Rosselli went Friday morning to Professor Michael Rittman’s office on the third floor of Harkness Hall. Hopfgartner had been murdered Wednesday night. Yale felt like a wintry medieval ghost town. The German department was still buzzing with activity, but the secretaries and assistants in the other departments had left for Christmas vacation. A few teaching assistants graded papers, or frantically wrote their own, in the closet-size, dust-filled cubicles beneath the eaves of Harkness Hall.
Rittman was a bearded man in his early forties, with wire glasses that looked tiny against his thick, protruding forehead and shock of black hair. He greeted Detective Rosselli with a meek smile.
“It was simply the last faculty meeting of the fall,” Rittman said. “Very straightforward. We argued about who’d start the first review of the incoming graduate students. We voted on the visiting appointments for next year. Three of them. Maienfeld, one of the visiting professors, is one of Professor Hopfgartner’s best friends. I still can’t believe Werner’s dead. What an absolute shock! He was like a father figure around here. Loved and hated.”
Rosselli perked up. “Hated? People actually hated him?”
“Well … not universally. He had a few great allies too. That’s just the way it is. You get together with your friends, mold the department in a certain way. You defeat your enemies and try to prevent them from gaining the upper hand. Over the past two or three years, Hopfgartner seemed less directly involved in these squabbles. Maybe he was just waiting to retire. He’d been at it for more than three decades. What a lousy way to go out.”
“You don’t seem too shook up about it.”
“Well, I don’t really know how to react. Maybe it’ll hit me later. I thought he was a great professor. When I came into the department, I came because of him. He helped me find my way. I certainly would never have gotten tenure this early without his support. But he could be heartless if you turned against him. I also thought he was marking time. Maybe if he had retired a few years earlier, none of this would’ve happened.”
“At the meeting, what did Professor Hopfgartner say?”
“He supported Maienfeld, that I remember. But not much else. He stayed around for a drink afterward. But that’s about it.”
“What kind of a mood was he in?” Rosselli asked.
“Mood? I don’t think he was in any particular mood.”
“He wasn’t angry or depressed?”
“No.”
“He didn’t seem preoccupied with any problems?”
“Not really. It was rather a dull meeting. I had work the next day and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.”
“What time did Hopfgartner leave the meeting? You remember that?”
“Well, I left at 9:40 p.m. I’d promised my wife I’d be home no later than ten. And I think Professor Hopfgartner left about half an hour earlier.”
“No one left with him?”
“No.”
“You said before some people hated him,” Rosselli said, leaning forward. “Had anything important happened the last couple of days or weeks? Any political fights? Any disappointments or successes?”
“May I ask you a question first?” Rittman asked, suddenly intrigued. He stroked his beard carefully.
“Sure,” Rosselli said, with a practiced smile on his face.
“Are you seriously considering the possibility that someone at Yale killed Hopfgartner?”
“Not really. But it might help to know everything about the professor.”
“I mean, I thought he was killed by a mugger on Whitney. Isn’t that what happened?”
“That’s what probably happened. That’s what our investigation has focused on as the most likely possibility. But I still need to look at every angle. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t. The more I know about the victim, the more I’ll know if other possibilities are realistic too. Any information, even about personal matters, will be helpful. I can assure you, Professor Rittman, if it’s not pertinent to the case, this conversation will remain strictly between you and me.”
Rittman carefully thought about what he might say. He seemed to want to say it, whatever it was, and Rosselli would let him.
“Well, detective, where do I begin? Hopfgartner was known to be very ‘popular’ with certain undergraduates and graduate students.”
“What do you mean?”
“He slept with them. Not many, but every once in a while. Don’t misunderstand me, he was an excellent professor and a great scholar. That’s probably what gave him the power to do it for so many years. That, and his political connections.”
“Didn’t anyone ever complain or try to stop him?”
“Werner was careful about it,” Rittman said. “His relationships were consensual, or at least that’s what I heard. He was clever. Never forced himself on anybody. I just know no student ever filed a complaint against him. I certainly didn’t like the situation. But it was hard to do anything about it.”
“You know the names of these students?”
“Only one. Sarah Goodman.”
“What are you not telling me, professor?”
“Well, Sarah Goodman actually denies everything. But that’s not important. She’s just a graduate student trying to make her way through Yale. I don’t know her very well. I’ve heard she works hard and is quiet in class. Several months ago, at the beginning of the semester, there was a ‘confrontation.’ I think that’s probably the right word. Another professor, Professor Neumann, tried to get Sarah to accuse Hopfgartner of sexual harassment. At the last moment, Sarah denied everything. It saved us from an external scandal, but it also created the most difficult months in this department in a long time. It was almost forgotten when this happened.”
