A Little Class on Murder

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “You can come up with a lot of maybes, when he isn’t here to defend himself,” Annie said tartly.

  “Oh yes, I’m good at that,” Moss said amiably. “On the other hand, I can equally easily believe that he was not responsible, but that he discovered the informant’s identity and it caused his death.”

  “In that event, who do you think leaked the information?” Max asked.

  Moss frowned. “I would assume, Mr. Darling, that what I say will be held in confidence. I should be very unhappy to pick up the local newspaper and read any report of this discussion.”

  “The local newspaper will not hear about any of this from us,” Max assured him. “But I don’t know what the local police intend to reveal.”

  A relaxed headshake. “I don’t believe they intend to reveal much of anything. They have made their arrest. And, in passing, I might say I’ve had that young lady in class. I find the proposition that she is a violent murderer to be absurd. But, back to your question. My candidate for your villain is the same now as when Burke and I talked. I’ve always felt that Kurt Diggs likes to live on the edge. Garrison’s cautious. Norden’s out of control. Crandall’s a fool. Now Sue,” he said ruminatively, “Sue’s a dark horse. Hot-tempered, perhaps a little unstable. Perhaps Sue. But of them all, Kurt’s the one with a wild streak.” He stroked his chin, but his massive fingers didn’t quite hide his salacious smile. “I understand he was tried for rape and acquitted when he was in the military.”

  “Would that have been in his personnel file?” Annie asked.

  A shrug of those bulky shoulders. “I have no idea.” He held up a meaty hand when Annie started to speak. “Although I was on the personnel committee, I certainly wasn’t cognizant of every piece of information in every file.”

  Max poised a pen over his notebook. “What can you tell us about those missing personnel files?”

  “Not much more than the fact that they’re missing. I went through the offices with a police lieutenant this morning. Now, I don’t know what was in Burke’s files. I couldn’t help them there. But the minute we got to the middle office, I knew there was trouble. Those files are kept in a locked closet which can be opened by a master key or by a key on a bunch kept in the secretary’s desk. In Emily’s desk. By the way, her keys were there. I suppose any faculty member would have known about her keys—but no faculty member would have needed them, because we all have master keys. In any event, the closet was open—and it shouldn’t have been. I checked immediately and the current personnel files are gone.”

  “What do the police think?” Annie asked.

  A supercilious glance. “I’m not in their confidence.”

  Annie decided Moss would have had his head bashed in years ago if he’d been foolish enough to keep an iron bar handy.

  Max hurried to forestall an outburst. “What do you think?”

  Moss didn’t answer directly. “That door was closed when I left Burke’s office shortly after ten. That is no guarantee, of course, that the files were in there. But I think it’s likely that the door was left open when the files were taken. I would assume that happened at some point after I left and before the explosion.”

  “Do you think the murderer took the files?” Annie asked.

  Those sardonic blue eyes looked amused. “Isn’t that what we are supposed to think?” He shrugged. “But what else is there to think? And what good does it do anyone to remove those files?”

  “For one thing, it prevented their being made public to the press today,” Max suggested.

  “True. But it has also focused the attention of the world on those files—and their presumed contents. As any journalist knows, once questions are raised it’s so easy to find answers.” Was there a satisfied lilt to his heavy voice?

  “Are you willing to give a public description of the contents of those folders?” Annie asked sharply.

  He was bland but definite. “Of course not.”

  “To protect yourself or the school?” Max inquired.

  “The files themselves, if they still exist, have substance,” Moss pointed out. “The uncorroborated memory of a committee member as to their contents is worthless. If, as acting chair, I am asked to release the files, should they become available, that is a decision I would have to make. Under no conceivable circumstances could I be expected to rely upon memory to recreate them.”

  “So it gets you off the hook?” Annie said.

  “What hook?” he asked lightly, but his blue eyes were cold.

  * * *

  “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,” Annie chanted as they completed a fruitless round of the other faculty offices—nobody home—and started down the stairs.

