As always, there was an uneasy silence just before the professor appeared. The screen wobbled and Aldiss was there again at his table, hands clasped and eyes straight ahead. He could have been anywhere, that concrete room was so nondescript. He could have been down the hall in an empty classroom for all they knew.
“Now,” he began, “are you starting to see the patterns in The Coil?”
“I’m coming to understand that the novel is a kind of allegory,” said Christian Kane. “The city—it’s so strange.”
“The New York City of the novel is very strange indeed,” said Aldiss. “This book is about Ann Marie, our heroine, breaking away from Iowa, coming into her own. Instead, what does she find?”
“She finds a kind of . . . labyrinth,” said Sally Mitchell.
“Very good.” Aldiss nodded, pleased. “That is exactly what the setting of The Coil is like for its last two hundred pages. Our reading so far just brushes the surface. Everything in this book is a mirror, a reflection of something else. Ann Marie doesn’t go off into a jungle so much as she walks into a house of mirrors. Everywhere she goes Fallows is throwing up obstacles for her.” Aldiss stopped, then cocked his head to the side as if he was thinking. “Obstacles, yes. But what is the writer really doing, class?”
No one answered. A few students looked down, as if they couldn’t even face the professor without an answer to his question.
“Come on,” Aldiss said, the tone of his voice getting sharper. “What is Fallows doing here?”
“He’s tricking her.”
It was Jacob Keller. He blinked slow-lidded at the screen, his look one of casual disinterest. But this was far from the truth; Keller was perfectly engaged. He always was.
“And why do you say this?”
“Isn’t it clear?” Keller asked. “He is trying to do everything in his power to keep her from succeeding. He’s the master and Ann Marie . . . well, she’s like a rat in a maze.”
“A rat in a maze,” Aldiss repeated, as if he had never heard the phrase used to describe this novel. But it was clear it worked: it fit the patterns and themes of the book perfectly. “I think you’re exactly right. The literary critics have said over time that the novel is a feminist text. But as you see Ann Marie struggling through this city-labyrinth, you begin to wonder if Fallows isn’t—”
“Trying to drive her mad.”
He swung his head to look at Alex. “Exactly, Ms. Shipley.”
“So what you’re saying,” put in Melissa Lee, her smoky voice barely audible in the room, “is that Fallows isn’t a feminist at all. In fact he is the opposite of that. He hates women and is trying to dominate his main character.”
“What I am saying,” Aldiss said, “is that Fallows is in no way a generous novelist.”
“Then what is he?”
“Haven’t you seen, Ms. Lee? He’s a trickster. This city of obstacles, all of these pitfalls Ann Marie must overcome—think of the crazy uncle who continues to hide himself from her in the rooms of his mansion—have an edge to them. All good novelists give their characters hurdles to overcome, but here it’s as if Fallows is teasing his heroine. As if he intends to drive her to the edge. And of course he does. But that is for another time.”
The class shifted; again, they had hung on his voice, his exegesis of The Coil, and now that he had moved on they were snapped out of their trance. The line that connected Aldiss and his students through the TV screen was severed again.
“What does all this say about Paul Fallows himself ?” he asked.
“It says the man was a liar.”
The class turned to face the student who had spoken: Daniel Hayden.
“Aren’t all novelists liars, Mr. Hayden?” asked Aldiss.
“Some are more accomplished than others,” the boy shot back. He spoke now with confidence; the uneasy, defiant kid from the last lecture was gone and had been replaced with somebody more brazen. Somebody with something to prove.
“Of course. But to accomplish a lie you need two things: the skill of the teller and the naïveté of the listener.”
“Skill,” scoffed Hayden.
“So you disagree that Fallows is good at what he did?” Aldiss’s eyes shined now. He was enjoying this back-and-forth. “At what he does?”
“I believe people should tell the truth.”
“Do you?” Aldiss goaded. “Always tell the truth?”
Hayden dodged. “Even in fiction there needs to be a context. Where is the context in these games Fallows is playing?”
