by Hazel Holt
‘Well, yes, I might be ... I think I can hear Linda calling—I have to go now.’
Although I was deeply curious about the outcome of the interview with Carl Loring, and I knew that Linda and Anna would expect me to find out all I could, I wasn’t sure that seeing Mike again was a good idea. Of course, I wasn’t affected by Linda and Anna’s teasing, I told myself, that was all nonsense, really. But I had felt quite strongly, when I was with Mike, that he was beginning to regard me as more than just a visitor from England who happened to share his interest in Shakespeare. He was a pleasant person, very pleasant indeed, but he was a lonely man, who might read more than was meant into a chance acquaintance. I was enjoying my time at Wilmot—I liked my students and most of the people in the department and I loved Linda and Anna as dear friends—but it was only an interlude, and at the end of a couple of months I would be going home to my real life. Anything else was a complication I could do without. The trouble was that now I had somehow, by my own natural curiosity, got myself into the situation where I was (in however minor a way) involved in the investigation of Max Loring’s murder. Actually, I didn’t feel like giving up on that. I would simply have to watch my step with Mike Landis.
‘So?’ Linda said when I went back into the kitchen where she and Anna were getting supper. ‘What did he say?’
‘He’s going to see Carl on Monday afternoon,’ I told her. ‘I suppose he’ll go and see Sam, too. I hope she isn’t wearing all her diamonds when he does. I tried to give the impression that Hal was just a simple farmer and that the settlement was no big deal. Still,’ I continued, ‘I think I’ve persuaded Mike Landis that she couldn’t have got into the Institute anyway.’
But later on that evening, when Linda was teasing Anna again about her overstuffed handbag, I suddenly remembered the missing invitation card. Anna had been in the department commons room and Sam had been in and out of there too. The invitation card could easily have fallen out of Anna’s bag and if Sam had seen it she might have decided that it would be the perfect way to get into the Institute unobtrusively and deal with Max Loring. Whether or not Sam was capable of murder I wasn’t sure, but she certainly had a strong motive.
I had a lovely Sunday with Linda and Anna, driving about the Pennsylvania countryside, crisscrossed with charming little covered bridges, admiring the neat farmhouses and barns and the sleek black and white cattle. We had lunch with Sara Heisick and her husband at the mill-house they had converted, with a great carved stairway and a millpond (complete with trout) actually inside the house. Afterwards I was taken out into the woods that surrounded the house and solemnly shown some poison ivy, that harmless-looking three-leaved plant that I was told could wreak such havoc.
‘Charles and I had a terrible time this summer,’ Sara said. ‘We thought we’d got the yard clear of it and, fool that I was, I didn’t wear gloves one time when I pulled up some weeds—and there I was covered with these hellish blisters. That was just about the time when Carl Loring was pushing that terrible policy document about an Expository Writing Course—all that crap about territories of voice and conflict within cultural questions. Do you remember, Linda? And those endless committee meetings we had to sit through just because Rob Huron was too feeble to say no. I was nearly crazy with the irritation of the poison ivy and Loring going on about students learning to recognize the rhetorical situation! If it hadn’t been for Dave cutting him down to size, reminding him that his area was strictly limited to drama and that he didn’t have jurisdiction over that area of teaching—not as yet, anyway.’
‘Yes,’ Linda agreed, ‘Dave really outmanoeuvred him, but Loring’s had it in for him ever since.’
‘I know,’ Sara said. ‘All the old tricks—putting up students to complain about his courses, attacking Dave as a former director of freshman comp., and the way he ran things, putting up suggestions for programmes that would undercut Dave’s specializations—the lot. It’s all quite vile, because Dave’s been through a really bad time lately, what with losing Elaine like that and worrying about the children. Only a slime bucket like Loring would add to his troubles! And now Loring’s trying to edge him out of the college policy committee. It’s something we can’t let happen. But it’s so exhausting having to fight Loring all the time, when, God knows, there’s far too much else to do! Hell, why are we wasting our time talking about that creep. What about a slice of apple pie and a cup of coffee?’
