The Edith Wharton Murders

by Lev Raphael

  But wait, wouldn’t he have known what his own wife looked like, even in a darkened hallway? Admittedly, the corridor had been quite dark, and he might have been rushed, but still—

  This was crazy.

  Serena said, “What? What’s crazy?”

  Everyone at the table was staring at me. I blushed, realizing I must have spoken aloud. I had to calm myself down.

  “I mean, like the beatniks used to say it. You know: Crazy, man.”

  If I weren’t the Wharton bibliographer and so essential to Wharton studies, I don’t think the scholars sitting at that table would have smiled and nodded.

  But they kept looking at me, and as if to shoo them off, Serena addressed the table at large. “Have any of you noticed that Wharton’s lover was always photographed sitting down with his legs crossed, or behind a desk?”

  There were blank and puzzled looks around the table, and then they were replaced with recognition. Serena was right. I had never seen a picture of dapper, mustachioed Morton Fullerton—the lover Wharton took in her forties—standing up.

  “Why do you think that is?” Serena asked, a strange glint in her eyes. She seemed to know the answer, and she let the silence draw itself out.

  A few puzzled scholars bit and said, “Why?”

  “He was so enormously hung it would have been embarrassing. It may even have been a Parisian law.” She pronounced it “low,” like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, but I don’t think anyone sitting with us got the reference or could tell she was being salacious just to cause trouble. I was the only one who laughed.

  But Serena wasn’t done. “I’ve been thinking of doing an essay,” she announced. “About the way that Fullerton’s sexuality affected Wharton after their affair. I’m calling it ‘The Penis as Protagonist in Wharton’s Later Fiction.’”

  What was this? Wharton stand-up?

  Serena laughed gaily. “Just kidding,” she said, but one or two scholars at the table seemed to be considering the possibilities of the subject.

  “Pleased?” Serena asked me, as everyone turned to other topics.

  I shook my head. I’d drifted off to thinking about Chloe’s murder again. “About what?”

  “The chicken.” She pointed.

  I looked down at my plate. I had been eating chicken breast stuffed with spinach and fontina and only at that moment did I realize it was very good. It was as if my taste buds had gone completely off-line while I mused about Joanne and Chloe.

  I took another forkful, but before I even got it to my mouth, I was struck by a question that Valley hadn’t really asked anyone last night. What was Chloe doing in that dark corridor? If Joanne Gillian often got confused because of her dyslexia, that was one thing, but Chloe would have known where she was going, wouldn’t she? Even if she was lost, which was easy to do in the Campus Center, that corridor was dark and there was a heap of tiles at one end. Why would anyone think that was the right way to go?

  Someone must have lured her there—but how? With a note? A phone call?

  When the coffee came, Serena leaned closer and said, “I love this, you know.”

  “What?” I turned to her.

  “Oh, being an éminence grise. Nobody really knows what I’m doing here, or that I’ve been as involved as you are in the conference.”

  “More,” I said.

  Serena waved that off. “And when they ask what my area is and I say Canadian Studies, it throws them. I like confusing my peers—they’re so used to thinking they know everything.”

  “Have you been reading about Wharton?” She must have, to be familiar with photographs of Morton Fullerton.

  “A biography or two, and I looked through your book, as well.” Her tone made my bibliography sound arduous and punishing. I couldn’t blame her. Bibliographies are pretty scary if that’s not the kind of work you do or enjoy. “Say, Nick. Remember Laugh-In?” she asked. “Remember the joke wall, and Goldie Hawn? Well, since Edith Wharton was so bossy, if she had married Morton Fullerton, would he have been Morton Wharton?”

  Despite myself, I chuckled. It might have been an idiotic joke, but I was in need of some laughs, even cheap ones. And Serena seemed to sense that.

  “Maybe we should have scheduled a talent show for tonight,” I said. “First prize to the best Wharton look-alike.”

  Serena pursed her lips. “Too tame. What about a prize for juggling the most numbers of flaming copies of The Age of Innocence?”

