That Sleep of Death

by Richard King

  “You have to find Renard’s thesis and a copy of Miller-More’s thesis and compare them.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Gaston interrupted me. “But you can see the complications. I have to compare two dissertations, one of which may be difficult to get my hands on. I have to determine whether her husband knew about the plagiarism, as she claims. He may have allowed himself to be tricked or seduced into marriage in order to buy his silence, and so on. Not the sort of thing a guy is likely to admit to, just like that. It will take a while to check her story, believe me.”

  I hadn’t realized until that moment how complicated and hard it would be to find evidence to prove or disprove what she told us. If she was guilty her confession would certainly buy her time and time might help her get away with murder.

  But I had come this far as a sort of unofficial sounding board for Gaston and I didn’t want to be left out of the action now. The last thing I wanted was to read about the case in the Gazette.

  Gaston was saying, “You’ve been a big help to me, Sam. I appreciate all that you’ve done to help me. I’ll keep in touch.” He shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder with his free hand. He turned to walk down McGill College Avenue to the parking lot where he kept his car.

  Not so fast, buddy, I said to myself, and dogged his footsteps. “How would it be if I made some notes on my perceptions of what we’ve been told and by whom? Sort of a chronology of events and notes on the conversations we had with all the suspects and witnesses.” I was thinking as I was talking and I hoped that what I was proposing made sense to him.

  “Sure,” he said absently. “Why not? Write up your notes and I’ll look at them when I can.” And he strode off.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I was still part of the case.

  I decided to walk back to my place. I turned back through the Roddick Gates and cut across campus heading up to the mountain and home. Walking helps me to think and I sure had a lot to think about if I was to be able to write a coherent synopsis of events. In the face of no concrete evidence whatsoever to support her story I was now inclined to believe Jane was innocent. My two main suspects were Allan Gutmacher and Arlene Ford.

  By the time I got to the monument at the foot of Mount Royal, at the corner of Rachel and Park, I figured I had the case solved. I was sure Gutmacher was the murderer for the oldest of motives — jealous rage. At least he had a motive I could understand; the problem was that Arlene Ford had the same motive. In fact if Arlene knew about Harold’s affair with Jane she had a motive we hadn’t known about before. And she looked much more like a murderess to me than Jane did.

  I turned east on Rachel and headed for Esplanade and by the time I got to my place I realized that Gutmacher wasn’t the murderer at all. Now I was almost absolutely certain it was Arlene.

  I let myself into my flat and headed for the computer with a brief stop in the kitchen for a snack. I recorded Jane’s story in as much detail as I could remember and then wrote a chronology of events with notes on who said what to whom. When I looked up from my computer I had written about a dozen pages and it was one in the morning. As I reread what I had written I realized that my opinion of Professor Hilliard had changed somewhat. I had always liked and respected the man but Jennifer and Arlene and even the awful Allan depicted him as a sexual predator. I realized that losing Jane when she married Fred More had changed him. He seemed to try to hide his feelings, which made him a sort of tragically romantic person. I think his real character, the person I knew, would have re-emerged if he and Jane had been able to get back together. Sadly this did not happen. I printed what I had written and headed, exhausted, for bed.

  chapter twenty-one

  I woke up the next morning feeling groggy after only about six hours of sleep. I decided to go for a run up the mountain in order to clear my head. I pulled on my running clothes and headed out. I crossed Esplanade and jogged across Jeanne-Mance Park, across Park Avenue to the war memorial at the corner of Rachel and on up the mountain. I doubt that there’s another city in the world that looks as gorgeous as Montreal does at sunrise. If I live to be a hundred and still have the energy to jog on the mountain I’ll still love this view — and on a beautiful autumn morning a run gives me a chance to enjoy the colours of and the chirping of birds and the smells of nature without actually having to leave Montreal. A city boy’s version of communing with nature. It also gave me a chance to think. I do my best thinking while jogging. I must modestly admit to having solved all of the world’s problems, large and small, while exercising on Mount Royal. Too bad I’ve never had a chance to share these solutions with anyone.