“It’s in the texts themselves.”
“What texts?” asked Hayden, his voice rising. He held his copy of The Coil up, shook it like a doll. “This thing isn’t real enough to be a text. The author won’t even come forward and claim the damn thing. It’s like some kind of forgery.”
Aldiss began to speak, stopped. His tongue came out, swiped against his lips. The classroom had an intensity now, a pulse. It was as if Aldiss had drawn closer to them, as if he had stood in the front of the room and taken a literal step toward the boy.
“Well,” the man said, “in my mind a good lie is the same as a good story. Without embellishment there would be no artifice, and what is embellishment but—”
“Do you lie, Professor?” Hayden asked.
Aldiss drew back. “Pardon me?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“I do. I have. But it’s a habit, like many other habits I once had, that I have tried to break since I have come to this prison.”
“What kinds of lies did you tell?”
“Oh, come on, Daniel,” said Melissa Lee. “Let’s get on with it.”
On the screen Aldiss smiled. “No, no, let him talk. I find the boy interesting. My lies . . .” Aldiss’s eyes closed to slits as he thought back. “I used to tell my students at Dumant stories that were not quite true. In that way, I was like the great Paul Fallows.”
“What kinds of stories?”
“I told them that I had lived in Europe,” Aldiss said. “This is not true. The strangest place I have lived was Iowa.” The class laughed.
Hayden didn’t laugh. He looked at the screen and muttered something else. No one in the class caught it, or if someone did, they didn’t dwell on it. It was just two words: the Procedure.
But Richard Aldiss caught it. And he smiled.
Alex
Present Day
13
On her way back to the mansion Alex called Lewis Prine’s cell. That familiar voice, recorded in a flat monotone: “This is Dr. Lewis Prine, warden and chief psychiatrist at Oakwood Hospital. Please leave a message at the tone. If it’s an emergency, you may contact Administrative Services. Thank you.” There was a short pulse, and then Alex said, “Lewis, I’m starting to worry about you. We’re all here, staying in Dean Fisk’s house for the night. Michael’s memorial service is tomorrow morning. We’re waiting for you. We would . . . I would really like to see you. Please call.” She pushed End and walked on across the quad.
When she returned to the house, everyone was in the great room, telling stories about Michael Tanner. As she entered, the tales abruptly stopped, and each of the five former classmates looked at her as if she had caught them revealing their innermost secrets. In the middle of the group, a blanket around her shoulders and shivering wickedly, was Sally Tanner.
She knows, Alex thought. She knows what I’m up to.
“Hey, guys,” she managed to say.
“Anything?” Sally asked, her blue eyes now devoid of anything but hope.
Alex shook her head. “They’re still looking. Detective Black is a good man, Sally. He will find out who did this.”
The widow made a face. “Black. The bastard.” Christian Kane pulled her to him, and for some reason this gesture made Alex jealous—that she hadn’t been around the others in so long, that she had gone back to Harvard after Daniel’s death without keeping her promise to stay in touch. She looked at Keller and he glanced away.
“Let�
��s talk about the good times,” Christian said. “Michael would have wanted that.”
“Yes,” slurred Frank Marsden. “Absolutely.” He was sitting off to the side, Lucy Wiggins clutching his arm.
“Do you remember when Michael asked Aldiss if he was sure about a quotation from Fallows?” asked Christian.
“I remember,” Melissa Lee said. “That was pure Michael.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” It was Sally who had spoken, but there was nothing in her voice. Nothing at all. Alex wondered if she even really remembered the moment.
They went on like that for the next half hour, trading stories about their murdered friend. Most of them were minor instances from the night class where Michael had challenged Richard Aldiss’s authority. He was brilliant even then, as they all were in their own way; when he’d accepted the position at his alma mater just a year out of graduate school, Alex had called to congratulate him. She remembered the tone of his voice, remembered thinking, He’s not happy to be back there, not excited to return to that place—and I don’t blame him.
