A. C. Koning (1)

It is summer, 1935, and the academic year is drawing to a close in Cambridge. All that remains are the various colleges’’ May Balls before dons and students alike can embark upon the long summer vacation. Frederick Rowlands has accompanied his wife, who has been invited to enjoy the festivities at St Gertrude’s, the largest female college in Cambridge. Although he is blind, as a consequence of a shrapnel wound during the Great War, Fred is fiercely independent, to the extent that few people initially recognise his handicap.

During the ball, Fred briefly withdraws to the College garden, where he encounters a beautiful postgraduate physics student to whom he had been introduced earlier in the day. It is clear that she is upset, and that she had been waiting for someone who had not turned up. Assuming that this was a planned romantic encounter, Fred initially thinks nothing more of it. However, later that evening the same student is found dead in her room, with a syringe bearing traces of morphine next to her body. Called upon to help, Fred notices some inconsistencies in the description of the young woman’s room.

The prevailing opinion is that she committed suicide, although the coroner returns a verdict of death by misadventure. Rowlands remains unconvinced, however. His doubts seem to be vindicated when he returns to Cambridge a few weeks later, summoned by one of the dead student’s friends who had expressed their own doubts about her death. Rowlands find himself on the scene of another drug-induced death, and becomes utterly convinced that murder is afoot.

Ms Koning weaves a sinuous but watertight plot, and throws in a handful of very credible characters. She also offers some amusing insights into collegiate life, which are intensified by the backdrop of inequality that still persisted between the rights and reasonable expectations of male students and their female counterparts. The portrayal of St Gertrude’s College is affectionate, but not hagiographical, and there are a few gentle jokes at Girton’s expense.

This was very enjoyable, and I am eagerly looking for some of the earlier books in this series.… (more)