Fiddlers Read online

  ‘So altogether she taught six hours a week.’

  ‘Well, plus the seminar, of course. That would have been another two hours a week. Eight hours in all.’

  ‘And she taught this seminar at night?’

  ‘Yes. Thursday nights, from seven to nine P.M. On “Keats and the Italian Influence.” Either in her classroom or her office. There were only half a dozen students in the class… seven or eight at the most. Certainly no more than that.’

  ‘But this Would’ve been a Thursday night, you say.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why would she have been on campus on a Wednesday night?’

  ‘Any number of reasons. She may have been preparing lesson plans, or grading papers… or doing research in the library. The library closes at nine.’

  ‘What sort of research?’

  ‘I know she was writing a paper for the PMLA. About the influence Charles Lamb’s sister had on his work.’

  PMLA? Kling wondered. Pre-menstrual something or other?

  ‘She was quite ill, you know, his sister, Mary. In fact, in a fit of temporary insanity, she killed their mother.’

  Brown raised his eyebrows.

  So did Kling.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Knowles said. ‘Lamb had to place her in a private mental institution. Well, he was not without his own mental problems, you know. After a disastrous love affair, he himself had a breakdown. Spent a great deal of time in an asylum in Hoxton, yes.’

  ‘And Professor Langston was writing a paper on this?’

  ‘Yes, hoping to have it published in one of the Modern Language Association’s journals. On how Lamb’s sister affected his work, yes. She titled it “The Madness of Mary Lamb.” We joked about that a lot.’

  ‘Joked about it?’ Brown said.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Her colleagues in the department. We called it “Mary Had a Little Madness.”

  ‘So you think she might’ve spent some time in the library the night she was killed,’ Kling said.

  ‘Possibly, yes. I’m sure you can check that.’

  ‘But normally, what time would her classes have ended?’

  ‘Well, except for the seminar…”

  ‘On Thursdays

  ‘Yes. Except for that, she taught afternoon classes. Three to five.’

  ‘All young people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does the name Alicia Hendricks mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘One of the victims. Fifty-five years old,’ Kling said. ‘How about Max Sobolov, fifty-eight? Blind?’

  ‘No. Neither of them. And, as you say, they couldn’t have been Christine’s students here at Baldwin. Far too old.’

  ‘Any other way she might have been connected to them?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Well,’ Brown said, ‘is it possible they were relatives of one of her students? Or friends? Or in any other way linked to Professor Langston?’

  ‘How would I know that?’

  ‘Can we check your records?’ Kling asked. ‘Get the names of her students for the past several years? See if we come up with a match for either of them? Hendricks? Sobolov?’

  ‘She taught here for the past twelve years,’ Knowles said. ‘She was a tenured professor. Surely you don’t expect to go through all the…”

  ‘Grudges sometimes go back a long time,’ Brown said.

  ‘Grudges?’

  ‘A student she failed? A student she embarrassed? The kid might’ve told a parent or a friend, might’ve initiated a grudge that

  ‘I see,’ Knowles said.

  He was thinking.

  They both saw him thinking.

  ‘Yes?’ Kling said.

  ‘I can recall only one such incident,’ Knowles said. ‘But the student’s name isn’t anything like those you mentioned.’

  ‘That only eliminates a relative,’ Brown said.

  ‘What was the incident?’

  ‘Christine threatened to fail this girl. The girl went over her head, came to me. I protected Christine in every way possible, but… you know… we don’t fail students here. We simply don’t.’

  ‘Would you remember who the girl was?’ Kling asked.

  * * * *

  Brown was still annoyed with himself for not having asked Knowles where he’d bought his fancy bow tie.

  ‘You can get them anywhere,’ Kling said.

  ‘Yeah? Where? I never saw a tie like that one before.’

  ‘Besides, you’d look lousy in a tie like that,’ Kling said.

  ‘I think I’d look real cool in a tie like that.’

  ‘Too big for a big man like you.’

