Medieval Murders

by Aaron Stander

“Pennington said that in recent years he’s the only one that’s ever in the carillon other than the maintenance people. The public tours stopped years ago, something about the stairs and lighting, a question of safety and liability. He said that he used to give graduate students keys so they could practice, but he said these days few students want to learn how to play a carillon. Then he told me when he’s dead, they’ll just put some long haired kid up there with an electric guitar and big speakers.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?”

  “I had to. He wanted to know why the police were so interested in who had keys. I told him and could tell the news upset him.”

  “Well that’s understandable. What a violation of his space.” Ray paused for a long moment, then asked, “What else?”

  “I’ve got prints for Bensen, and they matched the ones on the key and the chair. I’ve also had a phone conversation with Dr. Gutiérrez.”

  “And,” said Elkins.

  “She wanted you to know about an interesting finding.”

  “Okay?”

  “Gutiérrez said she found partially dissolved calcium tablets in Bensen’s stomach.”

  “What?”

  “Calcium tablets, you know, women, osteoporosis. It looks like Bensen had her vitamins and minerals with her breakfast. So why would you bother if you were going to kill yourself?”

  “Who knows? We’re all such creatures of habit.” Elkins paused and sipped his coffee. “Or she hadn’t planned to kill herself.”

  “So what are you thinking, a capricious act? She decided to kill herself on a whim sometime after breakfast?”

  “If this was suicide, it wasn’t capricious. She had somehow acquired a key, thought about how she was going to do it. That wouldn’t have been her first trip in. But what if this was a murder?”

  “We don’t have any evidence.” She looked and asked with emphasis, “Do we?”

  “Well, no, but we always have to keep that possibility out there.”

  “For a reasonable time,” said Char. “But if there’s no evidence to the contrary, you’ve got to reach some kind of… Looking at your face I can tell you’re not comfortable.”

  “I just have this feeling, and I don’t have data to support it. Until we do, we keep saying it’s an apparent suicide. Anything else?”

  Pascoe flipped through the papers again, reading as she went. She looked up and said, “It seems to me there was one more thing, but I can’t remember it. Oh yes, Bensen’s car. It was parked in the main campus faculty parking ramp.”

  Elkins nodded to signal that he took in the information.

  “You have someone waiting to see you,” said Pascoe. “I told her I’d make sure she was next.”

  “Who?”

  “Reda Rudd. Says she’s from the Daily.”

  “Reda, haven’t seen her during the summer months. She’s the one who wrote the exposé of the athletic department and the university police. And,” he added, “she created an opportunity to bring one of the criminal justice program’s top graduates back to campus. Wave her in on your way out.”

  “Sure will. And,” she gave Elkins a mocking smile, “I’ll thank her for giving you the opportunity to persuade me to take a major pay cut for the honor of returning to my alma mater.”

  “Cost of living is less here. You’ll be ahead in the long run. Plus, when you start your Ph.D., you’ll get a tuition waver.”

  “I can hardly wait,” she retorted. “I just don’t have enough to do.”

  “Reda, come on in. Want some coffee?”

  Reda—wearing sandals, white shorts, and a light-blue T-shirt, her red hair tied at the back and hanging past her shoulders—pulled a bottle of diet Coke from her pack. “I can’t stand coffee. I don’t know how you people drink it, especially first thing in the morning.”

  “Just one of the many vices of the older generation. How was your summer?” Elkins asked.

  “It was okay. I visited my parents. It was good to see them, but a month in Ames is....” She let the sentence trail off and flopped her hand open and out to complete her meaning. “Then I came back here and finished an incomplete from spring term. How about you?”

  “I was here most of the summer. I took two weeks off to spend some time with family and some old friends.”

  “Where?”

  “Northern Michigan, God’s country. So what brings the News Editor of the Daily here so early in the term?”

  “Well, first, News Editor was last year; this year I’m Editor-in-Chief. And obviously the big story is the death of Professor Bensen. We’ll resume publication on Monday and that will be front page, even though it’s week-old news. She was a leading figure in the women’s movement on campus, and there was a lot of unhappiness last year with how she was treated by the university. You know, the tenure thing and all.” She paused, her tone changed. “I’ve only got bits and pieces of what happened. What can you tell me?”

  “It looks like a suicide,” said Elkins. “We’re being very thorough with our investigation, and at this time we have no evidence that it is anything else.”

  “You’ve always been honest with me, not like Chancellor Pearson, and I know you’ll do a very professional job. But regardless of the evidence, you know a lot of people are saying that she must have been murdered. Some of the more wacko radical feminists contend that her death was ordered by the administration and carried out by the university police. There’re many crazies out there, lots of anger, hatred, and suspicion.”

  “How are you going to report it?” asked Elkins.

  “I’ve drafted an article. Will you take a look at it and tell me what you think?”

  “Sure. Do you have it with you?”

  Reda pulled a sheet from her pack and handed it across the table. “That’s a mock-up of the front page.”

  Elkins read the article.

