by Richard King
I looked around for a Kleenex in case she started to cry but could not find any. She breathed deeply a few more times, trying to get her emotions and tears in check.
“You’re right. I’m being insensitive. That’s often the case in a murder. We forget the feelings of the living in order to avenge the dead,” Lemieux told her. “Can I have someone drive you home? Or is there someone I can call to come and pick you up? I have just one or two more questions for now. Anything else can wait.”
“I can get home under my own steam. Just ask your questions so I can go.”
“You said that the two graduate students, Allan and Sarah, were having coffee when you came in this morning.”
“That’s right. They usually come in together. I think they usually go everywhere together.”
“Could anyone have been here before them?”
“Very unlikely. They were usually the first in. They seem to have a routine. They come downtown by métro and stop off at the Second Cup on du Collège for their coffee on their way to campus.”
“I see,” Lemieux said. “Can you describe them for me?”
“Describe them? Sarah is a natural blonde, about five feet four or five inches tall. Pretty, I suppose, but not gorgeous. She could be if she did more with herself, but she doesn’t.” Arlene started to sniffle and she fished around in her bag for a Kleenex. But instead of using it on her nose or the corners of her eyes where tears were starting to form, she tore at it while she squinted her eyes as if she were trying to bring a picture of Sarah and Allan into focus. “Allan is tall,” she continued. “Close to six feet, with dark hair and a permanent sour look on his face and a chip on his shoulder.”
“Why would that be?” Lemieux enquired.
“I think it’s because he doesn’t really fit in around here. He’s much further to the right politically than almost anyone else around here; Hilliard had conservative opinions, too, in some ways, but Allan is way more aggressive about it. Frankly, I don’t know what Sarah sees in him. He is bright enough, but sarcastic. I never took to him, but who knows? There’s no accounting for taste. He may be really nice to Sarah. He seems a domineering type to me. Is that all?”
“Yes, thank you. Please give me your phone numbers so I can call you if I have any more questions.”
Arlene gave him her phone numbers and she left.
“Well,” Lemieux said to me. “What do you think?”
I told Lemieux what I thought of her description of Hilliard. I recounted some of my experiences with the man, which were entirely positive. As I told him what the victim was like in life I realized that had he and Lemieux had a chance to meet they would have liked one another. They had similar tastes in books and they were similar in another ways as well. They both believed that there was an order and structure to things and they both looked for it. Maybe that’s why Hilliard was a historian and Lemieux a cop. “But in general I agree with her,” I concluded. “No one is going to kill a person for a computer.”
“That depends what’s on the computer, mon ami. And we won’t know that until we find the computer. This is turning into a very modern case. Cherchez l’ordinateur.”
Lemieux got up and walked over to the common room windows. He looked out at the campus for a while, then turned back to me. “I understand what you are telling me. I am not prepared to accept everything she says at face value. I’m sure she is lying about something. Most people who are involved with a murder victim panic and try to conceal something, often something completely innocent. But I don’t at this point know what she is lying about or why.” He paused and thought for a moment and then continued. “Usually in murder cases it takes a day or two to find the people we need to interview. Here I have a wealth of people to take statements from. And now, I suppose I had better tackle that gang at the faculty club, and then try to find out if our two students arrived separately or together this morning, and if anyone knows when they left.”
As we left the Elwitt Building Lemieux asked me, “Do you know where the faculty club is?”
“I’ll walk you over.” Didn’t he understand that I would stick to him like a burr as long as the case was unsolved?
He looked at me with amusement. “Don’t you have a job to go to?”
“I did. Maybe I still do. I’ll check into that later.” But it crossed my mind that I should really call Jennifer. She isn’t cute when she’s angry. I decided to face that later.
chapter five
The McGill University Faculty Club is an old greystone building on McTavish Street. Probably a former residence of one of the charter members of Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. The building is well maintained and hasn’t lost any of its solid bourgeois glory.
We walked up the steps and into a red-wallpapered foyer. To our left was the lounge, where I could hear the professors idly discussing the things all academics talk about when they get together—sports and real estate. (With their intimate friends they discuss appointments, other people’s salaries, and tenure.) To our right was a flight of stairs that led up to private dining rooms and meeting rooms. Lemieux and I must have looked out of place because before we could walk into the bar to meet the faculty members we were approached by an old man in a uniform — one of the legion of retired armed forces personnel who spend their golden years earning some extra money acting as officious guardians at private and semi-private clubs across Canada. “May I help you?” he asked.
Lemieux flashed his badge. “I’m here to see the group in there.” He tilted his head to the left, indicating the professors sitting at a table in the lounge. The hussier just about saluted at the sight of Lemieux’s badge and stood back to let us pass. “I’d like to speak to them privately. Is there an empty room somewhere in the building I could use?”
“I’m sure there is,” the hussier said, backing up to his desk to check an appointment book. “There’s a room available upstairs. It’s the third door to the left on the next floor up. I’ll ask your guests to meet you there. You’ll need this.” He handed Lemieux a key to the room and gave us a minute to start up the stairs before he went to tell our guests — as he termed them — where to meet us.
