Physics Can Be Fatal (10 page)

     Will stacked the books neatly and gathered them in his arms.

     “Where to?” he asked.

     “Oh, thanks. End of the hall, on the left,” she replied.

     Edwina unlocked the door to her small office, and Will followed her inside.

     “Thanks again––would you put them right here?” she said, clearing a space on her desk.

     Will set the books down carefully, and the two stood looking at each other for an awkward moment.

     A constellation of pale freckles across Edwina’s nose and cheeks held Will’s attention, as did her faint smell of wood smoke.  He wondered why this student had her own office.  After some moments Will realized he was staring at her.

     “William Tenney,” he said proffering a hand.  “I’m a detective with the New Guilford Police.  We’re looking into the death of Alan Sidebottom.”

     “Edwina Goodman,” she replied, motioning for Will to sit down.

     “Are you––do you teach here?”

     “I look too young, you mean,” Edwina laughed.  “I get that all the time. I do teach, yeah. I finished my doctorate last year, and now I teach beginning level courses in physics, along with doing research.”

      Will nodded.

     “How did Professor Sidebottom die?” she asked.

     “Heart attack.”

     “It’s so terrible. I feel awful about it, especially since I was with Professor Sidebottom the night he died,” she said.

     “Oh?”

     “Yes, I was having dinner with him at the New World Tavern on Monday night, the night before Professor Mann found him at the cottage.”

     “Was it, like, a date?”

     “No, not exactly,” Edwina said. “Donald Gaylord asked me to escort Professor Sidebottom home after the party we had Friday night at the library.  That was the day he arrived at Cushing. As a matter of fact, Professor Gaylord picked him up at the airport, and brought him straight to the party. Well, no, that’s not quite true.  Professor Gaylord told me that Professor Sidebottom insisted on stopping somewhere for a drink on the way from the airport.  He was pretty drunk by the time they got to Sanborn House, and Professor Gaylord seemed incredibly annoyed about it.”

     “Anyway, I was telling you that Professor Sidebottom was going to be staying at the Carriage House, which is a little guest cottage on campus where the college puts up visiting scholars and people like that.  VIPs and stuff.  It’s just a few minutes walk from Sanborn House, but Professor Sidebottom had even more to drink at the party.  As I was walking with him to the cottage, he passed out drunk,” Edwina explained.

     “He fainted during the course of a few minutes walk from Sanborn House to the Carriage House?” Will repeated, making notes.

     “Yes. As I say, he really had a lot to drink.  He sort of tripped and fell into the hedge, threw up, and passed out.”

     “Good Lord.”

     “I checked his pulse to make sure he wasn’t dead.  Then, luckily, a couple of students came along, and they helped me carry him to the cottage.  We got him onto the bed and covered him up.”

     “And then?”

     “Then I locked up and left.”

     “Right,” said Will, taking more notes. “Tell me about this dinner the two of you had.”

     “Let’s see. Monday afternoon at tea Professor Sidebottom invited me to dinner, as a way of apologizing for what happened Friday night. I didn’t really want to go, for the very good reason that it could happen all over again, which it did,” she said.

     “After dinner––which he didn’t eat a single bite of––I figured I had better walk him back to campus, because he was drunk again, and I felt responsible for getting him back safely,” she continued. “All of a sudden as we were walking up Main Street, he just bolted.  Took off running before I knew what was happening. I was amazed he could move that fast, with all that alcohol in him.”

     “Did he say anything?”

     “You mean, to me?”

     “Well, to you, or to anybody.  Did he say anything in particular you can remember, before he ran off?”

     “As we were walking up Main Street, he was sort of mumbling to himself.  I remember feeling a little self-conscious because he looked like some homeless guy, with his wild hair and eccentric way of dressing––stumbling along––you know, muttering to himself and everything.”

     “Eccentric way of dressing?” Will interrupted.

     “Well, country squire sort of stuff, but with a twist.  Like, tweeds and sweater vests and long neck scarves, with sandals and socks.”

     Will smiled. Edwina looked out the window.

     “I feel guilty about what happened,” she said. “I keep thinking that if I had been at the cottage––if I had chased him down and taken him home––this might not have happened.”

     “What happened when Professor Sidebottom ran off?  Did you call out to him, or try to run after him?” Will said.

     “That’s just it,” Edwina sighed. “I feel terrible saying this, but the truth is that I was fed up with him.  With the drinking and falling down and throwing up.  I assumed it was more or less a way of life for him, and I figured he would be able to get back to campus on his own, so I waited for about five minutes, and then I left and went home.”

     “Do you live on campus?” asked Will.

     “ I live on Canaan Farm Road.”

     “How did you get home that night?”

     “On my bike.  That’s how I get everywhere.”

     Will made more notes. 

     Edwina reached into a desk drawer and removed a rectangular tin box. She pried off the lid and held the box out to Will.

     “Have one.  Professor Cake baked them, homemade shortbread cookies.”

     “Thank-you,” said Will.

     The two sat in silence, watching each other chewing, waiting for the other to speak.

     “Did Professor Sidebottom seem preoccupied or worried about anything in particular during dinner?” Will asked.

     Edwina thought for a moment.

