by Donn Taylor
Inside, my phone was ringing. It was Mrs. Dunwiddie.
“Professor Barclay, President Cantwell would like to see you in his office at eight-thirty this morning.”
All I needed to start the day with a bang was a meeting with the president. I checked my watch. Eight-twenty-five.
I struggled not to grit my teeth, and said, “I’ll be there.”
A new pair of football players trailed me to the Executive Center, and I saw two more following Mara Thorn toward the same destination. We met in the entryway.
“Do you know what this meeting is about?” she asked.
“I hope I’m wrong,” I said, “But I’d guess the Blatant Beast is salivating.”
Her jaw tightened. I hoped President Cantwell could read the warning signs.
In the secretary’s office, we found Mrs. Dunwiddie trying to look inscrutable, another sure sign of something unpleasant. The only favorable sign was that Dean-Dean’s office door was closed and no light showed under it. That meant he was probably somewhere else. I flicked my pocket voice recorder on as Mrs. Dunwiddie showed us into President Cantwell’s office, where two hardwood straight chairs awaited us, facing his desk. She herself slipped into a chair somewhat behind us, apparently to take notes. The president himself sat resting his elbows on his desk with his face hidden in his hands. This was a J. Cleveland Cantwell I hadn’t seen before.
Our president is a tall, impressive man with a long, thin face like John Carradine in the classic movies, and a resonant voice well-suited to formal rhetoric. Like Dean-Dean, he’d received his doctorate in an unusual manner. He was enrolled in an elementary education program when the trustees brought him in as president. His lack of a doctorate proved no obstacle, for our sister institution in the next state promptly awarded him an honorary degree. In the following year, Cantwell awarded one to that college’s un-degreed president. Thus the amenities were served, at least nominally.
When our president straightened up to acknowledge our presence, he showed a face so pale it had a greenish tinge. His eyes were red. Overall, he looked like the guest of honor at last week’s funeral.
He spoke in a hoarse voice. “I’ve asked both of you in because of certain information I’ve received about your recent activities, some of which occurred while I was in Minnesota raising funds for the university.”
At this point, I would normally have asked how he enjoyed the ice fishing, but today I didn’t. I held back because the situation was too threatening for levity, and Cantwell looked too ill for needling.
I didn’t have to ask what his information was or where he’d gotten it. Staggart to Dean-Dean to Cantwell was the expected course.
Mara sat forward in her chair. “And just what information have you received?” I think she’d have leaned across his desk except that she didn’t want to catch whatever disease he had.
“Please.” Cantwell raised a restraining hand, coughed into his sleeve, recovered, and proceeded in his customary rhetorical manner. “It is said that both of you were Involved with each other and Professor Fortier in ... in what I must call … An Unsavory Relationship.”
As always, the president’s words were so formal they seemed to me to roll off his tongue largely in capital letters.
Mara burned him with her ocular blow-torch. “It doesn’t say anything, President Cantwell. Someone has said it. I demand to know who is spreading vicious rumors about me.”
Cantwell recoiled before her onslaught. “Please,” he said again. “I believe the original source of the information is the police ... ”
“You mean Captain Clyde Staggart,” Mara said, eyes still blazing. “Last fall, Richmond Seagrave told you exactly why Staggart hates Pre ... uh ... Professor Barclay. It’s because twenty years ago in the Army, Professor Barclay and Richmond Seagrave testified against Staggart and he had to resign his commission. Staggart tried to pin Laila Sloan’s murder on Professor Barclay—and on me because I was associated with him. And now he hates both of us all the more because we solved the murder he couldn’t solve.”
President Cantwell erupted in a fit of coughing, some into his sleeve but some toward the room in general. At that moment, I might have sold my soul for a gas mask.
