College-Cut Kill

Chapter Five Accidentally — On Purpose

I cut the History class. Tilly cut her class at the same hour and we drove down Route 19 through Clearwater to Largo and then turned left to Indian Rocks Beach. I found a place where we could park in the shade and watch the placid gulf. On the way I had told her of the talk with Cord.

She look my hand, looked into my eyes and said, “For the first time it’s real to you, isn’t it, Joe?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“It’s been real to me all along. You know how when people go with each other, they talk about everything under the sun. Once Ted and Step were arguing about suicide. It was after Sherman had died. Step couldn’t see that it was wrong — but Ted told us that the only time he could see the remotest justification was when a person was painfully and incurably ill — that the world is too wide and wonderful a place to leave before the time you have is up. He wasn’t just talking, Joe.”

“I think I would have liked him, Till.”

“You would have. I know it. When they told me he’d hung himself, I found out later that I’d screamed that he didn’t do it, that someone had done it to him. I’m still just as certain of that as I was during the first moments. He was incapable of it. They were holding the last meeting of the year, the election of officers for the next year it was. They waited and waited and then they went looking for him.

“Brad cried like a baby. They cut him down and then he was shipped north for the funeral. I couldn’t go to that. I couldn’t even go to the memorial service for him in the chapel at school. I was too sick. They had me in the infirmary. When I got out I went north and took that job.”

“Up until now,” I said, “I’ve been playing an intellectual game. Mental musical chairs. Now it isn’t a game any more.”

“For me it never has been.” She bit her lip. “Joe, you’d better not let anything happen to you. You’d just better not.”

I kissed her then, there in the cool shade with the warm wind touching our faces, and she came alive in my arms in a way I’ve never before experienced. Holding her was holding flame and purpose and a clean, wanting strength. It shook me, and shook her too. We sat apart from each other.

We said very little on the drive back. I left her off at the sorority house. I went to a bar and had a few. I arrived at Gamma U in time for dinner. I talked and I listened politely and the table conversation went over the surface of my mind while below the surface a tallish, faintly awkward girl walked, and her eyes were more than promise...

I woke with a start at dawn. The bedroom had an outside door. I had left it open and latched the screen. A tall figure was silhouetted there.

“Rod,” he said. “Rod, let me in.”

I went to the door. “Oh, Arthur! Man, it’s a little after six. I didn’t know you boys were going to drop in at this time of day.”

I unlatched the door. He brushed by me, walked to the bed and sat down, staring at his big hands. His faintly Lincolnesque appearance was more pronounced. The eyes had sunk deeper into his head. His cheeks were more hollow. I suddenly knew that this was no time for patter and laughter.

“I can’t depend on anybody else,” he said. “You’ve got to help me.”

I sat beside him and reached over and took my cigarettes from the bedside table. I lit both cigarettes with my lighter. “What is it?”

“The most awful mess yet, Rod. The worst. Everybody’s running around like headless chickens. I came out here to talk to somebody with sense. This time it has rattled me.”

“Get to it, Arthur. What happened?”

“The police phoned the house at three this morning. It happened at the Onyx Court.” I barely concealed my start of surprise. That was the court and trailer outfit owned by the Toberlys.

“They said that they had a body tentatively identified as Bradford Carroll. I dressed and went over along with Bill Armand. The place was swarming with police. Brad’s throat had been cut. I told them that it was Brad all right. I still feel sick. There was blood all over...”

“Take it easy, Arthur.”

“They were still questioning Bob Toberly. He’s a student too. We rushed him a couple of years ago and passed him over. He runs the place along with his wife. It’s sort of a crummy place. Toberly said that Brad and his wife, a tall dark girl that he recognized as a student, had registered in at about ten for the night. He said they’d done it many times before. He said that they were secretely married.

“Well, Bill, standing beside me, said ‘Laura!’ They turned on Bill and made him admit that he thought it sounded like Laura Trainor. They got the name of the sorority house and two cops went to pick her up. They’re holding her now. I’ve done all I could. I wired Brad’s parents, and the sorority sisters phoned Laura’s father. I heard he’s on his way down. Rod, it would be bad enough without all that trouble last year, but this is absolutely the worst. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

I left him sitting there and made him a stiff drink. Laura was one of Tilly’s sorority sisters, along with Molly. So Tilly would know already. I made a second stiff one for myself. He took his glass numbly and drank it as though it were water.

“The razor was right there,” he said. “I saw it. A straight razor. He used them. I guess it was an affectation. I guess he had a kit with him so he could get cleaned up and go directly from the Onyx Court to class.”

“Do you think Laura did it?”

He shuddered. “How do I know what to think? I don’t think she’s capable of a thing like that. But they could have quarreled.”

“What will happen?”

