Was he about to admit that he had tried to kill Gus? Oh God, she didn’t want to hear it “Perhaps we belong to a doomed profession,” she said, “people who make unfortunate mistakes in marriage.” She essayed a smile, one more comradely than she’d ever have considered sending his way. “I’m divorced, and you’re separated.” Or was it a mistake to remind him of his wife, considering that he might have killed Mary Ellen too? Sarah fought to keep her terror from showing. “I suppose all we can do is get on with our lives.”
“I must tell you, Sarah, that you’re a poor dissembler. I’m sure Gus has already bragged about his affair with my wife.”
Sarah could feel her own face stiffening with alarm. The admission she didn’t want to hear was coming, the admission of murder. Karl was flushed, rage shining in his eyes, his mouth set in a fierce grimace.
“How could she consider offering what was mine — “ he snarled. “Her body was mine! And she gave it to your disgusting husband.”
“I — I — didn’t realize,” Sarah stammered. “Perhaps — she was — unhinged by her association with that sect.”
“Yes, that sect. My God, that any woman would dare to humiliate me by associating with a group of crackpot fanatics.”
Sarah nodded quickly. “It must have seemed very strange,” she said, feigning sympathy, hoping to get him onto the subject of Mary Ellen’s church. “I understand they believe in faith healing as well as — as creation science.”
He nodded. “They probably rolled around on the floor, talked in tongues, her among them.”
“Then you never actually attended one of their services?”
“Of course not.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to myself,” Sarah agreed, wondering if now was the time to jump up and make a dash for the front door. But no, he’d locked it and, she thought, taken the dead bolt key with him. She had to keep him talking while she thought of some other way to escape. “I’m afraid I’m not a religious person myself. I don’t really understand the impulse to join even the most ordinary denomination. Were you ever religious?”
“Are you trying to distract me, Sarah?”
She manufactured a look of surprise.
“I ask because you’ve never manifested any interest in my beliefs before.”
“Well, Karl, you’re really a very private man. This is the most personal conversation we’ve ever had, but then this is the first time” — her mind whirled hectically, searching for words that would divert him — ”we’ve had a traumatic event in common. I suppose that bad marriages will get people talking.”
“Yes, your marriage wrecked my life. It caused me exceptional embarrassment.”
“I hadn’t heard a thing,” Sarah mumbled.
“Your husband — “
“Ex-husband.”
“ — ex-husband hasn’t boasted about his affair with — “
“Really, Karl. I don’t see Gus if I can help it. I’m sure you can understand why. He did, after all, make that ludicrous accusation of murder when a snail exploded on his plate in my dining room.”
“Too bad it didn’t kill him.”
“And now he’s accused me again.” She wondered unhappily if mentioning the murder had been a mistake. Since she had, she couldn’t very well drop the subject, so she said, “As you pointed out, he’s responsible indirectly for bringing me into embarrassing contact with the police and costing me a great deal of money. I don’t suppose it was his fault that the other person was killed in his apartment, but frankly I never intend to say another word to Gus McGlenlevie as long as I live.”
“Yes, as long as you live.” He paused, as if he were considering how long that might be.
“And I do want to thank you for your offer when I was in jail. It was very kind of you.” And an amazing piece of hypocrisy if her arrest was Bonnard’s fault.
“Stop trying to change the subject, Sarah. I don’t believe that McGlenlevie hasn’t told you about his fling with Mary Ellen. Men like that can’t keep their mouths shut about their sexual exploits.”
“Believe me, Karl, I’d never have known if you hadn’t — “
“It has undoubtedly occurred to you that I might be the person who mistakenly killed — what was his name? — Margreaves.”
She wanted to deny that she’d had any such thought, but couldn’t quite get it out.
“I don’t believe that you’ve come here to see Mary Ellen about the departmental picnic. She told everyone at the last prayer meeting that she was going on a religious retreat. In fact, I heard her tell you, so stop lying to me, Sarah. It won’t do you a bit of good.” His hand had closed over the fire shovel. “You can’t fool me any more than she could. I heard her talking to him on the telephone. That’s how I found out, listening on the extension. The silly twit took a call from him when I was in the house. So I followed her.” His eyes had narrowed, as if he were watching himself tracking Mary Ellen. “Every time she left the house without me, I followed her. All those church meetings. I was sitting outside. To be sure that’s where she was going. But Tuesdays it wasn’t church. Tuesdays she was meeting your husband.”
The venom in his voice made Sarah shiver.
