Simon Said Read Online Free PDF

the entire campus, and it was still lined with bookshelves that held faculty publications and part of the original collection. A few battered leather couches and a couple of tables filled the center of the room. A full pot of usually decent coffee sat on one table. During the academic year, one could find the entire history department in the lounge at this hour, but this morning, only Professor Vera Thayer was ensconced on one of the couches. She was drinking a steaming cup of coffee and reading the Raleigh News and Observer.
Vera looked up at him as he walked into the room. "It's good to see you," she said. "Where have you been all summer?"
    Simon wished that everyone would stop noticing his comings and goings. He really didn't enjoy explaining to the world that he had been having some difficulty getting out of bed in the morning because of a bout with clinical depression but that he was feeling much better, thank you.
Thayer suddenly seemed to realize the implications of her question.
"Oh, I forgot, North Carolina History doesn't meet until the afternoon, does it?" she said, covering for him.
    "That's right," he said. Of course, he continued to himself, as he filled a cup of coffee to the brim and laced it with sugar, you're not teaching anything until second session, and you're here bright and early every day, loaded for bear. Professor Thayer was in her late fifties. She was always dressed meticulously in a suit, wore full makeup, and had her hair fixed twice a week. She was the type of middle-aged career woman who was so selfconscious about her success that she was constantly playing the part of the perfect academic. She was not brilliant, but she was tough and had written seven books, most of them now out of print. She was the first woman at Kenan to make full professor. She was not a popular teacher because she had no empathy with her students, but everyone who passed her courses knew the material backward and forward. Of course she knew that Simon's wife had left him, but she usually accepted no excuses for herself or anyone else, and it surprised him that she would excuse his "malingering." Simon, and everyone else on the faculty, except perhaps Walker Jones, tended to wilt under Thayer's scrutiny. Simon wondered if she would be chair of the department after Jones retired.
Simon picked up part of the paper and the two read in silence while the sun slowly rose higher in the sky and slanted into the room through the huge windows.
    After a while, Simon became aware that Professor Thayer had let her paper fall into her lap and was studying him. He looked up at her, and she seized her opportunity to speak.
"I heard about all the excitement yesterday from Judy," she said. "I'm glad you could identify that woman," she went on. "It must have been an interesting experience." "It was," Simon said. "Kind of gruesome, too. I thought about it half the night." "I understand that the policeman in charge of the case is coming to see you this morning? What about?"
    Simon shrugged. "I don't really know. He seems to think I might be able to help them more. Apparently if she was murdered, there might be some kind of an official investigation, even though it happened a long time ago."
    "It would be a mighty cold trail."
"But we historians investigate old, cold trails all the time," Simon said.
"True." She sat silently for a few minutes. It was clear that she had just been warming up to what she really wanted to talk to him about.
    "There's going to be a faculty meeting at eleven."
"I know. Do you know what it's about?"
"I'm afraid it's going to be unpleasant for you," she said.
Simon felt his stomach constrict and his armpits grow damp.
"What on earth—"
    "Simon," she said, "since you haven't been yourself this summer, which," she added quickly, "we all understand, under the circumstances, I'm afraid that there is an individual in the department who will use it against you."
Andrus, Simon thought. He wants my job. Always has.
    Simon had