“Okay, but what about the next eager bloodhound who comes along? Secrets never stay buried. Ahlers probably said something to someone about a fourth book. Someone’s going to come up with the goods eventually, so why shouldn’t it be you?”
“Because I have to live with myself.” I shook my head and shrugged myself into motion. “I’m beat. I need about twenty hours of sleep and then some. Go home, Guy. I’ll call you when I get myself back in gear.”
“You do that. I’ll come and take you out for a sinfully large breakfast at Uncle Albert’s.”
“Yum.” I gave him a quick kiss. “And Guy—I know you don’t understand, or approve, but thanks for the solidarity.”
“No problem, comrade. You know me, always one to play by the rules.”
I went to sleep thinking about Guy, who didn’t really understand me, and Quinn, who did. And I also dreamt of a shadowy woman in a flowery dress, standing on the far side of a lake.
No matter what Quinn thought, she did exist. And no matter what Guy thought, it was she to whom I owed my loyalty.
The phone woke me. It was Guy.
“Randy?”
“I said I’d call you, Mr. Eager. What time is it, anyway?”
“Randy, I’m over at the English Department. I thought you ought to know right away … Dr. Quinn killed herself last night. Here, in her office.” Silence. “Randy?”
I hung up the phone. There was nothing to say.
As a detective, I’d been worse than E.C. Bentley’s Trent. The most you could say for me was that I’d been persistent. And finally, after all the digging, I’d succeeded where a lot of literary critics fail.
I spent the morning with Guy at the English Department. The police were there, but Dr. Quinn had left a note giving her motives as grief over the death of a friend amid stress-related job pressures, so they didn’t seem too interested in questioning hordes of people. She’d had a shotgun, something I hadn’t found while searching her office. She had likely brought it with her from home. Apparently no one seemed to think it unusual that she would have a shotgun, being an Alberta girl. According to the officer keeping gawkers from traipsing down the hallway, shotguns were the weapon of choice in western Canadian suicides. He also was the one who let us know that the blast had been enough to pull a goodly chunk out of the concrete wall behind her chair, and she had been found amid a flurry of gore-covered books. She was identified by her clothing and a signet ring on her baby finger. The general scuttlebutt and gossip machine was running overtime. People at the other end of HUB were likely talking about the incident already.
Though we identified ourselves as her students, the police weren’t interested in talking to us about Quinn’s state of mind. Detectives were seen heading into Dr. Spanner’s office, and that was that.
I needed to walk. I found myself on Saskatchewan Drive, looking past the emergency response vehicles parked along the road, back at the Humanities Building. I counted off the windows to find hers. It felt appropriate for Quinn to have died in her office; she’d spent her whole life getting there.
The responsibility I felt weighed like an anvil on my heart. If I hadn’t been digging, if I had only said something to assure her I wouldn’t be revealing her secret to the world, maybe she’d be up there, clinically dissecting my next chapter. How could I face anyone again? People would be able to look at me and sense my guilt. I had driven someone to take her own life. I was a monster.
What could I have said to assure her of my silence? Maybe nothing. Maybe Guy was right and Quinn had realized it; one day, someone else would discover the hoax and blow her tidy life right out of the water. At least now, Ahlers’ work would have a chance to survive and Quinn would maintain some dignity.
I thought about my thesis, which seemed inordinately anti-climactic. Should I finish it? I could foresee second-guessing myself, having to obscure my own research to muddy the trail from Ahlers to Quinn. Was it worth it? Or should I let the world know what I had discovered? People would revel in the ingenious planning and work that went into creating a successful academic career and somehow the brilliance of the books would be lost.
I would follow Quinn’s drastic lead, I decided. She had always insisted on calling me Miranda. Well, I’d take my cue from Prospero’s daughter and “drown the book.”
I put together my thesis quietly and efficiently in another couple of months of concentrated work, and the department rewarded me with my degree and about seven years of steady work as a sessional before it grew too crowded with other post-secondary students needing a TA stipend.
And day after day, it grew a bit easier to not think about my part in another person’s death. Guy moved away, I met Steve, life went on. And I had managed to put all of it behind me, mostly.
But now, there was a new Margaret Ahlers novel? From all I had gone through, I knew it couldn’t be written by Hilary Quinn. So, who was behind it? And what did they hope to do? Would they be cashing in on Ahlers’ cult status as one of the greats cut down in her prime? They certainly wouldn’t be receiving royalties from the earlier works, but the reputation of those earlier books would do a great deal for the new book, I was certain.
I wondered if Guy Larmour was out there somewhere today, reading the same news item, and asking the same questions? As far as he knew, of course, Ahlers was a dead writer. I had never confided Quinn’s last conversation with me to anyone.
Most people knew of her as the dead professor who had written about Ahlers. Guy knew of her as the dead professor who had had a lesbian relationship with a dead writer.
Only I knew they had been one and the same person. Or so I had believed.
Now I was really curious to know if Guy was coming to Homecoming.
25.