As they spoke, Alex watched them. Observed them.
“I remember something else Michael said once,” Christian was saying, and Alex focused on the writer, on his sharp academic’s jaw and his eyes that never settled. Again she remembered what Aldiss had said that morning, the task he had given her. Could this man be responsible for the murder? Could Christian, with his ratty clothes and desperate ambition, possibly be the one who—
“Good evening.”
Alex turned and saw Matthew Owen pushing a wheelchair into the room. In the chair—it was outdated and canvas-backed and somehow fitting for the shambles of the mansion around them—was Dean Stanley Fisk. The sight of the man shocked her. He was shrunken, slumped and childlike in a heavy robe. He wore sunglasses and a thick patina of foundation. His face was powdered and his lips had been daubed with a bright crimson. The dean’s head was covered with a blond wig that swept over on top and was parted at the side, the look pitifully aping the style he’d worn as a lit professor at Jasper. Owen pushed Fisk inside and left him there, sitting just outside the circle of former students, and went to stoke the fire that had gotten low. Night was coming on.
“I am so sorry about what’s happened,” the dean said in his lilting voice. “Michael and Sally are dear friends of mine, and I am as devastated about this as you all are.”
“Dean Fisk,” Melissa cut in. She wore a black sweater over her shoulders, and the porcelain whiteness of her face reminded Alex of the girl she had been in the night class. On her lap was a book, pinched open with a slender finger. It was one of Christian’s. “Do you believe Richard Aldiss had anything to do with this?” Her eyes flicked toward Alex.
“We must keep our minds open to any possibility,” the dean said.
“They say Aldiss changed after he was released from prison,” Frank offered. He sat on the sheet-covered sofa, a sweating glass of something toxic in his hand. The hand trembled slightly, ice singing against the glass. “That he got darker, took a house not far from campus, and started a new book about Fallows. A book he still hasn’t finished.”
At the sound of the writer’s name there was a hush in the great room. Owen got the fire lit and a knot of sparks blew out from the hearth, making Alex jump.
“They should at least investigate him,” Melissa said. “There’s too much history for them not to.”
“History,” spat Sally Tanner. She was still wrapped in the blanket, still shivering as if the fire weren’t raging just a few feet from her. It threw a shadow on her face, a black scar running down the woman’s sharp cheekbone. She was no longer a twenty-one-year-old with her life stretching ahead of her, and Michael’s death had turned her bitter. She too had taken something, drunk something—her eyes fluttered in the half-light and her words were slurred. “There is no history now. It’s over. Everything Richard Aldiss did, everything he accumulated, all his fame—gone. Now he’s just a pathetic old man living out there with his memories.”
“No.” Alex realized too late that she had spoken aloud. “He’s still a genius. He still has his mind.”
Sally laughed, rage burning in her eyes. “Of course you would think that.”
Alex bit her tongue and looked away.
“Lewis,” said Dean Fisk from his wheelchair. “Will he not be joining us?”
“Prine probably went batshit crazy,” Frank said, “working with those nuts.”
“Frank.” Playfully, his date squeezed his arm.
“I’m serious, Lucy. Have I ever told you what Lewis does? He’s the warden of this prison, this castle where they keep very bad men. I don’t know how he does it and stays sane. Really I don’t.”
Frank faded off, realizing that he might have gone too far. He finished his glass of poison.
“Tomorrow,” Dean Fisk said, “we will have a memorial service on the east quad in front of the Tower. Alex will give the eulogy, and anyone who wants to speak about Michael may do so.” On the sofa Sally sobbed, the sound dry as dead leaves. “I am so pleased that you have agreed to stay with me. You do not know how happy it makes me to hear the voices of the best and the brightest in my house again.”
His swiveled his head and blindly searched for Owen, and Alex saw a brief look of disgust come over the nurse. Then Fisk turned his wheelchair and began to roll out of the room. Owen caught up with him and pushed the old man into the shadows of the house.
