A Little Class on Murder (6 page)

“That’s terrific publicity,” Annie said happily. “It should increase enrollment.”

“Oh, I’ve already heard students talking about it,” Mrs. Porter replied. “They are very excited.”

There was the slightest of awkward pauses.

The academic looked brightly around the coffee area. “I’m just so excited to have a chance to visit your store.”

This was right down Annie’s alley. “Let me give you my deluxe tour.”

They ended up at the coffee bar, Charlotte Porter clutching two Juanita Sheridan books. (“I just love Janice Cameron and the Hawaiian background.”)

Pouring coffee in mugs respectively inscribed
The Silent Bullet
and
The Case of the Sulky Girl
, Annie continued to shine as a hostess and wonder, with more than a little curiosity, what had brought Charlotte Porter to see her. The possibility that she had actually just been in the neighborhood (on an island thirteen miles away by land and two by sea on a misty November Saturday) seemed just a trifle farfetched.

“It was really very nice of you to bring
The Crier,
” Annie said finally, as she took a last sip of her magnificent (if she did say so herself) Colombian coffee.

“Oh, it was no trouble,” Mrs. Porter assured her earnestly. She didn’t look quite as worn today; her faded blue eyes sparkled as she talked about one of her favorite authors, Kathleen Moore Knight. A spot of color touched her almost cavernous cheeks and the thick weave of her wool cardigan hid the thinness of her upper body. “We do so enjoy the delights of getting to know our adjunct faculty members. Really, our faculty has always, historically, been one to be very proud of, even though we are such a small college. Mr. Burke is a prime example of the college’s willingness to go outside the narrowness of academia to seek out wonderfully accomplished professionals. You may know that he has won many awards over the years for his excellence in reporting.” She nodded, her gray head bobbing energetically. “And, of course, our regular faculty has had so many, many outstanding members. Joshua Norden, for example.” The blue eyes regarded Annie steadily. “Why, for many years he served as an advertising consultant to the Chastain National Bank and to the State Bar Association, and he is a past chairman of the American Academy of Advertising. When he worked in advertising, he was a winner of Addys at four different times.”

“I’m sure he is very outstanding,” Annie said gently.

There was more, of course—references to other faculty, to their achievements—but, as Annie walked her new friend to the front door of Death on Demand, she knew why Charlotte Porter had come.

Annie watched as the thin figure disappeared into the November mist. What a gallant effort to preserve the reputation of an old friend—and how deeply Charlotte Porter must identify her own life with the needs and objectives of the Chastain College journalism department.

Annie walked slowly back to the coffee area and began to straighten up. She checked the coffee pot, which was almost empty, but decided against brewing more. There wouldn’t be many people in today. It was too gray and dank and there weren’t any tourists, in November, to clog the aisles with disappointed sun worshippers.

She picked up
The Crier
, thinking she must be sure and thank the young photographer, and closed it, then stared at the boldface announcement at the top left of page one.

Annie nodded admiringly. A spunky guy, that Kelly.

Ah, shades of Helen Kirkpatrick, Ruth Cowan, and Marguerite Higgins. They rest secure in the history of women war correspondents, but Mary Roberts Rinehart beat them to it. An argument could be made for Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman) as the first woman foreign correspondent, but actually Nellie was making news, as well as reporting it. Of course, looking even farther back, Margaret Fuller wrote about Louis Napoleon’s siege of Paris in 1849 for the
New York Tribune
. But honors for being one of the first in the trenches should go to MRR, who reached the front in the early days of World War I despite a ban on correspondents, jouncing up a shell-pocked road in an unlit car to the flooded no-man’s-land between the German and Allied lines. Bodies bobbed grotesquely in the icy water, and the night smelled of death.

MRR was no stranger to death in many guises. In the 1890s, she had trained as a nurse in a Pittsburgh hospital that served men injured in the great steel mills and on the railroads. One night she agonized over the slow death of a man who had been caught in a flywheel. She stood beside him in the Emergency Room. “I wanted him to die quickly, not to go on breathing. I can’t stand it. Die and stop suffering. I can’t stand it. I can’t.”

