Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (21 page)

Connie Samari, mothlike in a red-and-black polyester kimono, toyed with her crystal earrings. “I suppose we could all write commemorative poems in honor of John Clay Hawkins,” she murmured. “Read them at the memorial service.”

Snowfield held up a restraining hand. “Just a moment,” he said. “I think that I am the obvious choice for regional poet laureate, now that Hawkins has shuffled off the mortal coil. In light of that, the hour ought to be spent introducing people to my own works, with perhaps a short farewell to Hawkins.” He shrugged. “I don’t care which of you does that.”

The poets were so intent upon their territorial struggles that they did not notice the two self-appointed investigators watching them from the doorway. What, after all, was a trifle like murder compared to their artistic considerations?

Amy Dillow, Hawkins’s graduate student, glared at the upstarts. Two spots of color appeared in her pale cheeks, and she drew herself up with as much dignity as one can muster when wearing a pink chenille bathrobe and bunny slippers. “I am appalled at your attitudes!” she announced. “John Clay Hawkins was a major poet, deserving of much greater recognition than he ever received. The idea of any of you assuming his mantle is laughable. I will conduct Dr. Hawkins’s conference hour myself. I have just completed a paper on the symbolism in the works of Hawkins, and it seems logical to read that tomorrow as we pause to consider his achievements.”

Rose Hanelon strode into the fray, rubbing her hands together in cheerful anticipation. “Well, this won’t be hard!” she announced. “It sounds just like a faculty meeting in the English department.”

The poets stopped quarreling and stared at her. “Who are you?” Snowfield demanded with a touch of apprehension. He didn’t think any major women poets had been invited to this piddling conference. Anyway, she wasn’t Nikki Giovanni, so she probably didn’t matter.

“Relax,” said Rose. “If anybody called me a poet, I’d sue them for slander. I’m not here to replace Caesar, but to bury him. He was murdered, you know.”

Amy Dillow sighed theatrically. “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Margie Collier, ever the peacemaker, said, “Why don’t I get us some coffee while Miss Hanelon speaks to you about the murder. We thought it might be nice to get the preliminary questioning done while we wait for the police.” She hurried away before anyone could raise any objections to this plan, leaving Rose Hanelon alone with a roomful of egotists and possibly one murderer.

The poets sat down in a semicircle and faced her with varying degrees of resentment. Some of them were sputtering about the indignity of being a suspect in a sordid murder case.

Rose sighed. “I always find this the boring part of murder mysteries,” she confided to the assembly. “It seems to go on for pages and pages, while we listen to alibis, and tedious contradictory accounts of the deceased’s relationships with all present. And in order to find out who’s lying, I need access to outside documents detailing the life and loves of the victim. Obviously, I can’t do that, since we’re stormbound on this island.”

“Perhaps we could tell the police that Hawkins committed suicide,” said Carter Jute. “That would protect us all from notoriety, and it’s very correct in literary circles. Hemingway, Sylvia Plath.”

“We
could
blame it on Ted Hughes,” said Rose sarcastically, “but that wouldn’t be true, either. You’ll find that the police are awfully wedded to facts, as opposed to hopeful interpretation. They will investigate the crime scene, get fingerprints off the bottle, and that’ll be that.”

“Surely the killer would wipe the fingerprints off the murder weapon?” said Snowfield. He reddened under the stares of everyone else present. “Well, I’ve read a few whodunits. After all, C. Day Lewis, the English poet laureate, wrote some under the name of Nicholas Blake.”

“Never mind about the murder!” said Carter Jute. “What are we going to do about Hawkins’s time slot tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Rose. “Why don’t you discuss that among yourselves? And while you do, I’d like to read that paper on the life and works of John Clay Hawkins. Do you have it with you, Ms. Dillow?”

Amy Dillow stood up, and yawned. “It’s in my room. I’ll get it for you. But why do you want to read it now?”

“It helps to have a clear idea who the victim was,” said Rose.

“Oh, all right.” She shuffled off in her bunny slippers. “I haven’t proofed it yet, though.”

In the doorway she nearly collided with Margie Collier, who was returning with a pot of coffee and seven cups. She set the tray on the coffee table, and beamed at Rose Hanelon. “Have you solved it yet?”

