Honest Doubt (11 page)

Yamaha,
I scribbled back.
What book is he talking about?
I added, nodding at the professor as I handed the paper back.

Who the fuck knows?
he wrote in return, handing me the paper with an enormous shrug of his shoulders. I had kept my eye on Goldberg, who frowned in our direction; I tried to look apologetic and humble. But he wasn't glaring at me; he was glaring at my dozing, note-passing companion. “Mr. Ferguson,” Goldberg said, spitting out every syllable, “I have no objection to your sleeping; I quite understand that my taking attendance persuades you to sleep here rather than elsewhere. I would, however, appreciate your not conversing, vocally or by pen, with anyone else.”

Mr. Ferguson saluted in answer, tipped his chair back, and closed his eyes. I thought his behavior unnecessarily rude, but Goldberg certainly seemed to be a pompous ass, and not exactly courtesy himself.

When the lecture was over, Mr. Ferguson exited with haste, but he waited for me on the stairs. “Could I see it?” he asked. “Your wheels?” he added as I looked bewildered.

“It's over in the parking lot,” I said. “I think it's the only bike there. You can look, but don't lay a finger on it; I'll know where to look if there's so much as a fingerprint.”

“Got you,” he said.

We continued down the stairs together. “Mr. Ferguson,” I said. “You don't seem to care much for American literature. Why are you in the class?”

“You have to take a certain amount of lit beyond the survey. I had Petrillo for the survey; an okay guy, but he tended to stick around old times. I mean, who cared what they were doing that long ago? I thought American lit would at least make some sense, but forget it. Goldberg is not only a shit, he's a boring shit. Like calling me Mr. Ferguson. He calls all the others he bothers to notice, or who bother to suck up to him, by their first names. I'm not worthy of that honor.”

“I wonder,” I began, and then decided not to beat around the bush. “Why are you in college at all if it bores you out of your mind?”

“Sports,” he said, as though that explained everything. I looked my question.

“Yeah, sports at Clifton, if you can believe it. I hardly can. They play in some league so minor no one's ever heard of any of the colleges. But hell, they gave me a scholarship, and the folks thought it would do me good to go to college and help me to get on in the world. Not all the courses are that bad; he's the dullest and the biggest prick. None of them's great either.”

“Do many students feel the way you do?” I asked. “About Goldberg and the college in general?”

“Many do; they have these stupid required courses—an asshole idea. There's too much lit required, and most of the students think these old guys are like from some other universe. Well, nice talking with you; I'm off to look at your bike and feel it up a little. Just kidding. Don't freak.”

Somehow there didn't seem much point in waiting around to talk to Goldberg. I didn't mind Petrillo mentioning sin, but there's only so much religious stuff I can stand in one day. I went back to the department and waited outside some more office doors. I didn't learn much. If one of these professors was hiding a murderous hatred, or an act of murder, he or she was not going to let it all hang out during their first interview with me.

My last encounter that day was with Kevin Oakwood, the adjunct teacher of creative writing. When I got to his office and explained who I was and what I wanted, he told me he couldn't sit still another minute, and if I wanted his perspective, I'd have to buy him a drink. I agreed, and off we went, he with a briefcase stuffed with papers and I with my bag and helmet. He didn't question the helmet. I got the impression other people didn't interest him much, least of all fat, no-longer-really-young women. He marched at a great pace and I followed like a pet bulldog.

He led the way to a seedy bar, hardly devoid of students but unlikely, I gathered, to appeal to students who might want to corner him and talk about their writing. He did, however, accept several greetings in a way that suggested he was not above picking up companionship here, and would probably do so when I had left. It didn't take a detective to figure that out.

We sat at a small table. I offered to go to the bar and get the drinks, which seemed the right thing to do. It also avoided his asking me what I wanted, which was nothing alcoholic; if I got it myself, the seltzer might look like gin and tonic. He wanted beer, a large one. “The thirst those creative types create is unbelievable,” he told me.

When I returned with his beer and my drink, which he didn't even glance at, he gulped beer for a while, and then lit a cigarette. “I guess you must be the detective they've hired about the murder of Lord Tennyson,” he said. “Yes, I was there that day, and no, I didn't do it. What else can I tell you?”

“I'm surprised you teach creative writing if you don't like the students or their work,” I said, hoping to get a rise out of him. A lot of useful stuff rises with rises.

“Jesus, sweetie, where did they dig you up? I know there're some writers who like teaching writing, encouraging the young and all that, but mostly they're poets and mostly they're ladies, and mostly they couldn't write themselves out of a wet paper bag. I write novels, and I teach writing to pay the rent and buy the necessaries. Like beer,” he said, finishing his off.

“Have another,” I said, figuring that was the only way to keep him there any longer.

