She had gone to see Erasmus on Friday before she left, as Hawkin had asked. She found him sitting on the bunk in his cell, his eyes closed and his lips moving in a murmur of prayer or recitation. His head came around at the sound of her approach and he watched her come in, his eyes neither welcoming nor antagonistic, simply waiting. She sat down on the bunk next to him.
“Hello, Erasmus. David. Are you comfortable?” She laughed at the sweep of his eyes. “Yeah, I know, stupid question. What I meant was, can I bring you anything?”
“O, thou fairest among women!” he said in wan humor.
“I don’t know about that. Something to eat tomorrow? Jail food isn’t the greatest.”
“The bread of adversity and the water of affliction.”
“I hope it’s not quite that bad.”
“The abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep,” he said in a gentle refusal of her offer.
“I wasn’t offering rich abundance, but I might stretch to a cheese sandwich and some fruit.”
His eyes lighted up at the last word, though he did not say anything.
“Nothing else?”
He hesitated, then said, “I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here.”
“Your books? From your backpack. Yes, I’ll have them brought to you. Writing materials? Another blanket?”
He smiled a refusal, then his right hand came up and nestled into his neck, his index finger stroking his beard. He cocked his eyebrow at her. “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me,” he suggested.
“Urn, your staff? I’m sorry, I don’t think I could get that approved.” Even if I could get the laboratory to hurry up with it, she thought.
He shrugged a bit wistfully. “Naked came I into the world, and naked shall I return. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
She hesitated and then risked a joke. “I don’t think even Inspector Hawkin himself thinks he’s God.”
His smile was warmly appreciative, but somehow she got the uncomfortable feeling that she’d given something away. She stood up, and he rose with her.
“I’ll see if I can get your books released tonight, and I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
He surprised her by putting up a finger to stop her, then bent down to look into her face. “Be strong, and of good courage,” he told her. “Be not afraid.” And when she could find no answer to that, he merely touched her shoulder and, sitting back down on the too-short bunk, said, “I will lay me down to sleep, and take my rest.”
That last little episode was what she had had in mind when she said that David Sawyer was cooperating with his seduction. He knew what she was doing, and moreover he knew what it was doing to her.
No, she did not like cozying up to that old man in order to pry him loose from his secure rest,- she was honest enough with herself to admit that she felt dirty using his affection against him. Feeling dirty was, of course, an occupational hazard, and so far it had never kept her from doing her job.
But all in all, she would much rather play bad cop.
♦
The readers in the living room were coming back to life and the coffee had finished dripping, so she moved back out to be hostess for a few minutes. When the cups were full and hot, she paused, the tape of the Sunday session in her hand.
“Al Hawkin was not there this morning. This was partly technique but mostly because he had other commitments.” (As if Al would allow previous commitments to stand in the way of an important interrogation session unless it was toward a greater goal, Kate thought to herself.) “I conducted the interview” (stick with that less-loaded term) “and another sat in— and only sat in. I don’t think she said a word the whole time, except for saying Hello when I introduced her to Erasmus. Sorry—Sawyer.”
“His nom de folie does seem to fit him better than the workaday David Sawyer,” agreed Dean Gardner.
Kate slipped the cassette into the player and sat down with a cup of coffee. Her own voice came on, sounding stifled and foreign as it always did, with the formalities, then explaining to the prisoner Hawkin’s absence and Officer Macauley’s presence. After that the interview began.
The recording, on more than one cassette, ran for nearly three hours, and there was even more silence on it than Kate remembered. Long stretches of silence. Many questions were unanswered, or perhaps unanswerable,- at other times, remarks were offered that seemed to have nothing to do with Kate’s questions—even at the time, Kate had thought that the pronouncements seemed plucked out of thin air. Hawkin, on the telephone afterward, had been greatly encouraged: There had been no antagonism, and he had interpreted Sawyer’s mute periods as the first signs of stress, the lapse of confidence that would open him up. Kate was not sure of that. She had been in the room with Sawyer and she had witnessed no lack of confidence. If anything, he seemed to be reconciling himself to his surroundings. When he came into the room, he stood easily in himself, he submitted to the handcuff rituals without noticing them, and he was beginning to look with interest at his jailers and fellow prisoners. Last night, the guards had told Kate, he had sung to the other inmates and read from his book of poetry. It had been, she was informed, the calmest Saturday night in a long time.
No, Kate did not think Erasmus was building up to a revelation,- she was afraid he might be settling down to a new home.
Had the tape recorder been voice-activated, the tape they were listening to might have run under two hours. As it was, by the time it ended, Kate was laying out plates and forks and the cold salads Jon had left for them. They helped themselves and carried their plates and glasses back to the sofas and the fireplace. Kate shoveled a few bites down and then opened her notebook.
“Now,” she began, “there are two reasons I’ve asked you to help me with this. The first, as I mentioned, is that one of you might have an idea about how we can get David Sawyer to talk to me about the murdered man. The other is to help me decipher what he’s already told us. It would take me years to track down the references and meanings you probably know instantly.”
“I don’t know about Professor Whitlaw,” began the dean.
“Eve, please,” murmured the professor.
“Eve, then. But it would take me hours to figure out sources for most of the quotes Erasmus uses.”
“I don’t think we need all of them. How about if we concentrate on the ones that don’t seem to have much bearing on the question that we’re asking at the time.”
“What do you hope to gain?” the professor asked doubtfully.
“I won’t know unless I find it. You see, in an investigation like this we may ask a hundred useless questions for every one that turns out to be of importance. The hope is that a thread end may appear in the process.”
“The method is not precisely scientific,” said Professor Whitlaw, sounding disapproving.
“That side of it is not. It’s an art rather than a science,” Kate stated, hoping she sounded confident rather than apologetic. The dean and the professor seemed satisfied, though the therapist lowered her gaze to her plate and did not respond.
“For example. Dean Gardner, when—”
“Philip.”
“Philip. When I first met you, Erasmus said something about—where is it? Here… Jerusalem killing the prophets, and you interpreted that as a reference to hens, and therefore eggs, and so decided he wanted omelets for breakfast.” Lee was frowning and Eve Whitlaw smiling at the convoluted reasoning. “Now, I’m assuming there are other places in the Bible or Shakespeare or wherever where hens are mentioned. Why did he choose this one?”