He took a gasping breath and tried again. “Professor Thorn, I hear that you are only Peripherally Involved in the ... ah ... Difficulties … between Professor Barclay and Professor Fortier ... ”
I thought she’d carried our case long enough, so I jumped in. “Sir, those supposed ‘difficulties’ between me and Professor Fortier never happened. There has never been a romantic or other improper relationship between us. Nor has there ever been an improper relationship between Professor Thorn and me.”
Cantwell coughed again, thankfully only into his sleeve, and resumed his formal rhetoric. “Professor Barclay, I’m aware that No Official Information on this ... ah ... Matter ... has yet been received. But As You Know, we are on the Annual Budgets of More Than One Hundred Churches. Any further derogatory information could cause a Serious Decline in that support.”
Mara attacked again. “I would hope a respectable church would act upon truth rather than scurrilous rumors. I demand my right to face my accusers.”
Cantwell roused himself momentarily. “You both may have that opportunity, Professor Thorn. I have asked Dr. Billig to determine if there is Any Substance to the rumors and to Initiate Appropriate Action if he finds that there is.”
He coughed into his sleeve again. I wondered if the dry cleaners could ever sanitize it.
“In the Meantime,” he said, “I expect you to Conduct Yourselves in the Exemplary Manner expected of faculty at This Institution.” He stood, signaling that the meeting was ended.
Mara also stood, eyes blazing. “President Cantwell, I have always conducted myself that way, and I don’t plan to conduct myself any differently now.”
With my history as faculty troublemaker I couldn’t make that boast, so I only said, “I understand.”
Mrs. Dunwiddie remained with the president and closed his door behind us. Mara still had a full head of steam, but she held it until we reached the hallway. Then she exploded.
“How dare they spread that vicious drivel about us! And how dare President Cantwell believe it!”
“Welcome to the college faculty,” I said. “Here everyone lives by his own fantasy about the way things are.” I wondered if that included my claim that I “just teach history.”
Mara spoke between clenched teeth. “I can’t wait to confront the people who started those rumors.” She marched out toward her classroom, her chin elevated in the manner that meant trouble for someone.
I realized with a shock that I hadn’t told her about Mitra’s journal.
CHAPTER 22
I hadn’t told Mara about Bruno Pinkle’s attempt to get into my computer, either. I’d intended to brief her on both, but the appearance of the toughs at Goolock’s interrupted. I decided I’d try to bring her up to date at lunch. If she would listen, that is. Cynthia Starlington’s lipstick had made her very angry— more than the occasion warranted, I thought. Mara had chosen to fight rumors by avoiding me, so why was she complaining if someone else didn’t?
By the time I began my nine o’clock class, I was feeling quite self-righteous about it. The class itself is my favorite—Renaissance History of Ideas. And today I talked about the Renaissance view of the Imagination, often called Phantasie, Fantasy, or Fancy. All of these words referred to the same link in Renaissance psychology’s hierarchy of human faculties. For it was believed that everything in the cosmos, including human beings, was organized in related hierarchies. (Admittedly, I gave an abbreviated version.)
At the bottom of the hierarchy came the five outer senses, with touch at the bottom and sight at the top. Above them came the inner senses, the Memory and the Imagination, and above those came the Reason, or Rational Soul. The important thing for our discussion was that the function of the Imagination was to convert data from the outer senses into
images and pass these images to the Reason. The Imagination could also originate images. It was believed to be particularly powerful in poets and other creative artists. Consequently, everything the Reason did was based on the images fed to it by the Imagination.
But the Imagination did not always present accurate images. If it empowered creative artists, it also presented lunatics with their delusions. Imagination also presented the lover with the image of his beloved. Thus the variations in those images among individuals explained why different men fell in love with different women.
These variations in Imagination appeared to explain much about love, creative artistry, and insanity. As always, I concluded by quoting that wonderful passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Duke Theseus explains that “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet/Are of Imagination all compact …” I quote the entire passage, including the lines in which an errant Imagination causes the lover to believe an ugly woman is beautiful.