  The sound of another runner coming up behind me snapped me out of my reverie. A tall, slender woman jogged past me. It took me a moment to realize that was Gisèle Lemieux. She looked glorious in a deep purple running suit. I put on a burst of speed and caught up with her.

  “Hi,” I said as I drew even with her. She was running at a slightly faster pace than I was and I hoped she would slow down a bit so we could talk.

  She glanced over at me at me with disdain, as if I were the kind of guy who tries to strike up conversations with women on the mountain. I could see from the look of in her eyes that she was about to speed up to get away from me.

  “Gisèle, I’m Sam. Sam Wiseman,” I panted quickly. I’m afraid I sounded desperate but I couldn’t let her think I was just some creep. “A friend of your brother Gaston’s. We met at the Café Paillon.”

  She turned her head and looked at me with relief, and broke into a smile. “Ah, Sam. I didn’t recognize you. I don’t wear my contact lenses when I run. How are you?”

  She slowed her pace a bit so that I could keep up.

  “I’m fine,” I replied. “Do you run up here often?”

  “As often as I can. I’m late this morning. I’m usually here before six. How about you?”

  “That’s why I’ve never seen you. I rarely get going that early.”

  We ran in silence for a while. I wanted to make conversation with the beautiful Gisèle but couldn’t think of anything that I could talk about while puffing and gasping with the exertion of the running.

  Finally I just blurted out, “Would you like to go to see a play with me some evening?”

  Gisèle did not look surprised at the question. I guess that when you are as beautiful as she is you get used to being asked out by men you don’t really know that well.

  “That’s very sweet of you, Sam, but I’m off to New York in a couple of days to work on a case and then I’m taking another couple of weeks’ vacation in France.”

  Although she didn’t exactly say “no” she did call me “sweet” which is pretty close to being blown off. But for her I was prepared to risk a little more ego damage. I gave her a minute to see if she would say something more. She didn’t and I took this as a hopeful sign.

  “Then how would it be if I called you in a month or so?” I asked.

  “Sure. Why not? It might be fun to do something.”

  “Great,” I said. I didn’t want to push my luck so I changed the subject to the weather and how great it was to run on the mountain. By this time we reached Beaver Lake.

  “I turn off here,” she said. “I live on Ridgewood.”

  “Have a nice vacation,” I said to her as she turned left and headed home.

  I continued on to the lookout and then turned around myself and ran back down faster than my normal pace.

  A half hour later I was back home sweaty and exhilarated.

  After a quick shower and a quicker breakfast of two glasses of orange juice and two glasses of water I was off to work. I arrived just before nine-thirty, in time to help Jennifer and the staff to get the store open. After enduring Jennifer’s affectionately sarcastic remarks about taking time away from crime fighting to return to the boring world of books I got down to work and did the things booksellers do. I moved the heavy boxes of books that start to arrive on Monday morning and continue all week, processed customers’ o
rders, whined at publishers about their slow delivery times and listened to them complain about how Dickens & Company, their favourite bookstore, should try to pay faster, etc. But I did all this with only half my mind. The other half was thinking about what Gaston was doing. I just knew he was at McGill pushing his investigation forward while I was schlepping boxes.

  Then Jennifer and I spent a few hours tying up various loose ends. I ensured that all the books that came in were out of their boxes and on the shelves where they could be sold. Jennifer assigned tasks to the staff to change displays and generally get the store shipshape. The last thing I did was organize a week’s worth of invoices for future payment and wrote the cheques that were immediately required. Jen and I both liked everything to run smoothly but neither of us liked to spend much time on paperwork unless it was absolutely necessary. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, and at one o’clock I left for a lunch break. I didn’t eat lunch, but instead headed for McGill to see what, if anything, was going on.

