Scam on the Cam by Clementine Beauvais Read Free Book Online

Catharine’s.
    This was a college I’d never been to before, but being endowed with a brain which, as you may or may not have heard, contains as many possible connections as there are stars in the universe, I was able to find my way through it quite easily.
    Well, let’s say I was lucky enough that the third staircase I got to had a slate that said
Robert Dawes F5
    Swiftly, I tiptoed upstairs and followed the corridor. The door to F5 was entirely covered with pictures of rowboats, the rowing team and newspaper cuttings about rowing. This probably meant that it was indeed the lair of Rob Dawes. And this assumption was confirmed by the thunderous voice of the very man, coming from inside the room. Judging from the absence of audible replies to his sentences, he was either talking on the phone or had become completelymad and was loudly chatting to himself.
    â€œYes, yes, I know, it’s very unexpected! . . . But amazing, right? Amazing! . . . Yes, in the first boat, I’m in the first boat now! Just like I told you . . . Yes, that means I’ll be on the Thames next week, rowing against Oxford!” He laughed. “How many different ways will I have to tell you this? I’m-in-the-first-boat! . . . Thank you, thank you . . . Me too . . . What? Oh yeah . . . Yeah, really mysterious, that virus . . . No, don’t worry, I’m not catching it, I’m being really careful . . . I know, I know . . .”
    So the illnesses of the fourth and fifth rowers in the first crew had meant that Rob Dawes had been pulled from the reserve crew to race against Oxford.

    As I was trying to determine whether he sounded genuinely surprised or was just an excellent actor and serial poisoner, my ear pressed against the many rowing pictures on the door, a strange sight at the end of the dark corridor caught my eye.
    That strange sight was a black silhouette, holding on to one handle of a pirate chest, followed by the pirate chest itself, the second handle of which was held by another black silhouette.
    Then this baffling sight disappeared again.
    I raced down the corridor, begging my ridiculous shiny shoes to be as silent as possible. If this was the pirate chest of all pirate chests, no wonder it had disappeared from underneath the weeping willow! But who was carrying it?
    I caught up with them in the next tiny stone staircase, where the two silhouettes were painfully negotiating their spirally way down with the pirate chest. Their identities were easily revealed: from where I stood, a dozen stepshigher than them, I could clearly make out the angelic blondness of the two stealthy carriers.
    Gwendoline and Julius Hawthorne.
    I followed them discreetly as they made their huffy and puffy way through another corridor, and then down another staircase. We were underground now, in a creepy, dusty passage spangled with wooden doors: Wine Cellar 2, Private, Archives 1956–1975 . . .
    One single naked lightbulb dangled from the arched ceiling, throwing a gloomy yellow-gray light on the walls. In the light was dancing the huge shadow of a tiny spider, which was happily walking on the lightbulb in the manner of a fakir. Finally the siblings dropped the chest onto the floor—it made a huge thud that lifted a little sheep of dust into the air—and Gwendoline rubbed her hands together.
    â€œIt’s damn heavy!” she said.
    â€œAt least we didn’t bump into anyone,” said Julius.
    Gwendoline got a key out of her pocket andopened the door they were facing. I inched closer to it as they got hold of the chest again and passed the doorstep. The door said Lost Objects.
    I just had time to walk in and dive between a musty old curtain and a revoltingly cobwebby coatrack covered in coats probably dating from the time of Anne Boleyn’s early childhood. Gwendoline brushed past me and