By the time I finished, about half the class recognized the majesty of the idea while the other half was giving me the Visiting-Professor-from-the-University-of-Pluto look.
When the class ended, I was on another high, with my internal musicians playing trumpets and timpani, and with Clyde Staggart and Bruno Pinkle only small clouds on a distant horizon. So much for my Imagination. But reality waited for me at my office in the form of Sally Finhatter.
“Professor Barclay,” she said, “I did give that index card to the police. They decided the word was ‘Ruskin’ because I’d picked it up right beside a book by somebody named Ruskin. Something about painting.”
“John Ruskin’s Modern Painters?” I asked.
Her face lit up. “That’s the one. I came back to tell you because I know you had a hard time reading Professor Fortier’s writing.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said.
She turned to leave, then threw a few words back over her shoulder. “The best part is that the police gave me back my own card.”
That encounter returned my mind to disproving my own scandal. I wasn’t satisfied with what Weldon Combes and Freda Broyles had told me, so I headed over to the Science Center. Combes’ office was locked, so I tried Freda. She was sitting at her desk like a giant toad waiting for a fly to come within tongue-lapping range.
Her glance made me as welcome as a scorpion. “What brings you back to science territory, Press? Looking for another body?”
“Only a body of fact,” I said. “You didn’t play straight with me last time, Freda. You told me you went home to get a lesson plan, but the police caught you taking dresses out of Mitra’s house. What were you trying to do?”
Her glance demoted me from scorpion to West Nile virus. “For heaven’s sake, Press. That terrible homicide policeman keeps pestering me, and now you come along. Are you trying to pin a murder on me?”
“I’m just trying to get a few facts straight,” I said. “What’s with the dresses?”
“They were mine. I didn’t want them tied up forever in some police evidence room.” She made such deliberate eye contact that I knew she was lying.
“I hear that the dresses wouldn’t fit you.”
“Of course not,” she said. “They were costumes from the Regency period. I don’t wear them. I collect them, so the sizes don’t matter.”
“What were they doing in Mitra’s house?”
Her shoulder gave a half-shrug. “I lent them to her. Last summer—before Jerry’s death—she talked about going to a costume ball with him. After he got killed, I didn’t want to ask for them back. She would have returned them when she got around to it.”
“Why Regency?” I asked. “Or do you collect from other periods, too?”
“That’s a special period for women readers,” she said. “It’s made famous by that romance writer, Georgiana Lowe.”
“I didn’t know you were a fan of romances,” I said.
This was the first time I’d ever seen a horned toad flutter its eyelashes. “We all have a bit of romance in us. We scientific women can’t spend all our time chasing decimal points.”
“Which book is your favorite?” I asked.
“Uh ...” Freda’s bold façade wobbled, but she quickly shored it up. “I think it’s called Ajax Revisited.”
“How did you like the one called The Bad Lady of Bath?”
Her discomfort returned, “Ah ... that was good, too.”
“Faith liked the bedroom scenes in that one,” I said.
“Yes, they were quite ... ah ... daring, I suppose you’d say.”
“Where did you say Mitra went on weekends?” I hoped the sudden change of subject would shake some information loose.
Instead, the impenetrable fortress façade returned. “She never said, except that she was doing research. And once she mentioned the School of Business library at the state university. The only relative she had was an aunt that raised her. Mitra sometimes visited her in a nursing home down in Cloverdale.”
“Did you ever hear of any love interest besides Jerry Vaughan?”
Freda again showed the overly-straight gaze that told me she was either lying or holding something back. “Not a trace of anything like that. She was very self-contained. I was surprised that Jerry even got to first base with her.”
“How many bases did he touch?”
“That’s something she would never have told me. Suffice it to say they planned to be married.” Her eyes shifted momentarily. “Well, Professor Combes had his eyes on Mitra right after Jerry’s death, but she wasn’t having any.”
