Poetic Justice (17 page)

“Might he have been impulsive enough to pull the aspirin trick?”

“I can’t see it. He and I saw Cudlipp together the day he died.”

“I know.”

“Were you working up to asking me about it? Because I’ve got to make a class in a minute.” Reed nodded. “We tried to urge Cudlipp to soft-peddle it a bit, but he wasn’t having any. Cartier said …”

“Yes?”

“He said, ‘You’re asking for trouble, Cudlipp; violence and trouble.’ But I’m sure he was just speaking generally.”

“What did you say to Cudlipp?”

“I told him if he kept on the way he was going, someone would break his goddam neck for him. Well, let me know if I can help.”

Reed took the subway downtown and was so engrossed in the problem that he forgot to get off at Franklin Street.

Mr. Higgenbothom turned up promptly at four.

“And how,” Kate asked, “are the computers?”

“You must let me show you through the computer center one of these days.”

“I should like that,” Kate said. “If only I had a problem a computer could solve this very moment. But I gather computers can give you answers only if you give them all the relevant information and ask all the right questions. Alas, I haven’t either.”

Mr. Higgenbothom sat down and looked politely expectant.

“As you have no doubt heard,” Kate rather ponderously began, “Professor Cudlipp died at a party given in my honor the other evening.” Mr. Higgenbothom nodded. “His death was, of course, the result of several unfortunate accidents, but the University would like, if possible, to establish some of the facts surrounding the case. Which means, in English that cats and dogs can understand, that I want a worm’s-eye view of the College English Department—and what is nearer a worm than a teaching assistant?”

Mr. Higgenbothom grinned.

“And,” Kate went on, “if you say a word about discretion, I will throw something at you. I am willing to let you use a computer on Max Beerbohm, who couldn’t even stand the simpler inventions of the twentieth century, so you’ve got to be willing to let me have your impressions—at least, I hope you’ll be willing.”

“I could quote Max Beerbohm in connection with Professor Cudlipp,” Mr. Higgenbothom said. “If two people disagree about a third, the one who likes him is right, always.”

“I’m to gather that you liked Cudlipp?”

“Yes, very much. He was very nice to me indeed. He let me experiment with my freshman English group—I spent the whole year on linguistics and stylistics and the students actually liked it—but it took some believing in me on his part. And then, he was very devoted to the College, and so am I. He believed it could really be an exciting educational place, because we were all ready to experiment, and Robert O’Toole was going to be Dean and do the first exciting things to be brought off in education in the last forty years. I know Cudlipp didn’t think highly of the University College, and I understand that you believe in it, but he knew perfectly well that there had to be only one undergraduate school here, and that first-rate. I agreed with him, and still do. I think Cudlipp had courage and he worked for what he believed in. I admire that. So many men just let things slide.”

Kate leaned back in her chair and laughed. “Sorry,” she said to Mr. Higgenbothom when she had recovered herself. “I’m laughing at my getting so cocksure as to forget there are two sides to every question, and I damn well ought to remember that. Would you be willing to tell me who’s likely to be new head of the College English Department?”

“At the moment it seems to be a standoff. I hear there’s been some heated discussion.”

“Between whom, mainly?”

“You’re remembering, Professor Fansler, that this is a worm’s-eye view?”

“By all means. I would apologize for asking these forthright questions when you can scarcely avoid answering them, Mr. Higgenbothom, if there were the smallest point in apologizing for what one has every intention of doing.”

“The rumor is that Clemance wants us to think about it a bit, sort of struggle on for a few months and not put a Cudlipp man right in. He says he’s willing to take on some of the work for the rest of the term, and no one’s exactly prepared to argue with that. I’m sorry there are more ill feelings; we ought to be healing up the wounds. We’re getting together a memorial volume to Cudlipp, by the way. I hope you’ll feel better about him by the time it comes out, which, given the schedules of scholars and university presses, should be in about three years.”

