A Little Class on Murder (17 page)

“Ohh,” Laurel cried, “oh yes, of course. Dear Pat Abbott in
The Great Mistake
. Such a
lovely
girl and in such straitened circumstances.”

What could Annie say? Wouldn’t any instructor be delighted at such recognition of and enthusiasm about the material by a student? She gritted her teeth. “Very good, Laurel.”

Laurel half turned to face her classmates. “Of course, Pat falls in love with Tony—he’s Maud’s son—but there’s more to the story than that. He’s still married, for one thing, and there are hidden identities and such complicated relationships and greed, of course, all of which are often Rinehart themes.”

“Laurel, Laurel. We’ll get into all of that later. Right now I’d like to discuss with the class Rinehart’s other contributions.”

Laurel nodded agreeably. “Oh, certainly, my dear. Such a good idea.” And she watched brightly, as if she were the authority generously approving a neophyte’s performance. The middle-aged ladies with blue-white hair gazed at Laurel admiringly.

Annie controlled her fury and managed to speak evenly. “Rinehart contributed four new elements to the field: one, the Had-I-But-Known technique; two, a strong love interest; three, humor; and four, the intertwining of two stories, that of
the narrator who observes and reacts to the inexplicable happenings and that of the criminal who is actively engaged in a course of action, often one deliberately intended to destroy the protagonist.”

“Two stories!” Morrison bleated. “You mean each one of those Rinehart books has
two
stories?”

Henny took up the cudgels. “The story behind the story. Think of the apparent story as a straight line and the second story as a series of peaks and valleys. The peaks protrude above the horizontal plane when the criminal’s activities are apparent.”

“Well posited,” Miss Dora said grudgingly. “However, Rinehart’s works never attain the brilliance and symmetry of Sayers’s.”

Morrison’s gaze moved from Henny to Miss Dora with a look of sheer stupefaction tinged with panic.

Responding to Miss Dora’s attack on her flank, Annie said sweetly, “Our novelists are not in competition with one another, Miss Dora. Rather, as a class we will come to appreciate the individual genius of each.”

“Only Agatha Christie can be termed a genius,” Henny trumpeted intemperately.

Annie clutched the lectern as the class exploded in acrimony.

Max rattled the knob to Malcolm Moss’s office door. Despite the posted sheet giving office hours that included ten to twelve on Tuesdays and Thursdays, no light shone behind the frosted glass upper panel and the door was locked.

The faculty offices filled the northwest quadrant of the second floor. A narrow corridor bisected the area and four offices were on each side. Garrison’s office was at the far end next to a rear corridor leading to the central west stairway.

On the north side were offices for Garrison, Moss, Porter, and Tarrant. Across the hall were Norden, Diggs, Crandall, and one vacant office.

Whom should he talk to next? He needed a clearer perception of the department and its members. Had Burke played
Max and Annie like a drum? Could Garrison’s suggestions be trusted? Was he likely to find an unbiased observer among this lot?

Max surveyed the closed doors, tossed a mental coin, and turned toward Josh Norden’s office.

Annie felt as stressed as Christie’s appealing detective, Mr. Satterthwaite, upon being plunged into the middle of a mystery by the enigmatic Harley Quin. She shot a covert glance at the wall clock. The hour—thank God that really meant fifty minutes—was almost over. At least she’d made most of the points she’d intended: Christie’s brilliance with plot, her delight in turning the reader’s assumptions against him, her clever use of clichés, her unsurpassed skill at sleight of hand, her Victorian conviction that evil exists everywhere, and, finally, to Miss Dora’s satisfaction, a description of Sayers’s great gift of language and her introduction into the mystery of finely drawn characters and plots concerned with intellectual integrity which Sayers saw as “the one great permanent value in an emotionally unstable world.”

“So,” Annie said in conclusion, “we have before us in the next few weeks the pleasure of discussing in more detail the works and attitudes of three superb and sharply differentiated mystery writers. Now, for next week, I’d like for everyone to have read the three Rinehart titles.”

“
Three
books by next
Tuesday?
” Swenson’s voice rose in panic. He must have known instinctively that Cliffs Notes would be no help here.

Miss Dora thumped her cane. “A philosophic inquiry.”

The other class members were learning. They looked at her in respectful silence. Even Swenson subsided quietly into a lump of misery.

“Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is, of course, a respectable intellectual equation.” The wrinkled parchment face was benign. “However, I should be quite pleased if the instructor would deign in our remaining minutes to give us a
personal expression of her views on the usefulness of our study.”

“Usefulness?” Annie parroted.

“Practical application to the problems of life,” Henny proffered. But she didn’t look at Annie, and her voice was a mumble.

Unease prickled the back of Annie’s neck. She looked from Miss Dora, as bland as Charlie Chan, to Laurel, nodding expectantly, to Henny, assiduously avoiding her eye.

Later, she would ascribe the outcome to her fatigue (very little sleep and a class filled with unexpected pitfalls and challenges) and to her beleaguered status (one against three was never fair).

At the moment, she took a deep breath and committed herself to, she would soon realize unhappily, the very worst position she could have taken.

“Practicality? Certainly. This is a very practical course.”

“How about another foot-long?” Max urged. “Be glad to go get it. With double chili?” He leaned forward, poised to hurry back to the Student Union to the fast food carryout window.

Annie considered his offer as she took the last bite of her hot dog (pretty good but not enough onions) and sucked the final suds from her root beer. Max, of course, was trying to make her feel better. Usually he was pressing her to eat broiled scrod or baked halibut. But not even her favorite foods could dispel her current outrage.

She didn’t bother to lower her voice because there was no one nearby to hear, unless you counted the alligator who’d arisen from his fall slumber to find a lone patch of toasty sunlight on the west bank. “My class,” she cried. “My
class!
”

Max slid closer and patted her shoulder. They had the gazebo to themselves. Although they were probably no more than one hundred yards from the journalism building, they might have been one hundred miles from habitation. The live oak avenue split to circle around this enormous lagoon, leaving a huge, dim pocket of greenery in the center of the campus. Actually, she wasn’t surprised at their privacy. It sounded
charming, of course, a gazebo constructed upon an artificial island in the middle of a cypress-rimmed lagoon with masses of blooming japonica and hibiscus affording total privacy. But this place would never make it as a passion pit, not with dorm rooms and car backseats so readily available. Secluded, yes. Remote, yes. Gloomy, in spades. Although it was a sunny, mild day, the temperature in the sixties, the tall, dark, knobby trees, nuzzled by weeping willows and shrubs, blocked away almost all of the sunlight, so the gazebo was chilly, damp, and dim, but not, fortunately, a murder site as in
The Gazebo
by Patricia Wentworth.

Annie glared impartially at the dark water, the alligator, and the two wooden bridges that arched to the shore.

“Friggin’ school,” she muttered.

“Now. Annie, love, you can’t blame it on the college.”

She transferred her glare to him. What a loathsome, avuncular tone.

“Maybe some fried okra,” he suggested hastily.

“I don’t want anything else to eat,” she snapped. “What I want—I’d like to get—” Her hands twitched.

He couldn’t help being defensive. “It sounds to me like it’s Miss Dora’s fault. If it’s anybody’s.”

“Laurel set me up.” It was a simple statement, laden with rancor. “Oh, I know,” she said impatiently, “it was Miss Dora who asked the question, got it all started, this nonsense about how practical the class was. My God, I didn’t know what they were leading up to. I want to tell you, this damn thing was orchestrated. And I know by who. Whom.” Drat, was it ‘who’? She continued to glare at the culprit’s son. My God, he looked more like Laurel every day, the same dark blue eyes, such ingenuous damn blue eyes.

“A banana split? Double chocolate?”

“No.”

“But, honey, it’s really not such a bad deal. Everyone will learn a lot about mysteries.”

“They could have learned a lot listening to my lectures.” She quivered on the bench. “Do you know what it’s like to lecture to a room with those three in it? It would be easier to
teach physics to a Montessori class. No, they have to horn in. And what could I say, after I’d said the damn thing was practical. There was Laurel all wide-eyed and sugary.” She mimicked her mother-in-law’s husky voice. “ ‘Annie dearest, how wonderful that you are urging us to become involved in the mystery of life around us and here is Chastain College with
such
a mystery.
Who
is behind the revelation of faculty secrets?
Who
is spreading misery and unrest among both students and faculty?
Who
is Chastain College’s very own Deep Throat?’ ”

“Wait a minute. Wait a
minute
,” Max demanded. “It can’t all be Mother’s idea. Annie, I assure you she was oblivious to Watergate. She was living in an ashram in New Delhi at the time.” He paused, frowning thoughtfully. “Or was it a casbah?”

