The Semester of Our Discontent

by Cynthia Kuhn

  “So why aren’t there any? It’s unfathomable in this day and age.”

  Calista sighed. “Blame it on the system. The chair must sign the forms before they go to the next level, and Roland blocks whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter if the curriculum committee approves a proposal or not. It’s outrageous, really. If I’d known you were working on a proposal, I would have filled you in.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “But didn’t you have a meeting with Roland today too? What happened?”

  “Oh, that.” She waved it off. “I need to gather some notes before the faculty meeting, so I’ll have to tell you later.”

  She gave me a quick hug before zooming away. I marveled at her energy level. Calista had always been able to do things faster than the rest of us mere mortals.

  Maybe if I walked fast enough, I could escape the dark cloud Roland had just positioned above my head.

  Twenty minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin, my assigned faculty mentor Judith Westerly popped her head into my office. In an impeccably tailored teal suit, her long white hair swept back in a complicated twist, she put me in mind of an Alfred Hitchcock heroine—cool, collected, and highly capable. She had been at Stonedale for almost thirty years and was an adept guide so far. I especially appreciated the fact that she seemed genuinely glad I was here.

  We exchanged pleasantries, and she consulted her dainty gold watch. “Perhaps we should head to the faculty meeting? It’s a little early—we all try to avoid it until the last possible minute, of course—but that means we would have our choice of seats and could settle in before all the hubbub. I’ll show you the best vantage points.”

  I followed her into the hallway, pulled the door shut behind me, and locked it.

  “Truth be told, I’m not in a hurry to return to the departmental agenda,” said Judith as we walked. “At the last meeting of spring term, we spent two hours arguing over the font on our letterhead. Can you believe it? Then the deadlock over Arial and Helvetica went on for another week in an email battle.”

  “Which font won?” I asked.

  “That’s the whole point. It was tabled to be revisited this fall.” She smiled. “You may be the tiebreaker, Lila.”

  “No thanks,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was antagonize half of the department.

  “Don’t worry. It will be a blind vote. We don’t want to put you in any uncomfortable situations.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Not at first, anyway,” she added with a wink.

  We arrived at the arched entrance to the department library. The intricately carved wooden door swung open slowly when I pushed on it, though the hinges protested loudly.

  At the sight of the lifeless form sprawled across the conference table, I shrieked and Judith gasped. One of the fiery dragons on Roland’s elegant tie had been slashed in half by the knife embedded in his chest.

  Chapter 2

  About an hour later, Judith and I waited, as we’d been directed to do, in the second-floor hallway. There was quite a crowd working the department library—both campus and Stonedale police had representatives upstairs, as well as crime scene investigators—and they’d moved us out of the way. Police personnel down here were clustered, talking in low voices. The adrenaline surging through my veins had dulled to weariness, and my head was starting to throb. For all I knew, Roland’s killer was lurking around a corner somewhere, yet I felt strangely disconnected, numb. Perhaps I was still in shock.

  Among the many horrors to be encountered at an English department meeting, a dead body was not usually one of them. I had been prepared for the standard litany of complaints, the political jousting, the barely audible snarling—but not this.

  I looked at Judith. “How are you doing?”

  She shook her head.

  I repositioned myself in the student desk—awful contraptions, yoking together uncomfortable chairs and inadequate writing trays, which seems like a failure on both fronts—and stared at the opposite wall until the door to one of the classrooms opened.

  A somber-faced man with sharp cheekbones and a buzz cut stepped outside, the badge on his belt catching the light for a moment. “Thanks, ladies, for your patience. I’m Detective Archer. I need to speak with you, one at a time.” He glanced down at the notepad in his hand that was open vertically, reporter-style. “Starting with Liza Maclean.”

  I stood up immediately.

  “It’s Lila.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said, scowling at the paper and slamming the cover closed. “Please follow me.” I did, noting the way the navy suit jacket pulled tight across his back and strained against the muscles of his upper arms. The dark hair along the back of his neck was cut in a straight line. He was the kind of guy you’d see playing a Secret Service agent in the movies: neatly contained but clearly dangerous.

  Leading me into a classroom, he folded himself into a desk and pointed to another that had been turned to face his. “Take a seat.” He pulled out a tape recorder and held it up for me to inspect. “Okay if I use this?” When I agreed, he pressed the play button. “Detective Lexington Archer, Stonedale P.D., September fourth at 2:57 p.m. Interview with Lila Maclean.” He caught my eye. “May I have your permission to tape this conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  He handed back the driver’s license an officer had taken from me earlier. “You’re thirty? That’s young for a professor, isn’t it?”

  “Not if you go right through,” I said. “I didn’t take any time off after undergrad.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little young to be a detective too.” I’d have pegged him as late thirties, maybe early forties.

  His mouth quirked. “I’m old enough, I promise.” He flipped open his notepad and positioned the pen over a blank page. “Do you prefer Professor or Doctor?”

