Death in Lovers' Lane

by Carolyn G. Hart

  I laughed too, and felt suddenly relaxed and a little bit ashamed. Maude Galloway and I weren’t so far apart in age. I’d been guilty of approaching her as if she might be dotty or incompetent simply because she was frail.

  “No, Miss Galloway. I don’t think it’s the least bit impolite. I think it’s very honest.”

  “Now.” Her sightless eyes looked toward me with uncanny accuracy. “Why have you come, Mrs.

  Collins? I’ve not been at Thorndyke for many years.”

  “You were Dean Nugent’s secretary, Miss Galloway.” I got out my notebook. She started to work at Thorn-dyke in November of 1975 and Nugent disappeared in March of 1976. She wouldn’t have known the dean well. But she was the last person to admit seeing Darryl Nugent.

  “Oh.” Her voice was soft and sad. “That was such a heartbreaking thing. And so strange. So very strange.”

  “You remember the day he disappeared?”

  “Of course, of course. It was such a difficult day. Do you know about Leonard?”

  I nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “Yes, yes, I do.”

  “Leonard was such a gentle boy. Very quiet, very soft-spoken. I remember he often studied in a little back office when he wasn’t working. He did filing, took messages, that sort of thing. I had just started with the University that fall and Leonard knew where everything was. He was very helpful to me. And I liked him because he reminded me a little of my brother Nate when he was young. Very tall and slim and dark. Such a handsome boy.”

  Maude Galloway’s face was reflective, her sightless eyes half-closed in recollection. “It was such a dreadful shock to all of us, Leonard’s fall. And you know, many people thought it must have been on purpose because he had to climb over those iron bars, and that wouldn’t be easy to do. Now, I’m sure it’s true that young people are very volatile, that their ups are so high and their downs so deep, but I know Leonard didn’t jump.” She shook her head firmly, her silver curls quivering. “Because

  the last time I saw Leonard was just before he left the office on Friday and he was so happy, so excited. And it was on Sunday night or early Monday morning that he died. So what could possibly have happened in such a short time? And he wasn’t a moody boy. He was always pleasant and cheerful. But I’ll never forget the last time I saw him. He showed me a paper he’d just gotten back—I think it was from an English course—and it was marked A-plus. I remember that the teacher had used red ink and made the A-plus so big, an inch big at least. Leonard was so proud and excited. He said he was going to call his folks and tell them. So it must have been an accident, that silly gargoyle.”

  I was learning much here that I hadn’t expected. I had come to find out about Darryl Nugent and I was discovering Leonard Cartwright. I had a sudden picture of the paper and the grade, the slim, darkly handsome boy, and the pleasure he’d shared and the poignancy of knowing, as young Leonard had not, that the sands were running so fast.

  “I see.” And I was having to recast my thoughts. I’d been so certain there had to be a link between the death and the disappearance. But this woman had been there, she’d seen Leonard on Friday afternoon, a happy, excited Leonard. “Did the police talk to you about Leonard?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her white head nodded. “I told them it had to be an accident! And, of course, as dreadful as it was about Leonard, everyone was simply distraught on Tuesday about Dean Nugent. There would have been a lot more talk about Leonard except for the dean being gone.”

  “What do you think happened to Dean Nugent?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.” Her voice rose in bewilderment. “It still seems impossible! I said good night to him. He was sitting at his desk, slumped in his chair, staring across the room. But not as if he were really seeing. He looked dreadful. Of course, he was extremely upset about Leonard. Why, they’d been such good friends, always laughing and having such a good time together.”

  “They were good friends?” I looked at her sharply.

  But there was only kindness and gentleness in her face. “Oh, yes.”

  I didn’t ask the question I was thinking. I felt certain I knew her answer, and I didn’t want to upset her.

  An attendant in a blue jumper stepped into the alcove and looked at us inquiringly. “Do you need anything, Maude?”

  “Oh, no, Sandy. We’re just fine.” Maude Galloway’s sweet smile was as cheering as a daffodil in early April.

  When the attendant moved away, I tried a different tack. “Miss Galloway, what was Dean Nugent like?”