  Controversial Campus Figure Dies.

  Foul Play Not Ruled Out.

  Sheila Bensen, a popular and controversial member of the English Department for the last seven years, was killed Tuesday morning in a fall from the Patriots’ Memorial Carillon.

  Although foul play has not been ruled out, police currently believe that the cause of death was suicide

  Professor Bensen was a leader in women’s issues on campus and in the community for many years. Her activities on behalf of women and the minorities have often angered the university’s male-dominated power structure.

  Last June the board of governors upheld the university’s decision to deny tenure to Professor Bensen. Observers of the campus political scene feel the board’s action was a signal that they would continue to support the reactionary policies of Chancellor Pearson’s administration.

  Brian Battleson, leader of Students for Social and Political Justice (SSPJ), was quoted after the June meeting as saying, “This was the board giving permission to Pearson to continue the oppression of women and racial and sexual minorities. This university and this state have a long history of supporting the forces of repression. This is one more example of these forces winning out.”

  Sherry Tompkins, President of Sisters for a Shared Future (SSF), opined at the same time that the denial of tenure was a clear indication that the glass ceiling is alive and well, and if you buck the system you will get pushed out of the university.

  English chair, Professor Clifford Chesterton, told Daily reporters that Professor Benson had made major contributions to the Department. Among these contributions he listed two new department offerings, Twentieth Century Women’s Literature and Feminist Critical Theory. Further, he noted that although the department had voted not to tenure Professor Benson, her wit, intellect, and bright smile would be missed. Professor Chesterton gave the board the English department’s recommendation that she not be tenured.

  by Reda Rudd

  After he finished, he asked, “Am I just proofreading or do you want me to comment on content?”

  “Content, of course, but I’m always happy to have the
proofreading, too.”

  “I’m not comfortable about the foul play line in the headline, although you handle that in the second paragraph, and most of your quotes are inflammatory. I think this sets the tone for your stewardship as editor,” he said with a smile.

  “Don’t be so damn sarcastic. Do you know how hard it is to get undergraduates to think about anything but beer, football, and sex? Besides, a little controversy early in the year sells lots of annual subscriptions.”

  “I like the article. Especially the fact that I’m not quoted. Pearson would demand to know why I talked to a reporter from the Daily.”

  “See,” said Reda, “we’re considerate of our friends. Besides, you’ll be back to faculty next week.”

  “I wish that were true. My replacement bailed out, and none of the other candidates were acceptable, so Pearson has formed a new search committee. Looks like I’m stuck with this for most or all of the fall semester.”

  “Good,” retorted Reda in almost a cackle, “for once there will be a good relationship between the university police and the press.”

  “Well, terrific,” Ray said as he rolled his eyes. “While you’re here, can you answer some of my questions about Bensen? How well did you know her?”

  “Not well. I was in one of her feminist lit courses, and I saw her at the women’s movement activities that I was covering or participating in.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “About?” asked Reda.

  “Let’s start with the teaching.”

  “She wasn’t a great teacher. I was really interested in the topic, got an ‘A’ in the class, but she wasn’t very good. It’s not that she wasn’t bright or didn’t know the material, but she was never prepared, totally disorganized, and always winging it. When you handed in a paper, you were lucky to ever get it back.”

  “How did she deal with students?”

  “Didn’t like men, that’s for sure. There were two guys in the feminist lit class, I knew one of them quite well, good student, nice person. They both dropped because she treated them like crap. ”

  “Example?”

  “Her view—everything wrong with the world was because of men. It was a kind of craziness. She linked it to testosterone, which she referred to as ‘more deadly than crack.’ If you could get past the loony tunes, she had some interesting things to say. She made me aware of writers I hadn’t heard of, authors I learned to like. So I’m thankful for that.”

  “Outside of class, in women’s groups?”

  “Well, she wasn’t the voice of reason. Her positions weren’t too radical. They were just irrational. If someone disagreed with her, she would accuse her of being co-opted by the male -dominated society. You can never have a discussion with a person like that. It’s like talking to a Bircher.”

  “How did people, let me rephrase, how did women react to her?”

  “They were sort of in a double bind. She was at every meeting, was always there to help with any cause, but was strident and often disruptive. You know what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying that people are glad to have someone who is supportive and works for the cause, but at times that help may come at too high of a cost.”

  “That’s right. Let me go back to the article. I’m not asking for your approval, but is it accurate as to the facts surrounding her death?”

  “Yes. Again, I’m bothered a bit by the headline on foul play. There is no evidence to support that. On the other hand—I can even give you the appropriate verbiage here, I went to one of those ‘writing across the curriculum’ workshops last year—you have a good sense of audience and you have provided your reader with enough background information that they know about Bensen and the events leading up to her death.”

  “You are,” said Reda laughingly, “learning the lingo of the biz, the parlance of the palace, and all that good shit.” Her tone changed from playful to serious. “You really helped me last year with the dope and date-rape articles. I trust you. If this develops into anything, I hope we can work together.” Reda didn’t wait for a response. She climbed out of her chair and gave Elkins a high five before she departed.

