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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 VI: A Red Herring?
[Contributed by Norman Stevens, Devoted Reader and Librarian Extraordinaire]
“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”
— Saul Bellow, in “Him With His Foot in His Mouth”
Since his appointment as head librarian at Hillborne slightly more than 10 years ago, Timothy Peason, a wiry Englishman with a small mustache and the tenacity of a bulldog, had survived three presidents in his quest to move what had been a languid backwater locked in the late 19th-century into the electronic era of the early 21st century.
Noted for his role, as assistant librarian of the Molesworth Institute, in helping plan for the first non-book academic library (“The Fully Electronic Academic Library” College & Research Libraries 67: 8-14, January 2006), Peason had used his velvet glove to charm the trustees, the college administration, and the technologically oriented faculty into packing the small, crowded building with computers and other technology. He had gradually instituted a plan to eliminate a large portion of the book collection by weeding out books that had not circulated in a given period of time that at present is two academic years. The morning of Professor Mann’s murder Peason had held a major ceremony to mark the reduction of the collection by 75 percent since his arrival.
Peason’s other mission, which was in large measure a matter of a dog marking his territory, was to eliminate all of the faculty offices in Satis Library. He was especially incensed that the faculty occupants had keys to the building that let them come and go at will. He had only been able to reclaim an office when the current occupant developed Alzheimer’s disease, moved to Florida, or, most often, died, as the assignments had traditionally been for an unlimited period of time.
Professor Mann was Peason’s main nemesis, and they had been waging war against one another for years. Initially unwilling to take the time or effort needed to bring books from the stacks that belonged in his office, Mann had insisted that any competent student or faculty member who wanted to use books by, or about, Faulkner, Twain, Wolfe, or any other major male literary figure before 2000 should know that they would be found in his office where they were readily available during the six hours a week he held office hours provided he did not have another visitor. Frustrated by the danger that Peason’s war against books posed, Mann had utilized the library’s new technology by employing Muffy McCoy to bring her laptop to his office — he would not, he always said, be “caught dead” with a computer as indeed he wasn’t — to charge all of “his” books out, and then quickly discharge them, to frustrate Peason’s biblicidal campaign.
The only concession that Peason had made to books was to enthusiastically promote the Satis Library’s one and only special collection. The Cecily Cardew Memorial Murder Morgue (CCMMM), as it is popularly known, had been established in 1932 shortly after the arrest, conviction, and execution of Professor Augustus Mann Chamberlain — a distant relative of the recently deceased Professor Mann — for the seduction, impregnation, and murder of a freshman student and her unborn daughter. Miss Cardew’s family had established an endowment of $2-million for the development and operation of a collection of detective fiction, especially works that dealt with murder, in the hopes that the contents would lead to the solution of the kind of personal tragedy that had befallen them.
On the morning after the demise of Mann, Peason was quietly celebrating the recovery of another faculty office into which he could put several computer workstations, when Noughleigh Rhee Furbished, the curator of the CCMMM, rushed into his office without knocking. Having committed what is usually regarded as the closest thing to a mortal sin that a staff member could commit, the lanky, and visibly distressed, Miss Furbished blurted out that one of her most precious treasures had been kidnapped. A maiden lady librarian of the old school, she had been transferred, with a handsome increase in salary, to her current position just six months ago from her previous job as book mender, since there were no more library books to be mended. A book needing repair, no matter how often it had been used, had been deemed as fit for the funeral pyre as one that had not been circulated.
When she finally stopped sobbing, not for the unexpected death of Mann with whom ages ago she had been linked romantically, over the loss of a book, Peason managed to extract the vital facts from her. By far the rarest book in the collection had been the only known copy of an anonymous 1869 novel, My Heart Is Missing. Based on a true-life case in a well-known college, it was highly regarded as the first piece of detective fiction set in an academic institution and among the first to be narrated by the victim. With mixed emotions over the death of Mann, the recovery of a faculty office, and the loss of the library’s most precious treasure, Peason’s brain finally brought him to the realization that the circumstances could be put to excellent use.
They presented him with another opportunity to press for the elimination of all faculty offices in the library, as it was obviously not safe for occupants to be in them when the library was closed. They also might enable the police to solve the crime, which must have been connected to the theft of his book, thus fulfilling the wish of Miss Cardew’s family and perhaps persuading their still filthy rich descendants to contribute additional funds that would better suit his purposes.
He quickly asked his secretary Emily to contact the campus police.
Posted at 10:59:57 PM on April 29, 2008 | All postings by Gina BarrecaComments
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A red herring? No; a read hair ring, around that heart — in the style of the Victorians.
;-)
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Apr 30, 12:52 AM · #
crazy! this twist is spooky. Some kind of cyclical history and justice seems to be going on here with Mann’s distant relative. And the quote in the beginning is great…I’ll keep my guard up today.
— Hannah · Apr 30, 07:02 AM · #
“Peason’s biblicidal campaign”—both frightening and brilliantly funny. What a great line!
— Emily · May 1, 07:02 AM · #
MORE, MORE! When’s the next installment? This is the most interesting insiderinfo I’ve seen in a long time. Keep it up!
— John Boy · May 1, 07:54 AM · #
I too loved “Peason’s biblicidal campaign” Lovely!
I am beginning to relate to the readers of the 19th century when one had to wait impatiently until the next instalment of Dickens came out…
— Ceres · May 1, 08:22 AM · #
I enjoy reading this series – however, a $2,000,000 gift in 1932 is equivalent to nearly $500,000,000 today and as such seems excessively large. Also, ‘unborn daughter’ is a modern phrase. Ultrasounds only began medical use in the 1940s so the sex of the fetus would not have been determined (unless post-mortem).
— historical index · May 1, 04:00 PM · #
Nothing is excessive in fiction which is what makes it worth our attention. Facts are boring. Excess is exciting, even by the standards of 1932.
— mkmolrlu · May 2, 09:24 PM · #
Where ever this is going I think it is important that Cindy and John get it on. Hardcore.
— Bob · May 3, 09:20 AM · #
mkmolrlu, I respectfully disagree. Excess and fiction do not always go hand in hand. In fact, good fiction walks a fine line without spilling into the realm of some no-rules zone. And facts are not boring. Where do you think fiction comes from?
historical index is right—there should be a level of credibility in the facts behind fiction. If we are to trust the writer, the writer’s facts better be in line.
Likes and dislikes:
I just don’t buy the CCMMM. Detective fiction leading to the solution of personal tragedy? No way. I don’t really buy Peason, either. He wants to get rid of all the books in the library. Why wouldn’t everybody hate him? Why is Mann the only who does? I would think this would be the one issue where the other English professors and Mann would all agree, but you write slyly around that.
I like Mann keeping the books in his office. It is a more natural way for Mann to come off as an asshole, rather than just being the meathead you sometimes describe him as. And I also just dig his style for doing it.
— Harry Lime · May 8, 05:02 PM · #