A Rare Murder In Princeton (18 page)

“Who have you talked to?”

“I’ve talked to Chester, as I told you. I felt so sorry for him that George and I had him to dinner. And of course, Natty Ledbetter is an old friend of George’s. When George was an undergraduate, he had Natty for a famous English course he taught, and Natty became his mentor, advised his senior thesis and all that. Let’s see—I talked to Buster Keaton and to Fanny Mobley and to Dodo Westcott. They’re just a fraction of the staff, you know.”

“They may be just a fraction of the staff,” said Perry, “but they’re a very important fraction as far as this case is concerned.”

“Why so?”

“They’re the ones who stayed the longest after Rare Books was closed to the public,” said Perry. “All the other people who did not leave at five have solid evidence that they were somewhere else, while every single one of the people you’ve named was still here.”

“Are you sure?” asked McLeod. Then she realized what a stupid question that was, that Nick Perry would never have said it if he had not been sure. She was at risk of sounding like a silly old lady.

“I’m sure for the moment, unless some explosive information comes to hand,” he said. He waited a few seconds. “So what did they tell you?”

“You mean the prime suspects?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Well, every one of them told me he or she left early, while other people were still here,” she said.

“They tell us the same thing. We’re working on that as hard as we can,” he said. “But of course, anybody could have killed Sheridan and left the body there while other people were still around. They tell me that hardly anybody except Chester ever went into Sheridan’s room anyway. Just Miss Mobley, Buster Keaton, and Mr. Ledbetter. So clearly somebody else could have killed Sheridan, even one of the others who left much earlier, and nobody would have found the body. But what did they tell you?”

“Nick, I hate to tell you in a way. It is all quite inconsequential. Each person seemed to want to implicate another person, but nobody had any real evidence of wrongdoing and not a semblance of a strong motive. For instance, Buster Keaton said Fanny Mobley and Philip Sheridan used to have shouting arguments—but nobody else confirms this. Dodo Westcott insisted it was Chester Holmes who had the motive for killing Sheridan, a man Chester says was his best friend. Stuff like that.”

“What else?” said Perry.

“Natty Ledbetter tried to implicate Dodo. And Chester said Natty Ledbetter had been angry with Sheridan. So you see it’s meaningless.”

“It seems that way,” said Nick, “but you never know with these ivory tower types. You’ve talked to all these people, so who do you think had it in for Philip Sheridan?”

“Nick, that’s the hard part. I don’t think anybody had it in for Philip Sheridan. He was the big benefactor who could help all of them with their pet projects—rare books, manuscripts, events for the Friends of the Library. I told Natty Ledbetter I didn’t see how anybody would want to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, and he got angry with me for calling Philip Sheridan a goose.”

“Geese that lay golden eggs sometimes try to call the tunes,” said Nick. “I mean the people that control the purse strings like to control other things, don’t they?”

“I guess so,” said McLeod.

“Well, keep listening, McLeod. People do tell you the most amazing things.”

“Let me know about that knife,” said McLeod.

“I will. Stay in touch. I’ll ask Ledbetter about the knife right now. Then I’ll ask Holmes.”

“He hasn’t come in. At least he hadn’t a little while ago,” said McLeod. “But he could identify it for sure.”

“As I said, I talked to him at home. He should be here soon. Don’t leave until we get your fingerprints,” said Nick. “Okay?”

“Okay,” said McLeod. “I’m going in the Reading Room and go through that box, if that’s all right. Actually, I never got my pencil out.”

“We should get any fingerprints off that box,” said Nick. “And anything else we can. Do you mind waiting?”

“Okay,” said McLeod again. “I can call up another box, but now I think I’ll just wait for the fingerprint man. I don’t feel like working on van Dyke right now.”

“I’ll go get that box,” said Nick.

“If Diane will let you take it out of her protective custody,” said McLeod.

“I’ll ask nicely,” said Nick. “Stay in touch.”

“Sure,” said McLeod. She was sitting in the work area outside the Reading Room when Barry Porter arrived.

“Still here?” said Porter.

“Oh, yes,” said McLeod. “And you’re back. Did it throw you off schedule when they had to close down last week and keep out researchers?”

“Not really,” said Porter. “I just have a few details to clean up anyway. Much excitement, eh?”

“I’ll say. And a great deal of real grief, Barry. Philip Sheridan was a benefactor and a nice man.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Barry Porter. They chatted for a few minutes until Porter said he’d better get to work and went in the Reading Room.

The fingerprint man arrived, spoke to the proctor, and sat down to take McLeod’s prints. When he had finished with her, McLeod got up and went out to the reception area to get her coat and the things she had put in the locker.

On her way out, she met Chester Holmes. “The police are here,” said McLeod. “And we found a knife in a box of van Dyke papers. I think it must have been Philip Sheridan’s.”

Surprisingly, Chester seemed to brush this information aside. “Have you got a minute?” he asked her, and led her over to an alcove formed by display cases.

“Sure,” said McLeod.

“I’m a suspect,” said Chester. “A real suspect. The police came back to the house early this morning. Mr. Sheridan’s lawyer told them that Mr. Sheridan left me some money, and the police say that gives me a real motive.”

“Oh, Chester. He must have left money to a lot of people. What about his sister, isn’t she an heir, or heiress?”

“I don’t know,” said Chester. “All I know is the police have another reason to keep hounding me.”

“Chester, I trust Nick Perry. Don’t give up. Right will triumph in the end. Go on in there and talk to Nick.” She remembered what Chester had told her last night. “And tell him about Natty and Philip Sheridan. You might as well.”

