A Trap for Fools

by Amanda Cross

  “How do you know he hadn’t been considering it for quite a while?”

  “I don’t think, do you, he would have died without a note, without arranging for the final stages of his book’s publication, or, even more tellingly, that he would have killed himself on the campus of the university where he had so firmly kept his secrets. He would have guessed the questioning and gossip that would follow, and I can’t believe he would have chosen that. Do you think it likely?”

  “No. Nor do I think him the sort of man to commit suicide, unless he had a fatal disease or something of the sort, and I assume that possibility has been eliminated.” Kate nodded. “On the other hand I have trouble thinking of him as a murderer’s victim. He bored and annoyed many people, I understand that, but if that led to murder it would be a common crime.”

  “Exactly. I think he was pushed, and I think whoever did it hated him for reasons far more visceral than the usual academic disagreements, not that some of those are not visceral enough. I have a much clearer picture of him now, and I’m grateful to you. Are you ever going back to the Crusades?”

  “No. I no longer believe in holy wars. You see, some of us old codgers can learn.” And they went on to chat of other things; Kate had another cup of tea and another sandwich; she was in no hurry to leave Mr. Witherspoon, for whom she had developed, for the complex reasons that do touch us, deep affection. It occurred to her also, as she walked home, that she was probably one of the few people Mr. Witherspoon saw these days who had no interest in his money.

  Kate walked home through Central Park, entering it at Seventy-sixth Street on a path that would lead to the Ramble, a wooded, countrylike area. She would have to swerve off this path to avoid it; it had become dangerous, its thick growth and small walkways providing excellent cover for muggers, rapists, and purse snatchers. In her youth its dangers had been incipient, not yet real, giving the place an air of adventure that added to its attractions; the worst, as far as Kate could remember, had been the occasional man exposing himself: leering, inviting, essentially avoidable and harmless. Suddenly, as happened these days, Kate remembered her mother recounting her upper-class New York girlhood, afternoons spent scrambling in the Ramble, the governesses waiting patiently on benches below, talking to each other, keeping an accustomed but not fearful eye on their charges as they popped in and out of the bushes, their voices far more in evidence than their persons. There had been, Kate’s mother had said proudly, nostalgically, accusingly, no danger then. As though to blame the “elements” that had taken over “her” park. It was an attitude Kate had, early and late, found despicable.

  Kate’s ideas and attitudes had never been her mother’s, not from the earliest remembered moment. Yet the past returned, and Kate knew what Mr. Witherspoon had also apparently learned, that nostalgia for old times and old values was little more than a yearning that poverty, despair, and desperation might keep themselves decently hidden from those lucky enough to have escaped them.

  That was the sort Adams had been: a person not unlike Kate’s mother, though younger, Kate, had been born when her mother was well past forty, so that there had been a generation missing between them, a generation occupied by Kate’s brothers, who were little better than the mother, with less excuse. For had Kate’s mother ever really had a chance to understand the system to which she gave such unthinking allegiance?

  Kate emerged from the park and continued westward, toward home. The West Side had changed also, becoming the home—or at least the strolling ground—of swinging singles, where smart clothing shops of foreign origin pushed out the old hardware, shoe repair, deli shops. Never mind, for Kate there was no returning east. It had a wrapped-in-cellophane aspect that Kate could not bear.

  Returning to a Reedless apartment, Kate fixed herself a drink and contemplated that day’s mail. She performed this latter task poised over a waste-basket, dropping the greater part of her mail directly into it. The residue was bills, business letters, and two mysteriously (because they were without recognizable return addresses) enticing letters. Even with all the junk it now entailed, mail had never quite lost its promise of excitement. It did no good to analyze what one might be expecting, could possibly be anticipating. Most news, good and bad, came by telephone these days. The greater part of Kate’s mail was delivered to the university. Nonetheless . . .

  The first letter turned out to be from one of the Adams sons; he had heard about Professor Fansler’s task, would be in New York two weeks hence, and might they meet? Yes, Kate thought grimly, they might. The second letter was from England and was more exciting:

  “Dear Professor Fansler,” Kate read. “This is going to sound like one of those ‘small world’ stories. My daughter is married to an American; she and her family live in Atlanta, but her husband is this year a visiting professor at your university, and he heard about your investigation. He mentioned it to my daughter, who mentioned it to me in our weekly telephone conversation. I knew Canfield Adams very well at one time (if any one person can be said to know another) and Lizzie, my daughter, suggested that when I come to New York next week I might be willing to talk to you about Adams. She gives you a strong personal recommendation, since she has a close friend who works with you—as I said, a small world. I shall be staying at the address below, and can be reached by telephone. I understand there is a message machine if no one is home. Do let me know if you wish to meet with me.” The letter was signed “Penelope Constable.” Good Lord, Kate thought, the novelist.

  She looked at the date on the letter. Penelope Constable must have already arrived. Her letter, mailed in the wonderful English expectation of prompt postal delivery, had no doubt crossed the ocean promptly enough, only to be dillydallied with at the New York post office, where nothing was delivered promptly, apparently as a matter of principle. Kate went to the phone.

