Murder in the English Department (17 page)

After ten days of iron doors slamming and ten sleepless nights, Nan heard that the English Department had formally disposed of her classes for the following quarter. ‘Women Writers' would be taught by a very competent lecturer (Couldn't you just see it on her
vita
, ‘substitute during murder trial'.) And the ‘Mod Lit' class would be covered by a series of lectures from various faculty. Meanwhile, she had received several letters from former students who were setting up a ‘Defence Committee' of women from all over campus. If the arrest weren't enough to lose her tenure, this defence committee could do it.

Matt brought all the details on his second visit. He had arrived with a bouquet of flowers for his lost duchess, but had to surrender them at the gate. Dear, sweet Matt. Loyal Matt. Loyalty, now there was a virtue no one discussed any more. Sure, people talked about ‘sharing' and ‘supportiveness', but loyalty ran deeper. Her people had come through—Matt, Shirley and Amy visited as often as possible. Their feelings about her didn't seem to change, except to intensify. In her most anxious moments, Nan worried that they would suspect her, but she was grateful to find they treated the arrest like some kind of disease from which she had to be rescued.

‘So how's it going today?' Matt was trying to sound casual. However, he was nagging at his beard, so she knew how nervous he was.

‘Just fine,' Nan told him. ‘My cellmate actually spoke to me last night. Guess she figured that silence wasn't providing any more room in our little box.'

‘What did she say?'

‘Hooking,' said Nan, shaking her head.

‘Sorry?' he said.

‘Hooking,' Nan repeated, still shaking her head. ‘Twenty years old and she's forced to prostitute herself to take care of two kids.' Nan was silent. When she noticed this, she added, ‘And Judy didn't ask why I was in; she knew.'

‘Honour,' said Matt.

‘What?' asked Nan.

‘Honour,' Matt pulled off his glasses and looked directly at Nan. ‘I've been talking with Amy,' he said, his voice tightening with fear. ‘And we think you know something, Nan. We think you're protecting someone.'

Nan turned back quickly to see if the matron was within hearing distance.

‘Nan,' he stared at her so hard she thought her glasses might crack. ‘Nan, dear, honour is a very old-fashioned defence.'

‘Oh, Matt,' she tried to laugh. ‘Sometimes I'm amazed at your penchant for melodrama.'

‘Try the Victorian novel,' said Matt, his eyes on the matron who was, in fact, moving closer. ‘Try
Tale of Two Cities
, for instance.'

‘Oh, Matt,' sighed Nan, exasperated because she had so little time with him and she desperately needed some outside conversation to distract her from the obsessions with mealtime and recreational breaks and the dimensions of her tiny cell. These visits kept her from going crazy. She needed to hear that the world was as she left it so she could concentrate on returning.

‘I'm not sacrificing
anything
for
any one
,' said Nan. ‘There simply is no evidence.' Even as she said this, she felt her pulse accelerate.

Nan wrote to Lisa
that
Santa Marta was just an enforced vacation. Santa Marta. It sounded like a little village on the coast of Spain. Or perhaps an old colonial port in Northern Morocco. She would have a lot of time to think here.

Nan knew she should take advantage of this time. She was always too busy at home. She could devise papers she wanted to write; reorganize her lectures for next year; dream about the trip to India with Lisa; meet Third World women. She was always complaining that most of her friends were white. Thanks to the racist courts, she now had plenty of time to talk with blacks and Chicanas. But Nan did none of this. For long hours of every day her mind seemed paralyzed, as though her head had been thrown into solitary confinement, without any ideas. Perhaps it was one of the consequences of being treated like a baboon. She could not think what to think about. If they had planned a torture, they could not have been more effective. She felt the weight of those early depressions in Hayward. She wished she was dead all day, save for those moments when she thought she was dead. She could not think what to think about.

But at night the pattern changed and her thoughts continued to keep her from sleeping. Nan ran through the incidents of New Year's Eve a dozen times, and she could find no evidence to convict Marjorie. If there was no evidence to convict Marjorie, surely there was no evidence to convict Nan? Matt was wrong. This wasn't about honour. She was sacrificing nothing. And during the few hours Nan did doze, her dreams connected Marjorie with herself; herself with Lisa; Marjorie with Lisa.

Chapter Seventeen

WHEN THE MATRON CAME
the next day, Nan couldn't imagine who was visiting her. Amy was not due for three hours; Matt and Shirley had promised tomorrow morning.

