So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
—JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
ELLIOT CORBIN WAS DEAD—an apparent homicide, Lieutenant Piotrowski said, but wouldn’t elaborate. Next to his body, police had found a lined yellow pad, with my name scribbled on it, heavily underlined.
I focused only on the initial information. “Dead? Elliot dead? But he can’t be! I just saw him two nights ago!” The second the words tumbled out of my mouth, I realized how stupid that sounded.
“Nonetheless, Doctor, he is dead. And in case you didn’t hear me, I’ll say it again: Your name was found at the scene.
“At first glance, it looks like the name was there before the blood spatters,” the lieutenant continued carefully, as I dropped like a stone into the nearest chair, suddenly light-headed with shock—blood spatters!—“so we don’t necessarily read it as a dying accusation—”
“What do you mean, necessarily?” my Amanda exploded, instantly ready to do battle for her mother. “Of course it’s not an accusation! Mom had nothing to do with—”
“I would assume not,” the lieutenant interrupted, with a faint smile. He liked Amanda, had told me the previous summer that he thought she had the kind of smarts that would make her a great cop. Not that I wanted to hear that: No daughter of mine …
Now Piotrowski turned to me. “But, I gotta admit, Doctor Pelletier, it gave me a hell of a jolt to find your name at a crime scene—so prominent-like. So … well … I need to talk to you. Is there somewhere you and me could have a little privacy,” he held up a meaty hand to forestall Amanda’s protest, “so I could ask you a few questions confidential-like?”
I led Piotrowski into the kitchen and closed the door on my gaping family and friends. As I cleared a spot for the lieutenant at a table littered with cold potatoes, congealed gravy, and a mutilated turkey carcass, I noted him eyeing the food with what appeared to be more than investigative interest.
“Have you eaten, Lieutenant?” Even though, as far as I knew, my scrawled name seemed to constitute the sole clue so far in this homicide—or, maybe because of that—I couldn’t let this man go hungry.
“Nope. Call came late afternoon. Haven’t had a minute to think about food.” Piotrowski didn’t look particularly malnourished. In fact, he looked no different than last time I’d seen him: tall and broad, with medium-brown hair cut short, wearing a conventional gray tweed sport jacket and gray pants spiffed up a bit with a charcoal-gray turtleneck jersey, as if for a holiday. Was there a wife waiting with dinner for the lieutenant somewhere? I knew he had grown sons, but he’d never said anything about a wife. “So, yeah,” he continued, “I could eat. If you’re offering. The minute I walked in here I got hungrier than a bear.”
“Tsk. On Thanksgiving!” I loaded a plate, covered it loosely with plastic wrap, and placed it in the microwave. To live with death on a daily basis as the lieutenant did seemed only to give him a heightened appetite for life. I liked and respected this big cop. I’d first met Piotrowski two years earlier, when a colleague and a student had been murdered on campus, and then had come across him again when the death of a friend had proven to be a murder. On each occasion my scholarly expertise had assisted the detective in identifying the killer. But I hadn’t thought about Piotrowski since the Hart case had been resolved—at least, not until my friends’ foolishness had brought him so vividly back to mind: broad shoulders, surprisingly shapely lips. Yeah, yeah. But surely my matchmaking pals were mistaken in their speculations that the lieutenant had a “thing” for me.
“Listen,” he said, in a business-like manner, “what I need to know right off is, how well d’ya know this guy Corbin?”
The microwave beeped. I removed Piotrowski’s plate, placed it in front of him, found napkins, butter, salt and pepper shakers. “Well, he’s my colleague of course.” The glass of white wine I placed by his plate got a nod of thanks.
“Yeah, so I assumed. He was a professor in your department, huh?” I noted the change in tense: was.
“Yes, but I don’t … didn’t … know him at all well.” I shifted the turkey carcass to the counter—suddenly the debris of the holiday table revolted me—poured wine for myself, a generous glass, and sat down across from the lieutenant. “Do you have any idea yet what happened? I know you can’t tell me much, but—”
“Believe me, Doctor, this case is fresh. I mean, listen, I get the call, I show up, and your name’s at the scene. I got myself over here quick as I could. So tell me what’s what with you and Corbin. Just get me clear on that up front.” He forked down a heap of potatoes with gravy.
“What do you mean what’s what? He’s my colleague.” I paused. “Was my colleague.” Piotrowski’s graphic description of the crime scene—blood spatters!—made Elliot’s death all too real. “God, it’s just beginning to sink in. Elliot is dead!” I searched for words of grief—or at least, shock—but what came to my lips was something far more mundane. “Jeez, all hell is going to break loose at work!”
