"The point is," Captain Lucy Menendez was saying, "It can't be Fr. Abernathy that killed Hartzmann. I know Father from church, and I don't believe it, and nobody else that knows him believes it either. Dr. Todd, your professional skills have already shown their value in a criminal investigation, and I'm asking you, as a friend, to help out."
Dr. Todd is the Hamilton-Guthrie-Sneed professor of Computers and Logic at the University of California at Berkeley. He believes that logic is good for the real world and not just truth tables. Personally I think any success he's had solving murders was luck, not logic. But everybody else thinks Todd's a genius, so maybe I'm just a sourpuss.
Me? I'm Hagerston. There is a first name, but I don't like it, and we'll just ignore it for now. I'm Dr. Todd's graduate student. This little confab was on a Tuesday morning; Captain Menendez, chief of the Berkeley campus police, had shown up at Todd's office. "But why would the murdered man in his dying message indicate this priest if he hadn't done it?" This was Dr. Todd. The Socratic question bit, together with his vagueness about names, will soon give him away. "Would any person lie at such a time?"
"Wait a minute, wait just a minute." That was me. I won't say that there's anything particular about my speech. Except it doesn't show Todd's reverence for Socrates or Captain Menendez's reverence for Dr. Todd. So since there were only three of us in the office, it had to be me. Now that's logic. "That's a moral, or even sentimental, argument, and not a logical argument at all. Dying people are just as likely to lie as anyone else, I'd say. Especially if they'd been liars all their life."
"That's just it." Captain Menendez interrupted. "That's what's so horrible. The dead man, Dr. Jürgen Hartzmann, was a particular friend of Fr. Abernathy, and as far as any one knows, had no wish to harm him at all. And Dr. Hartzmann was supposed to be scrupulously honest himself. That's the real reason they're going to arrest Fr. Abernathy today, I'm sure of it."
"Well, Hagerston, I'm forced to admit that there's something in what you say. It is clear we shall have to make an investigation." I should just have shut up.
But I'd better just give you a quick summary here of what it was Captain Menendez told us on that morning. Otherwise I'll forget, and then you'll have no idea what's going on. So here goes: Dr. Jürgen Hartzmann was murdered in his sleep in Gnostic Studies Center on the north side of campus. Or, to speak accurately, he was stabbed in his sleep--Dr. Hartzmann apparently had a habit of taking a nap in a wing chair in mid-afternoon--and then woke up, briefly, long enough to write 'Moe' in pencil on his yellow pad, before he died, presumably while awake. So he was stabbed in his sleep, but died when he was awake. Semantic whizzes may quibble about when he was murdered if they wish.
It was quite clear that he'd written this after he'd been stabbed, because part of it was through the blood that he'd just spilled. The police assumed, and it seemed reasonable, even logical, as Dr. Todd noted, that with his last effort the dying man had tried to indicate who had killed him. And Moe indicated Fr. Francis X. 'Moe' Abernathy.
Fr. Abernathy it turns out was not a Fr. Abernathy type at all. He never wore a collar, for example, so unless you knew him, you wouldn't know to call him Father. And if you did know him, he wouldn't put up with being called Fr. Abernathy. When I finally got a chance to talk to him, within five minutes, he insisted I drop the Father. Someone that informal wouldn't have been Francis. He might have been Frank, but he wasn't: he was Moe. And if you saw him, you'd know why. He looked like Moe of the Three Stooges. He had the same straight black hair, the bangs in front, the sunken cheeks, and when he wanted it, the scowl. He didn't want it very often, because even in rather scary circumstances, Moe seemed a fairly light-hearted, chipper sort of guy.
The Gnostic Studies library consisted of a number of small rooms, which mostly opened off a central hallway, though a few connected among themselves. It was the first floor of a smallish office building, and the rooms of the library had once been a complex of doctor's offices, visiting rooms, a secretary's office, all the rest. Now it was filled with books. There was only one way in, past what was once the nurse's station; now manned by a badly-paid undergraduate called, from all I ever learned, Wanker.
