Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  “Tell me what you know about how the boy died. He was up in the hills behind campus?” Annie took one of the soft lemon sponge cakes Kathleen had brought with the tea and began to nibble on it. The little sprout seemed to like soft sugary desserts.

  “He was part of a group that went camping. I believe they left campus Friday afternoon and were to return Sunday evening. Joseph LeConte, the brother of the university president, often takes students for camping trips in the Contra Costa range of mountains…whenever there is good weather. He’s the geology and natural sciences professor, so these excursions are sort of field trips. I gather that a couple of other professors often go as well…sometimes with their wives or children. They bring horses, tents, and supplies and spend time collecting different specimens—flowers, insects, and such—and studying rock formations. I’ve often thought these camping trips sounded like fun, but, of course, I can’t miss work.” Laura paused, her eyes troubled.

  “Do you know who was on this particular trip?” Annie interjected, hoping to keep Laura talking.

  “Ned told us that there were three professors. Professor LeConte and two other faculty members—Instructor Royce, the odd redhead I told you about who teaches the freshman English classes, and Professor Sanders, who is the senior English literature professor. Oh, and someone said LeConte brought two of his children, his young son Joseph and his older daughter Caroline. If so, Caroline’s friend, Helen Gompertz, who is the daughter of the Spanish professor at Berkeley, probably went as well because Caroline and Helen seem inseparable. They are both in my freshman literary classes. They seem nice enough, although they tend to keep to themselves. Must be hard to be a student when your father is on the faculty.”

  “I can understand that. You’ve mentioned Sanders before. Is he the professor who gives the special lectures on Fridays?”

  “Yes, he’s quite a favorite with the freshmen…mostly because he’s never boring. I don’t know if either Royce or Sanders brought their wives on this trip. Royce is newly married, so I wouldn’t be surprised if his wife came. From what I’ve heard about Sanders’ wife, however, I don’t quite picture her tramping up and down hill and dale and sleeping in a tent. As for which other students were there, besides Willie Caulfield, Ned only mentioned Elliot Sinclair and Bart Keller, two of his Zeta Psi brothers. They are the ones who told Ned about what happened when they returned to the fraternity house. He said the reason they didn’t make it back to Berkeley until early this morning was because everyone was forced to wait until the county sheriff arrived and supervised the removal of the body.”

  “So what did happen?”

  “According to Ned, when everyone got up Sunday morning, Willie wasn’t in camp. At first no one paid much attention, thought he was answering the call of nature or perhaps had gone for an early morning walk, although that sounds unlikely. Then, when he hadn’t reappeared by the time they had packed up camp and were ready to take off, everyone began to look for him.”

  “You said they found him at the bottom of a cliff? Was it near to the camp?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that it must have been quite a fall, since it took Professor LeConte, who is a skilled mountaineer, some time to get down to him, only to find that Willie was dead.”

  “And you think that his death was somehow related to Grace’s death.”

  “I don’t know, Annie.” Laura’s voice rose to a wail, and tears began to spill onto her cheeks. “I wish I could believe it wasn’t related…”

  Annie said softly, “Look, my dear, I can hear that Kathleen’s at the door. Why don’t you go wash your hands and face in preparation for your meal? We have all evening to discuss this, and you know that getting a bit of food into you will help.”

  Laura nodded mutely and went over to the washstand so her back was to the door when Kathleen entered. As the young maid moved plates onto the table, Annie asked Kathleen if she could help her go use the facilities, thereby giving her sister-in-law some time to compose herself. The tiny water closet that was carved out of the back second floor hallway had become increasingly difficult for Annie to maneuver in with the door completely closed…and she appreciated Kathleen’s help in raising her skirts and petticoats and helping her sit down and get back up again.

  No one had warned Annie that in the last months of her pregnancy she would feel like an old lady. The elderly Moffet sisters were more agile than she was right now. At night, or when she was alone in her room, she just used the old-fashioned chamberpot and thanked her stars she didn’t have to go down the steep back stairs to reach the old outhouse that still stood in the back yard.

  Once she returned to her room and Kathleen had gone down to the kitchen, she let Laura make inroads into her roast beef sandwich, while she related inconsequential gossip about the different boarders. Once Laura finished eating, Annie said, “Tell me exactly why you suspect there is a connection between Willie’s death and whatever happened to Grace.”

  Laura stared for a minute into her tea cup. “For one thing, last week Caro and I discovered that when Grace was a freshman, she wrote anonymous letters that got published in the short-lived, anti-fraternity paper I told you about, the Oestrus. We also learned that Willie knew about this and told some of his fraternity brothers, so we have proof that more than the ending of her engagement was behind her unhappiness.”

  “And you believe these letters explain why some of the Zetas didn’t like Grace and gave her a hard time.”

  “Annie, I haven’t had the chance to tell you what else we learned. Things went much further than just a few fraternity men making cutting comments, which most of us women face every day as we go between classes.”