  “Precise. Hardworking. And very charming. That’s to be expected in the position he held. Of course, I didn’t know him well, but I did enjoy working for him. It was such a good-humored office, everyone pleasant, and believe me, I’ve been in offices where that isn’t the case.” She pressed her lips together. “The next dean, well, he was a very difficult man and no one had a good time in his office. I found another position as soon as I could.”

  “Did Dean Nugent seem to be happily married?” I drew a series of question marks on my pad.

  “I think so.”

  Was there just a hint of uncertainty in her voice? I leaned forward.

  “Had he and his wife quarreled?”

  “Oh, no, no, nothing like that. And you see, I never married, so I can’t be sure. But my brother, Nate and his wife, when they were together I had a sense of delight, almost like a nimbus around them.” A faint pink touched her cheeks. “But I know all marriages must be so different. The dean was very proud of his wife and his family and he had their pictures there on his desk, but when he talked to Mrs. Nugent on the phone, well, I never heard that sound—warm and eager and, oh, I don’t know how to describe it, but his voice never sounded full of love, like Nate’s used to when he talked to Sylvia.” She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Do you know what I mean?” she asked doubtfully.

  “I know,” I assured her.

  “But the dean was very, very proud of his family. He was a very proud man.”

  “That last day, do you remember anything that you think could have had a bearing on the dean’s disappearance?”

  Her fragile hands clasped the edge of her afghan. “I’ve thought and thought over the years, and there’s nothing. I said, ‘Good night, Dean. You’ll be going home soon, won’t you?’ I was worried about him. He’d had such a hard day, and I knew he was very tired, very upset. He looked toward me and nodded and said, ‘Yes, Maude. Soon.’ And I went out the door and I never saw him again.”

  I slipped my notebook back into my purse. There didn’t seem to be anything more here.

  And what had I expected or hoped for? The police, of course, must have talked to Maude Galloway many times over the course of the weeks after Dean Nugent’s disappearance.

  I stood.

  With the acuity of the blind, her face lifted.

  “Miss Galloway, I certainly appreciate your—”

  “There’s only one thing.” She sounded uncertain.

  “Yes. That last day?”

  “No. It was the next day, Tuesday. But there was so much to be done and people asking questions, oh, so many people. Very nice men from the police, but so many questions. And they took photographs, the town police and our own campus police. Almost falling over each other. I tried to tell them, but they weren’t interested. They said they would have pictures of everything.” Her hands kneaded the pink wool of the afghan. “And later I tried to tell President Tucker—”

  A bulldozer couldn’t have budged me from that room. I listened, scarcely breathing.

  “—but he said I must be mistaken. By then, of course, so many things had been moved out of the room, the things that belonged to Dean Nugent, to make way for Dr. Pruitt’s furnishings. Dr. Pruitt became acting dean.”

  “Yes?”

  “But I’m just sure that when I went to the office on Tuesday morning, the morning after Dean Nugent disappeared, the rug in front of the fireplace was gone.”

  “The rug in front of the
fireplace?”

  Her laugh was embarrassed. “Of course, I know it doesn’t matter. What difference could it make?”

  “What size was the rug?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t very big. Perhaps eight feet long and three to four feet wide.” Her blind eyes stared emptily at me. “All these years I’ve wondered who took that rug and why. Because”—her pleasant face looked unaccustomedly firm—“I know it was gone the next morning. Even if President Tucker didn’t think so.”

  I met my Monday-morning classes, Advanced Feature Writing at 9 A.M., Editorial Writing at 10 A.M. Shortly before the close of each class, I announced: “If anyone knows anything about Maggie Winslow that might be helpful in investigating her death, I will be in my office at eleven A.M. today and will be glad to speak with you. Or you may make an appointment for another time.” I posted the same announcement on the bulletin board outside The Clarion newsroom.

  Buddy Neville was leaning against my office window when I arrived after my second class. I’d had Buddy in Reporting 101 two years ago. He was small, dark, and always looked dirty. In part, that was because he was one of those men whose beard made a bluish stubble on his cheeks by midday. But his jeans were usually wrinkled and he habitually wore the same shirt, a dark-brown pullover jersey. Buddy didn’t quite smell bad, but there’s nothing attractive about breath sour with last night’s beer and pizza and clothes that have absorbed both sweat and cheap talcum.