Nervously Nan walked into the visitors' room. She looked around and saw Lisa, or rather, the back of Lisa's curly head. (The hair. Blonde hair in the dark night. Lisa's fair hair would have turned gold in the evening light.) What was happening to her? Hallucinating, rambling. Lisa was not Marjorie. Marjorie was in Maryland and Lisa was here. But what was she doing here?

Lisa seemed to be surveying sadness in the waiting room. The podgy, white-haired woman who visited her daughter every day; the two black men who visited one of the prisoners in the cell next to Nan's. She was glad Lisa hadn't been watching the door, hadn't seen her aunt ushered into the room by this cold sergeant. Nan tried to materialize her old self from the greyness around her.

Lisa turned and waved.

‘Lisa, my sweet,' said Nan, for all the world like an Edwardian matron serving tea. ‘How lovely to see you.'

‘Oh, Nan,' Lisa worried, with no pretence of good cheer. ‘How are you? I've been dying to come, but Mom wouldn't let me out of the house. Are you all right? Are you OK?'

‘Yes,' smiled Nan. How could she smile now? How could she not smile? What else could she do with her nervous face? ‘I'm just fine, love. But what about you? And does you mother know you're here?'

‘No,' winked Lisa. ‘I escaped! Oh, dear,' she gasped. ‘Hope that wasn't in bad taste.'

‘No, no,' smiled Nan. ‘Prison rooms are wallpapered with lousy jokes.'

They both looked around at the patient, numb faces of the visitors.

‘Seeing you here is like watching spring arrive,' said Nan. ‘So tell me how you're feeling.'

‘Well, I do have news,' Lisa spoke conspiratorially. ‘I think that's why Mom looked the other way when I drove off this morning.'

‘Yes?' said Nan.

‘The test result came. Dr Bonelli says he doubts it's Lupus. Not one hundred percent sure, he said. He wants to take another set of tests in three months. But until then, I have a sort of parole.' Lisa paled. She put her hand over her mouth and looked down at the table. ‘Oh, Nan, that's terrible; it just slipped out.'

‘It's OK, honey,' Nan was laughing, ‘it's OK.'

‘Boy,' said Lisa, smiling and shaking her head. ‘I must be more nervous than I thought.'

‘But what does this doctor's report mean?' asked Nan. ‘What is it you have, or had? What about this butterfly rash?'

‘Don't know. It could be emotional, but we don't know. And that's what you said, Nan, remember, what you said all along.'

Nan nodded.

‘Emotional,' Lisa repeated. ‘It makes me feel a little crazy, psychosomatic or hypochondriacal or something.'

‘Oh, no, honey,' reassured Nan. ‘Pray that it
was
that. Those illnesses are real, just in a different way. And I'm so relieved that you're feeling better.'

‘Well, this week I've been eating well, sleeping OK.'

‘Lisa, honey, that's terrific. How are your mom and dad reacting?'

‘Overjoyed. Mom thinks it's a certified miracle. She's going to say a novena in thanks this afternoon. Dad thinks that it's the result of staying away from Berkeley. As for me, I'm just glad to be off the drugs for a while.'

Nan noticed how sharp her niece looked—as if she had emerged from a pool. Her voice was strong and clear, with just an edge of exasperation when she talked about home. So different from the guilty hesitation which used to characterize every family reference.

‘Enough about me,' Lisa went on. ‘How are
you
? What is this place like? I mean,' her voice quavered, ‘are you scared in here?'

‘There's a certain comfort to the routine.' Nan pulled a small face.

Lisa stared back.

‘It is difficult,' said Nan finally. ‘It gets more frightening every day.'

‘Who's visited you?'

‘Matt, your mom, Amy. This has taught me a lot about love. And then I had those wonderful letters from you.'

‘No one else?'

‘No.'

‘What about, what's-her-name, Marjorie Adams?' Lisa asked.

‘Marjorie Adams?' faltered Nan. ‘You mean my student Marjorie?' Nan was as frightened as she was confused by Lisa's question. ‘Why do you ask about her?'

‘Oh. I don't know,' said Lisa. ‘Just that she seemed to be your favourite, I guess. Hasn't she been by to see you?'

‘Well, no,' said Nan. ‘I think she went home to her family for a while. Anyway, tell me more about your dad and the boys.'

‘They're fine. Real worried, though. Everyone thinks it's outrageous they would arrest you. Dad has been alternating between wanting to rescue you with a crowbar and wanting to hit the cops over the head for stupidly wasting his tax dollars.'

‘I tried to calm down your mother yesterday.'

‘Yes,' nodded Lisa. ‘She's very worried. And so's Aunt Betty.'

‘You mean Grandma Weaver's sister Betty in Cleveland?' Nan was astonished.

