Face of Murder

Wardenford dressed slowly, cursing again at the aching in his limbs. Life wasn’t supposed to be this hard. He wasn’t an old man yet. He’d played a tough hand for his body to take, though, and it was letting its complaints be known now that he didn’t have a good whiskey to smooth the pain away.

He was dressed and sitting at his kitchen table with a mug of coffee, trying to pretend to himself that it was Irish, when someone rang his buzzer.

“Hello?” he said, frowning. It wouldn’t be those FBI girls again, would it? He’d enjoyed going over a puzzle with the smart one, and the other one wasn’t unpleasant to look at, but he’d had enough interrogations to last him a lifetime. Besides, that was where all this discomfort had started, with the sweating and the shakes.

“Professor?”

Wardenford’s mind was blank for a moment, appreciating that the sentiment must indicate a student but unsure about the voice. “It’s just Mr. Wardenford now,” he settled for.

“Sorry, right. It’s Matthias Kranz. I wanted to catch up. If it’s too early, I can go away.”

Matthias Kranz! Now, there was a student. One of the brightest of the bright. Although, hadn’t Wardenford heard through the grapevine that he never did end up taking a place on that program? Maybe he could ask him about it now.

Besides, Matthias had always been a polite and respectful boy. It would be nice to see someone who treated him the way he had been used to, back when he still had the support of the community.

“It’s fine—I’m an early riser at the moment. Please come up.”

After pushing the buzzer to unlock the door several stories below, Wardenford glanced around at the apartment and down at himself. His clothes were fine, if a little informal—the boy was used to seeing him in a suit jacket, not a sweater—but the décor could do with some hasty rearranging. He closed the door to his bedroom to shut out the mess, and did a rapid sweep of the open-plan kitchen, diner, and living area, throwing away empty bottles and takeout cartons. He even threw away a dirty plate in his haste, having far too little time to get it washed up and put away.

The knock on the door came before he was quite done, but it would have to do. An apartment that was too clean, too tidy—well, that smacked of a tidy-up, didn’t it? Better for there to be a few things out of place here and there, to give a lived-in impression. Wardenford caught his breath for a brief moment, before heading over and opening the door.

“Matthias,” he said warming, greeting his former student with a handshake. “How have you been? Come in, come in.”

“I’m well,” Matthias said, in a manner that seemed almost reticent. “You?”

Wardenford thought his lack of verboseness might be down to the awkward feeling of meeting someone one is used to seeing in a position of authority, but was now on level footing. Certainly, he had once been extremely talkative, and they had enjoyed many bright and spirited debates after his classes. In favor of improving his impression, Wardenford decided on the spot to ad lib a little. “Oh, just great, yes. I’ve been keeping myself busy with some consultation work.”

Well, the FBI had asked him for his opinion, hadn’t they?

Matthias sat down silently on the sofa when Wardenford gestured for him to do so, offering a slim smile. These bright kids—it was always hard to tell with them, wasn’t it? They hadn’t spent a great deal of time developing social skills, usually, and so while they were excellent at navigating classes and partnering up for assignments, talking out of class was another thing.

“Would you like a coffee?” Wardenford asked, checking the temperature of the glass and pouring himself a top-up. “It’s fresh-made.”

“Yes, please,” Matthias said, and Wardenford was buoyed by this.

With the two cups steaming on the coffee table and both of the men seated comfortably, Wardenford found that he was going to have to carry the conversation. Matthias had not said anything more. Rather than asking him outright why he had come—a question to which he might not like the answer, particularly if it turned out to deflate his ego—Wardenford decided to take this opportunity to extract any and all gossip he could about his former faculty.

“So, what’s new at Georgetown?”

“People are mostly talking about the bodies.” There was a measured, deliberate way to the way that Matthias spoke now. Like he was choosing each word carefully, and with great effort. What had happened to him…?

