though the rest of us were peasants. I guess if anything surprises me, it’s that no one here at Paracelsus has ever beat the shit out of him.”
“Did he keep regular hours? Snore? Have unpleasant-er-personal habits of any kind?”
Tom Wilkinson looked blank. “No, but yes to the regular hours. Unless you call his conceit and bragging unpleasant.”
“What time did you discover him?”
“About six. I have a car because it means I can get back to college for lunch and dinner. Cafeteria meals on Science Hill are expensive, and my sister gave me her old clunker when she bought a better car. Gas is dirt cheap, and my meals here are part of my room and board. The food’s good too. I finished a physiology class in the Burke Biology Tower at five thirty, then drove home.”
“Are most of your classes on Science Hill?”
“Sure, especially for a genuine pre-med. We have a couple of-um-dilettantes in our sophomore year who take art history and crap like that, but they go elsewhere for classes as well. The closest thing to a classroom Paracelsus has is a lecture theater that the Dean saves for sermons on untidiness and vandalism.”
“Vandalism?”
“Oh, that’s just the Dean. The freshmen get a bit restive and do things like chuck dirty old house bricks into Piero Conducci’s pebble gardens; they have to use a cherry picker to get them out. I wouldn’t call putting whore’s underwear on a nude lady’s statue vandalism, sir. Would you?”
“Probably not,” said Carmine, straight-faced. “I take it that all the students in your wing are sophomores, Tom?”
“Yes, sir. Four wings, one for each year. Evan and I have an upstairs room, but down below us are more sophomores.”
“So, given that the emphasis is on pre-med, that means the wing is deserted between lunch and around six in the evening?”
“Yeah, it is. If someone’s too sick to go to classes, he’s supposed to be in sick bay, where there’s a nurse. Sometimes a guy cuts classes to catch up on an important assignment, but there’s nothing like that on our schedule at the moment, sir.”
“What about mornings?”
“The same, only shorter. I think the Dean tries to get the tradesmen in during the morning, so he can keep a better eye on them.”
Carmine rose. “Thanks, Tom. I wish all my witnesses were half as candid. Go and have some dinner, even if you don’t feel like eating.”
From there it was off downstairs to see Dean Robert Highman. As Carmine descended the graceful but open staircase (he loathed stairs he could see through, like these), he stopped to take in the nucleus of Paracelsus College’s broad, squat X. Each wing was devoted to student accommodation, but the center contained the offices and apartments of the college’s senior faculty. The Dean and Bursar lived in commodious quarters here; though the four year Fellows each lived in a kitchenless apartment at the far end of the four wings, the four similar units adjacent to the nucleus were occupied by postdoctoral Fellows who had nothing to do with the college’s administration.
The offices were downstairs, the Dean’s and Bursar’s apartments upstairs. The foyer was relatively large and quite deserted at this dinner hour; the open counter where a clerk worked during office hours was unmanned, and the offices clearly visible through glass walls were equally empty.
Resuming his descent, Carmine stopped short of the counter and debated how he was going to locate the Dean. A cheerful buzz emanated from the opposite side of the nucleus, where the dining room and common rooms were located. Sighing, Carmine girded his loins for a sortie into the midst of four hundred eating young men, but it never happened. A short, fussy man in a three-piece suit emerged from the dining side entrance, took Carmine in at a glance, and walked toward him. He had the gait of a duck, though he wasn’t overweight. Just knock-kneed. His face was round and ruddy, his brown hair scant but assiduously brushed to hide as much scalp as possible, and his dark brown eyes held a flash that told Carmine he was capable of cowing most of Paracelsus’s inmates. No one could have called him handsome.
“Dean Highman,” said Carmine, shaking hands. Good, firm grip.
“Come upstairs to my apartment,” the Dean said, lifting the flap of the counter and unlocking a glass door. Once through that, they ascended to the second floor in a tiny elevator, a smoother ride than tiny elevators usually gave.
“Dean Dawkins-Paracelsus’s first dean and my predecessor-was a paraplegic,” Highman explained as they floated upward, “but his qualifications outweighed both his handicap and the cost of installing this.” A soft chuckle. “Princeton thought it had him.”
“Eat your heart out, Princeton,” said Carmine, grinning.
“Are you a Chubber, Captain?”
“Yes, Class of Forty-eight.”
“Ah! Then you were one of the young men who defended our beloved country. But you must have started before the war.”
“Yes, in September of 1939. I enlisted straight after Pearl Harbor, so I lost my credits for the fall of 1941. Not that I cared. The Japs and the Nazis came first.”
“Married?”
“Yes.”
“Children?”
“A girl by a previous marriage, Sophia, now sixteen, and a son five months old,” said Carmine, wondering who was conducting this interrogation.
“His name?”
“Still undecided.”
“Oh, dear! Is that a serious marital contretemps?”
“No, more an ongoing, good-natured argument.”
“She’ll win, Captain, she’ll win! They always do.”
Dean Highman settled his guest in a leather chair and went to the bar cart. “Sherry? Scotch? Whiskey?”
“You didn’t offer me gin, Dean.”
“You don’t look or act like a gin man.”
“How right you are! Whiskey will do fine, thanks. Soda and ice, and drown it.”
“Still on duty, eh?” The Dean sat down with his own generous glass of sherry. “Ask away, Captain.”
“I gather from Mr. Pugh’s roommate, Mr. Wilkinson, that the college is deserted during class hours?”
“Absolutely. Any student found wandering the corridors during class hours is certain to be queried. Not that it happens often. Paracelsus was built and endowed specifically for pre-med students by the Parson Foundation.”
Carmine pulled a face. “Oh, that bunch!”
“You speak as one who knows them.”
“I was involved in a case the year before last that had to do with one of their endowed facilities.”
“Yes, the Hug,” said Dean Highman, nodding wisely. “I do sincerely trust that the murder of Mr. Pugh does
“I doubt it, Dean, beyond what leaks to the press and other media about the circumstances of Mr. Pugh’s death. Rest assured that we’ll be trying to tone down our releases.”
The Dean leaned forward, his sherry forgotten. “I am smitten with fear, Captain. How did Mr. Pugh die?”
“Between the teeth of a bear trap rigged in his closet.”
The ruddy face paled, and the sherry stood in danger of slopping until the Dean lifted the glass to his lips and drank it off in a gulp. “Ye gods! Christ almighty!
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“But-but-what can we do? I swear no one saw anything odd today! I’ve asked, I do assure you!” the Dean bleated.
“I understand that, but tomorrow there will be detectives back to ask a lot more questions on the subject, Dr. Highman. For which reason, I’d like to make sure that every single member of your staff, including janitors, trash collectors, gardeners, maids and other nonfaculty be present all day. They’ll all have to answer questions. No one