I didn’t have any early classes on Monday morning, so after Linda left I sat down to write to Michael. I’d just finished describing the old mill house (‘There was a great wooden table made out of a whole circle cut from a tree. And all the latches on the doors were hand carved—perhaps we could try that on the pantry door’) when Anna came into the kitchen in search of coffee.
‘Hi. I overslept, would you believe? Oh, and some juice too.’
She reached into the fridge and took out a carton. ‘Oh, cranberry—yuk—isn’t there any orange?’
‘Yesterday was nice,’ I said. ‘I do like Sara and Charles and that heavenly house!’
I got up and reached past her to find the orange juice. ‘There,’ I said, pouring out a glass for both of us. ‘Have you been out jogging yet?’ I asked.
‘No, there’s no time now. I thought I’d jog gently in to the Institute instead—I’ll cover about the same distance.’ I looked at her navy track suit and trainers.
‘Won’t you be a bit informally dressed for the Institute?’ I asked.
Anna laughed. ‘It’s not exactly the Bodleian Library, you know,’ she said. ‘And I guess track suits are a sort of student uniform now, even for formal wear. They’ve kind of taken over from jeans.’
‘Come to think of it,’ I said, ‘when Michael was up at Oxford, he used to turn up at the Bodleian in his motorcycle gear, leathers, boots, crash helmet and all! I’m just writing to him now. Have you any message?’
‘Give him my love. Oh, and tell him I’ve got another crazy American name for him. I was at a two-day conference last week at a little college in Upper New York State—a place called Chicopee Falls.’
‘Oh how gorgeous, he’ll love that!’ I exclaimed. Michael and Anna had this running joke about English and American place names and which country could produce the most extraordinary ones.
‘Tell him from me,’ Anna said, ‘that I think that’s at least equal to his Toller Porcorum and Chilton Cantelo! Hell, is that the time! I must be off.’
She snatched up her handbag and a couple of files and rushed out, returning in a moment with Tiger.
‘Look who was on the porch—out all night again last night!’
Tiger, anxious to see what if anything had materialized on his plate in his absence, wriggled impatiently in her grasp.
‘Ouch!’ she cried, putting him down hastily. ‘You monster! Look what you’ve done!’
She exhibited a long scratch on her hand and went to rinse it off under the tap.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Shall I see if I can find you a Bandaid?’
‘No, it’s fine, it’s stopped bleeding now—I must dash. Bye.’
Tiger, affronted by a still empty plate, wound himself round my legs, opening and shutting his mouth silently. Used as I was to a very vocal Siamese, I always found this ploy irresistible.
‘Very well, you wicked creature,’ I said, going to the fridge and getting out his bowl of cooked chicken. ‘First things first.’
It was a lovely bright sunny day when I drove in to Wilmot. I’d hired a car when I first arrived and was now reasonably confident about driving on the wrong side of the road, though I still tended to panic a bit at junctions—I couldn’t get used to traffic lights way up in the air and not at eye level—and I hadn’t dared to tackle a freeway yet, but, all in all, I felt reasonably competent as I swung into a blessedly free parking space at Brook Hall.
My class was at twelve o’clock and it was now about ten minutes to, a time when everything should have been quiet, with students in cl
asses or conferences. But to my astonishment there were people everywhere and, as I got out of the car, I saw that the entrance to the department was cordoned off with white tapes and a policeman was on duty at the door. I edged my way through the crowd of excited students and found Sara talking to Ted Stern.
‘What on earth’s going on?’ I asked.
Sara gave a slightly hysterical little laugh. ‘Someone’s finally got to Carl Loring,’ she said. ‘He’s been murdered.’
Chapter Nine
As we stood there, all three of us stunned by the unexpectedness of the event, making the sort of disjointed remarks that such a situation seems to produce, Mike Landis appeared in the doorway with another policeman. He looked at the figures milling around outside and came over to us. Nodding briefly at Sara and Ted he said to me, ‘Oh, Mrs Malory, can you spare me a few minutes, please.’ He turned to the policeman at his side. ‘Schwartz, clear all these people away, I’ll be in the secretary’s office if anyone needs me.’