Wanker looked like a mother's nightmare from hell: he was about six foot nine, thin as a rail, a skinhead, face like a giant's pincushion with pierced tongue, lower lip, the cartilage of the nose, both ears; and he wore an outfit entirely of black, down to his black underwear, a sliver of which was visible through a tear in his black jeans. But from the point of view of a policeman, he was a dream. He was able to say exactly when Dr. Hartzmann entered the library, who entered the library after him and at what times those people entered and then left, all the way up until the moment when he, Wanker, about to close the library, discovered the body. He then had the smarts to touch nothing. He was even able to tell me what Gnosticism was, "A heretical movement in both Judaism and Christianity in the first couple of centuries A.D. with roots in an ancient Persian religion. It believed the force of evil was as powerful as the force for good." I humphed. Of those people who had entered and left after Dr. Hartzmann's arrival, Fr. Francis X. 'Moe' Abernathy had been the last.
I've sort of squished some of this together, and cheated a little bit, because I didn't learn all of this directly from Captain Menendez. She dragged us--or rather she dragged Todd, and he dragged me, "Because, Hagerston," he said, "of your unique ability to keep yourself well-informed," across campus, and up to the Gnostic Studies Center. There I met Wanker, back on his job of watching the library; Fr. Abernathy, who was in the process of being arrested; and also Vukovich, a homicide detective with Gandalf eyebrows from the city police.
"You two again," Vukovich said, pointing to Dr. Todd and myself. That has to be my least favorite opening to a conversation.
Captain Menendez stood up for us. "It's okay: I've brought them over. You know Dr. Todd has already demonstrated the usefulness of the logical method in the solving of crime."
"Just keep 'em out of my hair. Pitt, Johansen, let's go. We've already done our work." Pitt and Johansen were on either side of Fr. Abernathy; they guided him firmly into a waiting police car.
Before they hauled him away, Captain Menendez placed Moe's hand in Todd's, "Moe, this is Dr. Todd, the noted logician. He's working on your case, so don't worry." I'm not sure what Fr. Abernathy thought. If I were him, I'd still have got a good lawyer.
"Are you going to start your investigation with Mr. Wanker here?" Captain Menendez indicated the young man, bored and amused, eyeing our little group.
"Isn't it logical that I begin by talking to the individual that discovered the body?"
I recognized that question for what it was: another demonstration of Toddian obliviousness. He had already forgotten Wanker was the person that discovered the body. Captain Menendez, however, took it for another example of Toddian brilliance. "Again, precisely the right course of action. Dr. Todd, may I present Mr. Wanker?"
Somehow I didn't imagine that Mr. Wanker was often called Mister Wanker. He was probably lucky if it was just Wanker, and didn't include some Anglo-Saxon four-letter word stuck out in front . He drawled, "So, you're some kind of amateur pigs, are you?"
Captain Menendez scowled; she, at least, was not an amateur; but before she could correct Wanker, Dr. Todd began his questions. With an irrelevancy. "Do you think it sensible, sir, to refer to us as pigs when you can clearly see that our skin is not bright pink, that we are not covered in mud, and that we do not have curly tails? Further, is it at all appropriate to refer to the amateur or professional status of a domestic animal?"
Wanker began by lifting his eyebrows as the Todd started his peroration, but by the time he got to 'amateur or professional status,' Wanker was giggling. Uncontrollably. It's rather unexpected, that a six foot nine skinhead dressed in black should have so high-pitched and uncontrollable a giggle, but there you go. He went on for a good five minutes. I started laughing myself before we both choked it off into a smirk. But then he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both broke out into one last harrumphing guffaw, before becoming serious again. I haven't done that since I was ten and my cousin and I were both excused from the table before pie for our bad behavior.
Captain Menendez didn't take it much better than my grandmother and scowled. But before she could arrest me, Todd broke in. "Hagerston, is it sensible to laugh so uncontrollably? Mightn't it cause some sort of physical seizure?"
"Right." I said, as seriously as I could manage. "You're right. It's OK. I'm OK." Then I giggled just a little more.
Wanker also gave one last giggle. "Yeah, I've heard of you. What you want to know, I guess, is who else came into the library this afternoon while Jürgen Hartzmann was in there."
"That's correct, Mr. Wanker." Captain Menendez said. "If you could please give Dr. Todd a full picture of what happened."
Wanker began to explain what it was we would want to know. Since he and I now had this giggle-bond, he was eager to help. "Well, there were four people who came in after Hartzmann went in to the library. The last was Fr. Abernathy whom you've just met. The first was Hendricks Murchison. He's a Baptist scholar from Tennessee, but he's been out here for years now. Still's got a Southern drawl, though, and he'll sell you swampland while claiming he's just a barefoot boy. Don't believe it. He's got a Master's from Marquette--learned his wiles from the Jesuits--before finishing up a Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Yale. A first rate scholar. His field is the influence of Gnosticism on Pauline Christianity. He believes there was none.
