by Lev Raphael
Benevento nodded beneficently, sitting back with a sigh and then rocking slightly in his captain’s chair, inviting me to go on as if he were a committee and I the young researcher presenting my findings. So I continued. “Delaney seemed to enjoy pursuing women, and he probably even seduced your wife,” I said, studying his reaction, “and then strung her along. That’s what he did with Juno Dromgoole, the visiting professor in Canadian studies.”
“I know who Juno is,” he said flatly.
“And your wife couldn’t cope with not knowing what he really felt about her, or if he felt anything. Maybe he even tormented her about other women he was sleeping with, made her feel weak, ashamed, craving his affection.”
Benevento snorted. “Affection? Delaney Kildare didn’t feel affection for anyone, just contempt. He used people. He used my wife, Rebecca. All the time he was acting so charming to me, having dinner at our house, he was getting her to write his master’s thesis for him!”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“Oh, yes. She’d been a double major in history and French at Bennington, so it wasn’t difficult for her.”
“But was Delaney just too lazy to do it himself?” I asked, appalled.
“No, it was more than that I think the idea of having the History chair’s wife secretly do his thesis for him—when I was on his thesis committee—was just too good to pass up. Of course I knew it was plagiarism—the writing didn’t sound like his—but when I confronted Delaney, he said he would go public about the affair if I made trouble for him. And then he told me who did write it.” Benevento’s head dropped. “What could I do?”
If I’d been feeling bold before, now I was overwhelmed by this tangled story of grief, guilt, and shame, pondering Delaney’s need to first manipulate and then punish women. Women who took the place of his mother? The mother who had lived a lie and given birth to a bastard. Or was that too simple—was there something more tortured, more desperate, behind all this?
“So that’s why your wife killed herself,” I said, putting more of it together.
“Oh, no.” Benevento shook his head. “It’s Delaney who killed her.”
“Delaney?” Then that meant only one thing—
“He knew how fragile Rebecca was,” Benevento continued, reliving last year. “And he played with her. Destroyed her. I should have seen it coming. Delaney once told me a very strange story about how his parents’ marriage fell apart, and that he was the one who precipitated it—”
“He told me that story, too!” I realized then and there that Delaney had actually been warning people all along what he was capable of. That he could destroy a marriage. Or more. Like Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady telling Isabel that he wanted her money, Delaney had dared us to see what he was planning to do to all of us. First Benevento’s marriage, then Lucille and Didier, next me and Stefan. It gave me goose bumps.
“My wife committed suicide, but I still think that Delaney murdered her as surely as if he’d tied the noose himself.” He squeezed his eyes shut, breathing raggedly. “Her suicide helped drive Jesse away from me, made him turn to religious extremism. It’s easy enough to do at SUM. In my day, it would have been radical politics.”
“Jesse was very close to his mother?”
Benevento nodded, looking somber and thoughtful.
“Do you think she told him what happened before she died?”
He shrugged. “Jesse lived on campus, but he was home often enough to know something was wrong. I’m sure he figured it out, because when he wound up in an English class this year that Delaney was TA’ing, he demanded A’s for all his work, or he’d let people know that Delaney had plagiarized his entire master’s thesis.”
“But that would have hurt you.”
“Jesse hated me, he blamed me for everything. Still, how he could have considered hurting his mother’s memory—”
Yes, I thought, everything would have come out, washing himself and his parents with a foul tide of rumor and speculation—and Delaney, too. It would have finished Delaney—the degree would have been rescinded, and he would have been forced to leave SUM. The scandal would have followed him to every university in the country, so he’d have to give up academia completely, and even then, he wouldn’t be safe with something like that looming in his background.
“But how did you find out about Jesse threatening Delaney? Jesse wouldn’t have told you, and forget Delaney.”
