Death and The Fellow: A Professor Deshpande Mystery

The first thing Saanvi caught as the front door swung open was a sharp odor of bleach. Given the general dissonance of Thea McCord’s second floor office and textile arts workroom and the professor’s bone-deep Summer of Love and Teargas vibe, Prof. Deshpande had half-expected incense or even the earthy perfume of patchouli.

The Arts Department chair pondered as Earl McCord ushered her inside with timid conviviality. Anand had begged off, enthralled by the prospect of an evening’s discourse on monopsony and neoclassical synthesis at Messermann Hall. Earl was an academic appendage in the financial aid office, and thus was the 15^th or 37^th or 51^st wheel who kept Thea’s social functions running efficiently.

Saanvi revised her assessment. The customary clutter had been arranged into a charmingly eclectic scattering for the evening, and unless Thea had dismembered and disjointed one of the Poli-Sci neocons for the Moroccan stew Saanvi now detected, she couldn’t imagine her free-spirited colleague even owning a jug of Clorox.

Prof. Deshpande had been forced to attend to one of her commercial arts undergrads, and by the time she arrived deep in the tree-lined, brick-paved campus-adjacent historical district where much of the tenured faculty bunkered in, half the department was onsite.

Saanvi’s spice palette was bachelors’ level at best, but her aesthetic and cultural sensibilities razor-sharp. Even in the fluttering glow of a paint can-sized amber candle on the McCord’s low, broad slate coffee table, she could see Thea’s sinewy 74-year-old form was draped in a jet-black, silver-embroidered Moroccan Farasha Jalabiya kaftan that popped with her tight silver afro. When Thea appropriated, she went all-in.

Platters of hummus and tigrifine were placed strategically about the room, and Saanvi noted an unfamiliar Berber kilim runner and a vivid zellij tile capturing the candle’s fugitive wax.

“My sister,” Thea cooed as she descended upon her long-time friend and department chief. “Grab some tagine and a glass of Domaine de la Zouina Gris! You ever tried a Moroccan grey?”

Wager won. “What a lovely design – I recognize the brocade of Fes. You look like a true queen.”

Thea arched a brow in mock sociopolitical indignation. “The kaftan hasn’t been royalist chic since the 17^th Century. But you got a good eye – when Earl and I visited Fes before COVID, we met Abdelkader Ouazzani , one of the last brocade master weavers, and he taught me a few tricks. Man was almost 80, but he was like a puppeteer, using his whole body to operate this complicated drawloom with beams and blades and pulleys and counterweights. I’m planning a North African unit next fall, and I’m hoping to replicate the whole set-up.”

“I look forward to your proposal,” Saanvi smiled, despite having reviewed the School of Arts’ dismal fiscal 2024 budget. She was relieved when Thea disengaged to greet the evening’s guest of honor.

The arriving Iain Warrender, 70ish and self-consciously raffish, wordlessly submitted to Dr. McCord’s embrace and introductions, wearing a vaguely disdainful expression and staring somehow both at everyone and nothing. Thea escorted her Brit brother in the Struggle to the center of the room.

“Iain, I trust you remember our Arts Chair, Prof. Saanvi Deshpande. Graphic production with a sociocultural orientation. Saanvi came here in 2009, and she founded DesignHub, our student arts interface with the community and local non-profits.  

“Vice Chair Tom Skillruud here is our fine arts specialist, and you’ve met Prof. Malik Aboud, our art historian. Prof. Wei Zhao heads up our Asian/Oceanic Arts and Design Program, and when you tour campus tomorrow, you’ll see an installation by Assistant Prof. Ethan Cooper on the Wrightson Hall common. Ethan’s a multimedia sculptor and metal smith. Associate Prof. Urquardt – Melissa – is that photographer I told you about who made the Pulitzer shortlist for her work in Ukraine and Gaza. Oh, and June, Prof. Reeves, is arts education coordinator with the university school, in addition to teaching a few units a semester on artisanal crafts – carpentry, pottery, chandlery, and the like. If you’ll glance around the house, you’ll see pieces by Ethan, June, and Melissa.”

Warrender offered each guest a curt nod, even as his eyes darted about the living room and his narrow face grew pallid. Saanvi could feel stodgy Skillruud’s tightly wrapped reaction to the street artist/radical, and Melissa Urquardt’s chiseled expression was lethally neutral -- she’d been the cause celebre of the department until now.