“Of course, of course.” Wardenford nodded. “I’m sure there’s a lot of upset about it. Professor Henderson was a much-loved member of the staff.”

“Yes.” Matthias sipped at his coffee, his face largely blank.

“You had lectures with him as well, didn’t you? I seem to recall you mentioning that you were taking some English classes alongside your physics and mathematics.”

Matthias nodded. “I stopped.”

“Oh, well, that’s a shame.” Wardenford paused. “Not for you, necessarily. After all, you can take whichever classes seem best fitted to your needs. I simply mean, I would like to know how things are now. I presume there will be a TA or one of the other members of staff filling in. Have you heard if they have engaged a new lecturer for his position yet?”

Matthias shook his head. “I’m just glad the real killer has been caught.”

One thing about that struck Wardenford as odd, and then as he thought about it more, two things. The “real” killer? Did Matthias know that he had been arrested and spoken to?

Did everyone know it?

The other point was that Wardenford had thought he was the only one to know about the latest development. Had the police somehow made it public overnight? He had checked both local and national news this morning, and seen no updates about an arrest in the case.

“Caught?” he replied, treading cautiously. “Did they say who it was?”

Matthias made a face. “Pear. Uh, white. Pear white. No, something…”

“Dr. Applewhite,” Wardenford corrected quietly. So. They really had arrested her. Well. When he had presented what he could see himself, the equations pointing the way, he did not know if he really believed it could be true. But if they had taken her in—“How did you hear about that? I haven’t seen anything in the news.”

Matthias shrugged. He was depending on gestures today, Wardenford noticed. Fewer words and more gestures. As if he was unwilling to spare any more words to get his point across. “Campus rumors,” he said.

Ah, yes. The old rumor mill. Wardenford had been quite fond of it once, before he became the headline story for a while. Since then, of course, he had barely heard a thing. Even if someone had been willing to tell him, he wouldn’t have remembered any of it, not with the amount he had been drinking.

Still, it sent a shiver down his spine. News traveled fast around here, and if someone had managed to see Dr. Applewhite being arrested and spread it around the campus already, it seemed quite likely that they had done the same for him. So, another dent to his already battered reputation.

Mind you, at least he had been released. Maybe that would help matters.

The sound of a car horn blaring outside startled Wardenford, and he rose to look out the window. “Goodness me,” he muttered, shaking his head. “They shouldn’t be making that kind of racket this early in the morning. Some people are still asleep. What time is it now, anyway?”

“It’s nine-sixteen.”

Nine-sixteen…? That didn’t sound right, surely? Had so many hours flown by while Wardenford was staring into the bottom of a coffee cup? No, and the city was still quiet, people only just getting onto their commutes, school buses just starting to go past for the first time. Wardenford glanced at his watch, scratched and battered from many a drinking session that ended badly, and saw that he was right.

It was six-nineteen.

He opened his mouth to laugh and tell Matthias that he had got it the wrong way around, but then stopped himself. Hang on a second, here, James, he told himself. Now, just hang on and think about this.

The equations were all jumbled up, all out of order. The numbers, the letters, in the wrong places.

And Matthias was speaking so carefully, with so much control, using as few words as he possibly could.

Not that there was any need to read too far into that, was there? Perhaps he was overtired. Yes, that was probably all. To read any more into it would be absurd.

“Well,” Wardenford said briskly, turning back from the window and resuming his spot on the sofa. “Some people just don’t have any sense of what’s right, do they? I imagine there was barely any reason for them to hit the horn at all. You know what these road-rage inner-city drivers are like.”

Matthias laughed politely, nodding his head.

And Wardenford remembered something—something he had not thought of for a long time. The equation that Dr. Applewhite had shared with him. The fact that he had then shared it with Matthias, hoping that the lad would be able to use his talents to find the correction.

He’d been working on it, hadn’t he? Back then. Before the scandal hit.

Matthias had seen the equation, and there was something wrong with him now. The numbers. He had mixed up the numbers when he read the time.