Poetic Justice

by Amanda Cross

  “I too like Emilia. I like everybody concerned except the victim.”

  “Could the victim’s estranged wife have sent round doctored pills—suppose she put two regular aspirin in and Cudlipp got them at the first shot?”

  “Even if he managed to get one aspirin at the first shot, his chance of getting both was, statistically speaking, nonexistent. If we’re going to have to count on a long shot like that we’d better give up before we start.”

  “Speaking of starting, whatever is happening to your sausage and peppers? Don’t you think …”

  “No,” Reed said, “I don’t. The great thing about electric frying pans, my bachelor friend said, is that they can be ignored for hours and hours.”

  but we, at haphazard

  And unseasonably, are brought face to face

  By ones, Clio, with your silence.…

  your silence already is there

  Between us and any magical center

  Where things are taken in hand.

  Eight

  THE next morning Kate was able to reach on the telephone a young man presently teaching at the College whose dissertation she was directing. He had been a member of her Victorian Seminar several years back and had, after one-and-a-half semesters of the soundest work on the Corn Laws, Reform Bill, Carlyle, and John Stuart Mill, developed a frivolous and unaccountable passion for Max Beerbohm: not his life, nor his times, nor even his works as such, but his sentences. Since it is impossible to study all of a writer’s sentences in the ordinary way without a century of time, the young man (whose name was Higgenbothom, but whom Kate always thought of as Enoch Soames) had soon entangled himself with computers. With something between relief and dismay, Kate had handed him over to a stylistics expert, though she had remained on the dissertation committee. Higgenbothom agreed to come and see her at four, relieved and mystified to learn that his dissertation would not be the subject under discussion.

  Having arranged that matter, Kate settled down to the reading of some student papers, and was soon lost in wonder at the inability of highly intelligent students properly to construct a sentence. It occurred to her to wonder if computers might be enlisted in her constant struggle against wobbly syntax and sociological jargon. “Being a young writer, the novel was filled with fresh ideas,” was typical of sentences which greeted Kate’s wondering eyes. Nor was this the worst. She read with horror of the subdued dynamics of Ruskin’s interpersonal relations and could not at once hit upon a comment for the margin which was both succinct and mentionable in a scholarly ambience. Thinking of Max Beerbohm and then of her bright, reform-minded young students, Kate marveled not for the first time at the inverse correlation between moral outrage and sentence structure: apparently one could be radical or syntactical but not both; a disturbing thought. And where, Kate thought, her mind dwelling on interpersonal relations, would Reed have got in his investigations?

  Reed, at that moment, was vamping the secretary of the College English Department, a pitifully easy thing to do. He had been considering, on the subway, alternate possible approaches to a subject which, simply stated, was a demand to be told when Cudlipp received the bottle of pills, and where and how and what he did with them. The question was how to counter the inevitable “Who are you and why do you want to know?” which, while easily answered in a way, would immediately put the lady on her guard and negate the possibility of always-useful gossip. As it turned out, he need not have concerned himself. Miss Elton was a type with which he was agonizingly familiar. She appeared to have been born with a smirk on her face; she was one of those whose chief reward in life lies in snubbing others, particularly women. But let any male treat her in a truly manly fashion—that is, combining the worst features of a spoiled teenager and an aging roué—and she would bat her eyelashes as readily as their great load of mascara allowed, and succumb. Before you could say Blazes Boylan, Reed was sitting on the edge of her desk discussing bottles of pills. Auden of course, Reed thought, had got it perfectly:

  So pocket your fifty sonnets, Bud;

  tell Her a myth

  Of unpunishable gods and all the girls

  they interfered with.

