Death by Dissertation

by Dean James

  Dan paused. “You know, thinking about it now, maybe he was frightened. There was something strained about his tone while he talked to me.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I dropped everything and went to campus. I decided to stop by my carrel and pick up the Stenton book to take home because there were some references I wanted to check. It was about twenty after eleven when I got there. I remember glancing at my watch before I left my carrel.”

  As I listened, I wondered what had really happened in the grad lounge that night. Surely, after he had denied any responsibility, Dan wasn’t going to confess to Charlie’s murder. “What then?” I prompted.

  “I took the elevator instead of the stairs, and as I turned the corner after getting out on the fifth floor, I thought I saw someone down the hall, going away from me, but since most of the lights were off, I got only a vague impression. Anyway, the light in the lounge was off, and the door was slightly ajar.” He expelled a shaky breath. “I was so angry! I thought Charlie had called me over on a wild-goose chase. It would have been just like him to summon me for no reason, then disappear.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I started to turn around and head to the elevator, but instead, I pushed open the door and flipped on the light switch."

  I felt a chill across my shoulders. I knew just what Dan had found.

  “He was lying there on the sofa,” Dan continued. “I thought at first he was asleep, but then I could see that he was too still. I went over to him and touched him. He was warm—but not breathing.”

  Dan shuddered, and, involuntarily, I did too. The bright sunshine did little to dispel our image of the corpse.

  “All I wanted,” he said, “was to get out of there as quickly as possible. I had seen the back of his head and knew somebody had killed him. I checked for a pulse and couldn’t find one. I didn’t want to be caught with the body. I turned off the light and got out. It wasn’t until I got to my apartment that I remembered the Stenton book. I must have put it down without knowing it. And by then, of course, the library was closed.” He grimaced. “One of the few times I wished that the history department wasn’t located in the library.

  “I hardly slept. All I could think was that someone would find that book, checked out to me, and connect me with the murder. I made certain I was at the library the minute the doors opened the next morning so I could retrieve my book before anyone found the body. I took the stairs that open into the hallway right across from the lounge door. I saw nothing when I sneaked a look out the stairway door, so I stepped into the hallway. The door to the grad lounge had been pulled almost shut. I don’t remember if I closed it the night before. I had just gotten inside the room and found my book when I heard someone coming out of the stairway.”

  He looked at me apologetically. “It was you, although I didn’t know that until it was too late. Not that it would have made any difference, I guess, because I was in such a panic. After you noticed Charlie, I pushed you to cover my getaway.” His voice trembled as he continued. “I grabbed the book and got to the stairs as fast as I could. Then, for the next hour, I stayed in my carrel and read, trying to pretend nothing was going on.”

  “This person you thought you saw the night before,” I queried, my heart racing. “Do you have any idea who it was? Whether it was a man or a woman?”

  Dan shook his head. “The light was too bad, although I do think the person was about average height. That was the only real impression I got. I was in too much of a hurry—and too annoyed—to pay much attention. I’m afraid.”

  I hoped whoever it was hadn’t see Dan, because it was probably the murderer. Dan evidently had had similar thoughts, for he said, “When I had time to think about it, I concluded that stopping by my carrel probably kept me from walking in on the murder. Maybe it was more good luck than bad, although I might have saved Charlie’s life.” A shadow passed over his face, even though earlier, he had expressed little regret at Charlie’s death.

  The silence lengthened. Dan was gazing at me intently, a question writ large in his face. For a few seconds I felt claustrophobic, uncertain what he expected from me and equally certain that whatever my response, it wouldn’t match his expectations.

  After a deep breath, I spoke my mind. “I think you should tell the police what you saw the night of the murder.”

  “I know that’s the right thing to do,” he replied candidly, “but I’m terrified about what might come out. If they find out Charlie was blackmailing me, and why, they’ll make me a suspect—not to mention the trouble I’d be in with the history department.”

