“Er, yes. I am Inspector Kate Martinelli of the San Francisco Police Department. We are investigating a murder that occurred recently in Golden Gate Park. The reason I am calling you is that one of the persons involved refers to himself as a ‘fool,” and I was told by the dean of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific over in Berkeley that you might be able to tell me exactly what this man means when he uses that description.“ By the time Kate reached the end of this convoluted request, she was feeling something of a fool herself, and the sensation was reinforced by the long and ringing silence on the other end of the line.
“Dr. Whit—”
“You’ve arrested a Fool for murder?” the English voice said incredulously.
“He is not under arrest. At most, he’s a weak suspect. However, he’s a problem to us because it’s very difficult to understand what he’s doing here. The interviews we’ve held have been… unsatisfactory.”
The deep voice chuckled. “I can imagine. He answers your questions, but his answers are, shall we say, ambiguous. Even enigmatic.”
“Thank God,” Kate burst out. “You do understand.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but I may be able to throw a bit of light into your darkness. When may I meet this fool of yours?”
“You want to meet him?”
“My dear young woman, would you ask a paleontologist if she would care to meet a dinosaur? Of course I must meet him. Is he in jail?”
“No, at the moment he’s in Berkeley. He will be back in San Francisco by Saturday, I think, and I could put my hands on him by Sunday. Perhaps we could arrange a meeting on Monday?”
“Not until then? Ah well, it can’t be helped, I suppose. However, my dear, if you lose him, I shall find it very hard.” There was a thread of steel beneath the jovial words, and Kate had a vivid picture of an elderly teacher she’d once had, a nun who used to punish tardiness and forgotten homework with an astonishingly painful rap on the skull with a thimble.
“I’ll try not to lose him,” she said. “But I wonder if before then you and I could meet.”
“A brief tutorial might well be in order. Tomorrow will be difficult, the entire afternoon is rather solidly booked. Let me look at my diary. Hmm. I do have a space in the early afternoon. What about one—no, shall we say twelve-thirty?”
Dr. Whitlaw gave Kate an address in Noe Valley and the house telephone number, wished her enjoyment of the remainder of Pirates, and hung up. Kate obediently poured herself a tiny glass of the syrupy port and went out to sit between Lee and Jon on the sofa, watching the equally syrupy ending of the operetta.
♦
TEN
♦
When Francis came forth from his cave of vision,
he was wearing the same word “fool” as a feather
in his cap, as a crest or even a crown.
At under five and a half feet with shoes on, Kate was not often given the chance to feel tall, except in a room full of kids. In fact, when the door opened, she thought for a moment that she was faced with a child. It was the impression of an instant’s glance, though, because no sooner had the door begun to open than it caught forcibly on the chain and slammed shut in her face. The chain rattled, the door opened again, more fully this time, and the person standing there, colorful and gray-haired and of a height surely not far from dwarfism, was not a child, but a woman of about sixty.
“Doctor Whitlaw?” Kate asked uncertainly.
“Professor, actually. You’re Inspector Martinelli. Come in.”
Kate stepped inside while the woman reached up to fasten the chain.
“I was told that I must always bolt and chain the doors in this city. I live in a village, where a crime wave is the neighbor’s son stealing a handbag from the backseat of a car. I’m forever forgetting that I’ve put the chain on,- I nearly took my nose off the other day. Come in here and sit down, and tell me what I can do for you. Will you take a cup of tea?”
She had a lovely voice. On the phone it had sounded gruff, but in person it was only surprisingly deep, and the accent that had sounded English became something other than the posh tones of most actors and the occasional foreign correspondent on the news. Her accent had depth rather than smoothness, flavor rather than sophistication, and made her sound as if she could tell a sly joke, if the opportunity arose. Kate couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk tea, but she accepted.
They sat at a round, claw-foot, polished oak table, between a cheerful pine kitchen and a living room bursting with gloriously happy plants, tropical-print fabrics, and African sculpture. Professor Whitlaw brought another cup from the kitchen (using a step stool to reach the cupboard) and poured from a dark brown teapot so new that it still had the price sticker on the handle. She added milk without asking, put a sugar bowl, spoon, and plate of boring-looking cookies in front of Kate, and sat back in her chair, her feet dangling.
“This is a very pleasant place,” Kate offered.
“Do you think so? It belongs to friends of my niece, two pediatricians who are away for the month, so I’m house-sitting. Actually, I am beginning to find its unremitting cheerfulness oppressive, particularly in the mornings. I come out in my dressing gown and expect to hear parrots and monkeys. Fortunately, I don’t have to care for the jungle. They have a sort of indoor gardener who comes twice a week to water and prune—a good thing, because if I was responsible, they would come back to a desert. You wish to talk about the Fools movement.”
“Er, yes. Or about one particular fool, really.” Kate explained at length what she knew about Erasmus, his relationships with the homeless and the seminary, and his apparent unwillingness or inability to speak other than by way of quotations. She then gave a very general picture of the murder and investigation, ending up with: “So you see, the man must be treated as a suspect,- he has no alibi, no identification, no past, no nothing. The only thing he has said about himself that sounds in the least bit personal is that he thinks of himself as a fool. Now, he could just be saying that, or he may be referring to this organization or movement or whatever it is. Dean Gardner thought there was a chance he might be, so he referred me to you.”
“You are catching at straws.”
“I suppose so.”
“And even if he is a remnant of the Fools movement, it may have nothing to do with the man’s death.”
“That’s very possible.”
“But you are hoping nonetheless to understand the differences between the cultivated lunacy of Foolishness and the inadvertent insanity of a murderer.”
“Well, I guess. Actually, I was hoping that if he had been a member of this… movement, there might be records, or someone who might know who Erasmus is.”
“The Fools movement was short-lived, and fairly comprehensively dispersed. It was also never the sort of thing to have any formalized membership—that would have been seen as oxymoronic. If you will pardon the pun.” She chuckled, and Kate smiled politely, not having the faintest idea what the woman was talking about. “What you require,” she continued, sounding every bit the academic, “is background information. However, as I told you over the telephone, my day is fairly full. I’m afraid that I’ve loaned out my only copies of the book I edited on the subject, but may I suggest that I give you a couple of papers and you come back and talk with me when you’ve had a chance to digest them? This evening or tomorrow, or whenever.”
Without waiting for Kate to agree, she slid down from her chair and went out of the room and through a doorway on the other side of the hall. When Kate reached the door, she found Professor Whitlaw with her head in a filing cabinet. She laid three manila folders on the desk, opened the first two, and took out some papers, leaving a stapled sheaf of papers in each one. The third one, she hesitated over, then opened it and began to sift through the contents thoughtfully.