Ruth said, “She apologized to Dix because she knew Dr. Holcombe was his uncle, but she had thought about it, and had to let it out. The bottom line is, Helen Rafferty admitted she and Dr. Holcombe—that’s how she always referred to him—were lovers for perhaps three months about five years ago. She said it was in the summer, when there weren’t many students around. He broke it off, told her that being with her drained him. You’re going to like this—he said being with her had been sort of like attaching himself to an ancient blessing that had lost its power over the years, and now it was suffocating him and he couldn’t continue to be intimate with her. Fact was, she told us, Dr. Holcombe had this compulsion—she’d known about it since before their affair. He’d slept with a number of very talented young women at Stanislaus over the years, and he seemed not to want to stop. She confronted him with it, and he said he supposed that deep inside his spirit he needed their nourishment, their innocent love of music and life, or he couldn’t create, couldn’t compose his own music, didn’t think he could go on at all. She smiled a little and said she knows what that sounds like, but that he believed it, she was sure of that.
“Helen still thinks of him as a great man with a sickness, a harmless infirmity, not an old lech. So she bought into it. Because she had to, I guess, because she still loves him and admires him tremendously. She said Erin Bushnell was just another girl in a steady stream of talented young students who found themselves ministering to Dr. Holcombe’s spiritual needs. Again, her words.”
Dix sat forward on the sofa, clasped his hands between his knees. “Then she frowned, said maybe she was wrong, maybe Dr. Holcombe had felt more about Erin than about the others. It was creepy, guys, the way she spoke of him and his philandering, as if it was all right as long as it inspired Uncle Gordon’s music. She forgave all of it.”
Ruth picked up the story. “She said Dr. Holcombe had incredible energy, he composed the most amazing music in the past few months. But now, she said, he is destroyed, a shell of himself, and she is very worried about him. I mentioned he didn’t seem all that destroyed when we told him about Erin’s murder, and she told us he would never want to burden others with his pain.” Ruth snorted.
Sherlock asked Dix, “Did you get the names of the other young girls who ‘ministered’ to Dr. Holcombe over the years?”
“Whoa—” Dix pulled out his notebook, thumbed through the pages. “Okay, over the period of time that Helen has worked for Dr. Holcombe—fourteen years, four months—she thought he had affairs with about eight female students—that is in addition to Helen—both graduate students and undergraduates. I believe that would be up to the advanced age of twenty-three or -four. She gave me some of the names—none of them are at Stanislaus anymore—and said she’d look up the rest.”
Ruth marveled aloud, “Imagine, a man my father’s age believing I was too old to sleep with. She said that when Dr. Holcombe ‘disengaged’—her word—from a student, they didn’t leave Stanislaus, except when they graduated. They all seemed happy to remain, somehow simply taking it as part of their educational experience. Maybe they even enjoyed themselves, knowing they had made the great man shine again, who knows?”
Savich said slowly, “It would seem Dr. Holcombe had very good judgment about whom to pick, an excellent talent for self-preservation. It must also have helped over the years that as director of Stanislaus, he had great influence over their professional futures. I’m surprised other people in the school didn’t know about Dr. Holcombe’s predilections, then certainly there would be gossip, some bad feeling from students who couldn’t compete, maybe even a bit of huff from colleagues who found his behavior inappropriate.”
Ruth said, “Helen told us she actually thought no one except the girls involved over the years knew about it. She certainly never heard any rumors.”
Savich shook his head. “That’s hard to believe. Usually if more than two people know about something illicit, particularly something as juicy as this, it starts coming back to them in embarrassing detail.”
“Helen told us she herself had helped him quite a bit to protect his privacy,” Ruth said. “Translate that to ‘helped him keep his dirty little secret.’ ”
“He lives alone,” Dix said. “And I know he’s owned a place outside of town for many years, converted it into a studio. He may have spent time with them there. And another thing: If Chappy were aware of this, every single soul within a hundred miles would know about it. And the way Chappy would tell it, his brother wouldn’t have had a chance of staying on at Stanislaus. Maybe some of the students know, some of the professors, but no one outside Stanislaus.”