  “Dan, if they dig deep enough, they’re going to find it anyway, at least the fact that Charlie was blackmailing you.” There was just enough doubt in my mind that I wavered on trusting him. “I can’t tell you how I know, but I do know you weren’t the only person he blackmailed. If you go to the police of your own free will, they’re going to be less suspicious than if they have to haul you in for questioning when they discover you’re involved.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he admitted nervously, “but that doesn’t make it any easier.” He brightened, as a sudden thought struck him. “You know, I could tell them I had gone into the lounge that night to leave a note in someone’s box, saw the body, panicked, and ran, and they’d probably never know the difference.”

  That gambit was so old, it was hairless, but I wasn’t going to tell him. “That’s your decision,” I replied in a neutral tone. “I can’t make you tell them the truth, but I think you should. You don’t know—maybe you saw something that will help solve the case.” I had no idea what that something might be, but the police needed to know.

  He shrugged. “Maybe so.” He stood up, a look of regret on his face as he turned to me. “I know I’ve put you in a difficult position,” he apologized, “but I can’t tell you what a relief it is to talk to someone. I promise I’ll think it over and come to a decision soon, if you’ll give me at least until tomorrow.”

  “Dan, right now I can’t promise you anything, despite what I said earlier. What you’ve told me is rather difficult to absorb, all at once. I need some time to think myself.” I shook my head. “I appreciate the fact that you trusted me enough to tell me all this. Ordinarily I would never betray your confidence, but this is an extraordinary circumstance, and I’m just not certain.” I took a deep breath. “But I don’t think it’s my decision, do you?”

  “No, not really,” he replied softly. He looked at me, then got up, opened the door, and walked out of the study room.

  Watching him weave through the narrow stacks on the way to his carrel, I ruminated on the previous day with Rob and Maggie. Remembering the strained expression on Maggie’s face when we talked about Dan, I wondered if she hadn’t already suspected something. Perhaps she had sensed Dan’s turmoil over his sexuality. Obviously he was still troubled; the relationship with Charlie had been difficult. No wonder the guy was confused. Perhaps that was why Maggie had backed away—wisely, it seemed now—from going out with Dan more than a couple of times.

  If Charlie were still alive, I would have had great joy in telling him, at great length, just how disgusting and reprehensible he was. It was the living who suffered; the dead were beyond reach, at least beyond the reach of this world. The thought of demons tormenting Charlie in the netherworld gave me some satisfaction. The pain he had wrought in other people’s lives hadn’t died with him, but maybe he was finally paying for it.

  I stood up tiredly and went to my own carrel. It was nearly eleven o’clock. Now would be a good time to talk to Dr. Farrar about what she heard the afternoon of Whitelock’s murder. During the day, she never wandered far from her office.

  I came to an abrupt stop as I remembered what Dan had told me about the mysterious figure he saw before he discovered Charlie’s body. Was that person really Charlie’s murderer? Or had Dan invented this person to convince me that he was innocent? If this person had really been there, could he or she have seen Dan, before or after Dan had killed Charlie?r />
  I was inclined to think Dan innocent of Charlie’s murder, because I could think of no reason for him to murder Whitelock. Dan was a student of White-lock’s, but I couldn’t think of another connection between the two. As far as I knew, Whitelock had confined his extracurricular activities to partners of the opposite sex. There was certainly no hint in Charlie’s journal that Dan could have been involved in Whitelock’s sexual hijinks.

  Then another thought hit me. What if the mysterious person was Whitelock, and he had stumbled into the lounge while Dan was murdering Charlie?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I sat down in my carrel and stared blindly at the postcards of English cathedrals I had taped on every available surface. Could Dan have murdered both Charlie Harper and Julian Whitelock? As I relaxed in my chair, I sketched a scenario in my head.

  Dan had found Charlie alive in the grad lounge, they started arguing, and Dan, his temper fuelled by the humiliation and anger of his situation, picked up the commemorative statue and hit Charlie on the back of the head. White-lock, who often worked in the library until it closed at midnight, could have heard the sounds of an argument as he was on his way out of the building.

