5 - Murder on Campus

by Hazel Holt

‘Linda spoke to her on the phone,’ I said. ‘She said she sounded terrible. Gina said she had a virus ... And all that time she was thinking about killing herself. If only we’d known!’

  ‘What good would it have done?’ Mike put the plastic wallet back in his pocket. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted her to stand trial for murder.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not. I suppose this is the best solution all round, though it seems like a horrible thing to say.’

  We sat in silence for a while.

  ‘Can I tell Linda?’ I asked.

  ‘People will have to know she’s dead,’ Mike said, ‘but just for the moment I don’t want anyone to know about the letter. Except your friend Linda. The letter was written to her. Ask her if she’ll come around to see me. We need to keep the letter, of course, as evidence, but she’ll want to read it for herself.’

  I fiddled with some of the student papers on my desk, piling one on top of the other, as if reducing them to order might somehow impose a similar order upon the whole sorry mess.

  ‘So if Gina killed Carl Loring,’ I asked, ‘who killed Max?’

  Mike rose from his chair.

  ‘I’m still waiting for a report to come in,’ he said, ‘but I figure I should be able to tell you that by Sunday.’

  Linda was very shocked by the news when I told her.

  ‘If only she’d said something when I called!’ she kept saying. ‘Just shut up in her apartment brooding about that terrible thing she’d done. That and Rebecca!’

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ I said gently. ‘There’s nothing any of us could have done. It’s better this way.’

  Tiger, sensing her mood, jumped up on to her lap and butted her hand with his head. She sat stroking the soft fur automatically for a while and then she said, ‘I wonder if she was there, in the kitchen, when I went into the commons room?’

  ‘I suppose she might have been,’ I said. ‘She could have got out through the furnace room door—no one saw her in the corridor or anywhere around.’

  ‘I guess we’ll never know,’ Linda said. ‘Oh, poor Gina! What she must have gone through to be driven to do such an awful thing—it doesn’t bear thinking of! If only I’d made some sort of enquiries about Rebecca, kept in touch with her, tried to help—then maybe none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Linda,’ I said firmly, ‘you must stop thinking like that. There was nothing you could have done, you couldn’t have changed anything.’

  The news of Gina’s death so soon after that of the Lorings cast a gloom over the department. The atmosphere was decidedly low-key and no one seemed to have the inclination for the usual academic infighting or points-scoring.

  ‘I’ve never known a committee meeting to go so quickly and so smoothly,’ Dave Hunter said as we sat drinking coffee in Linda’s room. ‘Everyone just said the minimum of what they had to say and we took a vote and that was that. Couldn’t believe it—all over in half an hour!’

  ‘I suppose we’re all still in a state of shock,’ Linda said. ‘People just want to get on quietly with their work without any sort of hassle.’

  ‘Yeah, even the O’Brien,’ Dave said. ‘She was positively conciliatory about the funding for the new publications programme. And the egregious Rick hardly opened his mouth. I guess he’s feeling lost without Loring to back him up.’

  ‘I certainly noticed a difference in our esteemed Chair,’ Linda said, and I was pleased to hear the return of her old caustic tone. ‘Would you say accommodating was the word?’

  ‘Definitely!’ Dave smiled. ‘You know, I reckon we’re going to be able to fix the whole of next year’s course offerings without the usual casuitical rubbish, self-seeking and empire-building that we’ve had to put up with in recent years.’

  I got up. ‘I must leave you two to set Wilmot to rights,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a tutorial with Sam in ten minutes. To be honest, I’m not looking forward to it. I’m afraid she’s bound to be very upset about Gina.’

  Sam certainly didn’t look her usual vital self. Her careful make-up couldn’t wholly disguise the dark shadows under her eyes and there was a listlessness about her that seemed to quench the brightness and vivacity that normally surrounded her like a sort of nimbus. Even the diamonds on her fingers appeared to have lost their sparkle.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sam,’ I said. ‘I know that you and Gina were very close.’