  I found more than I bargained for.

  I heard the sirens before I got to the campus. I ran to the university just in time to see a police car join the three other blue and white squad cars and a charcoal grey morgue van parked in front of Elwitt Building.

  “Shit!” I muttered. I trotted up the stairs and into the foyer. There had been another murder, and I had almost missed it, working away in the stockroom and the Dickens & Company office. If anybody deserved to know what was going on it was me. I didn’t care then how morbidly curious and insensitive I was being. I ran to the history department offices, getting there a few seconds ahead of the just-arrived patrol car officers. A crowd of uniformed cops, CSU cops and Gaston were all crowded into Jane Miller-More’s office.

  Jane was sitting at her desk, slumped in her chair, her dead eyes bulging out at us in a lifeless stare. A bright red scarf, the cause of death, was tied tightly around her neck. Gaston was standing near the body looking grim. I heard before I saw Steve Mandopolous telling a cluster of people to stand back and give the cops some room. His orders worked pretty well for all of the crowd except one person. Barbara Young pushed her way through the mob to the door of the office, opposite me.

  “My God! Is she … is she dead?” Barbara asked.

  Gaston didn’t answer for a minute and I wasn’t sure he had heard the question.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” he exclaimed. “Yes she’s dead. But she hasn’t been dead long. Her body hasn’t really cooled off much. I must have missed the murderer by minutes, maybe seconds.”

  “Oh, poor Jane,” Barbara said softly.

  I pushed my way over to where Dr. Young was standing and asked if she would like to sit down and if she wanted a drink of water, the things I thought you were supposed to say to someone who has just found out that a friend and colleague has been murdered.

  She looked at me as if I was the murderer and said, “I’ll be OK. Just give me some space.”

  “Of course,” I said, and moved away from her. She turned and leaned against the wall a foot or two away from Jane Miller-More’s office door. I turned too, and looked into the office again. The place was a mess. But it was a mess when we visited Professor Miller-More there the other day and it didn’t seem to be any messier than it was then. I couldn’t see any signs of a struggle. No papers or books were spread all over the floor. On first glance it looked like some one had snuck up behind her and strangled her, before she knew what was going on. How someone could do that in that small an office was beyond me. Another murder. It was becoming an epidemic. And one suspect off our list. Or was she? After all, even a murderer can become a murder victim in her turn.

  Gaston issued some orders to the cops and the CSU team and elbowed his way out of the office. “Sam,” he exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Before I could answer Barbara Young came up to us and said, “What’s going on? How could someone just walk into her office and kill her? Who found her?”

  “I found her,” Gaston told us. “If it will make you feel any better I’ll tell you what happened and then I need your help with something.” Gaston told us that he had arrived on campus looking for Fred More. He wanted to discuss with him the things Jane had revealed to us yesterday. When he couldn’t find Fred at his office he decided to pay another visit to Jane to see where he could get a copy of her thesis and find out if she knew where her husband was. Gaston walked into Jane’s office and found her dead.

  “I have to ask you something, Dr. Young. I intended to come to see you after I talked with Professor Miller-More. Is there somewhere we can talk?” Gaston asked. He motioned to me to come with them.

  Barbara led the way down one of the hallways to an unused seminar room.

  “There is something I have to know,” Gaston was saying to Barbara as we sat down at the long table. “It’s about computers. You told us that it is not necessary to have a password to get into all the programs of a computer. Am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it always necessary to have a login and a password to get into the e-mail programs?”

  “Yes. That’s the way I wrote the e-mail software that we use on campus.”

  “Can you tell me more about how it works?”