“I’m certain to feel better about him long before then. Thank you for coming, and good luck with Max’s sentences.”

In fact, it was one of Max’s sentences Kate quoted to Reed when he asked her how her day had gone. “ ‘To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine,’ ” she wearily said.

“Likewise,” said Reed. It was uncertain what a computer would have made of that.

T
HE
week that followed was marked for Kate not primarily by attempts to solve the puzzle of the elevators and the aspirin, but by the presence together of Reed and herself on the campus. She was startled to discover that she had always held the University and Reed quite separate in her mind, as though her place of work existed, as far as Reed was concerned, as the source of news and problems and experiences which she might bring home and lay as tribute at his feet.

But now he had joined her in the problems and experience and news, and she found she enjoyed enormously walking with him on the campus, bidding him at its center a formal farewell which seemed to include their love more easily than any public embrace could ever have done. Reed, for his part, admitted the fascination of the campus and his eagerness to leave it as having
equal force with him. Certainly he did not want to leave it until he could provide it with the knowledge it required for peace. Disruptions of communities, like illnesses, are not cured by being named; but if one names them, one isolates them from their allies: unreasoning fear, anxiety, and trepidation. The magic of doctors, for all their research, Reed pointed out to Kate, is still their power to name. He had the power now; he wanted to use it and be gone.

In the past week Kate had had probing conversations with such involved students and faculty as she met and, since the troubles of spring, one seemed constantly to meet people and to stop and talk. From resembling a club where only the oldest members recognized and spoke to one another, the University had come to seem like a small town where everyone knew and greeted one another, and usually had news, gossip, or rumors to exchange. As always, Kate thought, it was danger and shared experiences which made the modern world like a village—not television, as that dreary medium-message man had said. She had talked to many and learned a good deal, but none of it seemed to move them very far forward.

Frogmore reported that he had talked with almost all the members of the Administrative Council, and there was no question that University College had an overwhelming number of votes with which to carry their motion
if
they could ever get it before the Council. A number of members on the Council came from schools not immediately connected with the Undergraduate or Graduate Faculties of Arts and Sciences, and they clearly saw no reason why one branch of the University should
be able to eliminate another—not without more cogent reasons than were being mentioned. Frogmore, as he told Kate, only hoped it would be that simple.

McQuire, who sought Kate out to tell her how superior he thought Reed, said that he now believed Cudlipp had committed suicide as the best way to kill the University College. “Call it a kind of hari-kari,” he said. “ ‘I’ll go down and take the enemy ship with me.’ ” In that case, Kate had pointed out, it would have made more sense to accuse his putative murderer before collapsing instead of merely yelling “aspirin” in that unhelpful way. McQuire only shrugged. “There is no question,” he said, “that the whole plan went awry. We shall probably never know. He has succeeded all the same, and I’m powerfully gloomy. Let’s get a drink.”

But Kate had gone on to talk to Carrier, who was beginning to intrigue her a good deal. He was the most restless man Kate had ever seen, almost as though he suffered from some muscular ailment which caused him to begin twitching if he stood or sat in one place too long. He would greet one pleasantly enough, with some provocative remark (“I’m on my way to interfere with a few elevators, how are you?” was a fair example) but after extracting a certain amount of information and imparting as little as he decently could he would twitch away as though some unseen string attached to him had been jerked offstage. A good deal of his restlessness, Kate surmised, came from his hunger for information and his utter inability to impart any. Since most people would rather talk than listen, Carrier’s method worked up to a point. He would listen, nodding
furiously, and then, when questioned in turn, would depart in a stammered explanation of pressing engagements. But after a time Kate, and no doubt others, began to realize that the exchange of information was not mutual, that Cartier could not bring himself to trust anyone else’s discretion. Kate faced him with this one day, and he accepted it, in his usual curt style, nodding his head and thrusting out his arms in his puppet fashion. “What elevators, for example, are you going to interfere with?” “Oh, just a joke, just a joke,” he replied, retreating exactly, it seemed to Kate, like some actress playing Tinkerbell whose apparatus is not working properly.