"Then there was Wilhemina Jones. She's a German, now married to the Welsh behaviorist Rhys Jones. Several degrees from deine Universitäten in der Deutschland. One of the degrees is from Heidelberg, but I forget which. She's an expert on Persian roots of Gnosticism; she has actually read the Zend Avesta in the original. Scary woman. Looks scary, too. Pinched face and pulled-back hair.
"The fourth, though the third into the library, was Henri Ricard. An atheist in personal life, he's an expert on ancient bull-worship, and wrote the book that finally finished off Cumont. Even though it's just as much speculation as Cumont, in my humble opinion. Also, again in my humble opinion, he's the one that did the job on Hartzmann, not Abernathy."
"Why's that?" I liked quick answers. If Wanker could solve things right off, that much the better. I knew Dr. Todd's enthusiasms. I didn't want detective work to interfere with my regular meals or sleeping habits.
"He's French, and I'm a Cockney. I just don't like him."
This seemed to wake Todd up. "Young man, do you think it logical that differing nationalities are reason to suspect someone of murder?"
"Well, no, not if he was an Australian, or a German, or a Russian. Or a Chink or a Black or a Yank. But he's a Frog. That's reason enough."
"And further, young man, is it all reasonable that a dying man would lie about the identity of his murderer?"
"No. That's not reasonable, especially not Hartzmann. But, anyway, you'll also want to consider me, because I could easily have nipped in there and done the job. Most people call me Wanker, and I'm a perennial undergraduate student in Religious Studies. I need one math course to graduate, and I've needed that course for eight years. I'm not taking it. Someday they'll change the graduation requirements and I'll get my degree."
"Could anybody else have gotten in, other than those four--and yourself?" I asked. Better a useful question than Toddian blather.
"Basically, no. You can check, if you like. But the windows are all locked for security reasons and none had been broken. There's some rare books back there. For the same reason, there's only the one way into the library, past my desk, so I can keep an eye on the books. I'm allowed to search anyone's bag or purse when they go in or come out."
"Did you?" Captain Menendez asked.
"No. Or, at least, not very effectively. I hated to admit this to the cops, but it was true. Everybody that went in or out yesterday afternoon was a regular, so I didn't search their bags very thoroughly. So, any of them could have walked in with the knife. Even if I'd searched thoroughly, though, I might not have noticed a knife; after all, I'm looking for stolen books. And I never look very closely at what goes in."
"Dr. Todd, what do you think is the proper procedure? I'd like to get Moe, that is, Fr. Abernathy, out of jail as soon as possible."
I'd got them off to a good footing with Wanker, and felt like I'd done my part. "Look, you don't need me right at the moment, so I'll just nip off to the library, and get some thinking done."
"I've got a suggestion," Wanker responded to Captain Menendez' question.
"Hagerston, you can't suggest leaving us at this time? Is there any work more important than the application of the logical method?"
I might've said, writing my thesis--and they're not the same, you know--, but I bit my lip.
Wanker continued, "Hey, well, you can't see the rooms where the crime was committed, because of all the police tape, but you can interview the suspects, I bet. C'mon, I'll lock the place up. I can't do anything anyway." So under Wanker's guidance, Dr. Todd, Captain Menendez, and I left the Gnostic Studies Center Library. I thought about ditching them, but didn't.
"Yeah, they were all four here just a little while ago: I mean Ricard, Wilhelmina Jones, Murchison, as well as Moe. Wilhelmina's husband, Rhys Jones, was here, too. They were all a little nervous, and as soon as the cops decided to arrest Abernathy, they scattered. But I know the holes they like to hide in. We'll flush them out. There's a couple of coffee places, and they'll be in one of those I bet." We'd gotten to Euclid, which is a main street on that side of campus, and Wanker thought for a second. "I know where to try first." He turned right, away from campus. A few doors on our right was a coffee shop named Brazilliant Beans.
Wanker peered in the window. "There's Murchison." He opened the door and held it open as he ushered us in.
Hendricks Murchison spotted Wanker right away and stood up. He was tall, though he looked short enough next to Wanker. He was in his fifties, I'd guess, but already had totally white hair. He hadn't lost a single strand, though; it was thick and fluffy. He'd probably played football on some high school in Tennessee, I'd say a linebacker, and he'd lost as little of his physical conditioning as his hair.