  Max chuckled. “That doesn’t surprise me a lot.”

  “Sexist asshole,” she amplified.

  “Elements of that,” Max agreed.

  As they stepped out into a sharp wind, Annie shivered. “Did you notice his arms? He could bash anything to pieces.”

  She grabbed Max’s elbow as they ducked against the wind on their way to the Student Union. She didn’t need support, of course. But it made the cool misty morning so much cheerier.

  Over coffee and doughnuts (even Max, which surprised her, but maybe he needed a boost, too), they studied their sheet of faculty addresses and wrangled over their next step.

  Annie won. “Crandall was there!” she insisted heatedly. “At or just before the critical moment.”

  • • •

  The pampas grass behind the bed of pink flowering impatiens rippled in the freshening wind.

  “Storm coming,” Annie, the old salt, announced, leading the way up the shallow front steps. Not every house in Chastain was old, of course. This boxy red brick ranch house was in a subdivision a good five miles from the campus. Drawn drapes in the front windows gave the house a forbidding appearance, but light from a lamp glowed behind the living room picture window.

  Max poked at the doorbell. “Good day to be home in front of a fire.”

  The warm image he had evoked dissipated immediately when the door opened. A sharp-featured woman with thin, heavily carmined lips, jutting cheekbones, and dark, brooding eyes stared out at them.

  “Is Professor Crandall home?” Max asked.

  “No.” Her eyes darted from Max to Annie and back again. “Who’re you? Why do you want to see him?” Her voice was sharp.

  Max lifted his eyebrows ever so little, to indicate polite surprise at her query. Lord Peter couldn’t have done it any better, Annie thought.

  “Mrs. Crandall?” Max inquired.

  “Yes. Who’re you?”

  “We’re working for one of the college trustees,” Annie said smoothly, “trying to discover what’s gone wrong in the department.”

  Those thin lips twisted. “A little late, aren’t you? And I suppose you’re going to whitewash that Burke man, turn him into a hero?”

  “Not at all,” Max said swiftly. “All we want to do is discover the truth.”

  “He was a jealous, hateful man. That’s the truth.” She glared at them. “He laughed at me. I know he did.”

  “Were you here on Thursday, just before lunch?” Annie asked.

  The brooding eyes flashed with anger. “I wasn’t over there, I can tell you that. I don’t know anything about it. I play bridge on Thursdays. All day.”

  “Your husband was there,” Max said quietly.

  “Of course Frank was. He teaches there. He had every right to be there.”

  “Certainly,” Max said soothingly. “But he did talk to Burke Thursday morning. In fact, he may have been the last person to see him alive. That’s why we want to see him. Can you tell us when he’ll be home?”

  The tight mouth trembled. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. Tears splashed down her cheeks. She shook her head and turned away, slamming the door against them.

  The grass needed mowing. A shutter hung loose and rattled disconcertingly as the wind swept the verandah. The sea pines quivered, whispering of the coming r
ain.

  They had almost turned away, having knocked three times, when the door slowly squeaked open. Josh Norden filled the doorway. He was a bigger man than Annie remembered. He looked at them blankly.

  “Professor Norden, sorry to bother you at home. You remember we talked early Thursday morning? Yesterday.”

  “Certainly I remember, young man. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t remember?” His diction was flawless. If he’d been drinking, and he probably had, he was well within his capacity.

  “We won’t take much of your time,” Annie said quickly. “Could we talk to you for just a few minutes?”

  It hung in the balance. But, finally, with a curt nod, he held open the screen door. The antebellum house followed the usual pattern, deep rooms opening to either side of the hall. They followed Norden into the room on the right.

  The long drapes hung open. The gloomy day pressed against the windows, providing the only illumination in the dim room. The room was cluttered with books, books on the floor, books in chairs, books scattered on tables. Open books, closed books. Norden cleared two chairs, gestured for Max and Annie to sit. He took a wing-back chair opposite them. Shoving his sliding horn-rims higher on his beaked nose, he said brusquely, “Well?”

