Ashley Bell (Ashley Bell #1)(115)
“Not at all. I’d put myself forward as an acceptable subject. I expected any student who chose me to have some fun with it. I am not thin-skinned. When Ms. Blair turned in her piece, I wasn’t surprised that she described the first two floors of this house with accuracy. There had been lovely parties here, quite wonderful occasions, when faculty members and students of previous classes had gathered in a unique atmosphere both celebratory and intellectual. No, I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed that she’d clearly sought out some of those people and grilled them about the layout of the house, the décor, the smallest of personal touches. This was supposed to be a creative exercise, not reportorial. Her descriptions were splendid, her writing unusually colorful and nuanced for a girl her age, but it was nonetheless something of a cheat to do what she’d done. Then, as I continued reading, much to my shock, I discovered that it was more than cheating, it was a crime.”
St. Croix focused so intently on forming the tart shells that when she fell silent, Pax realized she must be using the task at hand to direct her energy away from the anger that, when expressed, made her look years older and hard and unappealing.
“Crime?” he asked. “What crime?”
Finishing the fifth cup, the professor said, “Burglary. Well, to be scrupulously fair, no, not burglary. She didn’t steal anything, as far as I could tell. They call it housebreaking. She came into my house uninvited, when I wasn’t here, and she roamed every corner of it, all the way through the third floor, which is not and never has been open to most of my guests. It was a monstrous violation of my privacy. My third floor is sacrosanct.”
Pax knew that Bibi wasn’t capable of such a thing, but of course he didn’t leap to her defense. He only glanced warningly at Pogo.
After sipping her drink, St. Croix met Paxton’s eyes. “Why are you called a chief petty officer? There’s nothing petty about you, so far as I can see.”
“Oh, it’s just the Navy’s quaint way of differentiating between commissioned and noncommissioned officers. So we don’t forget our place in the scheme of things.”
“So we don’t get uppity,” Pogo said, proving that he had no talent for either deception or interrogation.
Pax expected that his answer to St. Croix’s question might make her wonder if such a minor officer would likely be dispatched on an official mission in the civilian sphere, but then he realized from her half smile and the directness of her gaze that the woman hoped to let him know the door was open for a more personal conversation and anything to which it might lead.
He asked, “How did Ms. Blair force entry? Break a window, bust a lock?”
“No evidence of how,” said the professor. “Which is what made it so unsettling. Clearly, she obtained a key. I was mystified as to how she could have done that. But I changed all the locks.”
“You’re certain she had a key?”
After taking another sip of her drink, St. Croix returned her attention to the pastry dough and the tart cups, making no further eye contact as she continued. “I am a strong and complex woman, Chief Petty Officer. I contain multitudes, as the poet said. I would have to be complex, with considerable depths, to have achieved my level of success and renown in the viciously competitive worlds of academia and literature, where the only sport more popular than logrolling is character assassination.”
She fell silent once more, and Pax knew better than to press her.
After she finished forming the sixth tart shell and started on the seventh, St. Croix said, “Image is everything in the worlds I inhabit. I guard my image as fiercely as other people might guard their families, their fortunes, their sacred honor—if they believe there is such a thing. I am the founder of the most successful writing program in any university in the country. I am known to have an unerring eye for genius and the ability to nurture it. Certain of my former students have been invited to join the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Three have won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, two have won the National Book Award, and two have won Pulitzers. The lesser awards are too numerous to recount. I am a starmaker. For someone in my position, an image of Spartan dedication to the written word at the expense even of my personal life, a reputation for cool indifference to everything but excellence in literature, makes me a laudable eccentric and an icon. My eminence would not be materially affected even if I publicly acknowledged that a few of the most renowned graduates of my program are pretentious fools of little talent. But with a woman as complex as I am, there are aspects of my personality that wouldn’t be regarded as compatible with my public image and would in fact diminish it greatly. Therefore, I keep those interests strictly private and indulge them only beyond the view of those who would be offended by them.”
Pogo sat goggle-eyed, as if his imagination were afire with images of her forbidden pursuits, as if he had forgotten that one of the controversial aspects of her personality that she felt the need to conceal was nothing more than an enchantment with Victoriana, the style and literature and perhaps the values of that age.
“Ms. Blair,” the professor continued, “wrote her little document of extortion as if imagining that I were a woman of more facets than a well-cut diamond. She wrote of my third floor as if she found its secrets charming and my unadvertised interests proof of the depth of my spirit and intellect. But of course that was butt-kissing meant to disguise her attempted blackmail. She was demanding my praise, my mentoring, my endorsement of her talent, my power to make her a star in return for her silence.”