by Richard King
“He was somewhat more impatient than usual. And it looked like he got dressed in a hurry. Jeans, his shirt hanging out, no shoes or socks. And I was so sure that she was there that I got out as quickly as I could. I felt embarrassed at disturbing them. And here’s the really funny thing; I’m sure that I recognized her perfume, but I didn’t know what it was. It certainly wasn’t the stuff they spray on you when you’re in the Bay. I imagined that it was pretty expensive and I was right. One day I happened to be in Holt-Renfrew and I discovered what it was that she wears: Jade. It costs about a million dollars an ounce.”
“Hmm, I guess we’ll have to have another chat with our friend.” Gaston was silent for a minute or two while he digested what Sarah had told him. He got up and began pacing back and forth in front of the windows, pausing every once in a while to look out at the campus. Finally he bent forward, placing both hands on the table and looked Sarah straight in the face, locking his eyes on hers. “Ms. Bloch,” he said sternly, “I don’t for a minute doubt what you have told me but you avoided my original question. I wanted to know if Professor Hilliard ever tried to have more than a student-teacher relationship with you. You told me that you never had anything but a professional relationship with the professor and that he probably had an affair with someone,” he nodded his head at the wall, the sign for Arlene, “but what I want to know is did Professor Hilliard ever try to cross the line? Did he try to initiate a personal relationship with you?”
Lemieux did not take his eyes off Sarah. She blushed and turned away from him and said, “Yes,” so softly I could barely hear her.
“I beg your pardon?” Lemieux asked. From where he stood he probably heard a timid squeak more than the word yes.
“Yes, he tried,” Sarah said, louder than her previous attempt to talk but not by much.
“Tell me about it,” Lemieux prompted.
“Yes, he tried,” Sarah said again, more confidently this time. “In my first year he would call me late at night every once in a while and ask me to meet him for coffee or a drink. He seemed so lonely he scared me. I always made up some reason not to go but I was very nervous that he would try something during the day, around here, when I couldn’t just make an excuse and hang up.”
“Did he?” Gaston asked. “Did he try anything here or in class?”
“No. Not then. In fact after a few phone calls he gave up all together. I was so relieved. He stopped calling me and I got over my fear of him and actually got to like him.”
“You said ‘not then’ a moment ago. Does that mean that he approached you again?”
Sarah inhaled and expelled her breath in a long sigh. “A year later. I guess he got restless in the fall. But he was different this time and so was I. He asked me out on real dates, not just last-minute calls. We’d go to dinner or long coffee breaks. At first it was all business. But it turned into more, or rather it began to turn into more than business. I was more flattered than frightened that time around. I was more sure of myself and I was pleased by the fact that he took me seriously as a historian. You have no idea how close I came to crossing the line and having an affair with him. He was very romantic. He would send me notes and letters telling me how much he enjoyed my company and how much he enjoyed talking to me and how much he valued my opinion. I was very flattered by his attention. I wrote to him, too, and told him more personal stuff than I probably should have, about my feelings, things like that. I came within a breath of falling into his bed. But I didn’t. Fall, I mean. Instead I went to the country for a week with a girlfriend, to regain my centre, to break his spell. You didn’t know him. He could be so charming and considerate. I had to put some distance between us to stop myself from doing something I knew I would regret. It worked. A week in the country with a friend and some books and I was my old self. Thank God.”
“How did he take it?” I asked.
“Well. Better than I thought he would. I was worried that it would affect our student-teacher relationship. It didn’t. I guess he didn’t really care for me as much as he said. He just turned his attentions elsewhere.”
Sarah fell silent, and we waited for her to continue. But after a moment it was clear she had said all she wanted to say about her almost-affair with her teacher. She looked down at her hands, and said nothing.
“What happened to the letters?” asked Gaston.
“I don’t know what happened to the ones I sent him. I burned the ones he sent me. When I was out in the country with my friend … she helped me. We had a kind of ceremony.”