     “I wish I could be more helpful, but no––nothing very serious came up in our conversation.  I think he had a pretty complicated life . . . who knows how much of the gossip is true, but there were a lot of stories flying around about him.”

     “Such as?”

     “Well, as I say, this is gossip and rumor, now.  Not fact.  I can tell you what I’ve heard on the grapevine, but I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t,” Edwina replied. 

    “Stuff like plagiarism, affairs with married women, smashing up a bookstore window, estrangements from his children, flings with students––things like that.  Enough to put a strain on your heart, I would imagine, especially on top of all that drinking.”

     “We haven’t ruled out suicide.”

     “Suicide?” Edwina frowned. “Oh, no, I don’t see that at all.  Professor Sidebottom was full of life. He was a very vital person.  In his own pickled way.”

     She took another bite of cookie.

     “If anything,” she continued, crumbs falling onto her shirt, “I would guess he’d been murdered.  According to some of the stories, he had a knack for making enemies, and––oh! I’ve just remembered something!  Something very weird just popped into my head––it’s what Professor Sidebottom said before he ran away that night!”

     Edwina closed her eyes and pushed her bangs to one side, trying to recall the arcane utterance.

     “Time for the Barnet Fair hat-toss,” she said slowly.  “It was something like that, anyway. Sorry, I’m not positive.”

     Will wrote it down in his notebook.

     There was a knock at the door.

     “Come in,” Edwina called.

     Bishop Larkin walked into the small office. He looked at Edwina and then at Will, and back at Edwina.

     “Come on in, Bish,” Edwina said.

     “I’ll just be going,” Will said.

     “Thank you for your help.  And for the cookie.  If you think of anything else, would you call me?” Will said handing her his card.

Chapter 6

     Edwina was too worked up thinking about the case to get any work done. 

    
If only I could figure out what Professor Sidebottom meant before he ran off,
she thought.
On the other hand, what if it was just drunken gibberish that didn’t mean anything at all?

     Edwina flipped open her laptop and made a few idle searches, looking for information about Alan Sidebottom that might shed more light on the investigation.  Nothing new jumped out at her.

     She turned her attention to the window.  She gazed outside and let her thoughts run wild, without censoring or redirecting any snippet of thought that came to mind, just free-associating. 

     She turned her focus back to the Internet, and typed in a new search.  Staring at the screen intently, she began to grow excited.  After a few minutes she snapped the computer shut, flew out of the office and raced downstairs.

    Sanborn House was connected to the main library in Hinley Hall by way of an underground passageway.  Another of Theodore Sanborn’s innovations, the subterranean passageway provided an indoor short cut during the harsh New England winter months when the landscape was covered in snow and ice.

     Edwina walked quickly through the passageway and came out in the lower level of Hinley Hall, where a catacomb of cavernous rooms housed the library’s closed ‘stacks’. These books were available to librarians, only. Library patrons put in requests for books at the front desk on the main floor, and librarians retrieved the titles from the tens of thousands of volumes arranged in bookshelves in the closed stacks.

     Edwina bounded up the staircase to the main floor, taking two steps at a time. After consulting the computerized card catalogue, she put in her book requests at the front desk, and waited. Within ten minutes the books were in her hands.

     Edwina checked out two books on British rhyming slang and returned with them via the passageway to Sanborn House, reading along the way.  Her suspicion regarding the meaning of Alan Sidebottom’s strange utterance was growing stronger, but she would have to wait until later to study the books more thoroughly.  Edwina had a class to teach, and her students came first.  Her private search into Alan Sidebottom’s death would have to be put on hold for the moment.

     Edwina had late night duty in the lab at Sanborn House that evening, doing research.  She let herself into the darkened building with a key, and flipped on the light switch near the staircase.  Edwina was responsible for collecting data in a research project, and she had fallen behind because of the Sidebottom inquiry.  She was intent on getting caught up, however long it might take, as it would have been unforgivable to jeopardize the outcome of the project out of simple neglect. 

     She had forgotten to eat dinner before arriving at the lab, and, inevitably, she was eventually interrupted by the noise of her grumbling stomach and accompanying light-headedness.  She looked at her watch.

     “What? It can’t be ten o’clock already!” she exclaimed.

     She scrabbled around in her backpack and found a granola bar, which she gratefully devoured. Still hungry, she ventured downstairs from the third floor to the reception area on the second floor, which functioned as a sort of common room.  Hoping to find something that could pass for dinner, Edwina rifled through the bottles of juice and iced tea in the mini-refrigerator under the coffee maker and discovered two containers of strawberry yogurt.  She guzzled the sweet, creamy yogurt, and made a mental note of the brand and flavor, which she would replace the following day.

     Edwina started back up the stairs to the lab on the third floor, and settled back in at the computer.  When she next looked at her watch it was one thirty in the morning.

    
Might as well sleep over,
she thought.
I’m too tired to ride home, and anyway, it won’t be the first time!

     She removed a toothbrush and toothpaste from her backpack and walked down the corridor to the Ladies’ Room.  Washed and brushed for the night, she turned off the lights in the lab, and went back downstairs to the second floor. She kicked off her shoes and flopped down on a comfortable sofa in the reception area, covering herself with her fleece jacket. Lulled by the soft ticking of a grandfather clock, she quickly fell to sleep.