  I carried the scene a few steps further. Whitelock, curious about the noise, decided to investigate. He walked into the grad lounge as Dan struck the fatal blow, or immediately after. Whitelock wouldn’t have been too sorry to find Charlie put permanently out of his way, and he wouldn’t have threatened Dan with the police. Perhaps they had come to some sort of agreement, an agreement which fell apart after Rob confronted Whitelock with his knowledge of Charlie’s blackmailing efforts. Made nervous by what he probably construed as a threat on Rob’s part, Whitelock contacted Dan and disturbed him sufficiently that Dan felt forced to silence the professor in order to protect himself.

  I mulled it over for a few minutes, and, though it sounded plausible, the theory didn’t seem all that probable. There were too many if's. If Whitelock had walked in on the murder. If he had been able to persuade Dan he wouldn’t turn him in. If, if, if Dan was an excellent suspect in Charlie’s murder, but since the two murders had to be closely connected, I’d have to find a better motive for Whitelock’s murder to include Dan seriously as a suspect. Unless there were two killers? But I dismissed that notion. It was too complicated.

  Coming out of my reverie, I gave my favorite cathedral, York Minster, a long look, then got up. How I wished I were there, soaking in the tranquility and timeless magnificence of that great structure. But I was stuck in Houston in the middle of a murder investigation, and gazing at postcards wasn’t getting me anywhere. A talk with Dr. Farrar might clear up a few things, and I should get on with it. I was hoping that the eccentric professor might have heard something— anything—on the afternoon Whitelock was murdered.

  Once on the fifth floor, I went straight to Dr. Farrar’s office. Her door was slightly ajar, and I paused for a few seconds to determine whether anyone was with the professor. Hearing nothing except the sound of rapid typing, I knocked, then pushed the door open.

  Dr. Farrar typed a few more words, then turned to face me. A distracted smile lit her homely face when she saw who it was. “Hello, my dear, how nice to see you.” She tended to call everyone “my dear,” since she had a hard time with students’ names. She shuffled a few papers on her desk, looking vainly for her appointment calendar, which was tacked up on the wall behind her chair. “Did we have an appointment?”

  I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling. She could never remember where her calendar was. “No, ma’am,” I replied. “But I did hope you might have a few minutes to talk to me about something important.”

  Though her eyes strayed wistfully toward her typewriter, she responded, “Of course,” after only slight hesitation.

  Closing the door behind me, I sat quickly in the chair beside her desk and apologized for interrupting her work. Interpreting the gleam in Dr. Farrar’s eyes as a signal that she was about to launch into a lengthy account of her current project, I hastily outlined the reason for my visit.

  My explanation elicited such a furious glare from the woman that I thought at first I had offended her somehow. But when she was able to master her temper enough to speak, I realized that her anger was not directed at me.

  “That man was the most inconsiderate creature it was ever my misfortune to know.” She slapped a hand down on her desk and dislodged a stack of note cards, which slid slowly over the edge of the desk. While I watched in fascination, the cards continued down onto a pile of books beside the desk, before they came to rest on the floor. Dr. Farrar never even noticed.

  After the last note card fluttered to a stop, I realized that the professor was still speaking, giving me a catalog of her disputes with Julian Whitelock. After about ten minutes, she finally got to the day he was killed.

  Hoping to focus her overflow of information, I interposed a question. “What did he do that particular afternoon?”

  Dr. Farrar paused in mid-sentence, blinked at me, then wrinkled her nose as she considered her reply. “If you are referring to the afternoon upon which he met his timely end,” she replied tartly, “he disturbed me with all that arguing.” So absorbed was she in her recriminations that she failed to notice my head snap to attention as I concentrated on what she was telling me.

  “That afternoon, from about one-thirty onwards, I had little of the customary quiet that a true scholar needs in order to concentrate. For nearly two hours,” Dr. Farrar complained, “each time I thought the argument was finished, it would resume. These walls, such are the standards of construction, are much too thin; and even if one cannot hear the actual words, the sound of loud, inconsiderate voices is sufficiently disturbing.”