“It was too late for the morning papers but the afternoon papers will give it a big play. They’ll bring up all that stuff from last year. There were reporters there. Toberly’s wife put on her best dress. To her it was like a party. They’re giving Toberly a bad time. Brad voted against Toberly, of course, two years ago. Most of us did. They’ll twist and turn until they make a motive out of it.”

“How can I help?”

He gave me a tired smile. “You’ve helped by listening. I have to go back now. I have to get everybody together and tell them to keep their damn mouths shut. Then I have to pack Brad’s things. A policeman is going to help me. He’ll be looking for evidence. He’s in the house now, sitting on a chair outside Brad’s room. He was there when I left anyway.”

“What about Brad’s people?”

“They’ll be down, I suppose. I ought to make a reservation for them at the hotel. Look, would you do that for me?”

“Sure thing.”

He stood up and put the glass on the bedside table. “Thanks, Rod. That drink helped a lot.”

“Let me dress. I’ll go in with you.”

“No, I’ll go along. I’ll be at the house. See you there.”

Some of the brothers were having an early breakfast when I went in. The single waiter acted jittery. Lieutenant Cord was sitting in the lounge. He came over to me and said, “Is this another one of those accident-prone guys?”

I kept my voice low. “Do you think he cut his throat?”

Cord shrugged his big sloping shoulders. “He could have. The razor’s in the right place. At least it was. But usually people that take a hack at their own throat, they’re timid about it. This was a good try. He damn near slashed his head off — that is, if he did it. Now I got what the boys call an unhealthy interest in you. Want to talk right here?”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

“You come in and give me a queer line of chatter and the next thing I know one of your friends is dead. I like to get all the loose ends pasted in or clipped off. Let’s you stop trying to kid me.”

“How do you mean?”

“I checked your schedule after you left and had a few words over the phone with your professor. I didn’t mention your name. He told me somebody was kidding me and that the department wouldn’t send a student out like that. So talk, Arlin.”

“Suppose I tell you that my reason was good but that it’s my business?”

“First let’s see how you check out last night. You had dinner here and left. Where did you go?”

“Right back to my place on the beach. I studied until about eleven, wrote a few letters and went to bed at about quarter to one.”

“No proof?”

“Not a shred.”

“Now this Toberly tells me that somebody was around asking him questions about how Gamma U turned him down. The guy said it was for a magazine article on fraternities. He didn’t give a name. Toberly gave me a description. It fits you pretty good, Arlin. Want to come on down to see if Toberly can make identification?”

“I give up. It was me.”

“Now don’t you think you better tell uncle?”

Two sophomores walked through into the dining room and stared at us curiously. “Someday I’ll get smarter,” I said. “Come on out and sit in my car for a little while.”

The sun was climbing higher. Cord’s face was drawn with fatigue. I told him my situation. He listened with a sour expression.

“What answer have you come to, Arlin?”

“I can’t give reasons. It’s just a very strong feeling. I say that four of them were murdered Carroll is the fourth. I don’t know about the automobile accident. We’ll skip that one.”

“And you think,” he said bitterly, “that three murders took place right under our noses. You think we’re that stupid!”

“It’s not that you’re stupid, Lieutenant. It’s that the guy behind it is one clever operator. Take the beach party. No trick to get Winniger out into the surf and drown him. No special trick to take advantage of the empty house on a Sunday, start a conversation with Sherman and trick him. And if a guy were disarming enough, he could talk the Flynn boy up onto a chair in the closet on some pretext.

“And now Brad. This last one is bolder than the others. This last one was permitted to even look a little like murder. Was it hard to find out where Brad and Laura had a habit of going? Would it be difficult to wait until Laura left to go back to her sorority house? There was a moon last night. What time did it happen?” I asked Lieutenant Cord.

“Around two, I guess. The way it was discovered so fast, this Toberly couldn’t sleep. He went for a walk around the place. He saw the light on and it bothered him. He took a quick look and phoned. We were there at quarter to three. Doesn’t that spoil the moon angle?”

“Not completely. Sneak in there and find the razor and let him have it. Then snap on the light on the way out to make it look more like a suicide.”

Cord studied me. “You talk a good game, Arlin. You almost get me believing it. Except for one thing. Why would anybody do all that? What the hell reason would he have?”

“Are you going to expose me, Lieutenant?”

He shrugged. “There’s no point in that. Keep playing your little game if you want to, as long as you’re getting paid for it. But stay out of my way. Don’t foul up any of my work.”

He got out of the car. He regarded me soberly. “And don’t leave town. I’m taking a chance on believing you, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do some checking to make sure.”

I had no heart for the classes. I ate and went over to pick up Tilly. She came running out to the car. She climbed in beside me and her fingernails bit into my wrist. “Oh, Joe, I can’t take it any more! All this horror! I keep seeing him the way he was out at your place. Smiling and happy.”

“How did Laura take it?”