‘Yes.' Lisa smiled. ‘We had a call from her this morning. It's the biggest thing to hit the family since Uncle Henry fell off the oil rig. And last night, Dad's brother Louie in Pittsburgh called.'

‘It wasn't in the newspapers out there?' asked Nan.

‘No, family telegraph, that's all,' sighed Lisa.

‘Cleveland
and
Pittsburgh, eh?' asked Nan. ‘Hmmmm, just two more places I won't get tenure.'

‘Oh, Nan, how you keep from going crazy in this place, I just don't know. You really are amazing,' Lisa fumbled in embarrassment. ‘Unique.'

‘Unique, that's true,' volleyed Nan. ‘I was the only one they arrested.'

Nan glanced at three visitors, waiting, silent. A podgy woman was biting her fingernails. Late morning sun poured through the small windows now, streaking a ray of dust across the grim room.

Nan turned back to Lisa and noticed tears rimming her eyes. She didn't know what to say. She had enough trouble keeping back her own tears.

Finally, Lisa spoke. ‘Listen,' she whispered angrily, ‘I'm going to do everything I can to get you out of here.'

‘Of course,' said Nan, who understood this need to do something when there was nothing you could do. Nothing. ‘I know that, Lisa, honey. I know you will.'

Chapter Eighteen

THEY BROUGHT NAN TO
THE
courthouse
half an hour early. Her hearing was scheduled for ten. By 9.40 she was sitting in the ante-room watching the public gallery fill up. The widow, Laura Murchie, was among the first to arrive, supported by Professor Augustine. They both wore a kind of grudging pride, like parents of the bride at a shotgun wedding, present to see Justice done. They sat behind the Assistant District Attorney, Laura Murchie's second cousin. He turned to greet them and then faced back to his notes.

On the far wall, Nan saw a homely needlepoint of an American eagle. The judge's bench was elevated slightly above the witness chair which was elevated above the lawyer's tables. Amy was busy writing, her head nodding to a yellow legal pad. Nan wondered why she had left her homework until so late. But she tried to concentrate on how professional her lawyer looked in a handsome beige suit. The defendant, herself, was wearing a severe navy skirt and blazer with a Peter Pan collared blouse, the lay nun effect.

Nan caught her breath as Shirley and Lisa entered the courtroom. Too bad they had never met Amy. (Why had she tried so hard to keep Berkeley apart from Hayward?) Perhaps she could introduce them in court. Were civilian exchanges allowed?

Amy's husband Warren was handing her a pile of papers over the rail. His red hair shone iridescent under the fluorescent lights. Amy reached back over the rail and squeezed his hand warmly. This rail, Nan's mind wandered, like the communion rail in St Mary's, separated the rest of the sanctuary from the altar. The sacrificial altar. Old Latin rose from Nan's belly like a spell of gas. ‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.'

Matt was next to arrive. Good old Matt. Also dressed in his most respectables. A grey tweed suit. He had even replaced his omnipresent Birkenstock sandals with squeaking black loafers. Tuesday morning, Nan reflected, he must have cancelled his class. He sat down stiffly behind Shirley and Lisa. His anxiety was diffused in a moment once Lisa turned around and introduced her mother. Nan saw Matt searching Shirley's face for traces of sisterhood. Shirley blushed and waved her hand in go-on-now modesty. They all laughed nervously, or rather smiled, and shook silently.

A small old man—not unlike the bird fellow who fussed around Nan during the Grand Jury—was ushering others through the door. Nan saw Millie walk in and sit beside Matt. This was like choosing sides of the bleachers in a football match. Now she saw Hammerly, who hesitated at the door and then chose the seat next to Augustine, behind the DA.

‘Quickly,' the old man whispered. ‘The judge will be with us presently.'

The judge—Nan wondered what kind of a person he would be. Not the worst, Amy had told her yesterday. Judge Harold Gordon was a liberal Republican. More liberal on race than on sex. Nevertheless, in Alameda County, he was what passed for liberal.

Nan watched, frozen, as two of her students arrived and sat beside Millie. Amy had gone to campus yesterday to quell the ‘Defence Committee', who had been planning a group protest. It had taken an hour to convince them that they shouldn't sit at the back of the court and heckle. She explained that this would only alienate the judge. They agreed to postpone the protest until the trial. The trial, Amy had reassured them, would never happen. So now Nan held her breath as two—only two of them, thank god—took their seats beside Millie.

Nan felt a nudge on her arm. The matron was nodding now, ‘Time to go in,' said Sergeant Fernandez, gently betraying the first trace of kindness that morning.