  “He and his wife had separated,” Miss Elton confided. “I know because I filled out the application for him to the University housing office; he wanted a small apartment for just him, with a room for the kids to stay in once in a while. But the pills were delivered as usual to his regular apartment, and his wife dropped them off here the morning he died. I took them into his office, and he said ‘Thank God, I just took the last two,’ and he showed me that little gidget he always carried them in was empty. He began opening the bottle, which always made him swear because it was sealed—like whiskey you know—and then he started telling me all the things I had to do while he filled the tube with the pills.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, I’d made the appointments the day before with those jerks from the University College—Cudlipp couldn’t stand them, but for some reason he decided to see them; we all supposed Clemance had talked him into it. I heard Cudlipp talking to Clemance recently when they walked out of here and Cudlipp said, ‘All right, I’ll see those students, but if one of them tries to pressure me, I’ll throw him out.’ He used to, you know.”

  Reed raised his eyebrows provocatively.

  “Throw people out,” she said, giggling. “He would open the door and yell ‘Get out!’ and if they didn’t, he’d put his hands on their chests and push. With men of course. He didn’t see women much in his office.”

  “Was there any chance he would have considered hiring women teachers in the College?” Reed asked, remembering what Emilia Airhart had told Kate.

  “I hope not. What a dreary bunch they are, all brains and messy hair. The College boys wouldn’t go for that, believe me. If we ever get women working around here, I quit; I’d never work for a woman.”

  “Did all the people Cudlipp had appointments with come to his office or did he go to theirs?”

  “You a detective or something?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am, but keep it secret, honey. It’ll be a real feather in my cap if I can clear things up—you know, universities don’t like hanky-panky.”

  “You ever been a spy?”

  “I go where the money is, so long as there’s plenty of it. So all of Cudlipp’s appointments came here?”

  “Yeh. Here’s the appointment sheet, Mr. Bond. Though really, I ought to turn my back so you could steal the page underneath the one I wrote the appointments on—the one with the impressions of the writing.”

  “I’d rather have the writing and impressions of you. Did they all show up on time?” Reed asked, reading the list.

  “More or less. He’d allotted half an hour for those students, but he threw them out after fifteen minutes, so he saw Clemance and O’Toole earlier than is down there. I called them and said he was ready. So in they came and shouted a lot, but I couldn’t hear about what. Academic stuff, anyhow.”

  “Do you mean he put his hands on the chests of the students and pushed?”

  “One of the men. ‘Get out!’ he screamed. ‘And stay out. Go back to that half-baked school you come from.’ ”

  “Some language from an English professor.”

  “Yeh. Then he lowered his voice real low and said, ‘Miss Elton, tell Mr. Clemance I’m free now.’ ” Reed had heard Cudlipp only once, but the imitation seemed to him not bad.

  “Who do you suppose will be in charge of things around here now?”

  “Search me. Of course, there’s a new piece of inside dope every other minute, but I figure I’ll wait and see. If I don’t like the guy, I’ll split. There are plenty of jobs.”

  “There must be lots of high-paying jobs for an efficient, attractive girl like you. Why work in a college where they pay less than a business does?”

  “I like being around literary types—I like an intellectual atmosphere. And the young English professors are real brainy and cute.”
/>
  “Like Robert O’Toole?”

  “He’s not young—he’s a full professor—and what a stuffed shirt! Thinks he’s a big deal. Mr. Know-it-all. Tries to imitate Clemance. Now there’s a nice old man, really dignified and cool. Always calls me Miss Elton. But he’s fading away.”

  “Clemance? He can’t be that old, surely. Barely sixty.”

  “That’s ancient. I feel sorry for the old coot. His days of greatness are behind him.”

  “Sic transit etcetera. Tell me, Miss Elton …”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Jennifer. Did Cudlipp ever go to the men’s room, or to someone else’s office, and leave his tube of pills on his desk?”

  “Look, sweetie, I’m the secretary here, not anyone’s valet. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Well, thanks, Jennifer; see you around.”

  “Anytime, poopsie. Take it easy.”

  Reed waved to the other secretaries in the office who apparently typed for the lower ranks. It had been clear to him early on that Cudlipp and the other full professors in the English Department here were Jennifer Elton’s property and none of theirs, so he did not stop to question them. Well, Reed thought, consulting Cudlipp’s appointment sheet, here I go. And he headed across the campus to the building that housed the University College and Dean Frogmore.

