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About the Author
Gina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. Her books include They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted; Perfect Husbands and Other Fairy Tales; Babes in Boyland; and, with Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post, I'm With Stupid. She's written or edited other books on vice, Victorians and sex, American humor, the erotics of instruction, The Sopranos, women's humor, and Italian-American literature. She will blog about teaching, sex, humor, money, publishing, ambition, books, marriage, envy (professional and personal), politics (professional and personal), aging, and cartoons.
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Murder Mystery Part II: Suspects
Who else saw the body before the police arrived on that Friday afternoon? Professor Cynthia Maxwell passed by Mann’s door but could hardly have been expected to stop in for a chat. She and Mann were enemies of the deadliest sort. Maxwell’s office was directly above Mann’s in the Satis Library, and she was in her rooms briefly during the time Mann’s body lay, inert and silent, under her. Mann himself might have argued that she was used to men lying inert and silent under her. Professor Maxwell claimed not to notice anything unusual that November afternoon. So in fact we should note that Cynthia, sometimes-sweet-sometimes-steely Cynthia, did not admit to seeing the body although God knows she would have enjoyed it had she done so.
Another person who might have seen but said he did not see was Hillborne’s favorite boy. Mann’s star Carrol (Kicker) Prescott III, president of Tau Iota Delta, quarterback of the Hillborne football team and a surprisingly dedicated English major, stopped by during Mann’s office hours and knocked on the door. He was not told to enter and so did not enter, being a product of a private secondary school in Connecticut and a young man given to politeness when dealing with adults. This according to Kicker during his initial interview with the police. Kicker — nobody ever called him Carrol — simply went on to his next appointment, meeting Muffy McCoy for a sandwich at Christian’s, a nearby restaurant. Muffy was only to happy too see Kicker sooner rather than later, her taffy-colored pony-tail practically standing up on end when he sat down beside her. Her toes curled inside her pink sneakers. Her hazel eyes noticed how Kicker’s hands were shaking or rather, she would have noticed, had she any insight at all.
Also not saying they saw the body are the only other faculty members on the premises. Professors Vera Campbell, Washington Jefferies, and Ahmed Farouk, although in Satis Library, were in a committee meeting sorting through applications for a graduate scholarship that would send the winner to Britain for a year of study. The choice seemed clear: Either send Gail Marshall and be honest or send Mark Johnson and be good. Gail’s father was president of the largest supermarket chain in the USA and she went to London at least twice a year and had done since she could remember. Marks Johnson’s father was a delivery man in White River Junction and Mark had never been out of New Hampshire. Gail’s grade point average was a full point higher than Mark’s. There was much to decide in the hour of their meeting and although each of the professors had left to go to the bathroom, get coffee, or grab a cigarette, they did not have time, surely, to do any harm. Surely not someone as formidable as Mann. Surely not enough time to cut out his heart.
The only other figure of interest, Professor John Vincento, had just returned from visiting his lover, not quite his girlfriend, in Boston. Maria had made it clear years ago that she would keep her job at a community college and, tempted as John was to leave Arborville, he could not bring himself to give up tenure, prestige, and the fresh faces of new adoring and yes, yes, rich girls every semester. They managed to see one another frequently. John, driving his 1999 black Toyota down the Boston road through a tangle of BMW’s, Audis, and Volvos, could get to Maria’s apartment in Somerville in two hours flat. The arrangement worked well for the time being, and until John could publish The Great Browning Book (known by his friends as TGBB) he could not hope of getting another job. Charming, jovial, and fairly diligent, John was not known by others as the ambitious man he regarded himself as being. Someday his arguments would jolt Victorian scholars out of their complacency, but meanwhile he couldn’t be bothered submitting to lesser journals, and the greater journals found too many faults with his textual theories to accept the three articles he mailed out, routinely, every two years with the hope that the old readers would have died with new, more adventurous ones replacing them.
John did indeed see Mann’s body, but only as the county coroner was carting it away, and then only in time to see the sheet fall briefly away from the mottled, angry face.
How did Mann die? He was strangled. It looked as if he was strangled by his old school tie (an obscure, unworthy parochial school defunct now for many years but for which Mann demonstrated an uncharacteristic fondness). The manner of the murder indicated strength and dexterity on the part of the perpetrator.