  “Professor, what did you and Mr. Burke discuss yesterday?” Max asked quietly.

  His nostrils flared. A flush rose in his chalky cheeks. “It was a matter of decency. That’s what I told him. The only honorable thing to do. And he had the gall to say that he didn’t need for me to instruct him on how to act.”

  “What did you want him to do?” Annie asked.

  “To announce to the world the circumstances of Charlotte’s use of those funds. It’s hideous for her friends to think she was no better than a common thief. And that’s little enough to do for her now.”

  “When we talked to him, before you saw him, he was considering whether to do just that. Had he decided against it?”

  “He had made no final decision. But he said that on reflection it seemed to him that any revelation from those files was an invasion of privacy. I told him not to be a goddamned fool. Charlotte didn’t need privacy any longer.” His hands clenched. Then his voice smoothed. “Moss will see it my way. He’ll take care of it.”

  “You quarreled with Burke.” Annie’s tone was declarative, not accusatory.

  Norden responded angrily. “I quarreled with him, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Do you think he could have been the one who gave that information to Kelly?” Max asked.

  Norden’s blue eyes weren’t glazed this morning. They burned with unsated fury. “If I’d thought that, I’d—” He broke off. He looked at them sharply. “Is that what you think? That he was the informant? God, it would serve him right then, wouldn’t it?”

  The rain slapped against the windshield. “What’s the number over there?” Max asked.

  Annie rolled down the window and peered through the slanting rain. “That’s it. The second complex.”

  Despite Max’s majestic black umbrella, they were damp and, consequently, shivering by the time they struggled against the wind up outside stairs and reached the unprotected second-story balcony and the door to apartment nine.

  Max pushed the doorbell.

  At the second ring, a peephole opened. “Yes.”

  Annie stepped closer. “Professor Tarrant, may we speak to you for a moment?”

  “Sue,” a man’s voice called nervously, “who is it?”

  The peephole closed.

  Sue Tarrant was divorced. That was in her vitae, but it gave no hint, of course, of her life, her friends, her lovers. Or lack of them.

  The door jerked open. Tarrant faced them, unsmiling. She wore a blue jersey dress that emphasized voluptuous curves, but her face was ashen beneath her makeup and her brown eyes were angry.

  “Who gives you the right to hound people? Miss Dora may be a trustee, but she doesn’t have any control over my private life. Frank can come here if he wants to, for God’s sake.”

  Frank Crandall paced toward the door. “Did my wife send you?” he demanded. He jerked his head toward the living room. “Come on in, for God’s sake. Let’s have it out.”

  Since Max had an unfortunate propensity for the truth (Annie had told him and told him that creative obfuscation was not lying), Annie shot ahead of him. She stood dripping in the middle of the small living room and announced baldly, “Your wife is really upset.”

  Crandall shoved a trembling hand through his mop of shaggy hair and looked helplessly at Tarrant.

  She hurried to him, put a reassuring hand on his arm. “Frank, none of this is your fault. Please don’t be upset.” She faced Annie and Max like a tigress protecting a favorite cub. “Look, you’ve got to understand the background. That Finney girl has hot pants.”

  Crandall winced. “No, no. No. She’s a nice girl. Really, she is. I didn’t—she is so gentle, so kind. So pretty.”

  Tarrant’s eyes glistened like ribbons of steel on an August day.

  “But Burke wasn’t having any, was he?” Max said crisply, obviously less than enchanted with Professor Crandall. “Burke didn’t want his faculty messing with students, right?”

  Crandall clawed at his knitted tie, loosened it. “I had a nice talk with him. We agreed that everything was going to be all right.” His face brightened. “In fact, he said he was going to recommend me for tenure.”

  It was like watching a cartoon character as the light bulb turns on. Annie knew, as surely as if she’d perched in his head, that the idea had just occurred to Crandall that no one could contradict his version of that final conversation. And he was going to position himself as well as he could.

