“No alibi for Mr. Cameron,” she thought.
Then there was Belknap. There was really not much reason for putting him down. Except that he was a funny fellow too. A queer blend of force and shyness. She remembered a remark of Francis’s: “He looks like a cross between De Valera and Upton Sinclair. I don’t trust these tall, thin, stooping men, any more than Shakespeare did. That’s the fanatic build. If they decide to live on nuts and roots, they would just as soon kill anybody that eats a steak.”
But why? Why? What earthly reason would Belknap have for pushing poor Lucie Coindreau to her death? Not money, certainly. Not professional rivalry. Love, possibly? A lovers’ quarrel? If Belknap had been carrying on with Lucie, the industrious campus FBI would have known about it. And then the idea was preposterous. Belknap was too genuinely austere, a priest of scholarship. Thirty years of devotion to historical truth had made a channel for his spirit, a channel from which he was not likely to be dislodged by some chance temptation. He had the piquant reputation of being a woman-hater, but woman-haters don’t go so far as to destroy the female sex. They just run away. Come to think of it, there was Schopenhauer, who was quite a woman-hater. He attacked and maimed for life a lady who gave a coffee-party in the anteroom of his lodgings, without his permission. But that hardly fitted the present case. The worst you could suppose of Belknap was that he might fall foul of the Muse of History. Clio, wasn’t it? That was really pretty good. She must tell that to Francis. A scholar who came from Ohio—. Belknap didn’t come from Ohio, in fact; from Connecticut. But that was a small matter. A scholar who came from Ohio was so deeply entangled with Clio—. Francis would have to finish it. She could never get beyond the second line.
But where was Belknap at 10.25? That was something else she would have to find out.
Francis. Gay, frolicsome Francis a murderer? She felt ashamed even to formulate the thought. He took everything too easily, life, himself, herself. He would avoid with fastidious horror any tragic, terrible act. He was a talker, not a doer. She knew him through and through—
But no, come to think of it, she did not know him through and through, and had told him so only a few minutes before the dreadful happening. There were things he had never told her, parts of his life, parts of his thought, that he protected by a zone of laughter. He seemed to be very knowledgeable about women, but he had never mentioned a name, never revealed whether or not he had ever had a real love affair. Of course he must have had, a fascinating bachelor of forty. At one time campus rumor had said that he had fallen for Lucie Coindreau. But there was nothing tangible; they were seldom seen together, and never surprised in what is prettily known as a compromising situation. Naturally, it wouldn’t make any difference to Gilda if they had had any kind of affair. After all, it wasn’t normal for grown-up men to lead a monastic existence, without even the reward of monasticism, the hope of heaven. But he was almost too careful, too secretive. If she was going to—to marry Francis, she wanted to know all the truth about him.
Where was Francis at 10.25?
He had gone for her wrap at about 10.08. A minute to get her cloak. 10.09. He had said that he had looked for her for about ten minutes. That made it 10.19. Then he had gone to the Library, to go to the men’s room. 10.21 to 10.23. He had gone out to the portico to smoke a cigarette, had walked around the Library, and had heard the exit bell at 10.25. Then he had re-entered the Library and had seen Sandys running up to the Wilmerding, at 10.27. He had not followed in hot haste, for he had entered the Wilmerding at least a minute or two after Sandys. That was like him, to pause and reflect a moment before acting, for fear of acting rashly.
But supposing he had not gone out to the portico at all? Supposing he had gone up to the Occulta, any time from about 10.21 on, and had settled matters with Lucie? It was possible. He could have escaped into the stacks, and out into the main corridors through one of the seminaries. The easiest way would have been to go through the Philosophy Seminary, and so down the stairs to the Wilmerding entrance door, as soon as Sandys was inside.
One thing would prove an alibi. If anyone had seen him in the portico, smoking his cigarette at the crucial moment, or entering just afterwards, he could not have committed any murder.
That was the whole list, wasn’t it? No, there were two more names: Gilda Gorham and Ignotus. There was always Ignotus.