Entering the courtroom, Nan glanced around carefully. Two flags—the Stars and Stripes and the Golden Bear of California—stood on either side of the bench. On the dusty ledge near the window were three busts, two she could make out, John Locke and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The third she didn't recognize, only that it was a man.

‘You'll be sitting with your attorney,' said the matron quietly.

‘Yes,' said Nan, adding, ‘Thank you.' After all, the poor woman was just doing her job. Were prison guards unionized? Did Sergeant Fernandez have children to support? What a terrible way to earn your living. Nan was relieved that the matron did not hold her arm. She didn't want to look like a prisoner. After all, her innocence would prove itself.

Nan was walking with as much confidence as she could conjure, reminding herself of the first time she gave a guest lecture in Wheeler Auditorium. How frightened she had been then, facing five hundred eager students. That day, and again this morning, she repeated over and over to herself the brave acts of her life: divorcing Charles, going back to college, working in Tanzania. Small heroics, but they did lend her some dignity and calm. As she moved toward the defence table, Nan repeated the words over and over, dignity and calm. Dignity and calm. As though on one foot she wore dignity and on the other calm.

Judge Harold Gordon entered, looking very much like Nelson Rockefeller. Never liked Rockefeller, thought Nan, never trusted his smile. Judge Gordon was unsmiling as he explained the court procedures. He spoke in such ponderous legal jargon that Nan wondered if he might put everyone to sleep.

The first witness called to the stand was the coroner, a squat young man who read his report as if he were reciting from the drawer in the morgue.

‘Sixty-year-old man. Dead of a sharp wound in the stomach. Apparently in the middle of sexual activity. Body found fully clothed, except that the pants were pulled down around the thighs. Lower stomach and genitals exposed …'

The San Francisco Chronicle
, true to its squalid mandate, Nan remembered, had published all the information, so this morning there were no surprised gasps of horror from the public. Nan thought she could feel the mortification of Mrs Angus Murchie. Without turning, Nan could sense the widow's stiff, almost brittle posture; she could hear the nervous, shallow breathing. In fact, Laura Murchie's presence was so palpable that Nan almost felt guilty.

The Chronicle
had given the crime banner headlines on the front page whenever a new shred of evidence surfaced. Sometimes they simply repeated the old shreds. What was next, Nan wondered, would some hack volunteer to ghost-write her autobiography? Why was
The Chronicle
obsessed with this crime when San Francisco provided two or three murders and ten assaults on an average day? Perhaps this case did have a dramatic ring, ‘Murder in the English Department'. The most galling aspect was the particular reporter, Beth Beale.

Beth was one of Nan's former students. (How many students were out there. Seven years times three-quarters equalled twenty-one times a hundred students equalled two thousand one hundred students. Nan pictured herself as an excessively fertile frog who had spawned hundreds of unpredictable tadpoles.) Actually, Beth Beale was a sweet woman who had done well in school. (Unlike Officer Ross. By now Nan was almost convinced that Ross was that Vietnam veteran who insisted on smoking in class and interrupting the discussion with questions about why they weren't reading more
American
writers.) Beth had even confided in Nan that she was on her side. Apparently being on Nan's side meant long featured articles about discrimination against women academics, about the difficulty of getting tenure, about Nan's unselfish devotion to the Sexual Harassment Campaign. Poor Beth had been quite hurt when Amy asked her to ‘tone down' her coverage of the hearing.

The next witness was Officer Ross, looking even taller than usual in his civilian clothes, a navy gaberdine suit which bagged around his thin frame. He testified to their thorough investigation of the English faculty, prior to the arrest of Professor Weaver.

As Ross was speaking, Nan heard a rustle from the back of the courtroom. Nan turned to see Clarence Johnson walk in and sit shyly in the last row. He looked tired and worried and Nan felt sad that he had got caught up in all this. Johnson was followed by his massive lawyer, who looked even more imposing today in a green sharkskin suit.

Judge Gordon rapped his gavel, and Nan turned back toward the bench, her eyes sweeping past, but not acknowledging, Beth Beale.

‘Order,' the judge called. ‘Let us keep our attention on the witness. Officer Ross, please proceed.'

The morning passed with one man after another pointing his evidence at Nan. Hammerly testified to the tension between her and Murchie, to political differences and temperamental difficulties. Augustine admitted that she would be the most successful of their junior faculty if she could be just a bit more ‘low key'. Even in her professional work—like that panel on feminist criticism she had chaired last year at the Modern Language Association (Nan remembered how jealous Murchie was that she was asked to chair a panel)—she had insisted on being ‘so political'.

