One Dead Dean

by Crider, Bill

  "Good Lord," Burns said. It was all he could think of.

  "It's not that simple, of course," Fox said. "Can't make it too easy, or someone might think we weren't being rigorous enough. So we department heads—that's you and me, buddy—will have to interview the 'independent scholars' to find out how much they know. You can bet that Elmore will be right in there when it comes to deciding the guidelines for the interviews, and that it won't be easy to fail one. I can just imagine the questions in history. 'Who was our first president?' 'Who was known as the Great Emancipator?' Things like that." He paused for a second. "Come to think of it, maybe the second one's too hard. But you get the idea."

  "Yeah," Burns said. "I get the idea."

  "Well," asked Fox, "are you surprised?"

  Burns thought about it. "I have to admit it," he said. "I'm surprised. I never thought I would be, but I am. Doesn't Elmore realize that if he pushes something like this through, the regular degree will be cheapened so much that it'll be almost worthless?"

  Fox laughed. "I don't think he cares. Think how much money he can bring in from people who want a degree but who don't want to have to go to school. And it's all perfectly legal."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sure I'm sure. He'll even tell you the name of the congressional act when he talks to you. The act that makes it legal, I mean. Ethical I'm not sure about, but legally he's on solid ground."

  "This is really going to infuriate a lot of old-timers around here," Burns said. "Do you think we'll get a vote on it?"

  "You, of all people, should recall what Clem and the Curriculum Committee went through a few years back, and the executive decision that came out of that," Fox said. "Elmore may present this to the faculty, but you don't have to worry about our getting a vote on it."

  They sat there at the decrepit card table, thinking about working for a degree mill, until the bell rang. "Let's get lunch," Burns said. "How about Chinese?"

  "Fine by me," Fox said. "Let's go by for Mal."

  They got up and went into the hall, which was clogged with students. There were stairways at either end of the hall, but no one was making any progress in going down. Two students stood at the head of the stairs, and each student was holding a clipboard. Students would sign something on the clipboard and then be allowed to go on down. The usual hum of between-class activity was amplified about five times by the crowding.

  "What the heck is going on?" Fox asked.

  Burns didn't know for sure, but he could make a pretty good guess. "I suspect it's a petition," he said.

  "A petition?"

  "If I were guessing," Burns said, "which of course I am, I'd guess that it was a petition making some statement about the importance of athletics to the students here and maybe saying something about the necessity of continuing to have a competitive athletic program to promote school and community spirit."

  Fox looked at him suspiciously. "Did you have anything to do with this?"

  Burns looked innocent. He actually hadn't thought Bunni could get things organized so quickly. "Not me," he said. "I'm sure this is a purely student-generated petition."

  "I'll bet," Fox said. "Well, let's go back in the lounge and have another smoke. We're not going to get down those stairs for a few minutes, that's for sure."

  After lunch, Burns, Tomlin, and Fox drove back via the Administration Building (Hartley Gorman II) at Burns's insistence. This was the second-oldest building on the campus, squat and ugly, but solidly constructed of serviceable red brick. There was a rose garden in front, filled at this time of the year with dry stalks rasping against one another.

  Today, however, there was something added. In front of the building, nine or ten students carrying posters were marching up and down. The posters were painted in the school colors and said things like FOOTBALL FOREVER, PANTHER PRIDE, WINNERS NEVER QUIT, and WE SHALL OVERCOME. Off to one side, several members of the Panther Marching Band were playing the school fight song.

  Mal Tomlin, who had been conned into driving, slowed almost to a stop, which was a good thing. He was laughing so hard that he might otherwise have been the cause of a serious wreck. "'We shall overcome'?" he yelled, gasping for breath between laughs. "'We shall overcome'?"

  "It's the thought that counts," Burns said, laughing as well.

  "What next?" Fox wondered.