“As you all know, Dr. Warrender is the University’s 2024-2025 Hollstien Distinguished Arts Fellow and one of the leaders in the late 20^th Century Muralist-Activist Movement along with Fairey, Above, Os Gêmeos, and Haring. Iain’s street art has been the hallmark of a variety of anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-apartheid, pro-Palestinian, women’s and LGBTQ rights, anti-gun, anti-MAGA, and Black Lives movements, and his seminal works remain on display in New York, Oakland, London, Havana, Mumbai, Tokyo, Brazil, Toronto, and Reykjavik. Professor Warrender, would you care to say a few words?”

“I need to lay down,” the distinguished Fellow grunted before nearly collapsing into the petite Thea and a Moorish bowl of pureed chickpeas.

**

“How was he on the way from the airport?” Thea demanded after tucking the muralist in. Malik stroked his salt-and-pepper love patch as the tiny academic somehow managed to tower over his 6’1” frame.

“Full-on Warrender,” the art scholar protested. “He never stopped talking, about hanging with the Castros and Kaddafi, riding with the IRA and Action Directe and the Red Brigade and Aum Shinrikyo, sprinkled with historically significant sex and drug orgies and his views on classic art and for that matter my profession. It was a delight.”

“Probably did a little party prep on the way over,” Skillruud mused, mopping hummus dregs from a ceramic bowl he’d earlier claimed as his own.

“Thea!” Saanvi started as Ethan Cooper’s voice boomed from the couch.

“Hey, don’t wake the Fellow,” Skillruud cautioned.

“What?” Thea snapped, her last nerve exposed.

“What the hell did you put in this stew?” the young sculptor growled, waving his bowl. “Is this fucking lamb or something?”

The professor crossed her thin robed arms. “I’m in a room full of liberal arts doctorates. You think I’m going to fuck with the vegans? Eat your damned tagine.”

Wei touched Ethan’s sleeve, and he settled back into the cushions, face creased in Megacandle’s flickering glow. Thea nodded, and turned back to Malik. She was interrupted by a strangled moan from down the hall. Saanvi moved quickly down the corridor, with Malik and Thea and Ethan in tow.

Iain Warrender was sprawled across the guest room bedspread, clutching at the duvet, eyes wide and bloodshot and imploring. His jaw moving to little effect.

“I got some EMS training,” Assistant Prof. Cooper declared, squeezing between Profs. McCord and Deshpande and attending to the agonized muralist.

“Sorry…” Warrender finally managed as Ethan tied to hold him down. “I’m so sorry…” He collapsed on the spread and weakly uttered one more word before he fell still and his gray eyes fixed.

“What’d he say?” Saanvi turned to see Wei and June in the bedroom doorway. Thea pivoted furiously to banish the onlookers.

“Sarah,” Ethan murmured, perched dejectedly beside the dead Fellow. 

**     

“No doubt an overdose—“ Skillruud mused before Thea spun homicidally from the departing Millington Ambulance gurney.

Saanvi herself scanned the still-dim room. Melissa Urquardt continued, as she had for most of the evening, to study the Berber, the curtains, the corners of the space. June comforted a quietly weeping Wei on the couch as Malik stood silently in the kitchen entry with a deeply perturbed expression. Ethan was still despondent, but as Prof. Deshpande studied him, the sculptor’s nose twitched.

Saanvi winced as she caught another hint of chlorine, everywhere but seemingly from nowhere. She moved closer to the huge amber candle anchoring the coffee table in the hope its fragrant fumes might expunge the memories, but the odor merely grew more pungent, more penetrating. 

Then, illuminated, Saanvi licked thumb and index finger and plunged the room into darkness.

**

“The. Fuck.” Thea’s exasperation filled the void. “Somebody hit the damn lights.”

Ultimately, that was Earl, who nursed a shin insulted on the cluttered path to illumination.

“Saanvi,” Thea stated. But Prof. Deshpande was now nowhere to be seen.

“Yes,” the department head responded, emerging from the kitchen and efficiently opening a window behind the couch for a bracing February draft. Once order and warmth were restored, Saanvi serenely faced her faculty.

“Now, if you could, what do you all smell?”

