The Prodigal Son(61)

The prawnlike white eyebrows climbed toward a head of splendidly white, waving hair; Dr. Don Carter’s dark eyes took on the expression of internal calculation. A formidable man.

“Then I’d best start with C.U.P.,” he said. “There are university presses and university presses, Captain. I mean, consider the two giants — Oxford and Cambridge. Were it not for their example, maybe no university would have gone into an esoteric field like publishing, but originally the university publisher filled a gap by providing a print medium for authors who stood no chance of publishing for profit. I guess no one in the beginning ever thought how much money there was to be made out of dictionaries and histories, but every profitable book also meant a scholar who could be published at a loss.”

He nibbled a muffin. “C.U.P. was founded to publish the unprofitable scholars, and never developed into a giant — or even a potential giant. Its list is modest and esoteric save for that one accidental bestseller, Fire Down Below. And Max Tunbull just happened to have the right kind of printery to suit our needs. We hadn’t published during the War, but by 1946 we had a couple of manuscripts that needed to be books — seminal stuff, one religious, one on syntax. Max tendered, was awarded the contract, and we were so pleased we’ve just never looked elsewhere.” Dr. Carter picked a blueberry out of its surrounding cake, and ate it with relish.

“Tunbull Printing is in such close proximity to Chubb, for one thing,” he went on, still fishing for fruit, “and in all fairly small operations, Captain, there is a tendency to form into a family unit. Which is what happened with Max.”

“What about Davina and Imaginexa?” Carmine asked, a part of his mind wondering why people needed to pick the eyes — or fruit — out of things. “Is it customary to hand over design of university textbooks to an outside firm?”

“Depends on the designer,” said Dr. Carter. “I was never happy with the way C.U.P. books looked. Without mentioning any names, our visual designer is so hidebound she’d have the books identical to those published in 1819. And I got tired of waiting for her to retire. Even small university presses have to move with the times, especially now that we’re contemplating things like soft cover editions. Davina is brilliant, make no mistake!”

“Thank you, that answers some of my questions,” Carmine said, pouring more coffee. “Was the original idea for Jim Hunter’s book his, Doctor?”

“I always assumed so,” Dr. Carter said mildly.

“I have some reason to query that.”



“Well, you are a captain of detectives, so I bow to your far superior experience. Could the idea have been implanted?” he asked himself musingly. “Given the pace at which Jim works, you may be right, yes. That gigantic head is stuffed with ideas, but all about his work. To think of explaining what he does to people who wouldn’t know RNA from the NRA wouldn’t occur to him — or at least that’s how I read him. Until he gave me the manuscript, which was definitely typed on their old IBM, no other machine. I was staggered.”

“Could Millie have suggested it?”

The seamed face, almost a caricature of the scholar, fell into shadow. “Ah, Millie! Poor, poor little girl … She is as much Jim Hunter’s slave as Uda is Davina’s.”

“How did that happen to Millie, Doctor?”

“Her passion, which is immense. She wrapped all of it in one single parcel, Jim Hunter, whom she adores. Jim has colossal charisma. Millie sweeps out the inner sanctum, goes into places in his life where no other human being is allowed to go. It is enough for her until the specter of childlessness rears its cobra head, as it will. Then she will demand that Jim give her children, and he’ll obey. But the impetus must come from her. This book is the turning point in their relationship.”

“She was too young,” Carmine said abruptly.

“At fifteen? No! Think of Romeo and Juliet, of teenage suicides. Don’t forget that Jim was only fifteen too. No seasoned seducer, he. I pity him even more than I do her — he is the black half. But what you must remember first of all, Captain, is the massive nature of their shared pain.”



Carmine flinched. “How long has Jim known the Tunbulls?”

“About four years. C.U.P. has published two works, one in 1965 and one in 1967. Both were learned tomes, if one can apply that phrase to biochemistry, which is more foreign to me than assembling a do-it-yourself nuclear submarine.”

“So he knew the Tunbulls before he came to Chubb?”

“Max, certainly. He wrote both while he was at Chicago, but I personally pirated him as an author — there were rumors of a future Nobel Prize even then. The second book came out right at the time Jim moved to Chubb.”