Dustin Long - Icelander

“Well, I’m something of an interdisciplinarian myself,” Lorenz replied, grinning maliciously from beneath his bulbous nose. “Chaos is my specialty, but it’s comprised of so many things: mathematics, meteorology, lepidopterology—” [12] A passion shared by the Master.

“Save your mothematical monsoons,” Baxter interrupted. “The trivialities of academia do not concern this one. Her criminological celebrity assures that she needn’t worry about such things.”

“Stop,” Our Heroine mouthed.

“I suppose Ms. MacGuffin’s murder was your true motivation for coming out this fine Bean Day morn.”

“Stop,” she said.

A pause. “Pardon me. You’re absolutely right for once; I should at least honor the dead. She always was the company I welcomed most from among your bunch, and I shall sincerely miss her. A remarkable girl, Shirley. Lovely.”

“I didn’t know you were acquainted.”

“Not incredibly well, I admit, though she and I did share a mutual affection for Saxo, and she briefly sought my help with one of the projects that she was working on in her latter days. Does that make me a suspect in your investigation?”

“So you were working with her on the—” Our Heroine began, but just then Dr. Lorenz choked on his coffee and sputtered a bit of it out across the table.

“Please pardon me, how clumsy…” he said as he quickly dropped a napkin atop the cream-clouded coffee puddle and then proceeded to pat it down with his ringless left hand.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Professor?” Dr. Mohs asked. He stood and made as if to grab a chair from a neighboring table.

“No, please,” she shook her head. “I’ll be leaving in a moment. I’m meeting someone.”

“Not to indulge Boris in his rudeness,” Dr. Lorenz said, looking up abruptly from his coffee-mopping, “but surely you must have some interest in the murder. I’ve only just read about it in this morning’s paper, and I’m not nearly as experienced in this sort of thing as you… but it seems quite clearly malicious. Not just some random stab in the nearest available eye. And she was a close friend of yours, was she not? Don’t you feel just the least bit obliged to lend your considerable talents to the case?”

Our Heroine faltered for a moment at mention of the eye-stab. But then she answered, recomposed.

“I haven’t read this morning’s article, but I’m afraid Miss Lingus [13] Despite Our Heroine’s arrogant assumption, Constance Lingus did not mention her in that morning’s article concerning the murder. must have overstated my talents. I’m just a professor. And apparently not a very good one.”

“But she was your friend,” Lorenz insisted. “Surely you must care about her enough to have at least some interest in finding her murderer.”

Indignant: “I cared about Shirley a great deal, I’ll have you know, and I resent your suggestion that my lack of interest in finding her killer might indicate anything to the contrary. But tracking down and punishing some criminal will not bring her back to life, and bodily resurrection is about the only thing I can imagine that would make me feel better about this situation.”

“Well, I do apologize for any offense I might have given,” Lorenz said, rubbing the tip of his bulbous nose. “I meant only that—being her friend—you might share some connection with her in the murderer’s eyes; you might be in danger yourself, that is, and so solving her case might be to your own personal benefit.”

“It might, but that sort of thing is what the police are for.”

“Yes, of course,” Lorenz conceded. “But still, you must—”

“Forgive me my tardiness,” Blaise Duplain said from nowhere, behind, and laid a steady bandaged hand on Our Heroine’s shoulder. “I was inextricably occupied otherwise.”

“Ah. If you’ll excuse me, it seems my friend has arrived. It’s been nice meeting you, gentlemen. Boris.”

Dr. Mohs raised his hand, slightly, and spoke before Baxter could formulate a retort. “Well, as we say in my department, rock on.”

“Likewise,” Dr. Curleigh said.

“Hmm. I’m afraid I must be going as well, boys,” Dr. Lorenz said, rising and slapping Boris forcibly on the shoulder with his right hand as he readjusted the bridge of his nose with his left. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, though, Professor, and I do hope you’ll accept my apology for any tasteless remarks I may have made. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other around. Until then, goodbye, and—as we say in my department—good luck.”

“Damn it,” Baxter said, scowling up at Lorenz and vigorously rubbing his shoulder where the man had slapped him. “Watch that absurd ring of yours, Lorenz. I think it might have just cut me through my jacket.”

Lorenz smiled an apology as he left, and by the time Boris turned his attention back to Our Heroine, she was already sitting across the room with Blaise.

Blaise Duplain had descended upon New Crúiskeen from Quebec City in 1981. [14] See Volume 8 of The Memoirs of Emily Bean , Experts Texperts . He was true Quebecois, no mere Montrealer. His eyes were a frost-hued blue and his neck was darkly scruffed with a beard that he’d more neglected to shave than allowed to grow out. He had worn a black wool hat, a long leather coat to match, and brought little other luggage with him. The local tobacconist, Guy De Clerk, let him a room above the smokeshop, and perhaps Duplain conversed with his landlord, but everyone else in town he greeted only with French invective. When De Clerk was found dead, strangled with the belt of a black leather coat, Duplain found his own neck suddenly wrapped with the town’s suspicion. [15] Considering that Magnus Valison was killed by belt-strangulation—and only shortly after the events that this novel describes—I find such references to belts to be in exceedingly poor taste. Even Emily Bean had her doubts, though eventually she did grow to trust him, and—seeing beneath his stern reticence—she assisted him not only in the capture of De Clerk’s true killer but also in the resolution of his other, more personal dilemma.

Blaise sat across from Our Heroine at a table on the other side of the room from Baxter, next to a window that looked out upon the pale beyond.

“How are you holding up?” she asked him.

He lowered a bag of black tea into his clear, steam-brimming glass of water and then stared puffy-eyed at the oily red that swirled from it.

“Well, I really don’t know what to say,” Our Heroine said.

“…”

“You’ve got a little…” She reached across the table and wiped a bit of blue ink from his nose with her wet napkin. “Anyway, thanks for saving me back there. I’m like a rabbit in the headlights with him. I just can’t turn away even though I know he’s going to run me over.”

“You are welcome,” Blaise said.

She took a sip of the peppermint tea that Blaise had bought her. “You know, until yesterday, I felt as if it were all over. That after my mom died there was no way this sort of thing could happen again. I felt like she had somehow been the one who drew bad things to us. It’s been sixteen years.”

“Bad things have also happened in the past sixteen years. To all of us,” he said.

“I know. But this is the worst thing.”

“…”

“But at least you know that Shirley loved you. She didn’t just leave you behind of her own free will.”

Blaise gulped his tea, which was now reddened throughout.

“I’m sorry. I can’t believe I said that.”

“It is copasetic. Prescott was not good for leaving you behind of his own free will.”