
Murder in a Small College Town
By Sally Smithson
Sandy hated Jane. She hated her on sight. Everyone in the liberal arts college where they both worked, Evergreen College, knew everybody else. They met at a reception for the new faculty, and Sandy’s eyes glowed with hostility as she shook Jane’s hand and tried to smile. Jane was tall, Sandy was short. Jane had a normal body weight, Sandy did not. Jane was tenure-track in the English department, with the promise of job security, and Sandy had one of those temporary jobs, renewed every year, that college gave to lonely faculty wives. I have to kill her, she thought as she clutched Jane’s hand. Raw, primeval hatred coursed through her whole body. As she left the reception with her dull husband Mark, she began to plan.
What else is there to do around here, she pondered as they walked to their car in the parking lot. People are stuck at this place, in a bad job market, and we know everything about each other, especially in the realm of romance, if that was the right word. Jim, in the history department, in love with his colleague Ellen, who did not return his affections. Mary Ann, in the religion department, married to her much younger colleague Tim, who cheated on her. Don, in the economics department, who had a wife in Pittsburgh and pretended he was single so he could sleep around. And Mark, a philosophy professor, was too boring for words. Her husband bored her on the honeymoon, with his talk of existential dilemmas, and he did not grow more interesting as the years passed. She went through an infidelity phase, but most of those men bored her, too, so she gave it up. That was not the way to make life interesting in small-town America, at least for her.
So, she thought as they pulled up to their mid-size Victorian house in the local historic district, how will I begin with my murder plan. First, I will pretend to be Jane’s friend, taking her to coffee at the only coffee shop in town. Then we’ll have her over for dinner at our shabby old house in terrible need of repairs. Then I’ll start confiding in her, lamenting my situation, and see if she responds, as most women do, with a confession of her own, something I can use.
But the plan did not work. Jane was polite, but she did not reciprocate. She did not ask Sandy out to coffee after Sandy asked her, and she did not invite them over for dinner in her small apartment near the campus after they had her over for dinner. She certainly did not confide anything in Jane, whether it was her current unhappiness or her future plans in academia or precious information on her love life. She chatted in a friendly but impersonal way, and she smiled when they ran into each other on campus in one of the decaying buildings constructed before World War II. But that was all.
What should I do now, Sandy thought as she sat in her tiny office, burning with frustration and rage. Jane should be grateful for my attention, since she is the new professor in town. Sandy then moved to the next phase, open hostility. Now she glared at Jane when their paths crossed, spitting out her name as if it were an obscenity, but Jane simply nodded and kept walking. Then she started the false rumor that Jane was having affairs with Jim, Ellen, Mary Ann, and Don, but if Jane found out, or if she knew Sandy was the source, she gave no sign. The same polite nod and brisk walk when they passed in the hallway, as if Jane had work to do.
Now Sandy moved into the final, desperate phase, planning the actual murder. First she decided on poison, which usually worked according to what she read in the newspaper. She thought of asking Jane over for dinner and putting arsenic in her salad, but Jane politely refused all invitations, saying she was busy. Then she tried painting liquid arsenic on the doorknob of Jane’s office, but that did not work, although the secretary got sick after she put a box of books in Jane’s office.
Maybe I could shoot her or stab her, Sandy wondered. If she wore gloves, that would leave no fingerprints, but the timing had to be right. She studied Jane’s habits, hoping she worked late at her campus office, but she did not, going home like clockwork every day at five o’clock. She tried burglarizing Jane’s apartment when she was out of town at a professional conference, hoping to find something incriminating. The apartment was immaculate, full of books and Danish-modern furniture, but Sandy found nothing she could use against her target. She stole a pair of Jane’s pajamas, although it gave her no satisfaction. Then a colleague mentioned Jane had put security locks on her apartment doors and windows after a mysterious break-in. So that would not work, either. Sandy began to dream at night about how good it would feel when Jane was dead.
But then the bombshell news spread through town, that Jane had landed another job. She had an interview at that conference, the offer was made, and it was official–she was leaving for another city far away. The faculty were tormented, all of them in agonies of jealousy, but they concealed it well. The old-timers were used to it by now, the promising young people who came and went, and they said what was expected, congratulations and best wishes. Sandy was more tortured than most, feeling like Jane had committed a terrible crime–the crime of rejection—and gotten away with it. When Mark blandly observed one morning at breakfast that it was nice that Jane had a new job, she felt a surge of energy she had never felt before, and she strangled him with her bare hands. Sandy went to prison, and Jane left town for her new job.
###
Sally Smithson writes from the U.S.