On the day when she had talked to McQuire she had gone to look for Cartier in the lounge of the Faculty Club. It was the best place to pick up information, and Cartier could never avoid it for long. She had, indeed, found Cartier and, with great difficulty, induced him to sit down with her on a couch. He offered every possible excuse, from imminent disasters to rising ill health, but Kate was firm: “I’ll only keep you a minute. Please sit down. I’m not feeling at all well.” This, while untrue, made Carrier’s refusal impossible. He perched on the couch, his weight on his toes and his knees drawn up, for all the world, Kate had thought, like a Victorian maiden lady anticipating an indecent proposal. Yet, Kate had thought, he is the only man I know who can resemble Little Miss Muffet without looking in the least effeminate.

She had reported McQuire’s theory to him. “Interesting,” was his comment, “but I don’t believe it. The aspirin were merely the result of an unfortunate accident,
pharmaceutical more likely than not; no one seems to have thought of that. The important question is the elevators.” Cartier always stopped talking as abruptly as he began, one of his more appealing characteristics these long-winded days.

“Have any elevators been stopping lately that you know of?” Kate had asked. “And,” she had added ominously, “if you try to leave I shall sit in your lap until you answer me.”

“Wonderful,” Cartier had surprisingly said, pushing himself back on the couch to make more lap available.

“I’m sorry,” Kate had said. “The ultimate sin: pigeon-holing people, thinking you always know what they will say.” Cartier took the apology as dismissal, but then paused as Kate allowed her unanswered question about the elevators to echo between them.

“There’s a meeting of the Chemistry Department late this afternoon,” he had said, departing. Kate had remained on the couch, treasuring this piece of information. She could not imagine what possible use it could be, but it was the only fact which Cartier had ever imparted to her. It was unfortunate that she had not taken it more to heart, or at least reported it immediately to Reed, because when she ran into Professor Fielding of Chemistry several days later, he mentioned that the whole Graduate Chemistry Faculty had been stuck in the science building elevator for forty-five minutes on the day of their meeting.

Reed in the past week had interviewed maintenance men, guards, deans, secretaries, and receptionists until he was weary of endless opinions on the student generation, dire predictions about the future, and completely
useless information. He told Kate as they emerged from the subway in time for her afternoon seminar that he hoped today would yield something, but he doubted it.

In this he was wrong.

To begin with, they ran into Castleman. He stopped to talk to them, resting his briefcase on the ground. “I have seen more progress,” he said, “made by an inch-worm on frictionless terrain. Oh, not your fault, not mine, not anybody’s. Cartier thinks he’ll catch someone at the elevators, but it will be the same story over again. Whoever is doing this isn’t going to walk into any trap. If someone’s there, they go away; if someone comes in on them, they run faster.”

“Is there a meeting of some sort today?”

“Yes. Political Science.”

“Why haven’t you tried to keep these meetings secret?” Kate asked.

“We thought of it—and then we thought a bit more. First of all, it’s impossible; if you have a meeting of eight people, there are at least double that number or more in the world who have to know it; we aren’t running a secret organization, God forbid. Besides, our only chance is either to get the offenders to stop out of sheer boredom, or to catch them. It isn’t as though there were any real danger; people terrified of being caught in elevators walk—they always have at this place anyway. Let’s face it, the elevators, even in the best of times, were problematical.”

“What time is the meeting?” Reed asked.

“Four. It could go on till six. And chances are nothing
will happen.” He wearily picked up his briefcase and left them.

Kate and Reed continued across the campus, feeling defeated and eager to act if only some possible action presented itself. Reed was just leaving Kate at the entrance to Baldwin when Clemance came along.

“You two,” he announced, “the first really pleasant sight in days.” He smiled his characteristic, sideways smile and stopped a moment with his oddly courteous air, implying that if they had anything to say he was delighted to hear it, but that he was bereft of the power of speech.