by Richard King
So I rambled on. “Does that mean that Hilliard was melancholy or depressed? It could. Hamlet’s love life is going nowhere with Ophelia and he’s angry with his mother. So does that mean that Hilliard made a note of that scene because it describes how he felt? But what could that have to do with his murder? Unless he was tricked into a duel and killed with a poison-tipped sword like Hamlet it’s not much help to us. It’s not exactly a message with a direction ‘To be opened in the event of my death.’”
Gaston said, more to himself than to me, “Well, it could have been kind of accusation. There is no question he was murdered. And the note was found in one place and the body in another. It must have some other significance. Hamlet meant something to Hilliard that we don’t understand yet.”
We were both silent for a few moments. As usual Jake and Jackie were snapping at each other in Romansh or Serbo-Croat or whatever their native language is. There was a guy sitting at a table beside the window who was writing something in a black notebook. He was dressed all in black and hadn’t shaved or combed his hair in at least a week. Another poet, obviously. It wouldn’t be long before he self-published his poetry and tried to force Jen and me to take the book on consignment. It seemed a long time since this morning, when I’d followed Mac Edwards and Sally Howard and listened in on their conversation with Carla Schwartz.
I realized I hadn’t yet told Gaston about all that. “This morning I—”
At which point Arlene Ford materialized at our table. She just stood there looking belligerent. Gaston, ever polite, rose. “Ms. Ford. How are you? Would you join us for a coffee?”
I wanted to get up too, but she was standing so close to me that I would have knocked her over if I’d tried. So I half rose and indicated the empty chair at our table. “Yes, please sit down.”
“OK,” she said, and sat abruptly.
I groped in my mind for something to say, but came up with nothing.
Jackie came over and without waiting for her to speak, Arlene said, “Cappuccino.” Then she turned to Lemieux and asked, “Have you found the murderer yet?”
“Alas, no. But Sam and I have just been discussing it. Do you happen to know whether Professor Hilliard liked Shakespeare particularly? Did he ever talk about Hamlet?”
“Shakespeare? Shakespeare? What has Shakespeare got to do with murder?” Arlene asked. “I never heard him mention Shakespeare. He went to the theatre from time to time and to Stratford every couple of years. But I don’t think he had a particular passion for Shakespeare or anything like that. Why do you ask?”
“We found a reference to Hamlet on one of those yellow sticky notes in his study. It was hidden. It looked like it was a reminder of something but we don’t know what.”
“You were at his apartment?” Arlene seemed unpleasantly surprised by this. “Already?”
“We searched it yesterday,” Gaston informed her. I wondered why she was so taken aback, when she had given us Hilliard’s address herself. Did she think the police would not visit the apartment of a murder victim? Or that we just knocked and, getting no answer, went away again?
“So, what did you find?” she asked, trying and failing to make the question appear conversational.
The expression on Gaston’s face, though it was studiously neutral, told me that he too had sensed that Arlene Ford was nervous about something. He gave me a look that told me to keep quiet so that he could try to get Arlene to open up.
“Well, the place was very tidy. It was easy for us to go through his belongings to see if anything appeared to be out of place. And the lab crew is probably there right now, checking for fingerprints and other physical evidence.”
“Yes, he was unbelievably neat,” Arlene said in a very soft voice. She looked a bit panicked. “So if there was something there that didn’t belong to Harold you would have found it?”
“Yes, of course. But we don’t broadcast that kind of thing. We save it so that we can use the information at the appropriate time.”
We were quiet. Arlene wasn’t very good at hiding what she was thinking. It was clear from her guilty look that she was worried about what we might have found. Something of hers? I could almost read her thoughts. Gaston and I had both guessed that she was keeping a secret of some kind, and it looked as if we were getting too close for comfort. She was frightened that we had evidence that might point to her and she was wondering whether she should open up to us now or wait to see what we knew.
Gaston, without telling her anything, had made her believe there had been something there that shouldn’t have been and she was worried about that. Very clever. Gaston was able to deceive her without lying; you have to admire that in a person.
Of course, we hadn’t actually found anything that we associated with her.
Or perhaps we had, I thought, suddenly remembering the perfume that had lingered in the air.
Gaston and I sipped at our coffee and said nothing as Arlene twisted her coffee spoon in her hand and continued to think. Finally she convinced herself that she had better talk now or things might be even worse later.
“I may have left something there,” she said in a low nervous voice.
“Tell me about it,” Gaston said encouragingly.
“Something personal,” she continued. Her skin had turned a greenish white colour and I could see beads of perspiration at her hairline and on her upper lip. She looked as if she might faint or throw up. She pulled her large leather handbag up onto the table and started to fish around in it for something, sniffling and on the verge of tears, looking for a tissue, I assumed. The bag was large and she had to dig through a lot of stuff. I could hear the click of the things inside her bag banging into each other as rummaged around.
And then the most amazing thing happened. She froze. The sniffling stopped, colour returned to her face and cheeks. Whatever she had feared, whatever precipice she had been hesitating on, seemed to have vanished. Her expression changed to one of secretive satisfaction. She was not going to tell us what she came so close to confessing.