  ‘I should have guessed how it would be,’ she said quietly, ‘when I heard about Rebecca. I knew she couldn’t live without her. But I was too wrapped up in my own affairs. I guess I can’t forgive myself for that.’

  It seemed we all felt in some way responsible for Gina’s death, a sort of collective guilt. However much we try to believe in Fate and predestined laws, there’s always the nagging feeling, deep down, that we, imperfect and human though we may be, could somehow prevent the tragedies of life. If only ... perhaps the two most futile words in the English language, but how often we find ourselves saying them.

  ‘You mustn’t think like that,’ I said. ‘It was no one’s fault.’

  ‘It was that creature Loring’s fault,’ Sam said vehemently. ‘If he hadn’t persecuted Rebecca like that, none of this would have happened. At least he’s dead, too—’ She broke off and looked at me. ‘I keep thinking. About Gina and Loring. She must have done it.’

  I shrugged my shoulders slightly but didn’t say anything.

  ‘You think so too, don’t you?’ Sam persisted.

  ‘Look, Sam,’ I replied hesitantly, ‘I can’t say anything, but, yes, it looks as if Gina did kill him. So, you see, things have turned out—not for the best, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she replied. ‘It’s all so complicated and such a terrible waste.’

  ‘I think you must all try and put it behind you,’ I said. ‘Get on with your lives. There’s nothing more anyone can do. It’s up to the police now to clear up the mess.’

  Sunday morning was clear and sunny, though quite cold so we were glad of the heater in Mike’s car as we drove from Harrisburg, past the Hershey factory with the smell of chocolate in the air, along Route 81 towards Hagerstown. By common consent we didn’t mention the murders or Gina’s death; instead Mike told me about Antietam and the battle that was fought there.

  ‘I guess it was the turning point of the war,’ he said. ‘Lee wanted to take the fighting across the Union’s southern border and have a kind of showdown battle. He didn’t make it though he came darned close, even though he had less than half the troops McClellan had. He was an extraordinary guy, McClellan—a kind of Hamlet figure, never quite able to make up his mind to act, always—what’s that thing in Macbeth?—“Letting I dare not wait upon I will.” He never could bring himself to believe he had the advantage and always held back at the critical moment ...’

  The battlefield was laid out like a great park, beautifully kept, the landmarks of the battles set out on plaques, telling where each division had stood and fought. There were many touching monuments to the dead, raised by survivors from the state they had come from.

  ‘My father’s great-grandfather fought under Grant at Spotsylvania,’ Mike said, ‘and my mother’s great-grandfather was with Jackson at Harper’s Ferry. I guess it was the same with you in England in your Civil War.’

  We walked along the sunken lane, bordered by zigzagged wooden post and rail fences, where so many soldiers had fallen, and stood silently outside the little white Dunker church which had been used as a hospital for the uncounted wounded. We stayed for a long time by the cornfield where the battle had raged so fiercely. We had seen very few people as we drove around the battlefield and here we were completely alone.

  ‘It’s stupid of me,’ I said, ‘but I’ve always thought of it as an English cornfield—you know, wheat. I hadn’t realized that it would be maize and shoulder-high.’

  It was still a cornfield, the crop cut earlier but with a few straggling heads of corn left round the edges. The air was still and
there was no birdsong. The dead seemed very close.

  When we stood on the bridge across Antietam Creek, where General Burnside had sent wave after wave of his men to their death, Mike said: ‘Nearly thirty thousand men were killed or wounded on that single day. More than on any battlefield where Americans have fought, before or since.’

  ‘It puts into perspective, I suppose, the death of the Lorings and Gina,’ I said, finally introducing the topic that was still on our minds.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I guess it does.’

  ‘You said you could tell me about Max Loring’s death,’ I said. ‘Was it Carl who killed him?’

  ‘Yes. It seems that he badly needed a lot of money and Max wouldn’t help.’

  ‘Just for this theatre project?’ I asked.

