sighs, after the bridge in Venice, which it was supposed to resemble; the Radcliffe Camera (known affectionately as the “Rad Cam”)—the Bodleian Library’s iconic reading room and perhaps the most photographed building in Oxford; the fantastic Gothic towers of All Souls College, which made up much of the “dreaming spires”; and the 17th-century Roman-inspired Sheldonian Theatre, with its thirteen busts of emperors’ heads standing vigil on posts around its boundary.
    I stopped outside the theatre and looked up at its circular façade, with the distinctive green-roofed cupola at the top. I thought of the many times I had been in that building—for matriculation and graduation ceremonies and numerous classical concerts in between. It was strange to be back in Oxford again, to see how the buildings, which had once been so much a part of my daily life, now seemed so alien to me. It was a bittersweet experience.
    Finally I drifted down to the Kings Arm’s, on the corner of Holywell Street and Parks Road, and stood looking at the pub thoughtfully. Although the King’s Arms was used by all students of the University, it was probably most frequented by those at the colleges nearby, such as Hertford, Wadham, Gloucester, Trinity, and New College. What were the chances that the American had been at one of those colleges? It was a long shot, but it was a place to start.
    I didn’t stop to ask myself why I was even doing