“So Sally’s arguments have a certain cogency.”
“Naturally. That’s the trouble. It’s a little early to tell, but it looks to me like either she cops or, as my clients say, she’ll blow trial and get a life term. As far as I can see it’s a dilemma with only one way out. Find the real killer. Right up your alley, I rather thought.”
Kate, who had decided on only one martini, waved for the waiter and ordered another. “I’ve known you so long,” she said, “that I’m not going to exchange debating points. We can both take it as said. If I wanted to talk with your murderer, would I have to go out to Riker’s Island?”
“No. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Sally will get bail after the indictment, if we have any luck at all with the judge. There’s every reason not to keep the old gal in jail, and Sally can be very persuasive. In which case you can visit her in the apartment they have just mortgaged to get the bail.”
“Leo, I want one thing perfectly clear…”
“As you said, dear Aunt Kate, we know the debating points. Just talk to the elderly sisters, together, separately, and let me know what you decide. End of discussion, unless of course, you decide they’re innocent and I can help.”
“I thought it was just one of them?”
“It is; but Cynthia’s the one I met first, so I sort of think of them as a pair. I’ve never met Beatrice; just caught sight of her with the other women prisoners at the arraignment. But I have met Cynthia, I’ve heard Angela on Cynthia, and I’m not ready to believe that Cynthia’s sister could have murdered anyone.”
Leo had told Kate that for a woman of Professor Beatrice Sterling’s background, experience of the criminal system would be a nightmare; indeed, Beatrice, as she asked Kate to call her, had the look of someone who has seen horrors. They were meeting in the sisters’ apartment after bail had been granted. Cynthia, now that Beatrice was home, was clearly taking the tack that a good dose of normality was what was needed, and she was providing it, with a kind of courageous pretense at cooperation from Beatrice that touched Kate, who allowed a certain amount of desultory chatter to go on while she reviewed the facts in her mind.
Burglary had always been a possibility, but it was considered an unlikely one. The victim’s wallet had not been taken, though the cash, if any, had. Her college ID, credit cards, and a bank card remained. Pictures that had been in the wallet had been vigorously torn apart and scattered over the body. Her college friends, although they knew the most intimate facts of her life as was usual these days, did not know how much money she usually carried or if anything else was missing from her wallet. She had been bludgeoned with a tennis award, a metal statue of a young woman swinging a racket that had been heavily weighted at the base. The assailant had worn gloves. What had doomed Beatrice was not so much these facts, not even the identification by the young man (though this was crushing), but the record of deep dislike between the victim and the accused that no one, not even the accused, denied, Motive is not enough for a conviction, but, as Leo had put it, the grounds for reasonable doubt were also, given the likely testimony of the victim’s friends, slim. Kate put down her teacup and began to speak of what faced them.
“You are our last hope,” Cynthia said, before Kate could begin.
“If that is true,” Kate answered, looking directly into the eyes of first one and then the other, “then you are going to have to put up with my endless questions, and with retelling your story until you think even jail would be preferable. Now, let’s start at the beginning, with a description of this seminar itself. How did you come to teach it, were these students you had known before, what was the subject? I want every detail you can think of, and then some. Start at the beginning.”
Beatrice took a deep breath, and kept her eyes on her hands folded in her lap. “I didn’t know those particular students at all,” she said, “and I didn’t particularly want to teach that seminar. For two reasons,” she added, catching Kate’s “Why?” before it was spoken. “It was in women’s studies, which I have never taught. I’m a feminist, but my field is early Christian history, and I have not much expertise about contemporary feminist scholarship. The seminar was for writing honors theses in women’s studies, which meant there were no texts; in addition, the students were all doing subjects in sociology or political science or anthropology, and I know little of these fields beyond their relation to my own rather ancient interests. I had worked hard, and under some unpleasant opposition, to help establish women’s studies at our college, so I had little excuse not to take my turn in directing this seminar; in any case, there was no one else available. There were twelve students, all seniors, and yes, it did occur to me to relate it to the Last Supper, which I mention only because you will then understand what the seminar invoked in me.” A sigh escaped, but Beatrice, with an encouraging pat from Cynthia, continued.
“The young are rude today; anyone who teaches undergraduates can tell you that. They are not so much aggressively rude as inconsiderate, as though no perspective but theirs existed. The odd part of this is that the most radical students, those who talk of little but the poor and the racially oppressed, are, if anything, ruder than the others, courtesy being beneath them. Forgive me if I rant a bit, but you wanted to hear all this.
“The point is, they hated me on sight and I them. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But when I tried to suggest what seemed to me minimal scholarly standards, they sneered. Quite literally, they sneered. I talked this over with the head of women’s studies, and she admitted that they are known to be an unruly bunch, and that they had not wanted me for their seminar, but she couldn’t do anything except cheer me on. They spoke about early feminists, like me, as though we were a bunch of co-opted creeps; worst of all, they never talked to me or asked me anything; they addressed each other, turning their backs on me. You’re a teacher, so perhaps this will sound less silly to you than to the police. It was the kind of rudeness that is close to rape. Or murder. Oh, don’t think I don’t usually run quite successful classes; I do. Students like me. Of course, my students are self-selected: they’re interested in the subject, which they elect to take. But even when I teach a required history survey, I do well. I’m not as intimate with the students as some of the younger teachers, and I regret that, but I grew up in a different time, and it seems best to be oneself and not pretend to feelings one doesn’t have. Do you agree?”
Kate nodded her agreement.
“The dead girl-they called each other only by their first names, and hers was Daphne, but I remembered her last name (which the police found suspicious) because it was Potter-Jones, and that sounded to me like something out of a drama from the BBC-she was the rudest of the lot and was writing on prostitutes, or, as they insisted on calling them, sex-workers. I should add that all their subjects were enormous, totally unsuitable to undergraduates, and entirely composed of oral history. All history, all previously published research, was lies. They would talk to real sex-workers, real homeless women, real victims of botched abortions, that sort of thing. When I suggested some academic research, they positively snorted. Daphne said that being a sex-worker was exactly like being a secretary-they were equally humiliating jobs-but at least we might try to see that sex-workers got fringe benefits. My only private conversation, if you can call it that-they never, any of them, came to my office hours or consulted me for a minute-was with Daphne. She had been advised at a seminar to pretend to be a sex-worker and try to get into a ‘house’ so that she might meet some prostitutes; she had, not surprisingly to me but apparently to her and all the others, found it difficult to get prostitutes to talk to her. I took her aside at the end of the class and told her I thought that might be rather dangerous. She laughed, and said she had told her mother, who thought it was a great idea. I know all this may sound exaggerated or even the wanderings of a demented person, but this is, I promise you, a straightforward rendition of my experience. I have spared you some details, considering them repetitive. No doubt you get the picture. It occurred to me, when I was in Riker’s Island, that perhaps I might now be of some interest to the members of the seminar, except of course that they thought I had murdered their friend, so I failed to interest them even as an accused murderer. Cynthia thought I oughtn’t to mention that, but my view is if, knowing it all, you can’t believe me, I might as well plead to manslaughter as my young but clearly smart lawyer urges.”