Setting the Stage for Murder

by Robert W. Gregg

  “Which leaves us with Conklin,” Carol said. “If you’ve got ice in the ice trays, I’m going to make myself some iced tea. How about you? Then let’s tackle suspect number four.”

  It was now mid-morning, and they had relegated Janet Myers, Sean Carpenter, and Paolo Rosetti to the status of persons of interest, a step below that of prime suspects. Both Carol and Kevin were thinking the same thing when she returned with the iced tea: What if Conklin were also to prove to be a less-promising suspect than they had imagined him to be? Would they have to go back to the beginning and cast a wider net?

  “Let’s start with what we know,” Carol began, “and one of the things we know is that Conklin was at the college about the time that Gerlach was killed. He admits driving him there after their lunch at The Post. Strange, isn’t it? Rosetti was there, singing his little heart out. Carpenter was there, courting Miss Merriman. Myers could well have been there, too; at least she can’t prove she wasn’t. Considering that your dress rehearsal wasn’t scheduled to start until 7:30, I’d say that the opera company was somewhat overrepresented on campus when Gerlach met his end. Wouldn’t you?”

  “It really was one of those coincidences you’re always dismissing,” Kevin said. “I’m sure they didn’t gang up on Harley—you know, draw straws to see who’d get to strangle him.”

  Carol chose to ignore Kevin’s attempt to inject some humor into their discussion.

  “What’s important is that we know Conklin was actually with Gerlach. He says he dropped him off at Wayne Hall. But he could as easily have gone into the building with him. It wouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes to coax him into that big bed, grab a length of piano wire, and use it as a garrote the minute he closed his eyes. Then off to the nursery.”

  “And getting him into the bed wouldn’t have been that hard if he was as drunk as he must have been, considering what the bartender told us. If Conklin wanted to strangle him, the bed would have been the perfect place to do it, and it would have been easy to lure Harley into the bed. I remember the proprietary interest he took in the bed the day it was delivered. He called it ‘my bed.’”

  “That’s another reason to suspect Conklin, the fact that Gerlach was drunk,” Carol said. “Ginny has it that Conklin kept getting him refills of his scotch all through lunch. There’s a good chance he was deliberately trying to get him drunk.”

  “I don’t believe Conklin or anybody else had to try to get Gerlach drunk. He did pretty well at it all by himself.”

  “I know,” Carol said, “but Conklin doesn’t seem to have tried to stop it. He never put his foot down, said that’s enough. He dutifully ran off to the bar and got Harley one drink after another. He could well have been planning all along what he would do when they got back to the college. The only favor Conklin seems to have done for Harley is not to let him drive drunk. How thoughtful.”

  “So you’re convinced that Conklin purposefully helped get Gerlach drunk so he could have an excuse to drive him to campus and kill him?”

  “Not one hundred percent convinced, but it’s hard to argue with that scenario,” Carol replied. “Besides, what the Listers told me makes it clear that the lunch-table conversation between Gerlach and Conklin turned nasty. Real nasty. Nasty enough that it’s not that much of a stretch to believe that Gerlach had goaded him to the point where Conklin wanted to kill him.”

  “Conklin told you that he had asked Gerlach to go to lunch because he wanted to offer him an olive branch. Put the past behind them. That doesn’t square with what the Listers overheard.”

  “No it doesn’t,” Carol said. “Which means that Conklin lied to me. So instead of using lunch to make up with the man who had an affair with his wife, he used it to accuse him, to berate him. After all, he may have known of the man before this summer, but he didn’t actually know him. But then he has a chance to observe him during rehearsals for the opera, and decides he’s a real piece of work. The lunch is his opportunity to get some belated revenge.”

  Kevin was staring at his half-empty glass of iced tea, but his mind was elsewhere.

  “What if Conklin invited Gerlach to lunch for the reason he gave you,” he asked. “What if he actually expected to use the occasion to put the past behind them. And what if Gerlach just laughed at him. Don’t you suppose that would really infuriate Conklin? I could imagine the conversation turning ugly in a hurry. It’s one thing to remember being angry about something that happened a year ago, but it’s another to be given a new reason to be angry—a reason which would seem inexplicable, simply perverse.”