“So for all you know he still had your letters?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t you afraid that they could embarrass you at some point?”
“Yes, I was. But I was more afraid of stirring things up by asking for them back. I trusted that Hal, Professor Hilliard, would be a gentleman. I hoped that the past would be forgotten.”
Heck of an attitude for a historian, I thought.
“I’m sorry, but I’ll need to confirm your story. I don’t disbelieve you. It’s just part of the process. Please write the name, address, and phone number of your friend down for me so I can contact her.” Gaston slid a pad and pencil across the table to Sarah. She wrote the information he requested.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now, let’s return to the present. What time did you come into the history department yesterday?”
“Allan, my boyfriend, and I usually start the day with a coffee in here at about eight-thirty and then head off to class.”
“Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”
“No. It was quiet, as usual.”
“Well, did anyone see you? Other than your boyfriend, that is?”
“I passed Jane Miller in the hallway. But the staff doesn’t get in till nine so things are pretty deserted until then. If any of the professors are in that early they’re usually in their offices.”
“Jane Miller? Is this the same person as Jane Miller-More?” Lemieux asked.
“That’s right. She added the More after she married but I never got into the habit of calling her by her married name. To me she’ll always be Jane Miller, I guess.”
I noticed, and I am sure that Lemieux did too, that without actually lying Sarah gave the impression that she and Allan arrived together. She told the literal truth but I was sure she was trying to deceive us. I was hoping that Gaston would wrap up his conversation — I would hardly call it an interrogation — so that we could take another crack at the divine Ms. F. But just then the conference-room door flew open and a very dishevelled young man barged in.
chapter thirteen
I jumped to my feet.
“Allan!” Sarah exclaimed.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, out of breath and breathing hard. “My last class ran overtime and I ran across campus to get here. Let me catch my breath and we can begin.” He dropped his six-foot frame into a chair.
This, obviously, was the boyfriend, Allan Gutmacher. He was dressed in the student style but instead of adopting the fashion of the nineties he dressed as if it were the late fifties, in a pair of grey trousers with a yellow shirt, a bit worn at the collar and cuffs, and a red, yellow, and blue striped tie. He wore a pair of heavy black lace-up shoes, the kind my father wears to bar mitzvahs. A blue two-button blazer, also a little worn, completed the outfit. Sure enough he was carrying the editorial section of the National Post, folded so that the sketch of David Frum peeked at us out of his blazer pocket. I don’t know why he thought that we were waiting for him. I thought Lemieux had made it clear he wanted to see people one at a time — not in groups.
“We’re almost finished interviewing Ms. Bloch. We’ll be delighted to talk to you next. Why don’t you wait outside?” Lemieux said, very politely. I sat down.
“Outside? Finished? Why didn’t you wait for me? You had no right to talk to Sarah without me.”
Sarah cringed. She cast him a quick look that plainly asked him if he had just arrived from some other plane
t, then said quickly, “Please forgive Allan. He’s being gallant or overprotective, or both, and both are totally inappropriate and unnecessary.” She pronounced the last three words very slowly and distinctly so that Allan would get a message.
“Unnecessary?” Allan sputtered. “Sarah, what did you tell them?” He noticed me across the table and demanded, “Who are you? You’re no cop.”
“But I am,” interjected Lemieux. “Please let me introduce my colleague, Sam Wiseman.” I stood up to shake Allan’s hand but he ignored me and I pulled back my arm and sat down again. I was beginning to feel about as useful and as bright as a jack-in-the-box. Lemieux turned to Sarah. “Thank you, Ms. Bloch. If there are any more questions we’ll be in touch.”
“Sarah, stay here. What did she say?” Allan demanded. “Did she tell you that Hilliard tried to molest her and should have been brought up on charges? Did she?”
“Allan,” Sarah said, with a warning tone to her voice. “I’ve told you, it wasn’t like that. Nothing of the sort happened. It was all a big misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding.” Allan literally spat the word. He had to use his hand to wipe spittle off his chin. “He was a moral idiot and should have been thrown out of the university. He was an animal. He had the values of a jackal.” For emphasis he whacked the table with the sketch of David Frum.
