Majoring In Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  “Why didn’t he?” I asked, placing the clean cups in the drainer next to the sink.

  “He couldn’t stand the rejections. When he was a kid, he said he was going to write a best-seller and make us all rich. He always had some scheme going to make money. He tried three or four times, and each book was sent back with a form letter.”

  “What kind of books were they?”

  She snorted softly. “Mysteries mostly. But after the last one was rejected, he decided that kind of book was dumb anyway and tried nonfiction.” She placed her fingers over her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No apologies necessary,” I said. “Go on. I’m interested in the sort of things he wrote.”

  “He loved puzzles. That’s why I was surprised that he didn’t stick with mysteries. Mysteries are such wonderful puzzles to solve. When we were kids, we used to hide a prize and then leave clues for each other to find, kind of like a private scavenger hunt.”

  “Is that what he meant in his letter when he told you to investigate like you used to do together?”

  “I guess so. I’d forgotten about that.” She paused before saying, “Is now a good time to say I’m an admirer of yours, Jessica Fletcher?”

  “That’s very kind,” I said.

  “I’m not being kind,” she said. “It’s the truth. And I’m not just buttering you up so you’ll help me.”

  “What help are you looking for?”

  “What I’m hoping is that you’ll help me find Wes’s killer, if there is a killer.”

  “We need to find out more before we can make that determination,” I said. “Harriet mentioned that he was published widely. Obviously he didn’t always receive rejections. What were his successful books?”

  “Oh, I don’t know all of them. I remember that the first book he sold was an analysis of the work of Daniel Defoe. All his published works are academic treatises of one kind or another.”

  “Do you know if he was working on a book now?”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It would have been great if he was writing a novel. He always dreamed of writing fiction. Maybe Harriet is right. Maybe the letter is a product of his imagination. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know, either,” I said, “but a policeman in New York once told me, ‘Just because a guy is paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t after him.’ ”

  Lorraine smiled, as I hoped she would.

  “You suggested I wait till after the autopsy before I speak to the police,” she said. “What do you think the autopsy will show?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m hoping it will say what killed him. And I don’t believe it was falling furniture.”

  “Can the autopsy tell you that?”

  “It can say whether the blow to his head was fatal, and sometimes what the object that hit him was made of, but it may raise more questions than it answers.”

  “When can we get the report?”

  “Tomorrow, I hope. Dr. Brad Zelinsky, the county coroner, is doing the autopsy. He was a friend of Wes’s. They played cards together.”

  “They played cards and he remained a friend?” Lorraine said. “That’s a first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Wes was a real cardsharp.”

  “He was?”

  “Another of his get-rich-quick schemes. He must have read every book in the library on how to win at cards.”

  “And did he win?”

  “He was pretty good. That’s how he earned extra money through college.”

  “By gambling?”

  “Yup. But he didn’t keep any friends, not after he took their money playing poker, bridge, canasta, gin rummy, anything he could place a bet on.”

  “He was in a friendly game with his colleagues. They had a limit on what they could lose.”

  “I’m surprised he stayed in it. He liked a high-stakes game.”

  I dried my hands and sat down next to her. “Would you mind letting me see his letter again?” I asked.

  “Sure. You can even keep it if you want. This is only a copy. I was afraid she might tear it up.”

  “Harriet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think she would have done that.”

  “You know her. I don’t. I didn’t want to take the chance.”

  Lorraine gave me the letter and I reread Wes’s message.

  “What did he enclose with his letter?” I asked. “Was it a key?”

  “This,” she said, drawing a chain from under her turtleneck.

  “A locket?”

  “It’s got a picture of us inside.”

  “May I see?”

  She opened the locket to reveal an old, cracked photograph of two little children playing with a kitten. “We must have been around eight and ten when this was taken.”

  “Do you think he meant it as a keepsake?” I asked.

  “Wes was never a sentimental man.”

  “I wonder why he sent it to you.”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d help me find out.”

  I sat back and thought of Harriet’s angry reaction to my questioning how Wes Newmark died. She was obviously not anxious for his death to be anything more than a freak accident, an act of nature aided and abetted by his poor judgment in not seeking shelter. I certainly didn’t want to upset my friend. Still ...

  “I’ll help any way I can,” I said. “But no jumping to conclusions, no rushing to judgment. Chances are your brother died accidentally.”

  I looked into her open, honest face and knew I really didn’t mean what I’d just said.

  “Yes, Lorraine, I’ll help you.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Who can tell me who wrote the first classic whodunit?”

  I was happy to see a few hands go up. Classes had resumed at Schoolman College, and it was comforting to take up the routine again. My class had about a dozen students spread out across the room, many with laptop computers on their desks, and some with minicassette recorders to record my lecture, certainly a change from my college days, when students who didn’t take notes were marked down for not paying attention.

  “Eli?”

  “Was it from the Bible, Professor Fletcher?”

