“You expected that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it proved he was planning to do away with us. I told Gordon we must be more circumspect, stop seeing each other. But he just laughed, said Cloute was a yellow-bellied bully, frantic with jealousy, but harmless as crazy old Natty. Cyril should have known better. And then that horrid last day.”
She stopped and taking a kerchief from her bag, wedged it against her lips. Her shoulders shook but she didn’t cry, returned the wadded kerchief to her beaded bag.
“So you were on the knoll with Gordon when he was murdered?”
“Yes, I was sitting with my back against the trunk of a giant hemlock, smoking. Gordon was reading Browning. He had just come to the lines about Fra Pandolf pointing to the oil painting of the Last Dutchess in the Florentine gallery. Through a clump of alder I saw the red-rimmed eyes of an Indian. His face was painted with blotches of white and yellow and one hand grasped the hilt of a tomahawk. I screamed much as the Dutchess must have cried out when she saw her husband, the Duke, standing at the foot of the bed.”
“Did your screams scare him away?”
“No, he hooted, sprang from the aiders and swung the tomahawk at Cyril. Before my poet could throw up his arms to protect himself, the Indian sunk the stone blade into his skull.”
“Did you blank out at that?” I asked.
“No, I was so frozen with fear I stopped screaming. As if I weren’t there he stooped over his victim and with a stick daubed a swastika sign on the dead man’s chest.”
“He didn’t strike you?” I asked her.
“No, he turned so I could see the grimace on his face, a mask of hate, lips drawn back, narrowed eyes, distended nostrils. With a grunt he tossed the stone axe at the dead body, swung and vanished in the underbrush.”
“You mean, the Indian was Natty?”
She shook her head. “It was Dr. Cloute, made up like ah Indian.”
“How did you recognize him?”
“When he sneered, drew back his lips in that look of hate. Natty was missing a front tooth. Dr. Cloute’s dentures were always perfect.”
She opened her bag, took out a calling card, scribbled an address on the back, handed it to me.
“I’m going home to New Hampshire for a while.” She rose, threw the strap of her bag over one shoulder. In her blue tailored suit, she looked like a smart Wave.
“You mean you’re not going to the police?”
She turned to look out the window of the gyn, across campus, toward Old Main perched high among the hemlocks. She then looked at me.
“No, I’m leaving him to live with his crime. Remember the lines, ‘There is a Fate that shapes our lives. Rough hew them how we may.’ ”
She turned to the door and for the first time I saw how clear and blue her eyes were.
Sitting alone in my stuffy office, I wondered where I would get another job. Then I remembered Natty in Farview, better housed, fed and watched over than he had ever been on campus, I went along with Miss Hackett’s decision. Leave the murderer to sweat it out. It was a warped, illegal decision. But as many crazy twists of poetic justice, probably it was the most just.