Sighing with relief, she took out a Kleenex and snapped her handbag shut. “It’s something personal,” she said again, in a louder, more self-confident voice. “I did some extra work for him at his place and I left a pen and pencil set there. It was an expensive gift, a Mont Blanc, from someone very dear to me and I really don’t want to lose it. It has great sentimental value.”
She gave a fake little sniff and dabbed at nonexistent tears in the corners of her dry eyes. This was meant to convince us that she was telling the truth about some object that was so meaningful that she was overcome at the thought of having lost it. It was a good save, almost, but she was not much of a liar. We saw right through her. Still, what could we do?
“What kind of work did you do for him at his place?” Gaston asked suspiciously.
“Proofreading. I proofed his manuscripts for him. The university doesn’t let us do that as part of our jobs as it would take too much time and it’s unfair anyway because not all the professors need proofreaders. So I picked up a bit of extra money moonlighting as an editor. I did a lot of work for Hal and I must have left my pen at his place. Is that what you found? Please tell me it is.”
She looked Gaston straight in his eyes and covered his hand with hers to convince him of her sincerity, I suppose. Luckily she didn’t: see me raise my eyebrows when she referred to our victim as Hal. Somehow, the nickname seemed too informal. To me he was Professor Hilliard, the historian.
Gaston wasn’t buying it. “I’m sorry. There was no pen and pencil set there. If we find it I’ll let you know.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” Arlene said, getting up to leave. “I’m so worried about my writing set. I’m glad I ran into you, because at least I know now that I didn’t leave it there.”
“Please. Just one moment before you leave. There’s something I’d like you to do for me. Sit down for just one more minute.” Gaston, too, had stood up and was now holding the back of Arlene’s chair inviting her to sit down
again.
She resumed her chair and was beginning to get that trapped-animal look in her eyes again.
“There are some people in the history department that I must see. I’d like you to set up appointments for me and my colleague to meet with them tomorrow morning.” Gaston reached into an inside pocket of his blazer and pulled out his notebook and flipped through it. “I need to see, ah, yes, here they are — Sarah Bloch, Jane Miller-More and Allan Gutmacher. I’d like to see one of them at ten o’clock and the others at eleven and noon. Can you arrange it? I’ll use the conference room if no one minds.”
“Well, I don’t know if I can summon people just like that. And what if the conference room is in use?”
“Just tell them that you are co-operating with the homicide investigation. I’m sure that the university wants to help in any way that it can.” Gaston gave her a hard look to convince her that he was in no mood for any more prevaricating from her; not after her earlier performance about the lost Mont Blanc pen and pencil.
“I’ll do what I can,” Arlene said as she got up to leave. Again, Gaston was on his feet a split second after her.
“Thank you. I appreciate your co-operation,” he said, meaning that he expected her co-operation.
Arlene Ford turned and walked away without thanking us for the coffee.
“Did you believe any of that?” I asked after she was safely out of the café.
“Not really.”
“Then you think she did it?”
“That’s not what I said. But she is not telling us everything she knows. She could be the guilty person or she could be afraid that she will look guilty if we find whatever thing I almost convinced her we had found.”
“So you don’t think she did it?”
“I don’t know. She is a suspect, that’s for sure. Whether she’s one of many suspects or the prime suspect we’ll know only after we interview some more people. She obviously thought she had left something at Hilliard’s place, something small enough to fit in her bag and personal enough that we could identify it as hers. And it was that specific thing. She didn’t mind telling us she’d been there and had left her nonexistent pen there. But then she found it in her bag, whatever it was, and regained her composure. Do you have any idea what it might be?”
“It could be anything from a wallet to cosmetics to birth control. Her bag was large enough to hold all that plus a change of clothing.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. It could be an article of clothing as well as one of those other things.”
“We’re not getting very far, are we?” I asked.
“Don’t be impatient. It’s very early in the case. Unless the perpetrator is found at the scene with some incriminating evidence these things take time. Remember, the murderer is in no rush to be found. It will take a couple of days just to sort out the details and determine who the suspects are.”
“Speaking of suspects,” I said. “I was going to tell you before Ms. Ford came in that I’ve found another one.”
Gaston looked both surprised and amused, but as I told him the story of the small and impromptu meeting of the historians the hard-eyed, analytical-detective look returned.
“… and that may explain the connection to Hamlet,” I concluded. “Maybe Hilliard was telling us that if he was ever found murdered it would be due to revenge or trickery and the murderer would be a member of his court — his department — I mean.”
Gaston could barely suppress a smile as he listened to my conclusion. He relaxed into his chair and said, “I don’t know if Hamlet points the finger at Professor Michaels but you certainly do. I will definitely have a talk with him. You have done good work, Sam, but please be careful about doing things that are best left to the police. I’ll solve this crime. Don’t worry.”
Didn’t he know me well enough yet to realize I wouldn’t give up? I was still puzzling over the two objects we were looking for: a laptop computer and something of Arlene Ford’s. In one case we knew what the object was but not where it was, and the other we knew where the object was — in Arlene Ford’s bag — but not what it was. It was a devilish riddle. I loved it.