  “There may be some mysteries in the Bible, Eli, but the classic whodunit is a fictional genre. You need to think a bit more modern times, but not too modern, mind you.”

  “I know,” Alice called out. She was parked in a wheelchair, her broken ankle encased in a colorful cast and propped up on the raised leg rest. A pair of wooden crutches was tied to the back of the chair with a bungee cord.

  “Tell us,” I said.

  “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “No, but you’re in the right century, at least. Anyone else?”

  A dozen blank faces stared at me.

  “I know you’ve read him in high school.” I wrote a name on the blackboard to a chorus of groans. “Edgar Allan Poe,” I said. “Now, who knows which of his stories we’re talking about?”

  The students shouted out titles of familiar Poe stories.

  “ ‘The Black Cat’?”

  “ ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’?”

  “‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “ ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is considered the first classic whodunit, and from this mystery classic, in which a crime is committed and then solved—those are the two elements that define the mystery—all other kinds of mysteries have descended.”

  “What do you mean, ‘other kinds of mysteries’?” Tyler said. “How many different kinds of mysteries are there?”

  “I’m glad you asked that question,” I said. “Mysteries are often categorized by the different elements in the story. When you pick out a mystery, what do you look for? For instance, who is the person who investigates the crime? Is it an officer of the law? A private investigator? A medical examiner? An amateur sleuth?”

  “I like the ones whe
re a private investigator is on the case.”

  “Okay, Tyler. That’s one kind of mystery.” I wrote private eye on the board. “Mysteries may also be grouped by setting. What kind of atmosphere does it have? Does it take place in the city, in the country, or someplace special?”

  “I like it when they go back in time and solve a mystery no one ever solved before,” said Janine.

  “A historical mystery,” I said, adding it to the list.

  The students caught on to the labeling and began calling out their guesses until we had a list of twelve, having added cozy, gothic, horror, police procedural, spy, thriller, legal, suspense, forensic, and hard-boiled to our original two.

  “You can see that there are many variations on the classic whodunit,” I said. “We could come up with more. There are no hard-and-fast rules. For instance, some people group female private eyes separately.”

  “I like it when a woman solves the crime,” Alice said. “Most of the time it’s men in the stories. I like to read about women.”

  “Women sleuths are very popular today,” I said as Edgar Poole, the graduate assistant, entered the class and held up a sheaf of papers. “Thank you, Edgar,” I said. “Please distribute them, if you don’t mind.” I’d given him a list of books and articles on mysteries to photocopy, but with the English department temporarily housed in the library, and without its usual complement of equipment, he’d had to beg a favor from another department to accommodate my request.

  “While Edgar is handing out your reading list, who can tell me how to classify writers who use humor?” I asked. “Where do they fit in with the list we have on the blackboard?”

  Freddie, a gruff young man with a shock of brown hair hanging in his eyes, raised his hand. “Would you make it a subcategory of what we already have? Say ‘humorous cozy’ or ’comic suspense’?”

  “That sounds logical,” I said, writing the word humor on the board with arrows pointing to the main categories.

  “I’m writing a funny, hard-boiled, horror thriller,” said Eli, tugging on his earlobe. “With lots of blood.”

  “Are you?” I said. “How far along are you?”

  “I’ve got about fifty pages done.”

  Of all my students, I found Eli especially appealing. There was a brightness to his face and walk that was contagious, youthful enthusiasm for everything around him that was hard to ignore. I could have done without the baseball hat worn backward and the impossibly long and baggy pants that rode down on his hips, but cosmetics aside, he was a likable young man.

  “Where is your book set?” I asked.

  “On a college campus,” he replied. “I figured I’d write what I know about.”

  “Good idea,” I said, a vision of Wes Newmark’s battered body coming and going in my mind as though someone had put up a slide, and then clicked it off my screen.

  “I look forward to reading your book,” I said, quickly adding, “when you’ve completed it and have done all the necessary rewrites.”

  There were a few groans at the word rewrite.

  “All good writing is in the rewriting,” I said. “And having a solid plot and outline, complete with detailed character sketches and a logical timeline, is crucial. We’ll be discussing how to craft a good outline in future classes. For now, let’s stick to a discussion of some of the basic elements that go into murder mysteries of all types. It used to be that readers of hard-boiled mysteries rarely picked up a gothic. Fans of cozy mysteries would never be seen reading political mysteries. But today many authors weave mysteries into their works just to fit into the genre. So you get combination genres, like mystery-romance and mystery-science fiction. Even among pure mystery writers, there may be many overlapping qualities, because the definition of a mystery is growing. In the last decade, mysteries have experienced a kind of renaissance, gaining widespread acceptance and filling most of the slots on best-seller lists, so much so that we now have bookstores that sell only mysteries, and Web sites that focus on mysteries in general, or specific mystery writers in particular. We have publishers that specialize in mystery books. Many mystery writers have become celebrities, appearing on nationally broadcast TV talk shows.”

