A Trap for Fools

by Amanda Cross

  “It is widely said,” he continued, “that the police aren’t interested in motive. In this case that seems to be all they have to be interested in; there wasn’t much other sort of evidence. But the police are hardly in a position to understand the motives or judge them rightly. Adams had fought with some members of his department to the point where they were barely speaking to him; there are a few who hated him with a virulence I used to find positively terrifying. But as we all know, in a university community that is far from meaning murder. Or was. I used to hear people say that the way to commit the perfect crime is to hit a total stranger over the head and disappear into the crowd. We are beginning to fear that where there are so many suspects you have the conditions of a stranger in a crowd. The case, in short, is unsolved. We turn to you.”

  “I could list my reasons for refusing to do what you want,” Kate said. “They are many. But to give many reasons is to suggest a certain ambivalence or guilt. So let me merely say no.”

  “We can’t let you say that,” the provost said. “You are our only hope of solving this thing.”

  “Then let it go unsolved. I understand about communities, and the finding of the guilty individual to return innocence to the rest of the community. But we have moved beyond those halcyon, or Agatha Christie, days. We are all guilty; Mr. Noble has already admitted as much. He has also admitted that the university community is well rid of Adams. So why not just announce that the best, unceasing efforts of the police, etcetera, etcetera, have availed us nothing? We can all get on with trying to make the university a better place without him, a more enticing task.”

  The dean of the professional schools, whose name was Edna Hoskins and whose demeanor comprised the velvet glove of maternal tolerance hiding the iron fist of determination, spoke next. “I told them you would never accept so horrendous a job on the excuses they were offering. But my colleagues feel that to give away information is to give away power; I believe in an institution where shared information leads to shared power and responsibility. We will probably never agree on that, but they will have to agree with me this one time. Or so I assume.” She looked around the room, her eyes meeting only resigned nods.

  “There are two reasons that might persuade you to help us. One is that the police have a suspect, and they are going to do their best to pin it on him, as I believe one says. You will recognize that that would be a disaster as soon as I tell you his name: Humphrey Edgerton. He has no alibi, was heard to threaten Adams, and, alone in the entire university apart from the security force, possessed a key to Levy Hall, which he shared with some students.”

  “Why on earth?” Kate asked, appalled. Edgerton was black, outspoken about racial discrimination in the university, and had been known to come publicly close to blows with Adams, restraining himself only after Adams, older and in no shape whatever, had collapsed on the ground close to apoplexy and with a bleeding nose before Edgerton had touched him.

  “Why did he have a key? Alas, because he needed a place to meet with black students and some faculty members on a regular basis. He insisted that it would be unreasonable to force him to go every Sunday, which is when they met, to get a key from the security office. Permission for this exception was granted, no doubt, if we are to continue this discussion in a mood of utmost frankness, which I certainly intend to do, because it would otherwise have seemed as though the administration was unwilling to trust a black faculty member with a key.”

  “Why hasn’t he an alibi, if everyone else does?”

  “He was trying to think something out, as he told his wife, and had gone for a long walk, heading downtown. I’m afraid, being black, he couldn’t get a taxi to take him back uptown, so he took a bus and was gone even longer than he might have been. No one saw him, he met no one, he has no alibi.”

  “What’s the second reason?” Kate asked, she hoped in a light tone. Edgerton taught literature, both American and Afro-American, as they were unfortunately still, like literature and feminist literature, separately dubbed. He and Kate were friends, at first more comrades because both felt marginalized by the university, lately friends because they had served together on many committees and had come to like and trust each other.

  “There is no way to put this but bluntly,” Edna’ said. “Adams’s wife, egged on by contingency lawyers, is going to sue the university for everything from negligence to unexplained death—I forget the technical terms. It seems if we can find the murderer, she can only sue us for negligence, if she can establish any. I mean, it isn’t as though the university had left all its buildings wide open, after many incidents of crime. The place could hardly be shut up tighter, more’s the pity; that’s what looks so bad for Humphrey, and doesn’t look that great for the university either.

  “Let me say one thing,” Edna interjected before Kate could speak. “I’m not going to pretend to you, though some of these gentlemen”—the word was very slightly emphasized—“wanted to, that it has been easy to turn to you in the capacity of chief investigator. But you must see, if you ponder the question as I urge you to do before giving us any answer at all, that you have all the requirements: familiarity with the situation, and tact—I know, I know, you’re not famous for it, but you know and I know that those who are famous for tact are always known as tactful and never believed—a proven ability at solving things, and the only absolutely unbreakable alibi among those who held Adams in less than perfect esteem.”

  Kate said, “You do realize that he might have been murdered by someone we don’t know hated him, or even knew him well. He could have been murdered by someone in this room.”

  “Touché. But we have to play the odds. And even if his murderer is wholly unknown to anyone, we’d rather trust you to establish that than the police, who, in my opinion, are likely to hit on the wrong person for the wrong reasons. A Zionist, for example.”