  They were walking across campus toward a building where a girl named Marcia Finch was attending a third-period class in Survey of Early American Literature. Marcia was the girl Professor Langston had threatened to flunk last semester.

  ‘Are you suggesting I’m overweight?’ Brown asked.

  ‘No. Just large.’

  ‘Like Ollie Weeks?’

  ‘No, he’s obese.’

  ‘Besides, it’s only large men who can entertain wearing big ties like that one.’

  ‘Entertain, huh?’

  ‘I think Caroline might like me in a tie like that one.’

  ‘So go to the Internet, click on bow ties. You’ll find all sorts of silly ties like that one.’

  ‘Nice big tie like that one,’ Brown said, nodding, visualizing himself in one.

  ‘What room did Knowles say?’ Kling asked.

  * * * *

  They were waiting in the corridor outside room 307 when Marcia Finch came striding out, books clutched to her chest. Professor Knowles had told them they couldn’t miss her…

  ‘She’s an assertive little girl, blonde, quite confident of her own good looks. She exudes… shall we say… a certain aura of self-assurance?’

  … and they spotted her at once now. Twenty-one, twenty-two years old, a senior here at Baldwin, wearing a short blue pleated skirt, a blue sweatshirt lettered with the words BALDWIN U in white, and flat leather sandals to match the blue of the skirt and shirt. She laughed at something a girl companion said, waggled the fingers of her left hand in farewell, and turned to see a big blond guy and a big black guy standing in her path.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said, making it sound like, ‘Get the fuck out of my way, okay?’ and was starting to step around them, when Brown said, ‘Miss Finch?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He flashed the tin.

  ‘Detective Brown,’ he said. ‘My partner, Detective Kling. Few questions we’d like to ask you.’

  ‘My father’s a lawyer,’ she said at once.

  ‘You won’t need a lawyer, miss,’ Brown said. ‘Let’s find a place we can sit and chat, shall we?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Little fracas you had with Professor Langston last semester.’

  ‘I think I’ll call my father,’ Marcia said.

  ‘Miss,’ Kling said, ‘let’s make this easy, okay?’

  She turned to look at him. Maybe it was the hazel eyes. Maybe it was the calm in his voice. Maybe she was a racist who preferred dealing with Mr. Blond WASP here. Whatever it was, she nodded briefly and led them outside.

  * * * *

  They sat in golden sunshine on a bench outside Coswell Hall. Marcia on the right, Kling in the middle, Brown on the far left, both detectives turned to face her. Marcia sat with her legs crossed, books sitting on the path beside the bench, addressing herself entirely to Kling, telling her story to Kling alone. Sitting there, Brown could have been made of stone the color of his name.

  ‘The issue seemed to be attendance,’ she said.

  ‘Seemed to be?’ Brown said.

  She ignored him.

  ‘Professor Langston said I’d cut too many classes. She said I couldn’t possibly have a grasp of the subject matter if I never attended any lectures. Have you ever been to on
e of her lectures?’ she asked Kling. ‘Bore-ing,’ she said, and patted her mouth in a simulated yawn. ‘The subject matter in question - actually, I’d only missed one or two classes - happened to be Wordsworth. Section II was all Wordsworth. I argued that Wordsworth was perhaps the most tedious poet in the entire nineteenth century. Have you ever read Tintern Abbey? Or My Heart Leaps Up? Or even Intimations of Immortality, which is supposed to be a masterpiece?’

  Brown hadn’t read any of them.

  Besides, she was addressing Kling.

  ‘Are you familiar with any of these?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘Well, take my word for it,’ she said. ‘In any case, I read all the assigned poems at home and felt well-acquainted with all of them. I saw no need to attend all of the scheduled lectures

  ‘How many lectures were there altogether?’ Brown asked.

  ‘A semester is fourteen weeks long,’ she told Kling. ‘She spent two weeks on introduction and orientation, two weeks each on Shelley, Byron, and Keats, that was Section I. Section II was a full six weeks of Wordsworth, because she felt he was so damn important, don’t you know?’