“Not yet,” said Rose. “It’s easier on television, where one of the actors is paid to confess. Real life is less tidy. This lot haven’t even decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour yet.”

“Well, you could read John Clay Hawkins’s last poem,” said Margie. “The one he was writing when he died.”

“He was working?” said Rose.

“Yes. I looked at the paper under poor Mr. Hawkins’s hand when we examined his body. Of course, we can’t remove the actual paper from the room. I’m sure the police would object to that, but I did make a copy while I was waiting for the hotel manager to arrive. Would you like to see it?” She fished a sheet of hotel stationery out of the pocket of her robe and handed it to Rose.

“Read it aloud!” Snowfield called out. The others nodded assent.

“Oh, all right,” grumbled the mystery writer. “I knew you would find some way to turn this into a poetry reading.” Holding the paper at arm’s length, she squinted at the spidery writing, and recited:

She lowered the paper and blinked at the assortment of poets. “That is the most stupid and pointless thing I have ever read. Do any of you bards get any meaning out of that?”

Jess Scarberry shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, these professor types don’t have to make sense. If you don’t understand what they write, they reckon it’s your fault.”

Snowfield scowled at him. “It seems clear enough to me. Hawkins was obviously contemplating his own mortality. Perhaps he had a premonition. Keats did.”

Rose Hanelon rolled her eyes. “Keats had medical training and symptoms of tuberculosis. I’d hardly call that a premonition. I should have thought that if Hawkins foresaw his own murder, he’d have gotten out of there, rather than sit down and write a poem about it. Still, with poets, you never know.”

“Who’s Norman?” asked Margie with a puzzled frown.

“A metaphor for Everyman,” said Carter Jute.

Connie Samari snickered. “
Everyman
. How typical of the male poet’s arrogance! And I think that poem stinks!”

“I expect it’s over your head,” said Snowfield.

Amy Dillow returned just then with a sheaf of dot matrix-printed papers. “Here’s my thesis on Hawkins. It isn’t finished, of course, but you may find it helpful.”

“A polygraph machine would be helpful,” said Rose.
“Reading this is an act of desperation. But it will have to do. Pour me some of that coffee.” She settled down on one of the sofas and began to read, while the bickering went on about her.

Carter Jute handed a cup of coffee to Amy Dillow. “It’s such a shame about poor old Hawkins,” he said. “By the way, Amy, do you have a copy of his current vitae?”

“Why do you ask?”

Jute gave her a boyish smile. “Well, I was thinking what a void his passing will leave in literary circles. There were certain editorial positions he held, and workshops that he taught year after year—”

“And you thought you’d apply for them?” Amy Dillow looked shocked.

“He’d want someone to carry on his work,” Jute assured her.

Connie Samari laughed. “And heaven forbid that his honors should go to someone outside the old-boy network, right?”

Margie Collier looked dismayed to be caught in such a maelstrom of ill will. She had always thought of poets as gentle people, wandering lonely as a cloud while they composed their little odes to nature. “Why don’t we all try to write a poem in memory of poor Dr. Hawkins?” she suggested. “Does anyone do haiku?”

Rose Hanelon looked up from her reading. “You say here that Hawkins was married.”

“He’s divorced,” said Amy.

“From whom?”

“A librarian named Dreama Belcher. They didn’t have any children, though.”

“Just as well,” muttered Snowfield, shuddering. “Imagine what the progeny of someone named Dreama Belcher would look like!”

“What became of her?”

“I don’t know,” said Amy. “Nothing much, I expect.
She didn’t have the temperament to be married to a poet.”

“She preferred monogamy, I expect,” said Samari. “I’ve often thought that male poets were reincarnations of walruses. Can’t you just picture them up there on a rock, surrounded by a herd of sunbathing cow-wives?”

Jess Scarberry reddened. “It’s understandable,” he said. “Poets need inspiration like a car needs a battery. If you’re writing love poems, you need something to jumpstart the creative process.”

Rose Hanelon ignored him. “Walruses,” she echoed. “That’s interesting. So John Clay Hawkins was … er … Byronic. That could have been hazardous to his health. Especially if one of his girlfriends objected to his philandering. Are any of his conquests here?” She peered at Amy Dillow with a glint of malicious interest.

