Poetic Justice

by Amanda Cross

  “I thought two of the students with you were women?”

  “Sure. And Randy Selkirk. All good guys.”

  “I see. What happened exactly?”

  “You want a sandwich? I’ll be glad to get us each one, if you’ve got what it takes. I’m stony.”

  Solemnly Reed handed over some money. “Ham and cheese on rye for me,” he said.

  Peabody returned in short order—clearly he was known here and got immediate service—with two sandwiches and two more steins of beer and a pack of cigarettes. “You need cigarettes?” he asked Reed.

  “I gather,” Reed said, “that you are fresh out.”

  “Man, you learn fast,” Peabody said. “We like your bird.”

  “I’m lost again,” Reed said. “I thought it was ham and cheese.”

  “Professor Fansler, man. She’s your bird. Fun and games in the Graduate English Office, when Cudlipp took the wrong pills. She’s real sexy on the Victorian novel.”

  “Sexy?”

  “Good, man, good.”

  “Yes,” Reed said. “Thank you. Now—about your meeting with Cudlipp. Could you give it to me slowly and in something approximating standard English?”

  “There’s nothing to give. We went there, the four of us, armed with our stories. We’re used to giving them—we did that bit for your bi—for Professor Fansler. The point is to give someone an idea of how great U.C. is. What it’s meant to us. We’re all different types, but all kind of impressive, if you follow me. But I hadn’t even finished my piece—I sort of M.C. the show—when Cudlipp lost his cool; man, he flipped. I found out why after: I’d said something about U.C. not just being a place to take some courses and wile away the time—I always say that—and of course he’d been bounced from The College a hundred years ago, when he was a lad, and had taken courses at U.C., then called extension, to wile away the time till he could get back in with the upperclass lads.”

  “Did anyone else say anything?”

  “Didn’t have a chance. He went for me. The others had to help me—boy, I was powed. But that Barbara Campbell is a cool chick. After they all got me out, and before Cudlipp could slam the door, she turned to him—of course her clothes are by Dior out of Bergdorf—and said, ‘Professor Cudlipp, a man of your standing should have better control of himself.’ Just like that. He slammed the door so hard I thought its hinges would spring off. And that’s all there is to that story.”

  “Not much help, I’m afraid,” Reed said. “You optimistic about the Administrative Council’s actions?”

  “Well, we got to clear up this mess. What about the elevators, man, carrying on like that. Beer tastes better in a stein, don’t you think, and certainly better on draught. Want another?”

  “No, thanks. What about the elevators?”

  “What about them?”

  “Didn’t you say …”

  “Man, you better take it easy. You’re pushing too hard.”

  “Right.” Reed pocketed his change. “It was a pleasure, Mr. Peabody.”

  “Likewise. Take it …”

  “I know,” Reed said. “I plan to.”

  Reed had an appointment downtown; one cannot, after all, spend one’s entire day vamping and drinking beer with undergraduates, but he dropped into Castleman’s office, just on the chance. Castleman was, Reed learned, at lunch at the Faculty Club. Reed said thanks and strolled toward the Faculty Club, not quite clear in his mind what he wanted to ask Castleman, but figuring he better have a look at the Club anyway, since that seemed to be where everybody spent all their time laying plans, nefarious or other. Entering the Club, he met Castleman coming out.

  “Ah,” Castleman said, stepping aside with Reed. “Any progress?”

  “Tell me,” Reed said, “is there somebody in the administration with whom I could discuss elevators?”

  “Will I do? Or do you want the maintenance department?”

  “I’m not sure what I want. I take it my question does not surprise you.”

  “Not unbearably. Shall we sit down a minute? Have you had lunch?”

  Reed nodded. “Let me just say ‘elevators’ and you tell me what comes into your mind.”

  “The Acting President mentioned it to me this morning, as it happens. I never thought of there being a connection with the Cudlipp business—but of course he was caught in an elevator, wasn’t he?”

