Majoring In Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  That perfidious Eli, I thought. That young man is going to get a tongue-lashing the next time I see him. I specifically asked him not to talk to Tyler or any other of his friends about the murder. Obviously it proved too hard for him to be discreet and follow my instructions.

  “This kind of speculation is very cruel,” I said. “Professor Newmark’s sister is on campus, and I certainly wouldn’t want her to hear talk of this kind. She wouldn’t find it funny. Please don’t participate in those kinds of discussions. The rumors will go away if no one passes them along.”

  But I was too late. Harriet was cold when I returned Phil Adler’s keys to her.

  “I never thought you would do something so underhanded, Jessica,” she said sternly. “I’ve already received calls from concerned parents today, worrying that there’s a killer on campus. Not only that, one of those dreadful tabloids called Roberta Dougherty to ask if you’d been hired to solve the case. How do they hear such things so fast?”

  I tried to assure her that the rumors had not started with me, but she remained unconvinced. “You were the only one who thought Wes Newmark’s death wasn’t an accident—you and Lorraine—and she doesn’t have much access to the student body.”

  “Harriet, I can’t tell you how sorry I am that the students are joking about Wes’s death, and I promise you I did not start these rumors on campus. In fact, when I found out about it, I pleaded with my class not to discuss Professor Newmark at all, to be considerate of his sister, that a man’s death was nothing to make jokes about.”

  “All very laudable, Jessica, but the rumor started somewhere. Can you deny you have talked to me about murder in connection with Wes’s death?”

  “Well, of course I talked to you about it. And I know you don’t agree. But, Harriet, I believe there’s proof that Wes Newmark’s death was not caused by the tornado. I just need a little more time. Now, whether his murder was premeditated or the result of an impulsive act, I don’t know.”

  Harriet exploded. “Enough, Jessica! I’m gravely disappointed in you. You have no idea the havoc you have set off. It’s very unprofessional, not to mention inconsiderate and ungrateful. Teaching as one of Schoolman’s famous-name professors is a position of great prestige. It is not only an honor, but has provided other writers with a boost to their careers. Now I’m wondering if I am harboring a Judas. I’m completely disheartened that you took advantage of our program for your own purposes. Is this your way of garnering more publicity for your next book?”

  “Harriet, you insult me.”

  “I’ll expect you to finish out the term, and I also expect you not to mention this topic to me again. However, and I say this in all sadness, I won’t be inviting you back for another semester.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Harriet. Nevertheless, it does not alter my convictions. I believe Wes Newmark was murdered, and frankly, I think that should be more of a concern to you than squelching rumors. I’ll hope for an apology when the truth is revealed.”

  I left her office and tried to avoid looking at the shocked faces of her secretary and the other staff members outside the door who’d overheard Harriet’s tirade. I was humiliated and infuriated by her assumption that I would use the death of a colleague to promote myself. However, as I’d just told her, I still believed I was right. Now there was even more pressure to prove it.

  The rumors of Wes Newmark’s murder might be a joke on campus, but they could turn serious at any time, and set off a panic among the students. I understood Harriet’s distress, even though I was upset that she could give even the slightest credence to the notion that I would start a rumor to promote my books. She was hanging on to Schoolman’s reputation, a laudable goal, no doubt, and I could forgive her for that. But would she sacrifice the truth for it? I was beginning to think she would. Worse, I was beginning to wonder about her relationship with Newmark. Eunice Carberra had said Harriet and Newmark might have been involved romantically, if local gossip could be believed. Yet Harriet herself had said unkind words about Wes to me. What was the truth? Until the blowup in her office, it never would have occurred to me that Harriet should be included on any suspect list in Newmark’s murder. Now, I sadly realized, she’d earned a place on that list.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Professor Constantine’s office was a model of neatness. While it was sorely lacking in adequate storage, he had arranged his materials in stacks of color-coded file folders, arrayed along two deep windowsills, on top of a table, and across the end of his desk. The colorful folders gave the room a cheerful appearance and distracted from the sadly worn furniture and frayed rug.

  “Hello, Jessica, what a surprise,” he said when I knocked on the frame of his open door. He came around his desk to greet me, leaning on his cane. “Come in. Come in. Sit down. Tell me how you are. I haven’t seen you since our tryst in the bomb shelter.” He squeezed my hand with his left hand. “The days go by so fast.”

  “I’m doing all right, Professor Constantine,” I said.

  “It’s Archie, you know. We’re old friends now.”

  He led me to a small wooden chair facing his desk. “How are your classes going?”

  “I’m very pleased with them,” I said, taking a seat. “The students are attentive and enthusiastic. Their papers have been fun to read. My colleagues have been very gracious and welcoming.”

  I didn’t add that Harriet Schoolman Bennett was furious with me and had declined to invite me back, or that Schoolman had provided me with a mystery to solve that was consuming much of my days and a good deal of my nights, especially if I included the hours of sleep I lost thinking about it. “I’d say everything is going relatively well.”

