Honest Doubt (6 page)

“Any relation to Angela?” I asked. Talk about women detectives on television; that Lansbury dame played a woman who never went anywhere without tripping over a body, but I liked the actress: not young, and not into romance.

“A distant cousin, I think,” Dawn said. “Antonia's teaching, but she'll probably be here later, if you want to wait for her. She always sees students in her office after her classes, which is more than the men do. Anyway, most of them. You could find her then.”

“I might,” I said. Now I wanted to get the names of the others. American was a guy named Donald Goldberg; he just got tenure, Dawn advised me in a whisper—terrible fight, the department was divided, but the dean and the president got him in.

“Do things often work out that way?” I asked, also in a whisper.

“Mostly the dean and the president turn people down,” she hissed back. “This caused a lot of comment, I can tell you.”

“I hope you will, one day, when you let me buy you another dinner. I did enjoy that one so much.”

“I did too,” Dawn said. I had the impression not a lot of people took the time to be nice to Dawn. Lucky for me, though that didn't make me glad.

We returned to the list. Medieval turned out to be a very nice guy named Larry Petrillo; that is, Dawn thought him nice, and said the students did too. I figured out he was probably not as big a pompous ass as the others. Renaissance—which means mainly Shakespeare, according to Dawn—was named David Longworth, an older man, close to retirement if he ever decided to retire, which nobody had to these days, not the way it used to be: sixty-five and you were out. You couldn't celebrate your sixty-sixth birthday standing up in a classroom. Then, also probably long in the tooth, was the Freud fanatic Dawn had told me about; his name was Daniel Wanamaker, and his field was more or less Nineteenth Century, and Comparative, meaning Germany and France. Those were the full professors. The assistant professors were David Lermann, Eighteenth Century, and Eileen Janeer, Romantic; she also covered Seventeenth Century this year, since the third assistant professor was away on a fellowship; she had been in England the whole time, visiting holy places where seventeenth-century divines sermonized. Well, as my mom used to say, it takes all sorts.

I made a list of the professors and held it out to Dawn for verification. She nodded affirmation. The list read:

VICTORIAN— CHARLES HAYCOCK
(DECEASED)
AMERICAN—DONALD GOLDBERG
MODERN—ANTONIA LANSBURY
MEDIEVAL—LARRY PETRILLO
RENAISSANCE—DAVID LONGWORTH
COMPARATIVE—DANIEL WANAMAKER
ROMANTIC—EILEEN JANEER,
ASSISTANT PROF.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY—DAVID
LERMANN, ASSISTANT PROF.
NOVEL—JANET GRAHAM
WRITING—KEVIN OAKWOOD
(ONE ASSISTANT PROF. ON LEAVE)

 

“So who's around?” I asked. I thought I might as well get started; after all, I had to begin sometime.

“At this hour, most of them are teaching,” Dawn said. “But David Longworth's in his office.” She pointed me in the right direction.

I knocked on the door of Professor Longworth's office, even though it was open. I didn't like to barge right in. He looked up and waved me in. I had the feeling he would have been glad to see anyone. He looked kind of expectant, sitting there, and I felt sorry for him.

“Come in, come in,” he shouted, waving even more vigorously. I walked up to his desk and introduced myself.

“I'm a private investigator,” I said. I always pause there for some expression of amazement, curiosity, or dismay.

“Surely you have a name,” he said. “Even Shakespeare's fools had names, most of them.”

“Woodhaven,” I said. “People call me Woody Woodhaven.”

“Nicely alliterative,” he said. “Sit down. I suppose you're the one they hired to find out who rushed Chuck Haycock into shuffling off his mortal coil.
Hamlet,
” he added as I looked a trifle puzzled.

“Yes, that's me.” Or is it I? I wondered. Talking with professors always makes me nervous. On the one hand, I think most of them haven't the wit to come in out of the rain; on the other hand, they make me feel stupid. Not a good combination, if you want the truth.

Professor Longworth didn't seem bothered by my grammar, right or wrong. These days he was probably used to anything; no doubt he considered himself lucky if anyone read Shakespeare, let alone talked like him.

“Ask away,” he said. “You will want to know where I was on the afternoon Chuck met his Maker. Well, I was with Chuck, as was everyone else in the department, so you'd better consider me a prime suspect.” He seemed pleased with the idea.

“At the moment I'm trying to get a picture of the department, how it works, and how the professors relate to each other, that kind of thing. I came to you first because you've been here the longest and probably have the most measured view.” This was also a crock, but flattery always works.