  Laura went on to tell her an involved story about the class of ’81, their out-of-control hazing, a shooting, and something she called the “Junior Exhibition Day Bogus Program” that culminated in mass suspensions and a faculty rule temporarily forbidding fraternities on campus.

  She concluded, “This fall, all of this would be still fresh in the minds of students, particularly members of the class of ’81 who were fraternity members. They would see anyone who was associated with the Oestrus as their enemy, but most of the former editors have graduated.”

  Annie nodded. “I can see why you believe someone like Miss Atherton, who actually wrote anti-fraternity letters to this paper and had the audacity to be engaged to one of their fraternity brothers, would be a target for their anger.”

  Then Laura described how they learned about the scraps of Grace’s letters to the Oestrus that were part of the vandalism directed against this year’s Junior Exhibition Day and how this was the event that finally ended Grace’s engagement to Willie Caulfield.

  “In other words, the fraternity men had achieved their purpose, breaking up Willie and Grace.”

  “Oh, no. We think their goal was to make her so frightened and unhappy that she would leave school. Otherwise, the harassment would have stopped when the engagement ended, but a few days later, something worse happened.” Laura told her about the substitution of a fake essay at the literary society that exposed Grace to a very public humiliation.

  Annie imagined the young woman, already feeling nervous about speaking in front of a large audience, coming upon the paragraphs of nonsense. This would be a student’s worst nightmare, like the bad dreams you have about showing up for an exam and not recognizing any of the questions.

  She said, “How awful for her! And this happened in November? And you think this is why she returned home?”

  “I’m sure it played a role. But Caro is convinced that something even more upsetting must have happened. She says her impression was that her cousin was more than embarrassed, she was utterly distraught when she got home.”

  “I still don’t see how this relates to Mr. Caulfield’s death.”

  Laura’s face crumpled again. She visibly tried to get back in control and said, “You see, Caro saw Willie right before he left for the camping trip, told him we knew about the lette
rs, the harassment, and the fake essay. She accused him outright of having a role in Grace’s subsequent illness and death.”

  “How did he respond?”

  “Caro said for a moment he seemed genuinely upset, but he quickly began to downplay what happened, saying that Grace had over-reacted to mere pranks.”

  “So he didn’t express any remorse?”

  “Not according to Caro. He said he was sorry, but mostly he argued that what happened wasn’t that bad and that he didn’t want to get his fraternity brothers in trouble, and at the end, he said he believed there was some mysterious person who acted behind the scenes who was really to blame. Finally, she told him that if he didn’t provide her the names of the leaders in the campaign against Grace, she would go to the university authorities.”

  “Oh, my. Given that the last time the campus authorities were brought in over…what did you call it…the Bogus Program, the result was suspensions, that must have gotten his attention. What did he say?”

  “He needed time to think, make sure he wasn’t implicating someone who was innocent. But he did agree to see Caro today, but then…”

  Annie saw Laura’s lip begin to quiver, so she leaned over and took her hand. “No wonder you are upset. It would be hard not to jump to the conclusion that there is some sort of connection between Caro’s conversation with him and his death. But it really could be coincidental. Just an accident.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Do you really think he might have thrown himself over the cliff on purpose? From everything you’ve just said, the young man doesn’t sound like the kind of person who was going to end his life because he felt guilty about the death of a young woman…no matter what his previous feelings for her had been. Instead, he sounds like the kind of person who would spend the weekend coming up with more and more excuses for why neither he nor his friends had any responsibility for what happened to Miss Atherton.”

  Laura took a deep breath and said, “That’s what I said to Caro this morning, when she suggested the possibility of suicide. She is a hard person to read, but I could tell she was really shaken by the news of his death. Then she said something that I can’t get out of my head. She said that if he’d been telling the truth about there being a single person who planned the whole thing, couldn’t that person have every reason to do whatever was necessary to ensure Willie never had his meeting with her?”

  Chapter 22

  Late Monday evening, March 14, 1881

  Berkeley

  “The Coroner also dilates severely upon the cowardice and crime of suicide, and advocates the severe punishment of those who attempt and fail.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 1880

  Caro couldn’t sleep.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Grace as she looked the morning she’d last seen her, hunched shoulders, the pale cheeks etched with lines of pain, the blue eyes staring sightlessly. At the time, she’d vowed she would find the people responsible for doing this to her cousin and make them pay.

  But I never meant for someone else to die…

  She sat up and put her pounding head in her hands, then shivered. Nights were cold here when the wind swept off San Francisco Bay, and the attic wasn’t that well insulated.

  She pulled Grace’s wool shawl around her shoulders, leaned over to light the candle beside her bed, and made her way to the table stacked with books and papers. Once there, she lit the lamp, throwing the attic room into stark relief. She looked at Grace’s trunk, its open lid showing it was only half-filled. She had spent the weekend going through all of Grace’s clothes in her attempt not to think about what Willie Caulfield was going to tell her on Monday. Her aunt Jean had requested that she take anything of Grace’s that she wanted and only ship back items that she thought might have personal meaning or her aunt could use, giving away what was left over to some charity.

