New England White (49 page)

CHAPTER 54

AGAIN HOBBY HILL

(I)

“B
IT OF A SURPRISE
, Chief Vallely,” said the secretary of the university, standing in the doorway of his elegant Victorian on Hobby Road. He was wearing shirtsleeves, his tie loosened, and, on his feet, comfortable slippers. “One values one’s privacy. Don’t actually remember inviting you, kind of thing. Perhaps you might be so good as to explain the meaning of this visit.”

“It couldn’t wait,” said Bruce, and meant it.

“Don’t actually follow, Chief Vallely.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t urgent, Mr. Secretary. Now, please, may I come in?”

Trevor Land thought it over for a moment. It was just past eight on Friday, and Bruce had been parked down the block for the past hour, waiting for the secretary to arrive, then giving him a few minutes to settle in. He had no choice. Every cop knew that witnesses were more likely to be rattled when you took them by surprise. But being rattled and being accurate were not the same thing.

At last the secretary stepped aside. The foyer was wide and nicely appointed, the furniture heavy and old and, to Bruce’s untutored eye, valuable. Oil paintings of country scenes filled the walls, both here and up the staircase. To Bruce they mainly signaled money. Trevor Land had lived alone since his wife died nine years ago. Bruce smelled rewarmed food beneath the redolence of furniture polish, and realized that he had interrupted the old man’s dinner.

“I’m sorry if this is a bad time, Mr. Secretary—”

“Assume you have your reasons.” He led the way into a small study, walled in rich, dark wood, nicely bound first editions on the shelves, more landscapes on the walls. “Do have a seat, Chief Vallely.”

He did, settling on the sofa because the chairs in front of the desk looked rickety and expensive. A heavy wooden chess set stood on the low table, the pieces set in a complicated position.

“I’ve just come from Nathaniel Knowland’s apartment,” Bruce began, and Trevor Land erupted—which is to say, he pouted and tilted his head and set off at a slow murmur that Bruce had to shut up in order to hear.

“Not my way to tell a man how to do his job. Still, one rather expects one’s reasonable requests to be honored. Correct me if I am mistaken, Chief Vallely, but I believe you and I had a conversation about young Knowland. Father came to me—you remember—and asked, as a favor, if we would kindly leave his son in peace. Well, alums are who they are, and one does not want to cross them without an excellent reason. One presumes, therefore, that you had one. Because otherwise one hates to imagine the consequences.”

“I fully understand, Mr. Secretary. And you’re right, I would not have visited Nathaniel Knowland’s apartment without a good reason. But I had one.” Trevor Land nodded indulgently. By choosing the sofa, Bruce had forced him, for the sake of politeness, to take one of the armchairs, thus denying him the intimidation associated with sitting behind a desk only slightly smaller than the one in Lombard Hall. “I had to go because I realized that his story wasn’t true. It couldn’t have been. There was a hockey game, so there was no parking on Town Street the night Professor Zant was killed.” He gave the secretary a moment to let this sink in. “Therefore, the professor could not have been seen there, getting into his car. And if Knowland and his friends had actually been on Town Street that night, even drunk, they would surely have noticed that no cars were parked there, so they would have made up a better story if they needed one.”

“Fascinating observation, Chief Vallely.”

“Actually, it isn’t. I must have been an idiot not to work it out sooner. Nathaniel Knowland was nowhere near Town Street that night, and he did not see Professor Zant. Not on Town Street. Not anywhere. That’s the reason he couldn’t take his story to the police. They have more resources to check it out. They could have tracked down his imaginary friends. They would have punched holes in the story in an hour, but because I have to work alone, it’s had me chasing my own tail for three months, trying to figure out why Zant would have been there.”

“Fascinating chain of logic, Chief Vallely. And did young Knowland confirm all of this speculation for you?”

“You know perfectly well he didn’t. He’s back home. Taking the semester off.”

“Pity, that.” Trevor Land pursed his bloodless lips. He seemed imperturbable and immovable, one of the great elms that gave the city its name, roots so deep in the frozen New England earth that it would take a bomb to blast him off his feet. “So, really, you can’t confirm your chain of logic, can you? It remains speculation. Pity.”

