(2012) Cross-Border Murder (4 page)

He frowned again. “Some of that information the university would be loath to hand over to a reporter. You know that. Some of it might even be legally confidential.”

“I would be prepared to trust your judgment in that regard.”

“I would have to consult the rector.”

I felt he needed a little extra nudge. “Joe, I want you to trust me on this one. I won’t write the story unless both of us are convinced that the evidence is strong enough to warrant that the file be re-opened.” I knew I was putting a burden on him that he did not need, and probably didn’t want. Nor was he stupid. He knew that I controlled only what I intended to do. What the paper might do with just some juicy tidbits was another matter. But I think he was too proud to ask me to keep everything I found out to myself until we both agreed on the need for a story.

He returned to the window and stared outside. I watched his shoulders slump a little and then square themselves.

“Okay.” He said. “I’ll speak to the rector as soon as I can. Call me after ten tomorrow morning.”

“Deo gratias, Joe.” We had both been around long enough to have studied Latin in High School. And maybe to trust each other a little. A younger PR man would have found a way to turn me down. Maybe even to put some roadblocks in my way.

CHAPTER THREE
 

I met Gina at the main gate. Decades ago the approach from the gate to the administration building had been composed of gravel pathways surrounded by grass and well-tended flower beds. Now most of it had been paved over to provide a parking lot for senior administrators. A few buildings still had a certain charm, even though their style was imitation Gothic. A century ago they had been set in a very ample green space and surrounded by a countryside that had yet to be turned into suburbia. But the city had grown and surrounded the site. Time, the value of real estate, and the change in university vocations had bowdlerized any of the original architect’s concept. The change was now beyond redemption. New cost-efficient buildings had sprouted like concrete bunkers around an under-sized grass quadrangle. The university had originally been an Arts College. But who needs labs that look like libraries? Not the technicians who work in them. And who needs business faculties that do not resemble the corporate world that students are being trained to manage? As I walked with Gina towards the main building, I wondered if she saw what I saw. Maybe she was too young. I wondered if this kind of ad-hoc mess of pottage was all that she had ever known.

The faculty club was on the top floor of the main building. We walked up what had once been an ornate staircase rather than wait for the rickety elevator. The faculty club, too, looked as if it had been recently modernized. The bar was now black leather and silver chrome rather than polished mahogany. Couches were a pale green, made of some imitation leather material that could be easily wiped clean. The parquetry floor was covered in a hard wall-to-wall, dark brown, industrial carpeting. All the original paintings had been replaced by lively, colorful prints. The old original paintings were probably now too valuable to be hung in a public place where petty theft had probably become a way of life. But the tall, leaded windows remained. Near one of these, at a small low table, I recognized Harold Hendricks from the photo. A drink and a small pitcher of water sat in front of him. I had told him I would be coming alone. He rose with a puzzled smile as I approached with Gina. When I introduced ourselves, he said to Gina, “Of course, I should have recognized you right away. You have your mother’s bone structure. Mind you, you’ve changed a lot since I saw you as a young teen.” He seemed uneasy. I wanted to think that perhaps there was some residual guilt about the fate of her father.

“You may have heard,” Gina said, “my father died recently.”

He nodded with a glance in my direction. “I’m truly sorry to hear that.”

He made a very slight clicking sound and shook his head ever so slightly in what seemed to me to be an effort to convey sympathy. As we sat he motioned to the student bartender. “Myself,” he said, “I drink a special single malt whisky with a bit of bottled water at room temperature.” Perhaps he was a connoisseur. But I think I recognized the kind of rationale that is often used to mask the more private motives of a heavy drinker. I told the waiter that I would have the same as professor Hendricks. Gina ordered a spritzer.

Hendricks sniffed and sipped from his drink. He beamed at us, intent on being a good host. “It’s from the only distillery on the Isle of Islay. It’s the island’s peat moss and the sea air which gives it its distinctive flavor.”

At the very least, I thought, it would be a change from the cheap blend I usually drank. Hendricks leaned back in his chair as the waiter deposited our drinks. He had brought Hendricks a refill.

