Chapter 11
Planted Seeds
Boston – November, 1968
World Press International
November 17, 1968
Boston, Massachusetts – Sources today have reported that the Chancellor of Harvard University, Dr. James Moorehead, has been accused of professional impropriety. Although further details are unavailable at this time, Dr. Moorehead has denied the accusations, saying only that the charges are completely baseless. Stay tuned for further information regarding this surprising development at the uppermost levels of higher education in Boston.
Boston – The Following Day
The phone rang, Sloan reaching for it absently. “Hello,” he murmured into the receiver.
“Sloan, it’s Sabrina,” the voice announced pointedly, “Have you seen the papers?”
“Yes, of course I have,” he responded noncommittally.
“Well, then tell me, what the hell is going on? Why is James under attack?”
“Complicated question, Sabrina,” he replied suspiciously.
“You son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed, “You did it, didn’t you?”
“Whatever are you talking about?” he responded in shock.
“You told them some cock-and-bull story about James, didn’t you!”
“I assure you, Sabrina, I did no such thing.”
“Oh, come now, Sloan. You have that damned exposé of Isolde’s. There must have been some insane story in it that you reported to the authorities. Come clean, you pervert.”
“Pervert?”
“Absolutely!”
“I thought we cleared that up at our last meeting, Sabrina.”
“Surely you didn’t expect me to believe the load of crap you gave me, after all the lies you’ve told me over the years.”
“Well, er, I had hoped…” he responded diffidently.
“Perish the thought. I’ve had far too much of your deceit, you pervert.”
“Right, I could see where you would think that,” he responded gloomily, “But the fact remains, I had nothing whatsoever to do with the current revelations regarding James.”
“Then tell me, what the hell is going on,” she exclaimed insistently.
“Alright, I shall tell you what I know and suspect, miniscule though it may be,” he responded and, hesitating in order to gather his thoughts, he continued with, “As you well know, Isolde left me a document - an exposé - if you will. I have now read parts of it, and it could be said to be an indictment of James’ activities over the past thirty years.”
“And you passed it on to the authorities, I presume?”
“No, Sabrina, I assure you, I did no such thing.”
“Then who did?”
“I’m not quite certain, but I have an idea,” he responded reticently.
“Okay, out with it, Sloan,” she commanded, “What the hell is going on?”
“I say, this is purely speculation on my part, Sabrina, but I believe that James’ accuser is Isolde.”
“What!” she exclaimed forcefully, “That’s impossible - she’s dead!”
“Yes, well, there is that, but I nonetheless believe that she is his plaintiff.”
“How so?”
“Look, she came to see me six months before her passing, offering me this exposé, but at the same time demanding that I refrain from reading it until after her passing.”
“Yes, I already know all of this, Sloan. What’s your point?”
Searching for the right words, he suggested, “Suppose she had a second confidant, and suppose furthermore that she supplied this second person with something more than a manuscript, something permissible as hard evidence in a court of law. And finally, suppose that she charged this confidant with the responsibility of handing over the evidence to the authorities upon her passing.”
“Oh…my…God…,” she stammered, “Could it possibly be?”
“I’m afraid so, Sabrina,” he responded.
“But why? Why would she do such a thing, Sloan?”
“I’m not certain, but I’ve an idea.”
“It must have been revenge,” she announced vehemently, “If, as you implied, she lived a loveless marriage, perhaps she wanted to get even with him, but she hadn’t the nerve to carry it through while she was yet alive.”
“I doubt that quite seriously, Sabrina,” he replied.
“Why?”
“You knew her. Do you think her capable of such retaliation, especially given her feelings for her son and what this would do to him?”
“Right, I see your point,” she responded thoughtfully, “There must have been some other reason. Please, tell me what it is, Sloan.”
“I think not, Sabrina. Let me delve further into this before revealing my suspicion. In the meantime, I believe that we shall have to simply await the outcome of the allegations regarding James.”
“I see,” she responded, “So you won’t tell me more?”
“Would that I could, but I’m afraid that I cannot, at least, not at this time.”
