Death of the Toad

by William McMurray

“You really have been overdoing it in the lab,” the Professor chided Janet as he executed one of his infamous jack-rabbit starts from the parking lot next morning. "Janet as well as John becomes dull from all work and no play you know."

  The car adopted a steady clanking rhythm to accompany the occasional clickety-click of the frayed fan-belt. Janet had put her cell cultures to bed for twenty-four hours, thrown caution to the wind and acceded to the Professor's invitation of a 'sinful weekend of bridge and slothfulness'. She was under no illusions about his sinister purpose in inviting her: he was short of a fourth for the bridge-table and ballast for his sailing dinghy. As she had explained to her landlady the previous evening, Janet had spent one weekend at the Professor's summer haven at a graduate students' outing when he had first uncovered her abilities at the bridge-table. And several times during the past winter she had filled in at short notice in contests with the Owens and the Butlers. It was the latter couple who were to make up the party on this occasion.

  "How is your graduate student progressing now ?" enquired the Professor.

  "I believe that Doug has settled in and is finally taking hold on his own." She outlined the work that he had initiated. "I think it's encouraging that he developed the protocols by himself. And he offered to carry on the cell transfers so that I could get away. I hope he manages," and she frowned dubiously.

  "Well," laughed the Professor, "you'll have to relinquish control over that for one day won't you? The first time is hardest," he continued. "It must be like the anxious parent the first time he lets junior take out the family car, although I obviously know nothing of that. One of the few consolations of bachelordom, Janet!" and he wheeled the ancient Antwhistle auto off the main highway down the short drive to the lake and his cottage site.

  The cottage was a rustic conglomerate of log boxes comprised of a central living-room to which the Professor had added a kitchen-workshop at the rear, bedrooms on either end, and a screened-in porch across the front facing the lake some ten meters below. The property was screened along the back and sides by a thick and ancient barrier of cedars which had started life as a hedge-row and filled out to become an impenetrable wall of greenery. Scattered about the property was a haphazard collection of the Professor's rough attempts at lawn-furniture from local materials, mostly driftwood and his idiosyncratic wood carvings. The latter, hewn effigies of gargoyles, nymphs and other mythical creatures, gave the place a demonic aspect that brought to mind the landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch.

  "Welcome to Ant's Nest!" beamed the Professor as he unloaded the boxes and suitcases into the cabin. Indeed, thought Janet, the site resembled progressive activity by an army of carpenter ants reducing the natural, forestation to a series of bizarrely shaped splinters and shavings. She handed groceries and bottles to the Professor who stashed them away in the kitchen cupboards.

  "And now," he said mopping his brow from the exertion, "it would seem a propitious moment for a sail. Or would you fancy a swim instead?"

  Janet peered dubiously through the swaying tree boughs at the rolling surf below. She had little motivation for either activity but didn't wish to be a wet blanket. She proceeded to her bedroom and changed into a bathing suit ready for either, or both, of these wet adventures.

  "Excellent, excellent!" enthused the Professor as they rolled the dinghy out from the space beneath the screen porch. "We should have a merry ride today!"

  This turned out to be a mild understatement. As Janet noted they were the only smaller vessel contending with the heavy chop. A few keel-boats were heeling alarmingly and a large grain boat steamed by majestically ten kilometers offshore, but the outboarders, windsurfers and centreboarders were not in evidence. None the less, after several hair-raising jibes and a couple of near dumps while coming about, the little craft survived the plunging waves and they planed back on the down-wind run landing halfway up the sand strip below the cabin. The Butler's, who had arrived in the interim, gazed down disapprovingly from the brow of the hill.

  "Do come in for a dip," invited the Professor as they finished stowing the dinghy away. But the Butler's, and Janet who by now was shivering from the combined effects of damp and exhilaration, declined the offer. They stood together, Janet wrapped in her towel, watching with some wonderment while the Professor cavorted in the surf.

  "Should have been a marine biologist," commented Frank Butler .

  "Should have been a marine creature, like a porpoise" rejoined Janet.

  "Or a barracuda?"

  Margaret Butler, as Janet had observed on previous occasions, was a brilliant person but no diplomat. With a fertile and nimble mind, her rapier tongue could match and better that of John Antwhistle. Possibly that was why he enjoyed her company so much. Janet shivered and went indoors to change.

  Upon returning to the porch in slacks and sweater Janet found the Professor, still dripping and mostly bare, pouring drinks for the company.

  "Ah Janet," he extended a glass with obvious delight. "A dry martini for a damp lass. You performed admirably, admirably," he bubbled on. "We'll make a tolerable sailor of you yet! You know where the biscuits and cheese are," and he disappeared into his bedroom re-emerging within seconds in a pair of fresh shorts. There was a very capacious pitcher of martini mix, several delicious cheeses plus a tin of assorted biscuits to sustain the pre-dinner conversation for an extended period. This allowed for a rehash of tidbits of scientific news, departmental gossip, and inevitably, exhumation of the Pinkney affair.