Benevento grinned wolfishly, his large, fat face alight with triumph. “For obvious reasons, I was suspicious of Delaney, even though he was in another department this year. After Jesse’s murder, I followed Delaney around, trying to see if I could discover something. Call it a gut feeling.”
So that’s why I’d seen Harry Benevento driving on our street—it had nothing to do with Polly or coincidence. He was trailing Delaney.
“But how did you—” I hesitated.
Benevento held out his hands as if displaying himself. “How did I disguise myself? I kept as far back from him as possible, but I didn’t have to be that careful. He was completely lost in himself and in his impression on people he was interested in. He left History for EAR thanks to Dean Bullerschmidt’s help—but I don’t know exactly how that happened. He was done here, he’d slept with the chair’s wife and killed her. Time to move on,” he said heavily. “I was glad to get rid of Delaney, and he didn’t consider me as a threat. He thought he was invulnerable, so he wasn’t suspicious. That’s how I was able to steal his backpack in the library the other night.”
Letting all this out, he seemed to be feeling more relief with each sentence.
“So you were the one who stole it.”
“I wanted his keys to go through his apartment for proof—of something. They weren’t in there, but I got more than I needed. He kept a diary of sorts. I don’t know what you’d call it. He wrote nasty little portraits of people, and recorded—fooling around with my wife, with Juno Dromgoole, even my secretary, then that Professor Mochtar. Even stalking Jesse and killing him, everything.”
So here at last was the connection.
“Yes, Delaney murdered my son to shut him up.”
Horrified, I said, “Delaney was—”
“There aren’t good words for what he was. But luckily, he didn’t think much of anyone except himself, that’s why it was easy to kill him. He was arrogant, overconfident.”
I felt my mouth go dry. What I’d pieced together was clearly true, though I hadn’t seen it all clearly.
Benevento leaned down to open a desk drawer, and I froze. But he frowned and sadly shook his head as if I’d disappointed him. He produced a black-bound artist’s sketchbook, the kind sold at the student bookstores on campus.
“I’d never want to hurt you, though it wouldn’t have been hard,” he noted.
“You’re a lot bigger than I am,” I conceded, oddly calm again. Then I flashed on the height difference between Jesse and Delaney. No wonder the stab wound had been up into his heart.
“No. That’s not it at all. I’m not a violent man. It’s this: Last year Jesse complained to me about something you said in one of your classes.”
I cringed. Here it comes, I thought.
“And he showed me a letter he was writing to Coral Greathouse. It would have sunk your chances for tenure; even if it were disproved or discounted, you’d be associated with something disreputable, and there couldn’t be a fair hearing. You couldn’t ever clear yourself. You’d be the Filthy Professor or something like that. I told Jesse not to send the letter, that it was un-Christian.” Benevento grinned. “That seemed to work. I told him to pray for you instead, pray that you’d see the error of your ways.”
“But why did you protect me?”
“I knew you couldn’t have meant any harm. And my son had turned into a fanatic—look at how he got involved in the riot on the bridge, defending some stupid box of Bibles.”
“And that’s what got him killed,” I realized. “It would have been easy to do it i
n the middle of a riot where no one could really see what was happening.”
Benevento nodded. “His fanaticism helped him get killed,” he spat. “Killing Delaney was simply an act of justice. I’m not sorry I did it. I didn’t plan it, I just took advantage of the opportunity. I was working in my office late Friday afternoon when I heard someone knock on the outside office door because it was locked. Polly was still here, doing some filing, and she let someone in—I heard his voice. They were speaking low because she obviously didn’t want me to hear anything, but I recognized his voice. He told her that somebody had duked him out downstairs. He was bleeding and looking for sympathy. Pathetic, both of them.”
Then Bill Malatesta’s story was true, I thought.
“You knew about them?”
He nodded. “I followed him once, to Polly’s house.”
And that was probably the night I’d seen his Cherokee speed down our street.
“So what happened when Delaney came to see Polly here?”
