Chapter 15

I had foolishly agreed to meet Nan for coffee at 9 on Thursday. She was already waiting when I arrived.

"I've got to talk to you. We'll sit here." I got myself a glass and a container of milk. Nan bought nothing. We sat down just about where we sat the day before.

"Nan," I began, "you're the most beautiful woman I've ever been in bed with. And there's almost nothing I'd rather do than screw you repeatedly and frequently. But there are a number of things you should be aware of. Just like you felt there was something I ought to know about you last week. I wasn't a virgin. And despite my actions, which I've thoroughly enjoyed, I'm happily married and I have a young daughter. And whatever fantasies I might have, I'm not going to leave my wife and child to run off with a young graduate student, no matter how gorgeous. No, don't say anything! The second thing is that I think you should find a guy closer to your own age, an available guy, and make it with him. Oh, hell! Don't look at the table! Look at me! You're going off to Stanford -- yes, you are -- and you don't need more baggage. Now say something!"

"I don't know what to say. I'm embarrassed. And I'm exposed. I never thought of myself as a home-wrecker. When I talked to you last Tuesday. When we had lunch. I liked you right away. You seemed interested ... and kind ... and ... and intelligent. And that night, when I went to my group, they were all talking about their sex lives. So I thought I'd seduce you, you know? I looked for you on Wednesday, but you weren't around. And I knew you would solve all my problems. Family and sex and graduate school. And I was right. You did!" She looked at me. Her eyes looked sad, but she flashed that smile. "I'll be able to cope, now. Inside, I've been going around saying 'He fucked me!' I wasn't able to say that even at my group." She blushed. "And then I started to worry about getting pregnant. Then I decided it didn't matter. I made up all sort of romantic stories about us: you would leave your wife for me; or I'd follow you to Toronto and you'd set me up as your mistress. But I knew how silly those scenarios were. You're the most important man in the whole world to me. Now, I mean. When you said those wonderful things about me on the phone to that woman at Stanford, I knew what I needed you for. I needed you for experience. And I want to keep you. In five years, ten years, when I'm a doctor, a professor, I want you for a friend. A real friend. I want to have boy friends and lovers and get married and have children ... but I want you. And the reason I want you is because you won't leave your wife for me." She was looking straight at me with tears in her eyes. "I love you, Burt."

"No. You don't. You don't. And I don't love you, either. But I do care about you a good deal. And I won't stop caring about you if I stop screwing you. If it's true confession time, you're only the second woman since I got married. Second besides my wife, that is." I finally drank my milk. It was warm and tasted awful. I made a face. "You're going to be a brilliant critic and I'm going to be proud to know you." I stood up. "I'm going to the library. Meet me at Jim's after your class? I need another question answered."

"Yes," she breathed. "Hasta luego."

Before leaving home, I had phoned Billings. As I had hoped, he wasn't in yet. So I left a message for him to meet me at San Diego State at 12:30, in the room where I'd found Gillespie. I carefully spelled my name "D-I-V-E-R" for the operator. Now I went to the library. The volume with Gillespie's Meredith article still wasn't there. I realized I could have taken a copy from the office. Tant pis, I thought, and abandoned the topic. I went downstairs and located the most recent copies of the Toronto Globe and Mail. An hour later I felt fully caught up on Toronto and Ontario politics. I also learned that there had been several art shows we might have gone to, that the Canadian Opera Company was offering Turandot, and that tickets were already on sale for The Nutcracker. That reminded me that Ann and I hadn't talked about Hilda's birthday, yet. It would be her first unfrozen one.

I restacked the papers and began to stroll over to Jim's office. I was quite nervous. It was like going to your comprehensive orals. In case you haven't caught on, I thought I had the answers. All Ph.D. candidates do. And I wanted to get Nan and Jim and Loot together to hear my exposition. And as I didn't have an Archie Goodwin to assemble everyone in my office, I thought the scene of the crime would be appropriate.

As I left the library, there were Irv and Nick -- sinister collaborators like Sam and Tom in Verdi's Masked Ball. I said "hello," but asked to be excused as I had an appointment.

"No problem, Burt," said Irv. "But you've been thinking about what we talked over, right?"

"Yes. And I mentioned it to Ann, too. But don't get your hopes up."

"OK. Bye."

"So long."

The delay was just long enough that I got to Jim's office as he was opening it. "Hi," I said. "Hi, Nan." She immediately blushed. Jim didn't notice.

"Hi," he said. "What's up? Lunch?"

"I think lunch'll be a bit late, today." I was very serious. "I invited Lieutenant Billings to meet us over in the seminar room in a little while. I have a story to tell all of you." Nan gasped.

"Burt, you don't mean... ?"

"I think so. But I'd rather give Billings a chance to shoot my theory down. But I wanted to ask Nan a question first."

"Me?"

"About one of the papers I read. If you can think about it."

"Sure. I can remember them."

"OK. Tell me about the one on Conrad and Ford. When you wrote it, how you came to pick the topic, that sort of thing. You know, it's by far the best of the three."

"Oh. That's easy. I was finishing my sophomore year, taking the fiction course with Aunt Alice. We had read Nostromo and Heart of Darkness and Typhoon and I asked about Conrad's writing. I've always been interested in people writing in languages that weren't their native ones, like Nabokov. Because I think of myself as a Spanish-speaker, you know. Well, Alice told me there were these collaborations between Ford and Conrad and suggested that I read The Inheritors, but the library didn't have it. So I did Romance instead. I worked very hard on it. I even read Ford's book of reminiscences about Conrad." She looked at me. "Why?"

