Клео Коул - Murder by Mocha

Madame arched an eyebrow. “Forget?”

The archivist stood at my shoulder, volume in hand. “I’m not supposed to show this to anyone but students or alumni. Not without the express permission of Dean Parnassus.”

I felt a pressure in my chest. So close. Are we dead?

“Oh, what the Hades!” Phoebe declared.

She placed the volume on the table in front of me, and I turned immediately to the lending sheets attached to the inside back cover. As Phoebe spoke, I rapidly scanned the names of those who’d looked at this thesis in the past eleven years. None looked familiar—and I felt crushed.

“That paper is a real potboiler,” Phoebe said. “As scholarship it’s rubbish, but as fiction it’s worthy of Anne Radcliffe.”

“I adored Anne Radcliffe when I was a girl,” Madame said. “I do believe I married an Italian man because I read The Italian at too impressionable an age.”

“Well, my guess is Miss Pixley was reading Henry Miller,” Phoebe said. “Or perhaps the Marquis de Sade, because the girl turned a tale of intrigue and injustice from the late Roman Empire into a Dionysian tragedy of sinister lust—complete with erotic passages. Of course, much of Greco-Roman mythology was driven by amorous desire.”

She tipped her head to the swaying branches beyond the open window.

“My beautiful laurel even has her roots in such a tale—a nymph transformed into a tree, the answer to a prayer as she ran from the clutches of a lustful god. ‘A heavy numbness seized her limbs, thin bark closed over her breast, her hair turned into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet so swift a moment ago stuck fast in roots, her face lost in the canopy. Only her shining beauty was left.’ ”

Madame sighed. “So much yearning, desire, and heartbreak. The young live in Puccini.”

“Oh, Puccini! ‘Mi chiamano Mimì’ is one of my favorite arias.”

“I have it as my ringtone.”

“Did you know the libretto for Gianni Schicchi is based on an incident mentioned in the Divine Comedy ?”

“Which one?”

As the newfound friends continued talking, I paged through the long paper. Finally, I interrupted: “Excuse me, but what was Miss Pixley attempting to explore here? An Apollonian versus Dionysian philosophy?”

“Oh, nothing so deep as that, I’m afraid.” Phoebe tipped her head to the campus quad. “And yet her dissertation became so popular among the other girls, she was made something of a campus celebrity.”

“But isn’t this supposed to be a scholarly study?”

“There’s some scholarship involved,” Phoebe said. “The trial and execution of the three innocent Vestals occurred in AD 213, as in the thesis. And Emperor Caracalla, the man whose lust for them led to their death sentences, was as brutally handsome as he was murderously brutal. But the rest of it is a fiction that sprung from the fevered, postpubescent mind of Thelma Pixley.”

“What happened to the author?” I asked.

Phoebe’s teeth rattled. “ That story is quite a potboiler, too. And it also ends in an execution. It was back when this college was exclusively a girl’s school. With that notorious paper circulating throughout the student body, Miss Pixley became a ringleader. She spearheaded a pagan revival. Thelma and her friends formed a secret sorority, complete with Dionysian rites.”

Phoebe lowered her voice. “These were daughters of affluence, you understand, so recreational drugs were easy to purchase. But this was a school for girls, so there was a dearth of men around with whom to practice their rites.”

“Then who did they target?” I asked.

“Male faculty members. Thelma focused her lust on one man in particular, a literature professor with a promising career ahead of him. Dr. Victor Temple also had a wife and a young daughter.”

Phoebe set her cup on the desk. “Dr. Temple was a fine educator and a good man. But in the end he was just a man, and he fell into bed with young Miss Pixley.”

Phoebe paused. “Not long after that, Dr. Temple’s wife, Dora, discovered the affair and shot her husband to death.”

Madame gasped and I blinked. Aphrodite lured a respected, married professor into an affair—one that ended in murder?

As Phoebe continued talking, I returned my attention to the library lending sheets. After searching the names carefully, I pointed: “I see a Temple listed here. A woman named Olympia Temple accessed this paper five years ago. Do you know who she is?”

Phoebe nodded. “Olympia Temple was the only daughter of Dora and Victor Temple.”

“Was?” Madame repeated.

“Yes, past tense is appropriate, I’m sorry to say. Olympia crossed the Styx by her own hand.”

“Suicide?”

Phoebe nodded. “The year her mother died in prison, Olympia jumped to her death from the Bay Creek bridge.”

“Will you tell us more?” I asked.

“I will—and I’ll give you an even more knowledgeable source for future reference.”

“Can you tell me what actually happened?” I asked.

Madame and I were now sitting in the cramped offices of the Bay Creek Village Chronicle . Phoebe Themis had suggested we speak with Mr. Kenneth Jeffries. According to our helpful librarian, he’d done the most thorough reporting on the case.

“What actually happened?” Mr. Jeffries barked a laugh. “Really, Ms. Cosi, for any trial, that’s a Rashomon sort of question, isn’t it?”

With the late afternoon sun streaming through his window, Mr. Jeffries’s hair looked as gray-white and crumpled as the old newsprint piled around him. He’d been an AP stringer during the years of the Temple murder and subsequent trial. Now he was editor in chief of the Chronicle’ s struggling, three-man operation. The grizzled veteran appeared pleased to hear his stories were remembered, though his tone tended to drift into the land of smug.

“What actually happened is entirely dependent on with whom you speak. In the prosecutor’s view, the murder was premeditated, and Mrs. Dora Temple was a cold-blooded killer.”

“And what did the defense believe?” I asked.

“The murder was accidental. Mrs. Temple wanted only to frighten her husband’s young mistress by pointing the gun at her. She never expected the struggle to follow. The fatal wounding of Dr. Temple was sheer accident.”

Madame arched an eyebrow. “And what did you believe, sir? Or don’t reporters have opinions?”

Jeffries blinked, as if waking up to a sharper mind than he’d expected. “Touché, ma’am.”

“No offense,” Madame said.

“None taken. Like politics and jelly doughnuts, the good stuff is usually found in the middle, isn’t it?”

Madame sighed. “Objectivity is a rare thing these days.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this . . .” Jeffries sat up a little farther in his seat, the condescension gone. “I heard every bit of testimony, interviewed all the witnesses, and I think my conclusion is the right one . . ”

According to Jeffries, Mrs. Temple surprised her husband by dropping by his campus office. “A professor named Alicia Bower was standing in the hallway outside, speaking with one of her students—a Sherri Sellars. Mrs. Temple pushed past them both and burst through her husband’s door. She found her Victor half naked with one of his students, Thelma Vale Pixley. She drew the gun and aimed it directly at Thelma. Alicia and Sherri rushed in and tried to wrest the weapon away from Mrs. Temple. During the struggle, Dora pulled the trigger, and Dr. Temple was struck in the groin. He bled to death en route to Bay Village Hospital.”