A Little Class on Murder
Page 17
She would never admit she’d been thinking about it.
“No, thanks.” Clipped response. “Quite full.”
“Of course, you’re right.” Max did prefer peace in the family. “Laurel has made a very good point, although I’m not persuaded as to the innocence of Georgia Finney and/or Frank Crandall.”
Annie licked a vagrant swipe of chocolate from her thumb. “You think they might have done it together? Oh, come on, Max. What kind of creep do you think he is? Would he foist the weapon off on her?”
Max’s eyes gleamed. “Who’s sexist?” he demanded slyly. He didn’t press his advantage. “But Laurel’s absolutely right about one thing. There was very little time. That seems to me the critical point. We know that Frank Crandall saw Burke. He’s admitted that to the police. His appointment was at eleven-fifteen. How long did they talk? Five minutes? Crandall leaves and claims Burke was alive when he did so. Okay, the bomb explodes in Brad Kelly’s office at approximately eleven forty-one. You found Burke’s body at approximately eleven forty-four. Obviously, since Georgia was caught trying to get rid of the murder weapon, she had the weapon in hand and was out of the building before the bomb went off. Also, it makes sense to assume Burke was dead by at least eleven forty-one because he didn’t come out of his office when the blast occurred.”
Annie poured fresh coffee and began to sip. She was beginning to have that familiar khaki-clad-white-rat-in-a-maze sensation.
“So, let’s put the murder between eleven-twenty and eleven forty-one—” Max figured happily with a pencil stub on his napkin. Which was another good argument for paper as opposed to cloth napkins. “We have a period of about twenty-one minutes during which the murder must have occurred.”
“Who was in the building then? Who could have done it? That’s what we need to know,” Annie said eagerly.
She reached out for his pencil and spread open her own napkin, ignoring a spot of honey. Quickly, she drew a sketch of the first floor.
She tapped the outline of the editor’s office. “We know Brad Kelly and Emily Everett were in the building. We need to find out how long they’d been there when the bomb went off. Kelly says he went to the bathroom. When? Again, how long? Was there time for him to have murdered Burke before Georgia found him dead, if that’s what happened? Was there time for Emily to have killed Burke and returned to the Crier office?”
“Why Kelly?” Max asked. “Why Emily?”
Annie shook her head impatiently. “I’m not worrying about motives here, I’m figuring out opportunity. We need to find out who was in the building from eleven-fifteen on. We know that all the faculty members had been in the building earlier in the morning, because Burke talked to them. But where were Garrison, Norden, Tarrant, Diggs, Moss, and Crandall during the critical time period? Let’s see, we don’t need to be concerned with any classes that were in session because Burke was alive when eleven o’clock classes started and dead before they finished. But we do need to check on the press area and, of course, the faculty upstairs.”
Max took the pencil and her napkin, flipped it over, and drew a layout of the second floor. “There’re the faculty offices. And look, they open onto a back corridor that leads to the stairs.”
“You know, this isn’t going to be so hard. It should be pretty easy to pick out the names of those who might have wanted Burke dead from among the people rounded up after the blast,” Annie suggested.
“Unless,” Max cautioned, “Georgia really did the deed. After all, isn’t it more likely for a murderer to flee than to remain near the scene of the crime?”
Annie had no strong feelings on that. Murderers, both fictional and real, had a long history of staying and an equally long history of fleeing.
“Maybe not. I’d think a faculty member might easily return upstairs to an office and take time to regain composure.”
“I’d think so, too,” Max agreed. “Unfortunately everyone in the building had an excellent excuse to appear upset. Explosions can reasonably produce symptoms of extreme stress.”
“God, that’s a poser,” Annie said unhappily. “Was the explosion timed to coincide with the murder? Were they independent of each other? Did the murderer plant the bomb? Max, how can we know what to investigate first?”
As if on cue, the telephone rang.
Annie glanced at the clock. Five-thirty. Who else would call at such an unappetizing hour?
“Hello.”
“Certainly it’s apparent to me the direction this investigation needs to take,” the dry, crackly, impatient voice announced.
“Good morning, Miss Dora. How are you at this early hour.”
“Light-minded women are the bane of society. Rarely been subjected to such idiocy.”
Obviously, someone had dared to disagree with her.
“Laurel? Henny?” Annie inquired sweetly. “Are the three of you progressing?”
A snort of outrage. “Told that chattering nincompoop to keep her silly notions to herself. Poor young man. Like being mothered by a firefly.”
This was such an enchanting picture that Annie lost the thread of conversation for a moment.
“… advise you to keep a close watch on him through the years. And that woman who’s besotted by Christie. Doesn’t even care about probabilities, has no appreciation of subtleties. Think of how Wimsey built from that single piece of burned rope that he discovered at the campground in Hinks’s Lane in Have His Carcase. But he had to be concerned with probabilities. He had to go and look. No detail was too small for his attention. Have you established the customary ebb and flow of people in the building?”
“The what?” Annie knew it hardly ranked as a scintillating rejoinder, but she didn’t have the faintest idea what the old bat was talking about.
“Who was where when?” Each word dropped like an icy pellet.
