No, no, no. She didn’t have to do this sort of thing, with people dropping dead all over the place. She wanted to think, and, by golly, she had a right to think once in a while.
She rose, went to the south stack, and down two decks to the ground level. At the top of a circular iron staircase she snapped on the lights of the crypt.
The crypt was the Library’s basement, storehouse, junkyard, and dungeon. In the tall presses were stored those unhappy books condemned, barring a special pardon, never to see the light of day. A collection of duplicates; a file of U. S. Patent Office records; the Wilmerding Time-table Collection; the Mosher Collection of Stereoscopic Slides; and all the old odds and ends which, for one reason or another, it was inexpedient to give away or destroy. It was always cool in the crypt, and always quiet; and always, too, ghostly, secret, and melancholy. Gilda liked it.
She chose an alcove lined with a set of Siamese classics presented by the King of Siam. She found one of the kitchen chairs which are standard library equipment. It would be nice to have a cigarette. . . . But no, that would be too dreadful. She smiled, recalling that Cameron had once caught a trustee smoking in the stacks. Cameron, standing just out of sight of the trustee, had tactfully shouted: “Come on there, boys; no smoking, or out you go on your ear!”
Let’s get down to business. She had two new facts, if they were facts. She had obtained them, to be sure, at a cost. She had made a tacit bargain with Cameron not to mention the door to the ventilating apparatus. Her new facts were: that Dr. Sandys had once been questioned, and probably suspected, in the case of a book theft; and that he was in financial difficulties. But why? He certainly had a good salary, probably of seven or eight thousand, and he lived very modestly, in simple bachelor style. He probably didn’t spend more than two or three thousand a year. Where did it all go, then?
Family obligations? Some relative with an expensive disease?
Blackmail?
Was somebody living comfortably off his past sin, or indiscretion?
No answer.
There was also the curious excitement he had shown in the strangling test in the locked press. The bizarre idea had already occurred to her that he might be a homicidal maniac. That idea she had lightly dismissed. Nevertheless, she was ever more impressed, as she grew older, by the lurid things that are hidden by the outward decorum of individuals, and of society. To take even a mild case: there was a professor in Entomology who, after twenty-five years of blameless married life, had arranged a divorce from his wife, a theosophist who lived mostly on raw carrots. And he had married a totally brainless little knee-flaunting sophomore who had sat in the front row of his lecture course. The public announcements in the case had been flat and formal, and the professor himself seemed a stodgy fellow, God knows. But a thorough psychological and pathological record of the case would reveal a fantastic tale of passion and folly. It would have to be kept in the locked press. In the card-catalogue she would put a see-also card under Sin.
Perhaps she hadn’t been thinking about this murder business sufficiently under the heading of Sin.
What were the seven deadly sins, now? Pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, and—hum—gluttony, and—what was it? Oh yes—lust.
Pride. Pride is the most sinful sin of all, the one that Dante puts on the lowest shelf of purgatory. Dante got around a good deal; he ought to know. And yet, in the present case, it was hard to see how Pride could have caused the death of Lucie Coindreau and Mr. Hyett, and the theft of the Filius Getronis.
Strike out Pride.
Envy. Of course, there was Casti! He was afraid that Lucie would get the associate professorship he coveted. Perhaps he was secretly jealous of Hyett. Jealous enough to kill him? Even if so, that didn’t explain the theft of the manuscript. But before the theft Casti had been pulling every string to get the manuscript in his hands by legitimate means. He wanted it badly. Perhaps he was surprised by Hyett while he was in the act of stealing it.
Fairly good. How about Anger?
Sandys, maybe. That sudden rush of blood to the head when he was pretending to throttle her. Then there was that funny business, a couple of weeks ago, when a man had attacked with a stick a boy and girl sitting on a bench behind the Library. Nothing like that had ever happened before Sandys’s arrival. Perhaps he had had such an access of rage toward Lucie Coindreau. Perhaps, again, he had been rifling the safe, and had been discovered by Hyett, and had strangled Hyett in fear and fury. There was that other book-theft at the Hopkinson. People are consistent; they don’t learn by experience. Exposed to the same set of stimuli, they always exhibit the same responses, and act accordingly. That’s psychology.
