Dead Letter

by Jonathan Valin

  “There are two types of department chairmen,” she said. “One pretends to hate his work, the other to enjoy it. The truth is that both of them thrive on the perquisites of the office. I haven’t met a departmental chairman yet who wasn’t a secret fascist. Lovingwell was just more open about it. He loved power and he exercised it with panache. But it was the fist inside the velvet glove sort of thing. And eventually it cost him his position. In a way he was lucky it didn’t cost him more. I can’t prove it, but I believe that Charley was driven to suicide by Daryl Lovingwell.”

  I could believe it. I suppose, at that point, I was eager to believe it. It made for such a brutal confirmation of all that Sarah had told me. I told her to go on with something like lust in my voice; and she heard it, the eagerness, and looked at me oddly.

  “Did you know him?” she said. “Did you know Lovingwell?”

  “I knew him,” I said, making my voice calmer, more professional. “Tell me about Charley McPhail.”

  “He was an astrophysicist, working with Mike O’Hara. In seventy-one O’Hara published a series of articles that Charley helped research. They created quite a stir. O’Hara had been cooperating for years with teams in England and at M.I.T. in an effort to validate the big-bang theory of the universe. His articles lent significant support to the theory; in fact, some of his data helped pave the way to the study of background radiation.

  “In most respects O’Hara was a decent enough man, innocent of any thought outside his field. But he was very ambitious to consolidate his position within the department, partly, I think, in order to gain supporters for his theories. There had always been a good deal of tension between him and Lovingwell. He was the fair-haired boy and Lovingwell the old hand—the athlete and the tweed coat. When O’Hara’s articles came out, the antagonism worsened. Where they had disagreed before in a polite, professional way, they began to go at it no-holds-barred and at every possible occasion, from student parties to meetings of the executive committee. I’ve seen it happen before, in every department I’ve worked in, and it’s a melancholy thing. People take sides. Talk becomes loose and flagrant. Egos are crushed like cigarette butts.

  “Someone started a rumor that Lovingwell was boffing O’Hara’s wife, which may have been true. With her, there’s no such thing as an accurate body count. Although it was rather amusing to imagine the two of them in bed. She’s bitchy, handsome, and hedonistic. He was crabby, supercilious, and about as out-going as hard stool. We figured he kept up a running commentary while they made love, to let her know just how badly she was doing. Then someone else started a rumor that O’Hara had plagiarized his findings from Charley’s dissertation, which was what set the whole ugly incident off.

  “You hear stories all the time about professors lifting their points and paragraphs from students’ papers. Two years ago, the English Department almost hired a man named Teague who actually did plagiarize most of his work. It was a real black eye for the department and they got out of it as gracelessly as they’d gotten in. Teague had already moved his family here when the tyros found out that he’d lost his job at Cambridge because of the plagiarizing business and canned him on the spot. You see, that’s how little attention they pay to each other’s work, that’s how much unexamined reputation means to them. They’re snobs of the worst kind. Teague was famous, so nobody bothered to look at what he’d written.

  “When the rumor started about O’Hara’s work, Lovingwell took it up like a cause. There would have to be an investigation, he said. There were some public meetings and some incredibly vicious private ones. And poor Charley McPhail found himself caught between two raging egotists out for each other’s blood. There’s a part of this that I’m not sure about. Whether Charley did, in fact, go to Lovingwell originally to complain in his quiet way about O’Hara’s appropriation of his work. Or whether Lovingwell called him on the carpet to browbeat him into a confession. Anyway, he recanted later. Publicly. And apologized to O’Hara. There was something queer about that, too. Because it was Lovingwell who made Charley recant, after he’d gotten him to confess in the first place. After a time, the issue of O’Hara’s integrity became secondary. And Charley himself became the issue. Lovingwell failed him twice on his orals and made an ugly scene at a party about Charley’s ‘weak’ character. Charley was a homosexual, and Lovingwell played on that for all it was worth. Which would surprise you in this enlightened place. Eventually, Charley resigned from the Department. And a few weeks later, he cut his wrists in a room in Daniels Hall.”