  Before I could answer, she tapped my wrist, pointing at my watch, and I realized it was time to get going with the lunchtime speaker, Van Deegan Jones. I’ve always hated listening to people at the end of a conference meal; I’d rather just digest in quiet. I wonder if it’s really respectful anyway for people to be chewing and slurping while someone tries to weave an argument or build a theory. But now that I’d been on the other side as an organizer, I understood the pressure to cram in as much as you can in a few days.

  I headed for the oak lectern that had been set up near the window where I’d talked to Vivianne. I didn’t embarrass myself or anyone in the room by tapping the lectern or making any kind of teacher like announcement. I just started right in on my introduction.

  And it worked. Everyone shut up, turned or yanked around their chairs. It was easy to introduce Van Deegan Jones since he was a pillar of Wharton studies. I even called him that. He nodded gravely from his seat, acknowledging the justice of my praise, looking very professorial in his dark blue suit, blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, and sober red and blue print tie. Applause was hearty, though louder from his cohorts than from Verity Gallup’s minions.

  Jones sauntered up from his table with suitable gravitas as I thanked him and headed back to my seat.

  “Don’t you mean pill, not pillar?” Serena asked out of the side of her mouth like a scrappy gun moll.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jones said magisterially, waving a small sheaf of paper that was evidently his talk. “We’ve experienced a tragedy here. A terrible tragedy, even though to most of us the victim was a stranger. Be that as it may, in all good conscience, I think this conference should be disbanded. I ask you, how else can we show respect for the dead?” He surveyed the audience as if daring someone to prove their rudeness and disagree. “I’m sure this is what Mrs. Wharton would have wanted.”

  There was a confused silence as people registered the implications of what Jones was saying, and then came a general outcry.

  Verity Gallup roared from her seat at a table near the door: “Patriarchal bullshit! How the hell would someone like you know what Wharton would think—unless it’s because you’re dead!” She leapt to her feet, looking, with her blond hair and leather jacket, like a funky Amazon. “How dare you talk about what Edith Wharton would want? You’ve never cared about that when it comes to her fiction! All you want to do is subvert her voice. You’re not suggesting we leave because of the murder. It’s because you’re desperate to flee the unmistakable evidence of your intellectual sterility. Now that you’re face-to-face with really original scholarship, you want to bolt.”

  Looking like he was ready to throttle Gallup, Van Deegan Jones shouted back, “You’re a fraud, an imposter, a charlatan. You jumped on the Wharton bandwagon because she was trendy. And ever since, you’ve been covering up your lack of knowledge about Wharton with abstruse critical language. You’re the last person in the world to talk about original scholarship! You have nothing to say so you hide behind Derrida and Lacan. Derrida is caca, and Lacan is a con!”

  I was stunned by this mean-spirited display, even while the bibliographer in me noted some inaccuracies. Actually, Verity Gallup’s book had used the boring theorist Bakhtin, not Derrida or Lucan, to mask the triviality of her analysis of Wharton’s short stories. But it was un fair to say that she had come to Wharton late; she’d been writing on Wharton for years. I was the bibliographer. I knew.

  “You want to cover up everything negative about Wharton!” Verity Gallup yelled at Jones. “You want
her to be a fucking saint!”

  “You’re bottom feeders! You thrive on garbage—innuendo—rumor—gossip—fantasy! That’s not literary criticism, that’s literary terrorism!”

  So now the hostility between the two groups was completely out in the open, and the bloody line drawn deep in the sand of the bull ring. Around me, people looked either stunned or excited, and I half expected a circle to form around Jones and Gallup, with chants of “Fight! Fight!”

  At her table, Joanne Gillian sat there with eyes aglow, eagerly taking in the melee like a pyromaniac enjoying someone else’s fire. Bob Gillian looked perplexed, but then he wasn’t a Wharton scholar, so he probably didn’t know what the argument was about. I thought he was despicable, coming here with Joanne to help her gather evidence of SUM’s moral collapse.

