Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide

Cliff’s besting of Sampson earns him popularity among students and teachers and gets him an invitation to dine at the Dean’s table. There, he meets the Assistant Dean and Chief Financial Officer, Erma Daimler who is the opposite of Dean Harrow in both personality and theory. Dean Harrow announces to the room that it will be a working dinner, as someone will try to kill them and the first student to identify the poison will have their lowest score changed to 100. Within a few moments of the disappointingly bland soup being served, two students fall, and the teacher and nurse Vesta Thripper hurries to administer an antidote. Simeon and Jud stand simultaneously saying they have the answer and Gemma lies, saying Jud told Simeon. Jud tells the room the poison is in the salt as the food is usually exceptional and the night’s bland food is suspicious. He watched people use the salt, and those who did got sick. The Dean asks Simeon to identify the poison, and he suggests potassium cyanide since there are colorless crystals in the salt. Vesta says the fallen students will survive and the conversation at the head table turns to using poison made from everyday foods.

Dean Harrow interrupts the narration to warn the reader that this chapter relies on outside sources, interviews at Woltan Aviation, and will be “distasteful,” as it focuses on Merrill Fiedler.

Dressed in a bathrobe, Fiedler invites an employee he’s had an affair with into his office and makes sure she knows he is the one responsible for her transfer despite her begging him to stop it because of sick family and children. He extorts her with photos he has secretly taken. He next calls in another employee who has seen the same design flaws as Cliff and Jack Horvath. Fielder extorts the employee with threats to reveal he is in in a gay, diverse-racial relationship. He then makes his switchboard operator, who he has also had an affair with and dropped, connect him to a new unsuspecting female employee and asks her to come to his office. He thinks life is good.

Gemma feels she’s said too much to Cliff about having already committed a murder but thinks he seems kind. She remembers how Adele Underton began to extort her, telling her Gemma’s secret was safe if she didn’t apply for a higher position that Adele wanted for herself. She gives Gemma a letter of recommendation to sign which Gemma reads and realizes is an accusation that Gemma stole drugs and a syringe from the hospital dispensary and used them to kill a patient.

Dulcie Mown is late for her “Alibis” class and so has to answer Dobson’s question about how one can create a good alibi by being somewhere one is not. She suggests a body double but is told that would involve an accomplice, which is against the rules. The answer comes to her over dinner as she’s eating Tissier’s separated rapini dish. Gemma, however, is not finding answers or success with her attempt to get Jud Helkampf to like her and is frustrated as it is part of her assignment at McMasters. She goes into Oxbane Chapel when she sees a notice about confessions. When she tells the priest she isn’t Catholic, he says he isn’t either but has a dispensation from many churches. She is shocked to hear he and all the faculty at McMasters have committed murder, thought the priest says they are often just doing God’s work.

Dulcie contemplates her answers to the thesis questions of if the murder is necessary and if one has given the target every chance to redeem themselves. She recalls a conversation with a new, young producer in the studio who has great, complex scripts that he feels were meant for her but says Leonid Kosta won’t consider her for any other projects. She reviews Dobson’s rules about alibis. Number 1 is no accomplices, including lovers or hit people. Number 2 is to manipulate someone else into committing the deletion, assuming that if the person is truly terrible others will hate them as much as you. The third is to create ignominy. If the police think the victim is a bad person and deserved it, they might not pursue leads with as much tenacity. This last rule triggers a thought, and when Dulcie wakes up in the morning, she knows what to do with Kosta.

The next section includes three faculty progress reports of students. The first is from Dean Harrow about Cliff Iverson for both the board and the sponsor. He states that Mr. Iverson is doing well and is keeping busy with studies and the job he’s taken in the kitchen so not to use the money provided by his sponsor. The job, he notes, has given him extra knowledge of toxins that may come in handy. He has joined the water polo team and become a support and friend to many in the school. The only negative is that a student (who is there only as the result of a failure of the screening process in order to increase profit) seems to have a grudge against Iverson. The situation has, however, inspired Cliff’s competitive nature and the Dean’s only concern is that his thoughtfulness may get in the way. Overall, however, the Dean thinks Mr. Iverson was a great investment of the sponsor’s money.

