by Cynthia Kuhn
“Do you think the same person did this?”
“I can’t give you any details. But I am interested in you giving me some.” He waved his pen. “Okay?”
“Okay. I went into the library and found Judith.”
He flipped the notepad open to a clean page and waited, pen poised. “Could you tell me what you saw at the party before you went into the library?”
“My colleagues—”
“And they would be?”
“Calista James, Nate Clayton, Tad Ruthersford, Addison Goldman, Judith Westerly, and Willa Hartwell.” He recorded the information while I checked my hands, which were still trembling.
“Did anyone seem upset?”
“No. Well—wait. Willa and Judith were arguing in the hallway.”
Archer looked up so quickly that I knew he thought it important. “Arguing? About what?”
“I couldn’t hear them. I was passing by and noticed they were in a serious conversation. Willa seemed to be trying to convince Judith of something.”
“What was Judith doing when Willa was talking to her?”
“Shaking her head.” I realized it sounded as though I were pointing a suspicious finger at Willa. “But, Detective Archer, they are really good friends. I’m sure it was nothing connected to, ah, this.” I gestured feebly around the room.
“What happened next?”
“I went back to the party and spoke to Addison until Willa returned.”
Archer waited.
“When I came out into the hallway, it was empty.”
He watched me intently. “Is that when you went into the library?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you go inside?”
“I could see the bookshelves through the door and wanted to get closer…”
“To?”
“You know, read the titles.” He seemed skeptical, and I blushed. It was hard to explain to someone who wasn’t a bibliophile why a bookshelf might call out to you.
“Did you see Judith at that time?”
“No. I didn’t see her at all until I tripped over her. She was beside the desk.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Yes, I went over and felt the pulse in her neck. And put my ear by her mouth to make sure she was breathing. Then I picked up the phone on the desk and called 911.”
“But you didn’t touch anything else?”
“No.” The detective noted that down. “Then I went out in the hallway and yelled for help.”
“Who was the first to arrive?”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember. It was difficult to get a clear picture of what had followed the discovery. There were many things happening simultaneously: men and women coming and going—shouting, crying, murmuring. “Spencer Bartholomew, I think. No, wait, it was Willa. They both arrived around the same time.”
“What did they do?”
“Willa started to run into the room, but Spencer stopped her, then told me to stand in the doorway, as a barrier, I guess. Then he went over to be with Judith until the ambulance and police arrived. Willa went back into the party and tried to organize people. I heard her saying there had been an accident.”
“Can you think of any reason someone might want to hurt Judith?”
“Absolutely not.”
“No jealousy in the department?”
“Well, there’s always jealousy everywhere, isn’t there? But I don’t know anything specific. People who’ve been here longer would, I’m sure.”
He regarded me thoughtfully. “I find it hard to believe you’ve been in Stonedale such a short while and have already found two bodies.”
“Bodies? Please don’t call Judith a body.” The room seemed to spin slightly. I sat up straighter on the sofa to counter the effect.
“I’m serious, Professor. Can you explain your involvement?”
“No. I have no idea what’s going on here. But if you’re accusing me—are you accusing me?”
He was silent.
“You think I could have done it? Seriously? I hardly know these people. I don’t have any reason.”
“Well,” he said, as he flipped through his notes. “Judith was your faculty mentor.” He went back a few more pages. “And Roland mocked your research in several different instances.”
“Yes, Judith and I were becoming friends. She has been kind to me. And yes, Roland was disparaging. But why would I attack my colleagues? I wanted this job more than anything in the world.” I was having trouble speaking calmly, battling simultaneous waves of defensiveness and fear.
He shrugged. “How many people do you know who are the first on a crime scene twice in one month?”
“I understand what you’re saying. But I didn’t want to be the first person there.”
His lips twitched, as though he was trying not to smile. “Well, you are the only thing linking both scenes so far.”
I couldn’t move.
“Except for this,” he continued. He scribbled something on a page of his notepad and slid it across the table. “Can you identify it?”
I glanced at it. “It looks like a circle with a fence inside it.”
He looked down. “I didn’t draw it very well. But does it remind you of anything? Do you know what it means?”
“No, I don’t know what it means. What is it?” I met his eyes.
“I’m asking what you think it means.” He tapped the page.
I examined it more thoroughly. “It just looks like a fence, or rows of letter Xs around something…another circle? What is that?”
He shot me an exasperated look. “I’m asking the questions here.”
“Right.” I took a sip of the coffee in front of me, which was a mistake, as it was both bitter and cold.