  “Fatally, as it turned out. Or probably so.”

  “I see. This has got to be strictly confidential, Mr. Amhearst. Not part of any report or officially noticed at all.”

  “I have seldom found any use for information that isn’t off the record,” Reed said, “but if an actionable crime has been committed, I can’t blink it away.”

  “No, naturally not. I was referring to the general University problem. But I know, who better, that you can’t ask someone to do a job and then bury him in caveats. The trouble with discretion in a university, I’ve been learning, is that if a man is discreet, it turns out his friends are the only ones in the dark. Everyone else, of course, has been consulting like mad. The line between full consultation and decent discretion is finer than the razor’s edge. Well, elevators. The elevators in the University have always been a blasted nuisance, an irritating joke. They are much overused, and by a community of youngsters whose gentleness with feedback devices is not noticeable. Still, it was never a serious problem. What usually happens is that an elevator which you have ridden for what seems like millennia in order to reach the top floor would decide one floor from the top that it was going no higher, and deposit you back on the ground floor minus two. Like that game my kids keep playing where you land on the wrong square and return to go. Annoying, but all in a day’s work. Quite often the elevators going down would simply refuse to stop at all, but we always suspected they were secretly geared that way as a hint that we ought to walk down.”

  “I lived once in a pension in Paris,” Reed said, “where you were only allowed to take the elevator up. I found it extremely annoying at times, particularly if one were descending with heavy packages.”

  “It is annoying. But that was about the size of it until this fall. Then, elevators began stopping between floors, sometimes in one building and sometimes in another. There was a great rash of that, and then the elevators took to stopping only during special hours, days or evenings when there was a meeting in a building, or all the deans were on their way to see the President, or, for example, when the whole senior classics faculty was in the elevator. Occasionally an hysterical student would get stuck and have to be treated for shock. Only very recently did we officially begin to wonder if it was actually part of some subversive plan.”

  “To what end?”

  “Disruption. Confusion. One more inducement to lose confidence and believe in the general ineptness of universities. It’s a clever trick, really, better in its way than class disruption, because no one’s caught at it, no one organizes against it, and its effects are more subtle and therefore longer lasting.”

  “You mean objectless hostility builds up?”

  “Exactly. Anger, or hostility if you prefer the term, is one of those forces modern society hasn’t devised any really good way of dealing with. Kicking an elevator you’re locked into, or an elevator door which shows no sign of opening, is humiliating and unsatisfactory—so one takes it out instead on the next student or colleague one meets. Yet stopping elevators isn’t really a major crime. Whoever does it probably isn’t even trespassing, according to the letter of the law, and they aren’t really causing any damage that can be laid directly to them. Always supposing we knew who ‘they’ are.”

  “But how are the elevators stopped, do you know? It sounds a bit dangerous.”

  “That’s what had puzzled us for so long. This whole business seemed to require a high degree of technical knowledge and timing. Then one day we nearly caught one of the culprits, or at least, Cartier thinks he nearly caught him. Cartier had dashed to the basement of the building once when he heard an
elevator stop, just in time to see someone sneaking out. Cartier, who has more nerve than sense if you want to know, almost grabbed the guy, but not quite. Anyway, when he looked at the place where the miscreant had been standing he discovered the power box.”

  “So they simply turned off the juice?”

  “As simple as that. We couldn’t lock the damn thing; one has to be able to get at it in case of emergencies. The campus guards tried keeping an eye on the elevators, but, needless to say, they couldn’t be everywhere at once. No doubt someone was waiting to tamper with the elevator in Baldwin the night Cudlipp died, knowing there was something going on up there. Simple enough, when you figure it out.”

  “Is this the sort of thing these radical groups go in for?”

  “No, it isn’t. That’s the most surprising aspect of the whole thing. They want publicity, some big, showy gesture which embarrasses the greatest number of people in the most flamboyant possible way, and puts the authorities immediately on the spot.”