Combes was married, and untoward conduct would get him in trouble with the administration almost as quickly as it would me. So I asked, “Did he make any overt advances?”
“You’ll have to ask him about that.” Freda looked at her watch and laboriously heaved her bulk into a standing position. “Now, if you’re through playing Torquemada,” she said, pronouncing the Grand Inquisitor’s name with an English d sound rather than the Spanish th, “I have an appointment. And I’d advise you to quit bulling around like you’re doing. You know what almost happened to you last fall.”
“People who tell me the whole truth have nothing to worry about,” I said, and left before she could reply.
Actually, my statement wasn’t the full truth, either. There was a murderer loose, and truth could be fatal to him or her. My statement was aimed at Freda’s deceptions. For Georgiana Lowe never wrote a book called The Bad Lady of Bath, and she prided herself on never writing bedroom scenes. Aside from the fact that Freda was lying, the only useful thing I’d learned was that Mitra had an aunt in a nursing home in Cloverdale.
Then it hit me. Freda had said “that terrible homicide detective” was still pestering her. So the police were still interested in Freda. I’d failed to follow up on that because I got tunnel vision about the dresses. Another opportunity missed.
When I got back to my office, the phone was ringing.
“Professor Barclay,” said a husky female voice on the line, “this is Brill Drisko. We met in that campus hamburger joint the other day.”
“I remember,” I said. “I gather you didn’t like your cheeseburger.”
“It was the pits,” she said. “It got grease all over my mouth, and I had to do my makeup over again.”
“Life’s tragedies,” I said.
She shifted topics without missing a breath. “Professor Barclay, I’ve got to talk to you before this thing gets too far.”
“What thing?” I asked.
“Your investigation of Mitra Fortier’s death.”
“That’s a police matter,” I said. “I’m not investigating it.”
“That’s not what I hear.” Her voice became huskier. “Can you come by here this afternoon?”
“Where is ‘here’?” I asked. My caution went on red alert.
“Steven’s and my house,” she said. “It’s a couple of miles out on the Caneyville Road.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m tied up this
afternoon with office hours.”
“Some other time, then,” she said. “But I do have to talk to you about your investigation.”
“I’m not investigating anything,” I said, but she had hung up.
It was almost noon, so I rang Mara’s office in hopes of catching her before lunch. She didn’t answer, so I headed to the grill. I found her there with the seemingly inevitable Emory Estes and the male and female composition specialists. Today, though, Mara’s chairman, Dathan Hormah, had graced us with his presence. As I joined them, Hormah was speaking in lecture mode.
“This whole idea of romantic love is hogwash,” he said. “In biblical times, love was either lust or a matter of having children to carry on the family name. Romantic love didn’t exist until medieval fiction made a fetish of it, and no one knows if people actually practiced it even then. That fiction has overshadowed reality ever since. The whole concept of romantic love is imaginary, a mythology our culture indoctrinates us with. The truth is that we’re well-designed physical organisms genetically programmed to propagate the species.”
He paused for effect, and Mara responded, “You’re saying that ‘This is what men called love until the Freudians taught us to blame it on the glands.’”
Score another point for her erudition. She’d neatly adapted Maxwell Anderson’s Winterset to the present occasion.
Dathan Hormah looked taken aback. “That’s a rather blunt way of putting it, Professor Thorn, but it’s essentially correct.” He showed no awareness that she was quoting anything or that she was using irony to refute him.
I usually stay out of these discussions, but this was too good to miss. “Back to your biblical claim,” I said, “from Genesis through Revelation, marriage is the earthly image of man’s right relationship with God.”
Hormah smiled. “Those writers also let their imaginations override their reason. It’s taken two thousand years to cut through the horseradish and fantasy. All metaphors are imaginary. In the real world, you have to deal with physical facts.” He heaved himself out of his chair and said over his shoulder as he left, “Come to my church in Meribah Valley, and we’ll give you the real facts.”