Honest Doubt (16 page)

Poirot solved it, of course. If you don't know the end, I'm sorry to spoil it for you, but the movie's so creaky you probably want to give it a miss. It turns out that everyone has lied, but Poirot knew the truth behind their lies, arrived at by reasoning I thought a bit farfetched. Detective story writers: they all make these leaps, which I could hardly do. What would Mr. Petrosky think if I summoned everyone before me and told them they were liars, but the truth was . . .

It turned out that they had all done it—planned it and done it together. They were all connected to the kidnapping and the household at that time. So they had drugged the mean guy and then each of them had plunged a dagger into him. Naturally, there turned out to be a convenient doctor in the Calais coach who could tell human from animal blood just by looking at it, and there turned out to be a snow-storm holding up the train so everything could be solved before they left the place where they were stuck. It all got enacted in replay before our eyes as Poirot explained it. No need to provide proof or anything like that. And then they decided to withhold everything and let the stupid police in the next town, in the Balkans of all places, assume the murderer escaped. I ask you. Everybody clicked glasses of champagne and all was well. Whoopie-do.

“Well, Kate,” I said as we reached the end of this riveting entertainment, “thank you for sharing that with me. I must say detective work was a lot easier in those days, at least in films.”

“Did you find it unrealistic?” she said.

“I wouldn't go that far,” I said, allowing myself the relief of sarcasm. “But of all the preposterous, unlikely, stupid stories, this one takes the cake. And even if that was how the murder was done, there was no way Poirot could possibly have guessed it. To say nothing of the fact that for no reason offered he seemed to have total recall of the five-year-old kidnapping that happened in a country he'd never even visited. Why should he have been able to solve anything as unsolvable as that crazy murder . . . ?”

And then I got it. Okay, I was pretty slow about getting it, but who am I to identify with Poirot and a movie supposedly set in Yugoslavia over a quarter of a century ago? Of course, I might have asked myself why Kate wanted me to watch this creaky old thing, and not just sit there assuming she was just another flaky academic.

“You think they all did it?” I said, holding out my glass.

Kate took it from me, fixed both of us new drinks, and sat down.

“It's a guess,” Kate said. “No more than that. I don't know what made me think of the book in connection with Clifton College—I thought of the book first, by the way. It was originally called
Murder in the Calais Coach
. Anyway, Reed happened to wonder if anyone read Agatha Christie anymore, and I said I thought so. It occurred to me to look at one of her mysteries just to see how it would strike me now. I hadn't read her for ages. We had a few of her books, but it must have been my subconscious or dumb luck that made me pick this one. I read it, and was going to suggest you read it, when it seemed to me the film, which I did vaguely remember, would concentrate our attention better. End of story.”

She sipped her drink and then said, “Let's go over all you know. Not out loud, but in our minds. After you've had a think, let me know if there is any reason this couldn't have been a crime like Christie's, with pills, of course, rather than a dagger.”

“There is one thing,” I said. “I never paid much attention to it before, but everyone kept talking about how horrible retsina tasted. I'll have to go back and ask, but my impression is that much was made of its horrible taste, and the bottle may have just stood there a while, or been passed around as they discussed it.”

“Exactly,” Kate said. “My guess is that they wanted to make sure that anyone wanting to take a taste would do it before the pills got into the bottle. Not that there were many there who didn't know what was happening, but they didn't take any chances.”

“You're saying that every person I questioned led me around by the nose, knowing all along they'd been one of the pill droppers?”

“Not quite everyone. But most of them. They were very clever in seeming to confide in you and earn your sympathy, while not giving you any useful information.”

“They even tried to hide the fact that ex-dean Elaine Kimberly had been there. I suppose her coming to the party seemed a bit odd; she must have felt a strong reason to take part, to take the risk with the others.”

“I don't think the students were involved. Do you?”

“Well, why did Oakwood get one of his student groupies to substitute for the girl who was supposed to be there?” I was asking questions not for the answers, but to try to get my mind in some kind of order.

“A precaution, don't you think? If the groupie noticed anything, he would be in a position to hear about it, and to distract her. Something like that.”

I was thinking it all through. “And the reason Oakwood beat up Petrillo. The poor guy, who's a good Catholic and a very upright person, may have been cracking. He may have said something to Oakwood about giving themselves up, admitting it all, whatever. That's probably why Oakwood jumped him.”

“Doubtless their motives differed. As in the movie. They each probably feared and despised Haycock for his or her own reason. At the same time, they must have felt they were saving the department and the college from a terrible outcome.”