  To Reed’s mild surprise, Frogmore agreed to see him almost immediately. Apparently Castleman had cleared the ground.

  “Come in, Mr. Amhearst. Please, don’t apologize. As a matter of fact, you give me the perfect excuse to get out of a rather boring meeting. I do hope we can settle this Cudlipp business—it’s very disturbing, you know.”

  “Helpful, too, is it not, Dean Frogmore? Speaking frankly.”

  “It could be very helpful, if we’re to be allowed to make use of it Cudlipp had a great deal of direct power—and he liked to wield it. He was damn clever in the personal deals he made, and he was absolutely set on destroying University College; it was an obsession. Some of the students went to see him, you know, the same day I did, thinking to tell him how great this place is, and he literally threw them out of his office. Frankly, if I’d heard Peabody had hit Cudlipp over the head with a bat, I would have been grieved but not surprised. I’m sure I don’t need to mention that Peabody didn’t even know about this aspirin business.”

  “Is there any chance I could talk to Peabody, do you think?”

  “I’ll do the best I can for you; hold on a minute.” Frogmore went over and stuck his head out the door: “Miss Philips, would you see if you can locate John Peabody? And let me know when you do. It’s rather important. Thank you.” He shut the door and returned to his desk. Academic secretaries, Reed observed, were cherished; they were not issued orders over the telephone.

  “Had you heard,” Reed asked, “that Cudlipp had attended the University College during his own undergraduate days?”

  “I had heard, and it’s quite true, interestingly enough. This place was called the extension school then, and it had even less prestige, universitywise, than it has now.” (Reed wondered if Frogmore had used “university-wise” to Kate, who hated the word formation. “Do you know what the mama owl said to the papa owl?” Kate would ask; “How’s the baby wisewise?” The only harsh criticism she had ever been known to make of Auden had been on this score: “something odd was happening soundwise,” he had, unforgivably, written in a poem.) “I guess it’s the typical syndrome,” Frogmore said, blissfully unaware of his offense. “Cudlipp, we now know, was simply incapable of any objectivity on the question of University College. And, of course, he managed to carry the College faculty and alumni with him.”

  “Of course. Snobbism transforms itself into intelligent discrimination when practiced by ordinarily rational people.”

  “That’s nice, Mr. Amhearst. I like that. You’ve heard that we began by trying to convince them that we were good—and then one day at luncheon Professors Castleman and Klein, whom you’ve met, told us we had to begin to attack politically. We did begin—with the Graduate English Department; and we were doing very well when this happened. Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Amhearst. With Cudlipp out of the way we have a much better chance. But O’Toole and some others have convinced the University that the whole issue can’t come before the Administrative Council while there’s any question about Cudlipp’s death. So, if there’s anything I can do to help you …”

  “You’re certain in your own mind then that no one connected with the University College could have given him the aspirin?”

  “Yes. That sort of thing just doesn’t occur to academic people, Mr. Amhearst.”

  “You’d be surprised what occurs to academic people these days, Dean Frogmore. Let me tell you something about the D.A.’s Office that has changed since your now historical events last spring. It used to be if a college kid got into trouble, if anyone connected with the academic world got into trouble, the lawyer would come to the D.A.’s Office and say ‘Look, he’s a college kid, you don’t want to press charges.’ And we didn’t press charges. If you were connected with a university or college it was assumed you were probably straight; certainly you got the benefit of the doubt and then some. Now? All the D.A.’s Office has to hear is it’s a college kid, and they’re pressing charges so fast the lawyer can’t even follow the handwriting. As troublemakers, the members of the academic world have lost their amateur standing. The question here is: Did you know about Cudlipp’s allergy to aspirin?”

  “I did know, though I’d forgotten I knew. Bill McQuire reminded me. A while back he said something about Cudlipp being so tensed up he was living on those British pills of his. I thought Bill was referring to birth-control pills, actually, which is what the word ‘pill’ seems to mean these days, and I said I didn’t get it. Then Bill told me about Cudlipp’s headaches and how he couldn’t take ordinary aspirin. But believe it or not, Mr. Amhearst, the news just didn’t sink in; it wasn’t of interest.”

