Death by Dissertation

by Dean James

  Azalea shot me a glance, bitter with loathing. “Take your hands off me,” she warned.

  “Don’t threaten me,” I snapped, looming over her.

  She shrank back in her chair.

  “You’d better hope Rob doesn’t file some sort of assault charge against you.”

  “He wouldn’t dare,” she said, the venom still in her voice.

  Then she smirked at me, and I lost it.

  “Listen to me, you bucktoothed witch,” I stormed. “I don’t know why the hell you think you’re so high-and-mighty. Just because none of the professors in this department have the balls to stand up to you and tell you what a damned, interfering, manipulative bitch you are doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to sit back and take it. If Rob decides to file some sort of charge with the university for assault, I’ll back him to the hilt, and I don’t give a damn about what little games you try to play to get out of it. I’d be delighted to see them fire your smarmy little ass, and they ought to. You had no excuse whatsoever to strike Rob, and I hope you’re ready to face the consequences.”

  I was so focused on Azalea that I hadn’t realized other people had come into the room and Rob and Bella were gone.

  “Andy, what’s going on here?”

  I turned to see Maggie, with Selena Bradbury behind her, standing in the doorway of the office. From the shocked expressions on their faces, I knew they had heard most of what I had just said to Azalea.

  Maggie came in. “I saw Bella and Rob in the kitchen when we passed by, and it looked like she was putting something on his face.”

  I glared down at Azalea. She glared right back before shoving me aside to stomp out of the room. Selena gave me a nasty look, then followed Azalea. Good riddance to both of them, I thought. I’d had enough of Azalea.

  “What is going on here?” Maggie asked again, dropping her backpack on the worn couch. “Whatever possessed you to light into Miss High-and-Mighty like that? Don’t you know you’ve made just about the worst enemy you could make?”

  Once more into the breach, I thought, suppressing the desire to laugh. I felt so good after letting Azalea have it that I didn’t care what she tried to do in reprisal. All the stress I had been under for the past two days had suddenly boiled over, and it couldn’t have been directed at a more deserving person. I motioned for Maggie to sit, and I joined her on the couch. While I was in the middle of my explanation, more campus police arrived. I saw Herrera go by and knew I’d be spending more time with him, before long.

  Bella and Rob returned, adding their remarks to my account of the scene with Azalea. Maggie’s eyes blazed as she looked at Rob’s cheek. Then she told Bella and Rob what she had heard of my tirade, and Rob grinned at me.

  “The Terminator strikes again,” he laughed. “I’m not the only one with a temper.”

  His eyes dared me to say anything back. I looked away from him.

  “Good work, Andy,” Bella said. “I’ve been meaning to tell her off for the last two years, but you beat me to the punch.” She chuckled evilly. “Don’t worry, guys, if she tries to turn spiteful on us, I know where the woman lives, and Bruce owes me a favor or two.”

  Maggie and Rob stared at her. Bella was probably just kidding, but you never knew with her.

  “Where is Bruce, anyway?” I asked. “Why isn’t he with you this morning?” As far as the rest of us could tell, Bella didn’t make any step, except into the bathroom, that Bruce didn’t make with her. And for all I knew, he might even go to the bathroom with her. Our dear mayor was slightly paranoid on the subject of his daughter’s safety.

  “Oh,” Bella replied casually, “I thought I could manage to turn in some papers without being kidnapped or attacked, so I talked him into staying behind. He had something he needed to do, anyway.” Whatever it was, Bella evidently found it amusing, because she grinned.

  Azalea and Selena chose that moment to return. Azalea ignored us, evidently having decided not to dignify my outburst with any kind of direct response, but Selena offered an uncertain smile, which, for her, was a strong emotional statement. She started to say something, but a man in uniform stepped into the office and inquired for me.

  “Come with me,” he ordered and turned without even waiting to see whether I would follow.