“Challenges,” Annie announced aloud.

Max looked up from his book
(The Amateur Cracksman
by E. W. Hornung). Diverted, Annie wondered what his choice indicated, then decided not to pursue that thought.

“Challenges?”

Annie paused to admire her husband. Really, he
was
a grown-up Joe Hardy, with his thick blond hair and eyes of such a dark blue they rivaled a mountaintop lake. And such a superbly muscled body. A tiny frown drew her brows together. Somehow she couldn’t picture the impetuous Joe Hardy quite so relaxed. Max sprawled full length on the sofa, three pillows
bunched behind him, and he looked about as muscled as a jelly fish. Was Max getting soft? Was married life blunting his keen edge? Actually, had Max ever
had
a keen edge?

He draped the book across his chest, put his hands behind his head. “Challenges?” he said again.

“Mary Roberts Rinehart,” she replied absently. Then, more excitedly, “That’s the key to her life, a zest for challenges! Entering a hospital at sixteen in 1893 to train as a nurse (she lied, she lied, Max, and said she was seventeen) when only a few young women of her class were choosing such arduous and unprotected work, beginning to write in earnest some years later when she and her doctor husband owed money because of the market crash of 1904, daring as a novice to write for Broadway, finagling her way to the front lines in 1915, later seeking out the still-challenging American West and traveling the deserts of Egypt and Iran!”

“Always living on the edge,” Max said affably, burrowing more comfortably into his pillows.

Annie’s frown became more pronounced, then she sighed. She didn’t have time now to think about Max’s incredible relaxation since marriage. Not certainly that he had ever been uptight. But she must focus her energies on the task at hand, preparation for her first class.

Her first class.

Tomorrow morning.

Annie clutched her Rinehart folder. Should she approach each writer one at a time or perhaps meld together a quick overview of all three?

Rinehart knew the gritty realities of life and death but fashioned a romantic world in her fiction where love always triumphed.

Christie believed in evil. She created puzzles and delighted in sleight of hand.

Sayers was brilliant and erudite, with a boisterous sense of humor and no capacity for tolerating fools.

The Three
Grande Dames
of the Mystery. Annie wondered for just an instant what the topic would be if the three of them came to tea.

Rinehart had great social charm.

Christie was very shy.

Sayers loved to stay up all night, smoke incessantly, and talk voraciously.

It would be quite a gathering.

Max held the front door.

Annie balanced three folders and her purse atop a box crammed with paperbacks. “Do I look all right?” she asked anxiously.

“Adorable,” her charming spouse responded with an insufferable grin.

She stamped her foot. “No, no, no. Do I look all
right?
”

Max tilted his head and stroked his chin contemplatively. “You don’t think a navy blue suit and plain white blouse with a Peter Pan collar is a little—well, perhaps, a little extreme?”

“Frumpy?” she demanded, peering down at the smooth expanse of offending navy blue gabardine.

“Of course not frumpy,” he said loyally. “Just a little … understated, perhaps.”

“But Max, I don’t want to look young!”

“Is there something in the faculty manual about age?” he asked innocently.

“Max, you know what I mean,” she wailed.

He bent, kissed her cheek. “Annie, my love, you are, as always, beautiful, desirable, and delectable. Don’t worry, your class is going to adore you.”

“Not if they think I’m just a kid,” she mumbled, starting
down the tree house steps. She paused and peered back at him worriedly. “Now, you’ll be all right—?”

Lounging against the doorframe, he arched a quizzical blond brow. “Is there some unheralded danger abroad on Broward’s Rock of which I am unaware? Fire-snorting dragons? Martian tarantulas?” He paused, grinned. “Truant officers for adults?”

“You
are
going to work?” she shot out sharply.

“Of course. Cross my heart, et cetera. Wouldn’t miss a day in the office for the world.”