“Alright then, I shall say good day to you, Sloan,” she rejoined, and so saying, she hung up.
“Goodbye, Sabrina,” he croaked into the now dead line.
Boston – Late November, 1968
Sloan propped his feet up, resigned to the necessity of struggling through yet another dose of Isolde’s exposé. Grasping it diffidently, the necessary medicinal glass of scotch in hand, he commenced reading.
James is beset with a deep psychological sickness, I am now quite certain of it. He is not technically impotent as, being his spouse, I should well know. However, his rather degenerate encroachments on my person from the outset of our marriage have, to say the least, been quite bizarre. This, of course, is the main reason that I never had children by him. The first few years that we were married, he had his way with me a few times, but they were rare indeed, and nearly always punctuated by something that could only be considered to be rather depraved. For example, once he tied me up, subsequently forcing me to perform fellatio on him, and while that in and of itself is perhaps not all that extraordinary, years later I caught him masturbating to a film he had secretly made on that occasion.
Then there was the panty caper. I’m not quite certain that you are even aware of it, because I convinced Sabrina to avoid bringing it up at the time, seeing as how we had no proof that you were the culprit. You see, Sabrina had two pairs of panties stolen from her midway through the summer in New Hampshire. In a misplaced act of trust, I told James, thinking that he, as Assistant Desk Manager, was the appropriate person to inform of the theft. Had I thought it through, I should have known that he was the culprit. After all, in his capacity, he had access to the key to our room, whereas you did not, but at the time I had no inkling whatsoever as to his true nature.
At any rate, James agreed to search for the purloined panties, and several days later he claimed that he had found one of the missing items within the men’s locker room at the lakeside bathhouse. Of course, although he deftly refused to point the finger at you, point that way it nonetheless did. And when I returned the recovered pair to Sabrina, she immediately jumped to that conclusion and, so far as I can tell, she has never surrendered her conviction that you were the wayward thief. Thus, whenever she has been heard to term you a pervert, it is more so due to her belief that you stole her panties than due to your treatment of her in the shower that night.
So what indeed was the resolution of the panty caper? About four years ago I actually found the pair that was not returned to Sabrina that summer. James had kept them hidden, all those years, in a cigar box within a secret drawer in his office desk. I managed to locate it while he was off on one of his trips, the panties still neatly folded therein. Don’t ask me why he never thought to get rid of them, but consider more importantly why he stole them in the first place. One might certainly conclude that he is the one that is perverted, but ponder instead a far more significant possibility – th
at he stole them as a means of casting suspicion on you, which of course he succeeded in doing. And ultimately, the seeds of doubt thereby planted in Sabrina’s mind eventually led to her divorce from you more than a decade later.
One of the vilest things James ever did had to do with Sabrina. One can’t say that he set her on her self-destructive path, but he certainly encouraged it whenever and wherever possible. It began in the fall of 1941, shortly after our summer in New Hampshire. As I mentioned earlier, James was at the root of the hole in the wall. What you surely did not know is that he also crept within the showers on several occasions, and worse, he took a camera with him.
He eventually managed to catch Sabrina peering through the hole in the wall and, after you were sent off to war, he mailed a letter together with the incriminating photo to the Dean of Students at Bryn Mawr. On receipt of the offending picture, Sabrina was summarily dismissed from the college.
You may ask why James undertook such a heinous maneuver, Sabrina not being his direct target. Figuring the answer to that question out took some doing, I don’t mind telling you. As the records were confidential, I had to wait some years, but I was eventually able to obtain access to Sabrina’s school records. The accusing letter, the photo still enclosed within, was still tucked neatly within her file. The handwriting was clearly that of James but, and here is the salient point, your name was forged at the bottom of the letter.
My dear Sloan, the record indicates that Sabrina was led to believe that you had mailed the letter to the Dean of Students at Bryn Mawr. In the light of all the monstrous things she believed you to have perpetrated, I wonder that she ever married you in the first place. Still, James’ underhanded ploys surely had something to do with your subsequent divorce. So you see, James was ever efficient in his destruction of you and, though peripherally, Sabrina as well.
