Bloodied Ivy (14 page)

“I’d call Hale mainly stupid for having looked a gift horse in the mouth,” Greenbaum grumbled. Wolfe glared at him and then turned back to Elena. “That decision of course made your president unhappy.”

“Potter? God, yes, the man was beside himself. Hale told me later that Keith summoned him to his office and went into a tantrum. He called Hale a traitor to the university. Apparently it was quite a spectacle,” she said, not bothering to suppress her grin.

“I’m glad you find this all so amusing.” Schmidt was so mad he was practically bouncing in his chair. “I personally find it hard to laugh at the misfortunes of the university I love.”

“Oh, come on, Orville, stop being so stuffy. You know as well as I do that Keith was—is—a damn sight more interested in what a gift from Bach could do for his own prestige than what it might accomplish for the school.”

Schmidt opened his mouth to reply, but Wolfe had had enough of the skirmish. He held up a hand to silence him. “Mrs. Moreau, I should think that after the Bach episode, Mr. Potter, too, would qualify as an antagonist of Hale Markham’s.”

“Without question,” Elena said promptly. “For that matter, he didn’t much care for Hale even before the incident. Almost from the moment Keith arrived on campus, Hale was constantly questioning his policies and his judgment. So were a lot of the rest of us, but Hale was always more outspoken about it.”

“Hale was outspoken about
everything
,” Greenbaum piped up. “He’d give you an argument if you said it looked like rain. Talk about opinionated.” He caught Wolfe’s eye and clammed up.

“Well, at least he
had
some opinions,” Elena said pointedly. “Mr. Wolfe, Hale may not have been the most popular person on the Prescott campus, but he likely was the frankest.”

“Frankness is a saber with two well-honed edges,” Wolfe remarked, draining the beer from his glass and refilling it from the second bottle. I tucked that away, figuring it might come in handy someday. “True, it may enhance one’s reputation for candor, but it frequently serves as a lodestone for resentment as well—to say nothing of stronger emotions. Do you care to add to Mr. Markham’s roll of enemies?”

Elena’s eyes slid from Schmidt to Greenbaum and back again. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“Very well. Mr. Schmidt, you’ve been patiently awaiting your turn, and I appreciate your forbearance. You have the floor.”

Schmidt accepted a fresh bourbon on the rocks from me with a curt nod and turned back to Wolfe. “If you’re trying to set me up, I’d advise you to forget it,” he said. “It’s common knowledge that Hale and I didn’t much care for each other. He saw me, I know, as a rabid left-winger teetering on the brink of Marxism. And he resented my getting named department chairman a few years back when he figured he should have had the job.”

“How did you feel about him?” Wolfe asked, lacing his fingers over the high point of his middle.

“Professionally, I thought he was an above-average classroom instructor, a fair researcher, inarguably a better-than-average writer, an erratic theoretician, and a shameless self-publicist. On a personal level, I found him arrogant, dogmatic, rude, and altogether insufferable. I formed those views years ago, and I’ve never had occasion to revise them.”

“Did the two of you openly clash?”

“You’ve of course been talking to people around campus.” Schmidt allowed himself the hint of a smile. “I think it’s accurate to say we had our moments in departmental meetings. Although from my perspective, Hale was the instigator of most of our…shall we say, public differences. He was always looking to pick a fight.”

“What about the satirical article he wrote soon after your book was published?”

“You
do
have your sources,” he said, nodding and forcing a smile. “Well, what about it?”

“Come, come, Mr. Schmidt. Surely such an article must have exacerbated the rancor between you.”

“Well, of course it did!” Schmidt barked, leaning forward with his palms on his knees. “What did you expect? It was a mean-spirited, gratuitous, and utterly uninformed pile of bilge, written for one reason: to irritate me.”

“It appears to have done so.”

Schmidt reddened. “I was angry, damn angry. No sense denying it. I had good reason to be, for God’s sake. The man was an absolute piranha. You know, he did more than just write that piece about my book. He also sent copies of his poison anonymously to book reviewers all over the East Coast, and maybe elsewhere, too, for that matter. He knew most of them wouldn’t have seen that reactionary little rag where it ran.”

“How do you know Mr. Markham was the sender?” Wolfe asked.