“I heard Delaney say he had a date—can you imagine?—but he had to wash up first. They left together, and I waited a little and found him in the men’s room.” He related the end of the story as unemotionally as a gas station attendant giving directions. “I didn’t intend to—I told him I had his diary, and he thought it was funny. He taunted me—”
“How?”
“Never mind that. I couldn’t ever repeat it.”
Picturing beautiful Delaney face-to-face with Benevento, a shambling, clownish old man, I could imagine the mockery spilling from Delaney’s fine lips.
“I blew up,” he concluded. “It wasn’t my plan.” Then he handed me Delaney’s diary. “It’s all here in his own writing. And now, I have a favor to ask you.”
“A favor?” It was such an incongruous word to hear in a conversation filled with images of cruelty.
“Yes. Since I protected you last year, I’d like you to at least read the diary before calling the campus police and turning me in. I’ll be at home. Whatever happens, I’m going to do the honorable thing. It’s time.”
What was that supposed to mean? I asked him, and he looked at me with some pity, as if I were very young and very naive. “My wife was driven to suicide, my son was murdered, and I’ve been turned into a killer. What do I have to live for anymore?”
We sat there in silence, our eyes not meeting, surveying between us the wreckage of four lives, and the lives that could have been destroyed or at least damaged: mine, Stefan’s, Lucille’s, Didier’s. Stunned, and still wary, I agreed to take the diary home. I rose, put my briefcase on his desk, and slipped the diary in next to the copy of Adolphe. On another impulse, I showed him the book.
He shuddered, “Jesse had a copy with him when he died.”
“Yes, it was in his backpack, I saw it on the bridge. Have you read it?”
“No, I don’t read fiction, but I know it was Rebecca’s favorite novel. Jesse liked having it with him as a keepsake.” He looked like a hot air balloon that had crashed and deflated.
Too bad Rebecca didn’t understand it, I thought, or maybe she did and was drawn to someone like Delaney because the book spoke some truth of her heart she was condemned to play out I left, briefly wondering if Benevento might change his mind and surge after me, determined to keep his secrets to himself a little longer.
But there was nothing behind me, just silence as I began to speed down the stairs. I fled the building and drove home like a maniac, not caring if I got stopped for speeding. I burst in on Stefan, who was grinning madly. “You’re going to get tenure for sure!” he cried.
But my expression must have cut him off.
“What happened?” he asked sharply, grabbing my arm. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I know who killed Delaney, and who killed Jesse.”
Stefan tightened his grip.
I looked around the hallway, wondering if anything would ever seem quite the same to me again, and where in this house I could possibly feel untouched by the darkness that had contaminated our lives.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Stefan asked in a low, cautious voice, as if he sensed I was on the edge.
“Sure.” I followed him into the kitchen, where something wonderful was in the oven. I registered the aroma without feeling especially hungry. I set my briefcase down, pulled out the copy of Adolphe. “Have you ever read this?” I settled into a chair while Stefan took the paperback from me, and nodded.
“Of course. In a college French class. It’s pretty grim.” He frowned. “Weren’t we talking about it last week in the car?”
“Jesse Benevento had a copy of it in his backpack when he died on the bridge. It was his mother’s favorite book.”
“So?”
“He wasn’t taking any French literature classes. I checked his schedule with his adviser, but never put that together.”
“I’m not following.”
“Does it make sense that a religious fanatic like Jesse would be reading this? Do you remember what it’s about?”
“Vaguely. It’s a fictionalized version of Benjamin Constant’s affair with George Sand.”
“No, Madame de Staël. And? Go on.”
Stefan shrugged and shook his head.
“It’s the story of an egocentric young man tormenting an older woman who’s crazy about him. The man’s completely detached, it’s like he’s performing an experiment.”
“Delaney?” he asked.
