Chapter 6

By a little before noon I had a wad of notes.

I was at Love Library by nine, located the SDSU's copies of the Burney and the Haywood volumes, and had xeroxed both of Gillespie's articles about Burney and his review of a book about Burney. With the books and articles I'd looked for a vacant table, but each of them seemed to be occupied by a breakfasting ("No Eating or Drinking in the Library," read the signs) or dozing student. As I wanted to spread out my materials, I didn't want to share. So I checked out the books (would I be reported by the Burney police for having checked out the same books from UCSD and SDSU?) and left the Library to seek a place to work -- an empty classroom or a friend's office.

Fate (or my subconscious) took me to the room in which I'd found Gillespie last Monday. Only a bit tardy. The hall clock informed me that it was now 10:27 (it had been 9:55 on Monday). In some way it seemed appropriate that I should burrow through the residue of Gillespie's life in the place where he had met his death. So I went into the empty room and deposited my books and papers on the still-mismatched tables. I refrained from occupying the "siege perilous."

Only a few moments after I settled down, a maintenance man entered. "Sorry," he said. "I just wanted to clean up."

"It's OK. I'm not supposed to be here anyway. I was just looking for a quiet place to sit."

"Well, you found one. They cancelled all the classes that met here. Moved 'em to other rooms. So there ain't supposed to be anyone here. 'Cause of that prof that got killed."

"Did you know him?"

"The guy that got killed?"

"Yeah. Professor Gillespie."

"Sure. I know all the profs who go in and out of here." He clearly meant within his domain, not the university. "He was a real pig."

"A pig?" A new side of Gillespie was emerging.

"Yeah. A real pig. I'd go into his office an' there'd be butts all over the floor, and paper crumpled and tossed anywhere near the basket. Hardly ever in it. And his coffee cup half full with bugs all over it. A real pig."

I wondered what he thought of Jim's stuff. "I never knew that."

"I guess nobody did. 'Cept me an' the guy who's my relief when I'm sick or off. I feel sorry for his wife. I wonder if he washed."

"He didn't have a wife," I remarked.

"Oh. Well, I guess there isn't anyone sorry he's gone, then. My job's easier now. Hell of a lot easier." He looked at the trash basket near the door. "Well, nothin' for me to do here. Nice talkin' to ya."

"Have a good day. Don't work too hard." I felt I'd failed at chumminess, but gained information.

"Try not to." The door closed behind him and I picked up Frances Burney: Mediating between England and France. I began just about where I had left off in the copy now at home.

Fanny Burney, according to George Sherburn, "was a sensible, sensitive, decorous maiden with a very just feeling for social values -- and a resulting tincture of snobbishness." The daughter of a music-master, she had spent years in "the best circles" and, at 41, she had married a French emigre, General d'Arblay, a comrade of Lafayette's. In 1801 the General returned to France, and his wife joined him there a year or so later. Gillespie's book was little concerned with Burney's four novels, but with her attempts at presenting France and things French in England from the 1780s till her death (in 1840) and with her revulsion at the excesses of the French Revolution and its aftermath (as displayed in her letters and journals).

The book seemed solid enough and Gillespie had made good use of the published and the manuscript materials.

The first article on Burney (in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library) dealt with the manuscript of Evelina, Burney's "first and most important novel," which had been acquired by the Berg Collection. It compared the manuscript to the published text in a dry, scholarly way, though there was noticeable malice in some of the footnotes.

The second Burney piece dealt with two letters in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. In it Gillespie scored some points off other scholars by quoting some (hitherto unpublished) remarks of Mme. d'Arblay's.

Gillespie's review of Hemlow's Fanny Burney was just vicious in its attack. As Hemlow was at McGill and as I had heard good things about her and her book, I was irritated by his attitude. I restacked the xeroxes, weighted them down with Gillespie's Mrs. Eliza Haywood, and decided to get Fanny Burney and her Evelina out of the library.

I just left my stuff on the table, walked downstairs, dropped Gillespie's volume into the book return, got the two books, and returned to the seminar. For some strange reason, my things were still there and no corpse had materialized.

I opened Evelina to Letter VI of Volume II and read: "Let not my Evelina be depreffed by a ftroke of fortune for which fhe is not refponfible," and closed it again. English typography has always been problematic, but epistolary novels in which everyone seems to lisp because of the use of the "long s" are just too much. I put it down and picked up Hemlow's book and began reading. By 11:30 I had skimmed 100 pages and was into the chapter on Evelina. Her transcriptions of letters and excerpts from the novel were more readable and recognizable than either the novel or Gillespie. I quickly came to the conclusion that the venom in the review had been engendered by envy and jealousy, rather than something amiss or lacking in Hemlow's work. I also noted Hemlow's Fanny Burney rather than Gillespie's Frances. I reluctantly set Hemlow aside and returned to the novel. This time I opened it to Volume I, Letter I. But I got no further, for it began: "Can any thing, my good Sir, be more painful to a friendly mind, than the neceffity of communicating difagreeable intelligence?"

"Disagreeable intelligence?" I read the words aloud. What a perfect description of the post-doctoral publications of Gillespie! In fact, his writings and everything I'd heard said that he was intelligent and able -- and extremely disagreeable. With that thought, I closed the books, reshuffled the copies, put my cards in my hip pocket, and -- remembering the cleaner's comments on the late professor -- tossed my crumpled cards into the wastepaper basket. Then I went to meet Jim for lunch.

I'm a Chinese food freak. So when Jim and I got to the restaurant (in his car, of course) and our eyes had adjusted to the gloom from the brilliant sunshine outside, it was all left to me.

Jim's relatively conservative. So I ordered some steamed and some fried dumplings, some steamed buns with pork, some lotus-seed cakes, and a big soup.

"Well," Jim began, "what did you find out?"

"A lot, when you get down to it. But I doubt whether any of it'll help much in locating the murderer." I poured tea for both of us and burnt my tongue trying it too soon.

"I think he was a very uptight, nasty person. A real bastard about a lot of things. A nit-picker of the worst sort; the kind of boor reviewer who always lists printing errors. And he really seems to have been a chauvinist pig."

"But he worked on female authors."

"Yes. But he was interested in only one kind of author: Fanny Burney was a 'real lady, ' one who was concerned about the 'right people, ' the proper way to do things; we don't know much about Aphra Behn, but if her father was a colonial governor, they must have been OK; and Eliza Haywood, who was married to a clergyman, seems to have been inside the 'best' circles in London -- even if she was accused of being a whore."

"She was?"

"Yep. Anyway, I think Gillespie wanted to be 'in, ' to be one of the people who might be mentioned as having been someplace or having been seen with someone notable."

"But he never made it."

"Nope."

"What are these?" Jim gestured with his chopsticks.

"Shu ma -- wheat flour dough filled with minced pork and steamed."

"They're great."

"Eat 'em all -- I'll take something else." I busied myself with a char shu bao. After swallowing, I resumed my narrative.

"It's hard to know where Mrs. Trollope or George Meredith fit in, though. Mrs. Trollope certainly wasn't high society ... nor Meredith female."

"Well, at least you're sure of something." And what're these?"

"They're called pot-stickers. Just eat. Don't worry about what the stuff is." I ladled myself some broth and vegetables and put a dollop of noodles in my bowl. The waitress, knowing me from previous visits, had waited before bringing the soup.