“So Neumann was after Werner Hopfgartner?”
“That’s right. I think she just wanted the truth to come out before Hopfgartner retired. I can’t blame her, really.”
“Why do you call it a ‘confrontation’?”
“Listen,” Rittman said, with a glimmer in his eyes.
“What?”
“Just listen. What do you hear?”
“It’s quiet. Like a library.”
“And that’s what it’s like most of the time,” Rittman said. “Once in a while, of course, there’s a lively discussion in one of the seminar rooms. Voices are raised. But they die down after a while. And you certainly never hear blood-curdling screams of profanity in these halls, at least not very often. But that’s how Regina Neumann exploded after her meeting with Sarah Goodman and Victor Otto, our chairman. The secretaries didn’t have to gossip about it. Everyone heard. It was simply astonishing. And from Professor Neumann? I don’t think she’s recovered from it yet. I still hear those disgusting words ringing in my ears.”
“I see. Is that it?”
“Yes, that’s it. But it’s just an aside to his last months. I honestly believe it’s not important, at least not anymore.”
“Thank you very much, professor. I’ll call you if I need anything else.”
Rosselli decided it was better not to start poking around about Regina Neumann yet. He had a meeting with her in less than two hours, just before lunch. It was simultaneously wonderful and terrible luck. It could be everything, or nothing. He had to gather more information before this appointment. If she did have something to do with Werner Hopfgartner’s murder, it was better to catch her by surprise, to know already what she did not expect him to know. But a female assassin with a knife? And a Yale prof to boot? That was highly unlikely, although not impossible. Rosselli turned into the main office.
“Ariane, hi again,” he said. “Where is everybody?” He slumped into a chair in front of the secretary’s desk. He had about ninety minutes before the Neumann interview.
“One secretary left early for vacation. To Aruba. Don’t know where the other one is this morning. It’s been that kind of week.”
“I’ll bet. I need to check Professor Hopfgartner’s office. Just routine.”
She handed him a ring of keys. “The long one is the deadbolt. The other one opens the door handle.” Ariane looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Her eyes were bloodshot.
“I’ll bring these back in a jiffy,” Rosselli said.
“No problem.”
“Oh, one quick question. Who knew Professor Hopfgartner really well? Who were his buddies?”
“I think Professor Otto was one of his good friends. But I don’t think they were buddies. It’s not like that around here. They got along. Hopfgartner wasn’t very social. He never just hung around. After my boss, I’d say it was Helmut.”
“You mentioned him before.”
“Helmut Sanchez,” Ariane said. “Professor Hopfgartner’s research assistant. A friend of mine. Helmut saw him every day. Can’t say he liked him—Werner Hopfgartner always gave him too much work—but I think Helmut knew him pretty well.”
“Is he around today?”
“Sure, here’s his number.”
“I’ll be right back with the keys.”
Rosselli unlocked the door to Hopfgartner’s office, flicked on the lights and went directly to the desk in the corner of the study. He opened the thick curtains of the basement windows. Where would the professor have hidden a pressing worry, a threat? the detective asked himself. If a crushing financial burden had plagued Hopfgartner, would he have left the details at home for his wife to find? How about a letter from a mistress?
Rosselli opened a drawer. Bingo, he thought. A box of condoms. Trojans. Finely Ribbed for Her Absolute Pleasure. And a bottle of Viagra. So Rittman had been telling the truth. Rosselli wondered if Rittman had dropped the Neumann tidbit because he wanted to mess her up. At least she tried to do the right thing, turning in a sexual predator. Rittman might just be ratting her out. What did they do at Yale all day? Play their little games?
The detective searched through the drawers. He found a set of small keys, probably to the cabinets. Rosselli also found term papers and a document called “A Compilation and Synthesis of Recent Criticism.” He couldn’t even understand what the first paragraph meant. Yale was light years away from the life of a working stiff, Rosselli thought. But wasn’t he the one who was supposed to solve their little problems now?
He bent to look into the lower drawers. A twinge of pain shot up his back. He pulled the whole drawer out and set it on the desk. He found papers and more papers. Bills. Two files, on “Drafts” and “Proofs.” One on “Investments.” Another on “Tax Deductions.” Rosselli glanced through them. Hopfgartner was certainly in good shape financially. Maybe he should have quit and moved to Florida.