How about Belknap, under Anger? He was one of those repressed boys, an adrenalin-secreter. And if at some point he couldn’t control his adrenals, he might burst forth into frantic violence. Yes, but why should he commit two murders and grand larceny?
Or how about Casti, for that matter? He was an Italian, and they were famous for their thoroughgoing vendettas. Vendetta means “revenge,” in Italian. Could revenge come in?
Why, yes! Suppose that Hyett had murdered Lucie, in a burst of senile dementia or something. And Casti, secretly in love with Lucie, murdered Hyett, and took the manuscript for good measure. But that scenario would fit Belknap, Sandys, or Parry just as well. And it was all just fancy, anyway.
Sloth. Well, murder was no job for a lazy man. Strike out Sloth.
Avarice. Sandys, again. Or Cameron? The fact that Cameron was mixed up in the Excelsior Personal Loan revealed something new. He had money, he was fairly unscrupulous about making more. He was likely to know how to dispose of a stolen manuscript to his advantage. He had told her, gratuitously, a fact which cast suspicion on Sandys. Why? Only to divert suspicion from himself? Or was there a deeper purpose?
Put down Cameron for Avarice. Or possibly Casti? Possibly. Certainly not Belknap or Parry.
Gluttony?
Gluttony is an obsolete vice. It was a reality to Dante, in the Middle Ages; it is the vice of hungry races and haggard times, when to feed full is to rob the starving. Strike out Gluttony.
And Lust? Well, perhaps in the case of Lucie’s death. Any one of the five men could be suspected. But it was hard to charge the second murder and the theft to Lust. Unless they were the results, in some way, of the first crime. Or unless the two crimes were committed by different people.
Of course, she hadn’t put in Ignotus anywhere. There was always Ignotus, who was probably a victim of all the seven deadly sins.
Maybe also there were some new sins that Dante didn’t know about. Morality seems to be subject to constant revision, in the light of new ideologies. Murder itself, for instance.
“Miss Gorham! Oh, Miss Gorham!”
It was Dr. Sandys’s voice, calling from the circular staircase that led down to the crypt.
Gilda felt that she did not want to be bothered by Dr. Sandys, especially if he was in his throttling mood. She made no answer.
What did Dr. Sandys want with her, anyway? And why did he suspect she was in the crypt?
He had a funny voice, she reflected. A sort of rasping huskiness in it that was not unpleasant. Gilda smiled, and tried to imitate it. “Miss Gorham! Oh, Miss Gorham!”
Not very good. Casti could do a better imitation of it. Probably got the phonetic values right, the proper number of vibrations per second.
Could the voice she had just heard have been Casti imitating Dr. Sandys?
There were getting to be too many mysteries around this Library.
“My dear Miss Gorham!”
It was Francis Parry, beaming at her.
“Why, Francis! Were you calling me?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you imitate Dr. Sandys?”
“I thought it would sound more official, sort of.”
“Showing off your stage technique. How did you know I was down here?”
“Cameron told me. He said it was your favorite hideaway. And I wanted t
o see you. I wanted to ask you to go to the concert tonight.”
“It’s Giulia Thalmann, isn’t it? Oh, I should like to hear her.”
“Good. I’ll stop and get you. Dinner first?”
“No. I won’t have time to do it comfortably.”
“Cosy down here, isn’t it?”
“Francis, there was something I had on my mind to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“What was it, now? Oh yes! I started to make up a limerick about Mr. Belknap. And I got stuck, so I wanted you to finish it. It went—let me see—
A scholar who came from Ohio
Was deeply enamored of Clio.
But then what?”
“That’s quite a problem. There isn’t much that rhymes with Clio. There’s a place near Paris called Chaillot. And there was a Spanish scholar named Menéndez y Pelayo. But I don’t see how to drag them in.”
