The Professor's Assassin

by Matthew Pearl

  “Jack who?” After a pause, the doctor frowned and said, “Is that one of their Negroes? Whatever do you want with him?”

  Rogers’s dismissive smile sent Cabell grumbling away through the colonnade. When Jack appeared, dressed in his finest suit of clothes, which he was smoothing and tugging at, Rogers took his arm and moved him onto the lawn.

  “You are certain about this, my boy?” Rogers asked. “I want you to understand you do not have to do this.”

  “I want to help whatever way I can,” Jack answered, nodding firmly. “I told you before.”

  “There is a brave spirit. I will be there with you all along.”

  “Professor,” Jack said a few minutes later as they neared the building where the meeting was scheduled, “remember I will be there with you. You oughtn’t fear about anything, either.”

  The main hall of the common building, one of six known as hotels, contained a dozen tables, where the students were served their meals by slaves. At this hour, it was empty except for Joseph Semmes and eleven other young men, who were sitting together on one side of a long rectangular table.

  Rogers almost stopped mid-stride but recovered smoothly and continued to the bench opposite the gathering. He hadn’t expected so many would be there. The first part of his plan, at least, had worked. Jack followed a few steps behind and then quietly took a seat next to him.

  “I see you are forgoing your masks today, gentlemen. I commend you for it,” Rogers began. “Thank you.”

  Semmes shrugged. “What do we have to hide? We came here peacefully enough. We fulfilled our end of the bargain. We sit here before you. Your letter promised to resolve the blame we have received for the unfortunate accident Professor Davis has befallen. We should kindly like to know how.”

  Rogers took his time, studying their faces one by one, taking the measure of each. He recognized a few and knew the names of one or two. They were a generally disreputable-looking lot—poorly trimmed mustaches, uncombed hair, rumpled suits and clothing. As Rogers stared at them, they began to fidget, their eyes resting anywhere but on his face. Jack, who was also running his eyes over the opposite bench, suddenly pulled at Rogers’s sleeve. The professor lowered his ear to the boy and listened intently.

  “I’m very sorry, gentlemen,” Rogers said, abruptly drawing himself up from the bench. “An unexpected circumstance has occurred, and I must take my leave. I’m afraid it cannot be helped.”

  Semmes furrowed his brow as the other students muttered complaints about Rogers having wasted their time, calling them there without reason.

  When they reached the lawn, Jack turned to Rogers and whispered, “How’d I do, professor?”

  “Splendidly, Jack. Really splendidly! If the shooter believes you may have seen his face when Professor Davis tried to unmask him, he will think you just now identified him to me. To the other men, it would have appeared merely that you were accompanying me as a servant and whispering of some obligation previously forgotten on my part. They would experience irritation. But not the perpetrator. No. For him, that moment in time was fire down his collar. Surely the group will begin discussion and argument about what that was about. Not the perpetrator. He will fear the worst for himself. If I’m correct in my presuppositions, we merely wait to see who comes out in a state of agitation and panic. Robert Dabney and his friends keep guard on the only other passages out from the hotel. Let us be patient. Tell me, Jack, how did you think Professor Davis seemed today? Professor Cabell said he was out of sorts.”

  “His stomach was in some more pain than yesterday,” Jack said. “Momma’s taking care of him, though. She can take care of just about anyone and make them better.”

  “Good.”

  “He’s going to sign our manumission papers, you know.”

  “What?” Rogers asked.

  “Professor Davis—he’s going to free Momma and me and my sisters,” Jack said, bursting with excitement at the idea. “He told me on my birthday last month that he’s been intending to draw up the papers.”

  “That is excellent, Jack.”

  “He’s the best master in the college.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “You ain’t have any slaves for yourself?” Jack asked.

  “No, Jack. I don’t.”

  “Shame. You’d be a top-notch master, I’d reckon.”

  The bell began tolling. Rogers, looking over in confusion at the Rotunda, heard footsteps hurrying from around the corner. It was Dabney.