After Sabrina was dismissed from Bryn Mawr, she found it difficult to obtain employment. James was the one who interceded yet again, inducing a scurrilous fellow named Sid Ackerman to offer her a position in a cabaret in New York City. I spoke to this character some years later, and he was certain that James had had some sort of secretive control over Sabrina at the time, something that gave her no choice in the matter.
I have always suspected that James’ hold over her was financial in nature. You see, I found the cancelled checks years later showing that he gave her money when she was at her lowest point, thereby leading her to view him favorably. Although I cannot prove it, it is quite likely that at the same time he was ensuring that all other employment opportunities were denied to her, thereby eventually forcing her to become a cabaret dancer as a means of sustaining herself.
That was when I first began to realize that James’ modus operandi was to get under the skin of his victims, to find out what their weaknesses were, and then to exploit them to the fullest. As you will discern shortly, that is exactly what he did with Sabrina, me, and ultimately, you as well.
James had discovered Sabrina’s weakness, you see. That night, when you sneaked from the inn and cornered Sabrina within the shower, James followed you. He watched the entire episode, even going so far as to film it as well. Indeed, that was his purpose all along when he drilled the hole - to make an indecent film. I found it years later. He, of course, had by then practically worn it out from watching it repeatedly, for what prurient purposes God only knows.
The point is this – James knew Sabrina’s weakness from the very start. He understood that she, having been shamed badly by you in a quite demeaning way, was susceptible to sexual extortion, and he played it to the hilt. Accordingly, when James paid Sid Ackerman to offer her a role in his cabaret, she was ripe for the picking.
Then there was the gambol in Boston, after the two of you had been married for several years. Having by then become quite concerned that you would eventually outshine him at Harvard, James used both Sabrina and me to engineer the downfall of your marriage.
Our conjugal bliss having been debilitated to oblivion, he subjected me to one of his particularly unsavory ploys. Having discerned that I was by then in a very susceptible way sexually, he took me to a party, got me stinking drunk and, unbeknownst to me, he then passed me off to someone he had secretly hired to seduce me. In my state of diminished resistance I was easy picking, having grown desperate for any sort of sexual fulfillment. I ended up at this guy’s apartment, and James had me followed by a private detective, who – you guessed it – filmed the whole thing. It was the only time I ever strayed, but it only took that one time.
Unbeknownst to me, James then used this guy to get at me, his associate making it clear that I would lose custody of Robert if the film was disclosed to my husband. I thereby became a pawn in James’ obsession to get at you. My fictional blackmailer, now turning his attentions toward your demise, suggested that I approach you in a friendly way and attempt to seduce you, for what reason I hadn’t the slightest idea. I don’t mind telling you, I was terrified at the prospect, but I couldn’t run the risk of losing Robert to James, so I was forced to play along.
I expect you will recollect the events, both in the summer of 1954. As I’m sure you will recall, I invited you to lunch that summer. By then my love for you had degenerated to desperation, and that, together with my fear of losing Robert, was of course my weakness. James exploited it to the fullest and, while you resisted my lame advances, rather ingenuously I might add, he nonetheless managed to obtain what he needed in order to get at Sabrina.
Using his pawn to trail us, James managed to obtain a couple of rather intimate photos of the pair of us together. One was when I kissed you in that alleyway and, while it may have seemed rather tame to you, his associate, being a real pro, managed to make it appear that we were about to go at it. The other photo was the real frosting on the cake. My blackmailer forced me on that second occasion to meet you pantyless, wearing only my stockings and garter belt beneath my skirt. Perhaps you recall, I chanced to meet you in the park by the Charles River, or so you thought. We strolled a bit, you subsequently pushing me on a swing, all clandestinely orchestrated by James, and deploying yours truly. Of course, the guy got some quite revealing photos, showing the pair of us grinning from ear to ear, myself swinging skyward, my legs quite spread-eagled for all the world to see.