"Ah, Wanker, I am terribly troubled by all of this. Aren't you?" Hendricks Murchison had the broad vowels and slowish drawl of a deep Tennessee accent. I'm going to fail in reproducing it. You're on your own. You'll just have to imagine it. "Who are these people you have brought to see me? Charmed, ma'am." He took the hand of Captain Menendez. I thought he was going to kiss it. I believe Captain Menendez thought so, too; at any rate, she was quick to convert the gesture to a handshake.
Wanker performed the introductions and explained we were detecting.
"Ah, so you are Professor Todd. I am extremely glad to make you're acquaintance, sir. Very troubling. I am glad you are taking a hand in this."
"Do you think it likely that a dying man, especially one known for his honesty, would lie about so important a matter?"
Murchison replied, "No, that's just it, it's not very likely."
Todd asked him, "So can it have been anyone other than this Curly person?"
"Curly?" Murchison looked puzzled.
You know, the scary thing is, I knew what Todd meant. I felt obliged to explain for him. "He means Moe."
"Hagerston, isn't it true names are the illogical result when the parent is faced with a screaming newborn?"
"Well, yes, as you say, Dr. Hartzmann was a very honest person. It seems totally unlike that grand old gentleman he should lie at any time, and especially at such a time as that, his last moments before his final reward. But I do not think that it was Fr. Moe, and I will tell you why, just as I told the police."
I hate complications, and since Hendricks Murchison was about to complicate things, I didn't like him. My dislike didn't stop him, though. "Hartzmann had an agreement with the Egyptian government. You're no longer supposed to export antiquities from Egypt, of course, but his relationship with the government is friendly and goes back a long ways. If he finds manuscripts on the open market, he's allowed to purchase them, and carry them off; in exchange, if he sees something that would look good in an Egyptian museum, he buys it for the museum. There's still a black market, you know. And he knows people who would be scared of the government. He had just bought this manuscript, which was going to blow the lid off Gnostic studies." Just the thought of the lid of Gnostic studies flying around was alarming me. There it went, whizz, bang. Duck everyone. "The verso has accounting records clearly dated to 70 A.D. That means the recto must be earlier. It purports to be the literal record of a debate between St. Paul, a priest of Mithras, and a wise man from Persia. I haven't read it, so I only know what Hartzmann said. But in it, Paul says that man must assist God in the coming struggle."
At this Wanker whistled, low and long and loud. "No. You're kidding."
The fact that Wanker was so clearly impressed woke me up a little bit. "Well, but it can't be a genuine record of a debate, can it?"
Murchison looked at me sadly. "Probably not, sir, probably not. But if it's that old it doesn't matter. It represents something somebody was thinking, and everything I've tried to prove true for the last twenty years would be proven false. That document has disappeared. So, I must declare, that actually makes me the likeliest suspect of all. And it doesn't matter to Moe, that is, I mean to say, Fr. Abernathy. His research would be totally unaffected by it."
Wanker interrupted him. "But it would bung up Ricard's and Wilhelmina Jones' work, just as much."
This discussion troubled Todd. "But, gentlemen," if you watch Todd closely, as I've had to do, you'll find he uses gentlemen a lot. It's a good way to sound dignified, and not reveal that you've already forgotten the name of everyone in the room. "Is this the proper behavior of a scholar? Does it matter what happens to our previous investigations if we discover some new and larger truth? Would any of us so betray our ideals we should suppress evidence?"
Murchison said, "I'm afraid, Dr. Todd, that is the case. Ah've even wished that dinged, if the lady present will excuse my French, document at the bottom of the sea, or at least, lost again in the Egyptian desert until after I've passed from the scene."
Most of the rest of what Hendricks Murchison told us simply repeated what Wanker had already said. He had not looked in on Hartzmann when he was there. He knew Hartzmann took a nap in that chair in the afternoon; since he didn't need any books from that room, he simply didn't go in, to avoid waking Dr. Hartzmann.
When we left Brazilliant Beans, Dr. Todd asked our little circle, "Isn't it revealing that this so-called scholar admitted he would have been happy if the document in question had disappeared? I trust this individual is alone in his willingness to destroy important information for such a reason. It is unthinkable this would hold true in general among scholars. Therefore, I assert this attitude, in particular, makes him a suspect. As he himself admitted. At least, he did not try to deny that."