“That's very sensible of you,” he said. “Most people think the longer one has been here, the less one knows. We older faculty may not be as familiar with rock stars as we ought, but we've seen all the cycles come and go, and we have some sense of what works and what doesn't. Not that anyone wants to hear it. Or anything else, for that matter. Can you imagine teaching
Lear
to a classroom of sophomores these days?”

“They must be interested if they take it.”

“It's required,” he said. “I'd be a very lonely man otherwise. Lear complained about ungrateful children; he should have met today's undergraduates. But you didn't come to hear the woes of teaching Shakespeare.”

“It all helps to get the picture. Surely they listen to you in faculty meetings,” I said. I doubted it, but I had to get him off Shakespeare and onto more practical subjects. I plan to read all of Shakespeare when I retire, but he's not on the top of my list at the moment.

“My dear young woman, if you suppose that, you can't be a very good detective. Surely you have already concluded that nobody listens to me. Not unless they want something; what do you want to know?”

“Tell me about faculty meetings,” I said, not looking embarrassed. I was even getting to like the old chap.

“Ah. Now you're sounding like a detective. Faculty meetings are where we all get off our high horses and sound like boys in a frat house deciding on whom to pledge.”

“Really?” I said. Old Longworth was beginning to surprise me.

“As near as makes no matter, I do assure you.”

“You do have a tenured woman on the faculty; hasn't she made any difference?”

“Apart from the other professors wishing they could frankly admire her legs, no.”

I think my mouth dropped open at this. I shut it, but couldn't decide if he was trying to tell me the woman had good legs, or they wished she had. He sensed my question.

“She has great legs, but she doesn't think that's the part of her accoutrement they ought to be considering, and she's quite right. I'm afraid most of the men in this department haven't greeted women's lib with open arms. Tony—Antonia—has to sit in on any interview with a female candidate to keep the old boys from admiring
her
legs.”

“Was Professor Haycock like that?” I asked.

“Leader of the pack. His hatred of women scholars, and Tony in particular, was the one fact everyone in the department agreed upon.”

“Do you dislike her?”

“I don't. She's nice to me, which is sufficiently unusual around here to win my affection. Beyond that, I admire her. She could have settled in as one of the boys, and written a book showing how women had ruined the wonders men had contrived, but she didn't. She's not a queen bee—I bet you didn't think I knew that term—and she really fought to get another tenured woman into the department. That really fluttered the dovecotes; imagine, two women sitting in on meetings of the tenured faculty.”

He looked positively gleeful at the memory. Since Professor Longworth seemed ready enough to gossip about his colleagues, I didn't want to lose the moment. He might tell me things he wouldn't tell me at another time, starting from scratch. When interviewees talk, keep them talking—that's my motto.

“Surely all the professors don't think exactly alike?” I said, astonishment ringing in my voice.

“Each had his separate reason for turning down Catherine Dorman for tenure.”

“Such as?” I asked encouragingly.

“Haycock I've already mentioned. He was the only one who admitted he was against women, period. The others were sophisticated enough not to put it quite so plainly, to say nothing of affirmative action rules. They didn't like her last ten refereed articles, or she was not properly obsequious to Freud—that was the opinion of our chairman, Daniel Wanamaker, who, as I understand it, is seriously considering retiring and taking his antediluvian opinions to the South.”

“And who will be chairman when he does leave?”

“A good question, my dear. Who indeed? I would like the job, and I'm willing to call myself the chair,
tout court,
avoiding the sexist title, but the others think I'd be too tolerant of views they don't like; the Lear syndrome, it's called, and I don't have it. I'm not supposed to know about it, but I do. Larry Petrillo told me; now there's a nice guy, even though he keeps extending the medieval period well into the Renaissance. Anyway, it was certainly going to be Haycock; I don't know who it will be now.”

“Lear syndrome?” I hated to ask, but I thought I'd better; it might be a clue. I could have waited and asked Kate—that might have been the sensible thing to do —but he seemed to welcome the question. Anyway, my instinct told me to keep away from the chairman question now; it sounded like a good motive, and I wanted to learn more about it before taking it up.

“No reason you should know about Lear. You're a detective, not a scholar, my dear. I won't ask what you majored in in college. Lear, whether through senility or the compassion of old age, gave his kingdom away to his nasty daughters. You see the relevance.”

“Of course. And he didn't give any part to his good daughter, because she wouldn't tell him she loved him. Sorry to have been so slow in catching on.” I'd seen
Lear
once on television, just the beginning, but I didn't see any point in mentioning that.

