Death in Vineyard Waters (16 page)

She was the model of efficiency and dependability. “I took care of that myself,” she said. “Dr. Summerharp phoned from the Island and asked that the package be shipped down to her immediately. I sent it express mail, insured, let's see,
just two weeks ago today. It must have gotten there only a day or two before she died. A terrible loss to the college, Mr. Jackson.”

Yes, a terrible loss. I hung up and poured myself a beer. Outside, the wind was roving through the trees and rain was spattering down in big drops, not too thick yet but promising more to come. ^

I imagined Marjorie Summerharp's office and apartment. The walls of books and files of papers. Brother Howard would have a heavy job of it when he came down from Maine to clean out her possessions. I hoped that he would give the books to the college and not just throw them into the rubbish. Surely in her long life Marjorie had picked up some books that the Weststock library would like to have. The idea of books being tossed into the trash displeased me.

On Martha's Vineyard we recycle books. We attend book sales at the libraries and. buy books at yard sales and then take the ones we don't want to keep any longer up to the West Tisbury Fairgrounds for the big annual book sale. Other people buy the books we take up there and we buy the books the other people bring. And the next year we do it all over again. That's the way books should be treated. I imagined that Marjorie Summerharp's books would fit quite well in that pattern.

I went out onto the screened porch and listened to the rising wind in the trees. Nantucket Sound was getting bumpy and wet for the boaters beating their way to the sanctuary of the harbors. The waves were growing and the spume was beginning to fly. A darkening gray sky rolled above the gray and white sea. Ian McGregor had told me that he'd sent all of Marjorie's personal belongings back home to Maine but had kept all of her professional papers here. In which category did you put Marjorie's copies of his and her own thesis? And why did Marjorie want a copy of her own work? Didn't scholars keep copies of their theses? Maybe not. I remembered hearing as a child that Edgar Rice Burroughs did not
have a first-edition copy of his most famous book,
Tarzan of the Apes,
and thinking that maybe Mr. Burroughs would like to have my inexpensive edition.

I got my foul weather gear and drove to John Skye's farm. Ian McGregor's car was in the yard. I noticed that he'd taken the surfboard off the rack on the car. That was smart, since a strong wind such as that which was beginning to blow might have torn it off and done some damage.

When Ian opened the door, he did not look friendly. “I didn't expect to see you today.”

I, on the other hand, felt pretty good. I gestured toward the dark wet sky. “Did you notice that it's raining and that I'm standing out in it getting soaked while you're nice and dry there in the kitchen?”

He hesitated, then stepped back. “All right, come in.”

In the kitchen I stripped off my topsider and hung it on a chair. “I see you took the surfboard off your car rack. Good idea. It's going to breeze up tonight.”

I smiled at him. He was wondering if I'd talked to Zee yet and if so what she'd said. He took the hardness out of his eyes. “What brings you out in weather like this?”

I saw coffee in a brewer and poured myself a cup. “I have some problems,” I said, sitting down at the kitchen table. After a moment, he refilled his cup and sat down too. I told him about the telephone numbers and my telephone calls. “My problems,” I concluded, “are that I didn't see the theses here and Howard Summerharp said they didn't get shipped to him along with the rest of Marjorie's personal possessions and I don't know why she wanted them in the first place.” I looked at him over the rim of my coffee cup. He looked at me over his.

“I don't know what to say,” he said. His face assumed an expression of bewilderment. He put down his coffee cup. “What in the world did she want with copies of our theses? And if they were forwarded to her here, where are they? I went over her things pretty carefully and I never saw them.”

“She never mentioned them?”

“No. I'm sure I'd have remembered.” He touched his hair with a slightly theatrical gesture. “How curious.”

“You cleaned out her room?”

“Oh, yes. Quite thoroughly.” He hesitated. “Zee Madieras helped me.”

“And there was nothing.” I thought a moment “ ‘The Purloined Letter'?”

“Ah, yes. Poe. Hide in plain sight. Naked is the best disguise. The library. Hide a rock amid rocks, hide a book amid books. Do you want to have a look?”

“Yes.” We stood up. “Do you think John will mind having us nosing around his library?”

“Not at all. That's what libraries are for. He's due home tomorrow, you know. If the ferries are still running, that is. Do you think this storm will stop the boats?”

We were walking down the hall to the library. “Too soon to tell,” I said. “I doubt it. The storm should have blown over by then.”

McGregor started at one end and I started at the other. John had several thousand books lining the walls of his library, and it was hard to get through them. Too many ordered me to stop and read. I had to force myself to move along without pausing. Still, it wasn't as slow as it might have been. If we'd been looking for something small—a letter, a hollowed place holding some secret item—we'd have had to open every book and fan through every page. But two Ph.D theses were not to be hidden within other bindings, so our work went faster.

And came to nothing. McGregor and I met about mid-library and exchanged reports of failure.

“You take my end and I'll take yours,” I said. “We'll double check.”

He gave me a long look.

“Just in case one of us missed something,” I said, and went right to work before he could argue. After a moment, he followed suit.