Captain Menendez said, "Well, I don't know. He seemed pretty candid to me. And, though I don't usually like that sort of thing, very gentlemanly. I don't think he did it."
"That bit about the manuscript was sure news to me," Wanker said. "That's hot stuff, what Hartzmann found. It certainly would give Murchison a motive." We had arrived at another coffee shop and Wanker peered in the window. "There's Ricard, with two female grad students. Surprise, surprise." Wanker growled, rather like a cat when a rival cat is too close.
Wanker grimaced through introductions. Henri Ricard was at a table with two young women. If you think I'm going to succeed at Ricard's real, honest-to-god Maurice Chevalier accent, after I gave up on Murchison's Tennessee drawl, then, as Dr. Todd would say, you are not being logical. "This is Hélène Samuelson, and this is Andrea Chang, two of my most brilliant, and also most elegant, students. Monsieur Wanker, this is an unexpected pleasure."
"Dr. Todd here is investigating the murder, and trying to figure out who killed Hartzmann. He is very good at this sort of thing, you know, Ricard." Wanker didn't get the blush he wanted.
"A very great tragedy, we must all agree."
Wanker kept trying. "No doubt, you know all about Hartzmann's manuscript?"
"Oh, yes, very exciting, it was supposed to be. But I never saw it, alas, and now I hear it is gone. Murchison sounded almost grateful. Do you know what it was?"
Wanker was about to explain, but Todd cut him off. "Is it reasonable a scholar would wish an important fact be suppressed, even though it controverted his own theories?"
"Oh, Docteur Todd, I know it should not be so, of course it should not be so, but I am very much feared there may some scholars who are not so scrupulous. Much as I admire Dr. Murchison, I do hope he was not subjected to such a temptation."
"Ha!" Wanker nearly shouted. "You're trying to pin it on Murchison, are you?"
"Monsieur Wanker, I am not trying to 'pin' it, in that detestable Americanism, on anyone. I am just making an observation. It may be I would have benefited just as much as Monsieur Murchison from the absence of the document, but my academic honor would have been at stake: I would not have damaged the manuscript. We can ask Hélène. Hélène, should I have found such a document, you wouldn't think me capable of destroying it?"
"Oh, no, Dr. Murchison."
Andrea Chang looked archly at him, "But you could lose it among the piles of books in your bedroom."
"Shh. Let us reveal no personal secrets, my dear." Hélène Samuelson looked daggers at her fellow student.
"Wilhelmina Mörike had actually seen the precious document, I know. And she was tremendously amazed by it."
"Wilhelmina who?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. I mean Wilhelmina Jones. Both Dr. Hartzmann and myself knew her in Europe, before she was married, when she was still Wilhelmina Mörike; we both tend to call her that, especially since that's how she signs her publications."
"Is it reasonable that everyone should have so many names? Hagerston, I think we should undertake to logically simplify the world's naming structure. If everyone had a single unique name, much simpler it would be. Now this woman has a multitude of names, and before her, there was that Fr. Shemp."
"Fr. Shemp?" Ricard cast a puzzled look at Todd.
"Fr. Moe," I said, "He meant to say, Fr. Moe."
"That, Hagerston, exactly illustrates my point. How much simpler it would be, if each individual had only one unique name, particularly if it suggested that individual's characteristics or interests. For example, I might be..."
I can't explain why it was I didn't listen, but I didn't. I just really didn't want to hear him say, "Logicus."
"I honestly do not think any of us would have done so horrible a thing as to murder Dr. Hartzmann and make away with this rare document," Ricard said. "I think you should check again those windows, and see how it is that someone came from the outside; that, I think, must be the answer."
Dr. Todd took this statement very seriously. "Thank you, very much, sir, for reaffirming my faith in scholarship; I believe you must be correct. Gentlemen, this is, I think, what we should do." I looked at Lucy Menendez to see how she took being referred to as one of the gentlemen so repeatedly, but it didn't seem to phase her.
Wanker said, "Well, we can go look at the windows again, but there's one more coffee shop; let's see if we can find Wilhelmina Jones there."
We walked back out on to Euclid, and then turned uphill. We came to The Blue Mountain. It would have been easy and symmetrical had Wilhelmina Jones been there, but she wasn't. Wanker did spot her husband, Rhys Jones.