“Yeah? Tell me about that.” The lieutenant was seriously engrossed in the turkey and stuffing. I shuddered. I was still thinking about the blood.
“Well …” I sighed profoundly, and related everything I knew about Elliot Corbin, which wasn’t much: the recent work on Poe that had finally brought him the scholarly acclaim he’d yearned for, his ambitions for the Palaver Chair, even the handball. “And, aside from his being generally obnoxious,” I concluded, “he didn’t seem to have any particular enemies. Oh … wait a minute.…” I told Piotrowski about the altercation in Elliot’s office I’d overheard a week earlier.
“A woman’s voice?” He relinquished his fork for a notebook and pen, made chicken-track marks on the pad. “And, you’re saying you didn’t recognize the other speaker?”
“I have no idea who it was. She was speaking very quietly.”
“As I recall, anybody has access to that building.…”
“Students, faculty, staff, prospective students, alumni, even casual visitors.”
“Great! Female, huh? That gives us, let’s see, exactly fifty-one percent of the world’s population to investigate.”
“You don’t have to get sarcastic, Lieutenant.”
The hinges on the kitchen door creaked. Amanda poked her head into the room. Earlier she had moussed her chestnut hair in trendy spikes, but now it lay flat on the right side, as if she’d been nervously running her fingers through it. “Mom? You okay?”
“She’s fine,” Piotrowski replied, grinning at her. “Did I see pie out there on that table?”
“Monica Cassale found him,” I told my dinner guests, after the lieutenant had scarfed down two slabs of pumpkin pie and hurried back to the crime scene.
“Monica? You mean the English Department secretary?” Sophia queried, appearing as mystified as I was. “What was she doing at Professor Corbin’s place?”
We sat around the dinner table, sobered by Piotrowski’s news.
“I don’t know.” I stared at the pies, then rejected the thought. Who could eat with such appalling news on her plate? Almost immediately, I relented and cut a sliver from the pumpkin, placed a teaspoonful of ice cream on it. Jill opted for a slice each of pumpkin and apple; after all, she was eating for Eloise. “For some reason, she stopped by his house—with a serving of Thanksgiving dinner, I think he said. I have no idea why she would be taking dinner to Elliot. And she found him there. Dead.” I examined the dessert on my plate. Did I really want that?
“Poor Monica,” Sophia said, unexpectedly. “She never gets a break. No thanks,” she demurred, when I slid the pie in her direction. “I don’t touch that stuff.”
“You know Monica?” I asked, surprised.
“I know her,” Sophia’s mother said. We all started. It was as if the dead had spoken. Agata Warzek probably wasn’t much older than me—maybe five or six years. But I still thought of myself as young. I was young. Life—and a brutal husband—had defeated Agata. She was a rag of a woman, with Sophia’s fine features and delicate coloring, but wrinkled and threadbare and washed out.
“You do?”
“Yes.” And that was it, nothing further forthcoming from Agata Warzek.
“She’s our neighbor, has been for years,” Sophia clarified. “She moved in down the street when Joey was a baby. She works all the time—I mean, all the time—and her mother takes care of Joey.”
“Really?” I finished the sliver of pie, cut another, dipped into the now-soppy ice cream.
“I was happy for her when she got such a good job at the college. She quit cleaning houses then, and cut back to just weekends at the Stop N’ Shop. I thought maybe she’d be able to take it a little easier, but she still seems to work around the clock.”
“Huh. I didn’t know all that about her.”
Sophia and her mother exchanged meaningful glances. Then Sophia spoke. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you, being a professor and all?”
That was a complex assessment, and I let it rumble around in my mind before I attempted to respond. Had my life taken a different turn I could easily have been Monica, but it hadn’t, and I wasn’t.
“Is she married?”
Again the exchange of glances. “Not that I know of. But my mother thinks she goes to see some guy.…”
“What do you mean, goes to see some guy?” I asked, as I finished my second sliver of pumpkin, eyed the apple pie.
Sophia glanced at her mother. Agata shrugged. Then Sophia shrugged. That was clearly as much as I was going to get from them.
“Mom,” Amanda commanded, “just cut yourself a decent size slice and get it over with.” I did. Earlene and Amanda followed suit. Then Agata. We ate slowly and solemnly, as if in the shared ritual we might somehow discover the key to a great mystery.
“Why are we talking about Monica, anyhow?” Jill asked, as she pushed her plate away. Eloise was spread out across her mother’s knees, face down and blissfully asleep.
