Murder by Mocha (35 page)

Now, as we crossed the lush green of the manicured campus, Madame openly admired the main library’s High-Victorian Gothic style. We quickly checked the brass plaque for the architect’s name and I noticed the building was a national landmark, which housed the college library, a collection of rare first editions, and the Juliana Gregg Saunders Archive and Reading Room.

Madame pointed at the plaque. “Who knew Juliana Saunders had a philanthropic bone in that venal body of hers?”

“You know the woman?”

“I’m afraid so. She’s one of Otto’s more disagreeable clients—and in oh-so-many ways. Last year she bid on a Chuck Close self-portrait because ‘it was just the right size’ to fit her two-story Park Avenue living room and the colors matched her brand-new Aubusson.”

“Ouch.”

“Thank goodness she lost the auction.”

“Yes . . .” I was smiling now but not because of the story. I realized Madame’s acquaintance with Ms. Saunders might be the miracle we needed, right when we needed it.

The Essen Library, a private institution at a private college, required a student or faculty ID to enter. Rather than try to explain ourselves at the dean’s office, I thought my work-around would save us valuable time.

“Do you think you can channel this Juliana Gregg Saunders? Imitate her mannerisms? Her attitude? Convince people you’re the real deal?”

“Why would I want to do that?” Madame suppressed a shudder.

I pointed out the security issue, and Madame agreed. As we ascended the steps to the library’s entrance, she slipped into her role and boldly took the lead.

The student working the front desk didn’t bother to look up from her iPad as we approached. “ID, please,” she said, hand extended.

Madame squared her shoulders. “My good woman, one does not need a common ID when one’s name is on the door!”

The girl looked up. “Excuse me?”

Madame tapped a manicured nail on the polished desk. “My name is Juliana Gregg Saunders, and I wish to see my room!”

“Room?”

“The Juliana Gregg Saunders Archive and Reading Room, young dolt. I pay a steep annual stipend for the privilege, and because the room bears my name, I would like to see it . . .
Now
.”

“Oh . . . oh! I’m so sorry Mrs. Gregg—I mean Saunders, er,
Mrs
. Saunders.”

Madame sniffed and the student jumped to her feet. “You can go up right now. It’s almost lunchtime, but I’m sure Ms. Themis will be happy to give you a tour.”

“Announce us,” Madame said. “Immediately.”

“Of course!” The girl lifted the receiver and with shaky hands dialed a three digit extension. She waited. “Ms. Themis isn’t picking up. She’s probably working in the stacks. If you want, I can escort you—”

“I’m capable of following directions, if they are accurate.”

The girl appeared relieved. “Okay. Take those stairs one flight up, to the second floor. Then make a left.”

“Come, Clare. Let’s see how this institution spends my largess!”

A wide staircase behind a granite arch led upstairs. Halfway to the top, Madame sighed. “That was quite distasteful. Imagine going through life behaving in such a ghastly manner. It’s so taxing . . .”

“Don’t drop your newfound nasty just yet. We’re not out of the woods.”

I opened a heavy door and we entered the archive. The walls were lined with darkly stained shelves packed with volumes thin and thick. A half-dozen reading tables, arranged to take advantage of the western sun streaming through the tall windows, were empty now. In fact, we saw only one occupant—an elderly woman with wild gray hair, sorting books beside a wheeled cart.

Madame cleared her throat. “Excuse me—”

Without facing us, the woman raised a hand for silence. With her other hand she fished a pair of false teeth out of a Mason jar and slipped them into her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, facing us at last. “I can’t say a comprehensible word without my teeth. Someday I’ll be gone from this room, but these choppers will still be in that jar, chattering away like the voice of the Cumaean Sibyl!”

The woman approached us, her teeth roughly in place, which gave her a crooked, toothy smile. Not much younger than Madame, she had that same spark in her eyes and spring in her step. Dressed appropriately tweedy, her jacket actually had leather patches on the elbows. But her outspoken attitude and wild gray-white hair were far from retiring.

“I’m Miss Themis, the head archivist. But please call me Phoebe,” she said, extending a hand.

“I’m Juliana Gregg Saunders,” Madame said solemnly. “And this is Clare, my personal assistant.”

