by John Farrow
“Not my student,” Professor Shedden declares, as if on a witness stand, as though under oath. “She was a student. Here. Yes. But never of mine.”
“You make that distinction, do you?”
“I don’t have to if that’s what you’re saying. To be clear, I’m not saying that I slept with her nor am I denying that I did. I simply do not answer questions of that nature, no matter where they come from or in what regard.”
“You make it sound like a— I don’t know, like a virtue. Isn’t it really a convenience?”
“What is?”
“That you don’t answer questions of that nature?”
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s a distinction to be made and I make it. Others might disagree. The sort of thing you’re suggesting is generally frowned upon. Years ago, starting in the sixties if not before that, student/professor relationships were rampant. Times changed, although I have a suspicion that the old days are making a comeback. Nowadays, I suspect it’s the students, more often than horny professors, who do the initiating. Just a theory. In any case, Addie Langford, that poor girl, I was very fond of her, but she was never a student of mine. I don’t know where you’re picking up your rumors, but…”
Cinq-Mars waits awhile. Then asks, “But what, Professor?”
“I was fond of her, that’s true. She was murdered and that’s been upsetting to say the least. For me personally. I’ve wept. Not because we were close or anything, but I knew her once and now she’s dead just as her life was beginning. It’s awful. Words can’t say.” She levels her gaze again. “Mr. Cinq-Mars, I don’t wish to impede any aspect of your investigation, but you should know that I haven’t spoken to Addie since last summer, maybe ten months ago. We haven’t talked. I don’t know what she’s been up to. As far as an inappropriate relationship goes, I don’t want to say and I hope that you won’t ask, but in any case I won’t answer. I never do. If I had a relationship with any student, male or female, who was not in one of my classes, I would consider that a union between consenting adults. Therefore, nobody’s business. On principle, I won’t answer. If you ask me if I’ve slept with Genghis Khan, I might point out the discrepancy in our centuries but I still won’t deny it or say yes. If you consider that a convenience for me, that’s not my problem. Addie was never in my class. She was not even in my department.”
Having gone as far as he can with this line without making a dent, he senses that he’s better off to reverse course and diffuse her fears. There’s no virtue in antagonizing her any further, in large measure because he has no authority here and, sooner or later, that’s bound to surface. “I’m not on a witch hunt, Professor Shedden. I’m interested in three murders and how they transpired. You’re now on record. You’ve not had contact with Addie Langford in nearly a year. What about the other two?”
“If I slept with either of them, as I told you, I won’t say.”
“My question was out of line. I apologize.”
“I know the woman by her first name—Malory—what’s her last again?”
“Earle. Malory Earle.”
“Yes. Only certain scholars are admitted to the seventh floor of the Lincoln Library. Special collections are kept in the stacks up there. The floor was part of Malory’s nightly cleanup schedule. I often work in the stacks, and I have a tendency to work late. Sure, we came across each other.”
Cinq-Mars is staring at her and appearing a bit wide-eyed.
“What?” she asks.
“Miss Earle worked on the seventh? At the entrance to the clock tower?”
“Do you think that’s significant?”
“Don’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought of it. Now that you mention it, I guess, although it could be a coincidence. I mean, I don’t see the connection.”
“Two people die. One in a locked and restricted area. The other one has access to that area. That’s a remarkable coincidence.” Cinq-Mars breathes out heavily, and clutches his wrists behind his head and secretly gives his back a stretch. “Please. Go on. How do you know her?”
“That’s it. That’s all. Late night, friendly, quick chats. I do research, she takes out the trash. Sweeps up. In the daytime we might never speak, unless we pass each other in the corridors, but late at night, it’s normal to say hi, how’s it going? How’re the kids? Exchange a few pleasantries.”
“Was that the extent?”
“Are you insinuating something again?”
“Even if I am, it doesn’t matter. Was that the extent?”
“Polite exchanges. That was it. The full extent.”
“Ever talk with her when you weren’t on the seventh floor?”
Professor Shedden thinks about it, her eyes going up to a poster condemning biologically modified food. “As I said, we bumped into each other a few times elsewhere in the library, of course. We exchanged a smile, once or twice said hello. Little more.”
“Were you up there, on the seventh, the night before last?”
“I haven’t been up there for a week or more.”
“Okay. What about Professor Toomey? How well do you know him?” He’s keeping his wrists crossed behind his head, extending his spine.
“I don’t know him, actually. Biblically or otherwise. Whoops, sorry. I don’t reveal that stuff. He sought me out, about a year ago. He wanted to be my date.”
Another surprise. “Seriously?”
“In a way.” She laughs. All in all, although he’s tried to keep her off guard, he finds her remarkably relaxed. His detective status usually has people on edge, a trick that doesn’t work in this room. “I don’t hide my preference. I was amused initially. He didn’t want to date me, just to be my date. There’s a difference. Turns out I had an invitation to a cocktail party that he wanted to attend. He asked to be my escort.”
Cinq-Mars drops his hands. He has an inkling. “Was this to a donors’ party?”
“Could’ve been. I go to those. I think it must have been.”