He jotted something, then reached down and produced an object encased in a clear plastic bag. He set it on the table, putting on a pair of latex gloves before unzipping the bag and pulling out an enormous book. Silver print against the dark red binding identified it as Selected Works of Virginia Woolf. Gently, he lifted the front cover and went to the title page, upon which rested a large embossed symbol. “What’s this?”
“Is it what you were drawing?”
He shrugged. “Trying to.”
“Wow,” I said. It was an intricate design, a circle with what looked like thorny branches crisscrossing around a smaller circle, inside of which was a rosebud. It seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“What is this doing here?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea how it got there.”
“No, I mean why would there be a graphic pressed into the paper?”
“Oh, it’s one way to identify a book as belonging to a personal library. Some people write their names in books. Others glue in bookplates or use a special tool—kind of like a metal clamp—to emboss the page, like this. Does the book have anything else embossed? Just a symbol is slightly unusual, though not unheard of.”
The detective studied the page briefly, then closed the book and returned it to the plastic. “We’ll check it out, thanks.”
“Is that Judith’s book?”
“What makes you say that?”
“She studies Woolf. Was that in the library? I didn’t see it. It’s huge.”
“Huge enough to knock someone unconscious, at least, wouldn’t you say?”
I stared at him. “Someone hit Judith with a book?”
“But since you didn’t touch it, we won’t find your fingerprints on it, right?”
“No. I already told you. I only touched her neck and the phone.” His steady gaze was unnerving. I knew I hadn’t done anything, but it made me feel guilty somehow. “You said the rose thing was at the first crime scene too?”
The detective pressed his lips together and hesitated before nodding.
&n
bsp; “Where?”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “By the way, Lila, you didn’t mention you and Roland had been arguing on the day of his death.”
“I wouldn’t call it arguing,” I said.
“What would you call it?”
I chose my next word carefully. “Conferring.”
He waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, he sighed. “About what were you conferring?”
“I proposed a class on mysteries, and Roland rejected it.”
“Was that all?”
“He also implied I should mind my Ps and Qs.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I should know my place. Show more deference. Shut up, basically.”
“That must have made you angry,” he said, in a neutral tone. He sounded like a therapist.
“Of course it did.”
Something shifted in his eyes.
“I was angry. But not murderously angry, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Why didn’t you mention it the first time we talked?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to bring it up. I was answering your questions.”
He consulted his notepad. “Did Roland talk to you about anything else that day?”
I thought back. “Yes. My research.”
“Tell me more.” He had begun taking notes again.
“In Roland’s opinion, which he droned on and on about in front of the entire department during my campus interview, by the way, Isabella Dare had three strikes against her. Scholars hadn’t written about her, which meant, to him, she could not be of value since everybody important must have already been discovered.”
Archer’s eyebrows went up.
“That’s not true,” I informed him. “It’s just what Roland believed.”
“I got that,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“So the first strike was that Isabella is an unknown. Second, she wrote mysteries. Popular fiction, to him, had nothing to do with real literary studies. Third, she was a woman. Enough said.” Just thinking about the way Roland had belittled my work in public infuriated me all over again.
The detective regarded me thoughtfully.
“And yet you continued to work on Isabella.”
“Yes.”
“Even though you knew your boss would be displeased?”
“Yes, but it’s not that simple. It wasn’t like I was directly defying an order from my commander or something. Research topics are…” I wasn’t sure how to end that sentence. “Captivating,” I tried. “An original topic is difficult to come by, all-consuming, and nearly impossible to relinquish once you’ve sunk your teeth into it.”
“I see,” he said.
“Besides, no one should prevent a professor from working on any subject. In the spirit of academic freedom and all that.”
Detective Archer wrote something down, then scrutinized me again. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“Just that I didn’t mean to cause any problems. I’m trying to do my job. Part of the issue is that Roland and I approached the study of literature very differently.”
“Sure sounds like it,” he said.
“It’s inevitable that there will be conflict in any department. But there’s a professional way to handle disagreements. Roland’s way is…” I stopped and corrected my tense. “Roland’s way was demeaning.”
“To you?”
“And to others.”
“Like? Wait, hold on.” Detective Archer reviewed several pages quickly, his eyes scanning from side to side at a rapid pace. Maybe he’d had speed reader training.
I tried to head him off at the pass. “I don’t really want to go into department gossip—”
“Like Tad?”
Unwillingly, I confirmed it, with the smallest possible nod ever.
“What can you tell me about Roland and Tad?”
“It’s not really my story to tell,” I said. “I only heard that Tad was almost denied tenure because of Roland.”
The detective studied my face.
“You know, Dr. Maclean, it would be helpful for you to volunteer information that is in any way related to these events.”
“Sure,” I said. “But that’s all I know. It happened last year, and I wasn’t even in Stonedale then.”