  “Certainly Frank will get tenure. I’m sure Malcolm will be all for him,” Tarrant said quickly.

  “Moss doesn’t care much for women, or about women, does he?” Annie asked sharply. “He won’t care if Professor Crandall’s having an affair with a student.”

  Tarrant snapped, “That’s in the past. It’s all over with.”

  Max stepped closer to her and spattered rainwater on the rug. “How much does it mean to you for Frank Crandall to receive tenure, to stay on this faculty?” Then he whirled on Crandall and another fine spray whipped from his coat. “Why don’t you tell us the truth? You and Burke had it out. There wasn’t going to be any tenure for you, was there?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Crandall said weakly.

  “The witness who saw you hurry out of Burke’s office said you were upset.” Annie ignored Max’s reproachful glance and was glad Tarrant and Crandall were too shaken to notice. “You might as well tell us the truth.” Inspiration struck. She had to wonder if perhaps Georgia Finney had a guardian angel strumming her wings in Annie’s vicinity. “That’s why Georgia went in his office, isn’t it? She saw you and you were obviously distraught. She hurried in there, hoping to be able to set things right with Burke, perhaps take all the blame for the affair. You seem to have plenty of women willing to do all they can for you. Anyway, Georgia went in and found him dead and she was terrified you’d done it. That’s why she grabbed up the bar and ran away with it, hoping to be able to get rid of it and protect you.”

  “He was such a bloody shit!” Crandall exploded. “He wouldn’t even talk to me! Told me he’d deal with me later, that he thought I was—” His lean face flushed.

  “Yes?” Annie encouraged.

  “Frank, we know what he was like,” Tarrant murmured.

  “He said I was a sorry bastard and he didn’t want anybody like me on his faculty. So, yeah, I was upset and I slammed the goddamn door as I went out. Why should I have to listen to stuff like that? I swear he was all right. He was brushing me off, didn’t have time for me, too busy talking on the phone. And he’s the one who set up the appointment, insisted I come! But he was all right when I left, I swear.”

  “How long were you in his office?” Max asked.

  “Two minutes maybe. He couldn’t w
ait to get rid of me.”

  Annie was trying to work out the timing in her mind. “Okay. You came out of his office around eleven-eighteen or so? What did you do then?”

  “I went outside. I needed some air. I needed to get the hell away from there for a while.”

  “Did you see Georgia?”

  Crandall cracked his knuckles. “The cops asked that.”

  “Did you?” Max pressed.

  Crandall looked at Tarrant for support. Her eyes glittered, but her voice was smooth. “If you saw her near Burke’s office, you should say so, Frank.”

  The better to incarcerate her, my dear, Annie thought. Was there any limit to what Sue Tarrant would do for Crandall’s attention?

  Crandall swallowed jerkily. “Yeah. Well. I told the cops I didn’t see her. I mean, they might think—” He swallowed again. “But the thing about it is, I saw her, but I didn’t want to talk to her. Hell, everything was all screwed up. I don’t like for things to be shitty,” he said plaintively.

  Annie decided she wasn’t enchanted with him either, despite his sensitive face, appealing mop of brown hair, and nicely fitting khakis.

  “I thought you told the police you went to the Union for coffee,” Max objected. “Couldn’t she have caught up with you easily?”

  Crandall turned and walked away. He banged against the sharp edge of a glass coffee table. Wincing, he grabbed at the calf of his leg.

  Tarrant was at his side immediately. “Oh, Frank, that damn table. I ought to get rid of it. Here, sit down,” and she urged him toward the overstuffed couch. She knelt down and began to massage his leg.

  “Where did you go when you left the journalism building?” Annie prodded.

  “To the Union,” he said defiantly. Then his glance slid away from her. “But not straight.” He nodded appreciatively at Tarrant and patted the couch. She gave his leg one last lingering stroke, then settled beside him.