Majoring In Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

“Good. Didn’t want to lay it on too thick. But with those ridiculous rumors flying around campus, I wanted it known that he was not someone anyone would murder. He was a popular professor.”

  “Was he?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The man is dead, after all. Say nice things and get off the stage. We’ll all miss him, but life goes on.” He tugged on the bottom of his vest. “They’ll have to name a new department chairman soon. Other than Wes, I’m probably the most published of the English professors. That should stand me in good stead when they’re making their decision. You’re a friend of Dean Bennett’s. Do you have any idea when she’ll be making that announcement?”

  “I’m not consulted about such things.”

  “Well, of course, I know that. But I thought maybe she confided in you.”

  “If she did, it wouldn’t be very nice of me to breach her confidence, would it?”

  Foner looked ill at ease. “No, of course not,” he said.

  “Tell me about your new book,” I said. “You sounded very excited when you were telling Rebecca about it.”

  “Yes. It’s going to be wonderful.”

  “What it’s about?”

  “The influence of George Meredith on Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  “I heard you say that the other day. Can’t you tell me more than that?”

  “It’s about their friendship and correspondence. You’ll just have to read it,” he said, smiling.

  “I’d like to do that. Have you been working on it for a while?”

  “Oh, I had the idea several years ago, but I didn’t have time to complete the research and write it until this summer.”

  “You must be a very fast writer. I certainly need a lot more than two months to write my books, and they aren’t scholarly.”

  “The research, that takes years, but once I have the vision in my mind, I just sit down and write and write and write. I spent the whole summer on it. It was exhausting, but I got it done.”

  “Well, congratulations. It’s always exciting when a book is accepted for publication. Who’s your publisher?”

  “I haven’t exactly signed the contract yet, so I’m a little superstitious about talking about it. You understand. Don’t want to jinx it by using their name. I’ll let you know soon.”

  “Please do. I’m very interested.”

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of Larry Durbin. Have you seen him this morning?”

  “Isn’t that Larry standing next to Lorraine Newmark?”

  “So it is. Excuse me.”

  Foner waded into the crowd surrounding Lorraine, but stopped to talk with a student and never reached Durbin, who left accompanied by his wife, Melissa.

  It looked as if the entire campus had turned out for the service. Phil Adler had missed it, of course, but he was due for release from the hospital that morning. Edgar Poole had no such excuse. The English department had been asked to assemble early so that we could all sit together with Lorraine in the front of the auditorium. Edgar’s absence had been noted, although not commented on by anyone other than Letitia Tingwell.

  “Where is he? He’s usually so prompt.”

  “Maybe he preferred to sit with the students,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s all right then.”

  But I hadn’t seen Edgar among the students, and I’d been keeping watch for him.

  There was still a sizable group of faculty members and students waiting to extend their condolences when President Needler emerged from the auditorium, a frustrated look on his face. He pushed through the crowd, elbowed Pastor Getler aside, and took Lorraine’s hand. He murmured his sympathies and departed immediately, moving sideways to get through the throng. I caught up with him as he descended the stairs.

  “President Needler,” I called, “may I speak with you a moment before you leave?”

  He hesitated before turning to me. “Will it take very long? I’m leaving for the weekend.”

  “I wanted to say how much I enjoyed your remarks about Wes Newmark.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you. Nice to be appreciated.”

  “And to ask you why you took books and a photograph from his study.”

  Needler’s face turned red; he coughed and cleared his throat. “They ... uh ... were ... uh, books I had lent to him. Yes, I had let him use them for his research and I was merely reclaiming them. After all, they’re mine. I don’t see why that should concern you.” He turned and continued down the stairs, but I kept stride with him. “In fact,” he said, when he saw he wasn’t rid of me, “that seems to me to be a rather impertinent question, Mrs. Fletcher. You have no business questioning my actions. You’re a guest on this campus. That’s quite an attitude you have. What have you to say for yourself?”

  “President Needler, I’m not a student you can intimidate.”

  “You’d better have a good reason for this third degree.”

  He was now on the attack, a tactic I was sure he must have used successfully before. I was taking a chance questioning him, but the time was getting away from me. Kammerer House was to be torn down in a matter of days. If I didn’t turn up something soon, the case would die for lack of evidence. I needed to rattle him again and see if I could shake loose some information.

  “Wes Newmark died under unusual and frankly suspicious circumstances,” I said in a low voice.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “That’s just some student tall tale. I’m surprised you would fall for that.”

  “The rumor this time is accurate,” I said. “An investigation is going to take place. I thought you should know, considering that the police will want to know why you tampered with Newmark’s belongings.”

  Needler was stunned. “Police? I haven’t heard that the police were looking into this. When did that happen? And I wasn’t tampering. I ... I ... I ... was simply retrieving books that are mine. Wes was going to give them back. He knew they’re very precious to me. I didn’t want his sister to give them away to a book sale. Why didn’t I hear about the police investigation? Why am I being kept in the dark?” His voice was starting to rise.