“Then I followed her every Tuesday for a month, and while I was sitting outside that apartment building, while your husband was screwing my wife, I made my plans. Brilliant plans. I made sure the police would never know exactly when he was killed. And all the evidence would point to you. You’d be arrested. And you were. I had a problem, and I found the most logical solution. The only mistake I made was killing the wrong man.”
His fist closed so tightly over the fire shovel that Sarah could see the whitened knuckles from her chair.
“He deserved to die. The young fool. Imitating McGlenlevie — the beard, the T-shirt that said ‘A Poet Is a Metaphor for Good Sex.’ How was I to know it wasn’t McGlenlevie?
“I should have realized that McGlenlevie would get tired of Mary Ellen and want to escape from her. That was my mistake. I should have anticipated that he’d get out of town as soon as the semester was over. I didn’t think about that part of it carefully enough. But my one mistake can be rectified. My second plan will be even more brilliant than my first.”
He smiled at Sarah. “Do you know what I’m going to do first, Madam Chairwoman?”
Now thoroughly frightened, Sarah shook her head.
“I’m going to bash your head in, just the way I did that stupid boy’s. That was very carefully planned so it would look like you’d done it. Did I tell you that?”
He’s demented, Sarah thought. He can’t even remember what he’s said.
“If I’d just got the right person, I’d have Mary Ellen back, and you can be sure I’d make her very, very sorry that she ever soiled herself in Angus McGlenlevie’s bed. You’d have gone to jail, and I’d have taken over as chairman, which is as it should be. Women have no business chairing departments. They have no organizational skills, no flair for leadership, no . . . ”
Sarah felt trapped. She was at a physical disadvantage because she was smaller than he, because even if she tried to defend herself, she had no experience with physical violence, and because she was enfolded in this deep, low chair with no weapon to use against a man who already held the implement with which he intended to crush her skull. Although she kept her eyes on Karl Bonnard, waiting for the moment when he stopped ranting about women and sprang at her, she concentrated on her peripheral vision. There was nothing within reach to the left of her.
“But all those mischances can be remedied,” said Karl.
To the right on a small end table stood a table lamp with a tall, slender brass base and an antique satin shade.
“This time,” said Karl, “I have a plan that won’t fail.”
The lamp, thought Sarah, was probably heavy, heavy enough to fend him off if she could wield it with any authority.
“I’m going to use Mary Ellen,” said Karl. “She’s going to be the means of killing you all.”
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br /> But the lamp might be too heavy, Sarah realized, noting with a sort of detached relief that Mary Ellen must be alive if she figured in Karl’s plans. Sarah acknowledged to herself that seated as she was, she might not be able to sweep the lamp off the table one-handed, and how could she get out of the chair and grasp it with two hands before he hit her?
“Mary Ellen’s going to call McGlenlevie and get him over here.” Karl smiled with satisfaction.
“Why would she agree?” asked Sarah. The longer she kept him talking the better.
“Because she’s terrified of me, but she’ll believe me if I tell her that I want to keep her alive to make her pay for what she’s done.”
She might indeed, thought Sarah, wondering whether Karl had always harbored that strain of calculating violence.
“I just have to choose the most likely murderer in the murder-suicide scenario. It can’t be McGlenlevie unless you know of some reason he might have killed his postdoctoral fellow. Can you suggest anything, Sarah?”
“I don’t know.” He was playing with her — enjoying her terror, but still — the longer she could keep him talking, keep him involved in his cruel game, the longer she’d stay alive. Concentrate, Sarah, she told herself. Brass lamps were all very well, but her intelligence had always been her best weapon. She ought to be able to outthink Karl Bonnard — at least for a while. A murder-suicide scenario, he’d said.
“What’s the matter, Sarah? Don’t tell me you’ve run out of ideas. All those brilliant scholarly articles, and now you can’t come up with a thing, can you?”
He was wrong, she thought, applying her mind to the problem; she’d offer him enough options to keep him occupied until nightfall if she had to. He planned to kill all three — Gus, Mary Ellen, and herself — making two deaths look like murder and one suicide. She did a quick calculation of the number of plans that could entail. And then one had to factor in not only alternate plans, but alternate motivations. Suddenly she felt more confident. Math could be applied even to murder. “I suppose Gus might have been irritated with Margreaves if Margreaves took over one of the volleyball girls,” she suggested. “Margreaves was assistant coach of that team. Maybe they were competing for the affections of the players.”
“That sounds like McGlenlevie,” Karl agreed.
