A Body In My Office (The Charles Bentley Mysteries Book 1)

by Glen Ebisch

  “Yes, but there seems to be a possible wealth of folks who might have wanted to do that going back to his time at Yale.”

  “Did you talk to Jessica Rhyser and Deborah Gould?”

  Charles filled the Lieutenant in on what he had discovered.

  “So they both knew him,” Thorndike said.

  “Yes. But they both adamantly denied having any personal involvement with him.”

  “Did you believe them?”

  “I’m not sure how good I am at telling when people are lying,” Charles admitted.

  “There’s no scientific way to know for sure. Even the police, who are used to seeing lots of liars, get it wrong. Did either one of them act nervous?”

  “Jessica seemed pretty composed. I think Deborah Gould considered telling me she didn’t know him, but had second thoughts. If one of them had killed him, would they even admit to having known him?”

  Thorndike shrugged. “Maybe, if they thought we might be able to find out the truth.”

  “Well, my money is on Gould because she acted the most suspiciously.”

  “People act that way for all sorts of reasons, but I’ll have a chat with both of them to see what I can find out. But what motive would either one of them have to kill him even if they had been involved with him.”

  “Revenge,” Charles suggested. “They say it is a dish best served cold.”

  “But after ten years it would be frozen.”

  Charles stared across the kitchen for a long moment.

  “You look like you’ve come up with something,” Thorndike said.

  “I was just thinking about Jessica Rhyser. She claimed that when push came to shove, Underwood would threaten to lower a student’s grades if she didn’t have sex with him. Since he had used extortion in the past, I was wondering if he was planning to use it again.”

  “I’d say most likely he was, but he didn’t have any students yet.”

  “True. But what if he had already tried it on with his new colleague that he had known as a student at Yale?”

  “You think he had something on Rhyser or Gould that he was going to use to extort sex?”

  Charles shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out when I talk to them. But they are probably not going to willingly give it away.”

  “Have you heard anything from the New Haven police?”

  “I talked to a detective down there who checked their records. They had nothing on Garrison Underwood. I suppose Yale handled it as an academic matter, and none of the women filed a police report.”

  “Unfortunate, a little time in jail might have been good for Underwood. Instead he just got to move on to somewhere new and continue his bad behavior.”

  Thorndike stood up and stretched. Suddenly Charles was aware that she was very much a woman.

  “Well, he paid the price eventually,” the Lieutenant said. She started to walk towards the door and Charles followed. “I’ll let you know what I find out from Rhyser and Gould.”

  “Thanks for coming by and keeping me up to date.”

  She nodded. “Were you sitting out on the patio when I rang the bell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe to do that?”

  “I thought we’d decided that the killings had nothing to do with me.”

  “I know, but until we have this case wrapped up and know what’s what, I’d be happier if you would play it safe. Will you do that?”

  “I really don’t think it’s necessary, but I’ll certainly accede to your wishes.”

  “Thanks, Charles.” Thorndike smiled and touched him on the arm. “I’d hate to lose you so soon after we’ve met. It would also add to my case load.”

  “That would be a shame,” Charles said, tongue-tied by the moment of intimacy.

  Charles watched the police car back down his driveway, then he went into his study and booted up his computer. He had an idea of what to do next in the investigation.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Charles carefully scrolled through the names of the members of the Yale English Department. Many of the full professors were people he knew, either personally from conferences or by reputation. But he doubted whether he could convince any of them to do what he wanted. He needed someone with whom he had a more intimate connection. Finally he found a familiar name among the ranks of assistant professors.

  Adam Sussman had been one of the best students Charles had ever taught. Charles had been his mentor on his senior honours thesis, and had written him an excellent letter of recommendation to graduate school. He had gone on to study at Harvard. Charles had lost track of him after that, but apparently he had found an entry position at Yale. Most importantly he had thought so much of Charles and had such a fun-loving nature that it might make him a good candidate for what Charles had in mind.

  He called the number for Adam’s office and was delighted to find him there. After some initial surprise at hearing from Charles after all these years, the two were soon engaged in fond reminiscence over Adam’s time at Opal College. When there was an appropriate pause in the conversation, Charles got down to the matters at hand.

  “I don’t know if the story has made its way down to New Haven yet, but Garrison Underwood was murdered up here a few days ago.”

  “Garrison Underwood! Of course I’ve heard of him, but I didn’t even know he was in the country. How did it happen?”

  “No one knows yet, but it happened in my office.”

  “My God! How horrible for you. I take it you weren’t there at the time.”

  “No, I had just left to go out to the parking lot. He was going to be using my office while I was . . . away.” Charles didn’t want to explain his retirement.

  “I see.”

  “Yes, and it is part of the reason why I’m calling you.”

  “Only part?” he asked shrewdly

  Charles chuckled to hide his embarrassment.

  “To be honest Adam, I have thought about you many times over the years. You were one of my best students. I’m afraid I haven’t been very good at keeping in touch with people recently.”