  “Let’s walk together,” I said. “I don’t want us to be overheard.” We moved away from people trooping down the stairs and spreading out across the campus. I accompanied Needler in the direction of the Student Union and paused next to one of the bare oak trees in the quad. When I was sure we were alone, I spoke again. “It’s all been very hush-hush. Even Harriet doesn’t know. You’re the first one I’ve mentioned it to. And you need to keep it quiet.”

  “Of course, I can be trusted.”

  “Can you?” I asked, looking hard into his eyes. “Those books were first editions, weren’t they?”

  He swallowed audibly and nodded.

  “You never lend out books from your collection. You told me so yourself. Why did Newmark have those books?”

  Needler ran a trembling hand through his white hair, and I felt a momentary pang of guilt for harassing an old man.

  “This is not something I want to be made public,” he said. “I must have your assurance you will keep it confidential.”

  “I can’t promise you that. If it has something to do with Wes Newmark’s death, the police will have to know.”

  “It had nothing to do with his death. I’ve done nothing illegal,” he said. “They were simply markers, that’s all.”

  “Gambling markers?”

  “Yes. I’d lost a lot of money on ... well, it doesn’t matter what it was on, does it? I was being threatened. It was very frightening. Never happened to me before. I didn’t have the money, so I went to Wes. He paid off my debt.”

  “And you gave him the books as collateral.”

  “Yes. I would have paid him back the money. I swear. Then, after he died, I couldn’t stand the thought that those books might be sent off to some secondhand dealer who didn’t know what he had, or sold at some tag sale in Alaska, or worse, thrown out.”

  “So you took them.”

  “She had no inter
est in them. She said they were ‘junky.’ Can you imagine? One of them was a first edition of Thackeray. It took me years to find it. You won’t tell the police about the books, will you?”

  “I won’t as long as you pay Lorraine fair value for them.”

  “I will. You have my word.”

  “How much did Wes give you for them?”

  “I ... uh ... believe it was several thousand.”

  “More like fifteen thousand, wasn’t it?”

  “It may have been as much as that. I’d have to look it up. I’ve already saved quite a bit so I can repay her.”

  “Were you the only one Wes Newmark loaned money to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you aware of any other people who borrowed from him?”

  “I wouldn’t know that, although he always had plenty of cash. The guy was an incredibly lucky gambler. He never lost. Not just at our monthly game. We went to Las Vegas a few times. He would clean out the casino. They asked him not to come back.”

  “Where were you the morning of the tornado? Where were you when Newmark was killed?”

  “I ... I ... was attending my Gamblers Anonymous meeting in New Salem. It’s every Saturday. I’ll give you a phone number, if you want. You can call yourself to confirm it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. You used the excuse of needing a photograph of Newmark to get into his study and take the books, didn’t you?”

  He looked confused. “No. No. The student paper needed his photograph for their obituary. I told Miss Newmark and she offered that picture in the frame.”

  “You’re not telling me the truth. The paper had a photograph of him. It appeared in the same edition as the announcement of my coming to Schoolman.”

  “I’m not lying. Harriet said the campus newspaper needed his photo. She asked me to pick it up when I paid a call on Lorraine.”

  “Did you give the photo to the student newspaper?”

  “No. I gave it to Harriet. She said she’d make sure it went to the proper person.”

  I was surprised. Harriet had access to faculty records and could have had a photo of Wes Newmark at any time. Why, I wondered, did she want that particular one?

  Needler scratched his cheek. “You know, I thought it was odd that the newspaper didn’t have a picture of him. He was a department head, after all. But she said to get it, so I got it.”

  “Do you always follow her orders?”

  He straightened and his expression hardened. “I raise a lot of money for this college. That’s what I was hired to do, and I do it. I’m the president! I won’t be patronized by you or her or anyone else.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I apologize.”

  “Is that enough? May I go now?”

  “Yes. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention to anyone about my attendance at Gamblers Anonymous. That’s a private matter.”

  “I won’t say anything, but you may want to tell the police yourself, if they question you.”

  He turned and strode off across the campus, his erect carriage and white hair easily setting him apart from the milling students who stepped aside to let him pass. He was an odd combination of erudition and indiscretion with his love of antiquarian books and his weakness for gambling. But maybe they were more allied than I’d previously thought. Maybe the thrill of purchasing a rare first edition was as much a gamble as betting on a poker hand. He hadn’t been entirely truthful, but he’d given me a lot to think about.

  Perhaps Wes Newmark had been an underground banker. If so, whoever owed him the most money may have decided not to repay in the usual manner.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The library was unusually quiet when I entered the main reading room. Most of the students and faculty had taken off for the weekend, following the memorial service. The tables were empty, the screens dark on the banks of computers.

  Administration members and the faculty of the English department would have gone back to La Salle House with Lorraine Newmark for refreshments sent over by the cafeteria staff. Rather than have Harriet’s coldness toward me put a chill on the day for the others, I’d told Lorraine I would stop by later on. Instead, I decided, it was an opportune time to explore the passage I’d seen on Professor Constantine’s map, the one Eli had taken to Kammerer House to retrieve the poker.

