5 - Murder on Campus

by Hazel Holt

  ‘Well,’ Sara said robustly, ‘no one in their right mind would think that you murdered anyone!’

  ‘Nor do you have a motive,’ Ted said. ‘At least, no more than the rest of us.’

  ‘For that matter,’ I said frivolously, ‘I might have had a motive. After all, Carl Loring was in England quite often. Who knows what he might have got up to while he was there!’

  ‘Say,’ Ted said, ‘that’s quite an idea! No, I don’t mean you, Sheila. But he did have a long spell at Evanston before he came to Wilmot. Just because he looked so young you sort of forget that Loring has been around quite a while. He must have been in his late forties. Max was in his mid-fifties, I know, because he was in Vietnam, if you can imagine such a thing! So someone in the department might have known Loring in Canada—someone who’s only come here quite recently.’

  ‘You mean Rick Johnson,’ Sara said thoughtfully. ‘But he’s always been toadying up to Loring.’

  ‘It might be a front,’ Ted replied, ‘to throw him off the scent.’

  ‘Well,’ Linda said, ‘I’ve no doubt the lieutenant will go into everyone’s past history—he seems a pretty thorough sort of guy to me. What do you say, Sheila?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think he misses much.’

  There was little work done that afternoon. Those members of the department who were not being interviewed by the police hung about, talking in low tones and casting sidelong glances at each other. What might be termed the anti-Loring faction clung together, slightly defiant, it seemed to me, as though they felt the suspicion of the other group. Rob Huron passed among them, with an emollient word here, a bland smile there. In spite of the disruption to the department, he seemed almost to be relishing the situation, as if he felt it somehow increased his importance.

  I decided I might as well go home. Down in the car park I ran into Sam who had just arrived. She was looking quite subdued, for her. Her clothes were as elegant as ever (cream trousers and a loose coffee-coloured cotton sweater) and the diamonds were in place, but her usual vivacity and sparkle were notably absent.

  ‘Hi.’ She spoke almost listlessly.

  ‘Hello, Sam,’ I said. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘That bastard Loring!’ she said bitterly.

  ‘Loring?’

  ‘Yeah, Max Loring. He was trying to, well, sort of blackmail me, and now the police think I murdered him. They’re going to be asking Hal all sorts of questions about things I don’t want him to know. Loring threatened to tell Hal that we’d had an affair—though there was no way ... But Hal’s crazy jealous and he might just have believed him. If the police ask him about it, well, that might be it. I know the man!’

  ‘It’s just possible the police will be too busy at the moment to follow that one up,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ she looked startled. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Haven’t you heard?’ I asked. ‘Carl Loring’s just been murdered.’

  ‘What!’ Sam turned her intense blue gaze on me. ‘Where? When?’

  ‘Here in the commons room, well, in the kitchen there, this morning, about ten o’clock. Hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘No. I was here around nine—I wanted to pick up some books from the library. Well, I got them and then I went back to the farm to finish off some work before this afternoon’s conference with Linda. I’ve just got back here.’

  ‘Was Hal at home this morning?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s away in Philadelphia for a couple of days. Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, ‘it’s just that everyone in the department is being asked about their alibis.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure as hell not sorry that both Lorings are dead, but why should I want to kill Carl?’

  ‘No reason,’ I said hastily. ‘I just thought I’d better tell you.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t know if there’ll be any conferences or classes, or, indeed, if there’ll be anything at all going on here this afternoon,’ I said. ‘The police have cordoned off parts of the building and the lieutenant is going to be interviewing people for most of the time. I expect he’ll want to see you, too. Come to think of it, it might be easier for you to see him here rather than at the farm with Hal around.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and see him.’

  ‘By the way,’ I said as she turned to go, ‘have you seen Gina this morning?’

  ‘Gina?’ She stopped and looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘Yes,’ I went on, ‘she seems to have disappeared. She had a conference with Linda at ten but she never turned up and she doesn’t seem to be at home, Linda called her there. It’s a bit awkward, really, because she should have been Linda’s alibi for the time Loring was killed—that was between ten and ten forty ...’