  There was a pause. “I heard about your wife dying. I’m sorry. I’m sure that’s made things difficult for you. But it certainly is great to hear from you now. What is it you want me to do?”

  “Well, the police, at first at least, suspected that I might be involved in Underwood’s murder because it happened in my office. Fortunately, they’ve gotten away from that idea, but I’d still like to find out who killed him in case the suspicion comes back in my direction.”

  “How can I help you with that?”

  Charles went on to explain about Underwood’s problems at Yale ten years ago. When he was done Adam whistled.

  “You know, the time I heard Underwood speak at a conference, I thought he was one of the most arrogant bastards I’d ever run across. One of those guys who goes through life thinking he’s entitled. So I’m not surprised that he’d be involved in something like this.”

  “Do you think it would be possible to find out some of the specifics of what he did? Maybe get names of the students involved? I’d particularly like to find out who this so-called sex slave was.”

  “Of course most of the senior faculty would have been here a decade ago. But getting them to name names might be hard. Some of them won’t be willing to talk about anything that reflects badly on the institution, and there are others who, even if willing, can’t even remember the names of the student they taught last semester, let alone students involved in a decade-old scandal.”

  “I realize that. But every department in every school has a sort of unofficial historian who is willing to share past gossip with anyone who shows some interest. I thought you might know someone like that.”

  “There is a fellow in eighteenth century poetry, Christian Geller, who occupies that role here. He’s a forty-year man, and thinks every event that’s occurred on campus in that time is worthy of rehashi
ng, especially after he has a few drinks.”

  “Do you know him well enough to take him out to dinner and ply him with alcohol?”

  “We get along pretty well. He’s a bachelor, and I’m sure things get slow for him during the summer break. I’ll give him a call and set it up. Actually, it’s been awhile since I’ve had a chat with the old boy, it might be fun. Plus I kind of like the idea of solving a mystery. That’s what scholarship is really all about, isn’t it?”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  “So we both should be really good at this sort of thing.”

  Charles smiled at the enthusiasm coming down the phone line.

  “Indeed we should, Adam, indeed we should.”

  After he hung up the phone, Charles sat at his desk lost in thought for a moment. He had greatly exaggerated to Adam the threat he felt from the police. He doubted very much that suspicion would ever again fall on him, especially now that the Lieutenant had made him virtually a participant in the investigation. So why was he so anxious to discover who had killed the egregious Underwood, a man, who to all accounts, deserved to be murdered more than most? It wasn’t because in principle he believed that all killers must be brought to justice. His ethics were much more situational than that, and he could easily imagine hoping that someone who assassinated an evil dictator got away scot-free. So why this determination to hunt down a killer who might be someone grievously wronged by Underwood in the past?

  Part of it, he knew was because Sylvia Underwood had been murdered. Finding her body still haunted him. He had liked her during their one brief meeting, and she had certainly suffered at the hands of Underwood as much as anyone. There was nothing from her past that indicated that she deserved to die. Since he suspected that the same person had killed twice, he believed that finding Underwood’s killer would also reveal Sylvia’s. She deserved justice.

  But there was more to it than that. Since his involvement in the Underwood case, he had thought less about his past with Barbara. Less about the question of why she had been out on that snowy road late at night. Her death had stopped being the default setting that his mind drifted to when not engaged in immediate matters. For the first time in three years something had caught his interest. He leaned back in his chair and listened to its familiar squeak. Adam had been right. Some of the skills similar to those required in scholarship applied to the investigation of crime, but solving crimes, because they involved injuries to people, were unlike scholarship in that they were never trivial. Perhaps by engaging with something important, he could get on with his life.

  He walked from his study and turned down the hall. For a moment he imagined that he heard the soft voices of Barbara and Andrea as they talked while working in the kitchen during the many times Andrea was over to dinner. The comforting sounds of the women still gripped his heart, but some of the sharp longing for the past had disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Charles ran again the next morning with Greg Wasserman, and this time when he turned around at the half-mile point and headed back to his house, he made it to within a block from home before he had to slow to a walk. Tomorrow for sure, he promised himself, he’d finally be able to run a mile. The thought brought an image to his mind of himself and Greg running off to meet the horizon, covering great distances with the speed of antelopes. How much can a man of your age reasonably be expected to do? The question suddenly loomed up puncturing his swelling balloon of excitement. Well, I guess I’m about to find out, he told himself defiantly.

  After having breakfast, Charles decided to go into the College. He thought that another way to discover who had killed Underwood, assuming it was someone from his past, would be to find out if he had shown a special interest in any member of the faculty. Yuri, the department chair, had spent more time with him during his brief sojourn on campus than anyone else, so a conversation with him might be beneficial. Conversations with Yuri were always a shade surrealistic, but sorting out the impressions from the facts might yield some valuable evidence.