  She met Penelope, at that woman’s request, at the university. “I would like to see it,” she had said to Kate on the phone. “If you don’t mind showing me around for a bit, we can go on to dinner afterward. I could perfectly well ask my son-in-law to do the honors, but he would make what you Americans call a big deal out of it, and somehow it seemed more natural to ask you. Besides, he hasn’t been here very long.” Kate, welcoming Penelope into her office, smiled at the recollection of that conversation, put with perfect English delicacy, that had meant: Let’s meet on neutral, professional turf. That way, we can size each other up without having to fumble through domestic, feminine niceties.

  Penelope Constable—or PC, as Kate had come to think of her, since one of her book jackets mentioned that she was always so called—was exactly sixty-five years old. Kate had been able to determine that much by a glance at Who’s Who. The age had been a surprise, since PC’s jacket photos had been taken by one of those fashionable photographers of authors, who, by means of an airbrush or other arcane techniques, give their subjects the kind of youthfulness skin creams promise and never deliver. Yet the photographs had not really lied: there was something essentially youthful about PC, by which Kate meant something vital, and open, and busy. Her black hair was no doubt dyed, but she had an air of being entirely herself that Kate warmed to. PC entered the room carrying her coat and suit jacket; she lowered herself into a chair and fanned herself with a copy of the student newspaper she had picked up. “I never get used to how hot Americans keep their buildings,” she said, smiling. “When we were all freezing in England we used to envy American central heating, but why do they turn it up so high?”

  “I don’t think they really control it,” Kate said. “It’s like our economy, our foreign policy, and the stock market—always taking the bit between its teeth and bolting, no one quite knows why. I have managed to keep the heat off in my office by carefully destroying the control so that no one can turn it on. And I keep the window open.”

  “I shall be fine in a moment,” PC said, putting down her newspaper. “To be perfectly frank, I don’t quite kno
w why I’m here; a novelist’s fascination with the fact that Adams has been murdered, I’m afraid. He was so dislikable, I find I’m not even disturbed at the news, though I am surprised. Can I be dreadfully ghoulish and ask to see the place where he fell to, perhaps even from?”

  “Of course,” Kate said. “Would you like a tour now, including the spot where the body was discovered?”

  “A woman after my own heart, as I suspected,” PC said, putting on her jacket. Kate grabbed her coat and they were off.

  When they stood, some time later, contemplating the path where Canfield Adams’s body had lain, PC looked up at the window of his office with amazement. “The last person I would have expected to come tumbling down from that height,” she said, “no matter what the cause. He was the sort of man who annoys almost everyone, but not enough to cause so dramatic an act, if you know what I mean. You might want to turn him into an ant and tread on him, but you couldn’t be bothered shoving him out a window. He was too easy to ignore.”

  “You’re perfectly right,” Kate said. “I hadn’t thought of him that way, but, irritating and obtrusive as he could be, he didn’t inspire me with thoughts of mayhem. I just wanted to get away from him as fast as possible. But if you went out of your way to meet him, as one assumes you did because you can hardly have been put together on committees, I assume he had some charms I missed.”

  “The chief charm he had,” PC said, “was that he was nice to me when I thought no man would ever be nice to me again. That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. I really think you ought to know what I can tell you of him, but I think I need a moment or two to collect my courage. Shall we go somewhere for a drink and dinner? If you can suggest a restaurant, I’d be delighted to have you as my guest.”

  “Nonsense,” Kate said. “My turf, my guest. But do say honestly, would you rather eat out or come home and put your feet up? I’m quite alone these days, with husband traveling. I can offer you drink, a steak—not eaten these days by anyone with cultural clout—salad, and a baked potato. That’s about the extent of my cooking. I can also suggest a good restaurant.”

  “Home sounds wonderful,” PC said. “I want a loo, a comfortable chair, a whiskey, and an American steak sounds like very heaven. Do all Americans brood about cholesterol night and day?”

  “All. They think they have found the secret of living forever. Forever seems to mean golf and bridge games, and the dubious rewards of jogging. I take no part in it. Shall we walk, take the subway, or a taxi?”

  “Do you mind a taxi?”

  “Not a bit,” Kate said, hailing one. “With any luck he will speak at least a hundred words of English, not drive like a lunatic, and have put off drugs and drink till after work.” The taxi pulled up and Kate ushered PC in.

  “You enjoy New York City,” PC said as they started off. “I can see that. It’s the sort of criticism only a lover indulges in.”

  “Of course,” Kate said. “New York is not like London, a now-and-then place to many people. You can either not live in New York or not live any place else. One is either a lover or hater. Unlike one’s attitude to Adams, now that I think of it.”

  They smiled at each other, glad to have met, anticipating conversation and community. The taxi driver raced through a red light, pausing to shout obscenities at an old man he had barely avoided, Kate leaned back and rolled her eyes; PC smiled. She had a lovely smile.

  Chapter Six

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat these two impostors just the same

  “Tell me about him,” Kate said when they had eaten, talked of many things, and were back in the living room with brandy and a sense of having known each other forever. They had covered every topic from contemporary fiction through the new opportunities of women’s friendships and the perhaps concomitant greater impatience of women with stilted men, ending up with the state of England’s economy and the extent to which it resembled the two nations of Disraeli’s time. With a distinct sense of reluctance Kate brought them back to the issue at hand. How like Adams it was, she pointed out to PC, to force upon them the discussion of a subject as dreary as himself; unfair, because without him they would never have met at all. “How exactly did you meet him?” Kate asked.