“Now that’s odd,” Phoebe said, “because the Juliana I know is just now rolling out of bed with a bad hangover and worse disposition.”

The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. “And between you and me, after a typical evening in her cups, the last thing Juliana would
ever
do is visit her reading room.”

My knees felt suddenly shaky. Madame paled. Phoebe simply cackled and slapped her knee. “Look at you two! Your faces are white as whippletree petals!”

“Whippletree?”

“Dogwood. Part of Chaucer’s nomenclature from “The Knight’s Tale.” Did you know Boccaccio was the source of that tale? His was an epic, of course, and old Geoffrey changed the genre to romance, although, inspired by Boethius, he added an undercurrent of philosophy.”

“I see.”

“Too much information?” She cackled again. “Oh my. Why so serious?” she leaned close. “Nothing to fear. Your secret little masquerade is safe for now. But, of course, with good scholarship, most secrets are revealed, sooner or later.”

“Sooner is better,” I replied, offering my hand. “My name is Clare Cosi and this is Mrs. Dubois. We apologize for crashing your reading room, but we need information. It’s a matter of life or death—”

“Tea!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Earl Gray. There’s nothing better than a strong tea served hot with a story well told.”

“We don’t have time for—”

“Sounds
delightful
,” Madame cut in, squeezing my elbow.

I forced a smile. “Thank you so much.”

M
INUTES later, tea was served under a tall, open window, in the warmth of the noontime sun. A flowering laurel tree stood just outside, swaying in the spring breeze. The sea-tinged air flowed in off the manicured quad along with sounds of laughter from passing students.

The cups were cardboard, the sugar in little packets, but the hot tea, freshly brewed from imported loose leaves, could have raised the dead, and the home-baked mini chocolate-chip scones, rich with butter and cream, were perfectly balanced—the lighter flavors rescued from complete obliteration by the judicious control of the chocolate’s darkness.

When we were all settled in, Madame tactfully explained our quest. “We’re searching for a thesis written by one of your alumni. Unfortunately, we don’t know the author’s name. We only know the subject.”

Phoebe patted Madame’s hand. “Never fear, Mrs. Dubois. All of our papers are cross-referenced.”

I jumped in. “This paper mentions words or perhaps names. One of them is Laeta, another is Severa—” I was ready to spell them out, but Phoebe was way ahead of me.

“Laeta, Severa, and Rufina. You don’t have to be coy, ladies. If you wanted to see ‘The Romance of the Vestals’ by Thelma Vale Pixley you need only ask—the dean of the college, that is.”

Aphrodite’s real name is Thelma Vale Pixley?

Phoebe rose and fetched a thin, worn volume from a shelf. “Once upon a time, this notorious thesis was referenced each and every semester,” she said. “That’s not true anymore. Time has passed, and the school has done its best to make everyone forget.”

Madame arched an eyebrow. “Forget?”

The archivist stood at my shoulder, volume in hand. “I’m not supposed to show this to anyone but students or alumni. Not without the express permission of Dean Parnassus.”

I felt a pressure in my chest.
So close. Are we dead?

“Oh, what the Hades!” Phoebe declared.

She placed the volume on the table in front of me, and I turned immediately to the lending sheets attached to the inside back cover. As Phoebe spoke, I rapidly scanned the names of those who’d looked at this thesis in the past eleven years. None looked familiar—and I felt crushed.

“That paper is a real potboiler,” Phoebe said. “As scholarship it’s rubbish, but as fiction it’s worthy of Anne Radcliffe.”

“I adored Anne Radcliffe when I was a girl,” Madame said. “I do believe I married an Italian man because I read
The Italian
at too impressionable an age.”

“Well, my guess is Miss Pixley was reading Henry Miller,” Phoebe said. “Or perhaps the Marquis de Sade, because the girl turned a tale of intrigue and injustice from the late Roman Empire into a Dionysian tragedy of sinister lust—complete with erotic passages. Of course, much of Greco-Roman mythology was driven by amorous desire.”

She tipped her head to the swaying branches beyond the open window.

“My beautiful laurel even has her roots in such a tale—a nymph transformed into a tree, the answer to a prayer as she ran from the clutches of a lustful god. ‘A heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in roots, her face lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.’ ”

Madame sighed. “So much yearning, desire, and heartbreak. The young live in Puccini.”

