The Count Of Baldpate
CSU History Professor Hank Rule - Chapter 3
…THREE
The following morning, back in his office above the garage, Hank tried desperately to concentrate on the precise wording for the last question in the last section of his history final. This spring he had a sharp group of graduating students and knew he needed to challenge them.
However, since the call from his former student Claire Gage, it had been difficult to keep his attention from straying back to the evidence bag containing the vintage book with so many intriguing notes.
He had counted twelve pages flagged by post-its in the book published over one hundred years before.
Most of his afternoon had been frittered away between going back and forth between tweaking final exam questions and making his own notes from the book in the evidence bag.
When Cleo came through his office door, she carried a small tray. She swung slightly to her left then to her right looking for a clear open place to rest it, but there was no desktop or tabletop or box top or any top with a stable surface.
Instead, she settled for a fairly level space on several thick reference books that lined the length of an antique library table. The narrow table was more-or-less, at a right angle to the north wall between Hank’s roll-top desk and the east wall of his crowded bookshelves.
His office was larger than the one Cleo had at her bookstore. Hank’s was almost twenty feet by twenty feet, but somehow it had less space. It had less space because he was reluctant to part with anything.
Besides two laptops and three vintage computers with their monitors, Hank still kept original paper files in three tall metal file cabinets, his stepfather once used.
Their four boys described their dad’s office as the ‘techno-museum’.
Hank’s first cell phone was in a box of old computer cables, on a shelf beside a 1988 IBM computer and monitor - his first - that still read six-inch floppy disks. A very heavy, but still functioning 1994 Toshiba laptop was on the shelf above that, beside Hank’s second computer that took three-inch file storage disks. On the top shelf was a clear plastic bin where each of his former cell phones had been ‘laid-to-rest’.
Cardboard file boxes were stacked in random columns that contained research material from published papers. Other boxes contained research data for his Masters’ and doctoral thesis. And in more boxes, there was additional documentation for potential, future papers.
At one time Mrs. Rule would have been thrilled for the opportunity to clean up and organize her husband’s office. However, she knew that almost forty years of academic and technological accumulation would take far more than one work week to put everything in order. Then after buying her bookstore, she could never find six consecutive days when Hank wouldn’t need his office and she had that kind of time.
Cleo’s attention then turned to her husband’s desktop as she searched for a safe place to set down his full coffee mug. Then perched on a piano stool, she knew she’d have his attention when he looked for some cookies to go with his midafternoon coffee.
When Hank swung around in his chair he held the bagged copy of The Seven Keys to Baldpate in his right hand, while his left hand instinctively reached for a newly opened box of Girl Guide cookies.
“Here’s the book the new sheriff of Estes Park, who as it happens was a former student of mine, found with a body discovered this morning near the Baldpate Inn parking lot.”
One entire Girl Guide BerryMunch cookie disappeared in one bite. He chewed and talked “I know the inn sells them, but have you ever carried a copy of this at Cottonwood Books?”
Cleo leaned closer. “Aw Earl Derr Biggers. No, we’ve never carried this one, but we carry all of the books from his Charlie Chan mystery series. Those are classics.”
Hank was still chewing and took a sip from his mug. “Charlie Chan?” He swallowed. “So, this author was famous? Never heard of him.”
“That’s because you’re biased against fiction. But fiction combined with fact can be every bit as interesting, often more. And I sell fictional mystery books six to one over nonfiction mysteries. So there.” She pulled out a Girl Guide Lemonades from a second box and took a bite.
“Besides with factual history the reader knows who ‘did-it’ and how everything ends. With fiction the end isn’t always a given unless it’s a predictable formula plot or some numbskull writer gives away too much as the story progresses.”
“That’s all well and good for your business bottom line, but I know for a ‘fact’ that Charlie Chan won’t be at all helpful finding who shot Hugo Lanze.”
“Of course not, but the deduction process is the same. You know assessing clues, eliminating suspects, checking alibis. Whether you’re a fictional book detective or an actual detective who’s also the sheriff of Estes…”
Cleo’s point was interrupted by Hank’s cell phone.
“Claire, hello. My wife Cleo and I were just discussing our dilemma of Hugo Lanze.” He waited. “Yes, I’ll say hi for you. No, she’s not still teaching high school she opened a bookstore in old town seven years ago.”
Cleo listened to her husband’s end of the conversation, sipping her coffee and reaching for a second cookie.
“Got nothing on the book yet, except, the author was apparently famous. Have you heard of the fictional Asian detective Charlie Chan?” He waited. “Well apparently the author of Seven Keys was also the author of the Chan detective series. But that’s all I have so far.”
Hank listened. “Oh, it’s Beck huh. Really? Then should you or the Reading police be looking for a second body? Did the nephew and his great uncle go missing at the same time?”
“Okay,” he looked away for a moment scowling, then back. “I set aside time to see if I can make some sense of the marked pages. I’ll also check attendance lists for other history seminars I’ve given along with summer class lists for the surname Beck too and Lanze, again.”
“I still have no idea why this guy would have an old business card of mine, unless… How old are Sylvia and Simon Beck?”
“Well, that would put them at about the right age as freshmen if they started CSU for the 1996-1997 academic school year. It also means they were newborns when Great Uncle Hugo gave them the book. Odd baby gift. It’s a first edition, but not particularly valuable.”
He listened for another minute. “Got it. I’ll let you know as soon as I discover anything from my end that I think will help.” Hank ended the call.
Cleo waited a moment. “Well? Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“The last name of the great niece and great nephew of the recently deceased Hugo Lanze is Beck. Sylvia Beck, who’s from Reading, Pennsylvania is also the person who reported her great uncle missing two weeks ago and a few days after that she reported her twin brother missing too.”
