The Semester of Our Discontent

by Cynthia Kuhn

  I leaned back in the chair and thought. Why would someone want me to wear a necklace with this symbol during a visit with Calista? And why would she then refuse to tell me what it meant? I had the feeling I was playing a role in some game that I didn’t understand, and I didn’t like it one bit.

  On top of that, I definitely needed to find out what Roland’s letter said.

  I picked up the phone and called Detective Archer.

  An hour later, the detective sat at my dining room table. I’d made him some coffee, which steamed silently next to his elbow. I had an urge to move it closer to the center of the table so he wouldn’t jostle it by mistake, but I refrained.

  He opened his trusty notepad. “I understand this is all very troubling, and I appreciate your offer to talk further about the case. What’s the new information you have?”

  “Well, it happened a little while ago, but I didn’t think it was important until now.”

  The detective turned to a fresh page and positioned his pen over it. “Go on.”

  He started writing as I spoke. “When Calista and I were leaving Roland’s memorial service, Norton Smythe came barreling over all upset. He said he knew Calista had killed Roland and that she would pay for it.”

  The detective narrowed his eyes slightly.

  “Don’t you see? He promised to take revenge. And I heard he gave you a letter that provided some sort of motive.”

  His lack of reaction was extremely frustrating. But he did appear to be listening, so I kept going.

  “Is that why you arrested her?”

  “We are not going to talk about that,” Archer said decisively, slicing his hand sideways through the air. “And what Dr. Smythe may or may not have said is not part of this discussion.”

  “But I believe he’s trying to frame my cousin.” There, I said it. “What does the letter say? It’s her tenure letter, right?”

  He let the hand holding the pen fall to the table and shifted positions. “I can’t talk about that.”

  “Detective, please listen. I’m sure it’s a false clue. I don’t think she ever saw it.”

  He set the notepad down and took a long drink of coffee. “What makes you think that?”

  “I asked her.”

  He nodded and resumed making notes.

  “It might not even have been written by Roland. How do we know it came from him? Did someone actually see him write it?” I was determined to cast as much doubt on this letter as possible.

  Archer sighed. “As I said, I cannot discuss the letter. Let me ask you something, though. Did your cousin ever talk to you about her knife?”

  I tapped the table top for emphasis. “Yes, and that’s another part of this. Calista told me Norton stopped by her office and, while he was there, he saw the knife on her desk.”

  He squinted at me, the fine lines emanating out from the corners of his eyes bringing to mind a young Clint Eastwood. “Why would she tell you Norton saw the knife on her desk?”

  “Because after Roland was found, she realized her knife was missing, and she was worried. She was trying to decide when to tell you—”

  “The correct answer is right away,” he interjected sternly. “For future reference.”

  “I told her that too. Anyway, that’s why he is accusing her. He doesn’t know that the knife had been stolen.”

  Archer wrote something down. “Did he say anything to her about it?”

  “Not until the memorial service, I don’t think. By then, he’d already made up his mind that she was guilty.”

  He looked out the window. Or maybe at his reflection in the dark glass. I couldn’t interpret his expression.

  “Maybe Norton killed Roland,” I said. “Otherwise, why would he be so insistent that Calista did it?”

  The detective slowly turned his head towards me. “Because he thinks she did.”

  Chapter 11

  Cousin in jail or not, I still had a job to do. The room was already full when I arrived a few minutes before the start time of my Gothic class on Wednesday. After organizing my notes, I greeted the students and asked how the assigned reading—Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing” and Edith Wharton’s “The Eyes”—had gone for them.

  “Creepy,” one of the men in the front row said, letting out a low whistle. He was a consistently strong contributor and it wasn’t a surprise that he was the first to respond.

  Heads nodded in agreement around the room.

  “Could you please talk a little more about what you mean, Alex?” I prompted.

  He carefully tucked his long sun-streaked hair behind his ears before beginning. “Wharton’s eyes, following that guy? I could see them.”

  “Me too,” said another student from beneath a thick curtain of brown bangs. She readjusted her position in the seat. “I even had nightmares about them later.”

  “Sorry about that, Fiona,” I said. “It is a disturbing story, for sure. Let’s start with Wharton, then. What is it about the eyes that makes them so effective?”

  A long discussion followed, during which we explored various technical and symbolic elements.

  Alex raised his hand again. “Dr. Maclean, can we talk about the Bierce story now?” At my nod of agreement, he continued, “I can’t figure out why he never explains the invisible threat. Freaked me out.”

  “Yes, how does Bierce elicit our strong response, given that he doesn’t identify what the ‘thing’ is?”

  “That’s what makes it so scary,” Fiona said. “You hear about it, and you see results of its existence, but you don’t really get a good look at it, like in The Blair Witch Project.” We spent a good bit of time reviewing the ways in which the film was like the Bierce story, then she made several connections to Gothic conventions we’d been exploring during the semester so far.