The room was a lovely dark-panelled salon with a large conference table surrounded by comfortable-looking leather chairs. It was well equipped for meetings, with a stack of pads and pens on the table. One wall was covered with shelves filled with old books, giving the place the feel of the private library it probably once was.
Lemieux took the eleven o’clock position at the conference table facing the door with a set of high windows with heavy blue velvet drapes behind him. I stood by the door waiting for our professors to arrive. As they settled themselves around the table I took a pad and pen and sat off to one side ready to keep out of sight as much as possible and to take notes in order to be helpful.
“All right,” said Lemieux. “My first question is an obvious one. Could each of you please tell me when you last saw Professor Hilliard alive?”
“I saw him at lunch last Friday,” said Ron Michaels, the guy with the tweed blazer and regimental tie.
“Tell me about it,” Lemieux prompted.
“Carla Schwartz and I” — he gestured to his right where Carla, a mouse-faced little woman, sat — “were having lunch right here in the faculty club. He was here as well. He was alone at one of the back tables. Almost hidden.”
“That’s right,” added Carla Schwartz. “I didn’t see him at first. He was way off in the corner. I think he was with Jane and Fred More. Jane Miller is one of our colleagues and Fred More is the dean of graduate studies,” she explained.
“No, he wasn’t with them,” Sally Howard piped in. “I was here before he arrived and he came in alone. I asked him to sit with me but he said he preferred to be alone and headed to the back. Fred and Jane came in later. They were near his table but they weren’t together.”
“Was that unusual?” asked Lemieux. “To avoid his friends?”
“Not really,” Sally expla
ined. “Sometimes we use lunch to catch up on reading or marking or whatever. Jonathan, on the other hand, came in while I was lingering over coffee and he was pleased to have my company.”
Jonathan Marreton, the white-haired gentleman with an equine face, treated us to a courtly smile and said, “Absolutely. At my age I accept all the invitations I get from pretty young women. I don’t get many. It was odd though. Hal and Fred and Jane sitting very close to each other, but I don’t think two words passed between the three of them during the entire time they were here.”
“You were close enough to hear them?” Lemieux asked.
“Not to hear them,” Marreton answered. “But certainly close enough to notice they weren’t talking, or even looking at each other much.”
“Can you think of any reason why they wouldn’t be on speaking terms?”
Lemieux’s question was followed by a silence. A silence that suggested that the members of the history department knew of, but did not want to mention, a reason for the Hilliard and the Mores not to speak to each other.
“I already know that professors Hilliard and Miller had a relationship before she married,” Lemieux prompted.
“If you know, then you know the reason they weren’t speaking,” Carla Schwartz put in.
“That’s not exactly true, Carla,” Sally Howard said. “Sure, there was a — well, a coolness between Hal and Fred and Jane when they first married but they got over that years ago. Hal and Fred never became friends but they could be cordial to one another.”
“Sally’s right, Carla,” Ron Michaels said, supporting his colleague. “I wouldn’t say that Hal and Jane were buddies but whenever they passed one another in the department or whenever they ran into one another at college function they would chat. I think that they still enjoyed each other’s company — intellectually, that is. And Fred was always a little protective of Jane, but still friendly.”
“They may have been sweet as pecan pie when in a group but I can tell you that when they thought no one was watching they were as cold as ice,” Carla said, defending herself.
“When you say, ‘they’ who do you mean? Hilliard and Miller or Hilliard and More?” Gaston enquired.
“Hal and Fred, certainly,” Marreton said. “But I don’t think that I ever saw Hal and Jane share much of a conversation beyond good morning.”
“That’s not true,” Michaels reiterated. “I saw them chat any number of times when they were in the department.”
I could see why Gaston wanted to interview the professors as a group. He could get at the contradictions in their stories, something that would have required seemingly endless back-and-forth meetings if he had decided to interview each of them separately.
“Maybe so, but I can tell you that I was coming into the club as Fred and Jane were leaving,” Mac Edwards said. “And they were both as silent as death. They barely mumbled hello as I passed them at the door.”
“I see,” Gaston said. But I wasn’t sure what it was that he saw. It sounded to me like Hilliard sort of got along with his ex-lover, but only in public and that he and the ex-lover’s husband did not get along at all — and made no effort to pretend that they did.
“Was Hilliard well liked?” Gaston asked.
“Well liked by whom?” Edwards countered.
“His colleagues? His students? Were any of you close to him?” Gaston probed.
“I suppose that I was as close to him as anyone in the university,” Nicholas Wheatley responded. “We would have lunch once a week or so and we tended to attend the same conferences and colloquia. I was on a panel with him a couple of years ago and we spent a fair amount of time working on our papers together.”
“I think the detective meant, were any of us actually, really, friends of Hal’s, friends beyond our connection as departmental colleagues, and the answer is no,” Carla informed us. “He was never what you would call extroverted. After Jane he didn’t show much of an interest in any of us. I don’t know what he did for a social life.”