“Thanks, I think I will,” he said. I got up to get it for him. I could have made him get it, but I needed to pay for it, and the thought of handing him the money didn't sit well. I suspected he wouldn't bring back any change.

He started talking as soon as I was back. “The real trouble,” he said, “isn't the students; they're not bad, they like to write about kinky sex and quirky parents—well, I guess I encourage that, but I have to read the damn stuff, don't I? It's the older women, the alumnae, who are allowed to take the course. They've all decided to write their stories, and believe me, their stories are as exciting as their bodies, which is to say not at all. I mean, who the fuck cares about their marriages or their affairs or their bloody children? And I can't tell them to go home and do some laundry, because if I make them happy they may give the college a little token of thanks for the college kitty and say it was all due to me. It's to puke.”

“You are a member of the English department?” I said, putting it as a question.

“Hardly a member. Just under their rule, and they pay my meager salary. I don't go to meetings and I don't know anybody in the fucking department, so it's no good interrogating me.”

“But you went to Haycock's party.”

“Got an invitation, which is to say a command. No good insulting the guy. I didn't stay long, though. Of course, I didn't know someone would bump him off after I left, or I might have hung around for the big event.”

“It wasn't worth staying for the free drinks?”

“Hardly. I'd already packed away a few. And one of the students hired to pass around the drinks and nibbly bits slipped me a large Scotch, so I was feeling just about right when I left.”

“Is she in your writing class?”

“Was. I give her more private lessons now. Well, you know,” he added, as though it had occurred to him that perhaps he wasn't making a terribly good impression, “she's here on a scholarship and has to work besides. I bring a little bit of frivolity into her demanding life.”

“Would you care to guess at who, of those you know in the department, might have wanted to kill Professor Haycock?”

“Anyone with all his or her marbles. The guy was crackers, and had far too much power. He even suggested that I get the students in my classes to write Tennysonian verse. I told him I don't teach poetry, but what I would have liked to tell him was . . . Well, he was paying my pittance, wasn't he? Or the department was, and he could have stopped it. I can't be sure the next chairman will even want a creative writing program, so why kill off the old fool I was sure of ? That suit you for an answer? As to who else would want to knock him off, I haven't a clue.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You've been very helpful. I appreciate your giving me the time.”

“Hey, no rush, is there? Don't you want another G and T?”

“One's enough for me,” I said, and walked away. But as I was leaving, I saw him move over toward one of the girl students. Well, I thought as I trudged back to the parking lot, if someone murdered him I wouldn't even take the case.

We, we have chosen our
path—
Path to a clear-proposed
goal,
Path of Advance!

—MATTHEW ARNOLD, “Rugby Chapel”

Nine

THE next evening I sat in Kate's living room spilling my guts. I was feeling humiliated, insecure, and in need of consolation and support. I would really have liked to lie down on the floor next to Banny and rest my head on her huge body, but I sat up in a chair and, fortified by the drink Kate had offered, tried to display what dignity I could muster. It wasn't much. Kate listened sympathetically and didn't try to interrupt or halt my complaint; she allowed it all to spill out.

“I'm out of my depth, useless, incompetent, and inadequate,” I announced, just for starters. “I'm a pretty efficient person, or thought I was. I get results; I have a good record; most of my cases are satisfactorily concluded. I size people up, figure them out, catch all the nuances, especially the unintended ones; I'm a good listener, and until this horrible case came along, I would have told you I was a good detective—first-rate, in fact. On this bloody assignment, I find myself spinning around in a state of bewilderment. I don't know what to make of what anybody says, except maybe the Haycock family. That's familiar enough.

“But I ask you: plays about Tennyson and required courses and tenure decisions and Freud worship — give me a break. I'm resigning, in fact. I thought it only right to tell you first. Next comes Claire Wiseman, then Don Jackson. Then I write a formal admission of failure to the family and the English department at that lousy college, together with a bill for the time I spent. After all, I did work for them, and success is not guaranteed, although in my own mind I always thought it was.”

Kate opened her mouth to speak, but I beat her to the punch. “Don't try to talk me out of quitting. I went to college, I went to law school—it isn't as though I'd never had an academic experience. I might as well have been running this investigation in a small foreign country with an unknown language. I don't wonder people came to you to investigate their academic crimes. Who else could possibly get what the people in today's crazy institutions of higher learning were talking about.”

I stopped because I was practically out of breath, and anyway I couldn't think of any more angry statements. Maybe I put it on a bit thick, but everything I said was true. I hated letting Kate down, and Don, but for the rest—well, it was my first absolute failure and I hoped never to think about any of it ever again. Also, I should in honesty add that since I'd come in the evening, leaving my bike at home, I'd enjoyed my drink and was set to go on to more if asked. Kate had said she had more time in the evening, and today I was going to need it; perhaps she had figured that out.