James most likely hoped to get something more incriminating on the pair of us, but as you were beyond reproach, he had to settle for what he could get, and those two photos were quite enough to do the trick. He then sent the photos anonymously to Sabrina in hopes of convincing her that you were having an affair with me, which of course she was.
Now comes the truly depraved part. It seems James owns a peep show, or at least he did at that time. I’m not exactly clear how he came to this point of depravity, but it most certainly has to do with that summer in New Hampshire. Either he descended into voyeurism as a result of his secretive dealings in the bathhouse, or he had already arrived at that point, the hole in the wall being little more than a symptom of his illness, but one thing is clear – he is now a voyeur of the most decadent sort.
As I said before, James was well aware of Sabrina’s goings-on during the war, having been the primary instigator of her short-lived profession as a cabaret dancer. He wasn’t really after Sabrina, being instead intent on building up power over her on the outside possibility that if and when you returned from the war, she might be used against you. Nevertheless, being the voyeur that he is, he couldn’t help but look in on her whenever he had the opportunity and - you guessed it - he used several of these occasions to photograph her performances.
Sure enough, you survived the war and, as he had surmised you might do, you subsequently went in search of Sabrina, eventually marrying her. Once it became apparent that you were going to be a competitor to him at Harvard, a plan formed in his mind to get at you through her. After all, he had ready-made blackmailing materials in the form of the photos, and by then he was well aware of
your weakness – Sabrina.
Accordingly, he hired one of his peep show associates to blackmail Sabrina, assuring her that if she did not join the peep show he would send the incriminating photos to Harvard University, thereby affecting your dismissal from the faculty. I doubt that the photos were all that damning, but being naïve about the inner workings of academia, Sabrina nonetheless fell for it. And shortly thereafter she became a peep show dancer by day, while Elise was at daycare and you were at the office. Having been convinced that the two of us were having an affair, she persuaded herself that she was doing it to get back at you.
While Sabrina must bear some of the burden for voluntarily taking up such a despicable profession, the point is this - James being the instigator of Sabrina’s greatest weakness – her complete distrust of you - he was most assuredly at the heart of the failure of your marriage.
Of course, Sabrina herself has no idea as to the manipulative deeds perpetrated on her by James, as he always treated her with the utmost respect to her face. To wit, she to this day believes that he is the beauty, and you the beast.
A Week Later
World Press International
December 2, 1968
Boston, Massachusetts – This report just in: Dr. James Moorehead, Chancellor of Harvard University, has been placed on paid administrative leave, pending an investigation into charges of impropriety made against him. Dr. Moorehead has to this point in time been unavailable for comment regarding the charges against him. Readers will recall that Dr. Moorehead’s wife, Isolde, passed away recently of cancer. Stay tuned for more information regarding this story that has mounting implications for the academic community.
Boston – The Following Evening
Sloan sat in his easy chair, the requisite glass of scotch available in case he felt the need for it in order to stomach this, the final installment of Isolde’s expose.
And now I come to the final chapter of my exposé and, given what you’ve already learned, I daresay you should not be surprised at what I am about to divulge. Let me begin by saying, in case it isn’t apparent by now - James is your very worst enemy. Ever since the first time he met you, he has been obsessed with defeating you. You see, you were always better than him, at anything and everything. For him that was terrifying, because no one had ever bested him at anything at all, much less absolutely everything.
As you now know, he was already plotting to destroy you by that summer in New Hampshire, but up to that point in time his efforts were rather amateurish, to say the least. He was still young, and his schemes were rather sophomoric in nature. Had they not been, I doubt I should have ever found him out.
Fortunately for him, you went off to war shortly thereafter, and he once again owned the playing field, at least in his own mind. But when you unexpectedly survived the war, his fears began to get the better of him once again. By then, he was on the faculty at Harvard, and although you were just starting your academic career, his conviction grew with each passing day that you would somehow eventually outshine him. That, of course, he could not allow to happen and, although it took some years for him to perfect his tactics, he eventually managed, as you well know, to engineer your divorce from Sabrina.