“I didn’t say the three of them didn’t connive,” Annie admitted grudgingly. “But Laurel was the motivating force, I’m certain of it. Why, Henny was positively embarrassed about the whole thing.”

“Bet she wins, anyway.”

“Making it a contest!” Annie exploded. “Whoever turns in the most clues to Deep Throat’s identity gets extra credit. What does that have to do with the Three
Grande Dames
of the Mystery?” she demanded wildly. “But they came at me from every direction and then the rest of the damn class got into the act, beside themselves with excitement at their ‘opportunity to rival the detective exploits of some of the greatest sleuths of all time’!” Her fists clenched. “You know who said that, don’t you?”

Max avoided her eyes.

“Laurel Darling Roethke,” Annie intoned bitterly. “My
class!
I’ll never get it under control again until we find out who leaked that stuff.” She tried to slow her breathing, bring her heartbeat down to an acceptable level. “All right. They think they’ve got me outsmarted. They think I’ll just fall down and lie doggo while they grab my class in their teeth and run away with it. But that’s not true. We’re going to put a stop to it by beating them at their own game.” She fixed Max with a
demanding stare. “Who did it?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she said—even she realized a bit unfairly—“Well, you’ve had all morning to find out. Who did it?”

But Max never had a chance to answer, if answer he could. The mind-numbing roar of an enormous explosion shattered the gloomy quiet of the lagoon.

They stared at each other in shocked silence for an instant, then flung themselves toward the steps and began to run.

It stuck in Annie’s mind, as odd details will in the midst of an emergency, that the alligator had responded more quickly than they, shooting back into the dark water before she and Max took a step.

They burst out from the dimness of the canopied trail among the cypresses and stumbled to a halt. Smoke and dust billowed out from the shattered side of the journalism building.

A chalky billow of masonry grit eddied from the doorway to the
Crier
offices. The door hung crazily from one hinge.

“Emily!”

Brad Kelly pelted up the central hall through the roiling dust. The gritty particles clung to him, coating his clothes and face with gray. He stumbled to a stop by the dangling door, his face slack with shock. “Oh God, I just went to the john—” He reached out, grabbed Max’s arm. “I just went to the john. If I hadn’t, I’d have been in—” Frantically, he began to pull on the sagging door. “Emily! Emily! Where are you? Emily, answer, for Christ’s sake!”

The door came loose in his hands. He heaved it into the hallway and plunged into the newsroom. Glass from imploded video display terminal screens covered the floor, crunched beneath his steps. Desks and terminals leaned at precarious, unnatural angles. Broken joists and splintered lathes protruded from the shattered plaster walls. There was an acrid smell of smoke, dust, plaster, and singed plastic.

Max yelled after the frantic editor as he careened across the room. “Is somebody in there? Where?”

Kelly pointed at the far corner, now a tangle of construction rods and sagging ceiling tiles and mounds of bricks. The exterior
wall was gone, and the remains of the office lay exposed to the outside. “My office. Emily. Emily Everett. Oh God, look!”

Choking from the dust, straining to see through the milky cloud, Annie and Max stared at the debris and at a bloated hand, gunpowder singed, sticking through a sheet of beaverboard. As they looked, blood seeped from the puckered edges of the wood.

Max gripped Annie’s elbow. “Quick. Go for help. We’ll see if we can get her free,” and he hurried after Kelly.

Annie darted a frantic glance at the unstable wall tilted over the corner office. But Max and the editor had to try. Whirling around, she bolted across the hall into the departmental office.

“Mr. Burke,” she shouted. “Mr. Burke!”

Even as she called, her mind was admonishing her for reacting so slowly. Obviously, Burke wasn’t in the building. If he had been in his office, the explosion would have brought him immediately to the scene.

Pushing through the swinging gate at the counter, Annie grabbed the telephone receiver and started to dial, then slammed it down. No sound. No tone. Nothing. The explosion must have blown out the lines. Then strong and high came the keen of a siren. It was one of the most welcome sounds she’d ever heard. Help was on the way. Of course it would be. It was a small campus, and the response to an explosion would be immediate and swift.