“Surely,” Kate said, “there have been cases that seemed unintelligible at some point, where you thought you'd better just bow out. I've never worked on a problem where I didn't feel like that at least once in a major way—more often in a minor way. I expect you're really farther along than you know. I think you need to talk it through. I'm listening.”

I accepted another drink, single malt Scotch—it goes down smooth and doesn't seem to cause the usual confusion in one's mental capacities; they just loosen up a bit. The drinks certainly didn't stop me from giving Kate a neat account of the bloody affair, not quite from the beginning—she'd heard that— but from the last time we'd met. I had to backtrack just a little to fill in now and then, but on the whole I did well. Kate thought so too.

I'd come provided with a list; she already had the department list and the family list, but I added the names of everyone who had set foot in the Haycock house on the day he keeled over. Everyone, down to delivery men, student helpers, and Haycock relatives not earlier designated. Then I told her, word for word, every conversation I'd had. I described every place I'd been, I left out my interpretations or impressions, if any, but I accounted for every minute spent on the case. So by the time I wound down, Kate had all I had. Which wasn't much, or wasn't what I'd call coherent.

I shut up, took a sip of my drink, and looked expectant.

“This may sound wild,” Kate said, “but I have to ask it. Can you be absolutely certain that Haycock didn't take the pills himself, that he didn't put them in his special wine and hope that someone else, anyone else, would be accused of murder? I know it's unlikely, but not unprecedented. Let's say he was simultaneously discouraged about the reception of his life's work on Tennyson, fed up with his family, and finding purpose and excitement in the thought of the havoc his death would cause. Is there any evidence that is not the case?”

“I can't say it's altogether impossible,” I said, pulling myself together. “I did float the idea here and there, not to the family but to his colleagues. They all dismissed it as out of the question. The general opinion seemed to be that he was far too narcissistic to consider doing away with himself, even for the chance to cause general misery. Uppermost in his mind would be the thought that he wouldn't be there to see the fun. I also played around with the idea with Don Jackson; he'd thought of it too. If we don't find who did it, we may be able to console ourselves with this theory, however.”

I took another sip, slowly. “I'd like to cling to your idea for dear life. But there's something else against it having been suicide. There was the same amount of digoxin in both the bottle of retsina and in Haycock's glass. If he could have put it in the glass to kill himself, why put it in the bottle too?”

“Am I missing something?” Kate asked. “If there was a certain amount of digoxin in the bottle and he had poured himself a glass, wouldn't you expect the two solutions to be the same?”

“You would, if he had put his self-administered dose in the bottle. But why do that? Why take the chance of someone else showing up who liked retsina, unlikely as that might be? Why not put his dose in his glass? Then he's safely dead and no one else is. If you see what I mean.” It seemed to make sense to me, but perhaps the single malt Scotch was having more effect than I realized.

“I see what you mean. Neat deduction. But can we be sure Haycock, if he had decided to leave this world, would not want to take a few people with him? That might strike him as a suitable ending to the lack of appreciation he'd been dealt.”

“Well, we can't have it both ways.”

Kate nodded. “Good. Let's abandon that idea for now. I thought it important to mention. The other reflection that has occurred to me has to do with Tennyson. I mean, there has been a tendency on everyone's part—his colleagues first of all and then yours and mine—to consider his relative lunacy about Tennyson as particularly germane to his murder. But I tend to think that Tennyson was a symptom, not the cause.”

“Antonia said that—that if Tennyson were the main motive, Haycock was likelier to have killed her. And what do you mean by
relative
lunacy?”

“Believe it or not, I've known cases of greater lunacy, of really mad devotion to one's subject. We all tend to get our own subjects a bit out of proportion; we defend those we have written about and resent others who cast aspersions, even reasonable ones. Then there are the real nuts like the Freudian advocates, who won't brook the slightest criticism or reinterpretation of holy writ. This type comes with devotion to a whole range of individual writers and thinkers. I'm not sure that Haycock quite reached the maniac dimension,” Kate said, sighing. “But I think it was good to mention that, as well as the theory about suicide. They've cleared our heads a bit.”

“They may have cleared your head,” I said, “but they haven't done much for mine. The point, you see, is that I feel that I've wandered, or allowed myself to be led, into a situation beyond my capabilities. I've studied all the information I've gathered so far, I've looked at it upside down and backward, and it's . . . well, what I said—I don't really know this foreign country's culture or its language. I think the best thing for me to do would be to bow out. It would also be the fairest all around.” I had the feeling that I might have said this before, but if so, I thought it would bear repeating.

