The Elite Café bestowed upon us a pleasant sensation of warmth, which contrasted sharply with both the store of Hubert Jorgen—from which we had just come—and the continued snow of afternoon. Baxter had pushed four of the small café tables together to make room for his graduate student retinue. Discussion was well underway, having commenced around one o’clock according to our most reliable intelligence. A seemingly popular professor, there was little room for us to squeeze our way in, so we waited for caffeine to enact its diuretic effects on the weak-bladdered, and then quickly we assumed their seats.
“No, I’m sorry,” Baxter said to a corn-haired coed, slapping the table and cutting her off mid-sentence. He dragged a napkin across his pale forehead as he spoke. We noticed that his thinning brown hair was in a state of severe disarray. “I’m afraid that just won’t do. No more laudatory papers on Vanaheim qua Utopia, if you please. Vanaheim? Vana-ha! If you must write about the place, focus on something like the way it acts as a dark mirror to topside Iceland—a repressed yet physical subconscious—or the way that Iceland’s obsession with purity is grotesquely manifested in Vanaheim’s inbred royal family. That sort of thing. Anyway, that should be enough to get you started. Now, who’s next?”
“If you would permit us,” we ventured, “though not enrolled in any of your lectures, we would like to ask a few questions of you nonetheless.”
“Yes, fine, but make it quick,” Baxter answered, scrutinizing us with eyes asquint. “I’m not feeling very well, just now, and I’m afraid it’s put me off my mood. I should probably be home in bed, except for the fact that my students depend on me so much. But please, ask away.” Even through the narrow aperture of his squinted eyelids, we could see that his whites were extremely bloodshot.
His students looked to us with only perplexity upon their faces.
“You knew Shirley MacGuffin,” we asserted.
He pressed his index and middle fingers hard against his temples and then emitted a series of noises, at this point, that we could only presume to be coughs, though in terms of objective description the sound was more akin to scraping metal.
“Ha. Ha, ha,” he said flatly when he was finally able to speak again. We could not be certain whether he was laughing or clearing his throat. “I knew Shirley, it’s true. But if you’re trying to start an argument, I’m afraid you’ll have to assert something a bit more controversial than that. For instance, did I kill her? No I did not!”
“You were assisting her in her attempt to emulate an apocryphal version of Hamlet,” Mr. Pacheco stated, unshaken by Baxter’s sudden shout.
“Ha. Ha, ha. You said you had questions for me; but I am still waiting to hear them. You haven’t asked me any questions.” He unsuccessfully attempted to transform his sickly expression into one of mild amusement, and he tensed the fingers of each hand one against the other, creating the shape of a coxcomb. Sigil of the Fool. We resolved to watch our step.
The students whose places we had taken now returned from the men’s room and stood behind us. Mr. Pacheco restored to them their respective cappuccinos.
Affecting mild amusement ourselves, we continued our enquiry. “We are interested in this Hamlet. What can you tell us of it?”
“Hamlet? I like him not, nor stands it safe with us to let his madness range.” He paused to spit a phlegmatic blob onto the table in front of himself. “But from the sound of things, you know more about the subject than I do. Shirley never showed me a single page.”
“Yet she came to you for help regarding the project, did she not?”
“She came to me with questions.” The tone of his voice was elevated to shrillness upon this final word, and he rolled his eyes wildly. “Specific questions, quite unlike the two of you. They mostly regarded subtle nuances of a dialect for which I have little love. Can we please stop talking around the subject, though? You want to know if I killed Shirley or if I have any information concerning her death. The answers are, respectively: no! And no! So will there be anything else, or does that just about settle it?”
His students collectively took in their breath, doubtless in anticipation of our response, which, as they sensed, could have been a scathing retort to his overly dramatic summation. We maintained a placid exterior, however, in order to provide greater counterpoint to his bombast.
“You misinterpret our intentions,” we said. “Much though we would welcome the killer being brought to justice, we are not ourselves engaged in the investigation of Ms. MacGuffin’s murder. Rather, we merely seek certain documents that she was in possession of prior to her demise.”
If this statement managed to disconcert him, the fact was not made apparent in his physiognomy. His expression had become progressively more pained throughout our interview, but it was with seemingly little relation to the actual words being said.
“For God’s sake!” he exclaimed, banging the table with a weakly curled fist. “If it’s Hamlet you’re after, why don’t you look to Denmark? What has Vanaheim got to do with anything? Leave me alone! Please!”
We made no answer; if this non sequitur was meant to perplex us, then it was successful. We decided to let him determine the manner in which the conversation would proceed.
“It was just a stupid idea,” he mumbled, glancing down at the table and then spitting up a sort of black bile to join the greenish phlegm in front of him. The quiet of his comment provided a strange contrast to his previous outburst.
“Perhaps you are sicker than you realize,” we offered. “But in any case, ideas in themselves possess no inherent level of intelligence. However, if you refer to Shirley’s—”
Before we could complete our sentence, he snapped his face up and stared at us with widened eyes.
We had seen that exact sort of mortal fright once before.
“Kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk,” he managed to say before his head fell finally back to the table.
We decided to leave before panic ensued in earnest and the police arrived on scene. Our concerns had never been with the physical or the mundane; we opted, therefore, to allow Baxter’s students to deal with his body.
I was just wandering aimlessly, now, with a semi-certain intuition that Garm had been killed by a snowplow. I could see it in my mind. He’d been chasing this other dog that Constance had seen, and it had lured him right beneath the wheels. I walked up Telegraph, keeping an eye out for any red discoloration in the snow.
It had let up a little. Falling constantly, but in smaller flakes, farther between. Still, it wasn’t weather for anyone to be out in. Even a dog. Or a bastard like Hubert. I’d always thought bastard should mean “male dog.” Bastard and bitch. At least I couldn’t feel how cold my toes were.
The sun was just visible behind the sky, a dull quarter-slug above the red brick face of the Elite. I paused in the road to watch a kid replacing the letters on the cinema marquee. What attractions did the town hold that a dog couldn’t find at home? Cats, perhaps. But where would cats be found out in this? The alleys, maybe, but the snow there was a bit too high for human slogging, so I discounted that idea without investigation. My eyes flicked down from the marquee to the cinema lobby and caught Wible and Pacheco about to emerge; I hurried down Dixon Lane, out of sight.
But wait. I went back and poked my head around the corner. Random wandering was getting me nowhere. If I was right about who hired them, then perhaps they actually had some clue about what they were doing. They were heading away from me, toward Vico. I waited until they turned (left) and then followed after. Perhaps they would stumble onto Garm or Hubert. Or something else worth finding. Too bad no crowds for me to hide in. I watched from a doorway until they turned up Masonic, and then I dashed after again. Exercise would do me good, anyway. And it was better than sitting at home and worrying.