Chapter 23: Monday, Nov. 20

"Mr. de Ratour," Mr. Dearth said with an ominous voice, "I am going to report your behavior to the University authorities."

"Feel welcome to, sir," I responded and turned to the library employees. "Can you tell me exactly how the feeling came over both of you."

They were both clearly embarrassed. "It just came over us," Mr. Jones said. "Big time."

"Me, too," Ms. Spronger said. "It was like a compulsion."

"Who first suggested that you retire to the closet?"

"You really don't have to answer that question. In fact, I advise against it very strongly." Mr. Dearth had grown visibly agitated during this time.

For my part, my irritation at what Mr. Dearth was attempting to do with these two young people had grown to indignation. But I kept my voice calm. "Actually, that's not really a question pertinent to my purposes. What's really important is that I ascertain that the only food you ate during that shared lunch came from home."

They both nodded. Then Mr. Jones said, bringing up a question Mr. Dearth had not asked, "What are your purposes?"

"Good question," I said. "It's one your attorney should have brought up at the beginning." I paused to let that register. "It's possible that somehow, somewhere, you ate food that had been doctored with a very powerful aphrodisiac. We're not sure, but it may have been a mild form of whatever it was that killed Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley."

Ms. Spronger grew pensive. "Actually..."

"We doubt very much anything like that happened," Mr. Dearth said forcefully.

"Because that would exculpate the University?" I turned to Ms. Spronger. "You were about to say something?"

She glanced this time at her counsel. "Nothing. Really."

"Are you sure?" I persisted. "This is very important. Other lives may be at stake."

But Mr. Dearth had them back under his control. He kept advising them not to say anything. He said, "Mr. de Ratour has no standing legal authority in this case."

I regarded Ms. Spronger and then Mr. Jones. I said, "If either of you change your mind about anything, please give me a call. Anything you tell me will be kept private."

When we all, except Mr. Jones, rose to go, I asked to speak to Mr. Dearth in private. The principals left to wait in the hall, and I closed the door. I did not sit down. I leaned across the table on my fisted hands. I looked Mr. Dearth straight in the face. I told him I could scarcely believe what he was doing.

"I am defending my clients' rights to a safe working environment," he responded.

"You mean to tell me that the University is responsible for the private consensual actions of these two adults?"

"We are contending that in the particular case of Sigmund Library, the University wittingly or unwittingly allowed an environment of sexual exploitation to exist of which these two young litigants are the very evident victims."

"What exactly, could you tell me, Mr. Dearth, should the University have done differently?"

"That is up to the deans in the administration to decide. But the very existence of a large securable closet and the ends to which everyone knows it was used indicates substantial grounds for complaint. The principle of undue temptation applies here."

"Undue temptation?"

"A concept I developed. It recognizes the limits of human virtue."

I shook my head in wonder and disgust.

"There's considerable case law in this area," the lawyer continued. Morin vs. Museum of Man established a good many of the points now being used in current cases."

I told him what he was doing was unconscionable even by the farcical ethics of the legal profession. I paraphrased for him a quote from Izzy Landes to the effect that the worst parasites are usually internal to the organism. As in the case of Mr. Morin, I said, you are making a travesty of the law. "You, Mr. Dearth, and people like you in the legal profession are consciously and for your own selfish ends deconstructing a great and noble American institution."

"Are you calling me a parasite?" he demanded to know.

"That's exactly what I'm calling you, Mr. Dearth. You and your ilk do not help society in the least. You merely find and feed on its vulnerabilities, all the while perverting the law as you go."

I told him that, as a member of the Subcommittee on Appropriateness, I was writing to the state Bar Association demanding that he be disciplined in a most decisive way.

There was some small gratification to see Mr. Dearth dumbfounded for once in his garrulous life. Leaving him there I turned and walked from the room, ignoring the two pathetic individuals he had suborned into a suit against the University.

I'm afraid I spent valuable time and a deal of spirit making good on my threats. Not only did I send a detailed and indignant letter to the members of the Subcommittee with copies to President Twill and the Wainscott Board of Regents, but I filed a complaint with the state bar association. Not that I have much faith in that latter organization, despite its impressive-looking code of ethics. The lawyers handling the estate of my late aunt, Augusta Heathering, all but looted its substance, leaving the sole heir, a nephew, with a pittance. When he took the matter to the state bar, they sat on it for a year and finally did nothing. As Izzy says, we live increasingly under a rule of lawyers, not law.

And such is life and death that none of this really means a damn to me; it is nothing more than a tempest in a tosspot next to the daily unraveling of my beautiful Elsbeth. She is now insisting that we spend Thanksgiving out at the cottage, but the poor dear is scarcely able to get out of bed.

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