In fact, I really felt awful, which is why the Scotch didn't seem to be making me drunk, or merry, or full of hope and resolution. I've noticed that there are times when one hopes for release by way of drink, and if the problem or fright is sufficiently serious, release does not come, as it had not come now.

I thought Kate might feel impatient, but she didn't. I suppose over the years she had dealt with enough discouraged students wrestling with their dissertations and convinced they'd picked the wrong subject to know what I was talking about. I decided to point this out.

“Look, surely you've had students who started writing on some literary subject, say Tennyson, and then they discovered, partway through, maybe halfway through, that they were so bored or annoyed by him and his poems that they couldn't continue. Well, that's how it is with me. Hasn't that happened?”

“Rarely, in fact,” Kate said. “No, I'm not tampering with the truth in order to persuade you to continue. There have been one or two who quit, but not many. One I can think of was writing on Swinburne and had reached the point of total abhorrence. He said it was like that drug alcoholics take to stop drinking: any alcohol at all and they vomit. One more glance at a Swinburne poem and . . . well, you get the point. But most of the time, the writer of the dissertation needs to approach the subject from a different angle— often only slightly different, as it turns out— or needs to expand or contract the extent of the original idea. That happens quite often. Anyone who writes, let alone works on a dissertation, often has to switch gears, change the emphasis, cut the material to be covered, or move whole sections around. It doesn't mean that quitting is the only solution, and it seldom is the one taken.”

“That's a nice little speech, and neatly applicable to my situation. Except that this job isn't a do-or-die situation; I just go on to other jobs more suited to my talents.”

“Sorry if I sounded patronizing,” Kate said. “I was just recalling the dissertations I'd sponsored and how they turned out. But I guess I was talking with a motive, which was to persuade you not to quit. You may not find the murderer; if you do find him or her, you may not be able to prove it. But for your own satisfaction, I don't think quitting is called for. Not yet.”

I sighed. Deeply.

Kate laughed. “Look, Woody, if you really want to quit, you should. Don't worry about what I'll think, which will be nothing critical of you. Don't worry about what the people who hired you will think. Who knows what their motives are anyway? Just ask yourself how you'll feel after the satisfaction of signing off has started to dilute just a little.”

“You sound convincing. You're ready to talk about the case with me, and I'm mighty grateful for that. Why do I get the feeling that you're keeping something back—that you don't want me to quit for all the reasons you've so movingly laid out, but that there's some other reason too? Maybe my suspecting this is just an indication that my intuition, when applied to academic, intellectual types and folks practiced in literary criticism, is out to lunch?”

Kate got up to get another drink. Once she was back in her seat, drink in hand, Banny moved over to her, thrusting her nose against her arm.

“She's telling me it's time to go out,” Kate said, setting down her drink. “And it is. How about that walk we talked about the three of us taking?”

“At night, in the park, in the dark?” I asked. I'm used to danger, but I don't cultivate it in parks in the middle of the night—well, evening.

“I rather think that Banny, you, and I will be quite safe enough. Banny and I don't go into the park at night alone. Usually Reed is with us. It's become a routine, at least when possible. You'd be surprised how many people are in the park, and not all muggers and worse.”

“It's a deal,” I said. Probably the air would do me good. Also, I figured, if Kate was going to deliver a low blow, I'd rather be walking in the dark when it hit.

So the three of us strolled in the park, Banny ahead without a leash. “I thought big dogs had to be leashed now,” I said. “One of the mayor's ways of interfering in city life.”

“Not after nine at night,” Kate said. “Or before nine in the morning. That is not an hour when I am conscious, but sometimes Reed takes her out then, if he's woken up early. Let's look at the lake. I always hope to see the swans. They mate for life, and arrive in pairs.”

I kept quiet. We walked past the lake while Kate was pulling her thoughts together, deciding what to say, and how to say it.

She finally spoke. “Woody, what I'm going to say is just a suspicion, a theory, no more likely to be true than my earlier idea about Haycock's possible suicide. What I'm going to say isn't necessarily the truth, has no foundation other than supposition, and may be nonsense.”

I nodded, though I didn't know if she could see me nod. “Go on,” I said. “Tell me your second wild idea.”

“You see, you remember that earlier I said I had a wild idea. You remember words; you're smart. I've learned how smart you are. But as you say, this isn't the sort of case you usually undertake or, in fact, have ever undertaken. Also, you tend to make remarks about your being fat, which also makes a certain impression. What I'm trying to say is—”

“I get it,” I said, interrupting her rather loudly. “I get it. You think they hired me because I was too stupid to figure it out, because they knew that with me on the trail, the murderer would get away with it. They hoped I'd be just as bamboozled as . . . as I am, in fact. That was the whole idea. Is that what you were going to tell me?”