Bruce shook his head. “It’s not speculation. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

“Nothing against guesswork, mind. Reason, speculation, imagination, all part of one’s intellectual faculties.” His thoughtful eyes were on the landscape behind Bruce’s head. The sconces were astonishingly bright, perhaps as an aid against failing eyesight. “On the other hand, Chief Vallely, reason is not really the same as fact, is it?” A stern shift of the head, something between a nod and a dismissal. “Now, tell me, please, why would young Knowland go to all that trouble? Making up a story like that, then running off?”

“I don’t think he did.”

“Say again, please.”

“Nathaniel Knowland did not make up the story,” said Bruce, leaning across the ornate coffee table dividing them. “He just repeated it.”

“Then one naturally wonders, if young Knowland didn’t make up the story, kind of thing, who did?”

“I don’t know who made it up. I do know who told Nathaniel to tell it to me.”

“And who might that have been, Chief Vallely?”

“You.”

(II)

T
HE SECRETARY OF THE UNIVERSITY
, a man of class and breeding, remained as icily calm, and distantly amused, as at any time Bruce had seen him. He simply made the familiar chewing motion with his small, prim mouth, and said, “Fascinating idea, Chief Vallely.”

“It’s supported by a chain of logic.”

“One rather thought it might be.”

“May I share it?”

“Please.” Folding his hands in his lap like an attentive student.

“Let’s begin with the proposition that Nate Knowland lied. He lied elaborately. Now, why would he do that? Not to protect himself from the authorities. If he hadn’t brought up the whole story of Professor Zant on Town Street, the authorities would not have paid him the slightest bit of attention. So the lie was to help someone else—not to help himself, or not directly.” Bruce rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “The question, then, is who would gain from my believing that Professor Zant was seen on Town Street that night, in the company of a black woman with a British accent. The first answer—the obvious one—is that the killer gains, if Professor Zant was actually somewhere else at the time, somewhere the killer has to hide.”

Even Trevor Land’s furious objections had the ring of calmly confident and very old money. “Surely, Chief Vallely, it is not your intention to suggest that I—”

“Killed Kellen Zant? No, no, Mr. Secretary. Nothing like that. Please. Allow me to continue.” Settling again. In the hall, a grandfather clock ticked loudly. “No. As I said. My first thought was that the killer wanted me to think Zant was in one place when really he was somewhere else. Why not send me chasing a mythical black woman with a British accent, and figuring out where the two of them had driven off to? But then it occurred to me that the killer, if covering up the crime were his principal motivation, would be taking an enormous risk. Nathaniel Knowland is not exactly the soul of discretion. He might share the story with his friends.”

“Perfectly well reasoned, Chief Vallely.”

“Therefore, I realized that the story must have a different purpose than simply to mislead. The details actually matter. To explain why, I should tell you that I was already skeptical of the story, precisely because of those details. In particular, Nate Knowland seemed entirely too confident that Zant got in the car first, the mysterious black woman after. I don’t think that was part of the original story. I think that was Nate’s own embellishment, and once he added it, backing away became difficult, even when it was obvious I had doubts.”

The secretary was fondling one of the knights, which had been captured and removed from the board. A plaque on the wall celebrated forty years of service to the university.

“Might one ask why you had doubts?”

“Because Kellen Zant was a well-known ladies’ man, by all accounts an amazing charmer. Such a man would hold the door for the lady.”

“Changing times, Chief Vallely. Not always for the better, but changing times nevertheless. One believes in courtesy, but we live in an age when it has become rather passé.”

“True. But Kellen Zant grew up in a small Southern town, where manners matter more, and—anyway, I was skeptical. That was one detail. But two others, which at first I fully believed, were more important. First, the black woman with the British accent, and, second, the location—that is, Town Street. I think those details were improvised with great care, and entirely for my benefit. The black woman with the British accent was an especially clever touch, because it would play to my, ah, prejudices. I would naturally assume that Nate Knowland, being white, would not be able to distinguish easily a British accent from a Barbadian one. I was meant to think that the black woman walking with Professor Zant that night was Astrid Venable, the cousin of Lemaster Carlyle.”

“Might one ask why the inventor of the story would want you to think that?”

“I can imagine two reasons. Astrid Venable was, at the time, a senior aide to Senator Malcolm Whisted. If she was implicated, even by rumor, in Professor Zant’s death, that could hardly help the Senator’s presidential chances. Second, it places Zant’s death a little bit closer to the throne.”