“You show promise; don't apologize. They're all afraid of nasty women taking over, all except David Lermann; it's the new theoretical lingo he objects to. He thinks anyone who even mentions theory has defiled the language and should be shot. Neither Tony nor Catherine went in for theory in a big way, but they didn't refuse to acknowledge it. Lermann called them illiterate; so did Haycock.”

“But I thought only tenured professors came to those faculty meetings.”

“Lermann is tenured, even though he's an assistant professor. He got de facto tenure. Somebody in the administration was nodding, and he taught here long enough to get automatic tenure. The old boys were so outraged that they've never given him a promotion. He isn't really stodgy, except about the English language; he hasn't published anything, but the students love him. You'd think he might resent the other tenured men, but no —he's really the sweetest guy in the world. He ought to have been promoted, but around here, no chance.”

“It all sounds, well, rather, well, not what you'd expect from college professors.” I was really getting nervous, and worrying if maybe the old boy was indeed losing his marbles.

“Don't take it from me,” he said cheerfully, reading my mind. “Ask around; find out for yourself. You'll see I'm right.”

“I'm sure I will. Who do you think killed Professor Haycock?”

“Just about anybody, I'd say. Nobody around here is very lovable, but Charles took offensiveness to a new level. I'd say your problem in finding the murderer, if any, is going to be a challenging one. Everyone had the opportunity; everyone had a motive; perhaps getting the means wasn't too hard.”

“Might he have killed himself ?”

“Charles? Never. Besides, if he'd decided to kill himself, he'd have done it so that someone was the obvious suspect. No, I think you can dismiss suicide; the police seem to have done so.”

“What was your motive?”

“Easy, my dear. He wanted to be chairman and so did I. I thought with him out of the way, they'd have to settle for me, Lear syndrome or not. I thought the chairmanship would be a nice way to end my long career.”

He smiled saying this, and while I was trying to interpret his words, a student came to the door. I stood up and said my farewells.

“Come again anytime, my dear,” he said. “Come in, Mr. Franklin; still puzzled by
Hamlet
, are we? What exactly do you find troublesome?”

I left them to it, and went to ask Dawn if anyone else had come back to the office. She told me that Antonia Lansbury was probably still in her office, probably still seeing students.

She was. I waited at the end of the line, making notes and wondering if Professor Longworth was having me on, making me into one of his Shakespearean fools, or if all college departments could possibly be as unpleasant as this one.

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a
newer world.

—TENNYSON, “Ulysses”

Five

OF course, when I finally got into her office, the first thing I did was look at her legs. She had turned her desk chair sideways, and her long legs were stretched out; she'd kicked her shoes off. I could see that she was tired, and I could see that not only were her legs gorgeous, she was thin and gorgeous all over. Two such women in one case: her and Kate. And she was my age, give or take a year, which made it worse. Kate, at least, had settled well into her fifties and wore glasses to read.

“Do I know you?” she asked. “Have you just signed up for the course?”

I stared at her, really worried. No way do I resemble a college student, here or anywhere else.

She understood immediately why I was puzzled. A good sign, I thought; intelligent lady. She said, “We have alumni who come back to take courses, as auditors,” she said. “They not infrequently show up after the courses have begun. I take it you are not an alumna and not an auditor.”

“I'm a private investigator,” I said. “Hired by members of this department to look into Professor Haycock's murder. I'd very much like to talk to you, if you haven't had too long a day. We could make it tomorrow.”

“Hell, it's a change of subject, anyway. I'm tired of T. S. Eliot, who hated Jews and women and wrote great poetry, damn him. Close the door, if you don't mind, and have a seat; I leave the door open to avoid any nonsense from students, but privacy seems to be what we need now.”

I wondered what sort of nonsense the students threatened— charges of sexual harassment, or what? I didn't ask. I had enough questions without taking her time to satisfy my personal curiosity. Maybe I'd ask later on. Anyway, I was looking around her office, which was rather barren; there were bookshelves all around the room, but few books.

Noticing my gaze, she said, “I work at home. These are only duplicate texts and a few books I lend to students. I don't do my own work here; this place is just where I hold my office hours. Sorry it's so bleak, which everyone notices, but for me this is not a home away from home.”