  “Do you think the students knew of it?”

  “I can’t imagine how. But my experience with students like Peabody is that they know everything there is to know, and a lot that hasn’t been thought up yet. I wonder if Miss Philips was able …”

  “Dean Frogmore, what did you feel about Cudlipp personally? I mean, did you have the sense he was not a bad guy underneath, did you think he would give in in the end, had you become fond of him for all his prejudice and churlishness, or did you dislike him rather intensely? I’m not looking for a motive, sir. The motive is screaming itself all over the place. I’d just like a sense of the sort of feelings Cudlipp aroused in someone outside the English Department.”

  “I hated him, and so did all of those in the inner circle of old-timers here. There’s no sense sidestepping that. I think the man was demented, if you want to know the truth, and so beside himself with vengeance and rage that he was perfectly capable of not knowing aspirin from peppermint Life Savers. I realize there is a lot of pressure from the College alumni, and I know the University is hard-up for funds right now—student disruption hardly stimulates giving—and that our alumni don’t fork it over the way the College alumni do, but none of that explains his animus. I don’t mind admitting that if I could have got Cudlipp an unrefusable offer from somewhere a thousand miles away, I would have grabbed at the chance; but that’s a long way from murder.”

  “From all I’ve heard, part of Cudlipp’s dementia was his devotion to the College. Apparently neither he nor Clemance would ever consider going anywhere else. And of course, Dean Frogmore,” Reed said, rising, “whoever gave Cudlipp the aspirin wasn’t necessarily planning murder; aspirin allergies are dangerous, but rarely fatal” Reed had planned to exit on that line, but there came a knock at the door. Miss Philips stuck her head in. “John Peabody is here, Dean Frogmore.”

  Frogmore introduced them: “John, this is Mr. Amhearst.”

  “Hi,” John Peabody said. “How about some lunch?” Clearly, informality was going to be Mr. Peabody’s keyn
ote.

  “Fine,” Reed said. “Thank you, Dean Frogmore. I may be back with more questions, if you’ll allow me, but I can’t think of any more at the moment.”

  “Any time, any time,” Frogmore said. “Glad to have you aboard.”

  “You must really be Some-Body,” Peabody said as they walked out, making it two words. “You the D.A. or just his brother?”

  “Has something noteworthy occurred?”

  “Frogmore never called you by your first name. Man, he must really be impressed.”

  “I never told him my first name.”

  “He picks up first names the way radar picks up moving objects. Regular bar and grill O.K. by you? We might even have a beer.”

  “Suits me,” Reed said. He found himself amused by John Peabody, who looked not only as though he had slept in his clothes, but as though he had spent his whole honeymoon in them. Why wear a tie when it is not tied, a shirt when it is not buttoned, Reed wondered? Still, his tie is not psychedelic and he does not wear beads; there is always much to be thankful for.

  The “regular bar and grill” turned out to be a largish restaurant with beer on draught, and Reed settled comfortably into a booth with John Peabody, who fetched them each a stein. “Here’s to it,” Peabody said. “I didn’t bump Cudlipp off, but, brother, I sure would have, given the chance. Man, we used to have fantasies—me and the other guys at U.C. Maybe we’d kidnap his kids and say, ‘O.K., mac, you get them back when you lay off old U.C.’ We dreamed about holding him prisoner in a cellar and beating him with wet ropes until he begged for mercy, and then we planned to say: ‘After you call the Acting President, mac, and make it O.K. about old U.C.’ So help me, if I’d known of this aspirin dodge, I’d have forced them down his stinking throat myself. He actually pushed me out of his office. I know he’s old enough to be my father, which would have made it one great big pleasure to lay him out flat, but he closed the door, and the other guys held onto me.” Peabody concluded with a few up-to-date epithets. Odd, Reed thought: When we were young we mouthed niceties and thought nastily. Mr. Peabody sounds like a horror and it’s perfectly obvious he’s nice as pie underneath. At least, so I assume.