“Oh, Puccini!
‘Mi chiamano Mimì’
is one of my favorite arias.”

“I have it as my ringtone.”

“Did you know the libretto for
Gianni Schicchi
is based on an incident mentioned in the
Divine Comedy
?”

“Which one?”

As the newfound friends continued talking, I paged through the long paper. Finally, I interrupted: “Excuse me, but what was Miss Pixley attempting to explore here? An Apollonian versus Dionysian philosophy?”

“Oh, nothing so deep as that, I’m afraid.” Phoebe tipped her head to the campus quad. “And yet her dissertation became so popular among the other girls, she was made something of a campus celebrity.”

“But isn’t this supposed to be a scholarly study?”

“There’s some scholarship involved,” Phoebe said. “The trial and execution of the three innocent Vestals occurred in AD 213, as in the thesis. And Emperor Caracalla, the man whose lust for them led to their death sentences, was as brutally handsome as he was murderously brutal. But the rest of it is a fiction that sprung from the fevered, postpubescent mind of Thelma Pixley.”

“What happened to the author?” I asked.

Phoebe’s teeth rattled. “
That
story is quite a potboiler, too. And it also ends in an execution. It was back when this college was exclusively a girl’s school. With that notorious paper circulating throughout the student body, Miss Pixley became a ringleader. She spearheaded a pagan revival. Thelma and her friends formed a secret sorority, complete with Dionysian rites.”

Phoebe lowered her voice. “These were daughters of affluence, you understand, so recreational drugs were easy to purchase. But this was a school for girls, so there was a dearth of men around with whom to practice their rites.”

“Then who did they target?” I asked.

“Male faculty members. Thelma focused her lust on one man in particular, a literature professor with a promising career ahead of him. Dr. Victor Temple also had a wife and a young daughter.”

Phoebe set her cup on the desk. “Dr. Temple was a fine educator and a good man. But in the end he was just a man, and he fell into bed with young Miss Pixley.”

Phoebe paused. “Not long after that, Dr. Temple’s wife, Dora, discovered the affair and shot her husband to death.”

Madame gasped and I blinked.
Aphrodite lured a respected, married professor into an affair—one that ended in murder?

As Phoebe continued talking, I returned my attention to the library lending sheets. After searching the names carefully, I pointed: “I see a Temple listed here. A woman named Olympia Temple accessed this paper five years ago. Do you know who she is?”

Phoebe nodded. “Olympia Temple was the only daughter of Dora and Victor Temple.”

“Was?” Madame repeated.

“Yes, past tense is appropriate, I’m sorry to say. Olympia crossed the Styx by her own hand.”

“Suicide?”

Phoebe nodded. “The year her mother died in prison, Olympia jumped to her death from the Bay Creek bridge.”

“Will you tell us more?” I asked.

“I will—and I’ll give you an even more knowledgeable source for future reference.”

FORTY-THREE

“C
AN you tell me what actually happened?” I asked.

Madame and I were now sitting in the cramped offices of the
Bay Creek Village Chronicle
. Phoebe Themis had suggested we speak with Mr. Kenneth Jeffries. According to our helpful librarian, he’d done the most thorough reporting on the case.

“What
actually
happened?” Mr. Jeffries barked a laugh. “Really, Ms. Cosi, for any trial, that’s a Rashomon sort of question, isn’t it?”

With the late afternoon sun streaming through his window, Mr. Jeffries’s hair looked as gray-white and crumpled as the old newsprint piled around him. He’d been an AP stringer during the years of the Temple murder and subsequent trial. Now he was editor in chief of the
Chronicle’
s struggling, three-man operation. The grizzled veteran appeared pleased to hear his stories were remembered, though his tone tended to drift into the land of smug.

“What
actually
happened is entirely dependent on with whom you speak. In the prosecutor’s view, the murder was premeditated, and Mrs. Dora Temple was a cold-blooded killer.”

“And what did the defense believe?” I asked.

“The murder was accidental. Mrs. Temple wanted only to frighten her husband’s young mistress by pointing the gun at her. She never expected the struggle to follow. The fatal wounding of Dr. Temple was sheer accident.”