  ‘How many of those six weeks did you miss?’ Brown asked.

  She looked past Kling.

  Fastened an eye lock on Brown.

  ‘I told you. One or two classes.’

  ‘Which was it? One or two?’

  ‘Maybe three altogether. And maybe I was late for one class.’

  ‘So you missed at least half of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cut half of your classes.’

  ‘Well… yes.’

  ‘And this was why Professor Langston threatened to fail you?’

  ‘I knew the work. I told you, I did it at home.’ She cut off the conversation with Brown, looked directly into Kling’s eyes. ‘Am I going to need my father here?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Kling said gently. ‘So what happened? After she said she was going to flunk you.’

  ‘I went to see Professor Knowles.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he’d talk to her.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Yes. I’m a straight-A student here. I’ve never had a grade below B in all my life!’ She turned slightly, so that her knees were just touching Kling’s. ‘Can you imagine what an F would have done to my average?’ she asked, blue eyes wide.

  Kling moved his own knees away.

  Marcia tugged at her skirt, as if she’d been molested.

  ‘So what happened after Knowles spoke to her?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, she just remained adamant. She told him the syllabus called for grading to be based on attendance, participation, and final exam. She told him it was outrageous to ask that she pass a student who’d cut half of her precious lectures. Even though I’d mastered the material at home, mind you…”

  ‘I think it was outrageous,’ Brown said.

  ‘Yes, well no one asked your opinion, did we?’ Marcia snapped.

  ‘Maybe you ought to call your father,’ Brown suggested.

  Kling recognized him falling into a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine. He didn’t think that was necessary here. Not yet, anyway. He snapped him an Eye Warn. Brown caught it, seemed to cool it.

  ‘So what happened?’ Kling asked.

  ‘My father went to see her.’

  ‘Good old dad,’ Brown said, and Kling snapped him another look.

  ‘Reminded her that I was a straight-A student, further reminded her that he was paying close to thirty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of my attendance at this institute of higher learning, and lastly reminded her that his law firm had contributed a hundred thousand dollars toward the founding of an English Department chair here at Baldwin U. I think she got the message.’

  ‘She passed you,’ Kling said.

  ‘She gave me an A.’

  ‘And was that the end of it?’ Brown asked.

  She looked at Kling when she answered.

  ‘That was the end of it,’ she said. ‘Look, I got my A, why would I even care about her any longer?’

  They tended to agree with her.

  * * * *

  ‘You’re not a drug dealer by any chance, are you?’ Reggie asked.

  ‘What makes you think so?’ Charles said.

  ‘Well… all this,’ she said, and waved her arm to include the seventy-five-foot sailing yacht, and the champagne in coolers, and the iced caviar, and the uniformed crew, and the filet mignon the chef was preparing for lunch, and… well… generally… all this luxury. Because out there in Denver, Colorado, where Regina Marshall was born and raised, you didn’t have this kind of money to throw around unless you owned an oil well or two, or were dealing drugs for the Crips or the Bloods.

  ‘No,’ Charles said, smiling. ‘I am not a drug dealer.’ Though he could imagine her thinking so.

  ‘In fact, the only time I ever went near drugs was in the Army,’ he said. ‘And that was marijuana. We all did marijuana in Nam.’

  The boat was under full sail, rounding the point of one of the small islands that comprised the Sands Spit chain. Sunlight danced on the water. Reggie and Charles were sitting under the blue bimini, sipping champagne. It was a little past noon. They’d been out on the water since ten thirty.

  ‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘Just a little bammy now and then.’

  He wondered if she was asking him for marijuana now.

  ‘Gee,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think to get any.’

  ‘I prefer this,’ she said, and smiled, and held up the long-stemmed champagne glass. She was wearing white jeans, a striped cotton tank top, and white sneakers. She looked like she’d been born on a yacht, though she’d told him earlier she’d never been on one in her life. This was his first time, too. Lots of firsts with Reggie. Lots of lasts, too, he realized.