Eyes widened across the room. “Nothing,” Malik finally whispered, seemingly astonished. “Well, I mean, the stew, I guess, but no…”

“No what, Malik?” His features clouded. “You need not answer. Ethan, you seemed agitated that Thea’s tagine might not be truly vegan, and I could see your periodic disgust. As if you smelled something unpleasant. Dare I suggest unpleasantly reminiscent?”

“Unpleasant,” the sculptor snorted. “Didn’t that stench bother anybody else?”

“The stench of livestock?” Saanvi prodded. Ethan glanced up sharply. “You’ve told me of your childhood in rural Nebraska. You were raised on a cattle farm?”

“We had a locker plant, you know, a meat processing facility with a butcher shop about 50 miles outside Lincoln,” Ethan muttered, eyes locked on hers. “When I came out about my sophomore year, Dad put me on the kill floor – mostly on the head splitter and hide puller, I suspect to make me a ‘man’ or maybe just punish me for failing on that account.”

Several colleagues looked on in horror, and Malik patted Ethan’s shoulder.

“Did anyone else experience this odor?” Saanvi inquired. “I observed one of you scanning the room most of the evening, especially the floor, around the furniture and windows. As if searching for something that should be in the room but cannot be seen. Now, I know Thea despises cats, and even if she didn’t, look at the exquisite black kaftan she’s wearing. Do you think any feline could resist such a temptation? Yet her hem is pristine. Melissa, you smelled a cat when you arrived this evening, am I correct? Could I ask if you’ve ever suffered the traumatic loss of a pet?”

The photographer’s jaw tightened before she smiled broadly. “It was a long time ago.”

Saanvi suddenly felt a chill, reframing Urquardt’s immunity to images of carnage and violence, her detached manner and seeming lack of empathy for students and colleagues alike. She now wondered if Melissa’s tabby might have met at untimely and calculated end, and moved swiftly on. “Anyone else?”

 “Burning plastic,” Wei volunteered with a troubled gaze at the Berber.

“Rotting fish,” Skillruud murmured. “An episode of youthful petulance for which I probably should recompense the Marquette Humanities Department.”

Saanvi looked to Thea, who shook her head once. “Oh, hell no. I’m taking the Fifth -- not sure the statute of limitations’ up, anyway. What the hell you getting at, Saanvi?”

“Olfactory memory,” Prof. Deshpande said. “The way a particular spice or familiar childhood aroma might stimulate a happy or comforting memory. Or how the smell of the butcher’s abattoir or decomposing flounder or teargas or even kitty litter might rekindle humiliating or painful or perhaps guilty memories.

“Oddly, most or all of us here tonight have experienced the same phenomenon, albeit in a very specific manner. I have no desire to embarrass any of you, but at least for myself, I will confess my own olfactory illusion brought back not merely a highly unpleasant experience, but indeed one of the worst acts I’ve ever committed.”

 “Phantosmia,” Skillruud muttered. It had been a slow night, and he smiled sagely, back at center stage. “Phantom smells, olfactory hallucinations. In short, an odor not actually present.”

“And just what causes that?” Ethan sighed.

“Nasal infections, nasal polyps, dental problems, migraines, head injuries, stroke, Parkinson's, seizures, brain tumors, bipolar or depression.” Skillruud smirked. “There was quite a bit of speculation following my youthful indiscretion at Marquette. Oh, and sometimes environmental factors come into play -- smoking or pesticide exposure.”

“You’re suggesting the School of Arts faculty shares the same polyps, headaches, and aversion to atrazine?” Thea deadpanned.

“Mass hypnosis?” Wei offered. “Some form of group delusion?”

“Except we all seem to be suffering from personalized delusions,” Saanvi pointed out. “Delusions related to loss or guilt. I might suggest Dr. Warrender experienced a similar delusion, and it may have related to his death. Thea, you knew him best. Didn’t he seem distracted, agitated, unnerved?”

“He didn’t seem like the old Iain,” her friend considered. “Came in the door looking like—“

“He smelled something bad?”

“If he did, he was too polite to mention. And he’s not about to spill now.”

“I believe,” Saanvi said, “he already did.”

**

She turned toward the couch. “Ethan, you were closest to Dr. Warrender when he died. What did he say?”

The sculptor paused. “That he was sorry. Then he said the name Sarah.”

“His wife’s name was Ellyn, and unless he was consorting with some awestuck student, I don’t personally know any Sarahs in his life,” Thea said.