“The throne?”

“By extension. If Astrid Venable’s implication in the murder could hurt the career of Senator Malcolm Whisted, it would surely devastate the career of Lemaster Carlyle.”

“Then what you are suggesting, Chief Vallely, is that whoever invented the story intended to harm one career or the other?”

“I think it’s possible, yes. So, naturally, I thought of Cameron Knowland, Nate’s father, and a big booster of the President. Perhaps Cameron, working through his son, took advantage of the murder to hurt the Senator.”

A moment while the two men pondered. Bruce’s eye fell on the chessboard, the armies, one black and one white, locked in eternal combat. Whenever one battle ended, you set up the pieces and started another. All at once he felt terribly tired.

“Fascinating notion, Chief Vallely. Trouble is, doesn’t quite square with the facts. Cameron Knowland was Lemaster’s biggest booster for the job, one. Stuck with him through the shaky early months, two. And, three, Chief Vallely, one happens to know that the two of them are friends of very long standing.”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary, I thought of that. And, besides, Astrid Venable denies absolutely that she was in Elm Harbor that night. She knew him, she saw him socially for a time, she spoke to him two days before, but did not see him that night. As it happens, she seems to be telling the truth, since she was at a forum on the media and politics that night at the University of Texas. You might have seen it on C-SPAN.” Bruce smiled. “And so I decided that the lie, assuming it was a lie, could not have been intended to bring down Lemaster Carlyle. Possibly Astrid Venable, possibly Malcolm Whisted, but not Lemaster Carlyle. And that leads me to the second of the two details I think were manufactured for my benefit.”

“And what detail is that, Chief Vallely?”

“The location. Town Street is just two blocks from Hilliman Tower, where Zant had his office, but it also forms the rear boundary of Kepler Quadrangle, the divinity school, where Julia Carlyle is a deputy dean. Julia Carlyle also happens to be Kellen Zant’s ex-lover, and he remained obsessed with her to the day he died, as I was bound to discover. I think whoever invented this story wanted me to consider the possibility that Kellen Zant was on Town Street because he had been at Kepler that night. Why doesn’t matter. I was meant to begin thinking of the two of them, Kellen Zant and Julia Carlyle, and speculating on the possibilities.”

“Really, Chief Vallely, this is becoming rather lurid.” Holding up his smooth white palms as if to prove his innocence. “To be sure, sexual freedom, wave of the future, and so forth. One happens to be rather libertarian. To each his own, me. But Julia Carlyle happens not to strike one as the sort of woman who—”

“I agree with you, Mr. Secretary. I agree. The point is, whoever manufactured the story wanted me to think along those lines.”

The pout was back. The secretary’s eyes ranged over the bookshelves. Perhaps the answer was there. “And do you seriously accuse me of being, as it were, the manufacturer?”

“No, Mr. Secretary. I don’t think you invented it. I think you passed it on. You needed an eyewitness you could coerce and I could browbeat, preferably one with a powerful father you could sic on me, to make me even more dogged once I imagined the rich alums didn’t want me on the trail.” When this brought no denial, Bruce plunged confidently on. “Then, having suggested the story in the first place, you could monitor my progress, and make sure, through your constant doubts, that I would continue to believe it to be the truth.”

“And how precisely would I have coerced young Knowland? Given that he does indeed possess, as you nicely put it, a powerful father.”

“Because of the powerful father. That’s my whole point.” Bruce stayed on the sofa with an effort. He wanted to be up and striding, but the secretary might take it wrong. “Nathaniel Knowland was a marginal student, far too busy having fun to take his classes seriously. At the same time, he was worried about disappointing his father. As his grades got worse, he worried more. I think you gave him some sort of reassurance. You made a deal to keep him in school. He takes the semester off, then comes back in the fall with a clean slate.”

“Which leads us back to where we began, Chief Vallely. Even if one grants for the sake of argument your quite extraordinary hypothesis, one would now need to imagine the existence of an individual possessing, you will excuse me, sufficient influence to recruit me to his nefarious plan, as well as an incentive to mislead you, both as to the involvement of Astrid Venable and to the possible relationship between Kellen Zant and Julia Carlyle.”