"And who has David Wade's career interest most at heart?" asked Sigrid. "Who very loudly read the warnings on the container of potassium dichromate last month? Who could unlock that chemical closet at her leisure or leave the coffee wherever she chose and maneuver things so as to implicate as many people as possible? Who could mark the coffee lids and position the cups on the tray, knowing which Quinn would pick up?"
"No!" cried Sandy. The white foam cup was now only a formless ball of plastic that slipped from her nerveless fingers as the girl shrank into her chair.
"Yes!" said Sigrid inexorably.
There was a stunned silence as Detective Tildon read the litany of her rights aloud, a silence broken only by Sandy Keppler's soft, terrified denials.
When they led her away, a scared and angry David Wade insisted on going with her.
The six people who remained in the large office stared at each other, incredulous and bewildered by the sudden finality of it all.
"She said academic positions were so scarce now," murmured Professor Simpson. The white-haired classicist seemed distressed and uncertain. "She chided the Harris boy for not taking the high rate of unemployment seriously, but even so…"
"I hope Washington doesn't hear of her solution," said Vance, but the quip was automatic, mechanical response, a numb reaction to the grim reality of Sandy 's arrest.
"I don't believe it," said Nauman, who'd been silent. "Sometimes I do get back first. She wouldn't have left it to chance."
"You said it yourself, Oscar," Piers Leyden reminded him. "Either way-you dead, or Riley-Wade would still have got tenure. That's the whole point. It wouldn't make any difference to her as far as making a place for Wade on the staff goes. And maybe the chanciness of it made her feel that it was out of her hands. Up to fate. Kismet."
"Anyhow," said Jake Saxer, fingering his pointed beard and breathing easily again, "poisoning is traditionally a woman's method."
"Thanks a lot!" snapped Andrea Ross. "You're saying that if Sandy weren't guilty, I'd be the only logical alternative?" She stubbed her cigarette and stood up. "I'm going to lunch."
Professor Simpson, still upset, began murmuring about finding a lawyer for Sandy; but before anyone could leave, Rudy Turitto, who taught photography and who, to his great regret, had missed Wednesday's dramatics, burst into the office.
"Where's that Lieutenant Harald?" he demanded excitedly.
When they told him, he dived for the phone book, then quickly dialed a number, forestalling their questions.
"Hello? Police?" he said as the call went through. After identifying himself, he said, "Lieutenant Harald's on her way there I've been told. As soon as she comes in, have her call me- Art Department, Vanderlyn College. It's very important."
"What's happened, Rudy?" asked Nauman.
"It's Harley Harris! He's downstairs holed up in one of the graduate studios. Says he's remembered something about Riley's death. He was here, wasn't he? Right there by the coffee the whole time before Riley came in? But the little bastard won't say what it is. Says he won't tell it to anyone except Lieutenant Harald."
"What could he know?" Vance asked scornfully. "Anyhow, they've arrested Sandy for it. They figure she killed Riley to make space on the staff for David Wade."
" Sandy? But that's terrible! Are they sure? Little Sandy?" Professor Turitto looked distressed as the others nodded. "Oh, well," he said, deflated, "in that case, what the Harris kid saw will just pile on more evidence, I guess."
He turned to go, "I've got a class, Oscar. When the lieutenant calls back, would you give her the message?"
Nauman nodded, but his eyes were speculative as they rested briefly in turn on everyone still in the room.
Uneasily they began to drift away-some to their desks, others to the elevator. Lunch in the cafeteria wasn't gourmet, but it was quick, and no one felt like lingering over food today.
20
IN the studio downstairs Harley Harris paced back and forth in an uneasy ellipse. The studio was small and crammed with canvases, easels and odd-sized stretchers. It had been painted white only two years before, but already the walls were covered with anatomical drawings, mathematical formulas for problems in proportion and perspective, political slogans and a rather rude caricature of one of the red-tape lovers down in the Registrar's Office. There were crumpled wads of paper on the floor, and along the baseboard stood a line of coffee cans bristling with dried-up brushes and reeking of rancid turpentine. A trashy, unlovely room, but the light was good, and students with no place of their own to work elsewhere could use it on a shared-time basis.
An enormous purple and orange batik covered a whole corner from the floor to ceiling; smaller ones fluttered from the high molding; and one of Harris's prouder efforts-a huge snowscape peopled by tiny beetlelike figures and titled Hommage à Brueghel filled another corner.
"When the hell are they coming?" the boy fumed and flung himself down at a rickety worktable under the tall window. He picked up a ball-point pen and tried to concentrate on exact details of Wednesday morning.
A breeze from the open window stirred the batik hangings, and Harris looked at them nervously, chewing on his weak underlip.
He jumped as the door opened, and Lemuel Vance stuck his head in. "So you are here," said Vance. "Rudy Turitto said you had a hot little tidbit tucked away in your head."
"I'm waiting for Lieutenant Harald," the boy said, holding the papers in front of his thin chest like a shield.
"And you don't want to unburden your soul to anyone else first?" asked Vance hopefully.
"N-no!"
"How tiresome. Oh, well, suit yourself," Vance shrugged and withdrew.
The door closed, and Harris returned to his narrative struggles. In less than five minutes the door opened again. The boy tensed.
"I thought you could use a cup of hot chocolate while you wait."
Harris relaxed. "Oh, Jesus, yes! Thanks a lot."
"No trouble." The chocolate was set on the worktable beside Harley's scrawled pages. "The police arrested Sandy Keppler, you know."
" Sandy? But she didn't do it."
"You're sure of that?"
"Positive," said the boy. "There's something I can't quite remember, but I'm sure it's important. Something I heard or saw. I thought if I wrote down every single thing that happened Wednesday morning, maybe it would come back."
"I'm sure it will," said the other. "Perhaps the hot chocolate will help. Better drink it before it gets cold."
"Thanks," said Harley. "You know, you're just about the only person here who's been decent to me. It's really meant a lot."
He removed the lid from the disposable Styrofoam cup, tossed it toward the overflowing wastebucket and lifted the cup to his lips.
"Dammit, Harris!" cried an exasperated Sigrid Harald. She fought her way from behind the batik hanging. "I told you not to drink anything!"
"But it's okay!" he protested, the cup still in midair. "Professor Simpson gave it to me."
Albert Simpson stared at Sigrid in consternation, then his hand shot out and grasped the cup from Harley's unresisting fingers. Before he could drink, however, the thin young woman wrestled it from his grip, Detective Tildon, who'd been listening at the door ever since Simpson entered the studio, now came up behind the professor and held him immobile as Sigrid carefully retrieved the cup.
It still held a few drops of liquid. More than enough for analysis.
"A trap!" the old man said sadly. "Still, the boy would have told you."
"Told what?" wailed Harris. "I didn't see you do anything! I didn't see anybody do anything. It was all the lieutenant's idea!"
"I might have known. Finis coronal opus," Simpson said gloomily and declined further speech as Tillie led him away to a waiting squad car.