  Carol thought about this line of reasoning for a moment.

  “But why would Gerlach get nasty if Conklin was trying to be nice?”

  “Who knows. Like I said, maybe he was just being perverse. Anyway, this takes me back to what I suspect is the more important Conklin lie. The one he told about his wife’s death. Remember, he seems to have told friends that his wife took that bad fall because she was drunk. But the police claim that there was no evidence of alcohol in her bloodstream at all. Now, why would he have lied about that? The way I see it, he did have something to do with her death. Either he deliberately pushed her down the stairs, or he was attacking her and she accidentally fell. The police never charged him, but he was anxious to put an end to any rumors. So he tells people she fell because she was drunk.

  “He knows he’s responsible for Helen’s death and that he caused it because he was furious with her for the affair with Gerlach. Now flash forward to this summer. He doesn’t have a good opinion of Gerlach, of course—remember the ‘nigger in the woodpile’ remark. But as the summer goes on, he starts to think that there’s no point carrying a grudge. After all, he seems to have blamed his wife for what happened. So he decides to make nice with the man who cuckolded him—that’s a terrible word, isn’t it? But when he tries to establish some kind of friendship with Gerlach, something goes wrong. It backfires. Gerlach has had too much to drink; he gets mad, and he tells Conklin to shove it. Literally.”

  Kevin paused to finish his iced tea. Carol’s reaction made it clear that she wasn’t ready to embrace what sounded suspiciously like another of his wild ideas.

  “I think I prefer my scenario. I had a professor in law school who liked to say that, other things being equal, the simplest, most obvious explanation is likely to be the right one. And the simplest, most obvious explanation is that Conklin went into lunch with a big chip on his shoulder. He lied to me.”

  “Could be,” Kevin said. “But in my experience, other things are rarely equal. I won’t be surprised to learn that Conklin’s effort to bury the hatchet blew up in his face. Whatever touched him off, Gerlach lost it. Whether that made Conklin a murderer, I don’t know. But it’s a real possibility.”

  “Do you find this as exhausting as I do?” Carol asked. “I’m brain tired. Let’s take a break and go swimming.”

  “Good idea,” Kevin agreed. They changed and, five minutes later, took running dives off the dock, one after the other. The decision about what to do next had been put on hold for the time being.

  CHAPTER 53

  That evening, Arthur Conklin and Sandy Temple were sitting in Conklin’s living room, awaiting the arrival of the Derwent sisters. Jane and Jean Derwent were the first and second violinists in the Prism String Quartet, which was about to hold its first rehearsal for the upcoming fall season. Conklin wanted to discuss Borodin’s second string quartet in D, the music for which lay on the coffee table in front of them. But Temple, who had not seen the group’s cellist since the collapse of the opera project, was more concerned with the status of the investigation into Harley Gerlach’s murder.

  “Tell me, Arthur, how are you doing? I mean, I’m worried about you. Worried that they’ll be thinking you might have killed Gerlach.”

  It was clear from the tone of her voice that she really was worried about her colleague.

  “Oh, I’m okay. It’s nice of you to be concerned about me, but it’s going to be al
l right. The sheriff has talked with me, of course, but she’s very pleasant. There’s no need to be worried.”

  “I guess I can’t help it,” Temple said. “I fear they’ll zero in on Helen’s affair and figure you’ve had it in for Gerlach ever since.”

  “That’s history. It happened over a year ago.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll see it that way. Besides, they don’t know you like I do. They don’t know you at all.”

  Conklin smiled. It was a sad smile.

  “I mean no offense, Sandy. And I do appreciate your concern. But let’s be completely honest. You don’t really know me. None of us really knows each other. I didn’t really know Helen, even if I’d lived with her for many years and loved her dearly.”

  “You know what I mean, Arthur. I talked with Professor Whitman last week. I wanted him to know that—”

  “You talked with Whitman about me?” Conklin said, interrupting her. “Why did you do that?”

