Stork Raving Mad: A Meg Langslow Mystery (A Meg Lanslow Mystery)

After a few years in an associate professor position at a largestate institution, she’d come to Caerphilly twenty years ago, achieved tenure thirteen years ago, and made dean five years after that. None of which shed any kind of light on why she was murdered and who did it. I found myself yawning several times as I leafed through the file and was very close to giving up on the whole thing. Or perhaps saving it for some evening when I was suffering from acute insomnia.
    And then the last few pages made the whole effort worthwhile. At first I was puzzled when I found a review of a college production of
The Importance of Being Earnest
. Not, according to the reviewer, a very able production. Of course he sounded like one of those reviewers who adored reviewing flawed shows, the better to show off his own wit and erudition.
    I’d have given up after the first snide, gloating paragraph if I hadn’t been curious to find out why this was in Danny’s file of information on Dr. Wright.
    Aha! “Possibly the worst performance came from Jean Wright, woefully miscast as Cecily Cardew.” The reviewer went on to eviscerate her performance for another lengthy paragraph. I found myself wondering if the reviewer was perhaps a jilted boyfriend.
    The next six pages contained more reviews, each of a play in which Dr. Wright had a part. The best of her reviews was lukewarm, and several other times she was singled out for particularly harsh treatment. And not always by the same person—two other reviewers also panned her performances. The reviews covered a three-year period corresponding to her freshman, sophomore, and junior years in college. In her senior year,she’d either given up acting or stopped being cast. I scanned the reviews again. In the earlier ones, she’d had fairly large roles; in the later ones, she’d sometimes had roles so small that she had to have been pretty awful to be noticed at all, much less singled out for criticism.
    “So now we know why she was so down on the drama students,” I murmured aloud. “She was jealous.”
    A pity Kathy hadn’t uncovered these reviews. I suspected they might have worked far better for intimidating Dr. Wright than any of the material Kathy had collected about harsh treatment of Caerphilly students.
    I tucked the papers under my arm. I’d show them to Michael later. Tomorrow, most probably. Time for me to get to sleep.
    “You should be in bed, dear,” came a voice from behind me.
    “That’s just where I’m heading, Mother,” I said.
    “Good.” I turned to see that she was wearing a heavy but elegant coat and hat and pulling on her gloves.
    “Going to see the show?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “After all, ‘The play’s the thing/wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ ”
    “Are you implying that the play has something to do with the murder?” I asked. “Or will have something to do with solving it?”
    “Half the suspects are in it, aren’t they?” she said. “And the other half will be watching. If Chief Burke or your father leaps up in the middle of the second act and announces that he’s justsolved the murder, I don’t want to miss it. What happened in here, anyway?”
    She was indicating, with a sweeping arm gesture, the whole cluttered, untidy kitchen. I had my failings as a housekeeper, although keeping a messy kitchen wasn’t normally one of them. But under the circumstances . . .
    “We’ve got several dozen extra people living here,” I said. “Puts a strain on the kitchen facilities, even if half of the students survive on pizza and Snickers bars. Pretty depressing, isn’t it?”
    “I could organize those students to come in and clean up,” she said. I had to smile. Yes, she probably could. The students wouldn’t know what had hit them.
    “That’s okay,” I said. “They’re busy, and this is actually better than usual.”
    Mother took a long, slow look around the room and shuddered.
    “You mean it’s usually worse?” she asked.
    “Yes, but usually it doesn’t really bother me,” I said. “For some reason, today it does. For the last day or two, actually.”
    “You’re probably getting close to having the babies,” Mother said, nodding.
    “Well, we knew that,” I said, glancing down at the inescapable evidence.
    “Very close,” she said. “The nesting instinct has kicked in. You should have seen me the three days before you were born. I couldn’t live unless I cleaned the house from top to