Well, Gilda knew she hadn’t done it. She was in the catalogue room at the time.
But she was alone there. In fact, no one had seen her, so far as she knew, from the time Parry had left her at the President’s house—let’s see, 10.08—until she was found screaming beside Lucie’s body at 10.26. That was really unfortunate. Supposing someone wanted to pin the thing on her, to frame her, as they said in mystery stories.
Certainly it would have been possible for her to give Lucie a push and then to run down one of the spiral staircases, to look at the body on the floor, and scream. It would have taken no longer, less long in fact, than the time she had spent in running from the catalogue room to the ground floor of the Wilmerding. She had, in short, opportunity.
Of course, no one could allege motive. There was no question of gain, or of ambition, or love, or jealousy.
Jealousy! Suppose someone was thinking about her at this moment as she had been thinking about her friends on the faculty! Suppose they said: “Gilda has been going around a lot with Francis Parry. And Parry was all tangled up with Lucie Coindreau a year or so ago. Maybe the two girls were fighting about a man, up there in the Occulta. And maybe one of them got pushed over. . . .”
But this was all nonsense! If anyone should make such a foolish statement, she would shout her denial!
However, there was no one else to support her denial. The only person who could deny it was dead.
It was silly of her ever to have got going on this train of thought. It would be even more silly of her to start in asking questions, making trouble. It wouldn’t be impossible, if she began making trouble for somebody, for somebody to make trouble for her. Very terrible trouble.
Put the whole thing out of mind and come back to normal.
She looked up. The catalogue room was emptied of its staff. The girls had gone home. No doubt, in her abstraction, she had nodded good-night to them without even realizing it. It was already a quarter past five. She must be going home, to get ready for dinner at the Nobles’.
There was something else, though. On the morning of Monday, September 29, Lucie Coindreau was talking with a man in the Occulta. Cameron had heard them. Or he had said he had heard them. And Lucie had said something funny. She had said—what was it?—“papoose”!
Why in the world should she have said “papoose”?
Perhaps it was French.
Gilda got up and walked to the dictionary rack.
On the way she noticed Professor Belknap, in the alcove that contained the foreign library catalogues. He was looking up something in the new British Museum Catalogue.
“How do you do, Mr. Belknap?” she said. He nodded in reply.
There was no “papoose” or “papouce” in the dictionary. “Pappeuse,” maybe; feminine for “pappose; downy. (Bot.)” Or “papuleuse”; feminine for “pimply. (Fam.)” It didn’t seem likely that Lucie Coindreau would have exclaimed forcefully that something feminine and botanical was downy, or that some feminine noun was pimply in a familiar way. There was “papyrus.” Maybe Lucie was mentioning a papyrus, and Cameron rationalized it into “papoose.” But that didn’t make much sense either.
Come to think of it, there was something else she wanted to know. Where was Professor Belknap at 10.25?
“Oh, Mr. Belknap!”
“Yes, Miss Gorham?” Professor Belknap was, as always, cavernously polite.
“What an awful ending to the President’s reception!”
“Wasn’t it, indeed?”
“But the President was wonderful! The way he took charge! I think I should have fainted if he hadn’t controlled everything so magnificently
.”
“It must have been a very trying ordeal for you.”
“What did they think at the reception when the President went rushing away?”
Professor Belknap smiled with his usual appearance of effort.
“I am afraid I cannot tell you. I had already gone home.”
“Oh. I thought it a very pleasant reception, as they go. Such nice little sandwiches.”
“Oh yes. Very. If one cares for receptions.”
Professor Belknap stood with his finger in a page. He showed the slightest indication of impatience. Gilda nodded brightly to him and returned to her desk.
So. Belknap had gone home early. Unless someone had seen him in the Faculty Club, he had no alibi.
Professor Belknap left the catalogue room with a distraught nod.
Cameron entered the room, silently. He must always wear rubber soles, thought Gilda. Old quiet Cameron. He was shutting the office windows, on schedule.