“So, what can I do to help you?”

I expanded on the brief explanation I had given him over the telephone. He listened attentively, periodically sniffing and sipping from his scotch glass. I told him I was particularly interested in any tensions which might have existed between Monaghan and the close group which surrounded him. “I understand,” I said, “that you were an integral part of that group.”

He seemed to be pondering his reply as he swished a mouthful of Scotch from one cheek to the other and back again before swallowing. “Well, to begin with,” he said with an amused smile, “while I feel honored to be thought of as a member of that particular group I must tell you that I was certainly not part of the inner circle. My role was neither that exalted nor my presence that wanted.”

I did not know whether to believe him. Like Gooden, was he now trying to take a safe distance from what had happened?

“You see,” he went on to explain, “the group had a nucleus of true insiders which included Monaghan, Symansky, Montini, Gooden and maybe one or two more. Then there were others like me, who were slightly inside, but mostly outside. And then there were the usual hangers-on who occasionally attended the parties and the meetings that were called in the early days and who may have thought of themselves as a part of it all.”

I must have looked puzzled and out of my depths. “You said you were partly inside, partly outside this group. I don’t understand.”

He smiled with amusement again, as if to say, ah, life is never quite what we would like it to be. “Temperament was a part of it,” he said. “And besides to be a true insider one had to be an American or at least have a natural grasp of the ideology which knit the group together. I was always too much of a cynic by temperament, and as a structural engineer, and originally from Scotland to boot, I was never sufficiently familiar with the shared rhetoric to be a true insider. Being American and having been virulently against the Vietnam War was almost a sine qua non.”

“What about Professor Monaghan,” I asked. “He was an engineer like you, wasn’t he?”

He nodded. “But first and foremost he was an angry American. Secondly, his area of specialization involved ballistics and hence weaponry. He was fascinated by military hardware and could quote facts and figures which delighted the anti-imperialists like Frank Montini.” He threw Gina an avuncular look. “As an historian, your father had a soft spot for all oppressed people.” He turned back to me. “And then, of course, Monaghan was zealous to the point of arrogance. Most of us at the time saw him as somehow cool and commanding. I came to the conclusion eventually that he was just cold and self-centered. But then most brilliant scientists are.” He brought the glass of scotch to his face and breathed in the bouquet before adding a small amount of water to it. I watched him. “Go ahead,” he said, “breathe it in. Then let a small quantity touch the taste buds at the back of your throat.” He smiled to encourage me. I did what he suggested and then smiled to indicate my pleasure at the experiment. I was in fact pleasantly surprised. But I had done it primarily to establish empathy.

I put my glass down. “Steve Symansky and Peter Gooden? What about them?” I asked.

“Symansky was a political scientist. His wife, Stella, was, I believe, in sociology. They were also both American. As you know Canadian universities were expanding very rapidly back then. There was a dearth of home grown talent, and consequently places like Winston accepted a veritable invasion of American professors.” He frowned. “Gooden, I think, was one of those rare birds with dual citizenship. His mother was American. Or something like that.”

“And you say he was part of the inner group?” I kept to myself Gooden’s claim to have been otherwise.

“Definitely.”

“Even if he was only a graduate student?”

He nodded. “Like many of them he had been given an undergraduate course or two to teach. He was briefly one of Monaghan’s favorites. I think he represented the new generation who would carry the flag and go on to build the new Jerusalem. Or something like that.” He said the words with an alcohol-assisted irony. He stared into his glass and chuckled. “Oh, what a fall from grace was there. If only Monaghan could see him now!” His eyes watered at what I took to be a flood of new memories. “We all fell from grace, I suppose. All tumbled off our once vaunted ideological perches.”

“You too?” Gina said. There was a mock irony in her voice. It was a deliberate provocation. She had little tolerance, I suspected, for cant in an older generation. Professor Hendrick’s left eyelid began to flutter.