  “But what if someone didn’t know the conventions?” the blonde student sitting next to Fiona protested. She put her black glasses on the desk. “I mean, does it really matter whether or not the person knows it’s Gothic? Can’t stories just work because of the content being all scary and stuff?”

  “Excellent question, Liane,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I didn’t sleep for two weeks after watching Blair Witch,” Liane said. “And I didn’t know anything about Gothic then. So I think stories can be effective either way. But knowing the conventions helps you talk about them differently or something, which is cool.”

  The sudden widespread reaching for backpacks indicated we’d reached the end of our class period.

  “That’s it for today, everyone.”

  I began gathering my own materials and putting them into my satchel.

  “Dr. Maclean?” Fiona stood before me, an uncertain expression on her face.

  “Yes?” I paused and smiled at her encouragingly.

  “Some of us in the Literature Club wondered if you were available to help us.”

  “There’s a literary club? I haven’t heard about that yet.”

  “Yes, it’s only a few years old, but some lit majors formed it so we could talk about the things we were reading in our classes. It started as a study group, actually.” She paused before adding proudly, “I’m the president.”

  “Congratulations—that sounds fun.”

  “It’s a blast,” she said. “The school has an honor society chapter, of course, and most of us belong to that too, but not everyone can join the society since there’s a grade point average requirement. Our club is open to all.”

  “That’s nice. What do you need from me?”

  “We need to think of a way to make money at Homecoming. The student organizations are allowed to have booths on Friday night at the football game, but we have to come up with a creative product to sell. We always try to do something related to literature because, well, that’s the whole point.” Fiona’s hop
eful expression won me over.

  “Do you have an official faculty advisor?” I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes.

  “Professor James, but she’s…”

  “Not available,” I hurried to complete the sentence. The last thing I wanted to do was discuss my jailed cousin with a student. “Do you have meetings, or how do you handle planning?”

  “Meetings, mostly. Sometimes Dr. Hartwell comes too, but she’s not usually involved.”

  “Well, if it’s okay with the club, I’d be happy to help out.”

  Fiona said she would email me after talking to the rest of the members.

  Back in the department, I knocked on Willa’s door, which was partially open.

  “Come in,” she called. I pushed the door open and stepped inside, gasping a little at the vibrant tapestries in clashing designs covering every inch of the walls. There was something almost antagonistic about the visual effect here.

  “Wow,” I said, turning around in a full circle to take it all in. “There’s so much to see.”

  “That’s what everyone says. I know it’s a bit much, but I like the contradictions of the dissimilar patterns.”

  “It’s very…uh…vivid,” I said. I was more of a minimalist, but to each her own.

  She pointed to a chair in front of her desk.

  “Have a seat.”

  As I sat, she put down her pen and gave me her full attention.

  “Fiona Graham asked me to help with the Literature Club booth for Homecoming while Calista is gone. I thought I’d check with you about it.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. I just asked Simone Raleigh to help out with the booth as well.”

  I registered a sinking feeling inside and rose to leave. “That’s fine. I’ll just tell Fiona you already have someone lined up—”

  “Actually, Lila, we could use all the help we can get. Why don’t you and Simone work together on this one?”

  Willa didn’t know that Simone was shaping up to be my archenemy, and I wasn’t about to explain it to her. “You know, I’m a bit swamped, being new and all. So if you and Simone are already working on it—”

  “We do need you. And it would be good service. Do you have anything in that column for your reappointment dossier yet?”

  “No,” I said. Definitely needed some service. “I’ll do it, thanks.”

  “I’ll give Simone your number, and you two can touch base.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to infuse my response with some enthusiasm.

  She pulled open her desk drawer and extracted a file folder. “Before you go, let me give you more information about the club.” She handed me a few stapled pages and slapped the folder shut. As she held the folder vertically and tapped it on her desk, I caught sight of what looked like a square of thorny branches penciled on the back of the folder.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at it.

  She turned the folder around and gave it a quick glance. Something in her face changed but I couldn’t interpret her expression.

  “A doodle, I guess,” she said. “One of the students in the club—I don’t know which one—put the folder in my mailbox so we could digitize the forms last year. I only have a few paper copies left, actually.”

  “The detective showed me a book with a similar symbol,” I pressed, hoping she’d be the one to finally explain everything to me.

  “Really?” She examined it again. “How odd.”

  She set the folder down on the desk while I debated whether or not to mention it had also been found on the knife. I decided to err on the side of caution—after all, my cousin was sitting in jail right now—and said nothing further.

  “I’ll be in touch, okay, Lila?” She smiled at me, then picked up her pen and started writing.

  Our conversation appeared to be over.