  Felicia Earle shook her head sadly. “That’s the story of Charley McPhail. Some of it I saw myself. Some of it I got through Leo, my husband, who was Charley’s friend. You should talk to him if you want more details. He works at the Gargoyle Record Shop on Calhoun until five-thirty. I’d better warn you, though, he doesn’t like talking about it. It still makes my flesh crawl. I must say you don’t seem as shocked as I thought you’d be.”

  “Honey,” I said to her. “Nothing you could tell me about Daryl Lovingwell could shock me anymore. What about O’Hara, what do you think of him?”

  “Not much anymore. He tries to act tough, but he’s run by his wife. Or, at least, he used to be. He drinks a lot, too. And he’s a bad sentimental drunk. I’ve had him on my hands at many a faculty party. I will say this for him, he’s got a heart. He took Charley McPhail’s death very hard.”

  “Sound like a man with a guilty conscience to you?”

  She shrugged. “It’s possible. But if he had plagiarized Charley’s work, Lovingwell would never have let him get away with it. Not in those days. Hell, he would have laid O’Hara’s head at the foot of the cyclotron.”

  “I guess so.” I got to my feet. “Thanks, Felicia. You’ve been a help.”

  “I feel like a stinker,” she said dismally. “In spite of the rancor, I still love what this goddamn place ought to be.” She looked mournfully about the room. “Ten years,” she said. “And do you know why?”

  I shook my head.

  “For love. So he could stay a little boy. So he wouldn’t have to grow up like the rest of them.”

  “Your husband?”

  She didn’t say anything. But the suffering look in her black eyes did.

  22

  ACROSS CAMPUS and up one flight of stairs I found the Gargoyle Record Shop. Two naked rooms with record bins on every wall. Leo Earle, or the guy I took to be Leo Earle, was sitting behind a register by the door. He was a tall young man, in his early thirties, husky, sloppy, and obviously bored with his work. Although he was sitting with his back facing the open room, I could tell that one flap of his shirt was out in back. He was the type. His pants would be falling down periodically, too. He had a broad, boyish face. Wore a light moustache, shaped like a flier’s wings. Horn-rimmed glasses. Brown hair that spilled off his scalp, down his neck and curled on his forehead in a love lock. He didn’t know me and he figured I wasn’t going to buy anything, so he didn’t waste any energy on hellos.

  I told him who I was and what I wanted and he gawked at me in disbelief.

  “You say you talked to Fell this morning? How do I know that?”

  “Give her a call.”

  “I will,” he said.

  He eyed me cagily, as if he thought I were going to bolt and run when he put my lie to the test. When I didn’t budge, he looked disappointed.

  He made the call anyway, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece so I couldn’t yell any advice. All I could hear was “some guy,” “Charley,” and “O.K.” When he hung up, he turned to me with a boyish, chastened grin. It was probably the same look he’d been giving Felicia for the last ten years.

  “I’m sorry about the confusion,” he said, jabbing ineffectually at his loose shirt tail. “How often do you meet a private eye?” He held out his hand, like a real man. And I shook it.

  “I did some security work myself one summer,” he said avidly.

  And I could just see him in his Wells Fargo uniform with an empty gun on his
Sam Browne, defending the honor of the all-night grocery the company had stuck him in. It’s frightening to think about all the college kids, unemployed salesmen, and self-styled gunsels who are hired for security duty in groceries and five-and-dimes. The general theory is that anybody wearing a badge and a pistol can serve as an intimidating prop—like those decals that security firms hand out with their burglar alarms: “This house is protected by X.” But, believe me, a tough with a shotgun under his coat isn’t going to fall for a pretty uniform. Which is why the mortality rate in U-Totems is so damn high. Until some real standards of training are established, yokels like Leo Earle are going to continue to get paid minimum wage to be killed and are going to continue to think it’s fun.

  “You know where the term ‘private eye’ came from?” he asked.

