Murder in the English Department (14 page)

‘What do you need?' he asked.

‘I need my students to learn something,' said Nan, thoughtfully. ‘I want the women in my classes to gain confidence. I need my family and friends to love me.'

‘Speaking of family,' said Matt, who was almost finished with his Pacifica Celebration Salad, ‘how's Lisa?'

‘The same,' Nan stared disconsolately at her plate. She felt nauseated by the profusion of green, green vegetation and full of horror that anything might grow so lush. ‘But the Memorial Hospital was enough to make anyone ill.'

‘She's out now?'

‘Yes, for a while,' Nan shook her head. ‘Until she has a relapse. She does look better. But she's been at Shirley's throat. It's as if the illness brought out a lifetime of anger about being confined in Hayward. Anyway, the family agreed that she could come visit me in Berkeley for a few days.'

Nan closed her eyes now. She wondered if having another body in the house, one used to nocturnal hibernation, might cure her of insomnia.

Matt looked concerned. ‘Maybe we should skip the drink tonight. You seem ready for bed.'

‘Yes,' said Nan. ‘Probably so.'

After effusive goodbyes to Knut the Handsome, they left the Pogo Cafe. On the drive back over the bridge, Nan and Matt chatted randomly about Knut, the Chancellor's meeting, the mood in the English Department, Murchie's death, Nan's family. Sometimes Nan thought that Matt would be the best husband she'd ever find—thoughtful, sensitive, honest. Anything was easy with him. She could say anything, ask anything she wanted. Well, almost anything. There was still one question that haunted her. How could the police believe it was suicide if Murchie was found with his pants down?

Chapter Fourteen

THEY ALL RECEIVED THEIR
SUBPOENAS
on the same day, Nan later found out. Hammerly, Augustine, Matt, Millie, herself and five others from the department had been called before the Grand Jury of Alameda County.

Matt brought in a newspaper describing the investigation of Murchie's death and they sat in Nan's office pouring over the yellow columns together.

Grand Jury. Nan remembered zilch from elementary American civics. Grand Jury. She had images from an old George Raft film. Memories of Jessica Mitford refusing to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

The San Francisco Chronicle
reported twenty-five people would be interviewed over the next couple of weeks. It was very unusual to call a Grand Jury for a routine suicide, but, as the
Chronicle
article revealed, Murchie's cousin-in-law was an Assistant District Attorney. Probably not a man to believe in suicide with the pants down.

Nan wasn't the only person alarmed. The following morning when the faculty met in the large committee room, Hammerly arrived fuming.

‘Really,' he stiffened. ‘This is too much. Can't they let the man die in peace and leave the rest of us to our work?'

Augustine, Murchie's friend, was silent, frowning.

‘It would be one thing to have a homicidal maniac in our midst,' Hammerly continued, nervously now as everyone watched him. ‘But it was a suicide, wasn't it?' He looked to Augustine who remained silent.

‘Really,' said Hammerly again. ‘We must be allowed to
work
. The department could disintegrate around us. We have responsibilities …'

‘Such as filling his position,' said Augustine bitterly.

‘Quite uncalled for,' said Hammerly, whose Princeton friend had become one of the prime candidates.

‘Gentlemen, please,' called Nelson, in his most chairpersonly tone.

‘Well, it's damn annoying,' flushed Hanson, ‘I don't mean any disrespect. These “investigations” might be useful if I were teaching the development of the mystery novel. However, I'm in the middle of writing a paper about Celtic myth and trying to direct three dissertations on Yeats.'

Matt smiled, almost imperceptibly, at Nan. He raised his dark eyebrows over the tortoise rims of his glasses. Nan nodded abruptly.

‘The best approach,' she heard herself saying (she was staring at Hammerly because he sat on the opposite side of the room from Marjorie Adams), ‘the best approach is to regard the investigation as an interesting experience. It's an inconvenience, to be sure, but little more trouble than that. No one seriously believes that anybody here committed murder.'

Murder. It was the first time the word had been uttered among them all. Shivering imperceptibly from the silence, Nan looked from Hammerly's impatient eyes to Hanson's red face to Augustine's rigid jaw. Each man was staring at her.

Finally Matt broke the tension. ‘Nan's right,' he said with a trace of nervousness. ‘It will be over in a few weeks. Let's try to bear with it.'

The corridors were quiet for the rest of the week. Eerie, as if they were threaded with an invisible string laid to trip criminals or ghosts. Everyone communicated from the corners of their eyes. The few greetings exchanged were subject to the closest scrutiny. Did everyone suspect everyone?

Everyone, except perhaps Marjorie Adams. Marjorie had not been called to testify. Still, Nan doubted whether this exemption would make her feel safe. Marjorie must be having the same need as Nan for the relief of talking to another person. Yet, neither woman would start the inevitable conversation.

