The dark sky and persistent raindrops on the windshield made the drive to Duquesne University especially glum that Tuesday morning. I felt a particular sense of being shadowed as I walked from my parked car down to Lieberman Hall for our class discussion of detective fiction. When I reached the building, I realized that I had forgotten my key to enter. Thankfully, a man who looked to be my professor rounded the corner and unlocked the door for me. As I passed through the doorway, I turned around to thank the gentleman, but he had vanished. Though this puzzled me, I continued to my class without giving the incident a second thought. I came upon a room, my classroom, that was dark and silent. A note hung on the door in sloppy, unorganized font:
…show more content…
The Hound of the Baskervilles! One of Arthur Conan Doyle’s very best works.”
We turned to each other with slight reassurance, yet still remained in a state of fright. Whoever had killed Professor Mirmotahari took great care in using his teaching aids to mock us. The quote from Doyle did nothing if not support the fact that these events were not otherworldly, and that we were facing a living, breathing killer. We became terrified by this reality.
“The killer is using my writing instructor’s syllabus to taunt us. Or maybe he’s trying to help us. He quoted Poe and Doyle, what else has he quoted?”
“What about the officer you spoke to? What did he say to you when you called?”
“He died without understanding his death – that’s from Chronicles of a Death …show more content…
It had to have been extremely personal.”
“But how could the murderer have the police department in on it? That’s absurd.”
“The campus police only really agree to get involved in situations that are built on instructive or campus-related demonstration.”
The room had finally been cleared of the foul smell, and it began to smell strangely of cherries. Perplexed, I watched Tierney approach the whiteboard, smear the message with his index finger, and put it to his tongue.
“This is not blood, its cherry pie filling.”
Everything coalesced into clarity for me at this point. The veil of uncertainty was lifted.
“He’s not dead, Professor Tierney. He put me in a real life a detective fiction to see how I’d react, and I had to have read his assigned readings to figure it all out. In fact, he’s the one who let me into the building today. He had the police quote Chronicle of a Death Foretold because it was part of the demonstration and not a real emergency. The solution in the beaker was a reaction of nitric acid and safety pins which produces nitrogen dioxide. The two reactants are easy to find in the chemistry department on campus and the product smells terrible, which masked the cherry smell and imitated that of a dead body. It was
The Hound of the Baskervilles! One of Arthur Conan Doyle’s very best works.”
We turned to each other with slight reassurance, yet still remained in a state of fright. Whoever had killed Professor Mirmotahari took great care in using his teaching aids to mock us. The quote from Doyle did nothing if not support the fact that these events were not otherworldly, and that we were facing a living, breathing killer. We became terrified by this reality.
“The killer is using my writing instructor’s syllabus to taunt us. Or maybe he’s trying to help us. He quoted Poe and Doyle, what else has he quoted?”
“What about the officer you spoke to? What did he say to you when you called?”
“He died without understanding his death – that’s from Chronicles of a Death …show more content…
It had to have been extremely personal.”
“But how could the murderer have the police department in on it? That’s absurd.”
“The campus police only really agree to get involved in situations that are built on instructive or campus-related demonstration.”
The room had finally been cleared of the foul smell, and it began to smell strangely of cherries. Perplexed, I watched Tierney approach the whiteboard, smear the message with his index finger, and put it to his tongue.
“This is not blood, its cherry pie filling.”
Everything coalesced into clarity for me at this point. The veil of uncertainty was lifted.
“He’s not dead, Professor Tierney. He put me in a real life a detective fiction to see how I’d react, and I had to have read his assigned readings to figure it all out. In fact, he’s the one who let me into the building today. He had the police quote Chronicle of a Death Foretold because it was part of the demonstration and not a real emergency. The solution in the beaker was a reaction of nitric acid and safety pins which produces nitrogen dioxide. The two reactants are easy to find in the chemistry department on campus and the product smells terrible, which masked the cherry smell and imitated that of a dead body. It was