  Waving goodbye to the others, I went to the same seminar room where I’d had a chat with Herrera after finding Charlie’s body. The air in the room was just as stale and sultry as it had been the first time. Herrera motioned at a chair, and I sat down. He didn’t look pleased with me, and I couldn’t really blame the man, given my luck lately.

  “What did you do yesterday after I left your house?” was his first question.

  I gave him a quick outline, being careful to stress the fact that Rob and Maggie had been with me until fairly late. Thank God that Maggie had been with us. I didn’t know whether Herrera would put much stock in any alibi that Rob and I gave each other. Maybe if I tell him we spent the night together, screwing our brains out, I thought viciously, he’ll leave both of us alone. I struggled to keep my face neutral.

  Herrera prompted me to tell him about discovering the body, and I did so, finishing up with an account of the scene in the department office. I knew if I didn’t, Bella and Azalea certainly would give him their versions of the incident, and I wanted him to have my version, although I was sure Bella’s sympathies lay with Rob, after that attack. But you never could be sure what Bella would say or do.

  “In light of what’s happened this morning,” Herrera told me when I finished, “I’d like to get your fingerprints today. That is, if you still have no objection. ”

  Once again, I assured him I’d be delighted to cooperate. He instructed me where to report, then let me go. The others would now each take a turn. I hoped Rob wasn’t too rattled. If he hesitated over anything, Herrera would pin him down. But, I thought, vastly relieved, he’d been with me and Maggie, so now he had to be in the clear. Whitelock’s murder would be linked to Charlie’s, and if Rob had an alibi for the second murder, surely Herrera would realize that he hadn’t committed the first one.

  Lost in thought, I rounded the corner and just about bowled over one of my favorite professors. “Dr. Logan, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t watching where I was going. Are you all right?”

  Fortunately for both of us, I hadn’t knocked the poor man off his feet. He clutched at the steadying hand I offered and frowned into my face.

  “I’m quite all right, Andy,” he informed me, “though I’ve had a slight shock. I just heard that the Whitelock Curse struck again. And finally, it hit in exactly the right place!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stood there for a moment, staring like a goggle-eyed fish. I was so surprised by what Dr. Logan had said that I couldn’t come up with anything to say in response.

  Taking pity on me, he tucked his hand in my arm and towed me along in the direction of his office. We must have made an amusing sight. He was about a foot shorter than I and proportioned like a garden gnome.

  He patted my hand as we moved along. “You poor boy. I’m sure if I had seen what you saw this morning, I’d be prostrate. Let me fix you a cup of tea.”

  This was much more like the Anthony Logan I knew, and as we approached his office, my mind began to work again. I scented a story or two in his remarks about Whitelock, and now would be an excellent time to find out what scandals he might be able to divulge.

  A member of the history department for thirty-five years, Logan was like the proverbial spinster in the English village mystery. He enjoyed nothing more than having a good natter and sharing tidbits with those he liked. He and I had gotten on very well together in the year I had known him, and I knew he would be more than willing to give me anything juicy he knew about the recently deceased, whom he had disliked heartily.

  With my curiosity sufficiently aroused, I followed him into his office and sat in a chair as he fussed around with his kettle. Fond of his tea, Logan kept a hot plate in his office, and he almo
st always had plenty of hot water and cups for any graduate students who happened to wander by. The department’s distinguished Southern historian, he was an internationally recognized expert on the colonial South, and he himself was descended from one of the oldest families in Virginia. I had often thought it fitting that this charming and friendly Southern gentleman should be a student of the South, for he seemed to me to embody the best qualities of the region he loved and studied. Hospitable and helpful,

  Logan was a great favorite with students, graduate and undergraduate alike. Though he and Whitelock didn’t care for each other, they had always managed to get along, at least in public. Then again, I couldn’t imagine Logan not get-ting along with anyone, but Southern manners could mask all sorts of hostility. That made me simply all the more impatient to find out what he could tell me.

  I came out of my reverie as Logan handed me a cup of hot, sweet tea, with a smidgen of milk, the way I liked it.

