(2012) Cross-Border Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

throat.” He smiled to encourage me. I did what he suggested and then smiled to indicate my pleasure at the experiment. I was in fact pleasantly surprised. But I had done it primarily to establish empathy.
    I put my glass down. “Steve Symansky and Peter Gooden? What about them?” I asked.
    “Symansky was a political scientist. His wife, Stella, was, I believe, in sociology. They were also both American. As you know Canadian universities were expanding very rapidly back then. There was a dearth of home grown talent, and consequently places like Winston accepted a veritable invasion of American professors.” He frowned. “Gooden, I think, was one of those rare birds with dual citizenship. His mother was American. Or something like that.”
    “And you say he was part of the inner group?” I kept to myself Gooden’s claim to have been otherwise.
    “Definitely.”
    “Even if he was only a graduate student?”
    He nodded. “Like many of them he had been given an undergraduate course or two to teach. He was briefly one of Monaghan’s favorites. I think he represented the new generation who would carry the flag and go on to build the new Jerusalem. Or something like that.” He said the words with an alcohol-assisted irony. He stared into his glass and chuckled. “Oh, what a fall from grace was there. If only Monaghan could see him now!” His eyes watered at what I took to be a flood of new memories. “We all fell from grace, I suppose. All tumbled off our once vaunted ideological perches.”
    “You too?” Gina said. There was a mock irony in her voice. It was a deliberate provocation. She had little tolerance, I suspected, for cant in an older generation. Professor Hendrick’s left eyelid began to flutter.
    “But unfortunately my perch was not as high as the others, and like many cynics I fell into the sauce and not into a cushy administrative position.” His index finger made a diving motion towards the liquor in his glass. “Professor Gooden, on the other hand, bounced right back up to become a member of the new business-government backed establishment.” I watched in fascination as his eyelid fluttered again. “As my mother used to say, when she wanted to hold up some other person’s son as a model with which to admonish me, he will go far, that boy, very far, mark my words!” I decided to push ahead.
    “What about the women in the group.”
    “Which ones?”
    “Any that you feel might have been pertinent.”
    “Well, then, I’ll leave out the female students. There was always a few around, but they were really marginal. There was Stella of course, Stella Symansky. She had a degree, as I said, probably, in sociology. She taught a couple of courses part time.” He closed his eyes as if to beckon back certain images from the past into sharper focus. He held his glass cupped in both hands as if to warm the liquor and himself. “I think she was more active as part of the inner circle than I may have realized back then. I was going to say that she was a shrewd one. But she was a good observer, and she had a disciplined control of herself that most of us didn’t.” As he opened his eyes, his left eyelid fluttered again briefly and then went still. “Strange, she was well-liked, had no apparent enemies. Probably because she was a very good listener. No one ever gossiped about her. Then, of course, there was Mrs. Monaghan. A very different kettle of fish. She was a bit of a tease.” He sneaked a glance at Gina. She gave him a secretive smile but held his gaze. “In a way she was quite remarkable. I think she spoke at least three languages fluently. I suspect she came from one of those wealthy families where the children get sent to Switzerland for part of their education. She knew Europe well. Probably had spent her summer vacations there. I suspect that’s where she is now.”
    “Actually she’s living in the east end of Montreal.”
    “Is she?” He seemed to have been caught by surprise.