It was clear Allan could not take a calm view of Sarah’s brush with a professorial fling, even now that the man he despised was dead.
Gaston tried to restore order. “Please compose yourself, Mr. Gutmacher. Ms. Bloch already told us what happened.”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Allan stormed, flinging himself violently back in his chair. “Sarah may want to make excuses for the guy, but —”
“That’s enough.” Gaston smacked the table. Obviously he was finding Gutmacher as much of a pain as I was. And I was beginning to wonder if he had been listening at the keyhole. He seemed to know what Sarah had said and he was prepared to contradict her. His breathless I-dashed-across-campus entrance could have been a fake.
Allan subsided a little under the force of Gaston’s anger.
“You’ll get your chance soon. If you can’t be quiet you’ll be asked to leave.” Gaston glared at Allan for a minute to make sure he got the point.
Sarah turned to Allan and said in sharp voice, “I told them the whole story. It was nothing, nothing happened and it’s in the past anyway. Let’s just drop it, OK?”
“Do you not believe her, Mr. Gutmacher?” Gaston asked Allan.
“I believe that Sarah told him where to get off. I’m not sure he didn’t try again. He had a reputation for always being on the make. I swear if he had tried anything with Sarah again I’d have …” Allan realized what he was about to say and shut up.
“You’d have … what?” Gaston asked.
“I don’t know. But something.” Allan shrugged, slouched even farther into his chair and, unable to meet Gaston’s eye, turned his head away and glared at me instead.
Well, well, I thought to myself. We now have suspects two and three. This was a very productive morning.
Sarah got to her feet. “Should I leave now?” she asked Gaston, pointedly ignoring Allan.
“No, please stay a moment longer,” said Gaston, in a neutral but still very courteous tone. She sat down again. I wondered why he was letting her remain; it wasn’t his usual practice. Maybe he wanted to observe see more of her interaction with her boyfriend. It was certainly interesting. “Tell me, Mr. Gutmacher, what time did you arrive here yesterday?”
“Yesterday? The usual, I guess. About eight-thirty. Sarah and I met at the subway, walked over to campus together and had a coffee here before getting down to work. Just like every other morning.”
That was an outright lie. We already knew that they had arrived separately. Allan was a lot less subtle than Sarah; she had prevaricated, carefully not saying anything untruthful. Her evasion and his lie told me that they had agreed to tell us that they arrived together as usual. But we knew he had got there first, and had had enough time to kill Hilliard before she arrived. I wondered whether Sarah was protecting Allan because he was the murderer, or because she thought he was the murderer, or because she thought he was a lunatic who would get himself in trouble for a crime he didn’t commit.
“And did you see anybody else or hear anything out of the ordinary?”
“No, we didn’t see a soul. Except Jane More, that is. She passed us in the hallway.”
“Fine.” Gaston smiled warmly, as if he was very pleased with them. “Thank you both. I needn’t detain you any longer. Here’s my card. Please call me if you remember anything and please give your addresses and phone numbers to my colleague so that I can get in touch with you if necessary.”
They both looked relieved that it was over.
They were almost out the door when Gaston stopped them. “There is one more thing. You were both here early on the day of the murder. Did either of you see Professor Hilliard’s computer, the one he carried around, anywhere? In the secretary’s office, in his office, in here, anywhere at all?”
Allan and Sarah looked at each other and then at Lemieux. “His computer?” Sarah asked. “Is it missing?”
“It is missing and I was wondering if either of you saw it.”
“No, we didn’t,” Allan said, speaking for both of them.
Sarah gave him a look and said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t seen it.”
Sarah and Allan would have been the perfect nineties couple — if Allan could get himself out of the 1890s and into the 1990s. They left quietly together and I had a feeling he was going to get some tutoring on how to treat a 1990s woman.
