Fiddlers

‘Yes?’ Kling said.

‘I can recall only one such incident,’ Knowles said. ‘But the student’s name isn’t anything like those you mentioned.’

‘That only eliminates a relative,’ Brown said.

‘What was the incident?’

‘Christine threatened to fail this girl. The girl went over her head, came to me. I protected Christine in every way possible, but… you know… we don’t fail students here. We simply don’t.’

‘Would you remember who the girl was?’ Kling asked.

* * * *

Brown was still annoyed with himself for not having asked Knowles where he’d bought his fancy bow tie.

‘You can get them anywhere,’ Kling said.

‘Yeah? Where? I never saw a tie like that one before.’

‘Besides, you’d look lousy in a tie like that,’ Kling said.

‘I think I’d look real cool in a tie like that.’

‘Too big for a big man like you.’

They were walking across campus toward a building where a girl named Marcia Finch was attending a third-period class in Survey of Early American Literature. Marcia was the girl Professor Langston had threatened to flunk last semester.

‘Are you suggesting I’m overweight?’ Brown asked.

‘No. Just large.’

‘Like Ollie Weeks?’

‘No, he’s obese.’

‘Besides, it’s only large men who can entertain wearing big ties like that one.’

‘Entertain, huh?’

‘I think Caroline might like me in a tie like that one.’

‘So go to the Internet, click on bow ties. You’ll find all sorts of silly ties like that one.’

‘Nice big tie like that one,’ Brown said, nodding, visualizing himself in one.

‘What room did Knowles say?’ Kling asked.

* * * *

They were waiting in the corridor outside room 307 when Marcia Finch came striding out, books clutched to her chest. Professor Knowles had told them they couldn’t miss her…

‘She’s an assertive little girl, blonde, quite confident of her own good looks. She exudes… shall we say… a certain aura of self-assurance?’

… and they spotted her at once now. Twenty-one, twenty-two years old, a senior here at Baldwin, wearing a short blue pleated skirt, a blue sweatshirt lettered with the words BALDWIN U in white, and flat leather sandals to match the blue of the skirt and shirt. She laughed at something a girl companion said, waggled the fingers of her left hand in farewell, and turned to see a big blond guy and a big black guy standing in her path.

‘Excuse me?’ she said, making it sound like, ‘Get the fuck out of my way, okay?’ and was starting to step around them, when Brown said, ‘Miss Finch?’

‘Yes?’

He flashed the tin.

‘Detective Brown,’ he said. ‘My partner, Detective Kling. Few questions we’d like to ask you.’

‘My father’s a lawyer,’ she said at once.

‘You won’t need a lawyer, miss,’ Brown said. ‘Let’s find a place we can sit and chat, shall we?’

‘What about?’

‘Little fracas you had with Professor Langston last semester.’

‘I think I’ll call my father,’ Marcia said.

‘Miss,’ Kling said, ‘let’s make this easy, okay?’

She turned to look at him. Maybe it was the hazel eyes. Maybe it was the calm in his voice. Maybe she was a racist who preferred dealing with Mr. Blond WASP here. Whatever it was, she nodded briefly and led them outside.

* * * *

They sat in golden sunshine on a bench outside Coswell Hall. Marcia on the right, Kling in the middle, Brown on the far left, both detectives turned to face her. Marcia sat with her legs crossed, books sitting on the path beside the bench, addressing herself entirely to Kling, telling her story to Kling alone. Sitting there, Brown could have been made of stone the color of his name.

‘The issue seemed to be attendance,’ she said.

‘Seemed to be?’ Brown said.

She ignored him.

‘Professor Langston said I’d cut too many classes. She said I couldn’t possibly have a grasp of the subject matter if I never attended any lectures. Have you ever been to one of her lectures?’ she asked Kling. ‘Bore-ing,’ she said, and patted her mouth in a simulated yawn. ‘The subject matter in question - actually, I’d only missed one or two classes - happened to be Wordsworth. Section II was all Wordsworth. I argued that Wordsworth was perhaps the most tedious poet in the entire nineteenth century. Have you ever read Tintern Abbey? Or My Heart Leaps Up? Or even Intimations of Immortality, which is supposed to be a masterpiece?’

Brown hadn’t read any of them.

Besides, she was addressing Kling.

‘Are you familiar with any of these?’ she asked him.

‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘Well, take my word for it,’ she said. ‘In any case, I read all the assigned poems at home and felt well- acquainted with all of them. I saw no need to attend all of the scheduled lectures

‘How many lectures were there altogether?’ Brown asked.

‘A semester is fourteen weeks long,’ she told Kling. ‘She spent two weeks on introduction and orientation, two weeks each on Shelley, Byron, and Keats, that was Section I. Section II was a full six weeks of Wordsworth, because she felt he was so damn important, don’t you know?’

‘How many of those six weeks did you miss?’ Brown asked.

She looked past Kling.

Fastened an eye lock on Brown.

‘I told you. One or two classes.’

‘Which was it? One or two?’

‘Maybe three altogether. And maybe I was late for one class.’

‘So you missed at least half of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cut half of your classes.’

‘Well… yes.’

‘And this was why Professor Langston threatened to fail you?’

‘I knew the work. I told you, I did it at home.’ She cut off the conversation with Brown, looked directly into Kling’s eyes. ‘Am I going to need my father here?’ she asked.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Kling said gently. ‘So what happened? After she said she was going to flunk you.’

‘I went to see Professor Knowles.’

‘And?’

‘He said he’d talk to her.’

‘And did he?’

‘Yes. I’m a straight-A student here. I’ve never had a grade below B in all my life!’ She turned slightly, so that her knees were just touching Kling’s. ‘Can you imagine what an F would have done to my average?’ she asked, blue eyes wide.

Kling moved his own knees away.