  Burns calmed down. "If I were guessing," he said, "which of course I am, I'd say that there might be a huge spontaneous pep rally in front of the women's dorm about seven o'clock tonight, after which all the little rallyers will probably march down to that vacant field at the end of the street here"—he gestured behind them with his thumb—"and then there'll be a big spontaneous bonfire, all in support of athletics at HGC."

  Fox looked at him sharply. "I know damn well you had something to do with all this."

  "Not me," Burns said. "All I did was make a little list."

  "I don't care whose idea it was," Tomlin said, recovering himself and driving on. "I bet our pal Elmore is sitting in there having a stroke right about now."

  "I sincerely hope so," Burns said.

  When Burns climbed back to the third floor of Main to keep his afternoon office hours, he was greeted by a sign taped to the wall near the classroom at the head of the stairs. Printed with black Magic Marker on college-ruled notebook paper, the sign said:

  PLEASE!

  DO NOT!!

  LEAVE CANS!

  UNDER DESK!!!

  MAID ROSE

  Rose was the black woman who cleaned the building. No one referred to her as the "maid," but she always signed her notes with that title. Her notes were famous throughout the building, and they were always couched in strong language and heavy with exclamation marks. Rose had her own ideas about how the building should be run, and she didn't tolerate any deviation. What this particular note meant was that someone, probably Burns, had been lax in enforcing the school's rule against soft-drink cans in the classroom, and Rose was chapped.

  Since Rose was built along the lines a defensive lineman should be built, rather than like the relatively skinny George ("The Ghost") Kaspar, Burns always tried to go along with her demands. He would have to be more careful in policing his classroom. Actually, few of the students who brought the cans into the room were drinking the contents. The cans had already been emptied, and were being used as spittoons. Snuff-dipping was a common habit at HGC, and some of Rose's more dramatic notes had been composed on the days she found snuff that had been spit into the trash cans.

  Burns took down the sign, as he always did, and went on to his office. Almost as soon as he got to his desk and sat down, Clem and Miss Darling appeared at his door. Clem's color was high, and Miss Darling was fairly jumping up and down. They've heard, Burns thought.

  "Dr. Burns. Dr. Burns," Miss Darling said in her high, breathy voice. "Oh, Dr. Burns. Do you . . . Have you . . . Is it true . . ."

  Burns hadn't seen Miss Darling so upset since one of her students had ridiculed a Walt Whitman poem and called the author "an old fairy." It had taken him all afternoon to get her calmed down after he finally got a coherent story out of her.

  Clem helped out this time in her usual straightforward way. "What we would like to know," she said, "is whether it's true that Dean Elmore plans to turn HGC into a degree mill."

  Nothing traveled faster than a campus rumor, Burns thought. What he didn't understand was why Miss Darling was so exercised. Nothing that Elmore had ever done in the past had bothered her. He didn't ask, though. He simply said, "Not exactly."

  "And what does 'not exactly' mean?" Clem asked.

  "It means 'not exactly,'" Burns said. "Why don't you two have a seat?"

  They sat. Clem, as usual, looked composed in her brown outfit, severely tailored to fit her compact frame. Miss Darling, also as usual, looked dithery. She was a short, doll-like woman, who always wore frilly blouses and full skirts. Her hair was tightly curled and of an indeterminate mousy brown color that varied at the whim of her hairdresser.
She wore too much make-up, in contrast to Clem, who wore hardly any, and her cheeks were always fiery red.

  After he had organized his thoughts, Burns said, "Now, let me tell you one thing straight off. I haven't talked to Dean Elmore myself. I assume that he will get to me fairly soon. So I know only what I've heard through the rumor mill—just like you two, I suspect."

  "And you've heard . . . you know that . . . they say that . . ." Miss Darling dithered.

  ". . . about this degree mill business," Clem finished for her.

  Burns told them what he knew.

  "That's despicable," Clem said.

  "Yes," said Miss Darling. "It's . . . well, it's just . . . I mean to say that . . ." She trailed off into silence.