  “I’m sure you’re being modest, and that your students are as delighted with you as you are with them,” he said, slowly moving to the chair behind his desk. “How could they not be with such a knowledgeable and charming professor?”

  “You’re a flatterer, Archie.”

  “Not at all. I simply recognize a natural teacher. I knew you would do well as soon as we met. You were so interested in everything around you. It’s my theory that you can’t be a good teacher unless you have a mind open to learning new things yourself. I was impressed with how eager you were to hear about the history of the fallout shelters while we waited out the tornado. We’re lucky to have you on the faculty. I hope the ensuing events haven’t soured you on Schoolman. Tornadoes are rare, you know, and fatalities even rarer. You’re not anxious about it happening again, are you?”

  I wondered if he’d heard the rumors about Wes, but he didn’t mention it and neither did I.

  “I won’t worry as long as I can sit with you in the shelter,” I said.

  “Aren’t you sweet? It will be my pleasure.”

  “Speaking of shelters, you mentioned that you have a map showing where they’re located. I was hoping you’d let me take a look at it.”

  “Certainly. It’s hanging on the wall behind you. You can look all you like. Let me take it down for you.”

  He started to get up, but I waved him back into his seat. “I’ll get it myself,” I said. “It doesn’t look too heavy.”

  “You can put it on this table. The light is good over here.”

  The map in question was encased in a dusty frame. I lifted it from its hook and held it up while Archie rolled his chair over to a round table at the side of his desk and removed a stack of orange and blue files.

  “Let’s lay it down flat,” he said, grabbing the top of the frame. “One of these days they’ll approve my requisition for a five-drawer lateral file cabinet—that’s my dream—and then I won’t be constantly moving files to make room for other things.”

  “That doesn’t seem like such a lofty dream. Why can’t they accommodate you?”

  “There’s a hold on all extraneous expenses. My file cabinet is low on the list of urgent items to buy.”

  “I know the tornado put a lot of pressure on the budget,” I said, “but it seems to me
that before it came through, the college was starting to turn itself around financially. Schoolman has a brand-new gymnasium, doesn’t it?”

  Archie laughed. “Well, basketball in Indiana will always take precedence over the file cabinet needs of the sociology department,” he said. “And for good reason. The alumni will contribute money for the one, but not the other.”

  “Ah, not so surprising then.”

  “Sad, but true. Things used to be so different around here. It was a gentler, happier time at Schoolman when I first arrived, before the current administration—”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, don’t listen to me, Jessica. It’s just that ... well, everything has a hard edge to it these days. President Needler maintains his distance from what’s going on on campus every day, not a good thing for a college president, I say.”

  I nodded. “What about Harriet’s leadership?” I asked. “From what I can see, she’s a dynamo determined to put things on an even financial keel.”

  “Financially speaking, yes. No question about that. I suppose we’re not unique in having to worship the god of money above all else. A sign of the times. It’s just that ...”

  His eyes began to glisten.

  “It’s just that I revere this small institution and what it once stood for. It isn’t the same anymore. No, hardly the same at all.”

  He rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his index fingers, forced a bright smile, and said, “Now, Mrs. Jessica Fletcher, about this map. This is the Hart Building, where we were. What exactly did you want to see?”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Do you think I should keep these in the safe?” Lorraine asked when I returned Wes’s letter and notebook to her.

  “That’s probably wise,” I said, trailing her down the hall to the study.

  “Have you had any luck deciphering his code?”

  “It’s not so much code as abbreviations, I think. I have some ideas I plan to follow up on.”

  “I hope you aren’t taking any chances, Jessica. One death is enough. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt by becoming involved in this.”

  “I’m being careful,” I said.

  “I called you this morning, but you’d left.”

  “I got a ride into New Salem with Edgar Poole, the graduate assistant in the English department. I don’t know if Mrs. Tingwell told you, but he and Wes did not get along.”

  “Wes could be very irritating, I know. We had some real knock-down-drag-outs when we were kids—even when we weren’t kids.”

  “Was he violent?” I asked. “I don’t remember your saying that.”

  “No. That was an exaggeration, although it wasn’t as if I didn’t want to sock him sometimes. I did. But he was bigger than me.” She smiled. “He was a stubbom son of a gun. I can see where a student disagreeing with him could come away angry. Wes would never give an inch. The word compromise was not in his vocabulary.”

  Lorraine slipped out of her shoes and climbed on the love seat.

  “I quizzed Edgar on the ride into town,” I said, taking the chair behind Wes’s desk and watching as she opened the safe and put the letter and the notebook inside. “I asked him where he’d been during the tornado and just prior to it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’s been waiting for someone to ask him that question, especially now that the campus is buzzing about the possibility of Wes’s being murdered.”

  Lorraine sat cross-legged on the love seat and smiled. “I hope you won’t be annoyed with me. I helped start that rumor.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. I figured that if the police and the college administration were not going to look into Wes’s death, I’d try to force their hand.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t mention the letter, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just said the autopsy was suspicious, which could be true, right?”