As the door closed behind them Lemieux looked over at me with a sigh of relief and a slight roll of the eyes. “Did you get the information?”
“Yes, I got it. And I put two more names on our suspect list,” I responded.
I tore the page with the Allan’s and Sarah’s addresses and phone numbers from the notepad, and passed it to Lemieux along with the page on which Sarah had written her girlfriend’s name and address.
“I’m not sure Sarah belongs on the list,” Gaston looked pensive. “She seems very self-possessed and I think she can handle herself. She just isn’t the kind that commits murder. Allan is another story. If he thought that Hilliard was harassing Sarah, and especially if he thought Sarah was still attracted to him, he might have tried to confront him. Things could have got out of hand. A jealous rage: it’s banal, but it happens all the time. We know that Hilliard was murdered but not that the murder was premeditated.”
“If Allan did it in a moment of passion why would he take the laptop?”
“To make it look like a robbery maybe? I don’t know. It seems that every time we try to narrow our list of suspects we expand it. Do you think Ms. Ford thought that she left her perfume at Hilliard’s?”
“Could be. Especially if she thought she left a bottle of the distinctive brand that could easily be traced to her. She must have known that Sarah recognized her perfume and so knew that Sarah knew she was in Hilliard’s bedroom. This is beginning to sound like the Watergate hearings: Who knew what and when did they know it?”
“Exactly. We’ll have to question Ford again, but first let’s see if Professor Miller-More is waiting for us.”
It turned out that Professor Jane Miller-More had declined to come to meet us. Arlene, looking annoyed, told us the professor had asked us to see her in her own office. She directed us to go out the door, turn left, the third door on the left; but if we got to the main entrance to the Elwitt Building we’d missed it, and we should retrace our steps. This time her office would be the fourth door on the right.
As we walked out I asked Gaston if he’d got that.
“Got it.”
“Good,” I muttered. I just hoped her name was on her office door.
It wasn’t actually that hard to find. It was only a few steps down the hall. The door was ajar. Lemie
ux knocked and then walked in without waiting to be invited. I was right behind him.
Startled, she looked up from her work. “May I help you?”
“I’m Detective Sergeant Gaston Lemieux, and this is my colleague, Sam Wiseman.”
We all shook hands and as we sat down she said to me, “You’re not from the police. I know you from the bookstore. You’re always extremely helpful.” She smiled as she said this in a deep voice with a bit of a rasp to it. Her eyes were the colour of dark brown corduroy.
“Yes, I’m discovering that I’m quite well known. I didn’t realize that I had so many friends.”
“Mr. Wiseman is assisting me in certain matters relating to the case — to the murder of Harold Hilliard,” said Gaston.
I was finding it difficult to pull my eyes away from Jane More. She was a small woman, five feet four inches or less, and perfectly proportioned. She wore her brown hair short, with bangs that came to her eyebrows. She wasn’t conventionally pretty but there was something very warm and attractive about her. I must confess that if I was in one of her classes I might find myself concentrating more on the teacher than on what was being taught.
“Isn’t it horrible?” she said, with real, deep sadness in her voice. “Harold murdered. God, I haven’t adjusted yet. I can’t believe he’s gone.” I realized that this was the first time I had heard anyone express any genuine feeling for the departed professor. Yet it didn’t seem personal. There was sorrow in her words, regret about the end of a life, but I could not detect any personal grief.
“Were you close?” Lemieux asked.
She paused a moment, looking carefully at both of us before she spoke. “At one time, we were very close. We even talked about marriage. But we drifted apart and I don’t think that Hal was really the marrying kind. He was a little obsessive about his privacy and independence.” I coud believe that, having seen his apartment. “He wasn’t good at sharing, either his space or himself. But there was a bond between us even after our relationship ended, and I remained fond of him. We saw each other regularly of course, here at work. I still expect him to come into my office with a coffee and some ideas to discuss. We both did French history. I guess I have to get used to talking about him in the past tense.”