  “Dabney!” Rogers said, taking his arm. “Did you see our culprit come out?”

  Dabney shook his head, trying to catch his breath and gesturing. Other students appeared on the lawn, some weeping, some talking frantically in groups.

  “Davis is dead!” cried Dabney.

  ***

  Jack launched himself across the lawn with a mournful howl, Rogers and Dabney trailing behind. When they arrived at the Davis’s pavilion, they found a multitude of weeping men and women gathered on the portico and in the public foyer—the professors and their wives, students and slaves.

  “But the doctor had said he was out of danger!” Dabney was saying. “Professor Rogers! You heard Professor Cabell say that, didn’t you?”

  Rogers ignored this and pushed through the crowd and up the main stairs, carried along by the flow of visitors to the bed where the body of John Davis reposed peacefully. His face had a faraway, drained quality that to Rogers seemed like a man forty years older than his late colleague. Rogers’s stomach clenched in a frightful spasm, and he had to turn away after only a few seconds.

  He found himself moving back down the stairs and out through the door to the garden, where he leaned on the top of the wooden gate for support.

  “A somber day, altogether, Professor,” said Cabell from his seat on a bench in the garden. Rogers had not seen him there; he looked worn to the bone.

  “Did he say anything before he died?” Rogers asked urgently. “Did he reveal anything about the identity of the shooter?”

  “No. He never strayed from his resolve,” Cabell said, his admiration evident. “Well, we mustn’t be too sad. It was his time to die. He met his end like a perfect Christian. God has called him back.”

  “No!” Rogers said, the complacency of his colleague’s words blowing the mists from his mind. “It was not his time to die, Professor Cabell. What God calls for now is wrath against the worm who murdered him.”

  “Is it God or you who call for it, Rogers? John wanted nothing to do with the apprehension of the perpetrator. He was too Christian for that.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Cabell had started back toward the pavilion. “I must begin to prepare the body for the burial.”

  “And the bullet?”

  “What nonsense do you speak at a time like this? What of it?”

  “You must remove it!” Rogers said. “Professor Cabell, that bullet could be our last chance to secure the evidence we need.”

  “The man is dead, and I will not violate the dignity of his body to secure you a memento.”

  Rogers clutched him by the arm. “You will.”

  “I categorically will not! Take your hand off of me, man!” Cabell shouted, shaking free and starting up the steps to the rear door of the Davis pavilion.

  “You will retrieve that bullet.…”

  The doctor slowed to a stop and rounded on Rogers, his curiosity provoked by the science professor’s ominous pause.

  “Or what will you do, Professor Rogers?” he demanded.

  “Or I will inform Mrs. Davis and their children that if you had not left the bullet inside his body, our friend, her husband and their father, might still be alive.”

  “How dare you! You, a charlatan scientist! I practice the medicine passed down by our fathers and forefathers.”

  “Perhaps that is where your failure begins,” Rogers said calmly.

  “You will not dare taint my name and reputation.…”

  “Doubt me at your p
eril, Doctor. You do what you must to get that bullet. Good day,” Rogers said, turning his back and exiting the garden through the gate.

  “Professor Rogers! Rogers, you blackguard, you come back here!” the doctor shouted.

  Chapter 7

  On Sunday morning, Dabney sat in Rogers’s study, staring blankly at the rug, his eyes still moist and red. “There must be some other way altogether to gather sufficient evidence for our cause.”

  “As long as Davis was living,” Rogers said, “there was a chance he might tell us. Now there is no chance of it, and those rascals know it.”

  “Perhaps he told Mrs. Davis the name of his murderer,” Dabney said doggedly. “If he did, I wonder whether she can be persuaded to reveal it.”

  Rogers sighed. “She shared his wishes entirely on the subject. In fact, I rather think she influenced him in his resolve.”

  “But now that he has died, surely she may feel differently! Surely the bloodthirsty nature of this crime, and that greatest of injuries it has inflicted upon her and all those he loved, must finally have shaken her to the core.”

