Wycke laughed. ‘No, I was just kidding. Well, I wish you luck, Charlie. Most killers are easy—you find them two blocks away covered in blood. The thoughtful ones can be very, very hard. How come they gave it to you?’
‘I think you boys were too busy. And I’m just helping out,’ Salter said cheerfully.
‘That’s right, we are. We probably looked at it and gave it back. Still, if you need any help, let me know.’
‘Thanks.’ Salter dipped his toe into the waters of fraternal feeling. ‘This stuff is pretty new to me. I might be glad to give you a shout if I get in too deep.’
‘Any time. You know where my office is.’ Wycke finished his coffee and stood up. ‘I won’t trip you up,’ he said.
Salter understood, and felt a twinge of grateful warmth. He had been lonely for some time. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
Wollstonecraft Hall, a red sandstone building on Harbord Street, was built by a dissenting church to protect young ladies from the city when they were not in class, but in the ‘sixties it had been forced to swing with the times and had become a mixed residence. As he walked through the halls, Salter passed young men and women in about equal numbers, chatting in groups and pairs, and, in one case, embracing feverishly as if war had been declared.
The Office of the Dean of Women was open, and Salter pushed the door back and walked in. A secretary looked up from her typewriter, and he introduced himself. She was the drabbest girl he had seen for some time; she looked as though she had been hired for her plainness by the original sex-fearing governors of the residence. Her glasses, steel-rimmed, round and tiny, were balanced on the end of her nose; her thick blonde hair was cut in a straight line, parallel with the bottoms of her ears; she wore a brown smock that looked like a shroud. Salter was appalled and piteous. ‘Is Miss Homer in?’ he asked. ‘She’s expecting me.’
The girl stood up, took her glasses off, and smiled, transforming herself like the heroine of a musical comedy. She had beautiful teeth, and the shroud, when she was upright, clothed a perfect figure. It’s a style, thought Salter. They do it deliberately.
The girl went into the inner office and reappeared with another wonderful smile. ‘Miss Homer says you can go right in,’ she said. She put her glasses on and went back to posing as a hag in front of her typewriter.
Miss Homer was another surprise. She was about thirty-five, light gold hair, a buff-coloured denim suit, brown-and-white striped shirt, gold bangles on each wrist, gold rings in her ears, and shoes made of tapestry. At first Salter thought she was sun-tanned, but as he approached to shake hands he realized she was so thickly freckled that the freckles seemed alive and she seemed to be blinking to keep them out of her eyes. Salter, who had been expecting a grey-haired matron in golf shoes, found himself shuffling his feet.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ she asked.
‘Thanks. Yes, please.’ He sat down in the armchair she indicated, one of a pair arranged by a low table. ^To his further surprise, instead of calling her secretary, she went to a table by the wall and poured two cups from a percolator. Ah yes, he thought. Secretaries do not make coffee these days, especially on the frontier of the movement.
The room was a relief after the utilitarianism of Douglas College. On one wall a huge block of photographs of various kinds formed a mural. On another hung a large framed thing made of bits of cloth. The desk was a sheet of heavy glass on two trestles. All this Salter had time to take in before she returned with the coffee.
She hunched over her cup and waited for him to begin.
Salter showed her the note which she barely glanced at.
‘Yes, that’s my note. I’d forgotten about it. Is that why you are here? I never saw Professor Summers.’
‘Were you a good friend of his?’
‘Once. Not any more. David was an old colleague. I taught at Douglas while I was doing my thesis.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Six years. I graduated five years ago, and got this job.’
‘Did’ you often see him in Toronto?’
‘No, never. Except by accident, of course.’
‘But you arranged to meet him at the conference?’
‘At conferences like that you pick up with people you don’t otherwise see. I often had a drink with the Douglas College people.’
‘Were you and Professor Summers in the same field?’ Salter asked out of his new knowledge.
‘What? Oh no. My field is women’s journals.
‘Like Chatelaine?’ Salter asked, surprised at what English Literature covered.
‘No, no. Diaries. I got interested first in Dorothy Wordsworth, and went on from there. As a matter of fact, David was interested in my thesis topic, which concerned journals as literary forms. I think he started one of his own because of me, but I never saw it.’
‘Let me see, then. You arrived at the conference and left a note in his box. Wasn’t he in his room? What time did you leave the note?’
‘About six. No, there was no answer from his room.’
‘And that’s all the contact you had with him?’
‘Yes.’ She got up to refill her cup.
‘How long did you stay in Montreal?’
‘I left on Saturday afternoon, with the people from Douglas. Everyone heard at lunch-time what had happened and I was too upset to stay. Besides, people were talking about it, people who didn’t know him, as if it was an exciting thing, like a president being assassinated.’ As she replaced her cup on the coffee table it rattled in its saucer.
‘I see. That’s that, then. You have nothing more to tell me?’
She shook her head and then began to shiver, trembling at first, then violently. When her teeth began to chatter, Salter shouted for the secretary, who ran in and held her until the shivering subsided.
‘I’m sorry,’ the Dean said, when she had recovered enough. ‘I seem to be a bit of a mess.’
‘Delayed shock, I should imagine,’ Salter said. ‘I should go to bed and call your doctor. If I want you again, I’ll let your secretary know.’
In the outer office Salter asked the secretary. ‘Has that happened before?’
‘Yes. A lot. She’s hardly stopped since she came back from Montreal. I thought she was all right today, but you set her off again.’
‘I didn’t realize she was so fragile, miss.’
‘She’s not. I don’t know why this is so hard on her.’
Salter left. Dean of Women overreacts to routine questioning, he thought. I wonder why?
It was a long time since Salter had gone home for lunch. From the early days of their marriage he associated it with ‘nooners’, making love in the daytime, preferably on the floor. Did the young officers still do that? He and Annie had not done it for years, but now as she stood at the sink he put his arms round her waist and squeezed her in something more than a friendly hug. She twisted in his arms and looked at him, startled and worried, but game. ‘If you want,’ she said. ‘But I’ll have to turn the pot down to simmer.’
‘Fuck the pot,’ Salter whispered, and hugged her close. ‘All right,’ she said. He let her go. ‘We’ll save it,’ he said.
‘Who have you been questioning today?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Just an old bag who looks after the morals of young ladies. You are the one who turns me on.’
Over their