The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders (15 page)

I lay on my back and stared at the window. The curtains were open and a light just outside threw a square of pale silver across Leslie's neat desk and a chair with a sweater draped over it. Sally Wooten across the hall had gone home after the festival and our end of the wing was quiet. I wondered where Augusta had taken up watch. She rests but I've never seen her sleep, so she might be anywhere in the dormitory or even outside. Down the hall a toilet flushed and somebody in the room below was watching a late-night talk show. A car door slammed.

I had forgotten to ask what happened to Riley Herman after his anointment with a chocolate-chip cone. The creep was lucky I had bought ice cream instead of one of those painted pumpkins or a big pot of chrysanthemums from the faculty Garden Club.

I closed my eyes. Tomorrow Ben and I would be hiking up Kings Mountain for a picnic at the top and I tried to think of something good to take along. I flipped over on my stomach and played the alphabet game Charlie and I used to play with Roger and Julie on long car trips. Apples, of course; bread, thick and crusty. Bananas? No, too smushy. Bottle of wine. Cheese. Cake or cookies? I couldn't decide…

The door closed so softly I don't know how I heard it, but I woke knowing somebody had stood there silently and then moved on. I sat up in bed. “Augusta?” I whispered, but no one answered.

Outside in the hallway a board creaked. Probably one of the girls had gone to the bathroom, and being half-asleep, opened our door by mistake. Footsteps, slow and cautious, moved away from the door. I sat on the side of the bed and listened. It was almost two in the morning and somebody was opening the door of the room across the hall. Sally's room. Why would she come back to the college at this hour?

The floor was cold to my bare feet as I tiptoed to the door and quietly, carefully turned the knob so the hinges wouldn't squeak. I was just in time to see the door across from me slowly close.

I had slept in an oversized T-shirt. Now, leaving the door slightly ajar, I grabbed the jeans and sweatshirt I had thrown on the foot of the bed and slipped into loafers. Leslie had not moved from her original position and her breathing was deep and even. There was no use waking her and frightening her even more.

Whoever was in Sally's room was making a poor effort to be quiet. A drawer squeaked open, then closed; a closet door banged softly. I stood with my back to the wall as close to the door as possible until I heard someone come out, then listened until footsteps reached about midway down the hall before I risked looking. Somebody in a raincoat—somebody tall—a woman, I thought, with a heavy knitted cap pulled low over her ears crept slowly down the stairs. I snatched my jacket and followed.

I stood listening at the top of the stairs as the prowler moved past Blythe's closed door and down the hall to the lounge, and was working up the courage to follow when someone touched my shoulder from behind.

“Wait for me!” Augusta whispered, falling into step beside me.

“Do you have to do that? You almost gave me a heart attack,” I said, although I was relieved to have her there beside me.

It seemed to take forever to reach the bottom of the steps and I looked around for a place to hide. Augusta, of course, didn't have to worry about that. The double doors at the end of the hall stood open and I slinked toward them as quietly as I could. What would anybody want in a room filled with ugly secondhand furniture, old magazines, and sports trophies? And what was I doing at my age snooping after God-knows-who when I could be warm and asleep—maybe even comparatively safe—upstairs, or better still, at home in my own bed?

The intruder rummaged through drawers in the trophy case, looked under sofa cushions, and slowly ran a finger over the titles on the bookshelf. The room had several windows and the security light from outside enabled me to see her plainly at last. For a few seconds she stood with one hand on her hip, apparently stymied in her search. Monica Hornsby.

She looked in my direction but didn't see me as I watched from behind the door, then she turned away to circle the lounge, checking possible hiding places once more. Finally, in a kind of last-ditch effort, she got down on her knees and looked behind the trophy case on the other side of the room. Something must have been shoved in back of it because Monica Hornsby sat on the floor with her back to the wall and slid an arm behind it as far as she could reach. She was drawing out what appeared to be a square boxlike package when a light came on in the hall and Blythe Cornelius charged out of her apartment, banging the door behind her. “Who's in there?” she yelled, clumping down the corridor past the door where I was hiding.

I heard a muffled thump and somebody muttered, “Damn!” Then a runner I guessed to be Monica dashed past me and out the heavy front door, letting it slam behind her.

I stepped out to find Blythe in a pink quilted bathrobe holding on to the back of the sofa and looking thoroughly confused.

“Are you all right?” I asked, and she looked up and nodded.

“I think you'd better call security…and would you please keep an eye on Leslie upstairs? I hate to leave her alone,” I said before taking off after Monica, who, as far as I knew, still had the package she'd found.

I was just in time to see her disappear around the corner of the building that housed the cafeteria, with Augusta not far behind her. I circled the building from the other side and with my back against the cold brick wall waited until she emerged from the other side. From there I watched her blend with the shadow of a ginkgo tree that sprinkles the ground with leaves like tiny golden fans. She walked quickly but didn't run, and carried the parcel under her arm as if she were on an ordinary errand.