  “It’s a rather shameful story, I’m afraid. We were living in Cambridge at that time; let me see, fifteen years ago, as I live and breathe. I hadn’t got any notice as a novelist yet—I’m one of your later arrivers. The children were growing up, my husband was involved in his particular brand of physics—that’s what he was doing in Cambridge, as a matter of fact—and who should come waltzing into Cambridge but Professor Canfield Adams, visiting fellow. He’d been invited to spend his sabbatical leave there; you know, all the perks, dinner at the high table, and accommodations. I suppose he was rather lonely—many Americans are lonely at Cambridge or Oxford; even Auden was, I understand, when he returned to Christ Church. We met in the most conventional possible way, at a dinner party, he without wife, I, as I often was those days, without husband, and a hostess who would have had fibrillations if the sexes had been unevenly represented at her table. I can’t remember who else was there, or even why I went, probably to avoid hanging around the house; anyway, he and I were easily, at least in each other’s eyes, the two most interesting people there. He saw me home, and then we seemed to bump into each other, conscious intention on his part, I soon realized, unconscious on mine, or perhaps just the devil at his work. God knows, my hands were idle. We drifted into an affair, my first, as it happens, in a long, long time. Your eyes widen in amazement.”

  “Do they?” Kate asked. “Sorry; it’s the thought of you finding him attractive enough, well, even for long walks.”

  “You probably only saw him being recalcitrant on committees. Of course, I found out soon enough how recalcitrant he could be. But like most men, when he set himself to be attractive and attentive, he succeeded, with help from one’s own damp ego. He did me good, as a matter of fact, for quite a while.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Oh, several things,” PC said. “The beginning and end of those dalliances are always over-determined, don’t you think? For one thing, I met his wife. She taught also, you know, at a different university, political science, and she was totally unsuspecting and a lot nicer than he was. By then I’d got to know him better. Then my husband began to remember he was married to me and not to a black hole and, well, what with one thing and another, Canfield Adams and I drifted apart. I remember now, though, as I talk of it, which I hadn’t ever done before, that the beginning of the end came when I did meet him by accident at the market when his wife was with him. She greeted me warmly when we were introduced, and he did such a smooth number in pretending he and I hardly knew each other that I was quite put off. There isn’t much more to it than that, except that I can tell you he had his charms, which you might not guess, but he was also basically an untrusting, unloving man. I said today I was surprised that someone would want to kill him, but I take that back. I was ready to dump or be dumped when he decided to cool toward me, but if I hadn’t been I can imagine I might have been rather angry, even revengeful. Can any of this help?”

  “Oh, it does. The problem is,” Kate sighed, “the new young wife alters the situation considerably. I mean, he isn’t likely to have dallied in quite the same way recently.”

  “Surely you don’t think he was killed by an angry woman. I mean, he must have been getting on; I know, we all are, but who would kill for love and fury over us; certainly not over Adams, don’t you really think? I’ll tell you something probably more significant about him.”

  “Do,” Kate said. “I gather you knew him when he was about to be off with the old wife and on with the new. Or were you well before that?”

  “Well before, I should have thought,” PC said. “Anyway, what I was going to tell you is that I met one of Adams’s sons in Cambridge; he
’d come over with his mother, and I got the distinct impression that he did not care for Dad. I saw them all later, you see; somehow, my husband and I offered to take them on a sort of tour, and we spent the day together. Long days are indicative.”

  “Did you call him ‘Adams’?”

  “No. That’s how I think of him now, talking to you about someone dead. I called him ‘Canfield.’ ”

  “Go on about the long day.”

  “I can’t remember the details. Not even exactly where we went; indicative was the operative word. The wife—I’m afraid I’ve forgotten her name, and the son’s too; it was the relationship that seemed paramount, and of course my husband and I were trying to mend our relationship under cover of this party—the wife was being nice. I don’t mean making an effort; she was nice. But she had tolerance and an air of determination not to be irritated by anything whatever. The son was clearly annoyed at Dad, and absorbed in his own thoughts. When I said ‘indicative’ that was all I meant, you see, except that if I were you I’d talk to the son.”

  “I’m about to,” Kate said. “Not that I’m sure I’ve got the same one you had; time will tell. Why do I have such a fatal sense of knowing Adams better and better and getting nowhere?”

  “I should think you would have developed the necessary patience by now,” PC said. “You’re involved, after all, in what some German youth group called ‘the long march through institutions.’ It’s a slower revolution but with better results, in my opinion; I’ve just muddled along in my individual, cowardly way.”

  “How does your daughter like spending a year in New York?”

  “She quite likes it; it’s an interesting change from Atlanta. She’d be very happy to meet you, by the way. Would you be able to bear a dinner party, if I promise you the sexes will not be equal? Perhaps I should ask the Adams son and kill two birds with one stone, as the hideous cliché goes.”