“They had to stop questioning her. She’s in the Sandson General Hospital. Shock and hysteria. They’re fools to bother her,” she said hotly. “Laura goes all green if somebody steps on a bug.”

“Have you eaten?”

“No, I couldn’t. And I couldn’t stand going to classes today, Joe. Start the car. Take me away from here. Drive fast, Joe.”

We didn’t get back until late afternoon. We bought a paper and read it together.

That’s the way they covered it, speaking neither of suicide nor murder, but hinting at murder.

From there on the article went into his history and the school groups of which he was a member.

“It’s a ghastly thing,” Tilly said. “The police,” I said, “promise an early solution of Carroll’s mysterious death.”

A friend of Tilly’s came over to the car. Tilly introduced us. The girl said, “How do you like the new ruling, kids?”

“Haven’t seen it yet.”

“No? It’s on all the bulletin boards. Curfew for all students living on the campus in either houses or dorms. All special senior privileges rescinded. Now we stand a bed check just like the lower classes. All absences from living quarters after eleven are to be reported to the office of the dean until further notice. How do you like that?”

“I don’t,” Tilly said. “But what else can they do? Anxious parents will be giving the school a very bad time. They’ve got to have some sort of an answer.”

I dropped Tilly with a promise to pick her up later, and went to the house. Step Krindall looked as glum as his round pink face permitted.

“Special meeting tonight,” he said.

Bill Armand was standing in the lounge, staring out the windows toward the palms that bordered the drive. He gave me a crooked smile.

“Come to college for a liberal education,” he said. “Where have you been all day?”

“Comforting the shaken.”

“Tilly? When you need a stand-in, let me know.”

I was surprised at the sudden feeling of jealousy. “Sure, Bill,” I said easily. “What’s the voting around here? Murder or suicide?”

“The dopes, which I might say covers about ninety percent of our membership, favor suicide. They overlook the very real argument that Brad was too selfish to kill himself. He wouldn’t think of depriving the world of his presence for the next forty years.”

“I thought he was your friend!”

“Is friendship blind, like love?”

“Armand, the adolescent cynic. Who stepped on you, Bill? And how hard?”

His lips tightened and his face turned chalk white. He turned on his heel and walked away.

I ate with placid Step Krindall, Arthur, Al Siminik and a quiet senior named Laybourne at a table for four. It was a very subdued meal. Once I went to a slaughterhouse. I saw the look in the eyes of the steer after that first brutal smack between the eyes. Siminik wore that look. Arthur ate doggedly, as though from a sense of duty.

After coffee, Arthur looked up at the dining-room clock. He rapped on his glass with a knife. “We’ll go up to the meeting room in five minutes. You Step — you other latecomers — hurry it up.”

We filed up to the meeting room. It was a meeting without ritual, the lights on full. Arthur took the chair. “We’ll dispense with the minutes of the previous meeting and with the treasurer’s report. This is a special meeting called for a special purpose. What happened last night was a severe shock to all of us. Brad was... our brother and our friend.”

Siminik startled the group by sobbing once aloud. He knuckled his eyes like a small boy.

Arthur went on. “I have talked with the police, just before dinner. It begins to appear that the verdict of the coroner’s jury will be death by his own hand.”

“Nuts!” Bill Armand said loudly.

Arthur rapped for order. “That’s enough, Armand. If you can’t control yourself, I’ll order you out of the meeting. Lieutenant Cord has made it clear to me that he anticipates that some of you will find a verdict of suicide hard to believe and will make some foolish, amateurish attempt to uncover evidence turning it into a crime. Murder. I have called this meeting to tell you that the police intend to deal with any such quixotic impulse very harshly. I will deal with it very harshly from this end. What happened is police business and will be handled by the police. I hope I’ve made myself clear.

“Now for my second point. The students will ask us Gamma U’s innumerable questions. Was Brad depressed? Did we know about his marriage? It will be the duty of each and every one of you as a Gamma U to politely but firmly evade all such questions. It is our duty as Brad’s friends to keep our mouths shut. By that I do not mean to go about with mysterious and knowing looks. Brad is dead. Nothing can alter that. The policy of this house will be to say that Brad had been troubled lately and that we did not know the cause. Any comment?”

“Yeah, what was he troubled about?” Armand asked.

“I consider that question impertinent, Armand. Any other comments?” He stared around the room. “All right, then. This meeting is adjourned. Wait. One more point. This is for you boys that live in the house. The bed check and curfew will be adhered to rigidly.”

Chairs were shoved back. Arthur walked out first. I went down the stairs and out the door. Tilly was sitting in my car.

“I walked over,” she said. “I didn’t want to be stood up.”

“How did you know I was going to?”

I turned on the lights and motor. She moved over close to me. “We’re going to your place and talk, Joe. I can think more clearly now.”