  “Pinkerton.”

  His face fell. “Yeah. That’s right. That was their trademark. An open eye and the motto, ‘We never sleep.’”

  “Do you think we could get out of here for a while, Leo. I could use some coffee.”

  “I guess so. There isn’t much doing here this morning anyway. I guess it would be all right.”

  Leo locked up the shop and we went next door to the Hidden Corner—an unprepossessing restaurant that serves some of the best food in the city. I boosted him to a cup of coffee and let him talk for five minutes about his dissertation on the founding of the Royal Society. Then I steered him back to Charley McPhail. It was clearly not a subject he wanted to be steered toward. When I asked him why, he said, “I was there when they found his body.”

  “I see.”

  “There are eight pints of blood in the human circulatory system,” he said grimly. “And poor Charley had spilled every drop on that damn bed.”

  Earle shivered in his chair and rubbed the coffee cup as if he were warming his hands over a fire.

  “I know it was ugly, Leo. I know he was your friend. But I’ve got to ask you to do some remembering. A girl’s life may depend on it.”

  It sounded silly, but it was the sort of silliness that impressed Leo Earle. He really was the little boy his wife had said he was. Full of enthusiasms and blank spaces.

  “A girl’s life?” he said, rolling it on his tongue. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said with dead earnestness. “I’m not being coy. This is literally a matter of life and death.”

  Hot dog! Leo said to himself and rubbed his hands on the coffee cup.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why he committed suicide.”

  Earle sighed painfully. “That’s not an easy question to answer.”

  “I’d like to hear what you think.”

  “Well, Lovingwell, of course. He was the efficient cause. He and the razor blades Charley used.”

  “And the final cause?”

  Leo looked at me sadly. “You know that Charley was a homosexual?”

  I nodded.

  “He’d been having an affair with someone on campus. A long-standing thing. When Lovingwell made such a fuss about O’Hara’s article and Charley got caught in between, this friend of his dropped him.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Charley would never talk about it. He was a very private man. Very defensive about his personal life. The only reason I know about his lover at all is that Charley got very drunk one night at a faculty party—Lovingwell had been tormenting him with snide remarks—and when I took him home, he started to cry.”

  Leo squinted at the memory. “It wasn’t a pleasant thing to see. He’d always been so much in control, so self-contained. To see him break down like that...”

  “Did he ever mention his lover’s name?” I said.

  Earle shook his head. “It wasn’t like a confession. It was more of a lament. He just couldn’t believe what had happened to his life. After that night he went home for a week or so. His folks live in Batesville, Indiana, I think. When he came back, he seemed to have himself under control. I figured something had happened while he was away. Some sort of reconciliation with his lover. Charley seemed quite ashamed of his outburst when I saw him. He asked me never to mention it again.” Earle’s boyish face turned red. “I said that I wouldn’t. A week later he slashed his wrists in Daniels.”

  Leo looked up from his coffee cup and frowned savagely. “When I read that Lovingwell had been murdered, do you know what I did?”

  “What?”

  “I said a prayer that whoever killed him would never be found.”

  If it hadn’t been for Sarah, I think I might have agreed.

  23

  IT WAS an hour’s drive to Batesville. Out I-74, through the sulfur-yellow gorges and huge, forested hills of southern Ohio and then into that flat, pallid Indiana countryside where high power stations and occasional farm houses are the only scenery amid treeless fields of snow. Lurman had come along because it was his job. I could see from the distraction on his face that most of him was looking ahead to nightfall, when the real business of killing or being killed might take place.

  Most of me was looking back. Seven years. To two suicides and one vicious man, if he’d been a man—he seemed to me now like an illusion, a trick done with infernal mirrors. I was looking back and thinking about that greed that Sarah and Meg O’Hara had said was his only motive. And not simply a greed for money. But apparently for whatever people held dear. O’Hara’s reputation. McPhail’s self-esteem. Claire Lovingwell’s inheritance. Sarah’s damaged love for her dead mother. He’d had a true bully’s instinct for the weaknesses of his victims, for the tender spots where their courage failed. Mercilessly, he’d reduced them to death or to impotence; and all the while he’d prospered.