And then one day Nan broke down, despite all her plans to let Marjorie speak first. (Best to keep quiet, she told herself. Quiet enough that Marjorie might forget. Quiet enough that Nan might learn nothing more to conceal from the Grand Jury.) But one day the silent, lonely corridors of Wheeler Hall became indistinguishable to Nan from that silent, lonely madhouse she had inhabited for the last six months of her marriage. So, when Marjorie arrived to discuss power and love in Iris Murdoch, Nan said,

‘Marjorie, you were a reader in Professor Murchie's class last quarter, weren't you?'

‘Yes,' said Marjorie quickly, as if to keep the admission from sticking to her crimson lipstick.

‘In fact,' said Nan, ‘I think I recall seeing you in his office several times during that last week.' She didn't want to push Marjorie. She just wanted to offer the opening.

‘That's quite possible,' said Marjorie, with more detachment than Nan expected.

‘So you must feel particularly upset about his death,' Nan tried again.

Marjorie was frowning, on the verge of tears?

That's it, thought Nan, let it out.

‘Do you think it's affecting my work?' Marjorie asked.

‘Oh, no,' said Nan, taken aback. ‘No, your work is fine.'

‘Then if you don't mind,' said Marjorie politely, ‘I would prefer not to discuss the matter.' She opened her notebook. ‘I do appreciate your concern.'

‘Of course,' said Nan. ‘Of course.' Matt was right about Marjorie being shy. Shy or frightened. Or one tough cookie, thought Nan. She was at once amazed by Marjorie's resistance and saddened by the overwhelming loneliness bred by such tenacity.

The Grand Jury met
the
following Friday, the seventh week of the quarter, February 22, at the Alameda County Courthouse, Oakland, from 7.00–10.00 p.m.

As Nan and her attorney Amy climbed the stone steps to the white, 1930s edifice, Nan was suddenly visited with optimism. The last time she walked into this building, thirteen years before, she was a middle-aged radical, eager to claim divorce from the bourgeois Dr Charles Woodward. (No alimony, she had said, just let me out of the confinement and boredom of this marriage. Mental cruelty, ruled the judge. Nan knew that each had been cruel to the other. Each was guilty. Just let me out, she had said. And they did.) Now she was back with the same lawyer and her own name, Dr Nan Weaver.

‘Just remember,' Amy was bearing down on her for the third time. ‘Don't answer anything tricky until you've come out in the corridor and checked it with me.'

Nan noticed that Amy was wearing her tweedy attorney suit that evening. Years before, at the beginning of her career, Amy had believed being a feminist lawyer required blue jeans. In those days she was still flaunting her youth in the Brooklyn projects, still playing rough kid. Since then, Amy had accepted the tactical advantage of observing dress code.

‘Right,' said Nan, smoothing a hand along her skirt. She was suddenly overcome with fear. Fear about being in this institution, fear about being a suspect. She winced, remembering the fear on Murchie's face as he lay dying.

Nan focussed on her friend again. ‘I'll imagine you're my translator, and I can't understand a word of what they're saying.'

‘Don't feel nervous,' Amy put her arm over Nan's shoulder. ‘The DA is really an ass. He can't cause you any
serious
trouble.'

‘I don't know about that,' said Nan, checking her watch, ‘Angus Murchie was an ass and he caused quite a lot of trouble.'

As they turned the corner of the courtroom, they saw Matt sitting on a bench, sipping a cup of vending machine coffee.

‘Matt,' Nan called, ‘what are you doing here? You're not due on stage until nine o'clock.'

‘Oh, you know me,' he said, nodding greeting to Amy, ‘phobic about tardiness. Besides, I thought you might like a little comradeship.'

‘Matt,' Nan kissed him on the cheek, ‘you
are
a prize friend.'

‘Better watch that,' he winked and wiped off her kiss. ‘People might get the wrong idea.'

‘Miss Weaver?' chirped a small, elderly man, who did not look unlike a scrub jay that Nan found hopping on her balcony last week.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I am Dr Nan Weaver.'

‘Oh, beg your pardon, Doctor,' he lisped as he checked his clipboard. ‘Well, Doctor, the jury is ready for you now.' The elderly court clerk emanated an aura of wintergreen. Nan realized later, during the hour of questioning, that he didn't have a lisp, but was sucking a lifesaver, one of a series he was to consume with discretion.

Nan found nothing very grand about this jury of housewives and business managers. Italian knits and plaid sports jackets. Most of the jury looked as uncomfortable as she felt, all there out of some vague sense of civic duty or some vaguer sense of ennui. But were they frightened? Could they smell her own fear?