I just nodded, going over in my mind everything I had learned, everything Don had learned. It fit. It goddamn fit. Kate had been right that they had hired me because I might not be able to solve the crime. She had been right that Claire Wiseman guessed that and wanted to keep me from being set up. But I'd sure as hell been set up. I could feel anger beginning to rise in me like a geyser. Like Old Faithful at Yellowstone, bursting out with steam and hot air. I hate being a patsy. I don't mind failing, but I hate being made a patsy.

I said that to Kate. I wondered how she was going to find comfort in this situation. As far as I was concerned at that moment, I would gladly have gotten them all in a room and told them what happened, like Poirot in the film. Just to let them know I'd caught on. Just to let them know they hadn't fooled me.

“You told me about all your conversations in some detail,” Kate said, “and my impression, which I do not say to make you feel better—it's the absolute truth—is that they all came to like you, even to trust you—well, maybe not Oakwood, but most of the others—and they were as honest with you as they could be, more honest than they would have been with anyone else. You have a right to feel angry, but you'd be wrong to think they were glad to be fooling you. One thing about a group murder is that you have to consider the safety of everyone who was in it with you.”

“You think Petrillo would have talked?”

“Probably not. My guess is that he was trying it out on someone. He picked the wrong guy.”

I was quieting down a bit—anyway, seething less.

“What are we going to do?” I asked Kate.

“It's your decision. It's what you're going to do that you have to decide. But I did mention this solution to Reed and he doubted whether anyone, let alone the New Jersey police, could get a conviction. They might even have trouble with the grand jury. There's no evidence. A good lawyer, and the college would surely hire one if they haven't already got him or her on retainer, would make mincemeat of this story. That is just a fact to put in the hopper with other facts when you try to decide what to do.”

“Okay,” I said. “What would you do? And don't tell me it's my decision; I know that. I'm asking what you would do.”

“I think I'd just let it go. But after all, I am an academic, and what I would do has to be different from what you would do.”

“And nobody hung you out to dry,” I said.

“I think that's putting it a bit strongly, but you're right. I'm not the one on the spot, as you have pointed out. On the other hand, you're a professional private investigator. Sometimes you fail to bring a case to conclusion. That must happen to all detectives, private or police, certainly to the FBI and the CIA. You write a sensible report, send a large bill, take the money, and run. You have the satisfaction of having guessed what happened, and that should count for something.”

I realized I was feeling a bit better. Kate got us each another drink, but I noticed, as I had before in times of extreme stress, that liquor didn't seem to have any effect on me. Still, I was a bit looser, from what Kate had said more than from the hooch.

“I have a Jewish friend,” I told her, “who's got a joke about a religious Jew who sneaks off to play golf on Yom Kippur. He hits a hole in one. And he can't tell anyone. That's my situation. If I decide to do nothing, I suppose I can't even tell Octavia. No one knows but you and Reed. I assume I don't have to tell Claire Wiseman.”

“I don't see why you should tell her, if you want to let the whole thing go, as Poirot did in the movie. But you can't decide now. Why don't you think about it for a few days? There's no real rush.”

“True,” I said, getting up. Banny's tail thumped. What I didn't ask was, What about Don Jackson? What the hell was I going to do about him? I felt I owed him honesty, yet how well did I know him; how much could I trust him?

I took a taxi back to Brooklyn, and actually fell asleep the minute after I got home and threw myself on the bed. I realized I hadn't turned on my cell phone, and I didn't. Everything—if there was anything, even Mr. Petrosky— could wait.

And I would that my tongue
could utter
The thoughts that arise
in me.

—TENNYSON, “Break, Break, Break”

Fourteen

I SLEPT far into the morning, until Octavia woke me by letting the phone ring a hundred times. She said she had been about to call the police, but had decided to come herself first if I didn't answer. I apologized as best I could, and said I would be there within the hour. I took a long shower, letting the water run through my hair and into my mouth. Then of course I had to blow-dry my hair, get myself and my clothes together, drink some juice and coffee, and let the day begin.

On the way to my office, I allowed myself to relish the relief I felt at having this damn case over. I hadn't realized it, or let myself realize it, but the sense of failure and frustration had been wearing away at me. Now I knew what had happened, the fact that no one else besides Kate and Reed might know didn't matter all that much. I could stop thinking of myself as incompetent and unable to solve anything but ordinary, crass crimes. Of course I wanted to shout it to the world, to burst in upon the dean and tell him what had happened; I wanted to dare him to do something about it. I wanted to be redeemed; I wanted to be praised and told that I did as well as anybody could have; I wanted my pride in my work restored to me.