  “I saw you on the Today show once,” said Barbara, a petite brunette sitting in the front row.

  “I’m flattered that you remember.”

  Edgar, who’d taken a seat in the back of the classroom, waved his hand. “What’s your favorite kind of mystery, Professor Fletcher?”

  “I like them all,” I said, “but I have to admit a partiality to the amateur sleuth. I like the idea that an everyday person like you or me, without special training or unusual abilities, can be an acute observer of humanity and of daily life, and see things that others might miss. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple is a good example. Dame Christie introduced her in The Murder at the Vicarage. And, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle created his brilliant amateur sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, based upon a professor he once had in medical school. Miss Marple and Holmes solved mysteries by being particularly observant of things going on around them.”

  “What kind of things, Professor?” Tyler asked, typing on his laptop as he spoke.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you an example. Let’s take Eli. What’s different about Eli since our last class?”

  The students turned in their seats. Eli stood, grinning at me.

  “I know,” Alice said. “He got a haircut.”

  Eli shook his head.

  Tyler hazarded a guess. “He’s wearing new pants?”

  “You doofus. I wore these last week,” Eli said to his friend.

  “You’re growing a mustache, right?” Janine said.

  “Nope. Thought I could get away without shaving today.”

  “Maria? Jake? Barbara? Freddie? Anyone have any ideas?”

  Eli put his hands on his shoulders and did a slow pirouette.

  “I give up,” Tyler said, turning in his seat. “There’s nothing different about him. He’s always been nuts.”

  “The first order of business if you’re going to solve a mystery,” I said, “is that you must be observant. You have to notice the little details, so that if there’s a change, you’ll catch it. People in training to join a police force or the FBI take courses in how to sharpen their observational skills. It’s one of the key traits used in mysteries.”

  “So what’s different about Eli?” asked Alicia.

  “You’re giving up so easily?”

  The students looked at Eli and back at me.

  “He’s wearing an earring,” I said.

  “So what’s the big deal?” Freddie said. “I wear an earring.”

  “Eli’s never worn one to class before,” I said. “It’s not a major change, but it’s a change. Sometimes the smallest detail provides a clue that leads to the solving of the mystery.”

  “That’s so cool, Professor Fletcher. I just got it done on the weekend.” Eli turned to Tyler. “Like it? It’s eighteen-karat gold.”

  “Cool,” Tyler said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was waiting for you to notice, man.”

  “Let’s say a murder took place while Eli was having his ear pierced. That would give him an alibi for the time of the murder. Maria, how would you define what an alibi is?”

  “It’s an excuse, isn’t it?”

  “That’s correct. It’s from the Latin word alius, meaning ‘elsewhere.’ Eli was elsewhere, having his ear pierced, at the time of our hypothetical murder. And if a person can present an alibi to the authorities, one that can be confirmed, he or she will no longer be a suspect in the crime. The investigator must look for someone else.”

  “How do the police decide someone is a suspect?” Maria asked.

  “Following a crime, the police start their investigation by asking a lot of questions. Who knew the victim? Who might have wanted that person dead? Who was seen near the crime scene? And little by little they narrow down their list of potential suspects by focusing on tho
se people who fill two requirements.” I wrote two words on the blackboard—motive and opportunity. “There may be several people who have a motive, a reason to kill the victim. But there will be fewer who had opportunity. Where was the suspect at the time of the murder? In our hypothetical murder case, even if Eli has a motive to kill the victim, he also has a firm alibi. Therefore he is removed from the suspect list. Yes, Eli?”

  “What happens if there’s a death and it looks like an accident but it really isn’t?”

  “What are you asking?”

  “Well, how do they find out it’s not really an accident?”

  “There are several ways that might happen,” I said, “but let’s put it to the class. What do you think would indicate that a death thought to be an accident is not an accident at all?”

  “Ooh, ooh, I know,” said Tyler, waving his arm.

  “All right, Tyler, start us off.”

  “The guy is heavy in debt to the mob. That’s how they get rid of deadbeats. They make it look like an accident.”

  “Okay. That’s a possibility. If other people have died under similar circumstances, that may cause the police to look a little more closely at this victim. That’s when the police recognize a modus operandi, or method of operation.” I wrote M.O. on the blackboard. “Criminals often use the same M.O. from crime to crime.”

  “Like the Boston Strangler?” Maria said.

  “How do you know about the Boston Strangler?” I asked.

  “I read about it on the Internet.”

  “Maria is referring to a famous case,” I said. “The Boston Strangler was a serial killer who always chose single women, living alone, as victims. There was never any forced entry, suggesting that either he knew his victims, or he presented a trustworthy appearance. And in each case, he molested them and then strangled them with a piece of clothing. That was his M.O.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Alice said.

  “Murder is never pretty,” I said. “Let’s get back to Eli’s question. What might trigger a police investigation into a seemingly accidental death? Barbara?”

  “What if the police found a clue at the crime scene?”

  “Give us an example.”