“Is there anything else you can think of that might be pertinent?”
“Not right now.”
“Please call me if anything else occurs to you.” Archer removed a small white business card from his pocket and pushed it across the coffee table at me.
“I will,” I assured him as I picked it up.
“We may need to talk with you again.”
“That’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.” I looped the strap of my bag across my body and stood.
He held up a finger. “One more question, Lila. What reasons might your cousin have for being involved in any of this?”
“Calista’s not involved. She would never do something to hurt another person. Why would you think that?”
Neither of us spoke while his blue eyes searched mine. Finally, he sighed and said I was free to go.
On the way home, I stopped by the hospital, but since I wasn’t family, they wouldn’t let me see Judith yet. So instead I spent a quiet night flipping channels while going over the events of the evening in my mind. Calista called late, asking about my interview. We compared notes, as she had also been asked to give a statement, but Detective Archer must have used different strategies for different people, as she was shocked to hear the weapon had been a book.
“It was a Woolf book?” She sounded oddly intense.
“Yes, does that mean something? Do you know if it was Judith’s?”
“I…I don’t know. She has a ton of Woolf books, but I’m not sure if that was one of them. What did it look like?”
“It was red with silver lettering, and it had something embossed into the title page. A rosebud with thorns around it.”
“Hmm.” There was a long pause.
“He asked me if there was any reason for you to be involved.”
“What? Of course not. Lila, you know that, right?”
“I do, Cal. I told him so. Did you tell him about your lost knife?”
“I did,” she said quickly.
“What did he say?”
“That he wished I’d told him sooner.”
“Does he think there’s a connection?”
“Well, since the book symbol you described matches the one on my knife, I bet he does.”
That was new information. “Wait, that’s what was on your knife? You didn’t specify before. Where did it come from?”
“A friend gave it to me. Let’s leave it at that. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“But your friend might be a murderer—”
“That’s impossible.”
Now I was confused and said so. She was unwilling to provide any additional details, even though I pushed for more information. We agreed to check in later and ended the call. All night, I wondered whom she felt compelled to protect and—what seemed even more incomprehensible—why she wouldn’t confide in me about it.
Resolving to stop attempting to figure out the citizens of Stonedale University for a bit, I threw myself into work mode. I stayed up half the night, but cooler weather tends to increase my energy for some reason, and I caught up on all of my grading, a victory in and of itself. On top of that, I managed to draft a very rough book proposal on the Isabella Dare project. It was one thing to understand the requirement to publish—the minimum expected of any tenure-track candidate—but it was a whole other matter to actually put something in writing for submission. Anything on paper was cause for celebration. I still needed to do more research, but at least I had a starting point.
On Monday morning, as I was locking the front door, Tad came out of his house in a black blazer over a crisp white shirt paired with jeans and Doc Martens—very Hip Young Professor. We headed to campus, our shoes crushing the scattered leaves on the sidewalk. I loved when the smothering heat of summer gave way to a properly autumnal crispness and it seemed to have taken even longer to arrive out west, so I was especially grateful this year. I tried to enjoy the moment, even though Judith’s welfare was weighing on my mind.
“Have you heard anything about Judith?” I asked Tad.
“Nothing. What did the detective tell you last night? I saw him talking to you.”
“Just that she was unconscious and they had stabilized her.”
He nodded and we walked silently for a few minutes, then I asked how his conversation with the police went.
He swallowed hard before answering. “That detective was really interested in my relationship with Roland, unfortunately. It’s impossible to tell that story without making myself look like an ass. He knew everything already, of course, and was going to talk to me even if someone hadn’t attacked Judith. It just made it more convenient for him—and more suspicious for me—that I was in attendance last night.”
“But he didn’t accuse you of anything, right?” As soon as I asked, I realized it wasn’t just me under scrutiny—or Calista, for that matter. The detective had all of us on his suspect list, and he would continue to investigate until someone confessed, or until the truth came out. Which was his job, I guess, but it was disconcerting all the same.
“Not outright. He seemed disbelieving, though, when I told him I harbored no ill will whatsoever for Judith. She’s been nothing but kind to me.”
“Me too. Extremely so.”
He sighed.
“I hate that the tenure thing has cast such a long shadow over everything. Stonedale was the perfect fit for me before that happened. Now I can see pity in people’s faces.”
“But that will fade, Tad. And are you sure it’s pity? I think it might be sympathy—from what I’ve heard, everyone believes Roland was not justified in his complaints.”
“That’s good to hear, but I can’t help feeling mortified.” He kicked at a small cluster of red and yellow leaves at the edge of the sidewalk.