He turned and led the way inside and I followed, not quite knowing how to respond to Sara and Ted’s raised eyebrows and questioning glances.
‘They’ve given me this office to use for now,’ Mike said. He gestured towards a hot-plate with a percolator on it. ‘Do you want some coffee?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No thanks. Mike, what’s happened?’
He put the cup of coffee he had poured for himself down carefully on a file so that it wouldn’t mark the polished surface of the desk.
‘Someone has put a knife in Carl Loring’s ribs,’ he said, ‘and killed him.’ For a moment I didn’t take in what Mike had said, the words seemed to have no meaning.
I sat down in the chair facing him.
‘Where?’ I asked. ‘Here, in the department?’
‘Yes. In the kitchen of the commons room.’
I shook my head as if that would make things clearer.
‘When was it? Did anyone see anything?’
‘It’s more or less only just happened—it must have been sometime between ten and ten thirty. People were in the commons room until just before ten and he was found at about ten forty when someone’—he consulted some notes in front of him—‘someone called Dave Hunter went into the kitchen and found him.’
‘Dave?’
‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘It seems that this guy Hunter went into the commons room around ten thirty. He sat there for a while reading or something, then he said he wanted a cup of coffee so he went into the kitchen to make one and found Loring lying there. Hunter said that he was dead when he found him.’
‘So the murder must have been committed before ten thirty?’ I suggested.
‘Unless Hunter was the murderer,’ he replied.
‘Oh no!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not Dave, it couldn’t be. He’s, well, too gentle to do anything like that.’
Mike smiled. ‘I guess you’re really not a lot of help on a murder case, Sheila—you always see the good side of everyone.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll find many people who can see the good side of Carl Loring! He wasn’t what you’d call popular.’
‘Did Dave Hunter dislike him?’ Mike asked.
‘Yes, he did,’ I replied, ‘but then so did practically everyone else in the department. Loring really was a thoroughly nasty piece of work.’
‘So a lot of people would have liked him dead?’ he persisted.
‘If you’re looking for suspects,’ I said, ‘I should think you’ll be spoiled for choice. No, seriously, he was the sort of man who actually enjoyed making enemies.’
‘Including his brother,’ Mike said.
‘Oh, goodness, yes!’ I said excitedly. ‘You were going to see him this afternoon about that quarrel. Well, I suppose this means he didn’t murder his brother.’
‘Not necessarily,’ he replied. ‘The two murders may be quite separate. Unless you can think of anyone who wanted both of them out of the way?’
‘No,’ I said, trying to think clearly. ‘Unless there’s someone who’d inherit from both of them.’
‘I haven’t checked out Carl Loring’s will yet,’ he said, ‘but there aren’t any other relations. There were just the two of them in that family.’
We sat in silence for a moment then I said, ‘Of course most people would have been in classes or tutorials around then, so I expect pretty well everyone will have alibis.’
‘Yes, except for this Hunter guy, though I guess there may be others. I’ll be checking that, of course.’
‘The department is usually pretty quiet between classes,’ I said, ‘so you may not be able to find anyone who saw the murderer go in and out of the commons room. Was there any other way into the kitchen?’
‘There’s a door that leads out into the furnace room,’ he said, ‘but apparently that’s always locked. So, no, whoever it was had to go through the commons room.’
‘Did anyone see Loring going into the commons room?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t found anyone so far. He’d been to see the chair of the department, what’s his name?’
‘Rob Huron.’
‘Yes, Huron,’ he said, ‘just before nine o’clock. Some sort of administrative matter, Huron said—I shall have to get more details of that—and no one saw him after that.’ He gave me a sudden smile. When he relaxed like this his rather formidable manner softened, allowing a glimpse of the kind and sensitive nature that it concealed. I somehow felt that not many people had seen this side of Mike’s character for some time—not, perhaps, since his wife had left—and possibly, given the circumstances of her leaving, well before that. I found that I was instinctively smiling back.