  Charles enjoyed the ride into the campus. It took him around narrow twisty roads that went dangerously near the edges of the hills, but what was a nail-biting adventure during the snowy and icy weather of winter was a bucolic treasure in the summer. Between almost running a mile and having a sylvan experience riding in, Charles felt so happily mellow that he went up the main staircase of the English building for a change. The faculty secretary, Martha Reynolds, was back at her usual post and asked how he was doing.

  Since she had been out on vacation for the past two weeks, he had to spend some time filling her in on his retirement and the murders of the Underwoods. She told him about her vacation, which apparently involved a cruise through the eastern Caribbean.

  “You look like you’ve lost some weight,” she finally said, after running out of vacation stories.

  “Well, it’s been a difficult week. Plus I’ve taken up running with Greg Wasserman in physics every morning. Do you know him?”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever met him, but I just heard his name recently.” She frowned and stared across the room. “That’s right, Sheila told me he was here a few days ago.” Martha lowered her voice, “Apparently he and Yuri got into quite an argument.”

  “What day was this?” Charles asked.

  “It was the day Garrison Underwood was killed. Sheila only told me about the argument yesterday because Professor Underwood’s death had pushed it out of her mind.”

  Charles’ mind raced. What if Greg had spoken to Yuri about the English Department’s sneaky manoeuvring to get the next Opal Chair for Garrison Underwood? Charles could easily imagine such a conversation degenerating into a rancorous argument. And what if Greg, after his unsuccessful meeting with Yuri, had foolishly decided to plead his case directly to Underwood? To do so he might have headed down the hall to Charles’ office right after Charles had left.

  He could imagine the kind of greeting Greg’s request for science to get the Opal Chair would receive from Underwood. Any appeal Greg might make to merit, justice, or equality would have been met with scorn. When Underwood had finally turned his back on Greg as a last sign of contempt, Charles could easily imagine Greg picking up the cricket trophy and dispatching this aggravating impediment to his future success. That would explain why he had met Greg when he did in the parking lot by the English building.

  Charles paused. Greg had seemed awfully calm at the time for someone who had just undergone a burst of murderous frenzy. But who knew about people in science? Some of them seemed to Charles to be absolutely nerveless, or perhaps it was their tendency to optimism about the fruits of science that kept them calm, for example only seeing atomic energy as a force for good. For a moment, Charles was tempted to leave the office and seek out Greg to find out what had happened that day. But then he realized that he might lay some valuable groundwork by pumping Yuri for the details of their conversation. He decided to wait to confront Greg until their run the next morning.

  “Would Yuri be available for a few minutes?” Charles asked.

  Martha picked up the phone to ask Yuri. He must have said yes because she nodded for Charles to go in. Yuri had his door open before Charles reached it.

  “Charles, my old friend, how is retirement treating you?” Yuri asked, giving him a comradely clap on the shoulder.

  “It hasn’t been long enough to know,” Charles replied somberly, not having forgotten Yuri’s role in attempting to get him replaced with Garrison Underwood.

  He went into Yuri’s office, which had bookshelves on every wall and piles of book on just about every flat surface.

  “May I?” Charles asked, pointing to the books on the only chair other than Yuri’s.

  “Put them wherever,” Yuri said with an expansive swing of his arm, as if Charles should fling them about the room.

  Charles piled them neatly on the floor next to the chair.

  He sat down and looked at Yuri, who smiled at him with nervous expectatio
n. Probably still having some residual guilt over the trick he tried to put over on me, Charles thought.

  “I’m here to try to learn a bit more about Garrison Underwood. I’m helping the police with their investigations.”

  Yuri’s face went still, an impassive mask. As Charles expected, mentioning the police had a dramatic effect on someone who grew up in the Soviet Union.

  “But I know nothing about his death,” Yuri protested. “I hardly knew the man.”

  Charles smiled reassuringly. “I know you had nothing to do with his death. But you must have gotten some sense of him. Didn’t you have several meetings with him?”

  Yuri thought carefully as if checking the conversational terrain for landmines.

  “We talked briefly on the phone a couple of times when he was still in England, and I picked him up at the airport and transported him here.”

  “That’s over a three hour trip. Surely you must have talked about something.”

  Yuri frowned. “He was convinced that studying British literature since nineteen hundred was a waste of time.”

  “Did he realize that was your field?”

  “Yes, I told him. He called it the stinking effluvia of a corrupt culture.”

  “Did you talk about anything else?”

  “He was quite expansive on the subject,” Yuri said dryly. “It took up a great deal of time.”

  “Did he mention anyone on the faculty by name?”

  Yuri nodded. “He mentioned you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that’s you were quite good a decade ago,” Yuri said, sounding apologetic. “He also said that it was a good thing you were being put out into the fields.”

  Charles pondered that for a moment. “You mean out to pasture.”

  Yuri looked at the little notebook on his desk, but didn’t reach out for it.

  “Underwood was not a man who pushed his punches.”

  “You mean pulled his punches.”

  Yuri shrugged, his lack of concern for correcting himself a sign that he was extremely uncomfortable.

  “Did he mention anyone else on the faculty by name?”