“Hah, that one’s easy. After a friend who runs the book column of a small New Jersey paper told me he’d gotten a photocopy of the piece in the mail, I confronted Hale, and the bastard just laughed in my face and said something like ‘Well, isn’t that curious?’ It was obvious from his reaction that he was the Lucifer. My New Jersey editor friend checked around for me and found out that at least eight other newspapers received photocopies—all without a covering letter or return address. Needless to say, I didn’t get reviewed a lot. As much as I hate to admit it, Hale’s name on that slimy article carried a lot of weight.”

“I’d have to agree,” Greenbaum put in, nodding vigorously. Wolfe shot a glance his way and turned back to Schmidt, who looked like he’d rather be somewhere else. “Mr. Schmidt, I’ll ask you the same question I posed to Mrs. Moreau: Can you suggest any other enemies Mr. Markham had?”

“Oh, let’s get serious. What is it you’re
really
asking? Did I give Hale a shove? The answer, if it’s any of your business, is an emphatic, unequivocal no! For that matter, neither did anybody else, whatever Walter Cortland thinks. Why can’t you accept the fact that Hale accidentally fell into the Gash? I know it’s hard for you to comprehend, being from New York and all, but accidents really do happen, and you heard Elena say he’d had some fainting spells. Not every death has to be a murder, although I recognize that accidental death hardly makes good copy for newspapers or big fees for lawyers—or private investigators.”

Wolfe grimly considered Schmidt, then shifted his attention to his beer. He was silent for so long that I thought he was counting the bubbles dancing their way to the top of the glass, but just as I was about to say something to break the spell, he leveled his eyes at Greenbaum. “Sir, how did you feel about Mr. Markham?”

The lanky professor twitched his bony shoulders. “What do you mean, how did I feel?”

“I thought the question was manifestly clear, but I will restate it,” Wolfe said. “How did you and Mr. Markham get along?”

Greenbaum twitched again, this time the legs as well as the shoulders. He was as bad as Cortland. Must be some kind of academic affliction. “Hale was a respected colleague, one I’d known for years,” he said defensively. “He brought a lot of honor to the school.”

“Would you term him a friend?”

“Hardly.”

“But you had been friends at one time, I believe?”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re driving at.”

“On the contrary, Mr. Greenbaum, I think you do. You were a disciple of Mr. Markham’s years ago, a devoted follower, and then a rift occurred.”

“That sounds suspiciously like the gospel according to Walter Cortland,” Greenbaum said peevishly. “Well, I’m sure he spun quite a tale to you about how I deserted Hale and his philosophy and principles—it’s a story he’s been telling for years to anyone he can get to get to listen, sort of like the Ancient Mariner at the wedding feast, although I must say, it’s getting pretty damned threadbare around the edges. The truth is, Hale and I both changed; it wasn’t a unilateral move on my part. Over the years, Hale got more conservative—a
lot
more conservative—while I moved toward the center.”

“I’d say well past the center,” Elena observed with a mocking smile. Greenbaum sent her a look that told her he wasn’t amused and turned back to Wolfe.

“Anyway, I was going through a long period of philosophical reevaluation,” he continued. “That reevaluation admittedly included some shifts in my views—hardly an unprecedented occurrence. But Hale became furious with me for ‘deserting the noble army’ as he termed it. In Hale Markham’s world, if you weren’t with him—and with him one hundred percent—you were against him. There was no middle ground.”

“Was the breach between you a sudden one?” Wolfe asked.

Greenbaum’s narrow head bobbed up and down. “Very. It practically happened overnight. I was fortunate to have Orville there to supply moral support and encouragement. Hale stopped speaking to me altogether. We’d pass in the hall or on the campus, and he’d look right through me. Like I wasn’t there at all.”

“What was Mr. Cortland’s attitude toward you at this time?”

“Walter? Oh, he was cool, at least for a while, but never arctic like Hale. That’s not his nature. He’s always been civil, at least. As Mr. Goodwin has now seen, we even share the same table at lunch with some frequency.”

“And you and Mr. Markham never reconciled your differences?”

“No. Hale eventually deigned to talk to me again, but only when it was absolutely necessary, usually because of some matter of university business.”

“And what about departmental meetings?”

“Ah, you’ve talked to Walter about that, too, no doubt. So he probably told you how Hale and I butted heads.”

“I can speak to that,” Schmidt said, leaning forward and jabbing a pudgy finger at the air. “A few of our meetings got a little…stormy. But as I said before, it was invariably Hale causing the storm. It seemed as if whenever Ted said something, Hale would maliciously contradict him. For that matter, he contradicted me every chance he got for a while, too. Some of those sessions were nightmares to try to chair.” His face clearly indicated that the memory of these meetings wasn’t pleasant.