The young graduate student blushed and looked away. “Certainly not!” she murmured. “I was solely interested in his work.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Connie Samari. “I met him for the first time tonight. And he definitely wasn’t my type.”

“Yes, but if you went to his room to discuss your poetry, and he made a pass at you, you might have killed him by accident, trying to fend him off.”

“If I had, I would have called a press conference to announce it,” said Samari. “I certainly wouldn’t have fled the scene and denied it.”

Jute and Snowfield, seated on either side of her, unobtrusively edged away. Jess Scarberry crossed his legs and whistled tunelessly. Rose Hanelon went back to reading the thesis.

“Would anybody like more coffee?” asked Margie nervously.

After a few moments of uneasy silence, the poets returned to the topic of Hawkins and the professional repercussions that would ensue.

“Wasn’t he set to do a guest professorship in Virginia this summer?” asked Snowfield.

“Probably. I know he was slated to write the introduction to the Regional Poets Anthology,” said Samari. “Had he written that?”

Amy Dillow shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

“I was thinking of applying for his slot at Bread Loaf,” mused Carter Jute.

“There’ll never be another John Clay Hawkins,” Amy Dillow assured them. “He was the greatest poet of our region.”

“Oh, come now!” Snowfield protested. “You ladies always say that about a good-looking fellow who reads well.”

“Oh, don’t be such a dinosaur!” said the graduate student. “I loved Hawkins’s work before I even knew what he looked like. He’s one of the few original voices in contemporary poetry. The fact that he was a drunk and a lecher is neither here nor there.”

Rose Hanelon was wondering if Detective Joe Villanova was awake at—what was it?—four A.M. Probably not. He wouldn’t be much better at this than she would, though, with no forensic evidence to go on. “Oh, well,” said Rose. “Even if I don’t figure out who the murderer is, all of you will be too exhausted tomorrow to commit any more murders, no matter which of you is guilty.”

Carter Jute consulted his watch. “Gosh, that’s right! We all have to be on panels tomorrow. Or rather, today. And we still haven’t decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour.”

The others stood up, yawned and stretched. “Long day,” they murmured.

“Wait! I’m not finished!” Rose was still riffling through the clues. “Is anyone here named Norman?” she asked in tones of desperation. “Does anyone know Hawkins’s ex-wife?”

They all shook their heads. “Sorry we can’t help, little lady,” drawled Scarberry.

“Wait!” said Connie Samari. “We never decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour!”

“Ah! Hawkins’s hour,” said Rose Hanelon with a feral smile. “I will be taking that.”

By skipping breakfast, Rose managed to get three hours of sleep before the conference sessions began, but she still looked like a catatonic bag lady. Five cups of coffee later, she had recovered the use of most of her brain cells, but she was still considerably lacking in presentability. When she ran into Joe Villanova, helping himself to doughnuts at the coffee break in the hall, he did a double take and said, “If you’ll lie down, I’ll draw chalk marks around you and ask the coroner to take a look at you.”

His next-door neighbor managed a feeble snarl. “Buzz off, Villanova. I’m solving this case for you. Come to the next lecture in the Catawba Room, and you’ll see.”

“You don’t mind if we continue doing the fingerprinting and the suspect interrogations in the meantime, do you?”

“Not at all. So glad you could finally manage to come.”

“Hey, I’m not risking my neck in a helicopter for a guy who is already dead. Listen, when you do this lecture of yours, don’t violate anybody’s rights, okay? I have to get a conviction.”

Rose looked up as a gaggle of silver-haired women walked by. They were wearing Poet name tags and they seemed to be earnestly discussing onomatopoeia. “I don’t suppose you could arrest all of them, Joe,” she said. “We have quite a surplus of poets.”

The Catawba Room was packed. Some of those present were groupies of the distinguished and handsome
poet, and they had not been informed of his death. Others had heard that a mystery writer was going to conduct the session, and attended in hopes of hearing a post mortem. All the poets were there in force in case Rose Hanelon didn’t use the whole hour. Scarberry, whose session had consisted of three elderly ladies, adjourned his group and joined the crowd in the Catawba Room. Villanova, with a ridiculous smirk on his face, sprawled in the front row with his arms folded, waiting for Rose to make an idiot of herself.