Gaston got up and pulled some money out of his pocket to pay for our coffee. “I suppose you’ll want to join me for the interviews tomorrow morning,” he said casually.
“I’d like that, yes,” I said, delighted and at the same time feeling guilty about dumping all my real work on Jennifer. But I was hooked. I intended to see this thing through.
“OK. Meet me at the history department at ten. Actually, I’d like you to get there early. Maybe the reluctant Ms. Ford will open up to you if I’m not there.”
Back at the store I found Jennifer trying to bring order out of chaos. We had just received a very large delivery of books and the boxes were spread all over the place.
Jennifer was directing two of the staff members, Nicole and Rob, on the order in which she wanted to boxes stacked. Our stockroom wasn’t very large and the overflow of boxes would have to remain in the store until the books were received into inventory.
When people find out I work in a bookstore they get all dreamy-eyed and talk about all the books I must get to read. I tell them about the tonnage of books I get to carry around. People think books walk into the store and float up onto the shelves, but alas they have to be heaved, and believe me, boxes of books are heavy. It takes brawn as much as a love of reading to work in a bookstore.
After the boxes were stacked Jennifer said, “Nicole, you and Rob will have to handle things for a while. Sam and I have some very important things to discuss. If things get busy call me but I think you’ll be OK. Anyway, Bill and Jim will be in in about an hour so you can take your breaks. Sylvia is working in the back but I’ll send her’out to help. Your office or mine, Sam?” she said, directing her attention to me.
This was a joke we never got tired of telling each other. We shared an office that was barely large enough to accommodate the two of us, with no room for a visitor. When Jen had an appointment with a sales rep I stayed out of the office so they could both sit down.
“Mine,” I said. “I just had a wet bar installed.”
On the way through the stock room to our office I got a couple of Snapples from the fridge in the corner while Jen sent Sylvia out to help in the store and we settled down to our important meeting.
“OK,” Jen said, popping the top on her Snapple. “Spill. I want to know everything that happened between you and your cop.”
I told Jen what happened at the Café Paillon in as much detail as I could remember. And that’s a lot of detail as I have a good memory.
“She’s up to something,” Jennifer snorted when I finished my story. “She didn’t lose a pen and pencil set.”
“We figured that out ourselves. Neither Gaston nor I are all that sure what women carry around in their purses. Help us. If we could peek into Arlene Ford’s bag what would we find?”
“You guessed most of the stuff. There might be a cheque book and an agenda as well. And certainly an extra pair of pantyhose if she wears them at all,” she told me.
“All right. Of that stuff, what is she likely to panic over if it were discovered at the scene of a crime?”
“Not the make-up, that’s for sure, unless the makeup case was special. Engraved or something. Women leave make-up all over the place. We just replace it. It could be a piece of jewellery that would be pretty easy to identify as belonging to her, especially if it was engraved. If she left birth control pills or a diaphragm around somewhere that could be embarrassing, especially if you could trace it to her somehow. Any other medication could be easily identified as hers as would a chequebook or an agenda. It might be harder to determine who belonged to a stray piece of clothing, or worse, intimate apparel, but if you could figure it out no woman would want to have to explain how or why she managed to leave a man’s apartment without that article, especially if it’s something like underwear or a bra.”
Jennifer confirmed what I had b
een thinking but it didn’t bring me any closer to a solution. I was dying to know what Arlene Ford had discovered safe and sound in her bag.
“Not to change the subject,” Jennifer said. “But as I told you while you’re off playing detective I’m going to need some extra help around here. Have you arranged for it?”
“Yeah. It’s not a problem. Sylvia wants some extra hours and so do a few of the others.”
“Can the bank balance stand the extra expense?” the ever worried Jennifer asked.
“No problem,” I told her. And if there was a problem I would solve it later.
We had a late appointment with the sales rep from Murray & Kerr, Jen’s former employers, to discuss an author tour. Jennifer and I chatted about business and books for a while longer while we waited for Mary-Anne Dolan, the M&K rep to show up.
She arrived promptly at four-thirty and as was her habit wasted very little time with chit-chat and got right down to business. Mary-Anne wanted to arrange for Allison Fitzgerald to have a reading and autographing at our store some time in early November. Jennifer thought it would be a good idea and since I look after this kind of thing she set up a meeting for the three of us to make plans. Arranging for an author visit is not as simple as it may seem. First the sales rep proposes an author and works out a potential date, then the bookseller and someone from the promotion department of the publisher make the final plans, including advertising and the division of expenses. The publisher normally pays for up to half the advertising according to a complicated formula that it works out for each bookstore. I don’t really understand the formula or the need for it and I’ve never met a bookseller who does understand it but so long as I get the amount of money I’m owed I really don’t care how the formula works. We concluded our business at about five and Jennifer and I each spent an hour or so finishing up paperwork, order processing and bookkeeping — all the stuff that keeps a small business running.
Just after six I turned off my computer, stretched and asked Jen if she wanted to go out to dinner. “Don’t you have to go out with young Susan?” she asked with a bit of a snippy tone in her voice.