Anticipating that your separation from her might in fact derail your academic focus, he took no further action right away, but eventually he could tell that you, having buried yourself in your work as a means of concealing your own misery from yourself, were destined to rise to great heights within the academic community. You see, although he was crafty and astute, you, on the other hand, were blessed with a mixture of technical brilliance, innate goodness, and honesty. These things he understood all too well, and your honesty, together with your adoration for Sabrina, were his most powerful weapons against you.
He had been keeping tabs on you all along, and eventually he settled on a plan to affect your dismissal from Harvard. Being the voyeur that he was, he had had you followed the day that you had gone looking for Sabrina at the peep show. He also had previously installed hidden film projectors within the Peep Show that he owned. He therefore had both clandestine film footage and photos of you from that day, and he kept them. He eventually pulled them out of storage, and that was when he hatched the plot to frame you.
Using his superior knowledge of chemistry, he doctored several of the images, carefully splicing just the right incriminating parts from other clips into the film footage to make it appear that you were masturbating along with the other two men in the first room. He then employed chemicals to erase the splice lines and, subsequently reshooting photos of the negatives, he thereby fabricated phony evidence of your moral turpitude. The photo of you paying a prostitute required nothing more than dying the note you handed her green.
Thereafter, it was a simple matter to mail the offending photos anonymously to the Dean of Faculty. He covered his own tracks by selling the Peep Show off, so that no one could trace it to him. It turned out that it didn’t matter since, as you well know, the authorities dropped the charges against you.
So, while you have been under the impression all these years that he managed to have the legal charges against you dropped, he in fact did nothing of the sort. Quite to the contrary, he made certain that the Faculty Affairs Committee found you guilty, thereby affecting your dismissal from the university. There is even a rumor that his brilliant handling of your dismissal had something to do with his promotion to Dean shortly thereafter, and eventually to chancellor.
The legal charges, as it turns out, were dropped unilaterally by the District Attorney, who saw no sense in using the taxpayers’ resources to further humiliate you. Besides, he was up for re-election, and he wanted nothing to do with a potentially explosive case involving public lewdness and indecent exposure in one of Boston’s seedier districts.
I have given you all of this information not in the hope that you would exact revenge, for as I know you only too well, I am certain that it is not within you to do so. I have therefore taken my own steps to ensure that justice shall be done.
As you may recall, that summer in 1954, when you discovered Sabrina working in the peep show downtown, you entered the club, and as you are also aware, it was within the club that James had set up his video cameras. He would later use the photos taken on the street as well as within the club to destroy your career, as you also well know. What you don’t know is that the woman who was dancing in the first room that day was a student at Harvard.
As I said before, I made it my challenge to discover as many of James’ transgressions as possible and, as a part of that quest, I eventually got hold of copies of the incriminating photos of you from the Faculty Affairs Committee. A couple of them were taken in the room with the other two men and, the dancer’s face quite discernible, she appeared to be quite young.
Given what I had already discerned about James by that point in time, I perceived that it was quite within the realm of possibility that James was extorting young women to perform in his peep show, and what better place to locate candidates for such positions than right on the campus at Harvard? I therefore searched through the Harvard yearbook and - surprise, surprise - I found a photo of a young woman that matched the one who was dancing in the room that day.
I now knew that I was onto something, so I kept at it, and shortly thereafter, I was able to locate the student in question. She was by then in her third year of law school and, cornering her one evening in a campus coffee shop, I showed her the photographs. Of course, despite the passage of time, she was in no mood to discuss it with me, so I let it go for the time being.
The years passed, but eventually, when I was diagnosed with cancer, I realized that this insane monster that was my husband would never cease destroying the lives of others. Furthermore, I was the only person on earth in a position to call an end to his wanton actions. What was worse, I had little time to affect a solution, so that was when I determined to seek out the young lady once again. Of cours
e, by that time she had completed her education, was married, and had two children. She had somewhat serendipitously joined a prestigious law firm right here in Boston, and that was what turned her to my ally.