  “Such faith, Dabney, does not blow with the wind or bend to events.”

  “I do not advocate vengeance. But it would have been more proper, more worthy, of Professor Davis to consider the interests of society in the punishment of the lawbreaker.”

  Rogers did not reply but did agree. His urge to punish had only grown in the last twenty hours since learning Davis had perished, but it was more pleasant to think of serving the “interests of society” than of feeding a hunger for revenge.

  Rogers had never seen the university as somber and silent as in the immediate aftermath of the tragic death the previous day. Everyone from slave to professor, from the hotel keepers to the students, wore mourning clothes. Even the usually rambunctious cliques of young men were weeping on doorsteps or huddled together in silence. Dabney had knocked at Rogers’s door at the first toll of the bell this morning to ask whether Professor Cabell had called yet.

  He hadn’t, and there had been no sign he would. They waited and waited. By this point, any opportunity to retrieve the bullet would have closed.

  “My threat to Cabell failed,” Rogers said. “Once John’s body has been dropped into the earth, the villain will be as good as free. There is not enough evidence against Semmes or any of the others to execute a warrant without the sheriff leaving himself open to embarrassment in court.”

  “I wonder if he fears the fathers of my classmates more than any lawyer or judge at court,” Dabney said, astutely and no doubt much closer to the mark than Rogers had been.

  Rogers’s hopes rose at a sharp knock at the front door, anticipating the possibility of finding Cabell there, but instead it was a messenger, who handed him a small paper parcel wrapped in string.

  Rogers unwrapped the paper on his dining room table. Inside was a small knot of oilcloth, which he carefully unfolded to reveal an oddly shaped ball of iron.

  Dabney drew his breath in at the sight. “That’s it, Professor Rogers! Professor Cabell came through! That’s one of mine!”

  Rogers clapped his hands together. “Then we have him. This is a distinct enough grade of iron that I will be able to show it passed through the pistol. We simply have to use this to convince the sheriff to draw out a warrant to search Semmes’s person and property. One matter, Dabney: You will have to testify to the sheriff that you lent your pistol to Semmes. You may have to testify in court, as well, in order for an indictment to be executed.”

  Dabney did not hesitate. “I will do it, Professor. It matters not, even if the other men make life miserable and force me from the university. A man who showed me and every other student nothing but kindness has been killed, and there must be justice. If it falls to me, so be it.”

  “We go directly to Pavilion Four, then.”

  The two men packed up their prize and knocked at the next pavilion. Harrison had given the sheriff use of the edifice, vacant since former professor Blaetterman had been expelled for beating his wife in public. In the anteroom, they found a woman huddled on the floor in prayer. They could not see her face, just the back of her bonnet and a broad, gray dress of an inexpensive material worn by many of the female slaves.

  “Professor,” the sheriff greeted Rogers, frowning at the spectacle. “Very sorry about that. Please, come into the drawing room.”

  Before Rogers could ask about the woman, Dabney burst out with their report: “Sir, we have a new piece of evidence against the assassin.”

  “Oh?” the sheriff asked, retaking his chair with little apparent interest in what Dabney held. He took a leisurely bite of what appeared to be apple cake.

  Rogers nodded to the student, who unwrapped the bullet and handed it over. Dabney explained the source and testified to his personal knowledge of the matter.

  “This should be sufficient, if I understand the laws, Sheriff Helms, to issue a warrant for Mr. Semmes,” Rogers said.

  The official studied the faces of his visitors before wiping some crumbs off his mustache. “Gentlemen, from what I can gather, the only thing I can prove about this pistol is that it belongs to this young man”—he pointed to Dabney—“and the iron ball of his own fashioning, as well.”

  “But I will testify that I handed the pistol to Semmes at his insistence the same day as the murder!” Dabney insisted. “And that my case with the bullets were shortly after missing!”

  “Are you truly willing to, son?” the sheriff asked. “I suspect Mr. Semmes will say it’s not true. Or, if he feels caught, will say that you conspired with him against Professor Davis. Will you take that risk?”