But, I told myself, my pride had been restored. Not publicly, not in the eyes of everyone connected with Haycock and Clifton College, but inside me, where it mattered, and in Kate's eyes. There was no doubt that some things needed to be kept secret. I rode across the Queensborough Bridge feeling like it was the beginning of a new life. “Here I come, Mr. Petrosky,” I sang, to no particular tune. My voice was drowned out by my bike and other traffic noise.

When I got to the office Octavia looked at me in a distinctly worried way, but I told her all was well, to send the final account off to the people in the English department at Clifton College, marking it
Case
Closed
.

“It's going to be a pretty stiff bill,” she said. “You put in a lot of hours, though the expenses are lower than usual.”

“If they object, we'll decide how to argue then. Somehow I think they'll just pay it.” Feeling satisfied, I thought to myself that they'd done the right thing in hiring a private investigator, and had gotten away with Haycock's demise exactly as they had hoped they would.

“Professor Kate Fansler called,” Octavia said. “She said would you call her back when you get in.”

“Fine. Then I'm off on the Petrosky case.”

“Glad we're on to something else,” Octavia said. Sometimes I wonder how much Octavia figures out on her own. I made up my mind long ago that I would never ask her.

Back in my office I rang up Kate.

“I'm glad to hear from you,” she said. “I hoped you'd be hugely relieved to have that academic caper behind you, but I wanted to hear from your own lips that you were. Or not.”

“Definitely relieved,” I said. “And I find I'm taking a lot of credit for solving the thing, even though it was you and Poirot who played a significant part in the solution. But if I hadn't gotten it from that creaky film, or had denied that what the film suggested could be the solution, you wouldn't have pressed it, would you?” I'd been wondering about that.

“No,” Kate said. “Definitely not.”

“So in a way I solved it. I got to the edge and you just gave me a little shove.”

“Exactly. Last evening, or anyway when I told Reed about it, I recalled a story I heard long ago, and I have waited many years for the applicable moment to tell it. I think this is that moment. Can you bear to hear it? Have you the time?”

“I'm listening,” I said. I felt as though suddenly I had all the time in the world.

“It's about a man—stories were always about men in those days—who was standing on the edge of a precipice admiring the view of the sunset and night coming on, when his footing gave way. Tumbling down and down the mountainside, he finally managed to catch hold of the branch of a bush. He held on as long as he could, dangling from one arm. Finally his grip simply gave way, and he had to let go. He fell six inches to the ground.”

“Nice story,” I said.

“Almost as good as your story about the Jewish golf player.”

“Let's call it a tie,” I said. “But you know, Kate, it's a funny thing how little Tennyson turned out to have to do with all this. He was a symptom of Haycock's problems, but not really a clue.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Kate said. “I've just started reading a new book about Auden, incidentally by another academic,
⁴
and I came across Auden saying about Tennyson—hold on, here it is— that Tennyson ‘
was
the Victorian mouthpiece in
In
Memoriam
when he was thinking of his grief. When he decided to be the Victorian bard and wrote
Idylls
of the King
, he ceased to be a poet.' I think the same must have been true of Haycock. He was a real academic when he began with Tennyson. Then he tried to become
the
academic and
the
Tennysonian, and ceased to be even a decent professor.”

“Interesting,” I said. And true, no doubt. But, I said to myself, at the same time, if no one ever mentioned Tennyson again, except maybe Kate quoting ‘Maud,' it would be quite all right with me.

Kate seemed to guess my thought. “Come and see me sometime, Woody,” she said. “I promise not to inflict any literary silliness on you.”

“Right,” I said. “And I'll need to remind you that in me you have your only fat friend, and your only friend who rides a motorbike.”

“I don't need to be reminded about you,” Kate said. “I'll call you in a month or so.”

And being Kate, she would, I thought. It wasn't just an empty promise, as it would have been with most folks. I was glad I'd met Kate Fansler, and I meant to see her again.

Meanwhile, I had to make up my mind about Don Jackson. I still didn't know if I wanted to tell him the outcome of our case or not, but I had at least to let him know it was over as far as I was concerned. And I had to say goodbye. Without taking too much time to think, I called Don's cell phone and got him.

“How goes it, Woody?” he said.

