too. I think it would be okay with Miss Greenberg.”
A pleasant-looking fellow, Sarah thought. Straight, slicked back auburn hair, freckled up-turned nose, wide, open face. Average, in a good sense of the term.
“It’ll be a bit tight,” Sarah said, “but the more the merrier. We’ll need another chair.”
“Leave that to me, ma’am,” Jim said, smiling, and returned quickly with the required seating. He put down the chair and rubbed his palm on his trousers before extending his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“You, too.”
“Sad occasion though,” he added.
“Yes, I’m so sorry for you both, for the whole college.”
“Jim’s in the economics department, Miss Kaufman,” Kathryn said, resting her hand on his shoulder maternally, “but he told me he’s never enjoyed a class more than the one he took with Professor Manhoff. So many of us here felt the same way about him.”
“Well,” Sarah said, “at least you’ll be helping to further his work. How about I divide this stuff into thirds?”
They each took their share and began poring over his notes. After almost an hour, Sarah needed a break. The heat was overwhelming, and sifting through the piles of papers was a bit too reminiscent of the newspaper clippings she had searched through not so long ago for clues, anything that might help Obee. She got up and offered to get everyone something to drink, which the two were apparently craving, as both responded with an emphatic nod; Jim, in particular, who put his hand up to his throat in an exaggerated pantomime of thirst. Sarah clicked her way down the hall to the faculty rest area where pitchers and cups were kept. She filled the pitcher with water from a rusty faucet, grabbed the cups and walked back.
“Thanks,” Kathryn said. “Sit down, and I’ll pour.”
Sarah repositioned her wire-framed reading glasses and glanced at the students. Were they sweethearts? They were sitting very close. Whatever the relationship between these two, though, they were doing a great job. Their pile at least equaled hers. Lena would be excited to have so much to work with.
Sarah took a sip of water and thumbed through the remaining few papers. She was becoming accustomed to the terminology as well as to the professor’s verbose style, which is why the last item gave her pause. Short. Terse. Fragmentary. Just the opposite. She pulled out the hand-written sheet and squinted, as if her glasses had suddenly lost their potency, and read the first line. “Meeting with Mencken, four-thirty p.m. July tenth, Morgan home—Dayton.” She read it again. Mencken. The Mencken? Dayton—Dayton, Tennessee, she assumed. That’s where the John Scopes trial was being held, and as everyone knew, the Sun was sending its famed reporter to cover it. Sarah had been made particularly aware of this fact. Mitchell Dobrinski, who had helped her so much with Obee, was covering the trial too, for the Blade. For weeks he could barely contain himself at the idea of meeting, as he repeatedly said, the “greatest journalist of all time.” Mitchell, she thought, giving her rings a few spins. She had tried to keep her distance, but he was such a persistent fellow.
Anyway, Sarah knew Mencken was brilliant, but she didn’t quite view him as the second, or, more accurately for her, the first coming, as Mitchell did. The man had enemies for a reason. She did know, however, that in addition to being a famed newspaperman, he was a noted literary critic, and thus assumed that the professor’s meeting probably would have had something to do with books. That seemed to be confirmed by three names written directly underneath the reminder: Smart Set (the literary magazine that Mencken edited), Theodore Dreiser and Mark Twain. And then this quote: “A good critic is like an artist . . . So with criticism. Let us forget all the heavy effort to make a science of it; it is a fine art, or nothing.” By H. L. Yes, Sarah thought. Henry Louis Mencken. But below this were words, a list of some sort, which caused Sarah’s heart to skip a beat.
1. The Origin of Species—BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVORED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
2. George William Hunter—Civic Biology—Caucasian race—finally the highest type of all.
3. Nietzsche—A democracy of intelligence, of strength, of superior fitness . . . a new aristocracy of the laboratory, the study, and the shop.
4. Eugenics—the science of improving the human race by better heredity.
And scrawled across the bottom: Mencken = Natural Selection. All men are created UNequal. The strong will naturally prevail over their inferiors. Convince M. to publish and join the Brotherhood.
She removed her glasses, leaned back and massaged the bridge of her nose. How strange. Brotherhood. Usually a noble concept. But, the Brotherhood. That could be . . . that could mean . . . No, it didn’t make sense. Not at all given what she’d heard of the professor. Maybe these were notes for a novel. A work of fiction he was planning to discuss with Mr. Mencken. Convince M. to publish. That must be it. There was no other reasonable explanation.
Feeling satisfied with her conclusion, Sarah picked up her folder again, just as Lena walked in. Everyone looked up eagerly, but as soon as they saw her, their expressions changed. She was pale. And trembling, so much so that she had to steady herself against the table. Sarah started to get up.
“The coroner’s report is in,” Lena said.
Sarah glanced at the others then back at Lena.
“Nick’s death was not an accident.”
6
The lead bullet entered the head at too close a range for it to be a hunter’s—or anyone else’s—mistake. The slug came from a six point thirty-five millimeter, a pocket pistol. ‘Probably a Beretta.’ So says County Coroner, Foster McClean.
Sarah put down her copy of the Edenville Times. This changed everything, of course. Ever since she arrived, it seemed fate was sending her a message. Go home, Sarah. You’re not tough enough for Dixie. Go home. But now, Lena didn’t just want her to stay, she needed her to. Her cousin’s usual air of imperviousness had given way to vulnerability, even a bit of fear. Murder? That was only in books, a literary device, an imaginative way to make a theoretical point. The reality of it confused her. The proximity put her normally calm nerves on edge.
Sarah had never had children, hoping to find a man to marry first. But she suddenly experienced something like a mother’s protective instinct. An instinct lying dormant, waiting to be ignited, allowing her to keep her own demons—which, at the very mention of murder, surely would have otherwise risen to haunt her—at bay. Lena needed her support now. The kind of support that comes only with the bonds of blood. And so she would stay, at least for a while.
•••
Now that the professor’s death had been deemed a homicide, the town took on an entirely different aspect, as if suddenly electrified, as if an especially powerful bolt of lightening had hit one of their shady old trees. Sparks flew everywhere, a high voltage mix of gossip, fear and excitement.
During the next week, all the available university staff was questioned and dismissed, as were the students, who frequently came away from their interviews in tears. Of course, many were gone for the summer, a source of aggravation for the authorities. Perhaps the murderer escaped, was already out of the country. If a clue didn’t surface soon, they would have to broaden their search.
Lena’s interview was conducted in the downstairs parlor. When she and Sarah entered the sweltering, fussy room, they were met by two uniformed officers gulping tall glasses of iced tea; a young, slender, redhead and a pot-bellied, crusty old codger with droplets of sweat threatening to drip from his deeply creviced forehead onto his vein-ridden, bulbous nose. The latter, clearly in charge, reluctantly allowed Sarah to remain in the room. “I’m Officer Perry,” he said, “this heah’s Officer Briggs. He’ll be takin’ some notes, if y’all don’t mind.”
Lena turned to Sarah, raising her eyebrows, as if to question whether this was appropriate. Sarah nodded, and the interview got underway.