Again we found nothing.

I looked around the room. There were file cabinets behind John's big desk. I went to them and slid one open. “They're not locked. Let's have a look.”

“You are a nosy fellow indeed,” he said. “Did you know that Ben Franklin supposedly had a large collection of racy writings? What if John has one, too?”

But John did not have such a collection. At least not in his file cabinets. And the missing theses were not there, either.

I looked out a window and saw the rain falling in earnest. It was a dark-looking rain, and through it I could see the wind bending the trees. Leaves were beginning to tear away from the branches.

“You can search the house, if you like,” said McGregor coolly. His voice made me think there was nothing to find.

“It's a big house. It would take days to do it well. When John and Mattie and the girls get here, I can ask them to do it for me. They'll know what should be where and if any thing's been added or subtracted.”

“You have any theories?”

“Only the obvious one.”

“Which is?”

“That either Marjorie got rid of it or you got rid of it.”

His eyes narrowed. “I don't care for that remark.”

“You're not paying me to trust people.”

“I sense a certain unfriendliness about you, Mr. Jackson.”

“You're not paying me to be friendly, either.”

He made a large fist out of his right hand and the muscles jumped in his arm. He looked at me, smiled a dreamy smile, and relaxed the fist. “Of course you're right about the theses. Either Marjorie got rid of it or I got rid of it. That's logical.”

“Unless they never arrived or unless the secretary I talked to at Weststock was lying.”

“But if she did send them, then they should have arrived. And the only two people who might have gotten rid of them were Marjorie and I.”

“Not the only people. Only the most likely people. Somebody we don't know about might have done it.”

He raised a brow. “Who? Why?”

“I don't know. I don't even know why Marjorie wanted the theses in the first place. If I knew that, maybe I could figure out who would have gotten rid of them.”

He was looking at me, the dreamy smile back on his lips. “You expect people to lie, don't you? You expect to be deceived.”

“No, not really. Actually I believe almost everything I'm told. I don't think people lie all the time or even a lot of the time. But I think it's hard for them to tell the truth when they think their own lives are going to be seriously affected by what they say. Dostoevski believed that we're so intent upon creating certain perceptions of ourselves that we can't tell the truth even in our most secret journals, diaries that we never expect anyone else to read. I sometimes think I agree with him. Mostly, though, I trust people. I think it would be impossible to be happy otherwise. I can't imagine living in a world where I couldn't believe that people were more or less what they seemed. I think there are psychological terms for people who see themselves as surrounded by liars and deceivers. I know some people like that, and they all lead miserable lives. They're all afraid. All of the time. I won't live like that.”

“And what do those people think of people like you?”

“They think I'm a fool, a sucker. Maybe they're right. I don't think so. What was the subject of your thesis?”

“I don't want to bore you.” He shaped and relaxed his fist.

“Bore me. Maybe it will mean something somewhere along the line.”

He shrugged. “If you wish. It was a study of English drama during the reign of Charles the First, 1624 to 1642, when the theaters were closed. I was interested in showing the way drama grew increasingly dependent on the court
during that period. I called it
The Curtain Falls: The Last Period of Elizabethan Drama
”

“Was that something other people hadn't written about?”

“God, no. But I'd been in London and had gotten hold of some material that others had overlooked, so I was able to add a bit to the area. Nothing earthshaking, I assure you.”

“Do you have a copy of your dissertation?”

“I imagine so. Somewhere. I don't remember looking at it since I got my degree.”

“Do you know what Marjorie Summerharp's thesis was about?”

“You
are
a curious chap. Yes. I read it while I was researching my own thesis. She wrote about the court masque in seventeenth-century British drama.”

“Why did you read it?”

“I read everything I could find that might relate to my own topic. The court masque was a type of drama I had to consider, so I read her thesis. And several others, I should add.”

“Can you think of anything that might tie the two theses together?”

“Only what I've told you.”

“Can anyone order a copy of someone's thesis?”

“I suppose so. I really don't know.” For the third time he made a large fist. “Have you talked with Zee?”

“We went fishing this morning. When we fish, we talk.”

“She's a bitch.”

I glanced around the library. “What will John think when he finds this place all broken up?”

“I'll report that you started it.” He had become very smooth and graceful and was balanced on his feet. “Your bitch can learn to love a different face from the one you're wearing.”

“You have a bad mouth,” I said, putting my hands on one of John's fine old oak chairs. “I can understand why Zee would prefer me to you. For one thing, I try not to call women nasty names and for another I don't like smashing
up good furniture that belongs to somebody else. I suggest that we either step outside in the rain where we can both slip and slide around like idiots or just forget this.”

“So you're a coward as well as a shithead. I should have known.” He leaned forward. “You aren't worth getting wet for. I'll be around here for a few days and I'll look you up when the rain stops, so don't think I'm through with you. Meanwhile, don't forget to tell your bitch how I threw you out.”

I let go of the chair, went into the kitchen and got my topsider, and then went out into the rain.

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