The husband spotted Wanker at the same time. "Wanker, have you seen my wife? She was supposed to meet me here a half-hour ago. She's found this whole business of the death of Dr. Hartzmann very upsetting, and I'm a little worried."
Rhys Jones was a small, dark-haired man who looked more like a grease monkey than a famous behaviorist. He had strong hands and agile fingers with which he ably stabbed an unlit cigarette in the air.
"No, we were hoping to find her here; do you know Dr. Todd?" He didn't, and Wanker performed introductions. "He's looking into the Hartzmann affair."
"I'm sure Wilhelmina would want to help. She was terribly fond of him, you know. He was having a little party this weekend." He unfolded a crumpled note from the pocket of his jeans jacket, and pushed it over towards us. 'Wilhelmina and Rhys, Please do come over this Saturday for a cookout at six o'clock. Juergen.' We all looked at it, as if we might learn something from it. "She was looking forward to it, I know."
"Hagerston, who is this Juergen?" Dr. Todd asked.
Rhys Jones answered for me, "That's Juergen Hartzmann, of course, the murdered man."
"Shouldn't he spell his name with a u with the umlaut, with the two dots over it? Hagerston, haven't we distinctly been saying his name all along as if it had two dots over the u?" I hadn't been saying his name in any particular way, but then I don't know German. That's for philosophers, a Toddian specialty; I'm merely a computer guy.
"Dr. Hartzmann used reformed German spelling, you don't use umlauts and stick an e after a vowel that should have an umlaut," Wanker said.
"Hagerston, is it logical that there should be more than one method of spelling a word? Doesn't that make the already difficult process of remembering names even more complicated?"
I ignored that, which is what I usually try to do with Dr. Todd's Socratic questions, and turned to Dr. Jones, male. "Thanks. Any idea where she might be?"
"Possibly back at the library; that's the only place I can think of."
"Hagerston, isn't it the logical course of action for us to return to the library? Where we might find this woman, and also where we can check the windows as that sensible foreigner suggested that we should do?" I've long since learned to deal with Todd's vagueness with names, but if you're still having trouble, he meant Wilhelmina Jones in the first instance and Henri Ricard in the second.
"If you see her at the library, could you let her know I'm here?" We agreed to do so, and we returned to the Gnostic Studies Center library. We checked all the windows from the outside; all were sealed shut, and none were broken.
"Hagerston, doesn't it seem to you that we have all the facts that can possibly be gathered at this point? Therefore are we not in a position to solve our difficulties by the use of the logical process?"
"Umm." It wasn't much of an answer, but it was all the answer I had.
"Well, that's right," Wanker replied. He'd become perky, and I turned against him. I've never liked perky people. "We now know about the motive, and we already knew about the opportunity. What's the other thing?"
"Means," Captain Menendez said.
"Yeah, that's it, the means. Well, we need to figure out who had a knife. We know it was done in the library, and with a knife, so all we need to figure out is, was it Colonel Mustard or Professor Plum who had a knife." We'd come back to the front door. "Wait, there's Wilhelmina Jones." Wanker called out to her, "Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones!"
Dr. Jones clearly heard him, and just as clearly did not want to talk to him. She turned and ran downhill. "Wait, wait, we were just talking to your husband." She didn't wait, but kept running. Wanker ran after her.
"Hagerston, does it seem reasonable to you that this lady should run away from that young man, especially when he is making so sensible a request?"
"No," I said. "No, it does not."
Dr. Todd was momentarily nonplussed. It's a trick you might keep in mind. He just asks those questions to get a rise; agree with him, and he's stuck for a follow-up.
"It is strange," Captain Menendez, and she started slowly to run after Wanker. Wilhelmina Jones only started running faster.
I was getting curious, too, and anyway the chase seemed to be going downhill, which is my sort of chase. Also, I figured I'd get going before Todd came up with another question.
But I didn't go fast enough. Dr. Todd trotted alongside me. "Hagerston, why have we all started running in this way? Perhaps, we have decided fitness is an important consideration in this case?" I grunted in response.
We continued to run downhill. Wilhelmina Jones was slender and pinched-looking, but she was in her mid-fifties, and she probably didn't want to run uphill any more than I did. The odd thing was that I was now in the lead; odd, because, something I hadn't really wanted to mention, I'm pretty overweight. We were running down Le Conte, quite steep, and it seemed easy. Just before Hearst Ave., Wanker got his long legs tangled up, and went down on his face. I slowed, but he waved me on. Then as we crossed Martin Luther King, I passed Captain Menendez; she'd clearly been spending too much time thinking about logic and mysteries and not enough pounding the pavement to find solutions. So I was doing OK. All I needed was for Dr. Todd to pass me. I was sure he had it in him, since he bicycled everywhere and was considerably thinner. But he preferred to run just behind me and ask annoying questions in my ear. That made me run faster.