“But unfortunately my perch was not as high as the others, and like many cynics I fell into the sauce and not into a cushy administrative position.” His index finger made a diving motion towards the liquor in his glass. “Professor Gooden, on the other hand, bounced right back up to become a member of the new business-government backed establishment.” I watched in fascination as his eyelid fluttered again. “As my mother used to say, when she wanted to hold up some other person’s son as a model with which to admonish me, he will go far, that boy, very far, mark my words!” I decided to push ahead.

“What about the women in the group.”

“Which ones?”

“Any that you feel might have been pertinent.”

“Well, then, I’ll leave out the female students. There was always a few around, but they were really marginal. There was Stella of course, Stella Symansky. She had a degree, as I said, probably, in sociology. She taught a couple of courses part time.” He closed his eyes as if to beckon back certain images from the past into sharper focus. He held his glass cupped in both hands as if to warm the liquor and himself. “I think she was more active as part of the inner circle than I may have realized back then. I was going to say that she was a shrewd one. But she was a good observer, and she had a disciplined control of herself that most of us didn’t.” As he opened his eyes, his left eyelid fluttered again briefly and then went still. “Strange, she was well-liked, had no apparent enemies. Probably because she was a very good listener. No one ever gossiped about her. Then, of course, there was Mrs. Monaghan. A very different kettle of fish. She was a bit of a tease.” He sneaked a glance at Gina. She gave him a secretive smile but held his gaze. “In a way she was quite remarkable. I think she spoke at least three languages fluently. I suspect she came from one of those wealthy families where the children get sent to Switzerland for part of their education. She knew Europe well. Probably had spent her summer vacations there. I suspect that’s where she is now.”

“Actually she’s living in the east end of Montreal.”

“Is she?” He seemed to have been caught by surprise. “Really? How odd.” I gave him a puzzled look. He went on, “she always spoke longingly of Paris. I think she did it to annoy her husband who seemed to be content in what she apparently considered the backwater of the universe. We always suspected that she had married Monaghan as a form of rebellion against her family background. The few contacts she had with her family that I was aware of did not seem to be pleasant ones. Professor Monaghan was from a lower stratum of American society. I think his father was a mechanic. Or something like that. Still in Montreal is she? Interesting. But odd.”

“And my mother?” Gina asked.

“Ah, yes. Your mother.” He looked at me first unsure of what to tell us. I had the feeling he would have told me something he did not want to reveal to Gina. “Well, she pretty well kept to herself. She was always there but she never seemed to really belong. If one caught her off guard, there always seemed to a hint of unhappiness in her face. When you spoke to her she was always polite. Friendly. What I would have called a true lady.” But in his tone he had hit a false note. I noticed it. I don’t think he did. Gina did. She winced. He went on, “Of course she was very beautiful and there were times when she appeared quite happy, but it seemed to me to be a transient emotion, as if she expected it to disappear at any moment.”

“It did,” Gina said.

I pressed on. “At the time, did you think Gina’s father was guilty?”

As he dragged his glass towards him and lifted it to drink, beads of moisture clung to the table like a trail of unsympathetic tears. He gave Gina an apologetic glance.

“I guess at the time it was convenient for all of us to think so. But I don’t think many of us really bought it. Convenient because otherwise we had to conclude that a murderer was still at large. And what might the motive have been? Something, maybe, that might prove a danger to our own lives? On the other hand none of us had ever thought of your father as someone capable of that kind of violence. It didn’t really make sense.” He turned to Gina. “I’m no psychologist, but usually a man who is prone to violence shows it in many small ways. Sudden anger at parties. Whatever. That was not your father.”

“But you didn’t rally to his support,” I said.

“No.”

“Not even when he was released.”

He did not reply. I could see that he was beginning to resent my line of questioning.

“Did anyone go out of their way to foster the idea that he was guilty even after his release?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Did you?”

“No. Definitely not!” But again he had struck a false note. There was, I felt, too much umbrage in his voice, and I caught a glint of distinct uneasiness in his eyes as he motioned to the bartender. As we waited for his refill, I asked, “assuming that Frank Montini was not guilty, looking back, who would emerge as your favorite suspect?”