“It’s just so intriguing that she would be there,” I replied. “I can’t conceive of any possible reason for her to be at Elliot’s house—taking him Thanksgiving dinner, for God’s sake!”
“What’s really intriguing,” Earlene countered, “is that Elliot Corbin is dead—and someone seems to have killed him.” She began stacking empty cups in front of her. “And it might very well be someone we know.”
First thing the next morning, Lieutenant Piotrowski called. Amanda answered the phone; after the lieutenant’s startling announcement about finding my name at a homicide scene, my daughter hadn’t said another word about going to Lowell, and I hadn’t asked. In her mismatched sweats—green pants, orange top—with her short hair still mussed from sleep, she looked about fourteen years old. She handed me the phone without comment, and I gave her a quick hug as I grabbed it. We may have our misunderstandings, but I do love that kid.
“Doctor.” The way Piotrowski enunciated the word—in two quick syllables—you would have thought it was my first name. “It looks like I’m gonna have to call on you again for some help. What you told me last night was real useful, and I’ve got something here at the station—a piece of evidence—I wanna run by you. Would you be able to stop in?”
Stopping in meant going way the hell out of my way, clear down to Springfield, but I did it. A person whose name appears to be the final written word of a murdered man gets real cooperative with the police.
The car radio blared as I turned the ignition:—homicide of the eminent Professor Corbin! More details at ten! WENF, Enfield Public Radio, was as electrified by Elliot’s death as public radio could possibly be.
At the station, the lieutenant met me at the door of a grungy green evidence room. He shook my hand solemnly. “Thanks, Dr. Pelletier. It’s good of you to come by so prompt.” He led me to the battered table and pulled out a chair. Then he sat and regarded me solemnly. I took it for several long seconds.
“You have something to show me, Lieutenant?” I prompted.
“Yeah. I do. But first—since earlier, when I talked to you on the phone, Sergeant Schultz … you remember Sergeant Schultz?…”
Schultz was Piotrowski’s partner, and until the magic moment last summer when I’d helped her apprehend a killer, she’d made very obvious her contempt for someone in my wimpy profession. I nodded.
“Well, as you can imagine, Schultz has been talking to a few people at the college today, and she’s just brought in a fresh piece of information.” He gave me another enigmatic look.
I nodded, again. It seemed the best response: I had no idea what he was getting at, and I didn’t want to risk incriminating myself in any way.
“I understand that you and the victim had a bit of an altercation the other day.…”
“We did?”
“And what I don’t understand is why you didn’t inform me of that fact.”
“What altercation? There was no altercation. I’ve never had an altercation with Elliot Corbin.”
“In front of your office? Last Friday? Something about you disturbing him?”
“Huh? Oh, you mean when he accused me of talking too loudly? No … chattering. Chattering was what he said. Lieutenant, that was nothing. He was just being his usual obnoxious self.”
“Umm,” Piotrowski replied.
“And who told you about that anyhow? No one was around.”
“Can’t reveal sources, Doctor. You know that.”
“Monica!” I exclaimed. “It must have been Monica! Of all the—”
“Okay, Doctor, calm down. So you say it was nothing?”
“Damn right, it was nothing!”
“Okay, then, relax. See, I’m writing it down: nothing. Look, here it is: nothing. See?” He turned his notebook toward me. An entire page was scrawled over with the single word, nothing.
I gave him fish eyes.
“Now, can we get on with why you’re here?” Piotrowski slid a plastic-sheathed notepad in my direction. “Okay, Doctor, have you seen this tablet before?” The yellow pad looked familiar only because all yellow lined pads look exactly the same. Except for the blood spatters. I must admit, with all the faculty battles I’d been involved in, I’d never seen a blood-speckled notepad before. The facing page of this pad, as the lieutenant had told me, featured my name, underlined with three bold scores of a black ballpoint pen. The final stroke of the underscoring had been inscribed with such force that the pen had ripped a hole through the paper. I glanced up at Piotrowski, mystified. He motioned me back to the page. Including my name, the jottings read as follows:
Karen Pelletier
Northbury Center
$10,000,000!
Int. Lib. Epistem. St!!!
Harriet P Mat Fem
Jewell Pur Inst
and, way down at the bottom of the page, in smaller, fainter letters: Emmeline Foster $$$———??? Rust-colored droplets spattered the page lightly.
“Well,” I mused, looking up at the lieutenant again, “I haven’t actually seen this page before—especially not the blood!—but I’m quite certain I know what it is.”
“What’s that?”