“Just great, Don. I've decided the case is over. The police can grind away if they want to, but I don't think we'll get any nearer to a solution if we keep going around in circles for the next six years.” That was true in a literal sense, even if it was cutting it a little close. Still, it wasn't a lie.

“You coming out to New Jersey to drink to the end of the case?” Don asked. “I rather think the police will go along with your decision, whether they exactly say so or not. They're mighty handy at keeping cases open without doing anything about them.”

“I don't think I want to go anywhere near Clifton College ever again,” I told Don. “I'll send them a formal report and a final accounting. But I would like to have that end-of-case beer. Is there anywhere else in New Jersey we could meet, maybe near one of the tunnels?”

“I'll come to New York,” Don said. “I'll even come to Brooklyn. You say where, and I'll meet you there for beer and whatever else, say at six-thirty. How's that?”

For a moment I thought of asking him up to my place. We could bring in beer and a pizza and just sit around. But I soon thought better of it. He was bound to think it meant something significant, and then he would have to deal with that. And however he dealt with it, it wouldn't make for a pleasant, casual time. So I told him about a pretty nice bar I knew, with booths, not great or anything, but comfortable. No need for him to go all the way to Brooklyn.

“Not a New York fancy place?” he asked.

“Not a bit.” I gave him the address. I was about to tell him how to find it when I remembered he'd lived in New York a lot longer than in New Jersey, and didn't need directions.

So that was settled. I still hadn't made up my mind whether to tell him the truth about the Haycock case or not; I planned to leave that decision to work itself out with the beer. I thought that, after talking with him again for a while, I'd know whether I wanted to level with him or not, which meant whether to trust him or not. Which meant a lot of things.

I got to the bar a little early, thinking I'd grab us a booth and wait for him, but Don was there ahead of me, already in a booth and almost at the end of his first beer. He got up to greet me, and then I slid into my side of the booth across from him.

“You relieved?” he asked.

“You'd better believe it. I feel fifty pounds lighter,” I said, and then laughed. “Not literally, of course.” For some reason I felt embarrassed, and annoyed at myself for saying that. He didn't take any notice.

“Me too,” Don said. “I suppose if we worked on each of the people at that party for a year or so, someone might tell us something about what he or she knew, might give us some idea of who did it, but I have to ask myself, Is it worth it? And I answer myself: No, it isn't. The hell with it.”

“A very immoral, illegal conclusion,” I said.

“Very. But hell, many murders go unsolved, including a number I've heard of that needed to be solved a lot more than this one does.”

“Too true,” I said.

We ordered hamburgers, cheeseburgers actually, and they came with French fries and coleslaw. We each had another beer. I liked eating with Don because he liked eating. He didn't need to act like food didn't really matter to him, and he didn't work at it as though it was the main reason for our being there. Well, it was true, he ate and did a lot of other things just right.

We didn't talk about the case. It was over for us, and nothing was to be gained by tossing it around. I asked Don if he still liked working with the police force in that college town, and he said he did, on the whole. There were some okay guys and some crappers, but it was a good life. His kids were coming soon during some week off the teachers took at their school for conferences or something. Don was looking forward to their visit, and had some plans laid out.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I've got a few cases ongoing,” I said, “and a new one that looks promising. It's right up my alley, not something full of Tennyson and
Freshwater
.”

“
Freshwater
?”

“I probably mentioned it in passing,” I said. “A play the professors in the English department put on, to the great discomfort of Haycock. It wasn't really important. No wonder you forgot it.” I thought that I would have forgotten it too, if Kate hadn't gone on about it so.

We finished our hamburgers, and decided not to have anything else to eat, just a final beer. We didn't say much drinking it. Not that we felt uneasy sitting there, or uncomfortable with each other. We just didn't have anything worth saying at that moment, and found the silence comfortable, both of us thinking our thoughts.

I knew by then that I wouldn't tell Don about how the murder really was committed. What was the point? I'd have to swear him to secrecy, and that would be a burden for him. If the case had been ongoing, I'd have had to tell him anything I found out, but since it was over, let it be over. It wasn't that I couldn't trust him. It was that there was no decent reason to burden him with that trust.

I smiled at him, and he smiled back. When we got up to leave—I paid; I said it was my turf, and he'd paid for our first meal in New Jersey—he didn't argue. He just said, “Thanks, Woody.”

We drove to Penn Station on my bike with him on the back. He held on to me, with his arms around my waist. When he got off, he waved, and I waved and watched him walk into the station. Then he was gone, and I was on my way back to Brooklyn and my own life.