‘It helps a lot, Sheila,’ he said, ‘to talk it through like this. You know these people and you know the—what shall I call it?—the atmosphere of the place. I’m a great believer in getting the atmosphere right. It can tell you more about a case sometimes than all the statements can! And talking to you about it sure as hell is an improvement on hacking away at it alone.’
‘What about your colleagues?’ I enquired.
‘That’s not the way I work,’ he said. ‘On a murder case you need one mind, kept clear, concentrating on that and nothing else.’
‘Well, of course,’ I said, ‘anything I can do to help ...’
‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘Look, why don’t we have dinner tomorrow evening? There’s this place in the centre of town, serves really good Thai food. I think you’d like it. By then I should have gotten a lot more facts and we can puzzle them out together.’
My instinct to avoid a tête-à-tête with Mike battled briefly with my curiosity. The curiosity won.
‘That would be lovely,’ I said.
Most of the members of the department, denied access to the commons room and badly needing a place to congregate and discuss this extraordinary happening, drifted one by one into the cafeteria building. Even people who didn’t normally eat lunch, like Linda, were there.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said, picking the anchovy out of her Caesar salad. ‘I mean, the guy was a creep, right? We all hated him, but it’s really terrible to think that he’s been murdered.’
Sara Heisek and Ted Stem, who were sitting at our table, gave murmurs of assent.
‘An awful lot of people had a reason for being glad he’s dead, though,’ Ted said, voicing what we were all thinking but, perhaps, couldn’t quite bring ourselves to put into words. ‘Practically every member of the department.’
‘It’s just as well, then,’ I said, ‘that most people will have been in class and will have an alibi. I haven’t, of course,’ I laughed, ‘but then I suppose I haven’t been at Wilmot long enough to have a motive!’
‘Why did the lieutenant want to speak to you just now?’ Sara asked curiously.
Linda laughed. ‘Didn’t you know? He’s Sheila’s new boyfriend—very smitten, he is.’
‘It’s not like that,’ I protested. ‘It was just something’—I searched around for some plau
sible explanation—‘something about some books I was recommending. He’s a great anglophile and he’s planning a trip next year,’ I improvised hastily. The last thing I wanted was for my colleagues in the department to think that I was, for any reason, in league with the police. ‘Actually, I was able to find out a little bit of what he’s turned up so far.’ I told them about Dave Hunter finding the body.
‘Do you think the lieutenant suspects Dave?’ Linda asked anxiously.
‘He doesn’t really think anything yet,’ I said. ‘He’s still pretty confused about who’s who in the department. I suppose he’ll be interviewing everyone soon—to see where they were and so forth.’
‘Yes,’ Sara said. ‘There’s a list of times he wants to see everyone this afternoon, put up in the office. Oh well, I’m OK. It was my Chaucer class from ten to eleven o’clock. How about you, Ted?’
‘Robert Lowell and confessional poetry,’ he replied, ‘a poor course but mine own. Only ten students this semester, but I guess that will suffice for an alibi! What about you, Linda?’
Linda shrugged. ‘Well, no. I should have had a conference with Gina, but she never showed up. She’s usually so conscientious, works really hard, but just lately—well, you’ve seen it too, Sheila, haven’t you?—there’s been a lack of concentration. She hasn’t been writing up her material ...’ She pushed the uneaten remains of the salad around her plate and sat silently for a moment. ‘I guess I was worried about her,’ she went on finally. ‘I waited a bit and then I went along to the secretary’s room to see if she’d called in sick, but there was no word there. So I just wandered around the department looking for her. Then at about ten forty-five I came back to my office and tried to call her at home, but there was no reply. I’d just put down the phone when I heard all the racket down the hall by the commons room, shouting and people running, so I went out to see what it was. So I don’t have an alibi for the time of the murder ...’ Her voice trailed away.