“Even recently?” Wolfe asked.

“Oh, maybe a little less in the last year or so,” Schmidt conceded. “Hale wasn’t quite as antagonistic as he had been.”

“Frankly, I didn’t notice much mellowing on his part,” Greenbaum objected, throwing a glare at Schmidt. Apparently he figured they should present a united front. “At a meeting just last spring, I think it was in May, he called me a son of a bitch—not once but twice. Surely you can’t have forgotten that episode, Orville.”

“I haven’t, not by any means, but in fairness to Hale, I think he was being more of a curmudgeon than an antagonist when he said that. He was going out of his way to be difficult, and to get attention.”

“The words have the same impact regardless of the intention,” Greenbaum sniffed, his breathing coming quickly. “I know what’s said about speaking ill of the dead, but the man was a barbarian. I’m going to tell you all something that only Orville here has heard, to give you an idea what kind of person we’re talking about. Almost exactly one year ago, after a particularly tense departmental meeting—Orville remembers the one—in which we really went at each other, Hale caught up with me out in the hall. I’ll never forget it; he stuck his face right up to mine and hissed that if he never accomplished anything else, he’d get me off the faculty. Those were his precise words: ‘If I never do another thing, I’ll see the day you’re gone from here.’” He looked around, as if expecting one of us to gasp at the announcement. Our silence appeared to dismay him.

“What Ted says is true—he told me about it later, and he was still shaking,” Schmidt said. “But I told him then that his job was as secure as a Scotsman’s grip on his wallet. After all, we’re talking about tenure here.”

“Tenure is indeed a powerful shield,” Wolfe agreed mildly. He had strong views on the subject, I know.

“Oh, I wasn’t so much worried about Hale trying to mount a campaign against me.” Greenbaum frowned. “What really worried me was that he’d get…
violent
. I honestly feared for my safety. He could be—”

“Ted, why don’t you shut the hell up?” The female voice crashed like the thunder of a midsummer Ohio downpour. Elena twisted at her end of the sofa, turning toward Greenbaum like a tiger ready to leap. For an instant, I thought she was going to reach across and whack him one, but she drew a deep breath, which seemed to calm her, although the look she kept giving him told me to never go out of my way to get her mad.

Wolfe considered his glass of beer, which he apparently found to be the most interesting thing in the room. “Mr. Greenbaum, after that confrontation in the hallway, did Mr. Markham ever threaten you again?”

Greenbaum glanced nervously at Elena before opening his narrow mouth. “Uh, no, not like that. We had words a few more times in departmental meetings, but nothing like that time.”

Wolfe glared, directing his expression first at Elena, then at Greenbaum, and finally at Schmidt, proving that he was an equal-opportunity glarer. “The conversation has been most instructive,” he said, pulling in most of the room’s oxygen before exhaling. “Before you leave, however, I would like to pose a single question to each of you: Can you account for your actions on the night that Hale Markham died?”

“By God, I knew that was coming!” Schmidt roared, pounding his fist into the palm of his other hand, which would have hurt if his hands hadn’t been so chubby. “The obligatory ‘where-were-you-on-the-night-of-the-murder?’ that the fictional detective invariably asks. God’s in his heaven—All’s right with the world. Tennyson.”

“Browning,” Wolfe corrected. “God may indeed be in his heaven, but patently we’re elsewhere. Mr. Schmidt, since my query elicited such animation from you, why don’t you respond first?”

Orville Schmidt slouched in his chair and considered Wolfe from under bushy eyebrows. “I’ll have to look at the appointment calendar in my office,” he said. “After all, that was what, over a month ago?”

“Three weeks,” Wolfe countered promptly. “September twenty-third, a Wednesday.”

“I’ll check it when I get to my office in the morning,” Schmidt said, “if only to satisfy you.”

“I don’t know why I have to satisfy anybody,” Greenbaum mumbled. “This man’s not the law.”

“True,” Schmidt answered. “But there are at least two factors to be considered here, Ted: First, since I have nothing to hide, why shouldn’t I tell him where I was? And second, let’s face it, he has clout, particularly with the New York newspapers. I know—I’ve read about him and his work in them on more than one occasion. What if he decides to go to the
Gazette
or the
Times
or one of the other papers and tell them I won’t talk about where I was the night Hale died? That could make me—and the university—look bad. It’s not right, I grant you, but that’s the way the world works.”