From where I stood, Sarah Bedford by moonlight looked like a print from an old woodcut, all black and white and still. There was no wind, but my ears were freezing, and my bare ankles tingled with cold. I slipped from shadow to shadow, keeping her in my sight until she reached the commons area. And that was when she looked back and saw me.

“Wait!” I called, and realized how ridiculous it sounded. Of course she wasn't going to wait. And she didn't. Immediately Monica Hornsby began to run, and searching for breath, I ran after her. My side felt like it was being stitched by a giant needle and gathered into a knot. Would the woman ever slow down? Clearly she was in better shape than I was, and a whole lot younger.

A dog barked somewhere not too far away and I heard the cold trickle of the fountain. I thought about yelling for help, but it might seem kind of strange since I was the one doing the chasing. Surely Blythe had called campus security by now, but where the hell were they?

And where was Monica Hornsby? Probably far away by now. The silhouette of the Tree House loomed in front of me, and in the darkness I saw the glow of Augusta's hair. I drew closer just in time to see Monica trip and go down; her short cry sounded out over the soft thud of her falling. By the time I reached her she was crawling on her hands and knees, probably searching for the package. When she saw me, Monica swore under her breath and hurried away, favoring her right foot in a limping gait. Near the loose flagstone that had tripped her, Augusta stood smiling, then wiped the soil from her hands before pressing the stone back into place.

A few feet away in the black shadow of the Tree House lay the package Monica had dropped and I scrambled to pick it up. What could be important enough to make the professor's wife go to such lengths to find it?

A gust of wind sent what was left of the leaves on the big oak rustling, and a limb swayed over my head. I grabbed the box to my chest and stumbled backward when a man's shoes swung past my face. The shoes had feet in them.

The scream was about halfway between thought and deed when I remembered the Halloween dummy we had encountered in the haunted garden. Whoever had been responsible for cleaning up after the festival had forgotten the stuffed creature hanging there. Thank heavens I hadn't screamed and awakened the whole campus over a fake monster. Poor Frankie. He looked cold and uncomfortable hanging there with his head turned that funny way.

Again the wind parted the foliage above me just long enough to reveal the white socks, the green denim pants…
Frankenstein's monster wasn't wearing green denim pants!

Then the pale light found his face. Londus Clack's face. And he was never going to sing again.

It was a good scream and I didn't waste it.

For some reason, throughout the ordeal that followed, I held on to the package Monica Hornsby had dropped. A couple of people looked at it curiously, and somebody—Blythe, I guess it was—asked me if I didn't want to put it down somewhere. I didn't. Whatever was in that box must have been important for Monica to do what she did and I wanted to find out what it was. But Monica's nocturnal visit was almost forgotten after I discovered Londus Clack hanging around like that.

Later, back at the dormitory, Captain Hardy looked at me with a resigned expression, as though he wasn't too surprised to find me there mixed up in murder again. Good grief! Was I some kind of homicidal Typhoid Mary? I hadn't even known D. C. Hunter, and I had only spoken with Londus Clack that one afternoon in Main Hall. Yet the idea made me feel a little strange.

Leslie was still sleeping soundly when I reluctantly returned to the room to wake her with the grim news of Londus's death, but the captain felt it necessary to speak with all the girls who had spent the night in Emma P. Harris Hall. Huddled in pajamas and robe, Leslie clung to me quietly during the questioning by police. Students were offered counseling of sorts by a yawning school psychologist who then advised them to try and get some sleep, and I felt her body tense beside me.

“I don't want to go back to that room alone,” she whispered.

“Why not bunk in with Debra and me?” Celeste offered. “We can push our beds together and sleep three across.”

Debra agreed. “Sounds okay to me. Mom always said there was safety in numbers.”

“I'll look in on you later,” I promised, trying to sound more confident than I was. And as the girls returned to their rooms, I was relieved to see Augusta trailing after.

It was after four and still dark. Ordinarily, I could sleep at that hour on a bed of gravel, but that morning my adrenaline pump was in high gear. Of course I was working on my second cup of Blythe's strong coffee.

Blythe had a bad bruise on her chin where she had collided with Monica earlier in the lounge, and I noticed a raw-looking patch where she'd run into the doorjamb, she said, on the heel of her right hand.

Now the captain pushed aside his half-filled coffee mug, looked at me, and sighed before removing his glasses to rub red-rimmed eyes.

Blythe half-sat, half-lay in the faded green armchair across from him with her eyes closed and her head resting on the back of the chair. The laces of one gray oxford had come undone, and she cradled her bifocals in one hand, gently resting them on her chest. She looked tired and old.

The young sergeant, Duff Acree, stood with his hands on his hips facing the window as though he dared anything else to happen.

“Well,” Captain Hardy said to me, readjusting his eyeglasses, “how 'bout telling us what you were doing out in the commons area at two—or whatever—in the morning?”

I glanced at Blythe, who smiled weakly, her gaze falling on the bulky package in my lap. I knew I was going to have to hand it over to the police—but not before I got a look at it first.

“Believe it or not, I was chasing a prowler,” I said, “and I'll be glad to give you a play-by-play account…” I shifted uncomfortably…“but first you'll have to excuse me for a minute.” I managed to look a trifle embarrassed. “All that coffee, you know.”