  “The word is confrontation, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly. Whereas confrontation is what one doesn’t have here. Just a rather diabolic scheme by someone who’s more interested in annoying the University than confronting it; someone with a twisted sense of humor; if you want my guess, it’ll turn out to be someone who got bounced out of here and is still simmering. The sort of people who used to sue the University for failing to fulfill its contract after they had flunked out, in the good old quiet days. But it’s anyone’s guess.”

  “Well,” Reed said, rising, “it’s not a pretty mess, but I don’t suppose it’s got anything to do with the present investigations.”

  “Let me know if I can be of help in any other way. There’s no question that time … Hi, Bill. I’d like you to meet Reed Amhearst from the D.A.’s Office; he’s looking into Cudlipp’s death. Bill McQuire.”

  “If you’re walking to the subway, Mr. Amhearst, I’ll go with you and see if I can be of any help. My office is in that direction. You interest me.”

  “Do I? Why?”

  “Lots of reasons. Let’s say I think it’s going to be uphill work, finding out who slipped those aspirin into Cudlipp’s pocket supply. Let’s say, what I happen to believe, that the University killed him.”

  “Now that’s an interesting idea. Why?”

  “Because he was doing his best to kill the University. Oh, he thought he was saving it, of course. But he was pushing the College out of all proportion. I think he would have been willing to see the rest of the University go if he could have used the resources for The College. Even if you could find out how the aspirin got into Mrs. Murphy’s chowder, would it matter?”

  “It seems it will matter to the University College quite a lot. The Administrative Council won’t move if this matter isn’t cleared up.”

  Bill McQuire whistled. “That sounds like the work of our friend O’Toole. Well, it’s the last gasp. Do you know everyone Cudlipp saw? Someone must have done some hanky-panky with those pills of his.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good line on most of them now. What do you think of Cartier?”

  “He’s in the English Department; hated Cudlipp’s guts, but that hardly makes him even noticeable in that crowd. I’m an economist myself.”

  “Someone suggested, in passing, that Cartier was perhaps somewhat hotheaded.”

  “He is. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s always popping around and turning up in odd places. During the police bust last spring, he was hit on the head by a policeman and carried off in a paddy wagon and damn near charged before anyone identified him, and all because he got into an argument with a student about the indecency of calling any human beings, even policemen, pigs. When he got out, the students said surely he’d changed his mind, but he said no, policemen were unnecessarily brutal, probably sadistic, and certainly ill-advised, but they weren’t pigs.”

  “Might he have been impulsive enough to pull the aspirin trick?”

  “I can’t see it. He and I saw Cudlipp together the day he died.”

  “I know.”

  “Were you working up to asking me about it? Because I’ve got to make a class in a minute.” Reed nodded. “We tried to urge Cudlipp to soft-peddle it a bit, but he wasn’t having any. Cartier said …”

  “Yes?”

  “He said, ‘You’re asking for trouble, Cudlipp; violence and trouble.’ But I’m sure he was just speaking generally.”

  “What did you say to Cudlipp?”

  “I told him if he kept on the way he was going, someone would break his goddam neck for him. Well, let me know if I can help.”

  Reed took the subway downtown and was so engrossed in the problem that he forgot to get off at Franklin Street.

  Mr. Higgenbothom turned up promptly at four.

  “And how,” Kate asked, “are the computers?”

  “You must let me show you through the computer center one of these days.”

  “I should like that,” Kate said. “If only I had a problem a computer could solve this very moment. But I gather computers can give you answers only if you give them all the relevant information and ask all the right questions. Alas, I haven’t either.”

  Mr. Higgenbothom sat down and looked politely expectant.

  “As you have no doubt heard,” Kate rather ponderously began, “Professor Cudlipp died at a party given in my honor the other evening.” Mr. Higgenbothom nodded. “His death was, of course, the result of several unfortunate accidents, but the University would like, if possible, to establish some of the facts surrounding the case. Which means, in English that cats and dogs can understand, that I want a worm’s-eye view of the College English Department—and what is nearer a worm than a teaching assistant?”