  “Either. Or neither.” It was the first time anyone had ever asked me that. I didn’t even know the answer myself.

  “Most of the professors I’ve met prefer one or the other.”

  “Formality can make a difference in the way people treat you in higher education. Not that I agree with that.” With concerted effort, I managed to stop myself from further lamenting the complexities of academic culture. “Please call me Lila, Detective Archer.”

  “Got it. What is your position here?”

  “Assistant professor of English.”

  He began making notes. “Have you been in Stonedale long?”

  “Four weeks. This is my first semester.”

  His pen moved busily across the page. “Where were you before that?”

  “New York.”

  “City?”

  “Yes. I graduated from NYU last spring.”

  He circled something. I couldn’t imagine what in that brief exchange deserved emphasis. As I tried to stretch my neck unobtrusively for a better vantage point, Detective Archer shifted so I couldn’t see his notepad.

  “Tell me about the events of this afternoon,” he said.

  “Judith Westerly and I went to the department library to attend the faculty meeting.”

  “What time was this?” His pen was hovering over his notepad again.

  “Quarter to two.”

  “Did you touch anything in the room?”

  “No. I was only in there for a minute or so.”

  “What did you see when you walked in?”

  “The man.”

  The detective waited.

  “And the knife.”

  He said nothing. His silence was disconcerting.

  “And the blood.” The memory of that dark pool dripping slowly onto the carpet triggered my gag reflex. I grasped the side of the desk to steady myself and took a few deep breaths.

  Archer cleared his throat. “Right. Did
you recognize the man?”

  “Oh. It was Roland Higgins.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes. He was my department chair.”

  “What was your impression of him?”

  “He was very knowledgeable about his area,” I said, trying to keep it professional.

  “I mean as a person. What was he like?”

  I hesitated.

  “Roland had a big personality. He liked to make his presence known.”

  “Can you elaborate on that?”

  “He had definite opinions about certain things and was rude to anyone who disagreed with him.”

  “For example?” he prodded, pen poised.

  I sorted through potential options in my mind while gazing at the classroom’s white board behind Archer, covered with the ghostly remains of unintelligible class notes. “I guess I would say he was overly concerned with tradition.”

  The detective made some more notes. “What do you mean by tradition?”

  “A single literary tradition. The idea that there are only certain writers who deserve to be studied—mostly ‘dead white men.’”

  His head snapped up. “Is that a joke?”

  “No,” I said, blushing. “Just…unfortunate terminology, given the circumstances.”

  Archer stared at me. Hard.

  I tried to explain. “It’s shorthand for privileged treatment in the canon—”

  “Cannon? As in Revolutionary war?”

  “No, C-A-N-O-N. A list of the texts which, over time, people have come to see as the most important.”

  “As in Shakespeare?”

  “Yes, and Milton, Coleridge, Dickens, and so on. Primarily males—hence the phrase ‘dead white men,’ which is used to challenge the idea that only they had something significant to offer and that time was the only way to measure worth.”

  The detective blinked rapidly. “Did you just say ‘hence’?”

  I nodded.

  Archer sighed and tilted his head slightly. “Where is this list kept?”

  “It isn’t officially written down anywhere. But when you meet a colleague who subscribes to the idea of a fixed canon, you can tell.”

  “They want the list to stay the same?”

  “Yes. Anything new is typically viewed as a threat.”

  “A threat?” He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Academics are deeply territorial. They want to preserve the importance of their topics.”

  “I see.” His shoulders relaxed slightly. “But if it isn’t written down, how does the list come into play?”

  “Curriculum, for one thing. Authors included in programs, courses, and textbooks are presumably vital for students to know, while those excluded are not. It’s also related to scholarship—it’s generally much harder for professors to publish research on an author who is not already accepted as essential.”

  At Archer’s puzzled expression, I tried to streamline things: “It all comes down to who gets to determine the importance of texts, which has far-reaching consequences. It’s about power, basically.”

  “Understood.” He rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache.

  I sat back, exhausted.

  “So let’s return to this afternoon. You went into the room and saw Dr. Higgins. Is there anything else you can tell me about the room itself?”

  “I don’t know. Everything sort of went into slow motion. Oh, Judith told me to call 911.”

  “What was Judith doing?”

  “Just standing there, I think.”

  “How does Judith feel about Roland?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure, really. I only met her a few weeks ago. She seems nice, though.”

  The detective looked grim. “Most people do. At first.”

  Chapter 3

  A week later, the last vestiges of afternoon sun warmed the back of my black cotton dress as I walked slowly towards First Methodist church for Roland’s memorial service. Although Colorado lacked the brutal humidity of my native New York, it was still plenty hot, even this late in the day. The front lawn of the church was filled with small groups of unfamiliar people murmuring to one another. I stepped over a flowerbed and edged onto the sidewalk uneasily.

  “Lila!”

  I heard Calista’s voice from the main steps of the church, where she stood at the top, waving me over impatiently. Today she wore a simple black sheath, army boots, and a tiny hat with a small veil—appropriately somber fare yet still with her own special flair. Making my way through the crowd, I joined her.