Secure in a stall in the first-floor bathroom, I slid the box from its padded envelope. It had obviously been around awhile as it was frayed at the corners, one side was split, and it was held together with string. It had once held typing paper and said so. It still did, only now the paper was filled with text, double-spaced. It was a manuscript typed on a manual machine that was in desperate need of a new ribbon by somebody who had never taken a typing course.

I read for as long as I dared and found it to be a pretty good story. It appeared to be a novel about a botanist named Giles Crenshaw who discovered a lost tribe in the wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There he fell in love, and into bed, with a spritelike beauty named Ariel who spoke Elizabethan English.

The language was beautiful and melodic, and from the little I read it seemed the writer not only had a sense of adventure but a sharp wit as well. The name “Crockett” had been typed in the top right-hand corner of every page, and on the inside lid of the box I found the title,
High Devongreen
, with the author's name and address written below it:

Amos Crockett
516 Gray Woods Court
Stone's Throw, S.C.

Amos Crockett. Wasn't he the English professor who died midterm, the man Clay had Hornsby replaced? What was his manuscript doing behind the trophy case in Emma P. Harris Hall? I was beginning to get a crazy idea.

I presented the box and its contents to Captain Hardy. “Here. This is what the chase was all about. Careful, it's falling apart.”

He frowned, accepting it reluctantly. “What is it?”

“A book manuscript. A novel, by a professor who once taught here. Amos Crockett.”

“So it was true!” Blythe came over to look at it. “Everybody suspected he was working on something, but he never talked about it. I thought it was probably some dull scholastic work, he was such a timid little man. A novel, you say?”

I nodded. “And a pretty good one, I think.”

Captain Hardy grunted. “You wanna let me in on this?”

I told him how I had heard somebody searching the room across the hall, then followed the prowler downstairs. “She was looking for something—this manuscript—and she found it behind the trophy case over there.”

“She?” The captain popped a couple of Rolaids.

“Monica Hornsby.” Blythe and I spoke together and I let her take up the tale.

“I heard somebody in here,” she said. “And when I turned on the light and confronted her, she knocked me sprawling and ran…”

“With the manuscript,” I said. “And I ran after her. She tripped on something out by the Tree House—a loose flagstone, I think—and hurt her ankle, probably sprained it.” No use telling about Augusta's part in this, I thought. “Anyway, she dropped the box, and that was when I found him: Londus Clack. The package had landed under the Tree House, and when I went to pick it up I saw the dummy. Only it wasn't a dummy.”

I yawned. Even the cracked leather sofa with the cold chrome arms looked tempting. I was ready to go to sleep now.

“And what about the Hornsby woman?” the detective asked.

“I don't know. She didn't stick around, but she was limping, so she can't have gone too far.”

“Sergeant,” Captain Hardy said, “you and Tillman take the patrol car and pick up Monica Hornsby—No, never mind. We're about finished here. I'd better go with you.”

“Thank you, God,” I said, letting my eyelids droop.

“Poor Londus,” Blythe said. “I know he's been acting strangely lately, but do you think he…I just can't believe he would…” She clucked softly to herself. “What an awful way to die!”

“Oh, he didn't hang himself, ma'am,” the young sergeant said. “At least the coroner didn't seem to think so. He said it looked like somebody'd whacked him over the head real good first.”

Captain Hardy groaned as he stood. “Well, fine, Sergeant. Do you have any other announcements you'd like to make, or can we get on with it?”

Blythe Cornelius shook her head numbly. “Another murder. When will it end?” Suddenly she leaned forward and nudged my arm. “Dear God! You don't suppose Riley Herman had anything to do with this?”

The weary captain sighed and sat back down. “Just for the record,” he said, “who's Riley Herman when he's at home?”

I told him how Willene's ex had confronted Jo Nell and me and how I had crowned him with a chocolate-chip cone. I thought for a minute he was going to smile, but he didn't.

“He's that man they brought in earlier, sir,” Sergeant Acree reminded him.

“As far as either of you know, is there any connection between Londus Clack and this Herman guy?” the captain asked.

Blythe said she didn't know of any unless Londus happened to get in the other man's way. I just shook my head. The two could have been engaged to be married for all I knew—or cared right then.

The captain looked at his watch. “If you ladies don't mind, let us know where you can be reached for the next day or so in case we need to get back to you.”

I muttered something in reply as I knelt on the gritty tile floor to retrieve my jacket that had fallen behind the sofa. Ben and I were supposed to go somewhere today. Someplace that required physical exercise and strenuous activity. Kings Mountain. We were supposed to hike to the top of Kings Mountain.

By the clock on the wall it was just after five and I didn't think I could stay awake to drive back home. With my jacket under my arm I groped my way upstairs to the bed I'd vacated in Leslie's room, pausing only to glance in at the sleeping girls down the hall.

Just before sleep came, a troublesome little doubt flitted like a gray moth through my semiconscious thoughts and into some deep dark void where I couldn't follow.