  She pounded again on her desk, but this time nothing moved. “That man had no consideration for the persons in this department who are actually carrying on scholarly work. He sat there, year after year, and did nothing except write book reviews, and had the nerve to be jealous of anyone who was actually working. He was unbearable.”

  The accusations were partially justified, but now was not the time to address her sense of grievance over Whitelock’s high-handed behavior. I ventured a question. “When you say there was an argument, do you mean that there was only one which lasted almost two hours?” I knew this couldn’t be correct, but I wanted to know whether Dr. Farrar realized it herself. If she had been unable to distinguish any difference in the persons arguing with Whitelock that afternoon, her evidence might not be helpful after all.

  “Goodness, no,” she responded, surprised at my question. “I should have expressed myself more accurately. It certainly seemed like one continuous argument to me, but of course it wasn’t.” She frowned in concentration, then ticked off something silently on her fingers. When she had touched the fourth finger, she looked triumphantly at me. “I believe there were four different arguments in all. Two of them, I’m positive, were with women, and two of them with men. ” I thought quickly. Bella and Rob should account for two of the four. Who was the other woman? Was there actually a second woman? And what about the second man? Perhaps there had been only the two arguments, with Bella and Rob, and Dr. Farrar hadn’t heard clearly enough to distinguish. The order of them should settle my doubts.

  “Could you tell me,” I asked carefully, “just how things happened that afternoon?”

  Dr. Farrar blinked at me, and I feared she wasn’t going to respond.

  “Well,” she replied, “I returned to my office after a late morning tea break. I rarely eat a regular meal at midday. By then, it was perhaps half past noon, and I settled down to my work. I have been transcribing some copies of microfilms of Victorian manuscripts, and the task is quite painstaking,” she explained.

  I nodded my commiseration, having worked with similar copies that had strained my eyes and my patience.

  “I keep my office door just barely open,” the professor continued, “because it helps the air to circulate. It can be terribly stuffy in the af
ternoon. Anyway, all was quiet until around one-thirty. I had heard Julian’s door open and close a few minutes earlier, but I thought little about it until the voices grew loud.” She frowned. “I tried to shut out the sound, but fortunately this particular disagreement didn’t last that long. I heard Julian’s door close somewhat forcefully, then all was quiet for a while.”

  In response to my hasty query, Dr. Farrar replied, “It was a man, I’m certain.” She leaned back in her swivel chair before she continued. “There was a nice, long period of quiet from next door. Then, around three, Julian’s door opened again, and another argument sprang up not long after. This time it was a woman. This argument became loud rather quickly.

  “I am somewhat vague about the actual time of day,” Dr. Farrar apologized, “and I didn’t look at the clock again after that, although that argument seemed even shorter than the first one. Not long after the second argument ended, Julian’s door opened and closed a third time, and for the third time, I heard an argument begin.” She frowned fiercely at me. “The visitor this time was also a woman.” Dr. Farrar anticipated my question and said, “I know it was a different woman, because the tone of voice was much more shrill, more piercing.” Bella Gordon had a deep voice for a woman. Azalea Westover, on the other hand, had rather a piercing quality to her voice, which was fairly high-pitched. But that second female voice could have belonged to Selena Bradbury, Wilda Franken, or Margaret Wilford. I tried to concentrate and capture an aural memory of their voices. With Selena, it wasn’t too difficult, and I decided she was a strong possibility. The same went for Wilda. I couldn’t be sure about Margaret, because I just hadn’t heard her that much.

  “Then,” Dr. Farrar fairly snorted in her disgust, and I called myself sharply to attention, “as if all the preceding hullabaloo wasn’t enough, as soon as that argument was over and someone slammed the office door, I barely had five minutes of precious silence, when I heard Julian’s door bang open once again. This time, another man set in with a rather loud tone of voice, and I decided I was ready for a cup of tea, so I left my office while Julian and that man continued to argue. It must have been around three-thirty, perhaps a little after, by then.”