“I was thinking of ‘heigh-ho.’ ”
“No. That makes an impure rhyme with ‘Ohio,’ and in a limerick you must above all things be pure. There is ‘trio.’ But I don’t see how to do anything with ‘trio.’ Wait a minute. . . . Here comes something. . . . Quiet. . . . Absolute silence. . . .
A scholar who came from Ohio
Was consumed by a passion for Clio.
I dunno what you use
When you ravish a Muse,
But you never can tell till you try-O.”
“Mild.”
“Not one of my best efforts. But I didn’t have time for meditation. A good limerick is produced by meditation, labor, and prayer.”
“What, a mere limerick?”
“Scorn not the limerick. It is our commonest and most beloved verse-form. It has its own perfection. Try making any alteration in its structure; every alteration is for the worse. Like all art, the beauty of a perfect limerick arises from the fitting of a beautiful, gem-like thought to a strict and difficult pattern. I call it the ‘poor man’s sonnet.’ ”
Gilda laughed.
“It’s the only important verse-form which the English have invented. And the strange thing is that it did not come into the open in English poetry until about a hundred years ago. How could it have escaped Shakespeare, for instance? Or Milton?”
“Edward Lear invented it, didn’t he?”
“No. He took it from an anonymous collection of verses for children entitled: Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen, which was published about 1820. My own theory is that it was developed from nursery rhymes. ‘Hickory, dickory, dock’ is in limerick form, and is probably very ancient. It suggests in its wording an old gypsy spell, which begins: ‘Ekkeri, akai-ri, you kair-an.’ And that suggests the numerals in Sanskrit, and also the very ancient Anglo-Cymric score, by means of which the shepherds still count their sheep. Fascinating how things hook up. ‘Dance a baby diddy’ is a limerick too, come to think of it. Well, I imagine that the illustrious, though unknown, writer of the Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen realized the possibilities in the thumping rhythm and brought it for the first time into literature.”
“Didn’t Lucie Coindreau have some theory about the limerick?”
“Yes. She had turned up a couple of examples, one from the Ménagiana, I remember, of the mid-seventeenth century. It had the right rhyme-scheme, a a b b a, but lines three and four were the same length as lines one, two, and five. I had to tell her it was an improper limerick.”
There was a short silence. Gilda suddenly decided to try Lieutenant Kennedy’s technique.
“Speaking of Lucie,” she said, “did you ever have an affair with her?”
There was a longer silence.
“You asked me that once before, Gilda. And I said no. After all, a man is supposed to say no.”
“Not to a girl he wants—well, not to me.”
“Maybe. Lucie is dead now, and what I say can’t affect her. It can only affect me. Well then, I did have an affair with her.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you marry her?”
“I didn’t really love her. It was what she called a passade. She was pretty angry because that is all it was. She was apparently fonder of me than I was of her. No doubt this is all very boorish of me, if not caddish, but you wanted the truth and I am telling it to you. We went for one week-end together to a shore resort. And then we didn’t go again.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the fact is, she had too much temperament for my chill northern blood. Besides—”
Though Parry’s mood had been tensely serious, he permitted a gradual smile to develop on his face.
“The fact is, our week-end cost about a hundred and fifty dollars. And at that time I wanted to buy a set of the Encyclopædia Britannica. And when the question of a second week-end came up, I thought it all over and decided I would get more lasting satisfaction out of the Encyclopædia. I tried to explain tactfully to Lucie; I described the Encyclopædia in most glowing terms, and suggested that we should sit side by side, reading it aloud to each other. I showed her the advertising brochure. She nearly murdered me with it.”
Gilda might have been amused had it not been for Francis’s last phrase. Someone had actually murdered Lucie, out of love or hate, such love or hate as Francis had hinted beneath the humorous surface of his tale. No doubt he had told the truth. But he was too inclined to shy away from the really important, the really serious, and turn it into a joke. And also, come to think of it, he was a very good actor. He could express his feelings very well; he could also disguise them. She sat impassive, trying to reveal none of her thought.
She shivered, and rose from her chair.
“Come on, Francis. I must be getting back to work.”