  "A clear case of academic murder," Margaret Butler pronounced. Her husband, as customary with Margaret's outrageous pronouncements, squirmed uncomfortably in the porch chair.

  "Really, Marg! You know there was no shred of evidence to suggest such a thing."

  "Motives," she retorted. "Consider all the motivated murderers simply waiting for opportunity. Thwarted ambitions of the Dean, thwarted plans of the Regents, affairs with Faculty wives."

  "None in the Department of Biology I trust," chortled John Antwhistle. "I thought you had better taste Margaret!"

  " Ah, but there were many available departments for liaisons," answered Margaret ignoring the last sally. "And chemistry, his old stomping grounds you know. Now that was a fertile field, with all the musical marriages. Switching and shunting of partners all over the place," she snorted.

  "You're undermining my attempts to convince Janet of the settled sanity to be found in academic life," accused the Professor in mock horror. "I knew that our Principal tried to keep up his scientific interests but scarcely imagined that it extended to embracing families of the scientists!"

  "Then just consider the Principal's office staff for starters," rejoined Margaret. "There's the prominent Mrs. Lindsay-"

  Janet smiled at the thought. Doris- Lindsay, the Principal's buxom chief secretary, was indeed prominent on the campus. She flaunted her powerful position over the faculty, as she flaunted the obvious attributes of her figure.

  "Why, you may ask, did she follow Joshua Pinkney across from the Department of Chemistry?"

  "Rising up the academic ladder no doubt," replied her husband.

  "And there's that mousy little Halinka woman," continued Margaret ignoring his comment. "Why did he need to move her in with him? There must be others about who could keep him in coffee and biscuits, and whatever other simple repetitive tasks she is able to perform around the office."

  "And so Mr. Lindsay, or Professor Halinka, or both in collective fits of jealous rage stole into the Principal's pool at the stroke of midnight each grasping an ankle, submersed him just long enough to make it appear to be accidental drowning," enthused the Professor while topping their glasses with martini mix. "I do believe you're on to something Margaret! Although," he went on, warming to the subject, "you shouldn't narrow the field to jealous husbands. There were doubtless even bachelor faculty members with enough disdain for our chief administrator to assist cheerfully in his immersion, or submersion. The pool may have been awash with academic assassins! Unfortuna
tely, there's the problem with your theory- too many potential murderers."

  "And too many motives," put in her husband. "The ratio of motivation to opportunity is greatly in excess of one. Also it's my recollection that the verdict was not death by drowning but heart failure, am I right?"

  Janet nodded in agreement. If someone had indeed contrived the Principal's death he had cunningly concealed the cause beneath the apparently natural circumstances.

  “What could have triggered cardiac arrest in a man who seemed to be in pretty fair shape, regular exercise etcetera?” she wondered out loud. “Did he overdo his alcohol consumption, for example?”

  "No more than your average administrative officer I daresay," offered the Professor as he doled out another generous instalment from the cocktail shaker. "Although I'm sure that has pickled a good many Principals over the years. He had a boozy reputation early in his career, but I got the impression that he moderated his drinking in recent years. He concealed it pretty effectively if he didn't actually control it, (which would be an essential attribute in dealing with some of the blue-stockings on the Board of Regents)."

  "If anything, he seemed to have almost developed an aversion to drinking," Margaret added. "A week or two ago he came to our Faculty Wives' wine and cheese do. Took only part of a glass at most."

  "Well, you can't blame him for that," interrupted the Professor. "Some of Frank's homebrew eh?"

  "Certainly not!" Margaret bristled with indignation. "It was an excellent Moselle. Actually, Hilda Pinkney did the selecting. She's always been active in the wives' organization. But Josh definitely looked unwell even then. Pale, perspiring, though it wasn't a hot day, I thought he had a fever. He didn't stay long at the do."

  “Ah well, regardless, I believe it’s time we sampled some of my favourite vintage.” and John Antwhistle led the way to the dinner-table where he uncorked a magnificent bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. He raised his glass to the assembled dinner party. “May it have a more salutary effect on us than on our late departed colleague.”

  Janet's enjoyment of the perfect vintage was diminished somewhat by a persistent whisper in her brain-- ‘wine-- poison.’

  Bridge that evening turned out to be a debacle, at least for the Butlers. They were repeatedly set, a couple of times for disastrous penalties, while Janet and the Professor rattled off two quick rubbers, including a vulnerable grand slam which Margaret had doubled in frustration only to see her hoped-for setting ace trumped on the first round. Otherwise Margaret played her usual strong, machine-gun style of bridge but the combination of unfortunate cards and more than usually ineffectual play by her partner raised her temper in parallel with her opponents' score. Now the Professor was just pulling in the last trick from his successful contract of five hearts doubled over Margaret's five clubs, both vulnerable, in the third rubber.

  "Well," exclaimed Frank cheerfully, "afraid that completes the rout. Too many cross-ruffs to let us use our black cards."

