Free Murder in the English Department by Valerie Miner Page A

would be the perfect climax to every rape.
    Appalled at such cool detachment, Nan forced herself to consider Marjorie Adams again. She unfolded the scarf and wiped Marjorie’s fingerprints off the ugly Moccasin handle of the letter opener. Then she wiped her own prints off the window and the door knob. Again, she marvelled at her logic and dispatch. Why wasn’t she shrieking? Falling apart? ‘The Weavers don’t behave that way,’ Mom would say. ‘You’re holding in your feelings,’ Francie would say. Amy would see it as ‘working-class common sense.’ Nan tuned out the voices.
    She considered calling the police. But ambulances would be too late and the cops were needed for live revellers tonight. Besides, her instinctive desire was to get away, to wake from this horror. Quickly, she checked around the room for other relics of her student and, finding none, left immediately. The corridor seemed brighter now, but this was a ridiculous psychological reaction, because Nan knew there were only two lights on in the whole building—hers and Murchie’s. She returned to her room, stuffed Marjorie’s scarf into her purse. Calmly (where did all this calm come from?) she gathered together her books, turned off the tensor lamp and headed out toward Isadora.
    But she couldn’t just hop in the car and go home to a stiff glass of brandy as if the murder movie had ended. She must try to find Marjorie Adams, to help her. Nan turned around and rushed toward the Northside of campus. She walked past Doe Library, down by the temporary buildings, up the hill to the geography hall where she had learned about the similarity in segregation patterns between Berkeley and Kenya (blacks in the flatlands and whites in the hills). What a strange memory to fill her head now. It was such a weird, silent night, and Nan longed for the more manageable terror of the Maryknoll Retreat House. Reaching the edge of campus, Nan knew the search was useless. What had she expected? To find little Miss Muffet sitting on a bench weeping? Marjorie Adams was a woman of resources; she might well have booked a flight to Kabul by now. Nan turned back and walked tensely through the dark campus, as anger mingled with her fear. Damn, god damn, she was outraged with Angus Murchie for causing this catastrophe. He was a selfish and destructive man, who, even in his death, brought trouble. Should she phone Amy and ask her to report the death? No, she did not want to be implicated. She did not want to testify against Marjorie Adams. Some things were very certain for Nan, despite this fear which knotted her stomach and buckled her knees.
    So Angus Murchie was dead. The thought actually gave Nan a terrible pleasure. For auld lang syne. Such a spiteful, petty, supercilious man. She had not realized just how much she hated him. Surely, he had been a constant irritant during these last seven years here. She had imagined him as an annoying fly. But actually, he was a corrosive termite, burrowing into her dignity, a relentless threat. This death was a curious relief; she felt as if an unknown tumour had been removed. Angus Murchie is dead; long live John Milton. Deep in her conscience, Nan knew she was a dreadful person.
    Suddenly she felt panicky, remembering she was a woman out alone tonight. One violence would not protect her from another. She looked around carefully, trying not to remember that eerie whistle from ‘Dial M For Murder’. The campus was sparsely occupied. And the other moving shadows seemed as timid of contact as she. Odd how you had to make an exaggerated gesture of walking to the opposite side of the road to show goodwill or harmlessness. In the fifties, Nan and her girlfriend Sally used to take three a.m. walks along Strawberry Creek just for the hell of it. Ten years later, when she returned here for graduate school, people would whisper about the dangers of campus under darkness. She did not believe them.