When the dean was gone Sally stood up and said, “I better get going. It’s almost Rachael’s bedtime.” She was referring to the Tanners’ daughter, and Alex shook her head at the thought of the little girl growing up fatherless. Alex knew how hard it was at any age.
The others hugged their widowed friend, and Sally stood among them, quivering as if she might slip off the edge of the world. She finally composed herself and walked out, nodding coldly as she went by Alex.
The rest spoke more freely when the specter of the woman was gone; their stories got rowdy in the makeshift wake. Alex tried to parse the conversations, find a piece of information that might help her with her task. But there was nothing here. It was implausible to her that one of these people would betray Michael, let alone murder him. They appeared to her as they had at Daniel’s funeral: made awkward by grief, trying their best to fill up the silences that would lead them to imagine the body, the library, the blanket of books. They’re just old friends, Alex. Aldiss has led you off, he’s conned you. When you go back tonight you must—
Behind her there came the chirp of a cell phone. Sally, pulling on her heels by the door, flipped the phone open. “Hello?” she said. Then she listened, and Alex watched the woman out of the corner of her eye. “I can’t talk right now,” she whispered. “It isn’t a good time.” She slapped closed the phone and went out into the evening.
* * *
Alex excused herself and walked slowly upstairs to her own room.
The talk of Aldiss before had stirred her. She knew the professor was innocent of the Dumant murders. After all, it was her investigation that had proven beyond any doubt that Aldiss could not have committed those crimes.
But what if there had been a mistake? What if Aldiss had been manipulating the night class, and now he was manipulating the murder of Michael Tanner?
No. Aldiss was innocent this time as well. He was innocent and someone in this house held the answers that would lead her to Michael’s killer.
Alex moved down the dark corridor. The house was quiet up here on the second floor, just the slight trill of the others’ talk reaching her. She walked deeper into the house, her hand on the wall leading her into the dark. One step at a time, the planks announcing her every step. Is it up here? she thought. Did he hide it in these—
Her cell vibrated.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Shipley, this is Detective Black.”
A heat rose to her face. They’ve found something.
“Can you meet me on the east campus in twenty minutes?”
Black asked.
“Of course. What’s this about?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “I just want to show you something that I think you’ll find interesting.”
“I’ll see you soon.” She ended the call.
Alex continued down the hallway. She was thinking, Answers. There were many reasons to return to Jasper, after all, reasons that were at least a little selfish. With her heart thumping and her blood roaring, she stepped into a room off the main corridor.
It was another book-filled room, shelves sagging under the weight of volumes that had not been touched in years. This room, like so many others in the mansion, had almost been overtaken by tomes. But Alex could see a pattern: instead of letting them run wild, Fisk had attempted to order them into schools or eras. In this he was nothing like Aldiss.
She stepped over the threshold and turned on the room’s only lamp, approaching the shelves with reverence. She traced a hand over the spines, making sure to look closely between the books to see if a manuscript might be hidden there.
She began with William Wordsworth and the Romantics, Whitman and the American poets, Hazlitt and the critics, then on to the modernists. This shelf was more bare but still diverse: Eliot, Oppen, Pound. Alex traced her fingers across the books, allowing her senses to lead her, the others’ laughter echoing up from below.
Where are you? Are you real?
Alex continued through the stacks. There was nothing here. Nothing at all. She had looked throughout the second floor, checked every room, and still she wasn’t even close. The manuscript was a farce, another promise by the scholars that turned out to be—
She stopped. She was still in the modernists, looking at the studies on Fallows. There was Benjamin Locke’s famous text on The Coil, and of course Stanley Fisk’s own treatise on Fallows the feminist. And there were two Aldisses side by side, the volumes he had written in prison on Fallows. She stared at the shelves, at the way the books had been arranged. The order she had noticed before—it was disturbed here. The book called Ghost had been eased out over the lip of the shelf, its wrinkled dust flap clinging staunchly onto one loose tendril of spiderweb.
Dominance Page 10