do I care who killed him? But I can’t stop thinking about him.’ She got up and led the way into the kitchen which occupied the old back room of the house. Another renovation, thought Salter, noting the clear pine, the quarry tile, and the butcher’s block table—all the staples of the Toronto renovated kitchen. She heated water and poured it through a filter, occupying the time while they waited for it by putting a lot of dishes in the sink and clearing the counter. Salter perched on a stool at the table and waited. She served two cups of coffee and pushed one over to him with a carton of cream and a wet spoon she fished out of the sink. She’s a bit of a slob, he thought, delighted. I wonder if Summers minded? They sipped the coffee in silence for a few minutes. Then she began.
‘David was nearly fifty and he was just getting used to the idea. For the last few years he had thought of himself as a failure, but he was just about through that.’
‘Why a failure? He was a good enough teacher, according to one of his students, anyway.’
‘Until lately he thought of himself as more than a teacher. He was chairman of the department for a while, and after that ended he felt—what do you call it?—unfulfilled. But in the last year he had become more at home with himself. His teaching was better than ever, and he didn’t care about it so much. In the past he had cared too much—a bad class could ruin his weekend and a good one would leave him flying, but he’d achieved a bit of detachment lately. He was still obsessional about it, though, preparing stuff he’d been teaching for years.’
‘Was he fired as chairman?’
‘Oh no. They rotate the job every three or six years. But he’d started to live and breathe it, and it was hard on him when it ended. He expected to be offered a job in the administration, and when that didn’t happen he started to feel like’a failure.’
‘Why? Why did he expect it, and why didn’t it happen?’
‘His mentor quit. The vice-president David was gung-ho for took a job somewhere else, and the new one didn’t like David. Simple as that. David went back to teaching, but he’s only lately got used to it again.’
Salter listened, uncomfortably aware of the parallels with his own life. This, he thought, is the bloody Conrad story. I must tell that fat chairman one day. Thinking this brought him around to his task.
‘Was it while he was chairman that he fell out with Professor Dunkley?’
‘I told you, Inspector, don’t bother with that one. Dunkley wouldn’t hurt a fly, on principle, although he made a principle out of hating. They were opposed, of course. Those were the days of the end of the student revolution. David had a few confrontations, and dug down deep in his heart and discovered he was a wishy-washy liberal who believed the students were entitled to run everything except the classroom. Dunkley was involved in all of the sit-ins and supported the students’ right to decide everything—including what they should be taught. There was an incident almost every day and those two were always on opposite sides.’ She paused, and looked as though she were gathering energy for the rest of it. ‘But that wasn’t the whole of it. You see—oh, shit—about that time Dunkley became separated from his wife, and just shortly thereafter David and Dunkley’s wife became lovers, and Dunkley found out, and they didn’t talk to each other after that, even though, according to Dunkley’s principles, his wife was free to do what she liked. OK? Now you know it all.’
‘How did you hear of it?’
‘David is a poor liar. Sorry, “was”, so I would have found out soon enough, but in this case Dunkley’s wife told him, to spite him, I think—poor Dunkley, no one likes him—and Dunkley told me.’
And that was the end of that, thought Salter. But it gave Dunkley all the motive in the world. He returned to pick at his own new-found relationship with Summers. The parallel fascinated him.
‘Why did he seem better lately?’ he asked. ‘What made the difference?’
‘You probably know the answer, Inspector, or you will. How old are you?’
Startled, Salter told her.
‘David was nearly fifty. We have some money now, and we were beginning to get around more. Travel. There was no need for him to spend all his time upstairs at his desk, though he still did, most of the winter. But we went away at Christmas, and for a few weeks during the summer.’ She looked at him calmly. ‘Our sex life improved, and he started to have some fun. He even began to write poetry—no good, but nice. He took up the bits of adolescence he never had, and finished off growing up.’
Salter got annoyed. ‘Why does it have to be adolescent? Maybe he just enjoyed playing squash.’
‘Don’t get uptight about it, Inspector. You didn’t even know him. I think everyone walks around with every age inside him, especially adolescence, but some people get a chance to let the other ages out—the lucky ones.’
This sounded to Salter like one of those conversations that end up discussing whether we are all faggots, really, if only we would relax, and he cut her off.
‘You had no money worries?’ he asked.
‘Nope.’ She pointed to the ceiling. ‘The house is paid for. Our daughter is nearly through college, and I’m making money. I work for an agency. We find new jobs for executives who. have been fired or want to quit. I’m good at it and I make a lot of money. I wanted to help David—I could have slotted him into a new career without any trouble, but he wouldn’t allow me near him on that one.’
Bloody right, thought Salter.
‘And David was making money himself, on the side,’ she added.
‘How?’
‘On the futures market. It was another thing Dunkley didn’t like about him. He called David a capitalist. Silly prick. David was a gambler in a modest sort of way. He was watching TV one day and saw a commodities broker who impressed him as a man who knew where it was at. The next day he phoned the broker and opened an account. It’s a kind of betting on the future prices of things. David had tried the stock market, but that’s rigged in favour of the brokers and the insiders, he said. He had spent a year playing the stock market and earned ten thousand in commissions for the broker and five hundred for himself. This commodities thing was different. He had a good trader—a woman, by the way—and she made him some money. He took back his original stake in six months—I think he put fifteen thousand in originally—and he’s been playing with his winnings ever since. Right now he was in cotton, copper and the Swiss franc.
‘But Dunkley didn’t understand anything about it. He thought that if you made a bet on the future price of pork bellies you were playing with the food of the poor. Even if you lost your shirt. I warn you, Inspector, if you ever get into the futures market, don’t tell anyone. They’ll be jealous and righteous if you win, and bloody happy if you lose. Which reminds me. I should find out what is happening to us. It’s a joint account and all our accounts were frozen until the will is probated, but the positions can still change. Excuse me.’ She went to the phone and dialled a number which she read off a list pasted above the receiver. ‘Leslie Stone, please. This is Mrs Summers, David’s wife. Thank you. I just wondered how we were doing. Good. Thanks. I’ll be in touch as soon as they unfreeze things.’ She hung up and came back to the table. ‘David trusted her totally,’ she said. ‘Apparently we are making money today.’
Salter was struck with an idea. ‘Would you call her again,’ he asked, ‘and authorize her to speak to me?’
