The Privilege by D.W. Buffa

Author:D.W. Buffa [Buffa, D.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polis Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Albert Craven was astonished when I told him what had happened.

“Redfield was Alan Boe’s best student! I had no idea. That would have been twenty - more than twenty - years ago,” he explained, as he dropped into the blue wingback chair in front of my desk. “Then that is the reason….”

He stared at me, expecting me to finish the thought, make the connection between the murder Redfield had arranged and a teacher who still, after all this time, remembered him as the most gifted student he had ever had. I had no explanation to offer, nothing beyond what had been guessed before.

“He was there, watching the trial, and you did not know it?”

“I don’t know if he was there or not; he might have come in when everyone else was leaving. You know what I’m like in the middle of a trial: I know the place is crowded, but the only people I see are on my side of the railing. He was there to see Boe; he was not there to see me.”

I loosened my tie and loosened my shirt and started to see it all over again: the sudden look of recognition on the face of Alan Boe, and something more than that: pride in his own achievement. Whatever Redfield had done, whatever he had become, he had as a young man shown the bright, shining promise that had given the extraordinary Alan Boe the hope that what he had come to know could be passed on to at least one other, remarkable, human being. The recognition had been instantaneous; there had not been the slightest hesitation. After an absence of a quarter century, Boe had known immediately that it was his former student, James Michael Redfield and no one else.

“Strange, and I don’t think he was serious, but after I told Boe that this was the second murder and trial that had been arranged by the same person, he wondered whether one of his students wanted to have the chance to know what it felt like when Socrates was put on trial.”

With his elbows on the arms of the wingback chair, and his hands laying flat against his legs, Craven rocked gently back and forth for a moment, and then, stopping, crossed his left arm over his chest and with his right hand stroked his small, fragile chin.

“It seems he was right after all. Isn’t that what has happened? Alan Boe on trial, Alan Boe who has questioned everything the university now thinks important and what nearly everyone believes, and who wants to teach students to question the same things as well. What is that, if not the trial of Socrates all over again? And who besides Boe could draw in such stark relief the deficiencies, not to say the outright fraud, of today’s higher education. Redfield may be a kind of evil genius, but he seems to know what he is doing. The document you used today - doesn’t that prove it?”

“The document…? The

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