Denise was overjoyed with my more enthusiastic help with the class reunion, and tasked me with sending out invitations to her English mixer. Because we had decided to broaden the invitation to a couple of years on either side of our twenty-year date, we had to be a lot more manual in our combing of lists of people to invite. The Alumni Association had great algorithms for address lists of particular class cohorts, but we were asking a bit much of them to be so bohemian and bizarrely inclusive in our approach.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies had very nicely complied with a list of all English specialty postgraduates, and it became my duty to cross those lists with the Alumni Association’s list of members, to see if I could get current addresses and phone numbers.
The Alumni Association was nicely supported on campus, and properly so. The VP of Finance knew which side the butter was coming from, after all. My happy chore for the day was to walk across campus to Assiniboia Hall to get a current printout of the alumni.
It was no hardship to get out into the late summer air. On the whole, my favourite time of year is incipient fall—August through to the end of October. You could taste the air, and with it the anticipation of new and great things to come. Birds were still singing, the more vibrant flowers were shining in all the boarders and beds, and best of all, there were very few students wandering around getting in one’s way or tossing Frisbees at one’s head.
Assiniboia Hall is one of the first buildings on campus, and stands in redbrick glory with its sister buildings, Pembina and Athabasca, along the western side of the main quad on campus. The smell of Murphy’s Oil and old books wafted in the air, which was golden with the hints of sunshine through stained glass. Once you got past the foyer, the building was modernized to look like any other cubicled business territory, but if you looked beyond the fabric half-walls, you’d get to a real sash window, often with pots of African violets sitting on the sill.
Sherry Brownlee, the head of the Alumni Association, came out to the front desk personally to meet me. She was just the sort of person I would have chosen for the job if anyone had asked me in the first place. She had a streak of silver hair braided and tucked behind her right ear, but the rest of her shiny brown hair hung straight, halfway down her back. She wa
s wearing a coral shift dress with little turquoise turtles printed along the hem, and a short-sleeved turquoise cardigan to match. Her high-heeled flip-flop sandals were a tangle of straps over her big toe and instep, showing off coral toenails. She had matching turquoise earrings and silver and turquoise bracelets and yet somehow it wasn’t too much Santa Fe on her. She smiled and shook hands with me, and invited me into her inner sanctum, laughing at the term.
I liked her immediately.
“I’ve been in conversation with Denise Wolff about your plans, and I think it’s wonderful to expand things to all English majors. You never know who is waiting to be asked back to Homecoming. Not that anyone has to wait to be invited, of course,” she trilled. “We try to make sure people realize they are welcome back any and every year. But class reunion years are very special, aren’t they?”
“I think we’re trying to focus on people who did grad studies, mainly,” I inserted cautiously, worried about hurting Sherry’s expansive plans.
She smiled. “Yes, but on the whole, how many people would that be? What about adding in the Honours English grads? They are easily discernable on the list, so it wouldn’t take too much more effort. More stamps, of course—unless you’re planning to go entirely digital on the invitation?”
“We were thinking so, yes.” I couldn’t imagine licking the number of stamps Denise had begun with, let along the myriads Sherry Brownlee now wanted me consorting with.
“I can understand that. Of course, you have to balance that with the findings that people respond more positively to personal mail in the post. Our suggestion is that if you can, do both, with handwritten addresses on the envelopes. Add in a self-addressed card to mail back along with an email address for connection to you, and you cover all bases,” she nodded. “That way, they can respond in whatever way is most comfortable for them and you can feed it right into your computer database on receipt.” She was now getting too technical for me, event non-planner that I was. I decided to smile and nod, which seemed to be all she needed. She smiled back and settled herself in front of her computer, and began humming to herself as she input a variety of “open sesames” from her keyboard. She was probably the sort of person who hummed as birds and forest creatures braided her hair and dressed her each morning. There was something beautifully protected about Sherry Brownlee, and I realized it might be that she had never been made to leave school. She had continued to exist within the hallowed halls, a place that was merely a respite or way station for most of us.
I envied that serenity of spirit that I was sensing. Maybe that is what I had been looking for through getting my MA, a re-entry into the safety and serenity of the university. Maybe that is what I’ve always been looking for. Who knew it was all happening in the Alumni Association Office?
Pretty soon Sherry was sliding a printed list into a manila envelope for me, and seeing me to the door of her sanctuary.
“You’ll want to ask for an automated response to your initial email, even though some people really hate those, because we cannot guarantee the validity of all the email addresses on the list.” She shook her head, demonstrating for a moment what a sad Sherry would look like. “There is nothing worse than waiting for someone to answer, only to find later that they never got your initial message.” I nodded in companionable sadness, though I could think of plenty worse things than not getting an answer to an invitation to a class reunion.
“Call me if I can be of any more assistance to you, Randy!” Sherry Brownlee waved brightly as I descended the steps into the hot August afternoon. I trudged back across campus toward Denise’s office in the Humanities Building, intending to drop the list off with her, but as I passed the Old Power Plant Bar, I veered right instead of left and headed up past South Rutherford Library, where I had run from Dr. Quinn all those years ago, and homeward to my cozy apartment.