  I’m not sure what possessed me, but I felt fired by some strange elation. Before Gallup or Jones could say another word, or call on their supporters for help, I rose from my seat and shouted, “Wharton studies are alive!”

  I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that all eyes were on me at that moment. “They’re vital! They’re exciting! They go to the heart of the academy, challenging us all—”

  Well, you get the picture. I was an academic version of a preacher, except my gospel was more mealy-mouthed, I guess. I wasn’t challenging people to change their ways, I was piling on the flattery and bombast, improbably claiming that the intensity in the room was a sign of intellectual vigor.

  No one gagged. In fact, they applauded.

  I know Stefan would have been appalled by my outrageousness—at least at first—but he wasn’t there to pull me back into my seat, so I went over the top. Like President Clinton with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, I held out my arms, waving both Jones and Gallup over to my table.

  Reluctantly, they were drawn to my display of fellowship, and they shook hands. The crowd was ecstatic. They gave us a standing ovation. Some even cheered, which made me think they were definitely lacking for real drama in their lives.

  Priscilla, however, did not rise. I could see her sitting with her head bent and hands clasped on the table as if in silent prayer.

  Verity Gallup and Van Deegan Jones muttered what might have been thank-yous to me, and broke away, heading for their acolytes. As people filed out to the afternoon sessions somewhat early, I sank into my chair. I was grateful that Serena was the only person still at my table.

  From over by the door, I heard someone say rather loudly, “I came all the way from San Diego to give my paper and I’ll give it even if there’s a car bombing!”

  Serena Fisch grinned at me. “Can we arrange that?” She shook her head. “What dedication.”

  “Him? Me?”

  “You. I couldn’t have managed that Elmer Gantry jazz. I guess every conference needs some kind of holy roller.” And then while I grabbed my napkin to wipe my sweaty face, she changed subjects without warning. “Do you think Jones did it? Killed Chloe? Why else would he want to decamp? Look how he made Chloe sound like someone who wandered in off the street. And haven’t you noticed how odd he’s seemed since Chloe’s body was found?”

  I reached for my water goblet and drank greedily from it, though I’d have enjoyed pouring it over my head to cool off. I set it down and pulled open my tie and unbuttoned the top of my shirt. If Jones had killed Chloe, what was the connection with the Wharton societies?

  “Serena, what are you talking about?”

  “It’s simple. Chloe has such an evil reputation for blighting people’s careers, right? Then it’s possible she might have done something once that earned her Jones’s hatred.”

  But what about Verity Gallup? I wondered.

  “Are you speaking from experience?” I asked her. “Did something happen between you and Chloe? What you told Detective Valley last night didn’t sound like the whole story to me.”

  Serena grimaced. “That’s because it wasn’t.” She patted at her hair as if she’d just come off a ferry ride. “Years ago, when the Rhetoric Department was axed and I lost my chairmanship, I went job hunting, but quietly.”

  “Last year you told me you didn’t want to leave Michigan back then.”

  Serena rolled her eyes. “I was dying to get out. I was mortified to go from being in charge to being one of the crowd. It’s not easy for me to talk about it. The job search was a disaster. Only one interview, at Emory,” she said bitterly. “That was a success, but Chloe was writer-in-residence there that year and threw her weight. I know for a fact from someone on the hiring committee that Chloe blackballed me. It was my best chance to get out of Michigan, to leave behind the cold, and to for get having my department ripped out from under me.”

  “And Chloe ruined it.”

  “Yes. Chloe ruined it.”

  “Why?”

  Serena frowned. “Does it matter? She didn’t like me, or my work, or my nail polish. Maybe she just wanted to veto some candidates to show off. People like Chloe don’t need a reason to inflict cruelty on others, to shaft them. She’s like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, breaking people and things, but she doesn’t retreat into her money, she scuttles back into her ego.” After a second or two she said, “Scuttled.”

  “But are you sure Chloe was the one who spoiled your chance?”

  “Sure enough. And whoever killed her should get a medal,” Serena hissed.