  The library’s basement housed the stacks for its nonfiction books. Fiction, a more limited collection, occupied the spacious main floor, with its spectacular arching glass skylight. Downstairs, case after case of books with narrow, carpeted aisles between them marched away to the distant walls. The cramped quarters, low ceiling, and fluorescent lighting gave the area a claustrophobic atmosphere despite its substantial size. Only the small signs at the ends of each section signifying the subject matter and its Dewey decimal numbers gave any indication of where in this vast room you stood. If there were students here hunting for books, they were as easily camouflaged as deer in the woods. It would be impossible to know how many people had taken refuge here during the tornado. It was too easy to hide. Claiming to have been here when Newmark was murdered wouldn’t be much of an alibi for Edgar Poole.

  I’d taken the stairs from the main level, which emptied into a corridor that ran the length of the stacks. Turning to recall which way I’d faced when I’d entered the stairwell, I got my bearings and set out in what I presumed was the direction of Kammerer House. At the end of the long corridor, a sign pointing to the right directed me to the copy center. I turned the corner; halfway down the hall I passed the room with the copy machines, two of them churning out pages in an uneven rhythm. Along the left-hand wall were several locked doors, none of them giving any hint of what lay beyond them. I tried twisting each doorknob, but in the crack between the jamb and the edge of the door I could see the bolt that spanned them.

  Fifty yards down, I reached the next corner and paused. If I turned here, I would be going away from Kammerer House, not toward it. How had Eli found the tunnel? Was there another set of stairs leading to them? Maybe I should have let him show me where it was. Was there someone upstairs who could give me specific directions?

  I walked back in the direction from which I’d come, trying each of the doors again, to no avail. I stopped at the entrance to the copy room. Could there be another exit from here?

  The copy center consisted of two rooms filled with large gray machines, the functions of which were obscure except for the two copiers at the entrance. The front room was unoccupied, brightly lit, and noisy. The mechanical clunk and thud of the two machines was deafening in the uncarpeted room, while the only movement visible was the paper as it flew out of the maw of the copiers into twenty separate trays.

  “Anyone here?” I called out.

  No one answered. I walked through to the back room, which was similarly bright and empty, its machines idle. Metal shelving took up most of the walls. I scanned the room for any sign of a way out, and saw none, but then I spotted a faded sign. Ahead of me, above a shelving unit, painted over and faint, I could discern the old radiation symbol with its three flaring blades in a black circle. Underneath was an arrow pointing to one of the shelving units, which held reams of paper. I peered between the packages and saw the outline of a door. Wedging myself between the wall and the frame, I pushed with both hands and fell forward as the unit moved smoothly away.

  Well, that wasn’t too hard, I told myself. The door, which had been covered, was unlocked, and opened out into a dark hall, the brilliant interior of the copy room lighting only the first few yards. I fumbled on the wall for a light switch and was rewarded when two bare bulbs, ten feet apart, lit up the beginning of the tunnel. I closed the door and listened. Behind me, the pounding of the copiers was muffled but audible.

  Cautiously I moved forward into the damp gray tunnel. Any paint that had covered the concrete walls had long since peeled off. Here and there, delicate flakes clung to a rough surface, the faded curls
evidence of the color the walls had once been. The floor was rough and required watching, especially in the pumps I’d worn to the memorial service. Why hadn’t I gone home to change? That would have been smart. But my apartment was in the opposite direction from the auditorium and the library. I’d taken the path of least resistance, and hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

  My decision to explore the tunnel had been last-minute. I’d been curious about it ever since Eli told me he’d gained access to Kammerer House by using the underground passageway. But I hadn’t given it much further thought until halfway through the memorial service when it occurred to me that whoever murdered Newmark might well have used the tunnel as his—or her—method of entrance and, more important, as a way to escape in the midst of the storm. Would venturing into the tunnel reveal anything about who that might have been? Probably not. But like people who climb mountains simply because they’re there, I felt the tunnel beckon, and I found myself drawn to it like a moth to a summer candle.

  By my calculation, the hallway before me stretched out in the direction of the three houses destroyed by the tornado. A short walk showed me that it also branched off into several side passages, none of them marked. I took the first right, twisting a timed light switch I found on the wall. Its rapid ticking reminded me that the light it controlled wouldn’t stay on very long. I dug out my new flashlight and forged ahead. The bulb in the wall fixture dimmed just as I came upon another inky hallway that seemed to angle back toward the library.

  I know how Hansel and Gretel felt, I thought. I should have brought bread crumbs. How had Eli known which passage led to Kammerer House?

  Using my flashlight, I retraced my steps to the door of the copy center, the sound of the machines now a comforting beacon, and started out again. This time I decided to see how far the tunnel extended before choosing which side corridor to try.

  The tunnel went forward for about two hundred feet when the route angled off to the left, with another corridor to the right. At least there were no other branches on the left side, but I’d counted four on the right, plus assorted doors, none of which I remembered seeing on Archie’s map. As I walked, the sound of my footsteps echoed back to me. All else was quiet.