  “There, Andy,” he said, settling in behind his desk, with his own steaming cup. “That should make you feel better.”

  “Thank you, sir. It was quite terrible this morning, but I’m doing okay, I think.”

  He nodded. “You’re a sensible young man, and I know you’re not going to shed any crocodile tears over Julian’s death. You haven’t known him long enough, for one thing; and besides, he wasn’t the kind of man to engender benevolent feelings in anyone. You shouldn’t waste any time grieving over a man who never cared in the least what other people felt.”

  I was more shocked by the professor’s candor than by finding Whitelock’s corpse. I took a moment, as I sipped at my tea, to study Logan as unobtrusively as possible. What I saw did not reassure me.

  Logan was about sixty-two, and he looked every bit of that and more. Normally he was cheerful, bustling around with energy and bonhomie, but now he seemed drawn in upon himself. The sparkle in his eyes and the bloom in his cheeks had been replaced by a gray weariness.

  I decided to volunteer a remark, in the hopes that I could get him going again. “You’re right, sir. I never cared much for Dr. Whitelock. I regret that he died this way, but I’m certainly not going to grieve for him.”

  Logan smiled at me, and the smile made me uneasy.

  “That’s quite an epitaph for Julian,” he said. “I don’t know that anyone is going to grieve for him. He seemed to go out of his way to alienate people. Even his own family stopped bothering with him, years ago.” He shook his head. “Julian treated most of those around him dishonorably, and he died in the same way. If I were a superstitious man, I really would believe in the Whitelock Curse, as I referred to it earlier. The lives of the people around him could be blighted quite easily. His relationships with his students were always fraught with emotions—mostly with his female students, I must say.”

  I didn’t say anything, just took another sip of my tea and nodded. Logan needed no prompting, and I didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought. He seemed troubled, and I supposed talking about Whitelock was his way of dealing with it.

  “When Julian first came here, I had been a member of the faculty for five or six years. He was quite the dashing young professor then, and he set more than a few hearts—and hormones—fluttering.” Logan paused to take a drink of tea. “Julian was very handsome, and female students by the dozen had crushes on him. His freshman history classes were always packed with young women. He fell into a trap, though, which many young professors can’t resist. He let himself get involved with one of his students, a senior history major whose family took a dim view of the relationship.”

  The tone of Logan’s voice darkened as he continued the story. Obviously he still felt strongly about what had happened, though it probably had occurred at least twenty years earlier. “The girl was twenty-one, so there was nothing the family could do legally, but the father promised her a year abroad if she’d give up Julian. I think, by that time, Julian was rather willing to be given up, though it certainly didn’t help his pride when the girl decided that Europe was more attractive. She left him strictly alone until she went overseas.”

  There was a certain amount of satisfaction in Logan’s tone, as if he had been delighted to see Whitelock come out the loser in that particular incident.

  “That didn’t stop Julian, though,” Logan went on. “He’s always had a thing for students, although he was careful to make certain that they were of age. I used to imagine that he asked to see their birth certificates first.” He looked directly at me, and I couldn’t suppress a somewhat embarrassed smile of complicity. “But Julian did manage to keep his nose clean, so to speak, after that. As he grew older, he grew wiser. He began to find the charms of older women more enticing, though he still couldn’t quite manage to separate his work from his private life.” Logan’s gaze slid away from mine.

  What was that supposed to mean? Was he hinting that Whitelock had messed around with someone in the department? Once more thinking of Azalea’s reaction to Whitelock’s death, I nearly choked on the tea I had just sipped. I had speculated that Azalea might have been the woman in Whitelock’s sex tapes, but I hadn’t seriously believed this was what Logan was hinting at.

  Evidently, Logan had decided to say no more on the subject, because he went quickly on to something else. “Julian has been something of a jinx on his male students as well. Two of them have died violent deaths.” He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know what he had to do with either of the deaths, if anything, but the coincidences are startling, to say the least.”