Chester stared at her and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

 

IT WAS AFTER noon. McLeod wondered if Philip Sheridan’s lawyer had told the university about the will. Had he, as promised, left his collection to Princeton? Surely he had, she thought. She picked up a sandwich and went to her office, checked for messages, and decided to forget the murder and everything else and go to a lecture on Sylvia Beach. Beach was the woman from Princeton who had run the Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris in the 1920s and published James Joyce’s
Ulysses
when nobody else would dare. The first copy to enter the United States was the one Sylvia mailed to her father, the Reverend Sylvester Beach, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Princeton. Lectures like that, McLeod reflected as she came out, were one of the glories of the Princeton life.

When she came out, it had finally started to snow. What a winter this was turning out to be.

As she walked home in the snow, McLeod thought about Chester. He seemed to be such a sweet boy. He had aroused her maternal instinct the day of the murder, and she had continued to fuss over him ever since. But everybody else seemed ready to suspect him of the murder. And now, he did indeed have a motive. Could that sweet, brown-eyed lad be a murderer? Things were never what they seemed, she thought, and maybe he did kill his “best friend” and “only relative.” And there was Dodo’s theory—the spouse or spousal figure is always the likeliest candidate to do a murder—even if Chester was telling the truth when he said he and Philip Sheridan had not been “ partners.”

By the time McLeod reached the little house on Edgehill, she had almost convinced herself that Chester Holmes was the murderer. On the front porch, she paused to make sure the were no signs of another break-in. Then she remembered the alarm system and opened the front door, she listened carefully for intruders before she went in.

Once inside, reality took over, and she dismissed thoughts of Chester’s guilt. He really was too nice, she thought, and genuinely grateful to Philip Sheridan. It had to be somebody else, but who?

AFTER GEORGE CAME home, they were in the kitchen, preparing to eat cold meat loaf and the baked potatoes McLeod had put in the oven when she got home. “I remember we’re going to dinner at Mrs. Westcott’s Wednesday night, but I won’t be home tomorrow night,” George said as he made the salad.

“What else is new?” asked McLeod.

“Well, the circumstances are new,” said George. “I have a date.”

They sat down to eat.

“You mean a girl date, not a university date?” said McLeod.

“That’s right,” said George. “A girl date.” He poured wine in their glasses.

McLeod was astonished, surprised at the news and surprised at her own reaction to it. It was amazing how upset she felt, but determined not to show it, she said, “That’s wonderful.” To her shame, she heard her voice quaver. What was wrong with her? They weren’t married. They weren’t sleeping together. They weren’t even seeing much of each other. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Polly Griffin,” said George.

“Does she work at the university?”

“At the art museum,” said George.

“Oh,” said McLeod. It was all she could think of to say. She poured her second glass of wine and decided she should pull herself together.

And pull herself together she did. While pulling valiantly, she remembered something—the treasure. “I have never told you, George—”

“You have a date, too,” he interrupted.

“Not at all,” she said. “I never told you I found something that I think is pretty valuable when Dante and I cleaned out the garage.”

“What?”

“A rare book,” she said. “Natty and Buster Keaton think it’s worth a lot of money. And I found a crucifix and a reliquary box made out of carved ivory.”

“Yes?” said George, frowning at her.

“Let me tell you how it happened,” she said. “I kept forgetting about it on account of the murder and finding the murder weapon.”

George looked puzzled.

“I think I found the murder weapon this morning,” she explained. “I mean, I found something that I think—and Nick thinks so, too—something that might be the murder weapon.”

“And that is?”

“Philip Sheridan’s paper knife.”

“Yes?” said George again.

“Didn’t you know about the paper knife? Chester said all along that the murderer must have used Philip Sheridan’s paper knife to kill him. And this morning I think I found it.” McLeod told him about her discovery in the Reading Room.

“I do admire the way you stay in the thick of things,” said George. “But back to the treasure.”

“There were all these boxes in the garage,” McLeod began, telling him about the old shoes and the recipes and the dresses. “I kept the box of dresses because I thought one of my students could use them in a production at Theatre Intime. And I didn’t even take the dresses out of the box until I had hauled the thing up to my office. So I looked at them just before Clark Powell—that’s the student —picked them up. And that’s how I found the book and the crucifix and the reliquary. I locked them in a file drawer in my cubicle. And then this morning I remembered them and I took the book over to Natty, and he and Buster were very excited about it—they say it’s a medieval copy of the four Gospels. And Natty came over to Joseph Henry House and got the reliquary and the crucifix so he could keep everything safely in the vault.”

“And you finally decided you’d better tell me about it,” said George.

He was really angry, McLeod realized. “I’m sorry, George. I really am. I hope I did the right thing. As I said, I forgot about it. I found the stuff in the box of dresses last Wednesday, the afternoon after I found the body that morning. Remember? Then I had class on Thursday and we had the burglary on Thursday and Friday Dante came and Saturday we had Natty to dinner and Sunday I went to chapel and took supper to Chester and this morning I remembered it when I got to my office and I took it over to Natty. Then I found the murder weapon, and if you ask me, I think it’s a miracle that I remembered to tell you tonight.” Especially after you just told me you have a date with a girl named Polly tomorrow night, she thought.

“I see,” said George.

“Do you think those things belong to you or Little Big? Dante was sure those boxes on the rafters of the garage had been there since Jill Murray lived here.”

“I think they belong to me and I’d like to see them,” said George.

“They’re safe in Natty’s vault. Go over to the library and look at them tomorrow,” said McLeod. “Get them back if you want to.”