  "Had I known about your black cards I could have saved in spades," said Margaret quietly with measured control.

  "I did mention my club support." Frank looked somewhat hurt. "And your spades were a second suit."

  "Which I bid twice. You must have known I had five of them. And you with king, jack, ten." Margaret's voice was rising by a decibel with each phrase.

  "Time for tea," interjected the Professor. "Might we sample that low-calorie sticky bun you brought us, Janet?"

  "Courtesy of Mrs. McKay's kitchen." Janet sprang from the room grateful to escape the Butlers' post-mortem. "I'll fix tea as well."

  "Cups in the side-board," called the Professor from the other room. The side-board had the dimensions of an armoire. The Professor had built it into the end wall of the kitchen-dining area with several drawers across the bottom and four immense doors covering the top portion. Janet instinctively opened the left side first and stopped momentarily in her tracks. The shelves showed no evidence of dishes, but were crammed with carved and sculpted objects in wood, stone, plaster, even the odd bronze object; clay maquettes of figure studies, portrait busts in various materials stared out at her.

  "Follies of my youth," said the Professor from the doorway. Janet started, and opened the other side of the cupboard to obtain the tea dishes. The Professor went on to describe his early training as "artist manqué before I settled upon biology as a more practical livelihood."

  "They're very well done," remarked Janet as she cut up Kay McKay's 'low-cal' sticky bun. "Did you ever regret making the choice?"

  "At first, very much so. When I was innocent of many realities," replied the Professor pensively. Janet thought of the collected works she had seen in the cupboard. Innocent would be a fair label to attach to the quality they expressed, certainly in contrast with the cynicism of John Antwhistle's more recent grotesqueries. There were several striking portrait busts for example, of a long-faced, slender-necked young girl with a Modigliani flavour that exuded freshness and beauty.

  "But I had no illusions about my ability to create much that was memorably original to add to the experience of the human race. Besides Janet," he continued softly, "most regrets you will find are not so much from conscious choices anyway," and he carried the tea-tray into the next room where angry recriminations from the bridge contest rumbled on.

  The Butlers left shortly afterward somewhat placated by tea and treats. Janet excused herself and retired to bed, leaving the Professor reading on the screened-porch. She read briefly herself, then turned out her light and lay thinking about the Butlers in particular and marriage in general. Frank was a congenial person; a champion athlete in his day, he was now a competent and productive geneticist but he paled intellectually beside his wife. Margaret had the quickness of response, the shrewdness and ambition, above all the toughness, to rise to the top in the business or political world. She seemed hampered by marriage to a lesser being; much of her resentment and sarcasm must be due to this one-sided alliance. Better to be free despite some lonely moments, like her Professor. Had he any true regrets she wondered, about the youthful girl who had once sat for the portrait bust? That had been no mere exercise in sculpture, but a labour of love and tenderness.

  The Professor turned off the porch light and went into the other bedroom. Through her window Janet could just make out some of the phantasmagoric shadows of the effigies outside in the moonlight. Some of the faces, caricatures though they were, bore likenesses of campus figures, one a particularly hideous distortion of the late Principal surmounting the body of a large toad. As she drifted off with the lulling rustle of poplar leaves and lapping of the wavelets on the beach this image of hatred for the dead man became superimposed on her vision of the gentle features of the young woman portrayed by the sculpture inside. Janet snapped into instant wakefulness with the sudden shock of recognition- there was no doubt in her mind that the portrait bust had been a representation of a youthful version of the Principal’s widow, Hilda Pinkney.

  After breakfast next morning Janet sat on the beach struggling to concentrate her mind upon the current review article from the Annals of Differentiation which lay in her lap where she had opened it fifteen minutes earlier. She was normally a rapid reader and it irritated her to find her attention wandering in this uncharacteristic way. Following one more try to assimilate the same paragraph for the third time Janet closed the book and gazed out at the lake. The wind had lowered in the night and a gentle breeze lapped the water at her feet. About a kilometer from shore the tiny sail of the Professor's dinghy could be made out, dwarfed by those of the ocean racing classes rounding the mark in the first leg of the regular Sunday regatta. John Antwhistle had invited her to accompany him out to watch the races close-up, but Janet realized that she was not required as ballast in the light airs and chose, to stay on dry land in hopes of accomplishing some necessary reading. Now she was regretting her choice, her thoughts returning uncontrollably to last night. "Most regrets don't arise from conscious choices", John Antwhistle had said.
What was his connection with Hilda Pinkney, then and now, and what the occasion for his regrets? There was such venom and contempt in his references to the late Principal it was not difficult to imagine the two men as erstwhile rivals for the affections of the same woman. And if so had not the Professor even now more cogent motivation to eliminate Joshua Pinkney than the coterie of jealous spouses imagined by Margaret Butler? Janet had to admit that despite her previous complacent assumption to the contrary, she knew precious little of the private life and inward workings of John Antwhistle.