Approaching her at her office one day, I laid the whole story out for her, the evidence being as you now know overwhelming and incontrovertible. On that day, she broke down in her office, telling me that James had produced evidence indicating that she had cheated in his course, she for her part certain that it had been fabricated, perhaps even by him. He had summarily threatened to have her dismissed from the university, at which her performance in the peep show had been extorted as a means of avoiding being expelled from Harvard.
Having never quite recovered from James’ treatment of her, she was by that time ready to bring charges against him, especially given the additional proof that I supplied to her. You see, by then I had evidence suggesting that James had perpetrated similar deeds on quite a few other young women at Harvard over the course of his career.
For my part, feeling myself incapable of dealing both with my own terminal illness and James’ anticipated downfall, I managed to entice the woman to hold off bringing charges until after my passing. I shall not divulge her identity to you, as I am quite certain that she would want to maintain her own anonymity. Still, given her legal expertise, I expect that she shall find the means to bring James to justice.
So now you know the entire story, at least, everything that I am aware of. There are doubtless other dastardly deeds portrayed by James, but I should think that those described herein are quite sufficient.
My dearest Sloan, you shall most likely conclude that I have done this all for you. I shall not endeavor to dissuade you from such a notion, but let me close by saying this – having failed to capture your heart, my life’s ambition has become to achieve your redemption. If my efforts succeed in restoring your good name, then as my reward for having succeeded, I charge you thusly – for the remainder of your life, live the life that, when we two docked together in Boston all those years ago, we promised one another we should live. And finally, know that I have kept my promise – I have always been true to you. And with that, I wish you a long and prosperous life.
Yours Ever-
Isolde
Boston – A Week Later
James strode confidently into the large paneled room, halting at intervals to shake hands with members of the Board of Regents. Eventually, the group assembling in formality about the table, Chairman Simpson announced, “Gentlemen, this special meeting of the board will come to order,” and at this, the group became silent.
“Chancellor Moorehead,” Chairman Simpson now stated, “I’ve called this special meeting of the board to address the issue that you are so aware – your alleged professional impropriety. This meeting is of course, entirely confidential. If anyone so much as utters a word regarding these proceedings outside the confines of this room, they shall be subject to the full legal force behind this august institution. Am I understood?” and at the unanimous and silent nods from the entire group, he proceeded, saying, “Now, members of the board, each of you has before you an envelope marked confidential. You are to open that envelope, peruse the contents carefully, and thenceforth return everything therein to the envelope, subsequently returning the envelope to me. Please proceed,” and at this, the members opened their envelopes and silently studied the contents.
Several minutes later, the envelopes having been unanimously returned to Chairman Simpson, he now inquired, “Chancellor Moorehead, you have now observed the evidence before you. What have you to say on your behalf regarding this most serious charge?”
“Gentlemen,” James commenced, “It seems to me that, in the interest of Harvard University, it would be best if I were to resign as Chancellor immediately. In addition, if I may be so bold, should you the members of the board, many of you my dear friends, find it in your hearts to do so, I would also be willing to severe all connections with Harvard, on the condition that the materials you have just considered never reach the light of day.”
At this pronouncement, there was a momentary silence, Chairman Simpson subsequently announcing, “Excellent notion, Chancellor Moorehead. Under the circumstances, I believe that a motion is in order.”
“So moved!” a voice exclaimed.
“Second!” another put in.
“All those in favor say aye,” Chairman Simpson commanded, followed by a chorus of consent.
“Opposed?” he queried, followed by silence.
“The motion carries unanimously,” and, turning to James, he proffered, “Thank you for your generous actions, er, Former Chancellor Moorehead. Now, if you will excuse us, the board has other important matters to address.”
Boston – The Following Morning
Sloan tied the package with a string, making certain that it was secure. He then approached the delivery window at the post office and supplied the clerk with the address in Pittsburgh. He wondered to himself if Sabrina would ever find the courage to read it. In any case, he felt that Isolde had provided the document for the both of them rather than for him alone, thus making it Sabrina’s equal right to the evidence therein. That afternoon he caught a direct flight to London.
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