Rosselli went through other drawers. More files. Old student papers. Recent articles and reviews. A file labeled “Current Reading.” The guy had been a pack rat, he thought. Who filed his newspapers?
The detective discovered another file labeled “Correspondence.” He opened it. On top was a letter from the previous month, to a man named Maienfeld. Four single-space pages. It was more indecipherable, abstract garbage. This was a letter? Rosselli asked himself. No wonder no one had any buddies at Yale. It was like one book talking to another book. Rosselli found similar letters written in German and French. He wondered why Hopfgartner had written Maienfeld in English.
At the back of the file, the detective discovered the responses to the letters. Hopfgartner even stapled the envelopes to the back of the letters. The old guy had been unbelievably anal.
Behind the “Correspondence” file, Rosselli came across a small, wrinkled note.
Werner Hopfgartner, you will never escape your perversions. You horrible bastard! I know about them. I know about everything. You will be found out if it’s the last thing I do. There will be no sailing into the sunset. There will be no beautiful life ahead. No future! You’ve ruined enough lives already. You’ve ruined my life. Yes, I was one of yours. But I’m not going to just walk away. Everything will be known soon. You will pay for everything you did to me. To all of us. Fuck you!
Bingo. Rosselli understood that. The note had been sent that summer to Switzerland, from New York. Unsigned, of course. Had it been Neumann’s first attempt to scare the old man? She sent the letter, worked herself into a lather and then had the rug pulled from under her by the department’s shenanigans, Rosselli imagined. So she stabbed Hopfgartner. It seemed so perfect.
But Rosselli caught himself. He needed to pull back for a second look. He already knew Professor Neumann had a way with words, especially when Hopfgartner was the subject. But he still needed to connect her to the letter. And then he had to connect her to Wednesday night. Maybe the detective had something here, and maybe he didn’t. But somebody had sure hated this son-of-a-bitch.
Rosselli knocked on the thick door, and the door opened slowly. Regina Neumann shook his hand, and the detective was dumbfounded. She was a fragile little thing! Her tiny hand felt like a feather in his beefy palm. How could she have had the strength to plunge a butcher knife into Hopfgartner’s spine?
He took off his coat and sat down across from her desk.
“Thanks for meeting with me, Professor Neumann. I really appreciate it. I know it’s been tough for everyone around here.”
“Professor Hopfgartner’s death certainly was the last thing anyone expected. Have you found anything yet? Do you know who did it?” she asked, her black eyes shining in the wintry half-light that filtered through her windows. Strangely enough, all the lights in this office were off. She wore a bright, white turtleneck sweater, which gave her pallid complexion an angelic aura. Rosselli shifted his weight, his back still aching.
“That’s just why I’m here. I need to find out as much as I can about Professor Hopfgartner and what happened after the meeting. Problem is, everyone tells me the same thing. ‘The meeting was no big deal. Hopfgartner left around nine-fifteen or nine-thirty p.m. He left alone.’ That just doesn’t leave me with much to go on. I’m pursuing some possibilities, but nothing concrete yet.”
“How can I help?”
“You were at the faculty meeting?”
“Correct.”
“When did you leave?”
“At eight-thirty.”
“Before the end?”
“Yes. I had to be somewhere else by nine.”
“Did you notice anything peculiar about Hopfgartner during the meeting? Did he seem preoccupied with a problem, anguished in any way?”
Regina Neumann burst out laughing. It was a self-absorbed, sinister laugh. Jack Rosselli frowned.
“I am sorry, detective. I just would never use ‘anguished’ to describe Werner Hopfgartner. He was not that kind of man. He seemed his old self.”
“What kind of a man was he, then?”
“He was just a man.”
“Was he a great man, beloved by his students? Respected and esteemed by his colleagues?”
“Certainly many enjoyed the fact that he was here. He had been a professor at Yale for a long time, long before I arrived. Some of his early work was quite good.”
“You don’t seem to be terribly enthusiastic about him, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Rosselli said. He thought about the letter in his portfolio.
“I don’t mind at all, particularly because you’re right. Anyone will tell you, if you simply ask, that I was not the best of friends with Professor Hopfgartner. We had our disagreements.” Neumann spoke, looking right through the detective, to a place beyond both of them.
“You mean about having sex with his students?” Rosselli said bluntly, surprising even himself. Her casual boredom incited him to push her. A real criminal would not have changed her expression now, but Regina Neumann did. She glared at him as if she had just noticed a puny mosquito engorging itself on her blood.