  “You’re not suggesting that Adams might have been working for the PLO?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. Adams was a specialist in Islamic history, and as far as I know had no passions one way or the other about Israel. But he certainly was against the study of modern Jewish history in his department, claiming that Israel only became a factor in the Middle East in the middle of this century. I didn’t mean to raise this question particularly; I’m trying to suggest that we are sitting on a powder keg, to coin a phrase. We turn to you, as a woman of remarkable lucidity of intellect, to coin another.”

  “I may do no better than Mr. Micawber. And, unlike Mr. Micawber, I may have a price.”

  This was the provost’s cue. “We are prepared to pay it. For results, of course. Even for a damn good try—one that, say, eliminated the current suspect.”

  Kate looked around the office. They all looked at her, waiting for a reply.

  “Damn,” Kate said.

  Chapter Two

  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too

  Edna Hoskins swept Kate up and into her, Edna’s, office, where she pushed Kate gently into a chair and rummaged in a cupboard for scotch. When they each had a glass, Edna raised hers: “To you, my dear. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. I don’t think Mrs. Micawber said that, but she might have. They planned for me to waft you off, by the way, so don’t be alarmed about the ruffled male feathers we have left behind on the rest of the administration. At nearly six, we’re all ready for a drink, but I for one prefer it in more congenial circumstances.”

  “You are the only congenial aspect of this circumstance,” Kate said. “Edna, what am I to do?”

  “What they ask. You haven’t really got a choice, as I’m sure you’ve realized. Let me back up. You have a choice: you can do it, you can refuse, you can name a price for doing it.”

  “I’ve never been paid for detecting.”

  “You’ve also never been hired, within the meaning of the term. Why
not ask to be paid in, say, student aid?”

  “Suppose I don’t find the murderer. Suppose, which is even worse, I find the murderer and don’t want to tell them who it is. To say nothing of where I’m to find the time for all this in the middle of a terrible semester. Besides, I realized something in there that frightened me: I don’t like the administration, and what is worse, I don’t trust them. Which is probably why they don’t trust me.”

  “Rather sweeping, don’t you think?” Edna said, putting her feet on her desk, as was her wont, and sipping her drink. Kate regarded her with that affection women who have been through a good deal in the professional world feel for one another.

  Kate said, “I’ve liked the occasional administrator, even a male here and there. But frankly I wouldn’t trust most of them not to choose expediency over principle every inch of the way. The definition of an administrator, at least of the old variety, is someone who knows what he can get away with. Every now and then they think they can get away with more than they can get away with: that’s when you have student sit-ins, campus disruption, and changes in the administration. The occasional woman does what she can, if she’s a gutsy woman, but she’s got to play the game. Right or wrong?”

  “Right and wrong. You’re too old and smart for absolutes. I think you’re afraid of failing. Afraid they’ll all say, We knew she couldn’t solve it; she’s been overrated, like most academic women, particularly those of the feminist variety.”

  “Oh, God,” Kate said. “Can I get access to what the police have found?”

  “Of course not. They intend to prosecute, and they’re not about to give away their evidence, not until they have to. What games you can get your husband, as an ex-D.A., to play, I neither know nor want to.”

  “Do you think the guys in there were counting on my asking Reed to help?”

  “There are no straws to which they will not clutch. Including you as a detective. Why not talk the whole thing over with Reed?”

  “Do you mind if I talk it over with you first?”

  Edna sighed, refilled her glass and Kate’s, and returned to put up her feet. She had raised four children with the help of a cooperative and loyal husband, and the security of that, and of having it all behind her, showed in her smile and in her assurance. She had been effective as a dean, and, felt, in her late fifties, properly used. Kate trusted her. “My view, for what it’s worth, is that you tell them you’ll poke around. Try to see how the land lies. Demand introductions, which is to say command performances, from anyone you want to see over whom they, any of them, have the slightest influence. In other words, not only will they provide you with leverage; the minute they say lay off, you lay off. I would also,” Edna answered with a mischievous look, “wave threats of publicity wildly around. It always serves to frighten away foxes and save the chickens. Don’t ask me why.”

  “You refuse to advise me to refuse, flatly and finally.”

  “You’ve already refused to advise yourself; you’d have refused in there, if you were really adamant. I’m willing to use your own strength for purposes I support. And mine. But think it over. When you’re ready, there is a certain amount of evidence the police have coughed up at the university’s insistence. You can have all that. There’s another reward you might consider. I promise you any member of the administration from the president down will talk to you instantly whenever you ask. Bound to be a certain gratification there.”

  “You,” Kate said fondly, “can go to blazes. But before you do, find me the most communicative member of Adams’s department. When I’ve talked to him, I’ll let you know what I’ve decided to do.”

  “Would right now be too soon?” Edna asked. “I’m trying to impress you with our eagerness to be helpful in all possible ways.”

