The Chill

Chapter 15

I drove up under the dripping trees to Helen Haggerty’s place. Two deputies messing around outside the front door wouldn’t let me in or answer any questions. It was turning out to be a bad day.

I drifted over to the campus and into the Administration Building. I had some idea of talking to Laura Sutherland, the Dean of Women, but her office was locked. All the offices were locked. The building was deserted except for a white-headed man in blue jeans who was sweeping the corridor with a long-handled push-broom. He looked like Father Time, and I had a nightmare moment of thinking that he was sweeping Helen’s last vestiges away.

In a kind of defensive reflex I got out my notebook and looked up the name of the chairman of the modem languages department. Dr. Geisman. The old man with the push-broom knew where his office was:

“It’s in the new Humanity Building, down the line.” He pointed. “But he won’t be there on a Saturday afternoon.”

The old man was mistaken. I found Geisman in the department office on the first floor of the Humanities Building, sitting with a telephone receiver in one hand and a pencil in the other. I had seen him coming out of Bradshaw’s conference the day before, a heavy middle-aged man with thick spectacles imperfectly masking anxious little eyes.

“One moment,” he said to me; and into the telephone: “I’m sorry you can’t help us, Mrs. Bass. I realize you have your family responsibilities and of course the remuneration is not great for a special lecturer.”

He sounded foreign, though he had no accent. His voice was denatured, as if English was just another language he had learned.

“I am Dr. Geisman,” he said as he hung up and stroked out a name on the list in front of him. “Are you Dr. de Falla?”

“No. My name is Archer.”

“What are your qualifications? Do you have an advanced degree?”

“In the university of hard knocks.”

He didn’t respond to my smile. “A member of our faculty is defunct, as you must know, and I’ve had to give up my Saturday to an attempt to find a replacement for her. If you expect me to take your application seriously–”

“I’m not applying for anything, doctor, except possibly a little information. I’m a private detective investigating Professor Haggerty’s death, and I’m interested in how she happened to land here.”

“I have no time to go into all that again. There are classes which must be met on Monday. If this Dr. de Falla doesn’t arrive, or proves impossible, I don’t know what to do.” He peered at his wristwatch. “I’m due at the Los Angeles airport at six-thirty.”

“You can spare five minutes, anybody can.”

“Very well. Five minutes.” He tapped the crystal of his watch. “You wish to know how Miss Haggerty came here? I can’t say, except that she appeared in my office one day and asked for a position. She had heard about Professor Farrand’s heart attack. This is our second emergency in a month.”

“Who told her about the heart attack?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps Dean Sutherland. She gave Dean Sutherland as a local reference. But it was common knowledge, it was in the paper.”

“Was she living here before she applied for a job with you?”

“I believe so. Yes, she was. She told me she already had a house. She liked the place, and wished to remain. She was very eager for the post. Frankly, I had some doubts about her. She had a master’s degree from Chicago but she wasn’t fully qualified. The school where she had been teaching, Maple Park, is not credentialed on our level. But Dean Sutherland told me she needed the position and I let her have it, unfortunately.”

“I understood she had a private income.”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Ladies with a private income don’t take on four sections of French and German, plus counseling duties, at a salary of less than five thousand dollars. Perhaps she meant her alimony. She told me she was having difficulty collecting her alimony.” His spectacles glinted as he looked up. “You knew that she had been recently divorced?”

“I heard that. Do you know where her ex-husband is?”

“No. I had very few words with her at any time. Do you suspect him?”

“I have no reason to. But when a woman is killed you normally look for a man who had a motive to kill her. The local police have other ideas.”

“You don’t agree with them?”

“I’m keeping my mind open, doctor.”

“I see. They tell me one of our students is under suspicion.”

“So I hear. Do you know the girl?”

“No. She was registered for none of our departmental courses, fortunately.”

“Why ‘fortunately’?”

“She is psychoneurotic, they tell me.” His myopic eyes looked as vulnerable as open oysters under the thick lenses of his glasses. “If the administration employed proper screening procedures we would not have students of that sort on the campus, endangering our lives. But we are very backward here in some respects.” He tapped the crystal of his watch again. “You’ve had your five minutes.”

“One more question, doctor. Have you been in touch with Helen Haggerty’s family?”

“Yes, I phoned her mother early this morning. Dean Bradshaw asked me to perform that duty, though properly I should think it was his duty. The mother, Mrs. Hoffman, is flying out here and I have to meet her at the Los Angeles airport.”

“At six-thirty?”

He nodded dismally. “There seems to be no one else available. Both of our deans are out of town–”

“Dean Sutherland, too?”

“Dean Sutherland, too. They’ve gone off and left the whole business on my shoulders.” His glasses blurred with self-pity, and he took them off to wipe them. “It’s foggy, and I can’t see to drive properly. My eyesight is so poor that without my glasses I can’t tell the difference between you and the Good Lord himself.”

“There isn’t much difference.”

He put on his glasses, saw that this was a joke, and emitted a short barking laugh.

“What plane is Mrs. Hoffman coming in on, doctor?”

“United, from Chicago. I promised to meet her at the United baggage counter.”

“Let me.”

“Are you serious?”

“It will give me a chance to talk to her. Where do you want me to bring her?”

“I reserved her a room at the Pacific Hotel. I could meet you there, at eight, say.”

“Fine.”

He got up and came around the desk and shook my hand vigorously. As I was leaving the building, a small, old man in a black hat and a greenish black cloak came sidling out of the fog. He had a dyed-looking black mustache, hectic black eyes, a wine flush on his hollow cheeks.

“Dr. de Falla?”

He nodded. I held the door for him. He swept off his hat and bowed.

“Merci beaucoup.”

His rubber-soled shoes made no more sound than a spider. I had another one of my little nightmare moments. This one was Doctor Death.