  Sam hesitated and then she said quickly, ‘No, I haven’t seen her. Like I said, I wasn’t around here long. She wasn’t in the library, that’s for sure.’

  I had a strong feeling that she wasn’t telling the truth, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine why she should be lying.

  ‘Oh well,’ I said vaguely, ‘I dare say there’s a perfectly simple explanation.’

  Linda and I had been going to meet Anna in town for a hamburger and then go on to see a film.

  ‘Should we still go?’ I suggested tentatively to Linda as we sat in her room drinking coffee and going over once again the extraordinary events of the day.

  ‘Well,’ Linda said robustly, ‘it would be pretty hypocritical for me to pretend I’m in any way grief-stricken at Loring’s murder! So I figure a trip to McDonald’s and an evening at the movies isn’t going to make me seem some sort of unfeeling wretch.’

  The door opened and Dave Hunter came in.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I’ve come for coffee and sympathy. I’ve just been grilled by the good lieutenant and I’m beginning to feel like suspect number one.’

  Linda spooned some coffee powder into a mug, filled it up with water from a jug and put it in the microwave.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ she said as she pressed various buttons (the functioning of the microwave is as mysterious and unfathomable to me as that of the nuclear reactor). ‘My coffee machine’s not working so we’re having to improvise. So. What’s with the lieutenant?’

  ‘It was my fault, I guess,’ Dave said ruefully. ‘He was asking me about Loring, you know, as a person and a teacher, and I’m afraid I let slip just how I feel about all that crap about this new system of grading and the bad effect it would have on the department. And I sort of got carried away—you know how I do?’

  The microwave gave a little ping, as if of agreement, and Linda took out the cup of coffee and gave it to Dave.

  ‘So before I knew what I was saying, like a fool I was telling him all about the fight over freshman comp. and the way Loring was trying to take over on the policy

  committee ...’

  ‘Oh, Dave!’ Linda said.

  ‘I don’t know that’s such a bad thing,’ I suggested. ‘I think he’ll take it as proof of total innocence. After all, if you were the murderer you’d hardly go right in and give yourself a motive the very first time he interviewed you, now would you?’

  ‘Unless he was very cunning and it was a double bluff,’ Linda said, smiling affectionately at him.

  He smiled back, his rather austere face lighting up as it always did when he looked at Linda. As they sat there chatting, I found myself regarding them like a fond matchmaking mama. They would be so well suited, both rather reserved, both, I was sure, full of love just waiting to be brought to the surface. A niggling voice inside my head suggested that Linda wasn’t the obvious candidate for stepmother of two small children under ten, but I brushed it aside.

  ‘I think Dave should come to the movies with us,’ Linda was saying. ‘Cheer him up, don’t you think?’

  I agreed enthusiastically.

  ‘Great,’ Dave said. ‘I’ll just call my mother and ask her to cope
with the kids tonight. Come and collect me when you’re ready to leave. You know, Loring’s death is going to mean we’re going to have to hire someone to take over his classes. I’d better have a talk with Rob about that.’

  Linda looked at her watch. ‘And I’d better call Anna and let her know what’s happened. She should be back by now.’

  I went and sat in my office. It was one that belonged to a member of the department who was on a sabbatical and was decidedly unrestful, since its usual occupant was obviously an enthusiastic collector of rather inferior modern art—all swirling reds and yellows with strange shapes that almost made sense, but mostly didn’t, so that they caught the eye and niggled away at the mind without ever being resolved. I sat with my back to the most intrusive of these paintings and tried to think. I hardly felt I could come right out and ask Sam where she had been on the night of the concert when Max Loring was murdered, but she’d certainly had a motive for killing him. And, in a way, a sort of motive for killing Carl as well. After all, he had tried to get her thrown out of Wilmot and she was almost obsessionally keen to finish her master’s degree—to prove, I suppose, that she was not just some pretty girl on the make, but a woman of proven intellectual achievement. Carl hadn’t succeeded, but it wasn’t for want of trying. But was Sam so vindictive that she had borne a strong enough grudge to lead to murder? They say that the first murder is the difficult one; perhaps, after killing Max, the murder of his brother wouldn’t seem so hard.