  “You’ve got a member of Adams’s department hidden under your desk?”

  “No, you idiot. I mean you don’t need to talk to a member of his department; you can just listen to me. I may be dean of the professional schools, but Arabs and other rich folk wander in and out of my office, and I’ve had plenty to do, one way and another, with Adams’s department. It differed from most departments only in that the members did not bother to preserve even the most superficial cordiality. They all hated one another, and only agreed when it came to keeping others out of their department. Of course they could never agree on hiring anyone. Adams was once chair for a couple of years. He insisted on it, claiming seniority and every other possible entitlement. They had to give it to him, but it didn’t last even into the second year. He finally blamed his resignation on some personal problem at home with his wife, and thankfully disappeared, at least for a while. He demanded a semester’s paid leave as the price of stepping down, which gives you some idea of how Adams worked. There’s more, if you want it, but I honestly don’t think you’ll be very enlightened by talking to a member of the department. Still, if you ever want to, be my guest. Shall I find someone for you tomorrow?”

  “Let’s wait for several tomorrows, if not forever,” Kate said, and went home to think.

  Walking home, which Kate found always helped to clear her brain, she tried to remember, in some logical or at least chronological order, what she could of Canfield Adams. He seemed to her one of those circumstances of academic life, as mosquito bites were part of life in the summer, that had always been there and were part of the scenery, part of the activity, inevitable, ultimately uncontrollable. When you had said that he was pompous, long-winded, tiresome, a mass of personal mannerisms and twitches that horrified and fascinated his listeners, so that one could hardly bear either to watch or not to watch the jerking motions, the inevitable gestures, how far forward had you got? Most characteristically, he never seemed to finish a sentence, interrupting himself, winding himself into a cocoon of words, of digressions and digressions from digressions, until one wanted to end the sentence for him, or scream, or shoot him, or, Kate thought, shove him out of a window—anything to shut him up, or at least neaten up his syntax. Oddly, enough, but like, many tiresome academic speakers, he wrote well and clearly, if a bit given, pen in hand, to what he thought of as irony but what everyone else saw as sarcasm, petty perhaps but forthright.

  They had both been at the university so long that she could hardly remember their first meeting; it had certainly taken place sometime in the middle or late seventies, when universities began to feel compelled to put women on every committee. Since there were many committees and few women, Kate passed through various stages of confabulation and consideration in a very short time. Adams had appeared early on—of that she was sure. He was the sort of man the administration in those days liked and trusted, which meant that he was narrow-minded, with all of the usual prejudices as to sex, race, class, sexual preference, and national origin, but also that he could be counted on to carry out the administration’s desires. As the administration grew younger and a bit more forward-looking, he was less respected but not less in demand. The point of committees, after all, from the administration’s point of view, was to prevent anything rash or awkward from happening. Certainly he could be counted on to stall indefinitely against changes in the canon, the rules, the faculty, or the calendar.

  None of this would do, Kate told herself. Suppose, she thought, you had to describe him to someone—a Jury, or a lawyer, or a judge. Will you please give us an account of the first meeting you can remember having with Professor Adams? It would hardly do to say that every time she found him in a room she blocked him out, not seeing, not hearing him for fear that her intense antagonism would show. Well, Your Honor, he lied, he was manipulative, he told you one thing and someone else another. But it was worse than that; he really could not believe that anyone who disagreed with him could be right.

  Let’s start over, Kate told herself. Describe him. He was Germanic-looking, very fair, with that odd color hair that develops when very light blond hair turns white. At first glance, you might have thought h
im an albino; he seemed to have no lashes, and he had a beard the color of his skin. But he did not wear glasses, did not have weak albino eyes. Indeed, Kate found herself saying idiotically, one of my best friends is an albino. Adams thought of himself as a dandy and dressed accordingly; bad dressing was bearable; elegant dressing in evil men was oppressive. Some of my best friends dress elegantly.

  She remembered a story she had heard. An excellent woman student, some years ago, told by him to go home and stay with her children, perhaps find a temporary job at the five-and-ten. Today such a remark would be funny, annoying at worst. Then it had been crushing. There was also a subtle form of sexual harassment; nothing he had ever been caught at. Simply that he had mainly female students, and that they had to behave to him in a certain way—flirtatious, grateful, pleasing, endearing, humble. Could all the women students have conspired to push him out the window in a united action first suggested by Agatha Christie? But that had been on a train. In this case there had been no evidence left in the room. Or had there? Really, she knew so little, it was preposterous to ask her to play detective.

  No question about it, it was easier to seek wholeheartedly the murderer of someone you have liked, someone whose loss is evident, a general diminution of the humane. Why bother to find the murderer, if any, of a man whose demise one could only, if not rejoice in, at least accept with marvelous equanimity? For the same reason one did not believe in assassination or other kinds of violence.