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“Or thought them.”
Kate dialed the number for the editor, one Shona McLeod.There was no reply, but she left a message.
“Could be,” Marcus mused, “that Whitman got threats, too.I mean, you’d expect it with him.”
They both trawled the web for a while, but were surprised to find a lack of controversy or threats surrounding the provocative author.
“Maybe he’s not read by the sort of people who make threats,” Marcus suggested.
“I’ve got something,” Kate declared, quietly.
Marcus scooted over, keenly.
“What am I looking at?”
“This was a major lecture series at Brantley.Five nights of Whitman, debating faith with an eminent believer.Rumors that Pope Leo XIV would be one of them.The whole thing timed to build up publicity before the release of this year’s book.The NYT telling its readers: ‘beg, borrow, steal a ticket, swim to Maine but don’t miss it!’Tickets selling at two-hundred dollars a pop.”
“And it was canceled.”
“Unforeseen circumstances.What kind of circumstances?”
She phoned the Dean, who she’d interviewed briefly, back at the crime scene.She recalled a harried-looking man in a suit too large for him.She had a feeling he’d been ill, or still was.
“When I asked you if there’d been anything of note in the Professor’s academic life over recent months, you said no.But now it seems he had a major lecture series canceled.”
There was a pause.It suggested the Dean was searching for an answer.
“I’m afraid it slipped my mind,” he said.“It’s not every day that one of my staff is murdered.”
She noted the flash of sarcasm – the shift from answering the question to implying the questioner was at fault.Or was it just all academics?They felt this need to put you down.Even her mother did it, from time to time, almost without thinking.
“Why was it canceled?”
“A stupid reason,” the Dean replied.“You saw our new theatre, I take it?When you drove in from the south.”
Kate recalled a big rectangular building with bright red bricks and a gleaming steel roof.She hadn’t paid it much attention.
“We were going to sell two types of tickets for Alan’s lecture series.Seated and standing.Standing at fifty bucks a head, so that actual students could afford to come.”
Kate couldn’t imagine standing up for an hour, not to mention paying fifty bucks for the privilege.She wouldn’t even have done that for Patsy Cline.Okay,maybefor Patsy.
“Then we have a snap fire inspection.The inspector guy’s a Nazi.The drapes are wrong.We say, fine, we’ll change the drapes.Then someone mentions the talks, and the standing tickets.That’s when he gets the big guns out.We can’t haveanypeople standing, the whole building would need to be reconfigured, more doors, different doors, exit routes, trained up fire marshals, yadda-yadda.So we had to cancel.”
“I don’t understand,” Kate said.“Surely you could have stuck with all the people who had paid for sit-down seats.That would still be a big audience.”
“It would.Unfortunately, Professor Whitman had charged his fee for the lectures on the basis of an audience that was standing and sitting.We did try our best to get him to accept the lesser sum, but he was unmovable.He pulled out, leaving us with no option but to cancel the lectures.”
“Did that result in a degree of tension?”
“Yes.But I didn’t murder him.It goes with the territory, Agent Valentine.These hothouse flowers get us a lot of attention.Rich, cool kids get their daddies to send them to school here, and that’s solely because of star staff like Alan Whitman.If you want that – and we do – then you have to put up with the egos and the tantrums.”
She told Marcus about the conversation with the Dean.
“It was a long explanation.Too long.And it sounded off to me.Do you know what I mean?The details all make sense, but somehow, still, you’re not sure if it’s the truth.”
“I do.These academic types do it all the time.They think everyone else is stupid.We need to talk to someone out of the fold.”
“Like who?”