  And, really, who would have had a motive for killing both Lorings? I considered my only other suspect, Walter Cleveland. He would have no obvious reason to kill Carl, and even if Carl somehow found out that Cleveland had murdered his brother and had to be silenced, then surely someone would have noticed a visitor as unusual as Cleveland wandering round the corridors. It was possible that Mike would turn up some other suspect we none of us knew about, someone outside the department altogether. What about Carl’s boyfriend, the actor that Anna had mentioned? There could well be several such young men that we knew nothing about ... The picture on the wall opposite caught my eye relentlessly. Was that peculiar triangular shape a witch’s hat, and, if so, perhaps what I had taken for a careless brushstroke, might just be a broomstick. I abandoned my confused thoughts on Carl Loring’s murder and gave myself up to this new problem.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘So that’s two cheeseburgers, two quarter-pounders—one without relish—and fries and coffee for everyone, OK?’ Anna made her way to the counter and Linda, Dave and I sat at a plastic-topped table as far away from the piped music as we could.

  Dave showed a tendency to want to discuss new schedules with Linda, but she said firmly, ‘No shop—tonight is happy time.’

  ‘Actually,’ Dave said, ‘I hate to say this, and I could only say it to you, but having Loring out of the way is enjoyment enough in itself!’

  And certainly we all seemed to have a feeling of euphoria; even Anna, who wasn’t involved in the department’s affairs like the rest of us, caught the mood, and if our liveliness that evening had a slight edge of hysteria, then our enjoyment was none the less for that. The movie, which matched our mood, was a romantic comedy of the kind (I couldn’t help thinking, in my middle-aged way) Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn used to do rather better, but cheerful and agreeable so that when Linda, Anna and I got back home we were in high spirits.

  ‘There’s some ice-cream in the freezer and that coffee cake left from yesterday if anyone wants some,’ Anna said.

  ‘Great,’ Linda enthused, ‘I’m starving. What about you, Sheila?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘It would round off the evening very well. Dave is nice, isn’t he?’ I continued.

  ‘He’s a great guy.’ Linda’s head was inside the freezer so I couldn’t see her face. ‘I don’t know how I’d have hung on sometimes without his support. All that business with Loring, that started when Dave took my side in one of our departmental fights.’

  She emerged with two cartons. ‘Strawberry or vanilla with chocolate fudge?’

  ‘Well, all that’s over now,’ Anna said. ‘You might even begin to enjoy your work again.’

  ‘Well, now he’s gone,’ Linda said thoughtfully, ‘the focus of opposition will be gone too, if you see what I mean. Nora O’Brien and the egregious Rick haven’t got the pull with Rob Huron that Loring had. I feel Huron was always a bit afraid of Loring.’

  ‘Goodness!’ I exclaimed. ‘There’s an idea! Perhaps Loring had some kind of hold over Rob, perhaps he was blackmailing him! Now that would be a motive for murder!’

  ‘Yes,’ Linda said doubtfully, cutting a slice of cake, ‘but can you see Rob killing anyone? He’s so indecisive he’d have had that knife in the air so long while he was trying to make up his mind that Loring would have simply taken it away from him! It would have been Hamlet all over again!’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m afraid you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘Reluctant as I am to lose a perfectly good suspect that none of us likes, I have to agree. Which, I’m afraid, only leaves us with Sam.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Anna protested.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘she does have a sort of motive for both murders and she hasn’t an alibi for today.’

  I told them my theory about the invitation card and how she might have slipped into the Institute.

  ‘No,’ Anna said flatly, ‘I’m sure I didn’t leave my bag around in the commons room that day.’

  But there was something in her voice, a note of uncertainty, that made me wonder if she couldn’t admit, even to herself, that such a thing might have happened.

  ‘By the way,’ I asked Linda, ‘did you hear from Gina eventually?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I didn’t. I hope she shows up tomorrow, otherwise I must go round to her apartment and see what’s happened. I’m sure there’s something wrong.’

  The Thai restaurant was very dark, lit only by candles whose precarious light was almost extinguished every time the door was opened to admit another customer.

  ‘I don’t think I can see to read the menu,’ I said to Mike. ‘You’ll have to tell me what to order.’