Francis’s long arms shot out. One hand caught her by the neck and drew her imperatively toward him. With a little cry she twisted sidewise, out of his grasp. Then she laughed.
“Francis! I thought you were going to strangle me!”
“My idea was that I would kiss you!”
Again his arms reached for her.
“Francis! No! Not now! Not here!”
“Why not?”
“Not in the Library!”
The tense, ridiculous pout of a man about to kiss disappeared from Francis’s face. He laughed.
“I see. No desecration of the temple. Amour in the stacks strictly forbidden. Well, all right, my dear Gilda. Back to work. You go first. I’ll see you this evening, anyway.”
As Gilda climbed the circular stairs Francis, close behind her, amused himself by pinching her ankles, just above the shoe-heels.
Chapter XVI
WHEN FRANCIS Parry called for Gilda that evening, he seemed to have something on his mind. He showed her into his car, a natty convertible, and set his course for the Lancaster Memorial Auditorium.
Gilda was reminded of a recent ride in another natty convertible.
“I wonder what will become of poor Mr. Hyett’s car, and the rest of his things,” she said.
There was no answer. She looked at Parry in surprise and saw him staring somberly through the windshield. He caught her look.
“What? Sorry. I was thinking of something else.”
“Has anything happened?”
“Well, yes. Your friend Lieutenant Kennedy and his merry men have been in, searching the Faculty Club. Purely a matter of routine, he explained.”
“Don’t they have to have a search-warrant or something?”
“I believe so. But he put his visit on such a friendly man-to-man basis that I didn’t ask to see the search-warrant. After all, if I objected I might become a major suspect, and then he would drag me off for questioning and search the rooms anyhow.”
“But they wouldn’t suspect you, Francis, would they?” Gilda glanced slyly at him.
“I don’t know why not. If I were Lieutenant Kennedy I’d suspect me. There are moments when I even suspect myself. Anyway, he found out one thing. He tried out all our typewriters. He wanted to find out who wrote that card, you know, ‘Thou shalt do no mur
der.’ Well, he discovered that it wasn’t written on mine.”
“I wonder whose it was written on.”
“It was written on Hyett’s. Kennedy just couldn’t help telling me. For a sleuth, he doesn’t seem to carry reticence to a fault.”
“So! On Hyett’s typewriter! That proves that the words were written by Hyett as a warning to someone else, and not by someone else as a warning to Hyett!”
“I suppose so. Unless someone else had access to his typewriter.”
“Possible but not probable. It suggests further that Hyett knew or suspected something about the death of Lucie Coindreau.”
“Are you going in for solving murder mysteries? Isn’t that a little dangerous, my dear Gilda?”
It was dangerous, Gilda recognized. It was particularly dangerous as long as the name of Francis Parry was not crossed off her list of suspects. She changed the subject.
“Did they find the manuscript?”
“No.” Parry grinned. “But they found something else in Hyett’s rooms. They found a peerless collection of dirty pictures. Judging by Kennedy’s pop-eyed description, they were mostly things with some sort of classical or artistic justification. Art at ten dollars a volume, Greek vase-paintings, wall-paintings from the lupanars of Pompeii.”
“Lupanar! That’s a pretty word.”
“It’s a beautiful word, now that you mention it. Swinburne was probably crazy about it. It belongs in the rich, syrupy poetry of the 1890’s.
Why is my soul unpopular,
A leper in a lupanar?
If Oscar Wilde or Ernest Dowson didn’t write that, it’s because they never got around to it.”
Parry seemed to have recovered all his good spirits.
“Look! A parking-space!”
Parry sped toward a vacant space by the curb, but was beaten by a station-wagon. For fifteen minutes all his attention and Gilda’s were taken by the parking problem, that gigantic game of pussy-wants-a-corner which occupies so large a part of America’s time and energy.
The two entered the Lancaster Memorial Auditorium, a great melancholy hall used for such functions as the University Music Series, commencement exercises, and the productions of the Motley, student musical comedies which derive their only humor from the fact that the chorus girls are large hairy-legged males, singing bass.
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