“Notes from a meeting.” I studied the jottings again. “Yes, it must be. Tuesday evening a study group I’m in met at Elliot’s house, and I gave a report on Edith Hart’s bequest to the college—”
The big cop grunted. He knew all about that bequest. “That explains some of what’s here: the Northbury Center, the ten million dollars. But what is this Int. Lib. Epistem. St?”
“Elliot was interested in epistemology.”
“Epistem—?”
“It’s a term from philosophy, having to do with the nature of knowledge, its instability and relativity. Very central to postmodernist thinking—”
“What knowledge?”
“All knowledge. But, in literary studies, especially issues such as authority, evaluation, methodology, interpretation …” My eyes fixed on the spatters. The pad had not been soaked in blood but, rather, sprinkled, so that the droplets formed an enigmatic free-flung design. If you were to take a pen, I thought, and connect the dots of gore, you might come up with some meaningful pattern. I tilted my head first one way, then the next, attempting to decipher the figure, but just as I thought I began to perceive some sort of configuration, Piotrowski spoke.
“There’s only one kind of knowledge I’m interested in right now, Dr. Pelletier, and that’s who killed your colleague.”
“Well, yes … that does … er … seem to take precedence over philosophical problems. So, then—I think I understand why everything on this sheet is here. I even remember Elliot taking the notes. As I told you yesterday, Elliot was very ambitious. At the meeting I began to sense that he was scheming to take over the Northbury Center and its funds for some kind of a prestigious institute he himself could direct. That would bring him power, money, acclaim, and—he’d never have to enter a classroom again if he didn’t want to.” I glanced back at Elliot’s notes—and the dried spatters. Could those connecta-dot bloodstains possibly form the outline of a bird—a crow, maybe? But surely I was being fanciful. Piotrowski was waiting for solid information from me, not Rorschach-test hallucinations. “The other names on the sheet are Harriet Person and Miles Jewell, and it seemed to me at the meeting that both Harriet and Miles also had self-interested ambitions for the Institute, so it makes sense that their names should be there. But I don’t understand why Emmeline Foster’s name is here—or why it’s followed by dollar signs.”
“Who’s Emmeline Foster?”
“She’s nobody—now. But a hundred and fifty years ago she committed suicide because of unrequited love for Edgar Allan Poe.” I paused, and the urge for scholarly accuracy overcame the urge to tell a dramatic story. “Well, that’s the myth, anyhow. I don’t know how true it is.”
Piotrowski slumped back with an exasperated little crash. His chair shuddered. “Shit!”
I said nothing. The lieutenant was usually extremely careful about not using crude language around “ladies.”
He sat up again, folded his hands in front of him. “Excuse my French, Doctor, but don’t tell me this homicide is going to turn into another one of your literary mysteries.”
“My literary mysteries, Lieutenant?” I turned the pad in its plastic sheath so that it faced him and shoved it back across the table. “You’re the one who brings these complicated conundrums to me. I’m beginning to think the state police should put me on the payroll!” From this new upside-down perspective, the blood-spatter pattern on the lined yellow page looked nothing like a crow.
I’d reached the exit when the lieutenant caught up with me. Since I’d left him two minutes earlier, he’d pulled on a gray down jacket.
“Sorry I had to ruin your holiday yesterday, but I needed to get some things straight. And, everything checks out—just like I knew it would.” He paused, looked cautiously around, moved closer to me, lowered his voice. “Forget about that fight with Corbin, Doctor. You got nothing to worry about. I want you to know you’re gonna be totally in the clear here.”
“Gonna be?” That obviously sounded better to the detective than it did to me, but then I was in a profession where I was hypersensitized to the tense of verbs. I’d much rather he had phrased that assurance solidly in the present—You are totally in the clear here—than in some kind of shaky colloquial adaptation of the future tense. Gonna be? Gonna be? There was no secure grammatical underpinning for gonna be. “God, Lieutenant, couldn’t you have just said will? As in, You will be totally in the clear here?”
Piotrowski made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, surreptitiously flashed it at me. “And thanks for the meal last night, Doctor. It was real good. Made me think of the old days.…” He let the words trail off, pushed the door open, nodded goodbye, and headed determinedly down the sidewalk toward the center of town. Earlene was dead wrong, I thought. This man had no interest in me as a woman. And for a brief second, before rational thought came flooding back, I felt inexplicably bereft.
When I got home, Amanda’s car was gone. A note on the kitchen table said, “Mom, I know you can take care of yourself with the Lt. I’m heading for Lowell. I’ll call when I can. Don’t worry. Love and kisses, always, Amanda.
“P.S. You’ve had at least a dozen calls—and all before noon! Wanna bet they’re all about Professor Corbin’s death? What are you, anyhow? Gossip Central?”