In Sandy Keppler's cheerfully shabby plant-filled office Lemuel Vance was amusing Piers Leyden, Andrea Ross and Sandy herself with a description of an administrative assistant's appraisal of Sam Jordan's contribution to the faculty exhibition. The burly printmaker had a mild talent for mimicry, and he minced across the room as if on high-heeled shoes and looked down his nose at the wastebasket, which his supercilious frown transformed into Jordan 's polished-steel sculpture.
"Are you trying to tell me," he asked in an outraged falsetto, "that this represents my world?"
Instantly he became the supercool Sam Jordan: "Hey, mama, you trying to tell me it don't?"
Their laughter died as Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, accompanied by Detective Tildon, entered the office. Her slate-cool eyes seemed to catalog and dismiss, although her tone was pleasant enough as she asked, "Is Professor Nauman in now?"
"He's on the telephone," Sandy said nervously.
At that moment his door banged open, and Nauman appeared, apparently in fine humor. The sight of the tall policewoman brought him up short.
"More questions, Lieutenant?" he asked blandly.
"If you can spare the time, Professor," She had meant to sound professional, but her voice had gone husky, and she felt a warm flush rising into her cheeks. She knew Tillie was staring at her curiously; fortunately Nauman's attention was on the pipe stem he'd finished biting in two.
"Fire away," he told Sigrid, then immediately asked Sandy, "Do we have any adhesive tape?"
Sigrid remained silent as the girl located a small roll in her desk drawer and handed it to him.
"In private, if you don't mind, Professor Nauman." Her voice was cool and under control again. "You needn't leave," she told the teachers who were edging from the office. "I'm sure Detective Tildon has a few more details to discuss with you."
Quite poised now, she preceded Nauman into his office.
Sandy 's blue eyes were wide and worried as the door closed, and she twisted a strand of long blonde hair anxiously while Detective Tildon spread his notes and diagrams on the corner table and invited Vance, Leyden and Andrea Ross to join him in yet another reconstruction of Wednesday morning's events.
The cleaning crew had been quite efficient in removing all traces of Riley Quinn's sickness and death from the office he had shared with Oscar Nauman. Only a whiff of carbolic lingered, and even that was quickly being dissipated by a mild spring breeze, which drifted through the tall open windows and which seemed to bring with it a vaguely herbal scent. It made Nauman think of formal summer gardens with clipped boxwood hedges and patterned walks.
He stood by the windowsill, awkwardly trying to hold his broken pipe stem with one hand while he taped it with the other. He kept his eyes on the pipe as if by avoiding her eyes he could avoid questions of poison and murderers; but when he groped for the scissors in a jar on his desk, the bowl of the pipe slipped through his fingers.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Sigrid snapped irritably, annoyed by what seemed like cavalier treatment of her in his continued attention to mending a pipe. She laid her notebook down and bent to pick up the pipe, and as she straightened, she caught the lost look on his face, and her tone gentled. "You hold it and I'll tape," she said.
Blue eyes met her gray ones, and part of his mind noted dispassionately that the vague scent of lemon balm emanated from her soft dark hair and not from the spring breezes that ruffled the collar of her blouse. She concentrated on winding the tape neatly. Only half a head shorter than he. There was something infinitely touching in the line of her slender neck, in her finely modeled head as she bent to the task.
He felt as if he were standing on a high precipice, removed, and watching the scene through the wrong end of a telescope.
The temporary mend was complete, the tape cut, yet he was still reacting with only the top, detached surface of consciousness. Time seemed stretched out. He drew her to him, and unlike yesterday she came without resistance. Their lips met, then he was holding her tightly, aware of the passion within himself, sensing-he thought-an answering feeling within her.
And nothing happened.
"Dammit! I don't want your pity!" he snarled releasing her angrily.
"Then don't kiss me like you're drowning, and I'm the last lifeboat on the lake!" she blazed back at him.
They glared at each other until Sigrid dropped her eyes. She took her notebook from his desk and walked slowly over tot he window where she stood gazing out for a long moment, her back to the room and to him.
On the brick walls far below, students crossed back and forth, girls and boys in short sleeves and bright colors beneath the blue spring sky. Sometimes in groups, more often in pairs, they lounged around the central fountain, lay on the grass with open books or walked hand in hand from one building to another. And Sigrid Harald, who had never been in love, found herself thinking about the love of a girl for a boy, of a parent for a child, of a man for a woman or of scholars for their studies. So many kinds of love, and one had grown so overpowering that Riley Quinn had been killed because that love could be more fulfilled with him out of the way.
Sigrid took a deep breath and turned to face the tall man behind her.
"You can't push it away," she said quietly. "He was murdered, you know. We can't just ignore it."
The bleak look had returned to Nauman's face. "You know who it is."
It was a statement, not a question, but Sigrid nodded.
"I think so. Proving it will be another matter without a confession. There are a few more facts I need to know. Tell me about tenure. How is it awarded here?"
Nauman answered that question and the ones that followed factually and tried not to let himself see where they were leading.
19
SCHEDULES seemed to be meaningless today, thought Sandy. All morning she had been aware of the police presence in the department-Lieutenant Harald and Detective Tildon asking questions, probing, adding data to the case they were building. Professor Nauman had looked at her oddly once or twice after his short conference with the policewoman but had revealed nothing of their talk.
It was eleven before she could go downstairs for coffee. Quinn's classes were canceled, of course; but his students, excited by the recent sensational events, had shown up anyhow and now milled about the halls, embellishing every conjecture and rumor that reached their avid ears.
"I've always wondered what it would take to get perfect attendance," Leyden told Nauman sourly.
The elevator was jammed when Sandy returned from the snack bar, and she had to juggle the tray of beverages as she pushed through the hallway. To her surprise she found everyone assembled in the big outer office. Lieutenant Harald had co-opted her desk again.
"One minute please, Miss Keppler," said Detective Tildon and took the tray from her unprotesting hands. He carried it across the room and set it on her desk. Everyone watched curiously as he and Lieutenant Harald seemed to give the cups lids special scrutiny.
"You didn't stop in at my print shop on the way back upstairs, did you, Sandy?" asked Lemuel Vance in an attempt to lighten the suddenly tense atmosphere.
"Knock it off!" David Wade said tightly from the corner table, and Sandy 's eyes widened as she saw him for the first time. He shrugged to show he was just as puzzled as she to find himself summoned to this gathering.
Detective Tildon returned the tray without a word. Yesterday's fear tightened around Sandy 's heart, and her hand trembled as she gave tea to Andrea Ross and Albert Simpson, hot chocolate to Lemuel Vance and Piers Leyden, and coffee with sugar to Oscar Nauman and Jake Saxer. She took her own black coffee to an empty chair next to Professor Simpson. Her hands shook so that when she removed the lid the old classicist kindly handed her his immaculate handkerchief to blot up the spill from her blue plaid slacks.