  "It may not be as bad as it sounds," Burns said. "It's all perfectly legal, and I'm sure Dean Elmore intends to explain the whole thing to the faculty in a general meeting."

  "Carl Burns, you're beginning to sound as if you agree with the whole thing. Next you'll be telling us how much you love the humanities course!" Clem was in her severe mode, and Carl would have been terrified had he been a freshman student. As it was, he was a little uncomfortable.

  "I'm just trying to withhold judgment," he said. "As it stands, you're right. It stinks on ice."

  "Oh, dear," Miss Darling said. "Oh, dear." She shook her head, got out of the chair, and toddled off to her office.

  "I've never seen her get so upset," Burns said. "At least not recently. How did you hear?"

  "Never mind how we heard," Clem said. "It's no wonder the poor woman is upset. Why, she's taught here for nearly forty years. She's seen a lot of things in her time, but this has to be the worst."

  "But surely—," Burns began, but Clem cut him off.

  "Don't surely me," she said. "I know what you think. You think she won't remember any of this tomorrow, and you're probably right. But the reputation of this school means something to her, and this time Elmore is going to destroy exactly that—the school's reputation."

  Everyone at HGC was convinced that Elmore had spies among the faculty, people who pretended to disagree with his policies but who reported every derogatory remark directly to him. Burns knew that Clem was not one of these spies, though he believed that they existed. Abner Swan, for instance, was a spy if ever there was one. But Burns knew that he could trust Clem, just as he trusted Mal Tomlin and Earl Fox. So he said, "You're right, of course, but we can't do anything about it right now."

  "And why not?" Clem said. "Tell me that. Why not? This time Elmore's gone too far. He's gone over the edge, if you ask me. Someone has got to do something to stop him."

  Burns though about it. This wasn't something like the sports program, something that you could rally the whole student body to protest. Most of the students wouldn't care. And you couldn't rally the faculty, either.

  "Look, Clem," Burns said, "if we tried something like a protest, or even a petition, no one would help. Everyone here's too scared that he's going to lose his job. If we get to vote on this in a faculty meeting, or even if it's just brought up for discussion, I promise you that I'll speak out against it, but you and I both know that no one else will."

  "I will," Clem said.

  "You know what I mean," Burns said. "I will, you will, maybe even one or two others will, but that's all. Then Elmore will take a vote by a show of hands, if he takes a vote at all, and we'll lose. That's just the way it is."

  "I don't believe it," Clem said.

  "Believe it," Burns said.

  "No. I won't. This time, I'm not going to let Elmore get the better of me." Clem stood up. "This time, I'm going to beat him."

  "I hope you're right," Burns said.

  "I am. You'll see." She turned and walked out of the office.

  Burns waited for a few minutes, but no other faculty members came by to discuss the rumor. He opened his middle drawer and took out his list of things he hated, but he couldn't get interested in it. So he spent the rest of the afternoon rereading The Sun Also Rises. He was interrupted only once, by a call from Dean Elmore's secretary, asking him to stop by the Dean's office on Tuesday at eleven-fifteen. He said that he would be there.

  Chapter 5

  Burns was five minutes late for his appointment. Had he been there on time, he might have seen the killer. He might even have prevented the murder. As it was, he found the body.

  As Burns left Main through the rear door, the Administration Building was to his left and slightly closer to the street. He met no one on his way there, which was not unusual considering the day and the hour. Every Tuesday and Thursday at eleven, HGC had assembly, formerly known as Chapel. Elmore had changed the name because so many of the programs were not of a religious nature that "Chapel" no longer seemed appropriate. It was one of the few decisions made by the dean with which Burns agreed.

  Attendance at assembly was compulsory for students, though not for faculty. Burns seldom attended. In fact, few faculty members did. Abner Swan always did, of course, and he encouraged his faculty to go, but most of them were like Burns and went only when the program appeared to be especially interesting.

  Burns entered the Administration Building and climbed the stairs to the second floor. An elevator had been installed several years earlier, but Burns was so used to the stairs in Main that he never used it.