Nodding, still worriedly chewing her lip, she started on down the steps, paused again. “You could go and check on the progress of the house.” She looked past him, at the weathered boards of her tree house. She did love it, but their stay had grown longer than anticipated. Not only had their new house not been ready upon their return from their honeymoon, it was still not completed.

So much to think about. The house. The store. Of course, Ingrid was quite capable of handling everything at Death on Demand. Annie paused, balanced her carton atop the mailbox, pulled down the lid, and fished inside. Bills, of course. Only two real letters. One to Max from his sister Diedre. One to her with a Paris postmark. The handwriting, a bold clear script, was familiar. Who could it—She ripped it open, then smiled. How sweet. A note from Emma Clyde, the island’s most successful resident writer and creator of that famous fictional sleuth, Marigold Rembrandt.

Annie was all the way to the car and had stowed the box in the trunk when she realized the morning’s mail lacked the weekly letter from her esteemed mother-in-law, Laurel. She paused, her hand on the car door, and looked back toward the tree house, but Max had already gone inside. Oh well, it would keep and surely the letter had only been delayed. Perhaps Laurel was busy with— Her mind quailed at the prospect of what might possibly be occupying Laurel’s time. But at least she was in Connecticut. Such a lovely,
distant
place, Connecticut.

* * *

Annie wheeled into the faculty lot. The Volvo windshield flaunted a newly applied crimson-and-white sticker,
FACULTY AND STAFF
. How many badges there were in the world, little emblems of belonging. Or not belonging. As she lifted her box of books and materials from the trunk, Annie sighed happily. To be a part of an academic institution, even if on a lowly level, was thrilling. And she’d already had so much fun preparing for the class and learned so many new facts about her favorite writers. Mary Roberts Rinehart used her own Bar Harbor mansion as the scene of the crime in
The Yellow Room
. Agatha Christie wrote the surname of her husband’s mistress when she signed the register of a hotel during her headlined disappearance in 1926. Dorothy L. Sayers, in the opinion of critic Trevor H. Hall, indicated her debt to Arthur Conan Doyle by giving Wimsey the address 110A Piccadilly, which is half of 221B Baker Street plus one (A as the first letter in the alphabet representing one).

Annie was grinning at the last as she stepped inside. It was wonderful what critics could suggest, that Christie developed into one of the world’s finest storytellers because her mother kept her home from school and so the lonely child populated her world with imaginary personalities. And the thesis of Rinehart’s biographer that the woman who became a national celebrity excused her career on the basis of family need and always pretended to herself that her family came first because her Victorian sense of propriety demanded it. And the suggestion that Sayers’s fruitless search for the true love of her life led her to create Lord Peter.

What would those ladies say now, had they the opportunity?

Annie paused just inside the back door. She had a clear view of the central hallway. It didn’t take Nurse Adams, Hercule Poirot, or Peter Wimsey to deduce that something was afoot—and that charming redhead who had snapped her photograph was right in the middle of it all.

Body language can shout. Four women stood squarely in front of the student newspaper entrance. Arms tightly folded, faces grim, their heads snapped toward her, then she was dismissed.
The front door creaked open, and they swung in unison to face it.

Annie was glad she wasn’t the one they were waiting for. Somebody was going to catch hell. It wasn’t, of course, any business of hers. She could have gone up the back stairs, but the tableau of anger intrigued her. What was going on? And probably she should check in at the main office anyway, see if there was anything she needed to do before her first class.

She paused at the main office door and gave a quick glance across the hall at the militant group, a pudgy blonde in a wrinkled bright green Mexican shift, a tiny dark girl with elfin features and brilliantly black eyes, a slightly older woman in a replica of Annie’s plain blue suit, and the red-haired photographer. Annie was startled by the change in her appearance. Gone was the elegant self-possession of last week. She looked as if she’d tossed on the nearest clothes at hand. The paisley skirt clashed with the plaid blouse, and her hair wasn’t sleek and controlled, but looked as though she’d jabbed at it hurriedly, scarcely combing it at all. She didn’t even have on any makeup and her face was gaunt and pale.