  I try to be tolerant about the Buddy Nevilles of the world. But each time I saw him I felt a mixture of impatience and sadness. Impatience, because Buddy was bright and energetic, so why didn’t he

  have the wit to figure out that cleanliness, if not next to godliness, was an essential in the workplace? Sadness, because I figured Buddy came from a slovenly background and I happened to know he held three part-time jobs to finance college and nobody’d ever encouraged him and he was probably bone-tired every day and the effort of clean clothes was just one effort too many.

  “Hi, Buddy.” I unlocked my office.

  He managed a grunt and followed me inside. Unbidden, he immediately slumped in a chair.

  “Coffee?”

  He shook his head. I’d probably have scored if I’d offered cola. I still shudder at what some students choose for breakfast. But I reminded myself cola was caffeine, even if cold and fizzy.

  He rubbed his stubbly cheek. “Mrs. Collins, listen, all that stuff about Maggie’s a lie, that she was screwing Duffy.”

  I suppose my utter surprise must have been clear in my face. I distinctly remembered Buddy’s cruel smile Wednesday night when Rita Duffy careened into the newsroom, clamoring for Maggie and Dennis.

  A dull flush mounted his dark cheeks. “Yeah, I know. I thought it was funny when Duffy’s wife blew in. Duffy’s a jerk. Everybody knows he hustles the babes. But he didn’t get to first base with Maggie. And I never figured anything weird would happen—I mean, that Mrs. Duffy would go psycho. I just figured it was super that Duffy’s ass was going to be in a crack because he was leaning on Maggie, trying to make time. But it wasn’t Maggie’s fault. Listen—I knew her real well. We were in a writing

  group. She told me Duffy was after her and wouldn’t

  take no for an answer.”

  “She told you?”

  Buddy pushed back a strand of lank hair. His eyes flashed. “Yeah, I know. You don’t think anybody as cool as Maggie could be friends with somebody like me. But we were in this writing group together. She was going to be a great writer.” He glared at me as if I’d disagreed. “She thought I was good, too. Real good.”

  I’ve rarely felt more uncomfortable. Yes, I’d not expected the cool, cerebral, fashionable, arrogant Maggie to have a friend like Buddy.

  I’d wronged both Maggie and Buddy.

  I remembered his work. “Maggie was right. You are a very good writer, Buddy. And I know”—I picked my words carefully—“that there’s a real bond between writers. But Maggie may not have told you everything about her and Duffy. She may have been putting a good face on it. She wouldn’t have wanted you to know if she was fooling around with him. Would she?”

  He leaned forward, planting his hands on his thighs. “Mrs. Collins, listen to me. Really listen to me. I tell you, Maggie and I were straight with each other. We showed each other what we wrote. She didn’t even show Eric what she wrote. Not her book. So she didn’t pretend with me. She didn’t have to. And I’ll tell you that Duffy was hot for her. She said she was going to tell him to back off, absolutely.”

  I played devil’s advocate. “The thing is, Buddy, Maggie apparently went out with Dennis a couple of times—”

  “Okay, so she had a drink with him at the Green Owl once or twice, but that didn’t mean anything. Listen, Duffy knew she had a class Wednesday night. I think he left to go after her, one more time. She’d told him no and no. What if Maggie told him this time just to get lost? What if Duffy’s the one who went psycho?”

  What if Duffy’s the one who went psycho?

  I mulled Buddy’s suggestion all the way across town. What, indeed?

  The break-in of Maggie’s apartment had convinced me that Rita was innocent and that Maggie’s murder was somehow tied to one of the unsolved crimes she was investigating. But if Dennis Duffy strangled Maggie, he, too, might have reason to be concerned about what was in her notes and papers, what she might have written down about his unwelcome advances.

  Why, then, would Dennis encourage me to write the series?

  Of course, he might not have expected me to make an unauthorized entry into Maggie’s apartment. And he needed to make it clear that he believed his wife to be innocent.