“You are absolutely right, Detective Rosselli,” she said coldly. “I hated him with all my life.”
He watched her, and waited.
“I wish to God I had killed Werner Hopfgartner,” she continued. “I hated that despicable old man.”
“What did you do after you left the meeting?”
“I, along with Professor Steiner, went to the Round Table at President Nathan’s house.”
“The Round Table?”
“It’s a dinner for faculty members with the president of Yale. He invites three or four departments at a time. A politicking session. Generally a waste of time. But somebody has to beg for money.”
“When did the dinner end?”
“A few minutes after midnight.”
“And you were there the whole time?”
“Yes, indeed I was. There are seven other faculty members, and President Nathan of course, who will give you any details you wish to know about our dinner. It was rather boring,” Neumann said, the slightest smile on her lips.
“Did you have anything to do with Hopfgartner’s murder?”
“I imagined it many times. But I did not touch him.”
“You didn’t answer the question, Professor Neumann,” Rosselli said irritably. In his gut, he knew she wasn’t the killer. She couldn’t have been the killer. That knife, Rosselli remembered, had hit ice as it was plunged straight through the professor’s body.
“No-I-did-not-have-anything-to-do-with-the-murder-of-Werner-Hopfgartner,” she said in a condescending, staccato tone. “I simply hated him completely,” she added in a normal voice, as if that would be enough to mollify Rosselli.
“So you played it safe,” Rosselli said snidely into her face. This time she looked angry. Immediately her deathlike pallor disappeared. “You wanted to kill him, yet you did nothing.”
“I hated him. I don’t care if the whole world knows it. Search my office if you want. I’ll give you the keys to my house. I have nothing to hide.”
“Oh, but you do have something to hide,” Rosselli said, reaching for his briefcase. Neumann looked vaguely amused.
“Nothing to hide. Your life is nothing but hiding! ‘You will pay for everything you did to me. To all of us. Fuck you!’ Did you write this garbage?”
Regina Neumann didn’t move. Her white skin seemed to transform itself into the whitest ceramic. “Yes,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I wrote it.”
“You didn’t have the guts to confront him? You mailed him an anonymous hate letter? Was that going to cleanse your soul and redeem you? ‘Nothing to hide.’ Hah! I bet. Now you want to tell the world that you wanted to kill him? Why are you wasting my time?”
“You’re out of line, detective!”
“You simply wanted to kill him. How nice.”
“He was a cock-sucking shit! I would have cut his penis off! I would have buried my fingers into his wretched blue eyes and ripped them out! I hated him! I, I …” Professor Neumann stared into her nether world, looking and not looking at Rosselli. She seemed to shake without moving.
“‘Would have’ means nothing,” the detective said coolly, getting up from his own chair and shoving the letter back into his portfolio. “That’s all you people do. ‘Would have’.”
“I … I … I killed him! I grabbed his neck and choked him! I took his life! I am the one! Where are you going, detective?” Neumann shrieked as he turned toward the door. “He was mine! That bastard was mine, I tell you! Detective!”
“I don’t know who or what you are,” Rosselli said glaring at her at the door’s threshold. His ears were ringing, and his head was bursting with a fresh headache. “But you better get some help.”
“I killed him! Detective! That is who I am! Truth! Blessed truth! Detective!” Neumann screamed even as the door closed tightly shut. As he walked away, Rosselli imagined that in a few seconds the professor would suddenly realize she was alone again. In a moment, yes, a self deep within her mind would emerge, and finally glance about the room, and understand that a shuddering silence was better now. Soon Neumann would be back in the world of cool politeness and exceptional brilliance. The world at Yale. She needed just a moment or two, and she could free herself again from the dark dreams of her primordial truths.
Detective Rosselli found a telephone and called Helmut Sanchez. They made an appointment to meet at Sanchez’s office in about an hour. It was lunchtime. The detective’s headache dissipated as soon as he walked toward Chapel Street. Frightful bitch, he thought. What the hell was her problem? She had treated him like some dope, though. New Haven and Yale didn’t get along? Surprise surprise. One was in the gutter, the other was in the clouds.
The important thing was that Rosselli was sure she wasn’t the killer. She could have had someone do it for her, but he didn’t think so. She would’ve been tap dancing if she had been behind it. No, somewhere out there was somebody who had hated Hopfgartner as much as—maybe even more than—she did. Or maybe, it had been a street punk after all.