  Mr. Higgenbothom grinned.

  “And,” Kate went on, “if you say a word about discretion, I will throw something at you. I am willing to let you use a computer on Max Beerbohm, who couldn’t even stand the simpler inventions of the twentieth century, so you’ve got to be willing to let me have your impressions—at least, I hope you’ll be willing.”

  “I could quote Max Beerbohm in connection with Professor Cudlipp,” Mr. Higgenbothom said. “If two people disagree about a third, the one who likes him is right, always.”

  “I’m to gather that you liked Cudlipp?”

  “Yes, very much. He was very nice to me indeed. He let me experiment with my freshman English group—I spent the whole year on linguistics and stylistics and the students actually liked it—but it took some believing in me on his part. And then, he was very devoted to the College, and so am I. He believed it could really be an exciting educational place, because we were all ready to experiment, and Robert O’Toole was going to be Dean and do the first exciting things to be brought off in education in the last forty years. I know Cudlipp didn’t think highly of the University College, and I understand that you believe in it, but he knew perfectly well that there had to be only one undergraduate school here, and that first-rate. I agreed with him, and still do. I think Cudlipp had courage and he worked for what he believed in. I admire that. So many men just let things slide.”

  Kate leaned back in her chair and laughed. “Sorry,” she said to Mr. Higgenbothom when she had recovered herself. “I’m laughing at my getting so cocksure as to forget there are two sides to every question, and I damn well ought to remember that. Would you be willing to tell me who’s likely to be new head of the College English Department?”

  “At the moment it seems to be a standoff. I hear there’s been some heated discussion.”

  “Between whom, mainly?”

  “You’re remembering, Professor Fansler, that this is a worm’s-eye view?”

  “By all means. I would apologize for asking these forthright questions when you can scarcely avoid answering them, Mr. Higgenbothom, if there were the smallest point in apologizing for what one has every intention of doing.”

  “The rumor is that Clemance wants us to think about it a bit, sort of struggle on for
a few months and not put a Cudlipp man right in. He says he’s willing to take on some of the work for the rest of the term, and no one’s exactly prepared to argue with that. I’m sorry there are more ill feelings; we ought to be healing up the wounds. We’re getting together a memorial volume to Cudlipp, by the way. I hope you’ll feel better about him by the time it comes out, which, given the schedules of scholars and university presses, should be in about three years.”

  “I’m certain to feel better about him long before then. Thank you for coming, and good luck with Max’s sentences.”

  In fact, it was one of Max’s sentences Kate quoted to Reed when he asked her how her day had gone. “ ‘To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine,’ ” she wearily said.

  “Likewise,” said Reed. It was uncertain what a computer would have made of that.

  Our race would not have gotten far,

  Had we not learned to bluff it out

  And look more certain than we are

  Of what our motion is about.

  Nine

  THE week that followed was marked for Kate not primarily by attempts to solve the puzzle of the elevators and the aspirin, but by the presence together of Reed and herself on the campus. She was startled to discover that she had always held the University and Reed quite separate in her mind, as though her place of work existed, as far as Reed was concerned, as the source of news and problems and experiences which she might bring home and lay as tribute at his feet.

  But now he had joined her in the problems and experience and news, and she found she enjoyed enormously walking with him on the campus, bidding him at its center a formal farewell which seemed to include their love more easily than any public embrace could ever have done. Reed, for his part, admitted the fascination of the campus and his eagerness to leave it as having equal force with him. Certainly he did not want to leave it until he could provide it with the knowledge it required for peace. Disruptions of communities, like illnesses, are not cured by being named; but if one names them, one isolates them from their allies: unreasoning fear, anxiety, and trepidation. The magic of doctors, for all their research, Reed pointed out to Kate, is still their power to name. He had the power now; he wanted to use it and be gone.