  She was sending back the nightdresses and petticoats that her aunt Jean had so lovingly embroidered for her daughter, a thick wool cape, and a perfectly good purse, as well as miscellaneous gloves and scarves. She was keeping the light blue shawl she was wearing that had her cousin’s initials, as well as the set of tortoiseshell hair combs that she knew had belonged to their grandmother. She’d also set aside a dark brown shawl that she thought Laura might like, thinking again about Grace’s admonition in that last letter to turn to Laura Dawson for help.

  As for Grace’s other clothing, she had been so petite, nothing would fit anyone Caro knew. Her plan, then, was to ask the Reverend Mason which charities she should donate these things to, giving her a good excuse to meet with him.

  She sighed.

  She should have seen Reverend Mason before confronting Willie. She knew from Grace’s letters that Willie had started going to Mason’s church with her last year. And surely Grace would have confided her troubles to the minister, the man who had persuaded her to come to Berkeley, the man who told her she had a moral responsibility to do so.

  Caro had been going to see the reverend last January, but then her cousin’s death intervened. So why hadn’t she made arrangements to see him as soon as she got back in town? She’d been too impatient to pursue the leads she and Laura had found.

  Caro shivered again.

  She looked at the books that still sat on the shelves lining one wall, left in disarray from the quick search she’d done last Thursday. If she couldn’t sleep, she could at least start to sort through those books, deciding which ones she would keep or offer to Laura, which ones to send back to Nebraska. Maybe she’d find something that would help her understand her cousin’s flight home. The more she thought about what they had discovered so far, the less likely it appeared to her that simple hazing, even the literary society fake essay, was enough to explain why Grace went fleeing out into a Nebraska snowstorm or why Willie might feel so guilty about what had happened that he would decide to end his own life.

  Chapter 23

  Tuesday morning, March 15, 1881

  Berkeley

  “This antagonism culminated in the establishment of a college paper—the Oestrus, the organ of this class of students, and the attempted formation of a secret anti-secret society!” 1880 Blue and Gold Yearbook

  Laura walked into the restaurant attached to the Golden Sheaf Bakery, and Caro thought the younger woman looked like she hadn’t gotten any more sleep than she had last night.

  Caro said to Laura as she sat down, “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered us coffee and scones? I decided I needed something stronger than their oolong tea this morning.”

  Taking off her gloves, Laura replied, “A very good idea. I confess I was starting to nod off in Royce’s class, although he didn’t look all that wide awake, either. I wonder if he would be willing to talk to either of us about what happened during the camping trip?”

  Caro looked around the restaurant, glad to see that none of the nearby tables held any students, and she said quietly, “Before we go any further, I must tell you I would understand perfectly if you decided you don’t want to continue to help me…I mean, given what’s happened.”

  “You mean, in case your conversation with Willie caused his death?”

  Right to the point. So rare to find someone who doesn’t beat around the bush.

  Caro nodded. “I as much as told him that he and his fraternity friends had caused Grace’s death.”

  “And you think he felt so guilty he decided to throw himself off a cliff?”

  “It is a possibility.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you. And the very idea is awful. I won’t pretend that possibility doesn’t upset me. But, as my sister-in-law reminded me last night, Willie Caulfield doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would feel so guilty about anything that he would kill himself. Isn’t it possible he talked to someone either before he left campus or on the camping trip? Told them what you said. And that person made sure he wouldn’t get a chance to talk to you again.” Laura paused for a heartbeat. “In that case, his death wasn’t accid
ental or suicide. It would be the result of murder.”

  The word hung there, in the air, incongruous in the midst of the restaurant’s mid-morning chatter.

  Caro took a deep breath and said, “If you believe that is what could have happened, then there is even greater reason for you to bow out. This is my fight, not yours.”

  Laura leaned towards her. “Oh, Caro, you don’t know me very well if you think I would draw back now. Someone hurt your cousin very badly. I want to find out who was responsible, to make sure they don’t have the chance to hurt someone like that again. Willie’s death makes it even more important to pursue the truth. Unless his death was purely accidental, which strains credulity, then whether he died at his own hand or that of another’s, he can be counted as another victim of whomever went after Grace.”

  Caro’s spirits lifted, and she realized how worried she’d been that Laura was going to walk into the restaurant this morning and tell her all the reasons she felt they should abandon their investigation. Suddenly very hungry after a night without sleep, she cut a large slice of her scone and said, “Then I think you need to see what I discovered.”

  Caro opened her purse and extracted a small pile of bits of paper of different sizes and lay them on the table.

  Laura picked up the piece on top and said, “Are these the scraps of Grace’s letters to the Oestrus that Chad gave to you? Did you find some clue in them we missed?”

  “No, these are different, although some belong to the articles we have already seen. I found them squirreled away in one of her old texts.”

  “Ah, the ones that Chad saw Grace collect and put in her pocket.”

  “That’s what I assume, but look at the ones that aren’t newsprint. They seem to be notes written by hand on paper from a notebook. I don’t think they were all written by the same person, because the handwriting and the kind of ink that was used varies.”