One Coffee With

Riley would take?'

'Congratulations for finally seeing the obvious,' Leyden said sourly. 'Better hire yourself an official taster till they catch him, Oscar.'

'Is that a suggestion or a warning?' asked the white-haired chairman with a half smile.

'What about it, Miss Keppler?' asked Sigrid. 'Was there a pattern as to who took which cup?'

The girl seemed genuinely puzzled. 'I'm not sure. Professor Quinn lectured just down the hall while Professor Nauman's class is on the next floor, so most times Professor Quinn had first choice; but I've never noticed which cup he usually took.'

'No? Still, I think we must assume someone did,' said Sigrid, 'unless it didn't make any difference to the murderer. A rather unlikely proposition.'

As the implications of her statement sank in, Piers Leyden shook his dark head. 'Much as it pains me, I have to say Harley Harris is probably the only one dumb enough to poison a cup of coffee without caring whether Riley or Oscar drank it.'

There were quick murmurs of agreement. Someone repeated Harris's threats; another described his anger and frustration at not receiving his master's degree.

'No!'

Oscar Nauman had listened without comments as his eager colleagues heaped blame on the unfortunate Harris, and now he cut across their accusations, silencing them. 'Rotten taste,' he said firmly, 'but all the time, and anyhow no one liked him.'

Obviously he thought his statement made the graduate student's innocence crystal clear. Sigrid looked blank and Lemuel Vance grinned.

'Don't mind him, Lieutenant Harald;

Oscar tends to leave out whole paragraphs when he's being logical.'

Patiently Nauman elucidated. 'Harris is an ant. Constant toil. A drudge. He doesn't socialize. Never comes up for coffee breaks. He's dull witted but just bright enough to know when he's the butt; so he stays downstairs painting all the time. Can't have been up here for coffee more than once or twice in the last year.'

Sigrid saw his logic. 'So you think he wouldn't have known Miss Keppler's routine with coffee cups?'

'Precisely,' said Nauman. 'And the same reservation applies to Mike Szabo.'

Sigrid glanced around the circle of attentive faces, but no one seemed inclined to dispute Nauman's observations. She nodded, made a brief notation on her note pad, then gathered up all the papers and neatly aligned their edges. 'It will probably be necessary to speak to you again, but that'll be all for now, I think,' she said, rising from Sandy 's desk and motioning to Detective Tildon, who had reappeared in the doorway during Nauman's statement.

'Class dismissed!' said Leyden, but no one smiled.

The professors drifted away from the office, and Sandy Keppler reclaimed her desk as Sigrid and Tillie conferred with the remaining lab technician, who was awaiting permission to leave. The others had finished with the inner office and already departed.

A young man in wire-rimmed glasses, chinos and a rumpled shirt had talked his way past the officer at the end of the hall and now stepped around the mail rack. Sigrid saw the blond secretary's face soften at the sight of him.

'David!'

'Hey, you okay?' he asked anxiously.

Her desk was between them, and they didn't actually touch, but Sigrid suddenly felt that she and Tillie and Yanitelli were interlopers. Intimacy always embarrassed her.

She cleared her throat and said. 'One thing more, Miss Keppler. Could you type a list of everyone else in the room before Professor Quinn actually went into his office, and put a check by the name of any you remember seeing near the bookcase?'

The girl seemed to pull herself away from another world to focus on Sigrid's request; then she quickly typed the names of teaching fellows, lecturers and graduate students while David Wade lounged against the corner of her desk, watchful and protective.

Sigrid turned back to the remaining lab man. 'That'll be all for now, Yanitelli, thanks. On your way out tell that officer at the elevator to check out Buildings and Grounds and see if he can locate a Mike Szabo.'

Yanitelli gave a half salute and gratefully departed.

'Did you turn up anything downstairs?' Sigrid asked Tillie beneath the clack of Sandy 's typewriter.

'Yes, indeed,' said Detective Tildon happily. 'I think I've found our poison.'

5

BACK in his office around the corner Lemuel Vance sat at his desk with his catalogs opened to the coveted printing presses. With Quinn dead, who would inherit the position of deputy chairman? Simpson? Probably. He was the most senior. A pedant, old Bert Simpson, always pottering after obscure details of Roman sculpture, compiling cross-references on the details of toga draping as if it mattered a tinker's damn which shoulder of a statue was left uncovered. But at least he had a proper respect for studio artists, something that pompous, parasitical Riley Quinn'd never had. He never lost sight of the fact that there wouldn't be any classical art if there hadn't been a lot of classical artists first. And he cared about the students, was always there to give them extra help. Too bad so few kids specialized in his area. Yes, Simpson could be led to see that a new press was more important than an enlarged slide library.

In the next office but one, Piers Leyden was calm in his newly acquired power as a less poised Jake Saxer followed him in and closed the door.

Saxer pulled out a briar pipe he'd recently affected and tried to seem casual as he went through the business of filling and lighting it, but his pale eyes, nervous and darting, kept flicking back to the older man apprehensively.

Around the department Piers Leyden was known as a lazy, cynical slob. He was a good-looking sensualist who ate too much, drank too much and spent too much time in too many different beds. At forty the effects hadn't quite begun to show; but hangovers were starting to take a little longer to go away in the mornings, his belt felt a bit tight all the time, and he knew he should be spending more hours in front of his easel. Tachs, his gallery owner, had been somewhat caustic about those last two nudes; he had implied that Leyden was coasting, that maybe Riley Quinn had a point.

Leyden knew why Jake Saxer had followed him, and he didn't intend to make it any easier for the sneaky, whey-faced opportunist.

A small cloud of blue sulfur drifted over to him as Saxer struggled through several kitchen matches trying to get the pipe going. At last he managed two or three jerky puffs. Unfortunately he'd chosen an oversweet blend that smelled more like apple pie than masculine tobacco; still the steady ribbon of smoke seemed to give Saxer confidence.

'A terrible thing, Riley's death.' he said.

'Isn't it?' Leyden agreed blandly. 'Poor Doris will no doubt be heartbroken. I wonder if anyone's thought to tell her yet?'

Saxer grasped at the opening offered by Doris Quinn's name. 'You and Riley may have had your differences, Leyden, but I didn't agree with him on everything.'

He paused again, and Leyden kept his face carefully blank. Inside he was chortling. When he'd first climbed into Doris Quinn's bed, it was to sting Riley; but that smug bastard acted as if their affair only confirmed Quinn's original low opinion of the artist's taste. And now that lusty little wench was going to insure his place in history. What marvelous irony!

He regarded Jake Saxer as a spider might regard a particularly tasty summer midge and gave the blond historian a wicked smile. 'Why, yes, I think Doris would listen to me… under the right circumstances, of course.'

Andrea Ross noted that closed door on her way through to the slide room. Losing Quinn's patronage would put