  As I walked home, I pondered the symbol. Why did I keep seeing it? The folder didn’t have a rose, but the thorns surely weren’t coincidental. Or were they?

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that there might be students involved in anything as extreme as murder. I hoped not. But you never know. Maybe all of them were involved. Or perhaps some of them were involved but the others didn’t know about it.

  There was only one thing to do: infiltrate the Literature Club and figure it out for myself. It was sort of like going undercover, though my identity was already known and I was coming in as an advisory figure. Okay, so it was nothing like going undercover. But it was necessary. I ran through the plan in my mind.

  Step One: Volunteer—or agree when forced—to help out with the Homecoming event.

  Step Two: Meet with students to learn what said event involves.

  Step Three: Gather evidence, obviously.

  Step Four: Identify guilty parties, make Stonedale safe for all.

  That could work if the murderers were, in fact, part of the group. Unless the murderers set their sights on me.

  “So what should we do for Homecoming? We have less than a month, so it can’t be too complicated.” Fiona addressed me expectantly the next day. We were in my office with Alex and Liane, who were also members of the Literature Club. Simone had texted that she was running late. I doubted she’d show up at all until we’d completed the work. Which was, I suspected, her plan in the first place. “But it has to be good so we can earn enough money to go to the Modern Language Association conference.”

  “You’re going to MLA?” I asked, surprised. The annual conference was the event of the year for those involved in literature study. Scholars came from all over the world to present on panels, literary societies held meetings of various types, and many schools interviewed potential hires there too. Graduate students often attended, but it wasn’t quite as typical for undergrads to go. Now I was even more impressed with their dedication to literature than I had been before, if that was possible.

  “We’ve been attending the regional one, the Rocky Mountain MLA, which is awesome. But this year, we wanted to try to go to national. It’s super expensive though,” Fiona explained.

  “Do you get any support from the university for that?” Calista had mentioned in passing that she’d attended a funding meeting a few weeks ago, though she hadn’t said what it was for, specifically. I’d assumed it was for Gender Studies, but perhaps it was for the Literature Club.

  Alex nodded briskly. “We do get some money, but it doesn’t cover all of the expenses, so we need to subsidize it with whatever we can earn.”

  “What’s the usual process?” I asked.

  “We sell books that are donated by professors over the year. That usually nets us a few hundred. But that’s not enough, so we have to do something else. Last year, we had a bake sale,” said Liane, pushing her black glasses up on her nose. Her long blonde hair had been tipped in red in the trendy ombre style, which suited her.

  “Yeah, but we only made seventy bucks from that,” said Alex, sounding disgusted. He pulled off his cap and threw it on the floor next to his backpack. “We need much more than that.”

  “What else could we sell, aside from the books?” Liane asked. “And remember, we have to make whatever it is.”

  “What if we put literary quotes into fortune cookies this year?” Fiona mused while sketching a flower on her notepad.

  “That’s an interesting idea,” I said encouragingly.

  Alex shook his head. “That’s even more work…and we’d probably make less money. Who buys a fortune cookie for a snack? At least the brownies sold well.”

  “Well, you come up with something, then,” Fiona said, straightening up in her chair to give him a glare. “Don’t be a hater.”

  Alex looked abashed momentarily, then cheered up. “What if we invested in some t-shirts and printed short quotes on them? I know a guy who silk screens. He has his own store and will give us a deal, I think. Plus, he’ll make th
em fast.” His voice grew stronger as he warmed to his topic. “We could do Bukowski and Kerouac—”

  “And Toni Morrison and Jane Austen.” Liane smiled at him.

  The three of them began chattering excitedly. Before too long, they had divided up the duties and were texting other members of the Literature Club to distribute the work.

  “What about copyright or trademarks, or whatever is appropriate if we’re going to sell something?” I asked.

  “I’ll check into that,” said Alex. “My friend who will do the silk screening knows all about that stuff because it’s how he makes a living. He has a store.”

  “Thank you so much, Dr. Maclean,” Fiona said, smiling shyly at me.

  “You three did all the work,” I said.

  “But we appreciate your help,” she added. “Really.”

  As I was about to broach the topic of the doodle on the folder, Simone swept into the room in an emerald-colored suit and a heady cloud of expensive perfume. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said to the students. “I was caught up in a meeting with the chancellor. He’s a dear friend of my mother’s, and he invited me to lunch to see how the semester was going so far and, well, one doesn’t run out on him.” She smiled warmly at them. They all smiled back and left.

  Simone marched farther into my office and settled on my desk chair, placing her Birkin bag carefully on her lap. I sank reluctantly into the nearest seat just vacated by the students.

  “How was the meeting?” she asked.

  “It went well,” I said. “They want to make t-shirts with literary quotes on them to sell at the Homecoming booth.”

  “Oh,” she said, her nose wrinkling as if she had just caught a whiff of something offensive. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”