“Yes, like Delaney. Jesse Benevento was taking a class Delaney was teaching, but the real class was Delaney. He was studying Delaney because Delaney had an affair with his mother—who was clinically depressed—and treated her so badly she killed herself. Jesse figured it out. And Adolphe was her favorite book—how about that? I should have read this book right when I realized it was an odd thing for Jesse to have in his backpack.”
“An affair with Rebecca Benevento? I don’t believe it. Where’d you hear all that?”
I took him through the entire afternoon from the memorial service on, Stefan exclaiming more than once that he didn’t believe it. He was so surprised he rose from the table and paced while I spoke. But when I got to the point where Benevento confessed, Stefan stopped me.
“You thought he might have killed Delaney—and you went into an office with him?”
“I wasn’t sure. I was pursuing the truth.”
“That was crazy—you’re not Ken Starr trying to bring down Clinton by wiring Linda Tripp! You don’t have the FBI working for you!” Stefan strode into the dining room, opened the liquor cabinet, yanked out a bottle, and returned to the kitchen with a shot glass. He filled the glass and downed it as if taking an antidote to some dread disease.
“I know you’re angry, but I felt compelled to do it. Jesse was my student, Delaney was infiltrating our lives, and then I was the one who found him dead. I couldn’t let it go, I couldn’t.”
“You risked your life.”
“Did I? I don’t think so. Benevento’s a wreck, you have no idea. His wife’s killed herself because of Delaney, Delaney killed his son, he killed Delaney—his life’s ruined. He wasn’t going to do anything to me.”
“But he has nothing to lose now,” Stefan had to point out.
I showed him the diary, which had Delaney’s address stamp on the inside of the cover, and his signature followed by the date he bought it over a year ago. Stefan joined me at the table, and though repulsed, we leafed through it, finding more and less than we had bargained for. It wasn’t exactly a diary, more a series of portraits and scenes, as if Delaney had been making notes for a vicious, satirical book. Juno was in there, and Lucille, Rebecca, Polly, Benevento. He mocked everyone and everything, like the way Polly bit the heel of her left hand when she came during sex.
Despite himself, Stefan murmured, “Good detail,” and it was my turn to raise my voice: “You think he was talented? American Psycho, part two? You’re not grading him, and this isn’t creative writing, it’s destruction.”
Then we both got very quiet when we read a chilling passage about us: “Stefan and Nick are so smooth together—like ice skaters with perfect lines. I can’t wait to do a Tonya Harding on them.”
I felt a strange mix of pride and fear, and slipped a hand into Stefan’s.
“What was he going to do?” Stefan wondered.
“Try to break us up, somehow.”
As we read on, we learned that Delaney had apparently also seduced Iris Bell and more secretaries than just Polly.
“How’d he have the energy to screw so many women?” I muttered, still shaken by his sick tribute to us.
Stefan said simply, “He was twenty-six. Remember twenty-six?”
“Sort of. But I was never bitter.”
Stefan sighed. “I was.”
We broke off when the timer rang. Suddenly I wanted to eat the world. But a wild-mushroom lasagna would do as a substitute. We ate quietly, gratefully, glad to be together and safe, though I felt threatened by the presence of the black book that lurked on the table like a cackling witch in a cartoon fairy tale.
“Tell me again how you figured out it was Benevento?” he asked when we were stacking the dishwasher.
“When you write,” I said, “don’t you see a pattern emerging from disparate details?”
“That’s part of it, yes.”
“Okay, then. Delaney was in History, but he switched departments, which is pretty unusual. Why? Benevento’s the chair of History. His wife committed suicide last year. There was trouble between Benevento and his son. Could have been the son blamed his father for her death, but what if there was something else? Delaney liked older women in this department—why should History have been any different? And then there was Jesse’s copy of Adolphe. I didn’t realize how important it was, but it suggested a motive once I realized what it was about.” Then I smacked my forehead. “Delaney told me his favorite Wharton novel was The Mother’s Recompense—and that’s also about an older woman betrayed by a younger man! How could I miss that?”