“Did any of you see Professor Hilliard at any other time during the day yesterday or this morning?” Gaston asked, changing subjects.
“I saw him in the early afternoon,” boomed Wheatley. His voice was the one that had actually showed concern for Hilliard when we first met. “He was coming into the department as I was off to class. He seemed lost in thought. I’m not sure that he even saw me as we passed.”
“Did any of you see him after that?” Gaston asked.
A chorus of noes.
Lemieux looked around the table slowly and said, “Thank you for your help. I may need to see some of you again. But you’re free to return to your offices and your students.” I tore my notes off the pad and folded them into my pocket.
Outside, Gaston and I joined the throng of students heading south to Sherbrooke Street. The information we’d gathered in the faculty club from the professors didn’t convey anything to me, and I wasn’t sure Gaston had detected any useful leads in it, either. The rush of students reminded me that we still had to determine whether Allan and Sarah arrived at the history department singly or together.
At the corner of Sherbrooke and McTavish, Lemieux turned to me to say goodbye and head off, probably to do some more detecting — without me. But before he could speak I jumped in: “Listen, why don’t I go over to the Second Cup and ask them about Allan and Sarah? I really don’t mind and I can report to you later.”
“You have no official status,” he reminded me. “You can’t go around asking questions as if you were a police detective.”
“I know,” I said, smiling at him as winningly as I could. “That’s the beauty of it. I’ll pretend that I know them or that I’m a professor and that they lost some exam papers and I’m looking for them at the café, sort of retracing their steps to find the missing papers.”
He looked dubious.
“I’m going there anyway, it’s on the way to the store, and it will save you some time.”
“It’s very unorthodox,” Gaston said slowly.
“I’m sure I’ll have no trouble getting some information.”
I could tell that he was beginning to see the merits of my idea. “Well, I suppose … I’ve got to write up my report and get a beat constable over to Hilliard’s apartment to make sure no one goes in before I get a chance to search it. It would save me some time.”
I waited.
“Okay,” he said at last, “you can do it, but remember, do not represent yourself as a cop. And if it looks like you’re in over your head just leave and let me know and I’ll take care of it myself. Understand?”
“Perfectly.” I had no intention of trying to pass myself off as a cop. And how could I possibly “get in over my head” as he put it? I was going to check out a café, not get into a gunfight.
“Meet me at Hilliard’s place at seven this evening and let me know what you find out about our two students. Do you have the address?”
“Yeah, 3519 Lefebvre. I’ll meet you in front at seven.”
Lemieux headed east and I crossed Sherbrooke to walk over to the Second Cup.
Knowledge is power, and in a pinch, information is power. I knew that if I could unearth some really useful information he would see me as a truly helpful comrade in arms and not as a pain in the ass trying to push my way into a police investigation.
chapter six
I realized that I had been out of the store for a long time so I figured I’d better make an appearance.
When I walked in, Jennifer was at the service desk talking to a customer. She saw me come in and flashed me an amazingly dirty look. The customer never noticed that the relaxed, knowledgeable person she was talking to was forming the intent to commit mayhem. Even I would have thought, except for that that one furious glance, that Jennifer was laid-back and cheerful, leaning against the information desk. I looked around, realized that there was no other staff member in the store and there was a customer waiting to pay for a couple of books at the cash counter.
I hurried over to over to the cash to make myself useful ringing up the transaction.
When I looked back a moment later the customer was folding her special order forms into her purse and thanking Jennifer, who was now standing in a fighter’s stance with one foot slightly ahead of the other, shoulder-width apart, hands firmly planted on hips.
All this time, I’d been so enthralled with my morning’s adventures that it hadn’t crossed my mind to call her, and now I was in big trouble. I knew how much she hated being left to handle things on her own. I realized I’d been depending on the fact that we had two staff members working that day. But they didn’t seem to be around.
The second the door closed behind Jennifer’s customer, her face was twelve inches from mine and her eyes were firing poison darts that made me flinch away from her. I was drawing a deep breath for the apology that was clearly required, but she didn’t wait for it.
“Where were you? We have a business to run here. Lorraine had an urgent dentist’s appointment and I finally had to let Yvonne go out to lunch. You can’t just disappear. People call for you. What am I supposed to tell them? Random House called. They want a cheque or they won’t ship. Why didn’t you pay them?”
“I’m sorry,” I began. “I should have …”
“You should have done a lot of things, but you didn’t think, did you?”
It was worse than I thought. It wasn’t just my unexplained absence. The Random House guy was always very nice and friendly on the telephone, but they do have rules, which I try not to break, but sometimes things get behind. Jennifer hates it when I forget to pay our suppliers. She worries that I’m withholding payments because we don’t have any money and we’re going bankrupt. No matter how much I explain that I’m only managing the cash flow and that the publishers know that they’ll get paid eventually, it still drives her crazy when she has to take a call from our most important supplier’s accounting department because I’m not there to deal with it. Part of my job description is to protect Jennifer from accounts receivable clerks.