  Elkins sat and watched her go down the hall. He had always loved red hair. His first love, a girl in his third grade class, had red hair. And he had always liked white shorts on a shapely woman.

  12

  Elkins sat on the deck and looked out at the fields behind his house. The shadows from the trees in the yard were growing longer as the sun slowly slipped away. He sipped on a glass of ginger ale as he read an article from last week’s New Yorker.

  He took another sip, set the glass down, and looked at it. He worried about drinking, not that it had ever caused any problems in his life. He was aware of the fact that in the last year he had been drinking more, and he had moved from wine to Scotch, but usually never more than a drink or two. His father had died from the long-term effects of alcoholism in his fifties.

  Since Ellen’s death he had developed a pattern of working late and then coming home, preparing dinner, usually frozen dinners warmed in the microwave, having a few drinks, and reading in bed until he fell asleep. The two of them had shared an active social life, attending concerts and plays and going to dinner with friends. Since her death he had become much more isolated.

  Elkins looked around at the deck. Ellen had loved it. She had designed it, and he had built it for her—that was a number of years ago, soon after they bought the house. From early spring to late fall she had insisted on having dinner there if the temperature was even close to tolerable. He used to joke about having dinner in a down jacket. Those were happy times. They would cook together, eat, and tell each other about their day.

  Evenings were now lonely. The house didn’t feel like his anymore, it was more like a motel room. There wasn’t the personal connection. The dwelling was still filled with the furnishings that they had collected together, but somehow that connection was gone.

  He returned to the kitchen and opened another can of soda, then walked into the living room, turned on the stereo, switched on the deck speakers, and put in a disc. The opening movement of the Tchaikovsky piano trio in A minor was under way by the time he got back to the deck. He set the can on the table and looked at his hands, spreading his fingers like a pianist. He wished he had studied music as a child or teenager. The ability to play an instrument would be a comfort now, but he had come to it too late and with too little talent.

  “Drinking alone, that’s a bad sign.”

  Elkins jumped at the sound of the voice.

  “Didn’t mean to frighten you,” said Stephanie Chesterton as she climbed onto the deck.

  “I was lost in thought, didn’t hear you coming.”

  “Are you going to get me a drink, or do I have to get my own?”

  “What would you like?”

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Ginger ale.”

  “Taking the cure, huh? You both had a bit too much to drink the other night.”

  “Well, if I had stopped with the Scotch, but the wine with dinner….”

  “Two bottles of a good Bordeaux.”

  “I wasn’t counting, probably didn’t want to know, and then the cognac. That was the coups de grâce. How did Clifford do?”

  “He was scheduled to meet with the provost at 9:00 A.M. I played the role of the good wife and called the provost’s secretary about 8:45 to say that poor Clifford picked up some horrible intestinal bug and had been up all night. I didn’t get too graphic, just enough to suggest that you didn’t want to get near him while he was contagious.”

  “So did he go in to the office?”

  “He took a sick day, worked from home, and spent most of the afternoon napping. Any more ginger ale?” asked Stephanie, pushing open the screen door.

  “There’s a twelve pack in the refrigerator.”

  A few minutes later Stephanie settled across the table from Ray. She popped the top of the can and slowly poured the soda in
to a glass.

  “So where is Clifford?” asked Ray as he looked across at her. She was wearing a chambray shirt that she had buttoned and tied in a way that covered her while still showing a lot of cleavage. He was attracted to her, had always been, but his commitment to Ellen had always helped him keep his interest in check. Now there was a new reality. It was one more thing he was struggling with, being attracted to women and not knowing how to deal with the attendant emotions. And in the case of Stephanie, the wife of a neighbor and a friend, his feelings were even more uncertain.

  “He went over to the pool to swim lengths, and then he planned to sit in the sauna. He has a theory that it takes a couple of days to boil the poison out of your system.” She paused and looked closely at Ray, then shifted her gaze away, toward the tall corn stalks in the field beyond the subdivision. “I’m worried about Clifford. He’s quite devastated by Bensen’s suicide.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t quite know, but he wonders if he should have tried to mentor Bensen during her early years in the department. He said by the time she was on his radar her future in the department was sealed.”

  “That’s sort of silly. She was a professional, his plate is more than full.”

  “I know,” she said looking back at Ray. “Clifford is so damn noble, he thinks he can fix everything, and he’s burning out. The Bensen suicide may be the proverbial last straw.”

  Ray held her gaze.

  “Sheila made his life miserable for the last several years. She was constantly creating chaos. Last year he was deposed several times by her lawyers. They intimated in their questioning that he had….”

  “I went through a wrongful dismissal suit a few years ago. I know the dance.”

  “Yes, you don’t end up liking lawyers much. And then there are the other problems. The new chancellor is doing his best to defund the humanities, the department has more than it’s share of loonies, and Clifford is getting older. He’s still struggling with some health issues. I think he’s just had it with this job, the university, the town….”