Smoke in Mirrors

turned very eccentric towards the end,” Leonora said.
    Andrew snorted softly. “He was a math geek. He was born eccentric. You had to remind him to change his underwear on a regular basis. But it’s true that, in those last months of his life, he got very strange. He was more than just consumed with his work. He became obsessed.”
    “Obsessed is a heavy word,” Thomas said.
    “It’s appropriate in this case,” Andrew said. “To be honest, at the time I thought he had lost his grip on reality. He was a genius, you know. Few realized it because he didn’t live long enough to prove himself. But I was close to him for several months and I was able to observe his incredible mind at work. Astonishing, really. Absolutely astonishing.”
    “He wouldn’t have been the first genius to get lost in his own brilliance,” Leonora said quietly.
    “True. It was the paranoia that drove us apart, though, not his brilliance. But after he was killed I decided that maybe he’d been right to be paranoid.”
    “You don’t buy the interrupted burglary story?” Thomas asked.
    “I did at the time.” Andrew propped his left ankle on his right knee. “I knew I wasn’t the one who had killedhim and there didn’t seem to be any other logical suspects. But I’ve done a lot of thinking over the years. I’ve arrived at some private conclusions. Pure conjecture and wild speculation, of course. I have not one shred of proof.”
    “We’re here to listen to pure conjecture and wild speculation,” Leonora said. “We’re used to it. That’s about all we’ve had to go on so far.”
    “I can see that,” Andrew said. “But I warn you that you won’t get anywhere trying to prove my theory.”
    “Why do you think Eubanks was murdered?” Thomas asked.
    “For the oldest reason in the academic world.”
    Thomas frowned. “Someone caught him in bed with the wrong person?”
    “No.” Andrew said. “Someone wanted to steal Sebastian’s work and publish it as his own.”
    “Good heavens,” Leonora whispered. “Publish or perish? Literally?”
    “The academic world is very Darwinian,” Andrew said. “But, then, you know that, don’t you? According to the online check I did before you arrived, you work in an academic library. Piercy College, I believe?”
    “Yes.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “And I’ll be the first to admit that things can get a little rough in the academy. But I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of anyone murdering someone else in order to publish a paper.”
    “Any cop will tell you that some people will commit murder for virtually any reason,” Andrew said. “But in this case there was far more than the publication of one minor paper in some obscure academic journal that only a couple of dozen people would have read at the time and which would have long since been forgotten.”
    He stopped talking for a moment. Thomas kept quiet. So did Leonora.

    “I was one of two people on campus at the time who had some knowledge of the nature of Sebastian’s work,” Andrew continued. “In the course of our relationship, he talked to me a bit about his theories. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to discuss them with someone and I was there.” He moved his hand again, this time in a dismissing gesture. “Also, to be blunt, he knew full well that I wouldn’t have been capable of stealing his concepts and publishing them as my own.”
    “Why not?” Thomas asked.
    “I was in the computer science department. Exactly where I belonged. I’m more of an engineer than a mathematician. My mind doesn’t work the same way that Sebastian’s did. I freely admit that I wouldn’t have been able to fake my way through a peer review article in his branch of mathematics even if I’d had unlimited access to his notes and papers. Which I did not.”
    “But someone else did?” Leonora asked softly.
    Andrew looked past her, through the windows, toward the sleek yacht berthed at the dock below the garden.
    “As I said, there was far more than the publication of a minor paper in mathematics at stake. There was fame and fortune to be had. Not to mention a reputation that would survive for generations in academic circles.”
    “Go on,” Thomas said.
    “There was an extremely ambitious assistant professor in the department of mathematics at Eubanks who was capable of comprehending the full implications of Sebastian’s work. They had been friends and colleagues for a time, but they quarreled.