“Cameron!”
“Yes, Miss Gorham?”
“Where were you on Monday night when you heard the scream?”
“Down in the stacks somewhere, shutting the fire-doors. I don’t remember exactly where. Why?”
“I was just wondering.”
“You’re getting to be quite a detective, aren’t you?”
“I wonder about things.”
“So do I. For instance, I wonder how you happened to be in the catalogue room just before closing-time.”
“I just stopped in to get something.”
“Your raincoat, maybe? Your old black raincoat?”
“So it was you who turned out the lights in the catalogue room and shut the door?”
“Of course it was me. That raincoat must have looked kind of funny with your evening costume.”
“Cameron, all this is certainly no business of yours.”
“And all the time Professor Parry had your evening wrap over his arm. Wonder what was going on, exactly.”
“What are you trying to get at, Cameron?”
“Nothing. I ain’t a detective any more. But I was just thinking that if anybody should start stirring things up around here, they might stir up more than they intended. I don’t hold with stirring up a row in this nice quiet Library. I like peace and quiet. Academic peace, like they say. Well, I’ll be on my way.”
And all this, thought Gilda, was clearly meant as a warning. A warning to keep out of trouble. A warning that she was in the trouble herself.
And Cameron could have murdered Lucie, and then have run to the catalogue room, perhaps to hide, naturally snapping off the lights and shutting the door. And then he could have thought better of it and returned to the Wilmerding to check in, as it were. It all fitted with her schedule.
This was serious. She would like to talk it over with someone—someone she could trust.
Not with the police. That Lieutenant Kennedy would just laugh at her, tell her to go home and not get hysterical.
She glanced at her list. Not with Casti, Hyett, Sandys, Belknap, Parry. Any one of them might be the—the one.
There seemed to be no one she could trust!
She laughed, a little wildly, and looked around in a kind of desperation. She saw no one. But she did see that it was past six o’clock.
Heavens! She must be getting home to dress for the Nobles’ dinner!
Chapter VIII
WHEN, AT a few minutes before seven, Professor Hyett called for Gilda, she was almost ready. With old-world gallantry, mingled with affectionate pats, he escorted her to his car. The two paused before the shimmering maroon convertible coupé at the curb.
“Why, that’s a new car, isn’t it, Mr. Hyett? What a beauty!”
“It is nice, isn’t it? Would you like the top down? Such a warm evening for the season.”
“Oh, I think it’s all right as it is.”
But Professor Hyett started the engine, pushed a lever, and proudly watched the top fold itself neatly, pack itself away, and tuck itself in. He laughed with glee.
“Wonderful! But I’d really rather have it up. Windblown hair, you know, only goes with tweeds and long tramps over the moors with the faithful bird-dogs.”
“No trouble at all.” Hyett pulled the lever, and the buried top stirred, peered forth, shook itself out, groped aloft, climbed over their heads, and fumbled at the windshield top, struggling, apparently, to fasten itself on.
“Eleven seconds!” exclaimed Hyett in triumph.
He talked of cars for several blocks. Gilda sought in vain for an opening. Finally, at a pause before a traffic light, she decided to dispense with a neat transition and come to the point.
“I had to go to the inquest on Lucie Coindreau this morning,” she said.
“My dear Miss Gorham! What an experience for you!”
“It was pretty terrible, from first to last.”
Professor Hyett made a noise indicative of sympathy and encouragement to forget and lead a new life.
“You didn’t see her after the—accident, did you?” said Gilda.
“No. In fact, I didn’t hear of it until next morning, when I opened my paper.”
“Oh. You weren’t at the reception at the time, then?”
“No. Fact is, rather a funny thing occurred. I happened to look into the small reception room, and the President and Mrs. Temple and Colonel Sloan were standing there all alone. And I thought it a shame that everyone should desert our poor President at his own reception, so I stepped up and murmured something to Mrs. Temple about its being a lovely party. She turned on me with a start—you know how distraught she is—and put out her hand and said: ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Hewlett!’ And then there was nothing to do but shake her hand and say goodnight to the President.”