“We’re working on that.”
“Why did the explosive device go off at that precise moment? I have ascertained that normally the Crier offices are empty and locked at that hour. Students begin to gather for work about three in the afternoon. It is, as you should know, a twice-weekly morning paper. What was that young man doing there? Why was that unfortunate young woman there? Lord Peter always found meaning to events that were out of the ordinary. In contrast, the pressroom was locked and untenanted, as it should have been. A pressrun was not scheduled until that evening. The only other occupants of the building on the first floor at that time, insofar as is known, were members of a Russian history class meeting in room one-oh-one and the members of a class on Keats in room one-oh-three. We may dismiss these individuals as their instructors report that no one entered or left those classes after eleven-ten A.M. Moreover, the instructors led their students out the back door to safety immediately after the explosion. Now, what were the effects of the bombing? Study the terrain. Look, just as Wimsey did. That’s what you young people need to do. Go and look.”
The line went dead.
Max looked at her inquiringly.
“Miss Dora. We are to go and look.”
“Where?”
“The journalism building. I think.”
A sharp piercing ring.
It was the first time it ever occurred to Annie that her phone actually had a rather unpleasant tone to it. Jangling.
She lifted the receiver. “Hello.”
“Been sucking lemons?” Miss Dora’s laughter sounded unnervingly like the slither of a snake through dry leaves. “As they said when I was young, missy, you’d better be careful or your mouth might stick like that!” A flood of husky cackles that ended abruptly. “Key’ll be in the postbox. Atop the stone pillar, end of the drive.”
The line went dead.
Annie wrestled with the temptation to rip out the phone and toss it into the marsh. Max had assuredly had the best idea of the morning. Instead, she replaced the receiver in the cradle with exaggerated care, much as Grace Latham kept her temper when dealing with Sergeant Buck.
Max waited.
The phone rang.
“Now, Annie,” Max began. “Don’t lose your temper. Wait. I’ll get it.”
But Annie had already yanked up the receiver. “Hello!”
A pause. “Spot of bother, old chap? You sound like Inspector Japp when Poirot’s at his most maddening!”
Annie’s heartbeat began to slow. She could feel the flush receding from her face. “Henny—”
“Old chap!”
“Oh yes, of course. Captain Hastings.” Her turn to pause. “Why do you want to be that ass Hastings?”
“It is my pleasure to be associated intimately with the greatest detective of all time!”
“Thought that was Lord Peter Wimsey.”
Henny dismissed the Hastings persona with a bleat. “That woman! That impossible old harridan! Told me Christie’s books had all the readability of a Sears, Roebuck catalog. Can you believe that?”
“Now, Henny, everyone likes different—”
“And to champion that overwritten tripe that Sayers produced is absolutely the last straw, and I enjoyed telling her so. Now, I want you to know that I was nice to your mother-in-law. I agreed that we should each pursue our own investigations. I was kind about her approach. Max is a dear fellow, so I was charming even though his mother’s thought patterns are unreal. As in totally unreal.”
Annie made no answer. There scarcely seemed to be a suitable response.
“However,” gradually Henny’s voice was calming, “I do not intend to permit any distractions to deflect me from my goals: Who is—or perhaps was—behind the faculty revelations, who murdered R.T. Burke, and who killed Emily Everett by putting that bomb in Brad Kelly’s office? Now, as Hercule Poirot made absolutely clear, the answer to murder always lies in the victim. We need to know everything—everything—about the late Burke. And about Emily Everett. What kind of man was Burke? Who was Emily Everett? Why was she in the Crier office? When we know the answers to these questions, we shall know the name of the murderer. Or, possibly, murderers. C’est vrai.”
Max had cleared the table by the time Henny rang off. Annie joined him in the kitchen and dutifully reported on Henny’s call. In a moment, the dishes were done, the kitchen tidied.
“So the three old dears are espousing opportunity, means, and motive,” Annie concluded.
Max tossed a dish towel over the rack. “It looks,” he said cheerfully, “as though we’re going to have a busy morning.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “But it’s just barely after six. We have lots of time before we catch the ferry. Come on, Annie, let’s shower.”
Annie forgot all about those irritating phone calls. She washed them right out of her mind.
They decided against parking in the lot behind Brevard Hall. For one thing, there were no other cars there. For another, police tape circled the entire building and street barricades barred each entryway. Freshly painted signs gleamed in the headlights of Max’s Maserati:
BUILDING CLOSED DANGER UNSTABLE
A chilly wind out of the north rattled the limbs of the live oaks, shook the palmetto palms like castanets. The sun wouldn’t rise for another few minutes; it was still gray and ghostly. Although gorgeous days in the sixties and low seventies often shine in November, occasional damp and cloudy days remind one that even the low country must have its brief taste of winter.
They stopped among a line of evergreens and studied the dismal scene in the lamplight, the gaping wound in the side of the building, the shattered windows and jumbled contents of the newsroom.
Annie turned up the collar of her windbreaker.
“Do you think we dare go inside?”
“Sure.” Max was decisive. “We’ll avoid the section with the most blast damage. I want a close look at Burke’s office and the rest of the department offices.”