  And I shouldn’t forget Maggie’s boyfriend, Eric March. If Buddy was right, Eric had no reason for jealousy.

  But Eric had slammed out of the newsroom that night, obviously in search of Maggie, and it didn’t matter whether Rita Duffy’s suspicions about her husband and Maggie were true; it only mattered that Eric thought they could be true. Jealousy is an irrational master. But Eric would have had no reason to break into Maggie’s apartment—unless she kept

  a diary that might record they’d quarreled over her relationship with Duffy.

  Circles within circles within circles.

  I found Kathryn Nugent in a moist warm greenhouse. She held a plastic bottle. Mist sprayed over the ferns from the bottle’s nozzle.

  I smelled dark rich dirt and water and growing plants.

  I studied her through the mist. Darryl Nugent’s once fashionable wife ignored the click of the closing door. Her faded ginger hair hung straight and unadorned around an oval face bare of makeup. And it wasn’t simply the mist that obscured her face. This woman seemed carefully devoid of any scrap of color that would reveal her. She was slightly built, almost swallowed by her oversize man’s flannel shirt. Her jeans, molding softly against bony legs, were so old they had a whitish hue. One knee was ragged. The laces of one muddy red sneaker trailed on the dirt floor.

  It was hard to think mink.

  “Mrs. Nugent?”

  Slowly she turned to look at me. “Yes?” There was no welcome. Her voice was as unrevealing as her pale face.

  I made a quick decision. “I’m going to ask you to help me solve a murder, Mrs. Nugent.”

  She put down the bottle, brushed back a strand of hair with her canvas-gloved hand. “I don’t know anyone who’s been murdered.” She spoke dully, without a flicker of curiosity.

  “The victim is a student of mine. She was looking into three famous unsolved crimes in Derry Hills. I’m Henrietta Collins and I teach journalism

  at the University.” I walked closer and brushed against flowing ferns and felt an icy spritz of water.

  Kathryn Nugent stood straight-legged and stiff. “That girl who wanted to know about Darryl?”

  “Maggie talked to you?”

  “No.” She picked up a garden trowel. “I hung up on her.”

  A vent spewed a sluggish current of warm air. Despite the he
at, my skin prickled.

  “Why did you hang up?”

  “There was nothing to talk about.” She stared at me with empty, lonely eyes. I thought of a photograph I’d seen of her in The Clarion from long-ago happy days. What an enormous toll her husband’s disappearance had taken. There was no trace here of a once vibrant and lovely woman.

  A tabby cat jumped up on the table, nosed against her. She put down the trowel, slipped off her gloves. Her fingernails were cracked and stained. She picked up the cat, nuzzled her face against its striped back.

  “Mrs. Nugent, Maggie was strangled by someone who didn’t want her to write about those old crimes. I know it’s hard for you, but please, help me.”

  The cat squirmed up on her shoulder. She said nothing and reached for the gloves.

  I had a quick inspiration. “You have a daughter, don’t you?” I asked.

  Those blank pale eyes widened. It was the first spark of life I’d seen in her. “Yes. Why?”

  “Maggie was someone’s daughter.”

  She gave a little derisive snort. “Piranhas have parents, too. But who gives a damn?” She leaned forward until the cat jumped onto the plant table. As she straightened up, she glared at me. “I know

  who you are. It said in the paper last week. You’re another one of them. Pulling and sucking and tearing at people, never giving them any peace, any rest. Do you know what it was like, after Darryl disappeared? Call after call after call. Reporters slipping up to me in the grocery store, at the beauty shop, in the gym, at my daughter’s recital, at my son’s basketball games—‘Had you quarreled, Mrs. Nugent?’ ‘Was he having an affair, Mrs. Nugent?’ ‘How was your sex life, Mrs. Nugent?’ ‘Has he called you, Mrs. Nugent?’ ‘Do you have insurance, Mrs. Nugent?’” She clutched the big earth-stained gloves against her chest.

  “Mrs. Nugent, all I want to know is what kind of man your husband was. Won’t you even talk to me about him?”