CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX #2
“You fled with him instead.” She rightly estimated that James took Elliott west to hide him elsewhere.
She even knew he crossed state lines with him into Arkansas, because she’d intercepted his letter to Knox.
“As with Athena passed over for the golden apple in the Judgment of Paris, I was passed over by my own protégé. Disregarded. As though I had nothing of value to offer you. Athena that led the Greeks to victory treated with the same insignificance as a fig stuck in your teeth.”
Athena that had caused the death and destruction of the masses over a single slight.
Athena who brutally punished Médousa to eternal isolation and murder for the immortal crime of being a victim of the actions of men.
Professor Ilaria was incensed that he had told her that he didn’t need her at all.
James did not mention a word of response. He was sickened with fury. He was tired of the Ancient Greek antiquity used as a pretense for pedagogical sadism. The institution’s power system sought to make their sadism appear rarified and dignified through Greco-Roman traditions and mythos.
It was merely perverse depravity.
Professor Ilaria relished in challenging him in dark trials of mental anguish fit for the Iliad.
If he lost the challenge, he lost everything.
Her perversion was boundless in its vitiation of scholarism and andragogy. She merely performed a mimicry of civility and sapience. She weaponized her authority at will and AEscwulf College permitted her full rein.
“In my heart, I believed I must aid you, guide you, then I realized that you had graduated beyond the need for me. You were no longer a protégé.” She spoke on as though he wasn’t even there.
“I was sullen. Of course, I was sullen. I preferred that my legacy live through you with fine art.” She dabbed the corner of her wet lashes with a handkerchief.
“It dawned on me that you never developed a taste for my work. I was melancholy for quite a while. Truly, you sent me into depression.”
“I sent you into depression?” James repeated with a crack of rage in his voice. She’d nearly gotten Finch killed, Elliott drowned, and James arrested for homicide. She’d stained his entire college experience with her psychological torture. “You nearly ended my life.”
She further slid the graded paper to him.
“In pedagogy, it is proper for a mentor to gift their protégé at the end of the tutelage. Impart wisdom. Bestow a final gift. I will still honor this, if you properly demonstrate your contrition.”
“Contrition?”
“Yes. An act of contrition.” She kept her rouged lips staid in its severity.
“In my time, when I offended the provost, I committed an act of contrition before him. He believed I was rather strange, and he was a bit repulsed by my eccentricities, and he often declined, but the act was about respect and honoring him.”
James realized there was invisible ink on the parchment.
“All you must do now is plead for me to render aid to you, and I will. If you perform an act of satisfying solatium for your slight, then you will be forgiven.” She parted from him with a final wistful, retreating look at him. “You’ve been my muse. Decide well.”
On the parchment, James examined the invisible ink.
Professor Ilaria laid out how she would help him.
A body would be found in the river three months from then in March. No longer recognizable.
The corpse would align with the approximate height, the approximate skeletal features, the approximate decomposed weight, and the approximate bone density of Lucien Montclair.
A messenger bag of his would be found buried nearby with Lucien’s handwriting and fingerprints, all obtained from his actual chemistry notebook, detailing the guilt he’d felt when he murdered Elliott.
How he wandered around endlessly.
How he meandered through the wilderness.
Professor Ilaria had proficiently taught herself Ancient Greek and Ancient Latin, therefore it would be of little effort to teach herself the handwriting of a distraught college boy.
Lucien would make it clear that he had no intention to kill himself, but he’d gone swimming in high tides, the notebook would mention. He would remark how swimming in brisk water took his mind off matters. The last entry date would be a night of treacherously high tides for the winter.
On the corpse’s body, there would be scarred tissue from a puncture wound. The exact location where Lucien had suffered the abdomen injury last October.
The Banebury Police Department would declare the hemophiliac body as Lucien Montclair. A misfortune that two boys lost their lives that December.
The frozen river preserved dead bodies nearly perfectly.
Almost without exception, a body would resurface in the waters, which was why she had to dump the body right then in January so that it would be discovered far later in March.
There would be no signs of struggle in the tendons nor broken ligaments nor fractured bones.
Due to the composition of inhaled water in the lungs, Lucien would be recorded as an accidental drowning victim.
The corpse would have compression swim wear that likely restricted his oxygen intake, the coroner and medical examiner pre-agreed to determine.
Of course, Professor Ilaria had close relations to the coroner’s office in her affiliations to the cabal.
The local medical examiners and coroners were dear friends of hers and society members with Wulfram.
A corpse could be procured for either of them at any time.
In conclusion, the body would be wearing Lucien Montclair’s athletic wear. The exact clothes from Swiehun Hall that he’d often worn whenever he went for an afternoon swim. The College had given her entry into Lucien’s dormitory before they even permitted the police department on campus.
All James needed to do was sufficiently atone with amends, propitiation, prostration, and offerings.
She expected James to be impressed with her. A reminder of her talent, wit, strategy, and forethought. She needed profuse compliments and contrition for her wounded pride.
He refused.
James locked the paper in the Brattleborough Athletic Facility so the evidence wouldn’t be located in his room. He couldn’t turn it into the Banebury Police Department without incriminating himself.
Professor Ilaria had left Elliott for slaughter.
He would never plead to her.
He would never beg her on his knees.
He hated that fucking desgracada.