Father Pugh writes Gemma’s progress report and notes that he is worried about her proposed deletion, as it requires Miss Underton to go on a hiking tour with her in the Yorkshire Dales, where Gemma will push her into a dangerous river called the Strid. While Gemma is mastering jiujitsu, the concern is that Gemma feels bad about employing it and her teacher, Coach Tarcott, thinks Gemma subconsciously feels she deserves to fail. To teach her the pointlessness of getting an extortioner to like you, they have assigned her the task of gaining Jud Helkampf’s trust. They are sending her to Vesta Thripper in hopes another woman can help change her mind.

The final progress report of Dulcie Mown, written by Professor Graves, says she is a natural in that she has a wide range of skills and is devoted to honing them on behalf of someone back in Hollywood, who he feels is extremely lucky. A postscript notes that Captain Dobson enlightened him with Dulcie’s true identity and that the person she is extremely devoted to back home is actually herself.

Cliff Iverson’s journal states that his problems with Jud Helkampf are getting worse, noting an incident where Helkampf endangered other players’ lives to cheat at water polo. Cliff got revenge during a meeting where Cliff was required to speak about his failed attempt to delete his target. Gemma also spoke and warned people to consider their success as hers has only created more problems and now she must commit another murder. Cliff’s rendition of his botched attempt made everyone laugh except Helkampf, who made a rude remark. Iverson then pretended he was giving out an award and asked Helkampf to come up to the microphone. He did, and he began to make a speech when the Dean told him to shut up and that Cliff had just illustrated how to use a target’s vanity against them. It was exactly how Cliff had lured Fiedler to the subway platform and was, as he told the crowd, the only thing he did correctly. He had told Fiedler he was featured in an old copy of a magazine he’d seen at that subway platform’s newsstand. Dean Harrow encourages Cliff to continue using this tactic.

Cliff notes that they had light snow on Christmas Eve and then a day free of traps or manipulations. Despite the weather, students still can’t figure out where they are located. On one of his walks Cliff finds a chasm and, on the other side, a castle with a single tower. It looks enormous, but Cliff then realizes it’s a false perspective and probably isn’t as large as it seems. A small tram on a rope pulley is visible on the other side but there is no way to summon it. Simeon Sampson appears out of nowhere and cautions that he could have pushed him off the cliff, then disappears behind some rocks.

The Valentine’s Day dance is a teaching tool for deletions, but Cliff ends up dancing with his neighbor who asks him to help her as she is failing and will probably be deleted by McMasters. The partners switch and Dulcie tells him she needs him to pitch to her so she can practice hitting a baseball. In return, she will teach him about acting. The partners switch again, and he is happy to be dancing with Gemma, who confesses she hates Helkampf; her seeming desire to be with Helkampf is just an assignment from McMasters. The revelation makes Cliff elated, and he asks her to go with him to see the castle across Raven Ravine. She says he’s graduating (or being deleted) any day and it won’t be worth it. He thinks sadly that this will be the only time they’ll get to dance.

Coach Tarcott encourages Cliff to use sports and his target’s passion to trap him. Iverson notes that Fiedler only likes horseracing. Dulcie and Cliff try batting practice, and Dulcie is distressed, saying she can’t afford to miss on her first swing.

Dean Harrow notes that “Eroticide” has become mandatory since the majority of male students think they didn’t need help with the subject. Vesta Thripper tries to convince Gemma that becoming her target’s friend to lure her on a trip is impractical. Her failure with Helkampf should be evidence of that. She asks Gemma if she’s sure she won’t die while trying to push Adele in. Gemma’s response that it would serve her right distresses Vesta.

The journal of Cliff Iverson notes that he sees Gemma leave “Eroticide” and it saddens him, thinking she would need the skills for her deletion.

The Dean’s narration continues with Dulcie Mown thinking she won’t need anything from “Eroticide,” as her career has necessitated she learn many of the skills she anticipates being taught. Vesta, however, surprises Dulcie by leading her to the men’s bathroom for their lesson.