Nan was surprised by the ordinariness of the small, stuffy courtroom. Against one wall were filing cabinets and a table piled with telephone books. Dusty Venetian blinds shut out the moon and the skyline of downtown Oakland. Where was the dignity she anticipated? The power? This felt more like a library binding room than a court. The one thing which captured her attention was the display board, drawn with an outline of a man's body and marked with an ‘X' over the stomach. The body was much skinnier than Murchie's. How many layers of flab did Marjorie have to thrust through, Nan wondered. From where did her strength come? How small was the gut? Nan shook herself back to attention.

‘How long did you know Angus Murchie?' the Assistant DA asked. He was fair, lanky and rather pretty, much as Nan remembered his second cousin, Laura Murchie, now the widow of Angus.

The questions seemed easy enough, so she didn't bother to check with Amy.

‘Seven years.'

‘I respected much of Professor Murchie's academic work.'

‘We were not close friends.'

‘Yes, we disagreed on certain political issues, as did many of our colleagues.'

‘I spent New Year's Eve with my family in Hayward.'

‘No, I haven't any idea who would want to harm Professor Murchie.'

After the testimony,
Nan and
Amy waited for Matt and his lawyer in a small bar which smelled as if they brewed beer on the spot. The rest of the witnesses would be called the next week, explained Amy, and then, if the DA were smart, he'd bury the case.

‘That was just a show,' she said, ‘a token to the family. And if he doesn't catch some bait soon, he'll have to drop the whole thing. The Grand Jury isn't meant to investigate homicide.'

‘You mean that's it?' asked Nan, feeling strangely let down, too tense from her testimony to be relieved. ‘We don't have to return for another torture test?'

‘Not unless something extraordinary happens,' said Amy.

Is that all there is, Nan wondered. Yes. Peggy Lee was singing ‘Is That All There Is?' inside her head. Well, maybe. Maybe Amy was right. And maybe she, herself, had been right about keeping Marjorie's secret. She could keep it for another week. And then it would be all over. Wouldn't it?

‘He'll have to drop the whole thing,' Amy repeated with a confidence which sounded only slightly forced.

Shirley's birthday seemed a month
early
; everything was happening at a different speed this year. All day Friday Nan looked forward to the party in the big yellow house. Commotion would be welcome after the brittle politeness of Wheeler Hall. She would feel easier in Hayward, safer.

Nan arrived to find Shirley cooking alone in the kitchen. Joe was singing in the shower; Nan tried very hard not to hear the lyrics. The boys hadn't shown up yet, and Lisa had run down to the Safeway for more beer and Coke. Shirley told her sister to sit down while she basted the chicken.

‘What's this, cooking on your own birthday,' demanded Nan. ‘I thought that everyone was
bringing
the meal.'

‘They are, they are,' reassured Shirley. She straightened her apron over the rose muu muu. ‘Now relax, Nan. I'm just doing the roast and a few veggies.'

‘Shirley!' exclaimed Nan.

‘Well, the girls are bringing desserts and Lisa made a salad,' acknowledged Shirley.

‘And Joe and the boys?' demanded Nan.

‘Now, Nan, they've been working all day, the same as you.'

Nan was irritated by this gentle admonishment. Most irritated with herself. What had she prepared? Nothing. The two bottles of champagne she brought weren't even a very grand expense for a single person on her salary.

She walked over to the sink and rolled up her sleeves. The least she could do was wash and chop the broccoli.

Family, thought Nan, what on earth drew her to these people? Matt's family sounded equally nerve-racking. But they were bright, professional people who had interesting conversations between the guilt-tripping. Many families exploded in violent fights. Nan would have preferred that, would have appreciated some excitement. So what was her bond with these people who bored and enraged her and touched her by turns? She didn't know. If another civil war started, they would be on opposite sides. Yet, she knew Shirley and Joe would give her sanctuary and that she would do the same for them. Well, at least for Shirley.

‘Now, Nannie,' Shirley was saying as she tied an apron around her sister. ‘I want this to be a
peaceful
evening. I don't want people stirring up things.'

Nan noticed the way Shirley said ‘people', as if she were referring to outside agitators.

‘OK,' said Nan. ‘It's your birthday, sweetie. I promise I'll behave. Cross my heart.'

Shirley wrapped her ample arms around Nan and gave her the sort of embrace Mom used to dispense when she said, ‘You're both my girls, different enough, but you'll always be each other's sisters.'

Suddenly the commotion began—and didn't stop for four hours. First, the arrival of Tom and Bob and Lynda and Debbie. Debbie was ‘showing', as Shirley called it, a good three inches. The next generation. They all walked into the kitchen with a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday to You'.