  Mike was silent for a second, looking at the water flowing under the bridge.

  ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘it wasn’t for that.’

  ‘What, then?’ I asked impatiently. ‘What was so urgent that he needed so much?’

  ‘Carl Loring was HIV positive,’ Mike said.

  For a moment I couldn’t take in what Mike had said. Yes, of course, I knew all about AIDS, the papers and television often appeared to be full of nothing else. But suddenly to come upon it in this very immediate way seemed incredible.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s one of the first things they look for in a post-mortem,’ Mike said. ‘You can’t be too careful these days.’

  ‘No one at Wilmot had the faintest idea,’ I said.

  ‘It seems to have been in the early stages of full-blown AIDS,’ Mike went on. ‘He must have taken it very badly, got really scared. He was trying everything he could find, anything for some miracle cure—alternative medicine, quack clinics and all that stuff. It doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘And Max wouldn’t help him?’ I asked.

  ‘I guess not. We found a letter from Max in Carl’s desk, which more or less said he’d made his bed and he could damn well lie on it.’

  ‘How awful!’ I exclaimed. ‘How could he? His own brother!’

  ‘I guess the money from the sale of the family house was the last straw. Carl must have felt he had a right to a share of that.’

  ‘He could have gone to law,’ I suggested.

  ‘The law can take a while,’ Mike replied. ‘He didn’t think he had the time. Anyhow, after the lawyers had been at it, there wouldn’t have been that much left!’

  ‘He must have been desperate,’ I said.

  Much as I had disliked Carl Loring I couldn’t help feeling how terrible his situation had been and how the despair must have eaten away at him as time passed and the disease proceeded inexorably.

  ‘I suppose, after that row he had with his brother,’ I said, ‘he came early for the concert and found Max upstairs alone in the study room—I don’t suppose there’d have been many people around at that time of day—and shot him.’

  ‘He was unlucky in one way,’ Mike said. ‘When he put his brother’s body in that blanket chest he must have thought no one would find it for quite a while. It was just by chance that Theo Portman chose to show you round the Institute that evening and even more by chance that he took you up to show you the top floor and that linen storage stuff.’

  ‘That’s true, I don’t expect Theo usually took visitors up there. But look,’ I said as a thought struck me, ‘if Max’s body wasn’t found, then how would Carl get at the money? I mean, he couldn’t inherit until people knew his brother was dead.’

  ‘If he’d inherited in the usual way,’ Mike replied, ‘and he was his brother’s heir, then it would have taken time, and that, we know he didn’t have. But if Carl said that Max had gone away—he often went on trips abroad, sometimes on the spur of the moment—then Carl would have access to his papers and so forth and could forge his signature. It looks like he’d done that once before.’

  ‘Good Heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’d kept a letter from Max, threatening him with the law if he did it again. Saying he’d put up with the scandal to get even.’

  ‘What a pair!’ I said.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mike said, ‘it all seems to fit together. I figure we can make a good case for Carl Loring murdering his brother.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘it does seem to be the only explanation.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to get it cleared up,’ Mike said. ‘It’s been a messy, unsatisfactory affair.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, thinking that it would be more comfortable now I need no longer feel I was keeping from Mike things he ought to know about my friends at Wilmot. ‘It’s been that, all right!’

  I leaned forward and rested my arms on the bridge, looking out at the trees lining the sloping ground on either side of the creek. They still retained some shreds of leaves, which conjured up melancholy images of a tattered, retreating army.

  ‘Mike,’ I asked, ‘what’s that faint smell? Sort of sweet and musky?’

  He looked down. ‘The coping of the bridge is covered with cedar wood,’ he said.

  ‘Cedar wood!’

  I was back again in that bleak room with the body of a man, neatly lying in a cedar-wood box as though in a coffin. Here, countless men had died, in the water or on the cold ground, not neatly but horribly mangled, limbs torn, scattered pieces of humanity, coffinless.

  The sweet smell hung in the air like the smell of death.