  ‘Well now,’ he said. ‘There’s Kai Tom Kah—that’s chicken with coconut milk and lemon grass, among other things, or Tom Yam Kung, which is lobster done the same way, or there’s Kaeng Pheet Kai, a sort of chicken curry, but I’d better warn you, that’s rather hot, a lot of chillies.’

  ‘Oh, the lobster thing, I think. It sounds delicious,’ I replied, rather taken aback by this expertise. ‘Do you cook yourself?’

  ‘I’ve had to, I guess. So I kind of got interested, it’s very relaxing. When I’m home, that is. Sometimes, after a really hard day, the temptation just to say what the hell and order a pizza is very strong, but usually I rustle up something. I guess I don’t have to tell you that I’m fond of my food.’ He indicated his bulky waistline. ‘Too fond, perhaps! Julia Child is my favourite bedtime reading. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I replied enthusiastically. ‘I cook myself what are known as Proper Meals, even when Michael’s not at home. Like you I find cooking therapeutic. If a book isn’t going well or I’m bogged down in a mass of material and it all seems too much, then I go into the kitchen and cook something. Very rich fruit cakes are particularly soothing. I think it’s something to do with having to measure out so many ingredients!’

  ‘Did you find it very difficult, being alone,’ Mike enquired, ‘after your husband died, when your son was away?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it was very bad. Peter had been ill for a long time and I knew it would happen, but somehow you’re never really prepared, it still comes as a terrible shock. And my mother had died just before—I simply felt my world had fallen apart. If it hadn’t been for Michael ...’ I was glad the restaurant was so dark as the tears came into my eyes, as they always do when I think of that time. I blinked a bit to clear them away and went on. ‘You get used to it, of course. Life goes on, the raw tissue heals, but you always carry t
he scar.’

  The food arrived—lots of little dishes with unfamiliar things in them.

  ‘This lobster thing’s very good,’ I said.

  We devoted our attention to the variety of food for a little while and then I continued, ‘Actually, to lose someone by death is probably more bearable, in some ways, than going through a divorce. I mean, if you still care very much for the other person, thinking of them still being there, perhaps with someone else ...’

  ‘Yes,’ Mike said. ‘I guess it’s a different kind of hurt. And there’s the sense of failure, too. You feel if only you’d done something different, been a different person ...’

  ‘And you lost your daughter, too. That was hard. I’m so lucky to have Michael. Even when he leaves home he’ll still be—what’s the phrase you all use over here?—there for me. I still have that.’

  ‘Is that enough?’ he asked. ‘I mean,’ he continued tentatively, ‘have you ever thought about marrying again?’

  Even in the dimly lit restaurant I was very aware of his gaze.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘I’d never do that. When you’ve had one really marvellous marriage, then that’s it. There’d be no point, somehow.’

  We sat in silence for a moment, unspoken words hanging between us. I think we both knew that if nothing were said on either side then the situation would remain tenable. We could continue a pleasant, light relationship, maintain the fiction that there were no deeper feelings involved. I still found it strange that Mike should have these feelings on so short an acquaintance—I was flattered, in a way, as any woman might be, but embarrassed and uneasy, not quite sure how to handle the situation.

  ‘That guy Dave Hunter,’ Mike said suddenly, ‘he’s changed his story.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Now he says he was in the commons room at ten fifteen.’ Mike spooned some lime sauce from the dish in front of him on to his curry.

  ‘But, goodness,’ I said, relief that we were now on safer ground conversationally making me react more strongly than the information might seem to warrant. ‘That’s really cutting things a bit fine. I mean, there were people in there almost up to ten o’clock, when most of them had classes. Would there have been time for someone to have met Loring in the commons room and kill him like that?’ ‘Practically speaking, I guess,’ Mike spoke slowly, ‘there would have been—that is if it was premeditated and not the result of some sort of conversation or quarrel. One thing I did gather: Carl Loring went into the commons room just before ten o’clock. Someone called Johnson told me he was the last to leave and just as he was going Carl Loring came in. They exchanged a few words about some business Loring had been to see this guy Huron about—something to do with a committee—and Johnson went on his way.’