  “Who did you say that to?”

  “Letitia.”

  “I didn’t think she was the type to spread a rumor.”

  “She’s not, but it was her idea to get the students to do it for us.”

  “It was?”

  “We were having breakfast in the cafeteria. She was telling me how she couldn’t understand why Wes didn’t go down to the basement when the storm hit. She was really upset. It was so unlike him to be lacking in judgment, she said. He must have had a heart attack, she said, and that would explain why he was still upstairs when the ceiling collapsed. So I told her that his autopsy was suspicious, and about how you and I wanted the college and the police to look into Wes’s death, but they wouldn’t, and how frustrated we were.”

  “And she said?”

  “She said sometimes people needed a push. There were some students sitting nearby and she suggested that we talk to each other about the possibility of Wes’s being murdered, but raise our voices just enough so we could be overheard. That’s all it took. The rumor spread like fire in a dry forest. Letitia phoned to tell me that all the students are talking about it, and that several parents have demanded the administration do something about it immediately. Maybe Harriet will call in the police now.”

  “Harriet thinks I started the rumor.”

  “She does? Is she mad at you?”

  “I’d say that’s a bit of an understatement.”

  “Oh, Jessica. I’m so sorry. I never even thought about what she would think beyond getting her to bring back the police. Do you want me to tell her I did it?”

  “Absolutely not. Don’t worry about it. I have a tough hide. And maybe your plan will work. If enough parents call the administration, perhaps it will make Harriet rethink her position, even if it’s only to ask the police to do a cursory investigation to quiet the rumors.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I think it’s an angle to work on.”

  “You were talking about the graduate assistant a moment ago. What did he say when you questioned him?”

  “He said he’d seen Wes at Kammerer House shortly before the tornado, and Wes had sent him to the library to do some research. Edgar said he was down in the basement stacks along with about forty others when the storm hit.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I believe he was in the basement during the storm. It wouldn’t pay for him to lie about that.”

  “You mean with so many people taking shelter, there would have to be a lot of witnesses.”

  “Exactly. I’ll ask around anyway.”

  “And before the storm? He could have killed Wes before the storm.”

  “I don’t think he did,” I said, half to myself. “Edgar is left-handed. Whoever killed Wes is right-handed.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I realized I’d never told Lorraine that I’d seen her brother’s body. I didn’t know how she would take it, whether she would consider it an invasion of his privacy. She didn’t know about the poker either, and I intended to keep that from her until I had proof that it was the murder weapon. “From the autopsy,” I said. “It described the angle of the blow.”

  “Really? You never said.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you until we knew more.”

  “Thank you.” A shiver passed through her body. “I don’t really want to know the details.”

  “I won’t tell you then,” I said.

  “You know that the memorial service is tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Would you like me to pick you up in the morning? We can walk over together.”

  “I would appreciate that. There are so few people I know. If it weren’t for you and Letitia, I’d be completely lost.”

  “I’m glad we can help,” I said. “May I tread on that friendship once more?”

  “Sure. What do you want?”

  “I’d like to examine Wes’s computer, see what I can find in his e-mail or in his files.”

  “Be my guest. Letitia is coming for supper in a little while. Why don’t you st
ay, too? You can work on it together.”

  “I like that idea,” I said, meaning it.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The memorial service for Professor Wesley Stanton Newmark had concluded after an hour of homilies by Pastor Getler, eulogies by Vernon Foner and Manny Rosenfeld, hymns sung by the Schoolman College choir, and mercifully short speeches by Harriet Schoolman Bennett and Lowell Needler. Classes had been suspended for the day, and as Harriet had desired, the auditorium seats were filled with students and faculty who waited to file out until the small entourage surrounding Lorraine had made its exit.

  “It was a lovely service,” she said to me.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Wes would have been so happy hearing what his colleagues said about him. Professor Rosenfeld’s eulogy was very moving.”

  We moved up the aisle of the Benjamin Harrison Auditorium, named for the Indiana citizen and twenty-third president of the United States. Behind us, Letitia Tingwell, dressed in black, her eyes red and swollen, leaned on the arm of Professor Manny Rosenfeld. My heart went out to her. Of all of us, she mourned Wes Newmark the most, yet had no official place in his life, one that would allow her to be recognized for the sacrifices she’d made for him and the love she bore him that, as far as anyone knew, had gone unrequited.

  Outside, the sky was overcast; black clouds rimmed the horizon, a fitting atmosphere for a memorial service. Lorraine stopped at the top of the steps, accepting condolences. A photographer from the student newspaper stood nearby, adjusting his telephoto lens. I moved off to the side.

  Vernon Foner stepped away from the group and came up to me.

  “Gad, that Getler can go on, can’t he? The man just loves the sound of his own voice.”

  “Lorraine was pleased with the service,” I said.

  “Yes. Well, Manny did a nice job. He always does. How did you like my eulogy? Did I make Wes sound too saintly?”

  “I don’t think so.”