  “It didn’t seem appropriate to talk with the sheriff, but I thought I could let him know about you, and then he could share it with her.”

  “What do you mean? What was it about me you thought he should know?”

  “That you are a kind, decent person, Arthur. That you couldn’t possibly have killed Gerlach. That you couldn’t kill anybody. Like I said, they don’t know you. But I do—everyone around here does, and we have to stick up for you. Anyway, I’m worried. Whitman kept questioning me, especially about Helen. I assumed he’d be understanding, but he sounded—I don’t know, doubtful. I have no idea whether he shared what I told him with the sheriff.”

  Arthur Conklin sat silently for a moment, staring at the Borodin score, but thinking about Harley Gerlach, Kevin Whitman, and the sheriff of Cumberland County.

  “You’re a good friend, Sandy. A loyal friend. I appreciate that. But I wouldn’t want you going out on a limb for me—saying something, doing something you might later regret. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to influence the investigation into Gerlach’s death.”

  “That’s what Whitman said. He promised to talk with the sheriff, but he made it clear that it was her investigation, that she’d do whatever she thought she had to do. I guess he doesn’t have much influence.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. There are rumors that Whitman and the sheriff are pretty close. That they’re sleeping together.”

  “Really?” Temple was obviously surprised to hear this. But then she seized on it as evidence that her decision to speak with Kevin had been the right one.

  “That’s good, isn’t it? I mean, she’s more likely to believe what I told him if they’re that close. She is, isn’t she?”

  Sandy Temple was beginning to have doubts. And Arthur Conklin’s face took on that opaque look which Kevin had noticed when Carol had questioned him two days earlier.

  “Sandy,” Conklin said, “why don’t we talk about the Borodin quartet? What the sheriff thinks and does is out of our hands.”

  And so they turned their attention to Borodin. The Derwent sisters arrived some ten minutes later, and the Prism String Quartet was soon making music together. The quartet’s cellist, however, was having a hard time concentrating on the score in front of him.

  _____

  It was a few minutes after eleven the next morning when Sheriff Kelleher, Deputy Sheriff Bridges, and sheriff’s department veteran Bill Parsons climbed into Bridges’ patrol car and set out for Geneva. Carol and Kevin had talked late into the evening the previous day, debating what to do with the ideas generated by their brainstorming session. Carol had wanted to proceed cautiously. Kevin had argued for a more aggressive approach. In the end, they had agreed that Carol should arrange to meet with the D.A. the next morning, lay out her case, and then pay Arthur Conklin a visit.

  For obvious reasons, there was no room for Kevin in the small party that set off from Cumberland for Geneva. This was official business, not something in which a professor of music should be involved. Which left him to spend the hours restlessly pacing around the cottage or trying to write his article for Opera News. He knew that he could not do either. Instead, he elected to take a long swim, the one which took him south along Blue Water Point and into Mallard Cove, the one which had ended in his discovery of a dead man on his dock two summers before. A discovery which had brought the sheriff of Cumberland County into his life.

  At 11:12, Kevin dove into Crooked Lake.

  At 11:51, Carol and her colleagues knocked on Arthur Conklin’s door.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Conklin greeted the uniformed party. “Won’t you come in?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Conklin. If you don’t mind, my colleagues can wait in here.” Carol pointed to a small, formal parlor, apparently little used, across the hall from the living room.

  “Would you like coffee? A soft drink?” Conklin asked.

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Let’s go in there,” Carol said, gesturing toward the living room.

  “You have presumably come to arrest me,” their host said. “Otherwise, you would probably have come alone. It really wasn’t necessary to bring along a posse, you know.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. It’s simply standard operating procedure.”

  They took seats, Conklin on the couch, Carol on what looked like the most comfortable chair in the room, across a large coffee table from the couch. The books and magazines on the coffee table looked as if they had been carefully placed to make a statement regarding the taste of the owner.

  “Am I correct that this isn’t simply a social visit?” Conklin was affecting a light, almost jocular tone. But he looked tired, his face drawn.