“Did you agree? To bring him along?”
“I did. Once inside, he pretty much dumped me at the door. Never saw him again, except across the room. Not that I cared.”
“Did he take you home at least?”
“No way! Don’t you get it? This was not an actual date. Which was fine with me. He was a busy man at the party, I noticed. Then again, I was, too. For me it’s part of my job.”
“For him? Not his job, then what was it?”
“Don’t know don’t care.”
“Are you going again this year?”
“Every year. I expect a different tone this week though, given recent events.”
“Toomey, also.”
“Pardon me?”
“He was going again. This time, he engineered an invitation of his own.”
She nods, as though to give him credit. “I guess he figured out how the system works.”
“Hmm.” Émile hesitates. He grips the arms of the chair. “Thanks for your time, Professor Shedden.”
“About that,” she says.
He stalls in pushing himself to his feet.
“Your thanks,” she adds.
He’s only clueless a moment. He says, “At this time, what some may deem inappropriate, even though you hold to a contrary opinion, needn’t come up.”
He appreciates the clarity of her gaze. “Tah,” she says.
In the corridor outside, Roberta nearby, Cinq-Mars dials Chief Till’s number. “How’s it going?” he asks him.
“It’s going.” The policeman mentions that he has Addie Langford’s parents in the backseat of his cruiser.
“Can I talk?”
“You can,” Till tells him, with a tone that suggests that he’s not free to reciprocate.
“Sorry to bother you, but can I get photographs of the deceased? All three?”
“Where do I send them?”
“Security at Dowbiggin. Have them addressed to Guard Roberta Dale.” He reads her full name off the tag on her uniform. “She�
�ll pick them up for me.”
“You bet. Find anything out?”
“The custodial worker, Malory Earle, part of her job was to clean the seventh floor. The restricted seventh floor where the entrance to the clock tower is.”
There’s a silence, and Émile suspects there wouldn’t be if Till was alone. The parents in tow, he must mute his response. “Interesting,” he says. And asks, “Your take?”
“Another piece to the puzzle. Anything new at your end you can mention?”
“I’m not privy to ME reports from this side of the river. Trooper Hammond is keeping those to himself. From White River Junction it’s more or less what we expected. Nothing too strange.”
“What is more or less than expected? What’s strange if not too strange?”
“Could be nothing. The medical examiner noticed radioactivity on Malory Earle. Specifically, on her chest. It’s unexplained. Makes us wonder where she was, what she contacted. Otherwise, it’s straightforward. What we saw is what we got.”
“Radioactive. Was she, I don’t know, dangerous?”
“Only a trace. The ME thinks it means she came in contact with something she shouldn’t have. Hard to explain it otherwise.”
“All right then. Okay. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”
Cinq-Mars puts his phone away in a hip pocket. “You can be the first to look at the photos, Roberta,” he advises his official escort, “when they come in. You can tell me who you know.”
“Probably nobody. A lot of people walk through this campus every day. I only know a handful by name.”
“That’s okay. The photographs aren’t only for your benefit. If you don’t mind, call your people. Ask them to alert you when the envelope arrives. Meantime, we’re off to Professor Toomey’s office. A visit on your authorized list. I know that will please you.”
“Yeah, throw a dog a bone, why don’tcha?”
He likes this woman.
* * *
Rather quickly he finds out that he should never have been admitted to the room. State troopers shouldn’t be allowed to enter either, or even some members of the FBI. This is a job for Homeland Security if he ever saw one, although he reminds himself that he’s never actually seen such a job before.
Perusing Professor Phillip Lars Toomey’s papers, he finds documents that should not have been left out in the open. Admittedly, much of it is old, but when he flips through a file and finds Top Secret stamped on certain pages, he questions the efficacy of secrecy these days. If they were old, secret documents may have been admitted to the public domain, but this easy access to anyone with a key to the room or a willingness to trip the lock strikes him as careless, at best. Even deliberately incendiary.
Roberta’s phone rings a chime. The photographs have arrived at the front security desk.
“Do I leave you here alone?” she asks. “Do I trust you?”
“Not on your life.”
“You’re not trustworthy, you’re saying?” That much probably does not surprise her. What does is that he admits to the failing.
“I wouldn’t trust me if I was you, Roberta. But, we have no clue to what’s already missing, if anything, or what might be construed as missing. We don’t know what’s here. I need you to be a witness to the fact that I’m not removing a speck of dust from this place.”
“And turning the dust over very carefully.” She’s noticed.
“As such, you’re my salvation. I wouldn’t mind if no one, other than President Palmerich, because he’s your boss, finds out that I was here. That’s all I ask.”
“My lips are sealed tighter than a jar of strawberry preserves.”
The comment cheers him up. “What that means exactly I don’t know, but I like it.”
She stands watch while he carries on with his search, and is the most curious when he stops and does nothing. For a while he inspects no manuscript. He opens no drawer. He appears to draw no breath. It’s spooky. She’s feeling trepidatious.
“Sir?” she asks, but Cinq-Mars ignores her and carries on doing absolutely nothing. As if listening to the walls speak.
She waits.