Mann’s heart must have been cut out while rigor was fairly well established, according to the coroner’s reports, at least six or seven hours after the actual time of death. The operation removing the heart would have been messy, true, but not nearly as messy as it would have been had the heart still been pumping blood. That would have been easy enough to trace, blood from Lampe Hall to the Stane Cluster dorms if it had been done when he was alive. Why do it after he was dead? Why do it at all? Surely it was a complex feat, rather more difficult but along the same lines as getting the best of a lobster. A terrible sort of sick prank? A deeply unbalanced act? A final, fitting literalization of how many conceived of the man even before he died?
A project for an art class?
Posted at 07:29:50 AM on April 23, 2008 | All postings by Gina BarrecaComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: An End-of-Semester Murder Mystery: Part One
Next: Murder III: Cui Bono?
Cannot wait for the part III!
— Ieva · Apr 23, 08:04 AM · #
What a nail-biter! What a pleasant diversion on a warm spring afternoon! Thanks!
— Susan · Apr 23, 12:18 PM · #
I know these people. I work with these people. I work with a man just like Mann.
— coxswain · Apr 23, 03:54 PM · #
It was coxswain in the Satis lavatory with a bowie knife ordered from the back pages of a Boy’s Life magazine.
— Luke Warm · Apr 23, 04:32 PM · #
:/ Yikes spikes!
— Hannah · Apr 23, 04:51 PM · #
You went to Dartmouth, right? I can tell!
— una · Apr 23, 08:55 PM · #
An intriguing idea: the eradicating of one’s colleagues. How delightful a thought at the end of the academic year. I particularly enjoyed the reference to Fendrich’s recent post. I think it was Vincento. He sounds like the villain. to me
— mickeym · Apr 23, 09:40 PM · #
Delicious! Looking forward to the next installment.
— problemchildbride · Apr 24, 01:35 AM · #
Where was Richard Tabor Green during all of this?
— Concerned · Apr 24, 05:26 AM · #
Woohoo!! #7 is right! It is a really cool fantasy… Havent we all dreamed of it at least once?!!!!Heheheheh
— Juno · Apr 24, 08:17 AM · #
I am so looking forward to the next part! What a treat this is! :)
— Jennifer · Apr 24, 08:47 AM · #
Young Mann Carroll is the one to watch. If you’ve read GB’s books, you know she is not a fan of the greek system and would have no hesitation in making one of them the perp.
— pettypatty · Apr 24, 01:24 PM · #
Like Part II even better than I. You’re recreating Star Wars.
Lines I loved:
“Mann himself might have argued that she was used to men lying inert and silent under her.” Maybe he’s more clever than we think.
So in fact we should note that Cynthia, sometimes-sweet-sometimes-steely Cynthia, did not admit to seeing the body although God knows she would have enjoyed it had she done so.
Muffy was only to happy too (typo with the to and too) see Kicker sooner rather than later, her taffy-colored pony-tail practically standing up on end when he sat down beside her. Her toes curled inside her pink sneakers.
A project for an art class?
What I didn’t like:
If he’s a quarterback, his nickname should not be kicker, even if out of irony.
There was much to decide in the hour of their meeting and although each of the professors had left to go to the bathroom, get coffee, or grab a cigarette, they did not have time, surely, to do any harm. Surely not someone as formidable as Mann. Surely not enough time to cut out his heart.
The “Surely not someone as formidable as Mann” confuses. It makes it sound like, surely not someone as formidable as Mann would have done harm to Mann. Should it be “Surely not to someone as formidable as Mann”?
— Harry Lime · Apr 25, 04:33 PM · #
What’s going to happen (eek.)
— hannah · Apr 28, 09:30 AM · #
I’m bad at keeping up with your blog… but this one’s got me…. especially liked the idea that the heart might be for an art project, haha.
— Tess · Apr 28, 09:53 AM · #
I think it was Kicker. He’s going to use the heart as a football. (Because we know very well that Mann’s contempt spares not even the frat boys and jocks.) And Kicker is someone Mann could have hurt badly.
— Nevil Parker · Apr 29, 08:14 AM · #