  Whatever I found at the McPhail home, it would lead me back to that greedy ghost. How he’d intended to profit, what driving the McPhail boy to suicide had gained him, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that there had to have been some profit. That humiliating McPhail, using him against O’Hara, and then forcing him to recant, had gotten Lovingwell something he’d wanted. Some trinket, somebody’s soul on a chain. Perhaps his rival’s, O’Hara’s. Perhaps McPhail’s unknown lover. At best, Charley McPhail’s parents could tell me precisely why Lovingwell had ruined their son. At worst, they could tell me more about his lover, who might have nursed an old hurt for seven years before salving it in Lovingwell’s blood.

  It was high noon when we got to the Harrison exit. I dropped down through a stand of leafless oak trees onto a two-lane state road. And about four miles south we hit the first cluster of tract homes, nondescript bungalows and single-story ranch houses that looked as desperately lifeless as trailer parks. We passed through the city proper, four or five blocks of two-story frame buildings, dotted incongruously with the red tile roofs and teepee-tops of fast-food joints. And then into a maple-lined grid of brick houses and snow-covered lawns. I pulled into a gas station and, while a pasty-faced boy in a parka tried to fill the tank and keep warm at the same time, I found a phonebook and looked up McPhail. There was only one listing. On Kearney Street. Number 153.

  It was a tiny, two-story bungalow, sided in aluminum and badly in need of repairs. Rust seemed to be everywhere about the house. The cyclone fencing in the front yard was full of it. It came off on my glove when I opened the gate at the foot of the short, snowy walk that lead to the front door. It coated the mailbox and the screens on the square, shaded windows.

  Lurman, not a man of delicate sensibility, began to fidget. “I can’t take this, Harry,” he said. “They’re going to be old, and you’re going to bring back the reason for all of this.” He looked forlornly about the small, un-tended yard. “It’s all too damn familiar. I’m going back to the car.”

  He walked down the snowy walk and left me standing on the porch. I knocked again.

  “Who’s there?” a timid voice asked. It could have been a man or a woman. It was that old and out of register. I looked back at the car and thought, you can still call this off, Harry. But she was at the storm d
oor by then. Loose print dress with the frill of her slip trailing at the hemline. Hair white and thin on top. Rouge spots on her cheeks. Lustrous brown eyes that had lost their focus.

  “What is it?” she said. “Who do you want?”

  “Mrs. McPhail?”

  “That’s me.” She pulled at her dress. “I’m Clovis McPhail.”

  “Could I come in, Mrs. McPhail? My name is Stoner. I want to talk to you about your son.”

  “Charley?” she said. “You a friend of Charley’s?”

  “Not exactly a friend,” I said with half a heart.

  “What is it you want, mister? Charley’s dead. There isn’t anything else to say. He’s dead, his pop’s dead, and I’m still here.” She looked past me toward the tired street. “You explain it.”

  “I can’t. I can’t explain why your son is dead. Can you help me?”

  “Why?” she said flatly. “Why bother? It won’t do him any good to explain. It won’t do me any good either.”

  “It might,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’ve been through it too many times. It’s been too many years.”

  “All right, Mrs. McPhail,” I said. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  I started down the walk when she called me back.

  “You could come in if you want. I don’t see that many folks I can afford to scare ‘em off. You could come in. For awhile.”

  The parlor was neat and sweet-smelling. The old mahogany furniture, the sideboards and end tables, were covered with linen doilies. She showed me to a wood rocker with a little quilted cushion on the seat.

  “I try to keep it clean,” she said, sitting across from me on an old armchair. “Can’t do much about the outside. Not since Lou died. But I try to keep it clean in here.” She looked at me with naked suspicion, as if she thought I were about to sell her something she didn’t want to buy. “Why do you want to talk about Charley? What’s this about? Are you with a newspaper or something?”