Murder by Mocha

hangover and worse disposition.”

The woman leaned close and lowered her voice. “And between you and me, after a typical evening in her cups, the last thing Juliana would ever do is visit her reading room.”

My knees felt suddenly shaky. Madame paled. Phoebe simply cackled and slapped her knee. “Look at you two! Your faces are white as whippletree petals!”

“Whippletree?”

“Dogwood. Part of Chaucer’s nomenclature from “The Knight’s Tale.” Did you know Boccaccio was the source of that tale? His was an epic, of course, and old Geoffrey changed the genre to romance, although, inspired by Boethius, he added an undercurrent of philosophy.”

“I see.”

“Too much information?” She cackled again. “Oh my. Why so serious?” she leaned close. “Nothing to fear. Your secret little masquerade is safe for now. But, of course, with good scholarship, most secrets are revealed, sooner or later.”

“Sooner is better,” I replied, offering my hand. “My name is Clare Cosi and this is Mrs. Dubois. We apologize for crashing your reading room, but we need information. It’s a matter of life or death—”

“Tea!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Earl Gray. There’s nothing better than a strong tea served hot with a story well told.”

“We don’t have time for—”

“Sounds delightful,” Madame cut in, squeezing my elbow.

I forced a smile. “Thank you so much.”

Minutes later, tea was served under a tall, open window, in the warmth of the noontime sun. A flowering laurel tree stood just outside, swaying in the spring breeze. The sea-tinged air flowed in off the manicured quad along with sounds of laughter from passing students.

The cups were cardboard, the sugar in little packets, but the hot tea, freshly brewed from imported loose leaves, could have raised the dead, and the home-baked mini chocolate-chip scones, rich with butter and cream, were perfectly balanced—the lighter flavors rescued from complete obliteration by the judicious control of the chocolate’s darkness.

When we were all settled in, Madame tactfully explained our quest. “We’re searching for a thesis written by one of your alumni. Unfortunately, we don’t know the author’s name. We only know the subject.”

Phoebe patted Madame’s hand. “Never fear, Mrs. Dubois. All of our papers are cross-referenced.”

I jumped in. “This paper mentions words or perhaps names. One of them is Laeta, another is Severa—” I was ready to spell them out, but Phoebe was way ahead of me.

“Laeta, Severa, and Rufina. You don’t have to be coy, ladies. If you wanted to see ‘The Romance of the Vestals’ by Thelma Vale Pixley you need only ask—the dean of the college, that is.”

Aphrodite’s real name is Thelma Vale Pixley?

Phoebe rose and fetched a thin, worn volume from a shelf. “Once upon a time, this notorious thesis was referenced each and every semester,” she said. “That’s not true anymore. Time has passed, and the school has done its best to make everyone forget.”

Madame arched an eyebrow. “Forget?”

The archivist stood at my shoulder, volume in hand. “I’m not supposed to show this to anyone but students or alumni. Not without the express permission of Dean Parnassus.”

I felt a pressure in my chest. So close. Are we dead?

“Oh, what the Hades!” Phoebe declared.

She placed the volume on the table in front of me, and I turned immediately to the lending sheets attached to the inside back cover. As Phoebe spoke, I rapidly scanned the names of those who’d looked at this thesis in the past eleven years. None looked familiar—and I felt crushed.

“That paper is a real potboiler,” Phoebe said. “As scholarship it’s rubbish, but as fiction it’s worthy of Anne Radcliffe.”

“I adored Anne Radcliffe when I was a girl,” Madame said. “I do believe I married an Italian man because I read The Italian at too impressionable an age.”

“Well, my guess is Miss Pixley was reading Henry Miller,” Phoebe said. “Or perhaps the Marquis de Sade, because the girl turned a tale of intrigue and injustice from the late Roman Empire into a Dionysian tragedy of sinister lust—complete with erotic passages. Of course, much of Greco-Roman mythology was driven by amorous desire.”

She tipped her head to the swaying branches beyond the open window.

“My beautiful laurel even has her roots in such a tale—a nymph transformed into a tree, the answer to a prayer as she ran from the clutches of a lustful god. ‘A heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in roots, her face lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.’ ”

Madame sighed. “So much yearning, desire, and heartbreak. The young live in Puccini.”

“Oh, Puccini! ‘Mi chiamano Mimì’ is one of my favorite arias.”

“I have it as my ringtone.”

“Did you know the libretto for Gianni Schicchi is based on an incident mentioned in the Divine Comedy?”

“Which one?”

As the newfound friends continued talking, I paged through the long paper. Finally, I interrupted: “Excuse me, but what was Miss Pixley attempting to explore here? An Apollonian versus Dionysian philosophy?”

“Oh, nothing so deep as that, I’m afraid.” Phoebe tipped her head to the campus quad. “And yet her dissertation became so popular among the other girls, she was made something of a campus celebrity.”

“But isn’t this supposed to be a scholarly study?”

“There’s some scholarship involved,” Phoebe said. “The trial and execution of the three innocent Vestals occurred in AD 213, as in the thesis. And Emperor Caracalla, the man whose lust for them led to their death sentences, was as brutally handsome as he was murderously brutal. But the rest of it is a fiction that sprung from the fevered, postpubescent mind of Thelma Pixley.”

“What happened to the author?” I asked.

Phoebe’s teeth rattled. “That story is quite a potboiler, too. And it also ends in an execution. It was back when this college was exclusively a girl’s school. With that notorious paper circulating throughout the student body, Miss Pixley became a ringleader. She spearheaded a pagan revival. Thelma and her friends formed a secret sorority, complete with Dionysian rites.”

Phoebe lowered her voice. “These were daughters of affluence, you understand, so recreational drugs were easy to purchase. But this was a school for girls, so there was a dearth of men around with whom to practice their rites.”

“Then who did they target?” I asked.

“Male faculty members. Thelma focused her lust on one man in particular, a literature professor with a promising career ahead of him. Dr. Victor Temple also had a wife and a young daughter.”

Phoebe set her cup on the desk. “Dr. Temple was a fine educator and a good man. But in the end he was just a man, and he fell into bed with young Miss Pixley.”

Phoebe paused. “Not long after that, Dr. Temple’s wife, Dora, discovered the affair and shot her husband to death.”

Madame gasped and I blinked. Aphrodite lured a respected, married professor into an affair— one that ended in murder?

As Phoebe continued talking, I returned my attention to the library lending sheets. After searching the names carefully, I pointed: “I see a Temple listed here. A woman named Olympia Temple accessed this paper five years ago. Do you know who she is?”

Phoebe nodded. “Olympia Temple was the only daughter of Dora and Victor Temple.”

“Was?” Madame repeated.

“Yes, past tense is appropriate, I’m sorry to say. Olympia crossed the Styx by her own hand.”

“Suicide?”