  I ventured a remark. “I know about Charlie, sir, only too well, but what other student of Dr. Whitelock’s died violently?”

  Logan blinked at me. “That was poor Philip Dunbar. He was one of the best graduate students we’ve ever had in this program, and he would have made a fine historian, poor lad, had he lived to fulfill his promise.”

  The name “Dunbar” made me flash on the truth. The Dunbar Award, that macabre little statue in the graduate lounge.

  Logan noticed my reaction. “I see you’ve made the connection with the award.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir, but I’m afraid I don’t really know the story.”

  He refilled his teacup, then continued. “About five years ago, Julian had an exceptional student named Philip Dunbar. He was a handsome and gifted young man, and he passed his qualifying exams with the highest honors. He spent several months in Paris and provincial French archives, doing research for his dissertation. He and Julian had apparently agreed, very loosely, on a topic. Julian was rather afraid of him, I think, so he didn’t supervise Philip closely. Julian knew Philip needed him only for a signature on his dissertation.” Logan sighed sadly. “In this case, the student had outpaced the master, and Julian was smart enough, as were the rest of us, to realize that.

  “Well, Philip had completed his dissertation. I believe he had even typed it himself. This was before all of you students had word processors at home. Philip was on his way to have copies of the dissertation made for his readers when he was killed in an accident on the freeway. The car exploded and destroyed everything.”

  Logan fell silent, and I felt great sadness for the violent end to such promise. The story, coming on top of everything that had happened in the past two days, touched me in a way that even the deaths of Charlie and Dr. Whitelock had not.

  “So someone established an award in his name,” I said finally. “The money that’s given each year to a graduate student for travel expenses for dissertation research.” Once again, my mind unwillingly conjured up an image of that grisly little statue.

  Logan must have seen the sick look on my face, but he couldn’t know just what bothered me so much. I made an effort to control my emotions, and he continued.

  “Yes, that’s right. Philip’s family gave the money to begin with, and people associated with the university more than tripled the original sum, so it grew to quite a valuable prize.” He sighed. “But at such cost. We wanted to look at Philip’s dissertation, since it was su
pposedly complete, with a view to awarding his degree posthumously and even trying to get it published, if possible. Julian was in charge, of course, since Philip had been his student. But look how we might, we couldn’t find any other copy of it. Julian swore at the time that he hadn’t seen any of it, other than a brief proposal. It seems so bizarre now, but Philip had either destroyed any copies he had, or else he had them with him in the car when he died. No rough drafts of the manuscript were found, only some of his note cards.” Logan shook his head and looked at me, an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Even Philip’s close friends, Selena Bradbury and Margaret Wilford, couldn’t explain it.”

  The sadness of the story touched me deeply; but, although poignant, and certainly curious, in light of what had happened to Charlie Harper and Julian Whitelock, it seemed to have little to do with the murders, as far as I could tell. The only link was that statue. I found it hard to believe that all traces of Dunbar’s dissertation had vanished. What if someone had found a copy? But surely it would have surfaced by now. Though the story didn’t seem relevant, I supposed that Logan wanted me to know, for some reason. Maybe he just needed to talk to someone, but I had the idea there might be more to it than that.

  Logan seemed to have run out of things to say, and I decided I had better be on my way and get the fingerprint business taken care of. I didn’t relish the thought, but I wanted to do my duty as a good—and innocent—citizen.

  “Thank you for the tea, sir.” I stood up. “I feel better now. I think I needed it more than I had realized. And our discussion has been quite... well... enlightening.”

  Logan shot me a sharp look, but he stood up to usher me out of the office. “You’re quite welcome, Andy. You should never underestimate the effects of shock.” He paused, and I registered once again the tiredness in his face. “We’re all terribly upset right now.” He shook his head. “Such a tangled web. Well, with regard to our conversation this morning, I’m certain you’ll be discreet.” He looked expectantly at me, and I dutifully nodded before I left.