  She smiled. “Come sit with me. I haven’t seen Judith yet but she’ll be here. How are you doing?”

  “Overwhelmed. And already behind on my grading. Does the pace ever slow down?”

  “Not really. It’s a race until the semester’s over. Are you feeling better about your conversation with the detective?” Her eyes caught on something behind me. “Speak of the devil. Don’t look now.”

  I turned around to see Archer climbing the stairs. He gave me a brief nod.

  “Hello—” said Calista, to his back as he disappeared into the church. “Well, he might be cute, but he isn’t the friendliest person I’ve ever met. I met him at a charity event last year, and he spent the whole time sitting in a corner by himself.”

  “I think he’s more the strong, silent type. And yes, I’m better now, thanks. It was just kind of intense.”

  Organ music began to play softly at that moment, so we went through the double doors and sat in a back row pew, watching the small church fill gradually with mourners in front of us. Most of the English faculty members were in attendance as well as a number of students. It was excessively warm in the room, despite the rotation of three oversized ceiling fans above, and many individuals fanned themselves with programs. I looked down at mine, which provided a list of prayers, hymns, and speakers, including Reverend Conrad Masters, Professor Spencer Bartholomew, and Professor Norton Smythe. Refreshments would follow in the reception room.

  Across the aisle, Judith waved at us and slid into the row next to Detective Archer. They nodded at each other, then rose along with the rest of the congregation to sing the first hymn. Stained-glass windows on either side of the church glowed, and the light from outside cast ruby, gold, and indigo beams across the rows of people before us. Although I hadn’t known Roland very well, the quiet splendor of that sight, along with the united voices of the people gathered here in his honor, moved me. I found myself having to wipe away a tear.

  After the service, I followed Calista into the church’s surprisingly spacious reception room, where we were offered paper cups of lukewarm coffee and butter cookies. A dark-suited Judith flung herself at us with arms outstretched and embraced us both. We chatted briefly about the service.

  “How are things going with our project?” Judith asked Calista.

  “Oh, right, I wanted to tell Lila.” Calista turned to me. “We offer a Gender Studies minor through the magic of cross-listed classes, and Judith and I are working on recruiting professors from various disciplines in order to grow into a major. We’re always looking for people to join us.”

  “I’d love to, as soon as I get some momentum here and figure everything out.”

  “If you do, please let the rest of us in on it.” She arched a well-groomed eyebrow. “Stonedale has its official procedures for paperwork to swim upward through the levels, but things tend to happen in mysterious and unofficial ways. I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”

  A tall gray-haired man in a black suit put an arm around Judith and thrust his head into the middle of the group. “Hello, everyone.”

  “Spence.” Judith hugged her husband.

  He kissed Calista on the cheek and gave me a firm handshake. “Lila, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to greet you at the faculty meeting on Friday, due to…the incid
ent.” Spencer lowered his voice on the last part and shook his head sadly. “He will be missed.”

  “Your eulogy was very kind,” I said. He had praised Higgins’ “eminently dignified scholarship” and “sense of fraternal bond.”

  “We’ve all known Rolly for eons,” said Judith. “In fact, he’s the one who introduced me to Spence.”

  “And for that,” Spencer smiled, “I am forever in his debt.”

  She touched his face gently. “You are sweet, my darling. Have you spoken to the family?”

  “Not yet. His brother Eldon is the only remaining member.” He pointed to a slightly younger-looking version of Roland—right down to the rimless glasses—standing in the corner beside a shiny silver coffee dispenser. A man strongly resembling Franklin Delano Roosevelt was talking earnestly to him.

  Judith squinted and craned her neck forward slightly. “Is that Trawley accosting him?”

  Spencer grimaced. “Yes. Probably suggesting that a generous donation would ensure the longevity of Rolly’s legacy or some such.”

  “Is there any way we could save the poor man? It’s hardly the right time.”

  “If he doesn’t approach him here, it will just happen elsewhere, Jude. But I’ll try to give Eldon a break—need to offer my own condolences, anyway. Speak to you later, all.” He ambled over to the corner. I was struck by how well-suited Spencer and Judith seemed to be.

  “Who is Trawley?” I hadn’t met him yet.

  “Chancellor Trawley Wellington,” Calista said. “Harvard man and don’t you forget it—”

  Judith coughed delicately. “Dear, perhaps we might hold off on the lengthy description for another time? The walls have ears, you know.”

  “Sorry, Judith.” Calista looked chastened. “You’re right. I should probably go home anyway.”

  Judith smiled at her, then patted my shoulder. “Perhaps you should aim for some quiet time tonight too. You’ve been through something quite out of the ordinary this week. But please do call me if you need anything.”

  I happened to agree with her suggestion and followed Calista straight for the exit after we’d bid Judith goodbye. We’d made it almost to the door when I heard someone call Calista’s name.