  “Mr. Dabney will tell the truth,” Rogers said. “I doubt it will surprise anyone if the murderer, on the other hand, decides to lie.”

  The sheriff rolled the bullet through his fingers, nodding to himself as he absorbed their information. Beads of sweat formed along his brow. “That blasted Negress’s shouts are too much for a man to bear,” he said, rising suddenly and reaching for a glass. “I am plagued by a ticklish headache now. Anyone else wish a glass of warm brandy?”

  The woman in the next room was now wailing her prayers and calling out the name “Jack.”

  Rogers shot to his feet. “That is Sally Cottrell in your anteroom?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “She’s one of the Davis slaves.”

  “What business does she have with you?” Rogers asked.

  The sheriff laughed. “None. I told her I could do nothing, and she threw herself to the floor. You see, I am quite occupied enough here with the Davis affair. She says her boy, Jack, who is also a slave, has gone missing. If he has run away, that is a task for a slave catcher, I haven’t the time. We know how reliable Negro boys that age are, don’t we? I reckon he took advantage of his master’s death to go off to fish, or some sort of thing, and couldn’t find his way back. Or perhaps he wished to be free enough to have had some part in the foul deed to his master. After all, he was the first to find him.”

  Rogers strode out and helped Sally to her feet. He gave her his handkerchief and led her to a sofa in the drawing room, comforting her until she could speak.

  “I just know something’s happened to him, Professor Rogers,” she said. “It ain’t like him to walk off.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Yesterday, after the professor’s blessed soul rose from his body. He came running home at the news. He went into town on some errands for the house—it was all so much chaos—and he hasn’t been back since. None of us have seen him.”

  The sheriff, feeling the heat of Rogers’s glare, said, “If I went after every Negro boy who suddenly dashed—”

  “Enough!” Rogers shouted at him. “Jack could be in serious danger. He was with me when I went to meet with the leaders of the riot. If Semmes believed Jack had seen his face when Davis tried removing his mask …”

  Chapter 8

  Rogers, leaving his sentence unfinished and its implication clear, had stor
med out of the pavilion. When Dabney caught up with him, Rogers demanded to know the location of Joseph Semmes’s dormitory.

  “Why, number fifty-six, I think.”

  Rogers moved ahead when they reached the building and found the door blocked by a large young man he recognized from the meeting in the student hotel.

  “Stand clear!” Rogers ordered, and pushed him aside when the brute made no move to comply.

  Entering Semmes’s room, Rogers discovered half a dozen familiar-looking students there. Each of them had been at the meeting. Semmes was not among them.

  “Where is he? Where is Joseph Semmes?” Rogers asked.

  “We don’t know,” said a smaller, freckled student, whom Rogers recognized as the fellow he had unmasked on Gessner Harrison’s doorstep. Dabney had previously identified him as Kincaid.

  “Where is Jack, the Davis’s serving boy?” Rogers asked.

  “We don’t know!” Kincaid repeated.

  “You will tell me,” Rogers said. “I will suffer no more lies!”

  “How dare you accuse a University Volunteer of a lie!” came a coarse voice from behind him. Rogers froze, then turned around to face the burly student who had been blocking the door. His face was craggy, with a prehistoric look, jutting ledges at the brow, nose, and chin, all counterbalanced by a thick black beard. But it was the voice that caught Rogers. That growl. How dare you speak to a University Volunteer in such a tone? It was he: the man who had followed him across the dark lawn. The stalker who had stowed away inside his nightmares.

  Rogers took his walking stick in both hands like a lance and pinned his adversary against the wall.

  “Who in the land do you think you are? Are you cracked in the head?” the student protested.

  “It was you with Semmes that night with your pistols outside Davis’s house when he was shot, wasn’t it? ‘Goddamn Professor Davis,’ that’s what you said to me!” Rogers pressed the walking stick tight against his neck, deaf to the protests of the other students and the sheriff, who had entered alongside Dabney.