As Laura Murchie climbed to the stand, she looked very willowy and blonde. (Blonde, Nan's mind raced wildly. Who had bothered to question Mrs Murchie's presence at the health spa? Blonde hair in the dark night.) The elegant widow spoke in short bursts of grief about her husband's devotion to students. She said she knew very little about Nan Weaver except that her dear husband had returned home several times, quite irritable about ‘some disagreement'.

The prosecution witnesses returned to their seats on the right side of the courtroom with evident relief, as if their testimonies might wrest some evil spirit from their midst. Nan couldn't shake the image of football bleachers from her mind. What were the opposite teams? Those who believed in the honour of Angus Murchie and those who knew better? Or, perhaps, those who supported Nan Weaver and those who conspired to frame her?

Few people in the English Department really mourned the passing of Angus Murchie. And she knew few more would mourn the passing of Nan Weaver. Murchie was just a faggot lit at the bottom of her stake. Here they were ridding themselves of the Wheeler Hall Witch, even if they had to overlook evidence of a rape to do it.

Mr Johnson's testimony was the most pathetic. He said he knew nothing about the murder.

‘I saw nothing,' he said quietly. ‘Heard nothing. I've got nothing much to say. Yes, I did notice Professor Weaver's light in the building that night …'

Nan sneaked a look at Laura Murchie, whose eyes were closed in tense concentration.

Johnson explained that about 3.00 a.m. he finally went to turn off the light in Murchie's office. Getting no answer when he knocked, he unlocked the door and found Murchie's body on the floor. He had noticed only one other light during the course of New Year's Eve, from the office of Professor Weaver.

Mr Johnson did not look at Nan during his testimony, and avoided her eyes as he walked back to his seat.

After lunch, Amy called the defence witnesses. Other lawyers had advised against this, had told her to accept the normal procedure of letting the prosecutor present his case and saving her big guns until the trial. However, she said she didn't know her big guns yet. Perhaps they would emerge in testimony. Anyway, the evidence was so weighted against Nan that a few character witnesses couldn't hurt.

Matt was the first on the stand. How scholarly he looked in his tweed jacket, one hand on the Bible, the other nervously pulling at his beard. A quiet man of evident integrity. His testimony was brief and confident. Amy asked a few character questions to balance out the dark words of Augustine and Laura Murchie.

‘Popular among students …'

‘Great respect from journal editors …'

‘A truly
loyal
colleague …'

Nan felt like she was at an awards ceremony rather than a murder hearing. She wondered whether Matt believed in her innocence. He probably wouldn't care if she had killed Murchie, acknowledging that she could still be ‘innocent' in a larger, existential sense. Matt's morality was more intricate than Shirley's.

Shirley sat in the witness chair, red with indignation. Shirley Growsky, mother of three, President of the Altar Society, sister of a murder suspect. Hayward wasn't a tiny town, but news travelled. Nan knew that during the last month Shirley's mantle had slipped significantly. Nowadays she was identified more as Nan Weaver's sister than as Joe Growsky's wife. However, if Shirley was embarrassed or ashamed or frightened, she never revealed it. And now, as Shirley answered the DA, Nan watched her usual shyness turn to outrage at those who would accuse her sister.

‘She arrived at our party shortly after one a.m.,' said Shirley, tersely.

‘She told us she was working late,' Shirley answered.

‘No, this didn't seem strange,' Shirley's voice was hot with anger. ‘No, not even on New Year's Eve. Our Nan works harder than most people.'

When Nan was finally called to the stand, she felt dizzy, as if the room had tilted. Like her first day in prison, this testifying seemed so unreal. Inexplicable. As she rose from her chair, she silently repeated to herself, ‘Dignity and calm. Dignity and calm.'

Nan sensed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Amy bending over her. ‘You OK, kid?' her friend asked.

Nan realized that she had been standing still, not moving toward the bench at all for a minute, perhaps five minutes.

‘Yes, sure,' she said, reaching for a glass and gulping down the dusty, warm water that had been standing on their table all day.

Nan swore on the old King James Bible that she would tell the whole truth (and she wondered briefly, in her scrupulous Catholic schoolgirl conscience, whether oaths on Protestant bibles counted).

Amy's questions drew out her devotion to scholarship, her cooperation as a colleague, her passion as a teacher.

The DA's questions about her relations with Angus Murchie were just what she expected.

‘You had disagreements on which courses should be assigned for the English major?'

‘At times,' said Nan.

‘You disagreed as to the place of politics in campus life?'