Gilda laughed. “That must have been right in the middle of things?”
“Oh yes. I don’t suppose it was much more than ten o’clock.”
“And no one brought the news of the accident to the Faculty Club?”
“I don’t think there was anyone around. I went right to my room, myself.”
“So,” thought Gilda, “if this is true, and it can easily be verified, Hyett has no alibi.”
The car turned down one of the campus roads and stopped in front of Professor Noble’s residence.
The Nobles’ house was built in the eighties, in an apparently unpremeditated combination of brick, stone, stucco, and wood. It was spacious and comfortable, in its wide-arched, wide-windowed, golden-oak manner. True, its component parts were now separating, and in winter jets of icy air blew on the backs of callers’ necks. The original occupant, obviously sentimental about his home, had carved mottoes celebrating peace on the stone fireplaces and on wooden panels. “Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind”; “Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content”; “Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh.” The appropriateness of the mottoes had passed with time, for Professor and Mrs. Noble notoriously fought like tigers, largely about the economic interpretation of history. Professor Noble was an orthodox economist, while Mrs. Noble, who had her Ph.D. also, was a more radical thinker. At the mention of Pareto or Veblen the Noble children began to cry, knowing that all hell was about to break loose.
The dinner was in honor of Professor and Mrs. Sparhawk, of the University of Rhode Island. Professor Sparhawk was being looked over for the vacant chair of Money and Banking. He was the devout, earnest type of professor; he tried to organize his life on economic principles. Aware of the outrageous cost of tooth-powder, he bought the ingredients wholesale and mixed them. He had nearly half a barrel of tooth-powder in his cellar, with a queer sort of mushroom growing in it. He deplored the waste of household time spent in washing dishes, and had given his wife a hundred gross of paper dishes for a wedding present. He tried to put in practice his theories, about the benefit of the barefoot life, about the edibility of alfalfa. His wife, a wholesome, homey woman, abjectly admired his giant intellect, while treating him in the house as an imbecile child. For the re
st, the pair were painfully poor, since Professor Sparhawk put all his surplus into the stock market, testing out his convictions on the behavior of money. He was always right, he insisted, but so far never at exactly the right time.
Professor Sparhawk had passed his preliminary tests, on scholarship, publications, and teaching record. The social qualifications remained to be settled, for in the close-knit college community it is important that the relations of husbands and wives of a department be harmonious, or at least not openly hostile.
Gilda and Professor Hyett saluted their hostess and host, and were presented to the guests of honor. In a moment Professor Parry entered, bringing Miss Cornwell, from the Library.
Gilda understood all about the party immediately. The hostess had been anxious to lift the pall of Social Studies for the evening. Parry and Hyett had been asked because they were amusing and would make any party go. She was included because she was bright and pleasant and knew what people were talking about, and Irene Cornwell because she was an extra girl. The party was limited to eight, because that is the best number for general conversation, and all that one girl in the kitchen can handle. Parry, of course, had been asked to call for Irene, as Hyett had been told off to get Gilda.
Cocktails and canapes appeared. There was some small talk on subjects of common scholastic concern. Professor Sparhawk gazed meditatively at his cocktail, for which he could find no justification in a rational society. Deciding, however, to accept the social mores of his host, and to get the thing out of the way, he drank it off. His wife, watching him closely, gratefully sipped at hers.
“Very refreshing, very prophylactic,” said Professor Hyett. “Tell me, Noble, what are you doing about the vermouth situation?”
“I still have some of the French. The domestic is passable, I think, but it certainly isn’t the same thing.”
“I don’t see why we can’t make a good substitute for vermouth in this country,” said Professor Sparhawk. “Vermouth is just a white wine exposed to the sun, fortified with alcohol, and flavored with herbs. To me the flavor is not unlike that of bay rum. It would be interesting to try baking some white wine to approximate the effect of the sun, and then mix it with a little bay rum. It might prove very satisfactory.”
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