  At the top of the stairs Burns turned right and walked down a carpeted hall to the offices. On the right was President Rogers's office, but there was no one visible inside. Both Rogers and his secretary usually went to assembly, where Rogers nearly always introduced the program or made some remarks.

  There was no one in Elmore's outer office, either. His secretary was no doubt attending assembly with most of the others in the building. The administration liked to keep up appearances, and they expected their secretaries to do likewise.

  In fact, it was unusual for Dean Elmore to conduct business during a scheduled assembly period, but, as Burns suddenly recalled, today was Football Awards Day, a traditional event at the end of the season, even at the end of such miserable seasons as HGC had been having lately. So Elmore probably felt that he didn't need to lend his presence to anything that supported the athletic program. The only thing out of character was that Elmore hadn't gone to ridicule the coach and make fun of the team's losing record.

  Burns hesitated for a minute in the secretary's office. He could hear no sound from the inner room, but he assumed that Elmore must be in there. He stepped to the open door and raised his hand to knock, at the same time glancing around the wainscoting to see if Elmore was at his desk.

  He was there, all right, but not exactly in the position that Burns had expected to find him. His upper body had fallen across the top of his desk, his arms outstretched as if he were reaching for something that was slipping off the opposite side. His head was turned to face the open door, and his mouth was slackly open. A thin line of blood trailed from between his lips. His open eyes stared blankly in Burns's direction.

  At first, Burns thought that Elmore had perhaps had a stroke or a heart attack—the man was a Type "A" if ever there was one but then he noticed the large bruise in the vicinity of Elmore's temple. Within the area covered by the bruise there was a sizeable dent, no doubt caused by some heavy object's having been used to bash Elmore in the head.

  Burns stood in the door for a few minutes, or seconds, he was never sure which, contemplating Elmore's body. He didn't know whether to go in and take a pulse or to call the police. He knew from his reading that he shouldn't touch anything, so he decided that the call to the police was best. Before he turned to make the call, he noticed one last detail. Under Elmore's head, protruding slightly and crushed but still recognizable, was a pink pig's snout made of cardboard.

  "Boss" Napier, chief of Pecan City's police force, attended the on-site investigation himself and immediately announced his intention of taking a leading part in apprehending the perpetrator. It was an election year, after all, and Napier was expecting heavy opposition from a m
an who disapproved of Napier's methods and who cited figures to show that crime in Pecan City was on the rise. Napier must have decided that the pig snout was a hot clue and that the perpetrator would be brought to book in short order.

  Napier was a fine figure of a man, who looked like a police chief should look. He was a bit over six feet tall, beefy and blonde, and usually wore, as he did today, jeans, a western-style shirt (this one was blue, with white and red flowers on it), boots, and a brown leather jacket.

  Napier had arrived with his homicide team shortly after Burns's call, just in time to isolate Elmore's office before everyone returned from assembly. The outer office door was now secured with a yellow ribbon with the words CRIME SCENE KEEP our printed on it in black. An officer was posted along with it in case anyone got too curious. Burns had been hustled down the hall to a small storage room containing, along with buckets, mops, and brooms, a small table and chair. It was a lot like the history lounge.

  The door was closed and Napier was questioning Burns, who could hear the noise of confusion and discussion in the hall beyond. There was no bereavement, however, and Burns didn't really expect any. In fact, he expected unbridled joy as soon as the word got out, if not dancing in the streets.

  The denomination didn't approve of dancing.

  Burns was sitting in the chair. Napier was standing. "So," he said, fixing Burns with a glare from his ice-blue eyes, "who do you know that might have a motive for killing Dean Delmar?"

  "That's Elmore," Burns said. He wished that Fox were there with an L & M.

  "Whatever," Napier said with a shrug. "Somebody didn't like him enough and bashed him in the head. Any ideas?" Obviously his assessment of the situation agreed with Burns's.