“Claire got a hit from a national missing persons’ database. She contacted Reading police, and they sent an officer to Ms. Beck’s home to inform her of her uncle’s confirmed death.”
“Does Claire suspect the brother is also dead?”
“He may be, but she seems to think it’s a stronger possibility that he’s on the run because he may have been the shooter. Until that’s established, she’s organizing another search party to look for other evidence around the grounds up at the inn. Naturally she hopes they don’t find another body.”
Cleo looked down at the tray. “I must quit buying these cookies. I’m taking the rest to the bookstore tomorrow, so we don’t eat them.” She stood gathering the tray, cookies and mugs. “Good luck with the clues for the body you do have.”
Hank finished the last question on the last page of the exam. After emailing it to his TA he settled in to check all the names of his regular and summer class lists from 1990 to 1999.
There were no students listed with the last name of Beck or Lanze. And there were no history class audit students with either last name, nor anyone with either last name who had registered to attend any of his guest lectures at other colleges or universities in Colorado.
Next, he checked with the department secretary, his thesis students and other colleagues. When no one in his department had heard of Hugo Lanze, Sylvia Beck or Simon Beck – Hank felt stalled with his name search, but free to concentrate exclusively on the marked pages in the fiction book.
The author had created Hooperstown as a fictional location in Westchester County, New York and so was Upper Asquewan Falls, New York, which is why Dr. Rule hated fiction.
Since he knew Long Island existed, and so did Westchester County, New York – using internet copies of one hundred-year-old maps for his starting point he spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find any connection between the page references in the book with what was happening socially or politically at turn of the 20th Century.
Two hours later when Cleo called him for their evening meal, he still had no idea why the twelve pages or the specific sentences on those pages had been flagged.
He trudged through the kitchen door scowling. “How the hell is anyone supposed to research something, or someone, or some place that doesn’t, correction - didn’t exist except in the mind of some fiction writer?”
Cleo poured two glasses of wine. “Wow, you’re particularly cheery. Here, savor some of this it’s fresh from the box.”
Hank accepted his glass, but his mind remained focused on his frustration with the case and the book. “I still don’t know why Hugo Lanze had my business card. Neither Simon Beck nor Sylvia Beck, were ever students at CSU.”
He took a sip of his wine more from habit than interest. “The Forty-Fourth Street Club on Long Island is just as fictional as the town of Reuton, Pennsylvania and Hooperstown, Westchester County and Upper Asquewan Falls, New York.”
“Readsboro, Vermont does exist, and Baldpate Inn exists, but your author plunked his inn on a mountain he named Baldpate in the state of New York. The ‘Chair of Crandall Comparative Literature’ is not an academic position. However, a Crandall apparently is a mason’s tool for ‘addressing stone’ – whatever the hell that means.”
“There’s no such novel as The Lost Limousine.”
Hank took another sip of wine. This time he held it in his mouth for a split second then swallowed.
“I seem to recall you saying something about fiction with fact made wonderful plots or some such crap. But how does someone determine any facts when works of fiction don’t come with an index?”
Cleo finished dishing up their plates of spaghetti and they carried them into the dining room. They sat facing each other at the same end of their nine-foot pine trestle table. Eight of their ten bow-back chairs were empty.
Even with all four of their boys grown and on their own they usually ate their evening meal together in this room. The walls were paneled with dark walnut to a height just above Cleo’s shoulders with a wide plate rail on three sides. Burgundy, grey and green striped wallpaper, that Cleo had intended to remove the year their youngest moved out five years before–was still on the walls above the paneling.
“You need to think like a creative writer not a history professor.” Cleo took a sip from her glass of wine.
“First of all, each of those places may very well exist, but the author renamed them for a reason. The Seven Keys to Baldpate is about a murder. What if there really was a murder in a remote vacation hotel in a small resort town, but at the time,” she pointed her spoon at Hank, “the murderer hadn’t been caught? So, the author changes the names of a few places leaving other hints in the plot.”
She twisted pasta around her fork using the end of her spoon. “What better way to disguise the truth than in a classic work of fiction. Could Claire find out if there was a high-profile murder in Pennsylvania or Upstate New York say, between 1900 and 1910?”
Hank stabbed a meatball. “I’m sure she could, but if there was such an unsolved crime so horrendous, scandalous and appalling–one hundred years is typically three sometimes four generations. That’s not a lot of time in comparative history, but still quite a stretch for me to take to Claire as speculation.”
She shrugged smiling. “Well, you’ve really got zip right now don’t you Professor.”
Cleo made a face and took another sip of her wine. “Since Readsboro, Vermont does exist I find that fascinating. Why is Readsboro, the only actual place, but all the other locations are fictional?”
She thought for a moment with her fork and spoon poised over her plate. “Maybe Readsboro is a starting point. New York shares an eastern border with Vermont, and a southern border with Pennsylvania so there might be something in old newspaper archives.”
She put down her spoon then reached for a slice of cheddar. “When you published your papers did anyone from one from the universities in other states respond or send comments? Would there be someone you could contact in Vermont or New York or…”
“That’s it!” Hank stared at his wife. “I completely spaced this out. I gave a talk at Albright College in Reading Pennsylvania, May 1997 on the highlights from my PhD thesis: The Politically Charged Church-State - A History of Governing Religions. And because so many Huguenot refugees from the Protestant Reformation settled there, 200 years before, the college also invited the public.”
“I gave two back-to-back seminars, and my business cards were piled in a several glass bowls like mints. Hugo Lanze must have attended one of my seminars and picked up my card then.”
He blew his wife a kiss. “It’s wonderful how your chatter sometimes makes sense. Thank you.” Hank attacked his meal.
“You’re welcome.” Cleo scowled. “By the way, what’s Baldpate?”
…………
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