“I’m here at Lillian’s request,” he said. “My role here is strictly to observe.”
“Open-shuttered and passive,” I said.
He smiled.
“How do you feel,” I said to Lillian Temple, “about the allegation that Robinson Nevins was responsible for the suicide of Prentice Lamont?”
“What?”
“Do you think Nevins had an affair with Lamont? Do you think that the end of the affair caused Lamont’s suicide?”
“I… my God… how would I…?”
“Wasn’t it discussed in the tenure meeting?”
“Yes… but… I can’t talk about the tenure meeting.”
“Of course,” I said, “but such an allegation would certainly have weighed in your decision. How did you vote?”
“I can’t tell you that.” She looked shocked.
“You could tell me how you feel about the allegation.”
She looked at Maitland. Nothing there. She looked back at me.
“Well,” she said.
I waited.
“I feel…,” she said, “that… each person has a right to his or her sexuality.”
“Un huh.”
“But that with such a right there is a commensurate responsibility to be a caring partner in the relationship.” She stopped, pleased with her statement.
“You think Nevins was a caring partner?”
“Not,” she spoke very firmly, “if he left that boy to die.”
“And you think he did,” I said.
“I suspect that he did.”
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.”
“What are they?”
She shook her head.
“Oh,” I said, “those reasons.”
“There’s no call for sarcasm,” she said.
“The hell there isn’t,” I said.
“I think that’s probably enough, Mr. Spenser,” Maitland said.
“It’s not enough,” I said. “But it’s all I can stand.”
I stood. Maitland still sat half on the desk, looking bemused and neutral. Lillian Temple sat straight in her swivel chair, both feet flat together on the floor, her hands folded in her lap, looking implacable. I got to my feet.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you more,” she said. “But I do not take my responsibilities lightly.”
“You don’t take anything lightly,” I said.
As I walked past the African-American Center on my way to the parking lot, I thought that while I had been fiercely bullshitted in the English department, no one had tried to kick my head off. Which was progress.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Burton Roth lived in an eight-room white colonial house with green shutters on a cul-de-sac off Commonwealth Avenue in Newton. I went to see him in the late afternoon on a Thursday when he said he’d be home from work a little early. We sat in front of a small clean fireplace in a small den off his small dining room and talked about his former wife.
“She always had that flair,” he said. “It made her seem maybe more special than she really was.”
“You miss her?” I said.
“Yes. I do. But not as much as I first did. And of course I’m really angry with her.”
“Because she left.”
“Because she took up with another man, and left me for him, and for crissake she wasn’t even smart enough to find a good one.”
“What would have constituted a good one?”