  “I called it Pandora. Kind of a joke, because opening your e-mail box is a bit like opening Pandora’s box. You don’t know what terrible things you’re going to find. The program is pretty straight forward. To access the program you log in, usually with your e-mail name and then use a password of your own devising. Once in you have access to all the regular features of e-mail and the Internet. You can check your new mail, which requires that you use another password, just as an additional security precaution, compose and send e-mail, create a directory of names and e-mail addresses, check news groups and so on. Nothing exceptional except that it’s tailor-made for staff at McGill. It’s not a commercially available program. All you need to get the program is a computer, a modem and telephone wire, and a staff card and you’re connected to the universe.”

  “Thank you. I just wanted to check the use of passwords. You’ve been very helpful,” Gaston said softly to her. “I won’t detain you any longer. But I must ask you not to mention anything you’ve seen here until I’ve informed her husband and any next of kin.”

  “I understand,” Professor Young said. “But I want to ask you something. Why are you asking me about computer software at a time like this? Does it have something to do with Jane’s murder?”

  “Yes. I had to be certain that I understood the way your program worked. It will help me to catch a murderer.”

  “But,” I couldn’t help asking, “I thought that you had already caught a murderer, murderess I should say, and you were wrong. Are you certain that you’re right this time?”

  “You’re right. My error may have cost that poor woman her life. But she withheld information that might have helped to find the guilty party sooner. I did think that she was the most likely suspect but if she had been more forthcoming I might have changed my opinion. At the very worst she would have been detained until she could demonstrate her innocence. But she would be alive. I’m sorry that I could not prevent her death. But I didn’t kill her. The murderer did that and that person could just as easily have not killed Professor Miller-More or Professor Hilliard. I think I know who did it and why. It’s a question of setting a trap. That’s why I had to make sure I understood the computer program.”

  “You know who did it?” I blurted out. Dr. Young was about to ask the same question but I beat her to it.

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Why are we sitting here?” asked Professor Young. “Go and get the wretch!”

  “I intend to but first I must ensure that the evidence is properly collected at the crime scene and then I have the sad task of informing her husband. I know it seems odd but I must follow procedure. It may seem to slow things down now but it will make it easier to get a conviction later. Believe me.”

&
nbsp; “How can you be sure that the killer won’t kill again?” Dr. Young asked nervously.

  “I can’t, of course. But I know who the potential victims are and I can protect them. Let’s go and find Mr. Mandopolous and arrange for that.”

  Gaston got up, held Dr. Young’s chair for her as she arose and we left. “Do you mean we’re the potential victims?” she asked incredulously.

  “I’m afraid so. Sam and I have seen all the evidence and you and Mr. Mandopolous have seen some of it. If the murderer realizes what you know you are in danger.

  It’s stupid because all of us know what you know and that’s too many people to kill — but murderers do stupid things. Or else they wouldn’t kill in the first place. So I want to arrange for some protection for you and Steve.”

  At Miller-More’s office the CSU technicians were busy collecting evidence and the man and woman from the morgue, dressed in grey suits, were wheeling the body out to the hearse on a stretcher. She was covered from head to toe with a white sheet. Dr. Young, Gaston, and I stood silently as Jane’s body was rolled past us.

  “Steve,” Gaston called him over to us. “I’d like you to stay with Dr. Young until I’ve done a few things to ensure that the murderer does not strike again. By this time the killer probably sees the hopelessness of the situation and may do something rash. If you leave the campus please stay together and I’ll ask the police to take you where you want to go.”

  Steve could have asked a lot of questions or given us a lot of arguments. He didn’t. “Is there some way I can reach you, if I need to?” Gaston asked.

  “Take my beeper number.” He recited it to Gaston, who wrote it down.

  “I want to check the office to see if there is anything that will tell me where the Mores lived. The first thing we have to do is inform her husband of this tragedy.”

  Gaston walked into the office and I could see him talking to one of the CSU people. The technician went behind the desk and picked up a small black purse by inserting a pen under the strap. She placed it on the desk and with gloved hands carefully opened it and removed a wallet. She flipped through the wallet slowly so that Gaston could see if there was any identification. She stopped and held it while he copied something into the notebook he had used to record Steve’s pager number.