Saanvi nodded. “June, I recall you spent much of your youth in Japan?”

The associate professor blinked. “My father was employed at the U.S. consulate in Tokyo.”

Saanvi perched on the coffee table beside her. “I believe you mentioned once that your mother died when you were a teen. Was this in Tokyo?”

June frowned momentarily, locking eyes. “Yes.”

Prof. Deshpande paused, then nodded. “And your mother’s name was…?”

“Daria,” June said triumphantly. Saanvi slowly nodded.

“We done here?” Thea demanded.

**

“Thanks, I guess,” June smiled as she coiled her bike chain. “Though I’m uncertain whether you were protecting me or your reputation. Or fucking Warrender’s.”

“A bit of the first two, and certainly I was considering the University,” Prof. Deshpande admitted. “I certainly didn’t relish having an international terrorist as our Fellow. Warrender associated with a number of fringe interests and tinkered with drugs, spirituality, and political dissidence throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. I consulted Thea’s library and found Warrender also was studying and presumably plying his art in Tokyo at the time. As a trust fund ‘radical,’ he might well have been drawn like many students of Japan’s more prestigious universities to the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, which was dubbed ‘a religion for the elite.’ And of course, Aum Shinrikyo’s most notable ‘achievement’ was the 1995 sarin release on the Tokyo Metro. More than 6,200 were injured, and 14 died. At least you received his confession and apology.”

“In this era of academic relativism, I’m unsure whether an old-school revolutionary like Thea might not label him a hero,” the artisan said quietly, walking her touring cycle alongside Saanvi.

“Neither Thea nor I sanction violence or murder, whether by sarin on a Tokyo subway or in belated retaliation 30 years later,” Saanvi chided mildly.

“No court would or could call this murder,” June countered casually. “Would you call it violence?”

“I don’t know what I might call it. It seems unquantifiable, but that implies only that it has yet to be quantified. But logic pointed to your candle as the source of our aromatic hallucinations. I don’t pretend to understand the neurology of olfactory stimulus, but I am aware of the cultural and ritual significance of candles and chandlery. The ancients held staring into candle flames could induce an altered state of consciousness where they might even see gods and spirits. Roman Christians criticized pagan use of ceremonial lamps and candles, but by the latter Middle Ages, both were routine accoutrement on Christian altars, and the Catholic Church was using consecrated candles in blessing and absolution rituals and in exorcising demons. European farmers used candles to protect livestock, while witches purportedly employed them in devil worship. Candles made from human tallow were believed to contain human energy and according to 17^th Century lore were used in Black Masses. Human tallow candles were later used to find treasure – it’s said that when treasure was at hand, they would burn brighter and hiss. Orthodox Jewish tradition calls for keeping a lit candle for a week in a room where someone has died, while Protestant American folklore holds a candle burning in an empty room will cause the death of a family member.

“In Wiccan and other cultures, colored candles are used to invoke spells, often in combination with various oils formulated according to the purpose of the spell. A yellow candle like the one you gave Thea is associated with powers of persuasion and enhanced memory. Once I removed your candle from the room, I could clear the air, and everyone’s guilty memories faded, or at least subsided. You know, of course, that you have reopened painful emotional scars for Wei and Malik and Ethan.”

“I have the right to remain silent, don’t I?” June asked as the pair stopped for a Purple Line bus discharging a motley collection of students and second-shifters.

“Well, I do know that as you’ve cost us a Fellow, you will be serving on the next search committee,” Saanvi murmured, not without a hint of asperity. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain what science or sorcery you brought to bear tonight.”

“According to the Magician’s Code, I believe I’m prohibited from revealing my secrets. Oh, hey, here you are.” June climbed onto her saddle, then hesitated. “By the way, what did you smell? What was your greatest sin?”

“Perhaps, someday, if you kill no more of my faculty, I’ll tell you the story.”

**

“Of course, you know sarin is odorless,” Anand noted, depositing a steaming cup of Ashwagandha before his wife.

“As is bleach, until it chemically interacts with organic compounds,” Saanvi countered. “If you’ll remember, the paintings I destroyed in my fit of youthful pique were acrylics. The smell of despair, of tragedy, of loss, is often a composite. Sense memory fills in the blanks.”

“I should liked to have seen them,” he lamented.

“And how was tonight’s adventure in macroeconomics?” Saanvi diverted.