  ‘Sir, excuse me, sir.’

  The steward, or whatever he was called. Blond guy wearing a white uniform. Charles looked up at him.

  ‘Sir, what time did you wish us to serve lunch?’

  ‘I was thinking about one. Reggie?’

  ‘One would be lovely,’ she said.

  ‘Then would you care to see the wine list now?’

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  Reggie glanced at him approvingly.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I really do enjoy being with you, Charles. Are we going to do this always?’

  ‘Sail around the city this way, you mean?’

  ‘No, I mean live this way.’ She held up the champagne glass again, gave it a little appreciative nod. ‘Just live the hell out of life this way.’

  ‘As long as we can,’ he said.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid the money might run out?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Got that much of it, huh?’

  ‘Enough to last.’

  ‘Just take me along, okay, Charles?’ she said, and reached over to kiss him. ‘Just take me along.’

  * * * *

  You dig, you find.

  In any murder investigation, the vic is treated somewhat like a perp himself. Any criminal record here? Any outstanding warrants? Anything in the distant or recent past that might have predicted violence in the present? You do your routine checks, and sometimes you get lucky.

  That Thursday afternoon, Christine Langston’s name popped up on a complaint filed in the Two-Six Precinct where she’d apparently been living at the time; this would have been some ten years ago, before she’d met Mortimer Shea. Professor Langston herself, then fifty-eight years old, had filed the complaint. This is what she told a detective named Joshua Sloate:

  One January night at a little past nine, she was leaving the building at Harleigh Junior College, where she was teaching English at the time. She hailed a yellow cab just outside the front door, and gave the driver her address downtown near the Financial District. At ten o’clock sharp, she dialed 911 to report an attempted rape. This was five minutes after she�
��d awakened to find the driver of the cab in bed with her, on top of her. She’d screamed, and he’d fled. She was now reporting the attempted rape to the police.

  A video surveillance camera in the lobby of her building had captured an image of the assailant following her into the building at 9:45 P.M. He was described in the report as an Indian man in his late twenties, five-foot-eight to five-foot-nine, and weighing approximately 160 pounds. There were no signs of forced entry into either the building or Christine Langston’s apartment. The complaint was subsequently dismissed as ‘unsubstantiated.’

  Kling and Brown wanted to know how come.

  * * * *

  They found Balamani Kumar as he was walking out of the Townline Taxi dispatcher’s office on Westlake Street. He was just coming off the afternoon shift. A thin, shambling man in his late thirties, he did not at all resemble what his given name meant in India; there was nothing of the ‘young jewel’ about him. He seemed only a tired and defeated stranger in a strange land, battered and beaten by the big city.

  ‘Mr. Kumar?’ Brown said.

  He stopped, seemed distracted for a moment.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked. Expecting trouble. Knowing that in this city, for a foreigner, for a foreigner of his color and background, there would always be trouble. Kling showed him his shield, not at all sure this would have a soothing effect.

  ‘Yes?’ Kumar said again.

  ‘Few questions, no problem,’ Kling said.

  He could tell Kumar didn’t believe him.

  ‘Let’s sit down and talk, okay?’ Brown said.

  * * * *

  They walked to a coffee shop a few blocks away. They bought him a cappuccino. They sat outside at round metal tables in the fading evening light. They did not tell him that Christine Langston had been murdered last night. They did not know whether he’d heard about this from the newspapers or television. They merely wanted to know about the complaint she’d filed ten years ago. And why it had been dismissed.

  ‘Because it was fabricated,’ Kumar said.

  His speech was clipped, more precise than singsong, undeniably Indian in origin. His native tongue might have been Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Telugu, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Oriya, or Malayalam. Here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, he merely sounded like a foreigner.

  ‘In what way, fabricated?’ Brown asked.