“I was just talking to Professor Longworth,” I explained, “and his office is, well, fixed up, with lots of books, and rugs, and an easy chair and lamps. . . .” My voice trailed off. Actually her office looked a lot more like my office than Professor Longworth's did. His office looked to me as though he was trying to have a life there. My office, even if it wasn't derelict, was just a place to meet with people about business, like hers. I decided, temporarily, to forgive her for being thin.

“Please tell me how I can help you,” she said. “This department has been seething with ill feeling for far too long; I didn't expect it to end in someone's death, but in theories and interpretations of literature; that would have been the only way for so much hatred to go. If you see what I mean. I'm afraid we English-lit types get to talking as though everyone lived in books as we do, or like to think we do.”

“You mean, in books things that might happen do happen, whereas in life they often don't.”

“That's part of it. In Dostoyevsky's
Crime and
Punishment
, he wants to kill the pawnbroker, but he doesn't really decide to do it until he happens to hear that her sister will be away that night. A coincidence? In life, yes; in books, no. Because the coincidence was simply the manifestation of his intention; what seem to be coincidences in life are really, in books—anyway, in good books—the confirmation of character and will. And, of course, the sister turns up anyway, and he has to kill her too.”

I looked at her. I thought of Kate. There was no doubt these literary types lived in some world where literature was more significant to them than events that had really happened. I guess the point is that literature has some meaning to it, and life often doesn't, although people hire us investigators to prove that it does.

“What caused all the ill feeling in this department?” I asked her. “I know there are probably a lot of reasons, but is there a main reason?”

She stretched her legs out and smiled. “You'll get a different answer from each person you ask. From my point of view, the simplest explanation is that these guys used to rule the roost, and now they're not only expected to share it, and to share it with women, they're also expected to change the way they look at the literature they have always taught, and even to consider writings they have never taught. They don't like being displaced, and they don't like being told they are no longer the final authority on what constitutes the canon. If I were one of them, I might not like it either.”

“Are they racists too?” I asked.

“No, or at least not blatantly. They like to congratulate themselves on not being racists. But women; that's turning the whole natural order upside down.”

“Aren't there younger men who are not quite so . . . well, so set in their ways?”

“Sure there are. And we've had some great younger male scholars in this department, but the old guys don't want them, and because they're male there aren't as many of the same questions asked when they're turned down. They prefer the old young men whom they could very well have cloned; men as conservative and in love with old-time values as themselves.”

“It's not like that with the police,” I said. “The racists are almost as bad as the woman-haters. I bet it's the same in the fire department, not to mention sanitation. Different class of people, I guess.”

“Exactly,” she said, smiling at me the way she probably smiled at a smart student. “And remember, with professors, particularly in literature, they don't feel quite certain that theirs is a manly profession. If women start swarming all over it, they might actually begin to feel feminized. But all that's general, and probably true of other English departments in other colleges, although ours is a bit extreme. At least I hope so. You probably need to know about particulars.” She seemed to be deciding the simplest and quickest way to put it, at least for now.

“These guys,” she said, “don't like women; they particularly don't like tenured women—that is, women with power—and they don't want any more of them here. We had a great female assistant professor who was up for tenure—maybe you've already heard something about that.” I nodded. “They were so set on getting rid of her they used every crooked and ridiculous trick to keep her from being promoted. I fought for her, which of course made her even less desirable, and women in other departments argued with the administration. The students, who really liked her and knew how much attention she gave them, got up a petition. It was all for naught. They won, but I think in a way they lost. They will probably never admit it to themselves, but that victory cost too much. It certainly left me a lot readier to fight them, particularly Haycock. The muttering on all sides continued. They still have the power, but at the same time they began to see the writing on the wall and were scared.
Not
a happy situation.”

“So the assistant professor left?”

“She did. She had another year to go, but she didn't want to stay and they didn't want her to stay, so they gave her a semester's pay as terminal leave and she left.”

“Any chance she could have dropped the pills in Professor Haycock's retsina?”

“None. One of her prominent qualifications for promotion was that she was bilingual, French and English; she could read Italian and Spanish as well. She wiped the dust of the United States as well as of this college off her feet and settled down in Paris. She and I communicate via e-mail; she's fine, if disillusioned about academia. But then, aren't we all?”

“It still seems a neat job to me,” I said. “You read most of the time; you talk about what you read, and people have to listen to you; you write about what you read. A lot less dirty than many jobs.”