"Just curious. You gave me the originals of the two Peacock papers, complete with Gillespie's marginalia, but a Xerox of that one."

Nan laughed. "Oh, Aunt Alice never returns papers. But she gave me an A."

I looked at my watch. "Time to mosey, pardners. Mustn't keep the law waiting."

Jim hadn't said anything, but I could see the wheels going around in his head. Nan started down the hall, but Jim grabbed my elbow. "Not Nan?" he asked.

"Don't be an ass," I responded. And we caught up with her.

Billings was seated in the "siege perilous" when we got to the room. Today it was neither canary nor lime, but a sort of pink-tan. He got up when he saw Nan.

"Hello, Loot. I see you got my message. You know Jim. This is Miss Sanchez y Gomez..."

Nan flashed him one of her smiles and I watched his fillings melt. "Call me Nan. It's much easier."

"Yeah. Uh. Glad to meet you, Miss." It was the first time I'd seen Loot unnerved. Another victim for Nan. "OK, Burt, what's this all about?"

"Sit down, Loot. Sit down Nan, Jim. I admit I did it this way for effect. But I think I've got a solution. I leaned back. Loot and I were at the ends, Jim and Nan on the same side, Nan nearer to me. "What I'm going to have to do is tell a story. Then I think it will all come together.

"Once upon a time..."

"Very funny," interrupted Loot.

"Sorry. Anyway, let's say there was an English Department. In that department there was a young man who was very smart, very eager, but also not very nice. He had come from a repressed background, a very sheltered environment. He didn't know how to get along with people. But he taught his classes and he wrote articles and books and edited a text. He even got married. To a pretty, young graduate student who understood just as little about life as he did. After a while, she ran away and he became yet nastier and less gregarious than he had been. In that same department was another professor. One who had been brought up very differently. One who got married and had children. One who enjoyed life, yet built up a scholarly reputation, too." I paused. "You see, this is a sort of ant and grasshopper story. Aesop told in one way, and Joyce another; and this is my version.

"But the grasshopper really didn't want to spend a lot of time in the library or even at home reading and thinking and burrowing the way the ant did. Every day, every week, every month the ant would drag home another book and, after digesting it, would spew forth another article. Perhaps not a great article, but a solid piece of work. But the ant never danced nor played the fiddle. In fact, the ant didn't have many friends, if any. The grasshopper used to pick up bits of the books that the ants would drop, dragging them home. And some of those bits were worthwhile bits that the grasshopper could use without going to the library, without giving up the children, without giving up the good life." I paused again. Jim, Nan and Loot were all looking at me. I had put together a good story, even if I wasn't La Fontaine.

"But one day the ant realized that the grasshopper wasn't dragging any books home. And the ant watched to see where the grasshopper got those worthwhile bits. Because they were the sort of bits that the ant, and many other ants, toiled to produce. And the ant discovered that the grasshopper was using bits extracted from the library by other ants. He didn't think that was right. But he didn't realize how strongly the grasshopper felt. He didn't realize that the grasshopper felt threatened. So he confronted the grasshopper. He told the grasshopper that he was going to tell the other ants that the grasshopper, singing away, was taking the bits they extracted from the library and was living on them. And the grasshopper, in order to continue using the other ants' work, killed him." I stopped. The room was very quiet. I could hear the hum of the florescent lamps.

Nan looked at me. There was terror in her eyes. "Burt, you don't mean... ? Those papers? ... You can't mean? That's why you asked me. Isn't it? That's why you asked me?" There were tears in her eyes now.

"I'm sorry, Nan. Yes. It was your paper that gave me the last clue. Actually, it wasn't the clue. It was the clincher."

Jim was looking at me. Billings said: "I must be dense. I don't get it. To whom are you referring?"

Nan answered. "Alice. He says Alice Singleton killed Gillespie." It was her very quiet voice. She was keeping strict control.

"Yes," I said. "Alice. Let me tell the story again. With my reasoning.

"Alice loved teaching. And she loved the students. But she had her husband and her children, and she just didn't feel she could spend as much time in the library or at meetings as she ought. But when San Diego State College became San Diego State University and people began talking about doctoral programs and keeping up the university's scholarly reputation, she felt she had to do something. So she took the easy way out. Whenever there was a good to excellent paper, she set it aside. And she would doctor it up a bit and send it off to a journal. Not a first-class journal, but a journal. And it would get published. One or two of them a year. And so she built up a good, solid reputation as a scholar. Not one with real depth, perhaps, but with a wide range of interests. But something got Gillespie suspicious. I'll get to my guesses as to what it was in a few minutes. But with his suspicions aroused, he looked at several of Alice's works. One of them, a recent one, made him very suspicious. Because he had heard of the topic from one of his own students. So he made an appointment with Alice and confronted her. I think he said that he was going to either the dean or the chairman and accuse her of plagiarizing students' essays unless she resigned. I think she made an appointment with him. Here. In this room. And stabbed him to death."

"Jesus," breathed Jim.

"It sounds good to me, Burt," said Billings. "But what's the evidence?"

"It was all over, but somehow it didn't fall into place until last night. The pieces began to come together in the afternoon. When we were in your office, Jim. And there's one thing that Nan told me a little while ago that confirmed everything." Nan was stony-faced.

"Let me try to put it together as a narrative. When I talked to Alice a week ago, she told me that she hadn't talked to Gillespie in over a decade except at departmental meetings. And Jim told me how Gillespie would bait her by calling her 'Simpleton.' But right on top of his desk was a slip from one of the secretaries about a meeting with Alice." I extracted it from my envelope and passed it to Loot. "And there was another, canceling the department meeting." I passed that down, too. Jim nodded.