The living room was of course the one that took time. It was about two in the morning when I found something. In the bottom bureau drawer was a cigar box containing letters, bills, canceled checks. I took it over to the daybed, sat down, and began to read through them. There were two letters from her mother full of aimless amenities that made my throat tighten. The dog got on the school bus and her father had gotten a call from the school and had to leave the store and go get it, younger brother was in a junior high school pageant, momma had lost three pounds, she hoped Cathy was watching what she ate, daddy sent his love.
The third letter was different. It was on the stationery of a Peabody motel. It said:
Darling,
You are beautiful when you are asleep. As I write this I am looking at you and the covers are half off you so I can see your breasts. They are beautiful. I want to climb back into bed with you, but I must leave. You can cut my eight o'clock class, but I can't. I won't mark you absent though and I'll be thinking about last night all the time. The room is paid for and you have to leave by noon, they said. I love you.
There was no date, no signature. It was written in a distinctive cursive, script.
For crissake! A clue. A goddamned clue. I folded the note up and put it in my inside coat pocket. So far I was guilty of breaking and entering, possession of burglar's tools, and destruction of property. I figured tampering with evidence would round things out nicely. I wanted to run right out and track down my clue, but I didn't. I searched the rest of the room. There were no other clues.
I turned off the lights, moved the chair, and went out. The door wouldn't stay shut because of the broken padlock. I went out the front way this time, as if I belonged. When I reached my car I put the pinch bar back in the trunk, got in the car, and sat for a bit. Now that I had a clue, what exactly was I supposed to do with it? I looked at my watch. 3 A.M. Searching apartments is slow business. I turned on the interior light in my car, took out my clue, and read it again. It said the same thing it said the first time. I folded it up again and tapped my front teeth with it for about fifteen seconds. Then I put it back in my pocket, turned off the interior light, started up the car, and went home. When I decide something I don't hesitate.
I went to bed and dreamed I was a miner and the tunnel was collapsing and everyone else had left. I woke up with the dream unfinished and my clock said ten minutes of seven. I looked at the bureau. My clue was up there where I'd left it, partly unfolded, along with my loose change and my jackknife and my wallet. Maybe I'd catch somebody today. Maybe I'd detect something. Maybe I'd solve a crime. There are such days. I'd even had some. I climbed out of bed and plodded to the shower. I hadn't worked out in four days and felt it. If I solved something this morning, maybe I could take the afternoon off and go over to the Y.
I took a shower and shaved and dressed and went out. It was only 7:45 and cold. The snow was hard-crusted and the sun glistened off it very brightly. I put on my sunglasses. Even through their dark lenses it was a bright and lovely day. I stopped at a diner and had two cups of coffee and three plain doughnuts. I looked at my watch. 8:15. The trouble with being up and at 'em bright and early was once you were up most of the 'em that you wanted to be at weren't out yet.
I bought a paper and cruised over to the university. There was room to park in a tow zone near the gymnasium. I parked there and read the paper for half an hour. Nowhere was there mention of the fact that I'd found a clue. In fact, nowhere was anyone even predicting that I would. At nine o'clock I got out and went looking for Iris Milford.
She wasn't in the newspaper office. The kid cropping photos at the next desk told me she never came in until the afternoon, and showed me her class schedule pasted on the corner of her desk. With his help I Figured out that from nine to ten she had a sociology course in room 218 of the chemistry building. He told me how to get there. I had a half-hour wait in the corridor, where I entertained myself examining the girl students who went by. During class time they were sparse and I had nothing else to do but marvel at the consistency with which the university architects had designed their buildings. Cinder block and vinyl tile seem to suffice for all seasons. At ten minutes to ten the bell rang and the kids poured into the corridor. Iris saw me as she came out of the classroom. She said, 'Hell, Spenser. How'd you know where to find me?'
I said, 'I'm a trained detective. Want some coffee?'
We went to the cafeteria in the student union. Above the cafeteria entrance someone had scrawled in purple magic marker, 'Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.'
I said, 'Isn't that from Dante?'
She said, 'Very good. It's written over the entrance to hell in book three of 'The Inferno.' '
I said, 'Aw, I bet you looked that up.'
The cafeteria was modernistic as far as cinder block and vinyl tile will permit. The service area along one side was low-ceilinged and close. The dining area was three stories high, with one wall of windows that reached the ceiling and opened on a parking lot. The cluttered tables were a spectrum of bright pastels, and the floor was red quarry tile in squares. It was somewhere between an aviary and Penn Station. It was noisy and hot. The smoke of thousands of cigarettes drifted through the shafts of winter sunlight that fused in through the windows. Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.
I said, 'Many campus romances start here?'
She laughed and shook her head. 'Not hardly,' she said. 'You want to scuff hand and hand through fallen leaves, you don't go here.'
We stood in line for our coffee. The service was cardboard, by Dixie. I paid, and we found a table. It was cluttered with paper plates, plastic forks, and cardboard beverage trays and napkins. I crumpled them together and deposited them in a trash can.
'How long you had this neatness fetish?' Iris asked.
I grinned, took a sip of coffee.
'You find Cathy Connelly?' she asked.
'Yeah,' I said, 'but she was dead.'
Iris's mouth pulled back in a grimace and she said, 'Shit.'
'She'd been drowned in her bathtub, by someone who tried to make it look accidental.'
Iris sipped her coffee and said nothing.
I took the letter from my inside pocket and gave it to her. 'I found this in her room,' I said.
Iris read it slowly.
'Well, she didn't die a virgin,' Iris said.
'There's that,' I said.
'She was sleeping with some professor,' Iris said.
'Yep.'
'If you can find out what eight o'clock classes she had, you'll know who.'
'Yep.'
'But you can't get that information because you've been banished from the campus.'
'Yep.'
'Which leaves old Iris to do it, right?'
'Right.'
'Why do you want to know?'
'Because I don't know. It's a clue. There's a professor in here someplace. The missing manuscript would suggest a professor. Terry says she heard Powell talking to a professor before he was killed, now Cathy Connelly appears to have been sleeping with a professor, and she's dead. I want to know who he is. He could be the same professor. Can you get her class schedule?'
'This year?'
'All years, there's no date on the note.'
'Okay, I got a friend in the registrar's office. She'll check it for me.'
'How soon?'
'As soon as she can. Probably know tomorrow.'
'I'm betting on Hayden,' I said.
'As a secret lover?'
'Yep. The manuscript is medieval. He's a medieval specialist. He teaches Chaucer, which is an early class.