As you go from the hills to the bay in Berkeley, the slope grows more gradual. It's like running down the inside of a mixing bowl, steep at first, but then flatter. As we crossed Sacramento, my heart was now pounding. Wilhelmina Jones was slowing down, too, but she hadn't stopped, yet. And when she darted across busy San Pablo, and nearly got squashed, I almost lost all interest. I waited for the traffic to quiet down, and there was Dr. Todd at my ear, "Hagerston, isn't it sensible when jogging for exercise to run farther than this?" My brain was clearly short on oxygen because I fell for that, and dashed across San Pablo. Wanker and Captain Menendez had almost caught up with us.
Now you're probably the sort of person who sneers at running three miles, especially downhill, but the only thing that kept me going was the thought that the water came soon, and Wilhelmina Jones would either have to swim or stop. She stopped, but she didn't stop any sooner than she had to, because she ran all the way out the pier at the marina, a hundred feet jutting out into the bay. Then she ripped open her purse, took a yellowish piece of paper out, and threw it into the bay.
I had stopped and doubled over with cramps. "Dr. Jones, your husband," I gasped.
"What do you want? Why are you following me?" She ripped a knife out of her purse, and lunged at me.
It hit. "What?" I said, and now I know what my last word will be. Not very witty. She'd stuck me in the side of my stomach with her knife. First comes the exercise, and now a lipectomy. Solving murders as a weight loss program. "Hey, that hurt. I only had a message from your husband."
Wanker screamed, "That's it," kicked off his shoes and jumped into the bay.
Captain Menendez shouted, "Drop that knife."
"Look, I'm bleeding." I felt somebody should pay attention to me.
"Hagerston, didn't I say it was absurd to run after that woman in that way?"
"I'm the police. Drop the knife." Captain Menendez said, then turned to Dr. Todd, "You're absolutely right; I had no idea she would be armed and dangerous. But it's clear she's already murdered once."
Wilhelmina Jones didn't drop the knife; instead she pulled at it. But since it was still stuck in my side, it didn't come easily. "Ouch. That hurts." In retrospect, it seems clear petulance is not a good strategy for dealing with a murderess, but I've got to present the facts as they happened.
Wilhelmina Jones let go of the knife, all the fight had gone out of her. Captain Menendez took Dr. Jones by the wrist, "Wilhelmina Jones, I'm arresting you for assault on Donald Hagerston, and," she paused for a moment, "For the murder of Jürgen Hartzmann." Dr. Jones slumped even more.
Wanker crawled out of the bay with the papyrus in his hand. "I've got it. We've got to get some pure water to rinse it off right away." Wilhemina Jones started sobbing.
The next day arrived: Wanker, Dr. Todd, Captain Menendez, and Fr. Moe were sitting around my hospital bed. The knife hadn't hit anything vital. Wanker took it on himself to explain, "She'd seen the document and knew it would ruin all the research she'd done. She thought Hartzmann hadn't shown it to anybody, so she could get away with it."
"I haven't seen this document. Did she destroy it?" Fr. Moe asked.
"It suffered some from the salt water of the bay, but not too much. But it turned out Hartzmann had made a provisional transcription. For one or two places we'll just have to trust he was right, but the rest can be checked."
"Are they sure she did it?"
Captain Menendez answered, "I heard the knife, while it had plenty of Hagerston's blood on it, also had traces of Dr. Hartzmann's blood."
"What really hurt me was Dr. Hartzmann's message. Didn't he know who stabbed him?"
Wanker said, "Oh, he did. He started to write her name, the name he used for her, Mörike. And he started to spell it, as he always did, Moerike. It's just that he died after he wrote those three letters. M. O. E."
Dr. Todd whispered to me, "Doesn't this young man have a sure logical grasp? His comments on motive, means, and opportunity struck me as very shrewd." I groaned.
One last bit of news: Wanker completed his B.A. and sent off applications for Ph.D. programs. Dr. Todd was so impressed with Mr. Wanker's accomplishments he signed off on an independent-study course, Special Topics in Mathematics: Logic.