Annie wasn’t sure she relished a close look at Burke’s office.
But at least the blood would be dried by now.
An early-rising student shuffled by. Waiting until he disappeared into the dark and silent math building—God, this early?—they held hands and dashed the thirty feet across the sandy ground to the back door of the damaged building, slipping around the barricade. He released her hand and pulled from his pocket the key they’d retrieved from Miss Dora’s mailbox. Using the flashlight from his car, he opened the door and they hurried inside.
The hall was dark. Very, very dark.
Max led the way, the beam of the flashlight dimly illuminating the welter of footprints in the dust. The smell of plaster dust mingled with the deeper odor of explosives. Annie wished Max still held her hand in a reassuring grip. She immediately brushed away the thought. The intrepid Harriet Vane would surely never have felt such a longing.
They stopped by the open entry to the newsroom. It remained as it had when they’d seen it yesterday, only moments after the explosion.
“All right,” Annie said briskly, matter-of-factly, keeping Wimsey’s Harriet in mind. “The effects of the explosion: One, death of Emily Everett; two, no Friday morning Crier, i.e., no further embarrassing revelations about the faculty; three, student editor scared, as well he might be.” She looked at Max.
He picked up the refrain. “Four, yesterday’s three o’clock press conference canceled; five, young editor in protective seclusion; six, new press conference set for nine A.M. today.”
Annie took the flash from him, and skimmed the beam over the wreckage. “God, what a mess. It will cost a fortune to replace all those terminals.”
“Yeah,” Max agreed soberly. “We can add that to the list. Seven, severe economic stress on the journalism department.”
“I always hated multiple-choice tests,” Annie complained.
“All, some, or none of the above,” Max mused.
She scuffed the gritty floor. “The problem is, we can’t figure out who did it if we don’t know why. And if we knew why, we’d know who.”
“So, that’s why we’re here.”
“Of course, Lord Peter,” she murmured.
“It ought to be apparent. It’s such a damn drastic move. People don’t blow up buildings on a whim. Why isn’t it clear to us?”
“It seems obvious to me.” (Annie heard her own confident tone in horror. Lord, was she starting to sound like Miss Dora? Edgar Allan Poe preserve her.) She hastily amended, “I mean, it looks to me like it’s pretty obvious. Somebody either wanted to kill Kelly or scare the hell out of him.”
“Yeah.” His tone was dubious. “But was there any real likelihood that Kelly would be in his office? Shouldn’t the entire Crier suite of offices have been empty at eleven-forty in the morning? Didn’t Miss Dora say the staff usually started drifting in around three? So why was he there?”
“We’ll ask him.” Annie was looking forward to that press conference. She had a lot of questions for Brad Kelly.
She swung the flashlight beam up at the exposed girders in the ceiling, where ruptured acoustical tiles hung on a slant. A crackle, a shifting, and masonry dust showered down in the area near the printer. “I wonder how long it will take before The Crier can be published again.”
Max shrugged. “I suppose at least a couple of weeks. More likely, a month or two.”
Annie turned off the flash. The lighter gray visible through the bombed-out wall signaled the coming dawn. “Any exposé about faculty members will be pretty old hat by then.”
“Exposure is exposure,” Max objected. “Whether it’s in the school newspaper or announced to the world in general this morning at the news conference.”
That hadn’t occurred to her. “Do you think that’s what Kelly has in mind?”
“It seems logical to me.”
“So it’s nutty t
o think somebody tried to blow The Crier away to stop the revelations,” Annie concluded.
“Who thinks that?” he inquired.
Annie certainly had no intention of admitting the thought had crossed her mind. Max was being as smug as Lord Peter. Next time she did a little class on murder, she wasn’t going to include Sayers. Ruth Rendell would do just fine. (Detective Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford, though a bit old for her taste, was a much more charming companion.)
Their footsteps gritted noisily as they crossed the hall to the front office of the journalism department.
The door was ajar, just as it had been yesterday, Annie recalled with sudden clarity, when she made her frantic dash to call for help. “I don’t think the police have moved anything.”
She flicked the flashlight on again. A counter separated the office proper from the entrance area. A gate afforded access to the office. Emily Everett had sat at a desk behind the counter.
They pushed through the gate.
Max stopped beside the desk. “Of course, Emily wasn’t here yesterday morning. So Burke had to answer all the calls.”
“Until he turned off the phone,” Annie said.
“She’d called in sick.” Max recalled.
But she’d been well enough to come to the Crier offices later that morning.
Her desk had an “In” box. Max picked up a couple of pencils and expertly used them as pincers to look through the sheets. Annie focused the light. Obviously, Emily had served as a personal secretary to Burke and also to the faculty in general. An editing test which Garrison wanted mimeographed. An announcement to be distributed to the faculty from Burke regarding department policy for support of research and creative activities. A request from Norden for faculty attendance at the Advertising Club banquet, scheduled next Friday in the Student Union. A memo from Burke to Moss rejecting a proposed course on the functions of mass media managers.
“Emily must have been lazy,” Annie said quickly. “Most of those things had to have been in place before Tuesday.”