  “No, I’m afraid it isn’t,” Carol replied, although choosing not to confirm his assumption that she was there to arrest him. “I wonder if you have anything you might like to add to what you told me when I was last here.”

  “You mean, do I wish to change my story. Is that it?”

  “If you wish to,” Carol said.

  “Sheriff, I am emotionally exhausted. This has been a very long and tiring two weeks. Or is it now closer to three weeks? In fact it has been a long and tiring summer. One might even say that it has been a long and tiring year if you go back to the day I learned that my wife had been having an affair with Harley Gerlach. That and her death shortly thereafter. I’m not much in the mood to continue the charade.”

  Carol had not known what to expect. She and Kevin had considered several scenarios, including one in which Conklin would angrily launch into a tirade against the sheriff. But it was beginning to look as if he might go to the other extreme and meekly confess that he had killed Gerlach. She patiently waited to see what he would say. What he would do.

  “Gerlach has been on my mind for a long time, as I’m sure you can imagine. When I invited him to lunch, it was not because I was prepared to forgive him. It was because I knew that the opera that had brought us together would soon be over, and that before that happened I wanted him to tell me in his own words about his affair with my wife. I had no intention of doing him harm. I suppose that in a way I was seeking closure for a very painful time in my life.”

  Conklin paused. He reached out idly, rearranging a magazine which appeared not to be perfectly aligned with others in the pile on the coffee table.

  “I had obviously underestimated the man. I had observed him over the course of the summer, and realized that he could be irascible and cruel in his dealings with people. And I had assumed that he would take some kind of perverse pleasure in telling me about his relationship with Helen. That he would enjoy my discomfort as I listened to him. He probably did. But when I ventured to ask him questions, he became agitated. And then belligerent. When I sought to calm him down, he lashed out at me. I saw this man at his unvarnished worst, this man who had seduced my wife and ruined my life.”

  Carol, who had listened without comment, finally interrupted.

  “I take it he was drunk.”

  “He had had a lot
to drink, yes.”

  “And I’m told by people at the restaurant that you kept buying his drinks.”

  “If I suggested he stop drinking, he just became more belligerent. It was easier to get him his scotch.”

  “And?” Carol wanted Conklin to resume his monologue.

  “It became unbearable. I’m not sure at exactly what point it happened, but there came a moment when I knew that Gerlach did not deserve to live.”

  “Mr. Conklin,” Carol spoke up, “I think it’s about time I reminded you that you have a right to remain silent, and that anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.”

  “I know all about my Miranda rights, Sheriff.”

  “Then you know that you should call your lawyer.”

  “I do not need a lawyer. As I told you, I’m tired—very tired—of this charade. I killed Harley Gerlach that afternoon. It was almost ridiculously easy. The bed was there. In his condition he didn’t have to be urged to climb into it. I suppose I could have strangled him with my own two hands, but the piano wire was convenient, and it meant that I didn’t have to dirty my hands by touching his miserable neck. Three minutes and I was on my way to the nursery.”

  “I still think you ought to call your lawyer. You need to discuss your defense with a qualified criminal attorney.”

  “Defense?” Arthur Conklin said with a wry laugh. “I lost my wife, Sheriff. I was furious with her. But she was only weak. Gerlach was another story. He was evil. Pure, unadulterated evil. I killed him.”

  CHAPTER 54

  As Carol explained it to Kevin later that day, Conklin had accompanied them back to Cumberland without an argument. He had confessed to responsibility for his wife’s ultimately fatal fall. No, he hadn’t tried to kill her, but he had been pushing and shoving her near the top of the stairs one day and she had lost her balance and fallen. Of course he had tried to cover it up, and while the police had initially been suspicious, they had eventually concluded that it had been an accident. While he had resented Gerlach, it was Helen he had blamed for her extramarital fling. Until this summer. Then he had had an opportunity to observe Gerlach up close for nearly ten weeks, and he had gradually come to the conclusion that he should have reserved his bitterness, his anger, for him.