  Max Loring’s death already seemed remote, far away, it would soon be forgotten. The deaths here would not be forgotten. I looked over the bridge at the creek flowing below and wondered how long it would take for the water to wash away the blood.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The semester was drawing to a close and I was looking forward to going home.

  ‘Anna will be down for a couple of days tomorrow,’ Linda said. ‘There’s some stuff she needs to do at the Institute before the vacation. Then we’ll all have a week in New York before you go. How does that sound?’

  ‘Oh, lovely. I can do my Christmas shopping in Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, it’ll solve all my problems. Even the simplest present seems glamorous if it’s come from Abroad!’

  The revelation about Carl Loring shook the department badly. People seemed disinclined to talk about it, or about Gina. It was as though they wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened. Gradually the factions were re-formed, the battle-lines were redrawn, but there was less confrontation; the former rancour was gone.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe,’ Linda said, ‘the way Rob Huron was actually congratulating Dave on his new syllabus for freshman comp. for next year! After all the fighting we’ve had to get anything like it!’

  ‘I believe you’re missing the battles,’ I said with amusement.

  ‘No way! I tell you, Sheila, I still can’t get used to waking up in the morning and actually looking forward to going in!’

  I’d finished my last class and said goodbye (with genuine regret) to my students and was in the process of clearing up generally. I always seem to accumulate an enormous amount of odds and ends, even in a short time, and I’m also an absolute fool about throwing things away. Silly things, like a paper napkin printed with the name and logo of the Blue Diner, for instance, or my name tag from a special seminar—Michael might be interested to see them, I tell myself, knowing full well that he won’t. No, it’s just that I can’t bear to shed any bit of my life. I’ve got museum ticket stubs from all over the world; they fall out of books and send me into time-wasting fits of nostalgia and reverie. I’d just taken some books back to the library and felt I needed a cup of coffee so I went into the commons room kitchen. I switched on the coffee machine, took the tube of sweeteners out of my bag and put them on the work top while I got a mug out of the cupboard. As I moved to turn the machine off I knocked the sweeteners on to the floor and they rolled under the fridge. Rather stiffly I got down on to my knees to look for them. They’d rolled right under the gap beneath the frid
ge and I had to find a knife to fish for them. As I eased them out, something else came with them. It was a ballpoint pen. I stood up and took it over to the light to see what was written on it. For a moment its significance didn’t register with me, then, as the realization of what I’d found was gradually borne in upon me, I put the pen in my bag and went away, all thoughts of coffee forgotten.

  Anna’s skipped breakfast,’ Linda said next morning. ‘She said she pigged out yesterday at some fabulous new Italian restaurant in the Village, masses of polenta fried in butter and stuff like that. Anyway she’s gone off jogging—with her weights on!—and she’ll go straight to the Institute. She’ll see you this evening and we’ll make plans.’

  I’d been out when Anna arrived the night before, having a farewell dinner with Sam and Hal. I, too, after being exposed to the full glory of Sam’s cooking, didn’t feel much like breakfast.

  ‘I think I’ll just have juice and coffee,’ I said cautiously. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to face food for several days!’

  ‘Did Sam do her famous crab cakes?’ Linda asked, laughing.

  ‘She did,’ I replied, ‘each one a meal in itself. There were two of those and then we had some sort of cajun chicken and pecan pie. I honestly don’t know how I got home!’

  ‘Isn’t it today you’re having lunch with the Sterns?’ Linda asked.

  ‘Oh, God! I’d forgotten. Oh well, I’ll just have to toy lightly with a salad or something. I’ve got to go into the department and collect the last of my things so if I go now I might have time for a brisk walk by the river to work off last night’s excesses before lunch!’

  In my office I packed the last remaining papers into my briefcase and put a strap round the books. I picked up my coffee mug, emblazoned with the words Wilmot Giants and an American football helmet, and went along to the commons room kitchen to rinse it out.

  As I opened the door I saw a figure in a grey track suit crouched on the floor, apparently searching for something.