“Granted. And people who agree with you usually add that we get our summers off as well as sabbaticals, a semester every seven years—though that's no longer as automatic as it used to be—and they can't fire you except for the most egregious of reasons. Who's to agree now on what that is? In the old days it was a lovely job on the whole. God knows, I wanted it. But now? It's really nasty, in a way I'm told even business isn't. There's too little money, so dissension over which department gets funds to hire faculty gets more and more bitter. Worst of all, there aren't enough jobs for the Ph.D.'s being produced, and that turns the whole process sour.”

“I know something about that,” I said, remembering Kate's rendition of the subject.

“What's really ironic is that the administration here and I'm sure elsewhere was in a panic when compulsory retirement for faculty was made illegal. My God, they said, we'll have ninety-year-olds tottering around. Now, those old enough to draw their full pension and social security can't wait to leave. Unfortunately,” she added with a shrug, “our ‘old boys' are still in their late fifties or just a bit beyond. And the young-old boys are young, damn them.”

I'd been taking notes, and now I looked up at her.

“How I do go on,” she said, beginning to gather up her papers. “While the others may not be as frank with you, or may be too tired at the end of a long day to be succinct, they'll all agree about the state of the department whether they tell you so or not; only the sides they're on will differ.”

“Don't the men get as tired as you by the end of the day?” I asked, partly to make myself a bit less sympathetic.

“If you want a blunt answer, it's no. I may be a better teacher than some of them, but that isn't the point. First of all, I'm the only tenured woman around, although the woman they canned took a lot of the weight of that off me. Then, the students these days are intrigued by feminism, even if all they want to do is sneer at it; they're certainly interested in women and sex. Those students who are gay, men and women, gravitate toward me because I'm expected not to be homophobic, which I'm not. If some senior wants to write a thesis on homosexuality in any work from Chaucer's on, he or she is sent to me. It is handy to assume that feminists understand these things. Well, most of us do, but why don't
they
try a little? Also, I'm on too many administrative committees, put there so they can say there is a woman on board. God, how I really do go on. I actually am very tired. Sorry.”

“I'm the one who ought to apologize for keeping you so late,” I said, rising to my feet, tucking away my notebook, and picking up my helmet. “Perhaps we can talk again sometime—maybe at lunch, when you've only had to make it through half a day?”

“Anytime,” she said. “Unpleasant as the atmosphere is around here, it will certainly be better when this investigation is over. Have they definitely decided he was murdered?”

“I think so, though there are far too many loose ends. Could I ask you just one more question for now?”

“If it's a short one,” she said; she was ready to leave with me, waved me out, and closed her office door behind her, locking it. We walked down the stairs together (“The elevator never comes, though I sometimes wait for it going up,” she explained), and she didn't even ask me about my helmet. She was either very tired, or tactful enough to spare what she could guess had become a tiresome question.

“What do you want to know that requires a very short answer?” she said when we were outside of the building. The wind had risen, and her hair was blowing. She pushed it back from her face.

“What do you think of Professor Haycock's”—I groped for a word—“devotion to Tennyson?”

“That may be a short question”—she laughed— “but the answer could fill hours, if not days. All I'll say for now is that if Tennyson were part of the motive in this investigation, you'd be detecting a different murder: mine.”

Waving, she walked off in a determined way. I didn't bother waving back, since she just kept looking ahead; I set off for the parking lot.

The next day I called Dawn first thing in the morning; I wanted the name of one of the “good” young men, one of those Antonia had admired, who had been fired. I wanted, in addition to his name, his current address and his new job, if he had one. If she could find me an assistant professor, late of Clifton College, who was working on the eastern seaboard I would consider myself fortunate. Most of those fired, I gloomily suspected, were now employed in the Midwest, happy perhaps, but distant, too distant for a trip on my motorbike or by commuter train.

But my luck was in. One of the young men fired three years ago had been hired by Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he also lived. Dawn gave me his home, office, and e-mail address, as well as his phone number. She had been forwarding mail to him until recently, and he still occasionally kept in touch. Profusely thanking Dawn for this information, I asked her again to have dinner with me. “You'll be doing me a favor,” I said, before she could protest. “This is not an easy case, and talking to you helps to clear my mind. What kind of dinner would you like this time?” I asked.

“Could we go to the same place?” she asked. “It was delicious and we could talk there; most restaurants are so noisy.” We made a date for a few days hence.

The assistant professor, late of Clifton, now of Rutgers, responded to my call with more enthusiasm than I anticipated. This case looked like one of those, commoner to fiction than life, where the good guys are all on one side and the baddies are all on the other. This is not a situation conducive to sharp detective work; one tends to take sides and to become blinded by favoritism, as though the suspects were on teams.