Sarah had no idea whether it sounded like Margreaves, but Karl didn’t know that. “Then he’d kill Mary Ellen and me because — “ She stopped, thinking desperately. “Because — “
“You’re being stupid, Sarah. McGlenlevie would do it because he was tired of both of you! Because women are irritating, inferior creatures, and men get tired of them. But that’s not a good enough story, Sarah. You’ll have to do better if you want to stay alive long enough to see this through to its solution.”
“I suppose Mary Ellen might have killed Margreaves by mistake. Maybe she didn’t know Gus had left town. She hadn’t heard from him. Terribly angry, she went to see him. Used her key. Hit Margreaves with something while his back was turned, thinking he was Gus.”
“I’m not sure she has the guts. We can’t have the police saying, ‘Oh, that one’s not guilty. She hasn’t the guts to murder anyone.’”
“The woman-scorned motivation is very traditional, very convincing.” Sarah was again trying to estimate how much that lamp might weigh and whether or not she could twist her body in the chair to grasp it with both hands.
“I suppose that’s possible.” Bonnard didn’t look convinced. “That would explain why she kills him this time, but what about you? Why does she kill you?”
“She — he — he told her he was breaking off the relationship, that he wanted to remarry me. In a fit of jealous fury she — “
“I’d never have guessed you had such a melodramatic imagination, Sarah.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she conceded. “And then there’s no way to be sure the police understand the whole story. Since it’s not true, there’ll be no evidence.”
“I’ll be around. When all of you are dead, I’ll be here like the last actor to speak in a Shakespearian tragedy. I’ll be your Greek chorus.”
“But how would you explain knowing?”
“Let’s see. Maybe you told me that Gus was after you to remarry him. Two colleagues exchanging personal confidences.”
No one would ever believe she had confided in Karl Bonnard, Sarah decided, but she said nothing. “Would it be prudent to admit that you knew about Mary Ellen’s infidelity?”
“Not before today — I wouldn’t have known before today. I’ll tell the police that she called me — no, I called her — from Alamogordo. The concerned husband, trying to find his unbalanced wife. I went to her mother’s house to look for her, you see, after I’d found that she left the retreat. That much is true. Then I’ll tell the police that I called to see if she’d returned home, and her confession spilled out, her infidelity, her plans to kill you, the rival for his affections, and McGlenlevie, her fickle lover.”
“Yes, but did you actually call here? The telephone companies have long-distance records, don’t they? And then the police will want to be sure that she was in town when Margreaves was killed.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” said Bonnard. “I made sure that they couldn’t tell when he died. That was not only very smart of me but very satisfying. To watch the flesh disappearing from his bones, avariciously devoured. I wiped out almost every trace of him, and then I covered up how it was done — so they couldn’t trace the method to me.”
She supposed he meant the unslaked lime that he had charged to her computer account, but he hadn’t covered up having used the lime. Of course, he was half crazy; she couldn’t expect everything he said to make sense.
“I think I should make you the triple murderer, Sarah,” Karl decided. “That would be the most satisfying.”
He was smiling, swinging the heavy shovel. She could almost feel it connecting with her skull. “You’d have to presuppose that I mistook Margreaves for Gus, which isn’t likely.”
“Yes. Well, if you opened the door yourself and hit him on the back of the head before he turned around, it wouldn’t be any different from the scenario you proposed with Mary Ellen as murderer.”
“Except that she had a key; I didn’t.”
“You tried before to kill him and came close to being arrested; the police did arrest you this time. If it turns out to be you, after all, think of all the criticism they’ll take for letting you go when McGlenlevie returned. All the law-and-order advocates will scream about the police and courts turning dangerous criminals loose. I like it.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll pin all the murders on you? You’ll be the last one alive.”
“My dear, Sarah, I’m out of town. Nobody knows I’m here. I am, in fact, registered at a motel in Alamogordo, waiting for a call from Mary Ellen or her mother. I’ll actually be back there tonight.”
“Oh, I see. That is clever.”
“Yes, I thought so. Now, back to you. Mary Ellen has a key to McGlenlevie’s apartment. And I have a key. That’s how I got in. With a copy of her key. So I’ll just put my copy with your fingerprints on it in your purse. Simple.”
“But wouldn’t the police have found my key when they searched my apartment?”
“We’ll just assume that you cleverly hid it somewhere and that it now turns up when they search your purse. You missed killing McGlenlevie on your first try — with the snail. And your second try. My, you’re a very inefficient murderer, Sarah. You’ll find Gus here with Mary Ellen. Say, in bed. And kill them. Jealousy. Just as you tried to kill him the first time over his new fiancée.”
“But why would I come here — to your house?”
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