Harrison. The person you want to talk to is Jackie Miller. She has a room near Janet’s. Jackie is the sort who talks all the time and never seems to listen, yet she punctuates the flow with pointed questions one somehow can’t avoid answering. She knows more about everyone than anybody else. Perhaps you know the type?” Kate merely groaned. She knew the type all too well. “Why not come up and see her now? She’s probably just getting up, and if you can once start her talking, she’ll tell you everything anyone could know. I believe,” Miss Lindsay added, leading the way upstairs, “that it was she who told the detective that Janet had always carried a notebook. No one else had noticed.”
Jackie responded to their knock by flinging open the door and waving them gleefully into the messiest room Kate had seen since her college days. Jackie, dressed in a sleeping outfit of very short pants and a lacy, sleeveless top that seemed quite wasted in a woman’s dormitory, was making herself a cup of instant coffee with water from thetap. She offered them some; Miss Lindsay refused with commendable firmness, but Kate meekly accepted hers in the hope that this would lead them sooner to the point. She might, however, have saved herself from the agony of drinking the concoction.
“So you’re Professor Fansler,” Jackie began. She was clearly the sort who a hundred years ago would have tossed aside her parasol and said, “So you’re President Lincoln.”
“I keep hearing about you from all the students, but I just can’t seem to work one of your courses into my schedule. All my credits from Boston University were in literature—I just love reading novels—so I have to spend all my time here taking courses in other ghastly things. But I must fit in one of your courses because they all say you’re one of the few professors who manage to be entertaining and profound; and let’s admit it, most women professors are dreadfully dull old maids.” It did not apparently occur to Jackie that there was anything infelicitous about this statement. Kate fought down the outrage which such a generalization always aroused in her.
“Janet Harrison was a student of mine,” she said, without too much finesse. But finesse would undoubtedly be wasted on Jackie.
“Yes, I know. She mentioned it once at lunch, and usually you know she never so much as uttered—the strong silent type, not at all attractive, I think, in a woman. Anyway, this day at lunch (you must have had your mouth full, Kate thought maliciously) she said that you said that Henry James had said that morality depended—the morality of one’s actions, that is—depended, or should depend, on the moral quality of the person who was going to do the action and not on the moral quality of the person one was doing the action to. Of course,” Jackie added,with the first sign of insight Kate had seen in her, “she put it better. But the point was, she didn’t agree. She thought if someone was morally bad, you should do something about it because of their morality, not because of yours.” Kate, gallantly allowing herself and Henry James to be so traduced, wondered if Janet Harrison had indeed said something of the sort.
Could
she have gotten wind of a drug ring?
“Of course,” Jackie continued, “she was frigid, poor thing, and completely unable to relate to people. I told her so and she practically admitted it. I guessed, of course, that she was being analyzed. She used to leave here promptly every morning at the same time, and I found out she wasn’t going to a class, and a very good thing for her. If you want to know, I think the analyst stabbed her out of sheer frustration. She probably lay there hour after hour not opening her mouth. Have you been analyzed?”
It was nearly a quarter of a century since Kate had felt the impulse to stick out her tongue at someone. “Were any other rooms robbed except hers?” she asked.
“No, it was really very peculiar. I
Jackie responded to their knock by flinging open the door and waving them gleefully into the messiest room Kate had seen since her college days. Jackie, dressed in a sleeping outfit of very short pants and a lacy, sleeveless top that seemed quite wasted in a woman’s dormitory, was making herself a cup of instant coffee with water from thetap. She offered them some; Miss Lindsay refused with commendable firmness, but Kate meekly accepted hers in the hope that this would lead them sooner to the point. She might, however, have saved herself from the agony of drinking the concoction.
“So you’re Professor Fansler,” Jackie began. She was clearly the sort who a hundred years ago would have tossed aside her parasol and said, “So you’re President Lincoln.”
“I keep hearing about you from all the students, but I just can’t seem to work one of your courses into my schedule. All my credits from Boston University were in literature—I just love reading novels—so I have to spend all my time here taking courses in other ghastly things. But I must fit in one of your courses because they all say you’re one of the few professors who manage to be entertaining and profound; and let’s admit it, most women professors are dreadfully dull old maids.” It did not apparently occur to Jackie that there was anything infelicitous about this statement. Kate fought down the outrage which such a generalization always aroused in her.
“Janet Harrison was a student of mine,” she said, without too much finesse. But finesse would undoubtedly be wasted on Jackie.
“Yes, I know. She mentioned it once at lunch, and usually you know she never so much as uttered—the strong silent type, not at all attractive, I think, in a woman. Anyway, this day at lunch (you must have had your mouth full, Kate thought maliciously) she said that you said that Henry James had said that morality depended—the morality of one’s actions, that is—depended, or should depend, on the moral quality of the person who was going to do the action and not on the moral quality of the person one was doing the action to. Of course,” Jackie added,with the first sign of insight Kate had seen in her, “she put it better. But the point was, she didn’t agree. She thought if someone was morally bad, you should do something about it because of their morality, not because of yours.” Kate, gallantly allowing herself and Henry James to be so traduced, wondered if Janet Harrison had indeed said something of the sort.
Could
she have gotten wind of a drug ring?
“Of course,” Jackie continued, “she was frigid, poor thing, and completely unable to relate to people. I told her so and she practically admitted it. I guessed, of course, that she was being analyzed. She used to leave here promptly every morning at the same time, and I found out she wasn’t going to a class, and a very good thing for her. If you want to know, I think the analyst stabbed her out of sheer frustration. She probably lay there hour after hour not opening her mouth. Have you been analyzed?”
It was nearly a quarter of a century since Kate had felt the impulse to stick out her tongue at someone. “Were any other rooms robbed except hers?” she asked.
“No, it was really very peculiar. I
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