  I was shocked by the hatred in her face and voice, and Serena hurried off as if she felt the same. So that’s why she hadn’t come to our reception for Chloe…

  I was alone in the littered dining room, except for the waiters cleaning up, so I gathered myself together, picked up a nearby program, and headed outside.

  I didn’t get far.

  “You’re Dr. Hoffman?”

  The question came from a slim, pasty-faced young woman in a brick-red suit. Her blond hair was a squashed beehive, and she looked like one of the B-52s gone to seed. I didn’t recognize her, and felt at a sharp disadvantage.

  “I’m Brenda Bolinski, with the Michiganapolis Tribune. Hi.” We shook hands. “I’d love to interview you about the conference.”

  “And the murder?”

  She simpered. “I’m sure that would come up.”

  I sighed and she must have taken that for assent, because she flipped open a notepad and started right in, without even suggesting we go have a cup of coffee or sit down. “Now, who exactly is this Edith Wharton and who else besides Chloe DeVore was going to be in the movie?”

  “The movie. What movie?”

  “The movie about Edith Wharton. Isn’t there a movie being made here?” Puzzled, she glanced down at her notepad, leafed through a few pages.

  I couldn’t imagine where she’d gotten the misinformation, unless she was confused about the film we were showing that evening, but it didn’t matter. I was about to make up something about Denzel Washington and Demi Moore, when the reporter whirled around, her face suddenly ablaze. She pointed wildly down the hall at Grace-Dawn Vaughan, sheathed in a green and red scarf dress. Vaughan was headed for the ladies’ room.

  “I know her! She’s famous! I saw her on Oprah!” Grace-Dawn disappeared into the ladies’ room and Brenda Bolinski abandoned me for bigger game.

  I was relieved to be left alone. For one wild moment I thought of jumping in my car, picking up Stefan, and driving north to our cabin, but just as I was picturing the glories of Lake Michigan, Serena came bustling down the hall.

  “Nick, I was looking for you. There’s a local news crew here and they want to do an interview for tonight’s six o’clock show. Joanne Gillian’s been calling the media and claiming that what’s happened at the conference is a sign of SUM’s—” Serena closed her eyes in an effort to remember the exact phrase. They flashed open. “A sign of ‘rampant immorality and decay.’ Can you believe it?”

  I couldn’t answer, and Serena asked if I was okay, and wasn’t I planning to come to any of the afternoon sessions.

  Her question decided me. I grabbed one o
f her hands. “Please,” I said, “please take over for me for the rest of the afternoon. I have to go home and relax a little or I will explode.”

  Wide-eyed, Serena nodded her assent, and withdrew her hand, which I must have been squeezing too tightly.

  “Sure,” she said. “No problem. I’ll do the interview, okay?”

  “Anything.”

  I turned and walked to the Campus Center garage, amazed that I was actually going to escape this hothouse environment of murder, newshounds, and scholarship.

  WHEN I GOT home, I almost burst into tears. Stefan had filled several vases with clematis and set them around the house; I felt I was entering a sanctuary. Well, wasn’t I?

  “You’re early,” he said with delight, giving me a big long hug.

  “I escaped. If Tommy Lee Jones lands a chopper in the backyard, tell him you didn’t see me.”

  Still holding on, Stefan squeezed his arms together and cracked my back, the tension flying out of it at light speed.

  “You’re strong.”

  Stefan gave a Tarzan grunt and led me into the kitchen, slipping my jacket off for me and draping it over the back of one of the low-backed kitchen stools.

  “This has been a shitty day. I need a vacation. I need detox. I need Mace!”

  “How about this?” Stefan opened the fridge and brought out a plat ter. “Behold,” he said proudly, setting it at the center of the table. He’d made one of my favorite appetizers, crabmeat mousse, and decorated it with sprigs of fresh dill. Then he whisked something else out of the fridge: a bottle of the Kendall Jackson Reserve chardonnay we’d been enjoying more and more.

  I was too overwhelmed to say thanks, but my face must have shown my gratitude.

  Stefan smiled warmly. “With all those Whartonites, I figured you’d probably be a basket case by the time you got back.”