He’s acquiring a feel for the room. Sensations compete for his attention. An academic patina marks the office as different than an entrepreneur’s, a businessman’s, or a professional’s. Yet the atmosphere feels borrowed from the institution and from previous tenants. He thinks this way because the library makes no sense, it’s more of a grab bag of titles than indicative of any course the man may be teaching. As well, he’s already cracked the covers of twenty books and no less than seven times has seen inscriptions to other people, as though Toomey purchased the collection at a secondhand store. For appearances sake, perhaps he did. Two such volumes are stamped to show that they belong or previously belonged to libraries in other states. If Cinq-Mars were to guess what courses the man taught based on his bookshelves, he’d fail.
Manuscripts, many lengthy, others mercifully brief, have been authored by the man himself. Often the attitude is readily identified as partisan, intended more to extoll a position than to examine various possibilities. To advocate, rather than inquire. Occasionally, in discussing different options, the diction falls to the pejorative. No academic distance or neutrality there. To the man’s credit, his arguments at first glance are committed to his point of view, they’re persuasive and intelligent. He sounds more like a smart, ardent lobbyist than any thinker of merit or active teacher. If there is a unifying theme to both the library and the unbound manuscripts, it’s their geographic diversity and topical concerns, with books and commentary on issues current to Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, as well as being germane to the United States.
The man got around.
As in his home, absent again are any indications of family or friends.
The guy was a loner.
A loner who got around and who poked his nose into current affairs and had a dubious connection to the State Department and received a professorship without a life in academia.
The guy was a spy.
“Can I help you?” Roberta’s voice is loud and startling. He’s shaken from his reverie. He hadn’t noticed her leave the room to challenge someone in the hall.
Cinq-Mars takes a peek out the door to satisfy his own curiosity. Roberta has issued her combative question to a rufous-haired, tall young man, a bit scrawny, good-looking, who will fully count as handsome as he fills out. His eyes are darting around as though he’s feeling cornered, for such is the sudden power of the guard’s voice.
“I was walking by here, that’s all.”
“That’s not all. You were looking in the room,” Roberta points out to him. “You were snooping.”
“No. It’s Professor Toomey’s office. I was curious, that’s all. You know. On account of he’s dead.”
“You expected to find him in? Even though you know he’s dead?”
“You knew Professor Toomey?” Cinq-Mars interrupts.
The boy shrugs.
“Does that mean yes?”
“Yeah. He was my professor once, that’s all. Last year. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interfere with anything.”
He seems a good kid.
“What kind of a guy was he? Professor Toomey?”
“Umm,” the boy says.
“What does that mean?”
“He was a prof. It’s not like we hung out or anything. I thought he was a pretty good teacher, though. On balance. He told a lot of good stories.”
“What subject?”
“International relations.”
“He told stories about international relations?”
“Life in the foreign service mostly. Stuff like that.”
“Hmm,” Cinq-Mars murmurs. Then he murmurs, “Mostly.”
“Yeah,” the boy defends.
“They were probably lies.”
Roberta looks between the two, the fidgeting boy and the humming, hawing older man, and decides to dismiss the lad. “All righty,” she
says. “You can go.”
The boy shrugs again, this time to indicate that he doesn’t believe he requires her permission to walk away or stay, that it’s his choice to carry on down the corridor. He’s soon around a corner and out of sight.
“He was looking in,” Roberta explains.
“You were guarding,” Cinq-Mars comments. “That’s what you do. Guard.”
“I guard,” Roberta agrees.
She locks the office again and they’re walking away before she says something that Émile wishes had come out earlier. “Know what?”
“What?”
“I’ve seen that boy around. Don’t know his name. But do you know who he knows?”
“Who?”
“The lady professor.”
“Wait a minute.” Cinq-Mars stops walking. “That boy, hanging around outside Professor Toomey’s door, knows Professor Shedden?”
“I’ve seen them talking.”
“When?”
“Not recently. A few times, I’d say. But a while ago.”
The boy’s long gone at this point. Émile is interested in him now, if only for whom he knows.
“Let’s check out the photographs that’ve come in,” Émile states. “We’ll test your knack for faces.”
She gets that he’s teasing her, in a way, and doesn’t mind.
“If I’ve seen them, I can tell you where. On campus. Oh that’ll be a big help.”
“You just never know, Roberta. By the way, that’s a detective’s mantra: you just never know.”
They cut back outside, and are greeted by a lovely day after the thrashing the region took during the rainstorm. The humidity low and the sun high. Roberta waxes on about her kids and how she hopes to find a good university for them that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. “Or at least not too many arms or too many legs.” She’ll never be able to afford Dartmouth down the road no matter what they say about bursaries and jobs, and the governmental and international thrust of Dowbiggin doesn’t interest them at all. Not that it’s any cheaper. Émile plants a seed by suggesting she consider Canada. “Good schools, less money. They charge Americans a premium but it’s still a bargain compared to the cost down here. Truth is, even rich kids go north.” She’s excited by that and goes on about the student loan crisis, then, when she gets to the security desk inside and is shown the photographs, she’s unexpectedly intrigued.