I had moved to my present address directly from my initial basement suite, exactly a month after I’d crossed the stage as a newly minted MA. At that point, it had been owned by the City, but they had sold it to a nice small consortium who continued to offer good landlording services. The place had been broken into once, and I discovered the folly of having collected objects when everything I owned had been trashed.
Now, I lived a more modest life, not monk-like, but definitely less acquisitive. It had been important to me at the time to rebuild my existence there on my own, even while Steve had been pressing me to move in with him. I didn’t want that step to feel like a contingency plan, and he finally understood my reasoning. Another couple of years into our relationship, and that ship seemed to have sailed. They were writing articles in the mainstream press these days about two-household and two-bedroom relationships. While we were more than happy to share space when we were together, a secret to our long-standing relationship might well be the space of twelve long city blocks between our respective homes.
I unlocked the several locks that had made me feel safer since the break-in, and did my routine of checking my mail at the door, depositing the dross in the recycle bin I kept by the shoe stand, kicking off my sandals, and heading to my dining room to dump my bag on the spare chair.
Once the teakettle had been filled and clicked on, I made a quick trip to the bathroom before settling in with the two letters that weren’t please-or-buy entreaties.
The first was from Leo, whose penmanship was probably still so great because he eschewed email in favour of little handwritten notes. Or perhaps he figured the best part of his missives was his cursive writing. Chicken, egg. The real issue was he was definitely coming back for the festivities and was trolling for a cheap place to stay.
I no longer had my long sofa, but I could possibly shift things around to accommodate one of those high air mattresses. I took a hard look at my apartment. Why was I even thinking about it? There was hardly enough room for me in a calm state of mind. It would be mayhem during Homecoming, helping Denise to keep things running. Why complicate matters by adding in the most flamboyant person I’d ever known? Leo was a big boy with a full-time gig in Newfoundland. He could pay for his own hotel.
I made a quick note on the envelope to send him the number of the Campus Towers Suite Hotels right across from campus, and picked up the other envelope. It was from my mother, who delighted in embedding photos into her letters but refused to make the leap to emailing them. So, every few weeks I would receive a thick envelope of colour commentary on my parents’ lives.
I noted that their hydrangeas were completely blue this year. My father must have been digging in the coffee grounds and eggshells diligently. His ideas on gardening felt a lot more like science experiments than restful meditation, but whatever. It got him out of the living room for hours at a time, and my mother loved the blooming garden results.
After two cups of tea I felt ready to tackle the list Sherry Brownlee had sent me off with. I grabbed a yellow highlighter and plunked myself down onto my loveseat. I figured a first pass to find all English grads would take me an hour.
It was getting dark when I turned the last page of the list over. Who knew there were that many English majors in the world? You’d think there would be far fewer apostrophe problems on signage.
I flipped back through the pages, seeing splotches of yellow on pretty well every page. There was no way we could manage if we sent invites to everyone. For one thing, there wouldn’t be room enough in the English grad lounge, where Denise wanted the mixer to be held. For another, I couldn’t imagine most of these people knowing each other.
Sherry and the Alumni Association had provided Denise with a checklist of things to think about when she had stepped forward to be a class organizer, and they were very particular about how actual printed invitations were more successful than email invitations. Denise was determined to foot the bill for the mixer herself, instead of asking people to send in a contribution, so I couldn’t see her wanting to invite more than a hundred strangers. It’s not like anyone in grad seminars had actually known any of t
he Honours students. They were a tribe unto themselves.
I pulled the papers together and thumped them straight into a tidy pile. Denise would have to be the one to decide if we would only target MAs and PhDs, or if we would open it up to Honours English grads. But then, what about double Honours folks? A lot of people had done English/French or English/Comparative Literature or English/Classics. In fact, going through this list was making me feel entirely inadequate.
I pulled my venetian blinds shut, and debated turning on a light or two and watching some television. My immediate reaction was to yawn, and I took it as a sign to get to bed.
Perhaps I was leaving too many decisions for another day. My sleep was restless and my dreams vivid and disturbing. I woke up feeling as if I’d run a marathon. Away from a killer with a shotgun. My sheets and nightshirt were drenched in sweat.
My subconscious was trying to tell me something.
I had to figure out what was happening with the new Margaret Ahlers book before strangers from my past started showing up on campus.
Someone out there knew things I figured only I was privy to. I had to figure out who, and just how much they knew. And whether or not they knew that I knew anything.
Hilary Quinn had killed herself because she thought my knowing meant I would tell the world her secret. If someone else out there thought I had a secret about Margaret Ahlers that might make problems for this new book, then maybe my dreams were trying to tell me something.
Maybe someone out there was dangerous.
26.
It took riffling the list in her face to show her the vast number of highlighted names, but Denise finally settled on our sending out mixer invites only to Grad Studies in English who had already indicated they’d be coming back for Homecoming, and BA Honours in English who had graduated within a three-year span on either side of our graduating year.
“That way, we’ll have possibly seen each other in the hallways,” she reasoned.
Another Margaret (The Randy Craig Mysteries Book 6) Page 13