A Rare Murder In Princeton (26 page)

“Too many iffy questions,” said Nick. “We’ll know more later. Back to business. Where were you this morning from nine o’clock on?”

“I walked to my office—I left home about nine-thirty. Then I came over to Rare Books. I stopped in to see Natty Ledbetter. I was in the Reading Room when Jeff came roaring in. That was about ten-thirty, I guess. And the rest you know.” She looked at her watch. It was already two o’clock. No wonder she felt hungry. “But look, I can’t be a suspect,” she said to Nick. “If it was a murder, the murderer had to have access to the vault and that means it would have to be somebody on the staff, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” said Nick noncommittally. “You saw a good deal of Chester Holmes after Philip Sheridan’s murder, didn’t you? Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?”

“I can’t imagine,” said McLeod.

“Have you anything else to tell me about him? Anything at all?”

“Nothing, Nick. Except that he was a dear boy and I had become very fond of him. He was crazy about Philip Sheridan, and I always thought you were crazy to suspect him of killing him. If Chester was murdered, too, I guess that clears him, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll see,” said Nick, apparently determined not to give one single thing away. “That’s all, McLeod. Thanks very much for your help.”

“Can you leave now?” asked Miss Swallow when McLeod appeared in the reception area. “Can you eat lunch?”

“I can leave, but can you?”

“Oh, yes. When it was determined that I didn’t know Chester and that I had no way of getting into the vault, they let me go, too. Where shall we eat? It’s too late for the café at Chancellor Green. The Annex? Frist?”

They settled on Frist, the still-new student center, and made their way carefully on walks that were slushy in spite of having been shoveled. When they got to Frist, they ordered pizza because it looked so good. They sat at a table by the big south-facing windows and looked out at the snow-covered plaza between them and Guyot Hall, whose window ledges and roof-top parapets were white with snow. It was warm inside Frist. We must be a pretty sight, thought McLeod—two white-haired women gobbling up pizzas in the student center.

“I was hungry, really hungry,” said McLeod when she had finished.

“Me, too.”

Miss Swallow had not been as ravenous as she; she was leaving uneaten a portion of her slice of anchovy/olive/ cheese pizza. Miss Swallow was much more ladylike than she was, McLeod thought; she wondered if she could possibly spear her friend’s uneaten pizza.

“Can you eat my leftovers?” asked Miss Swallow, reading her mind.

“Thanks so much. I was eyeing them covetously,” said McLeod.

Miss Swallow smiled and did not say she had noticed. “Did you learn anything more from that nice policeman?” she asked.

“Of course not,” said McLeod. “He never divulges information.” Except that time he came calling, she thought. “He just picks other people’s brains relentlessly.”

“You know, something else that’s very interesting has happened,” said Miss Swallow. “You saw that man in the Reading Room?”

“Yes. Who is he?”

“His name is Allen Weinberg, and he’s here to look at some bird books and bird prints. It’s quite a coincidence that we’re here at the same time, isn’t it? Birds and flowers. Anyway, a couple of bird prints he wanted to see are missing. Like me, he saw them here once before, but they have no record of them now. I told him about my orchid prints and how helpful Mr. Ledbetter had been and he said he would ask Natty for his help, too.”

“Did Natty know where they are?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t say. He just shook his head and said he and the staff would all look for them.”

“Poor man,” said McLeod. “I meant Allen Weinberg, but poor Natty, too. He’s had two murders and two cases of missing prints. He looked awful this morning.”

WHEN THEY LEFT Frist, McLeod said she would go back to her own office since there was nothing she could work on now at Rare Books. “Keep in touch,” she said, and told Miss Swallow her telephone number, “in case anything else happens.”

She settled down in her cubicle with a legal pad in front of her, seriously trying to plan Thursday’s class. The phone rang. It was Buster Keaton.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see you before you left here,” he said. “Can I come over to your office? I’m about to leave now.”

McLeod glanced at her watch—it was quite late, almost five o’clock. “Come ahead,” she said. “Do you know where it is?”

“Third floor of Joseph Henry House? Right. I’ll be there instantly.”

Very soon he arrived, puffing from climbing the stairs, unzipping his fat down jacket.

“Those stairs!” he said. “Murder.”

McLeod shivered. “Don’t say the word ‘murder,’ ” she said. “But everybody does complain about the stairs.”

“And nobody does anything about them,” said Buster. “I hope it’s all right if I barge in like this. Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure. What about?”

“I’ll explain if I can sit down,” said Buster, looking around.

“We’d better go downstairs where there are some chairs.” Buster followed her. “Would you like some tea?” she asked when they had reached the sun room.

“No, thanks, I just want to talk to you.”

“Can I ask you something first?” said McLeod. “How many people knew about the fire-extinguishing system in the vault? Nobody ever mentioned it to me before today.”

“I don’t have any idea,” said Buster. “What was there to know? It isn’t a sprinkler system because water would do too much damage. It’s gas. That’s all there is to it.”

“Did everybody know you could activate it with heat?”

“I never thought about it,” said Buster. “But isn’t that true of any automatic fire extinguisher system?”

“I never thought about it either. I just wondered if the staff talked about it, if it was general knowledge.”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right,” said McLeod. “You said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yes, I tried to reach George Bridges, but he’s so busy dealing with the press about the second murder that his secretary said he couldn’t even talk to me on the telephone, much less see me in his office.”

“Poor George,” said McLeod. “What can I do for you? I can’t speak for George.”

“I know, I know. But you can tell him something for me, can’t you? It’s about Natty. I know he really cares about Natty.” Buster paused and McLeod waited. “You see, I’ve had to report Natty. I hated to do it, but in all good conscience, I felt that I had to.” He paused again, looking, McLeod thought, terribly sad.

“What do you mean—you had to report Natty?”

“I had to squeal,” said Buster.

“To whom?”

“To the director of libraries, who took it to Tom.”

“Tom?”

“Tom Blackman, the president of the university.”

“Of course. What on earth did you think Natty had done?”

“I didn’t ‘think’; I knew,” said Buster.

“Well, what is it?”

“Natty has been stealing from the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.”

“I don’t believe it,” said McLeod.

“You better believe it.”

McLeod stared at him.

“I know it’s a shock to you, and I know it’s going to be a shock to George, a terrible shock,” said Buster. “And I want George to know that I hated to do what I did. But I felt that I had to put a stop to what was going on . . .”

McLeod stood up and looked out the window at Nassau Hall iced with white and sitting in the midst of blinding bright snow that covered Cannon Green behind it. She turned back to stare at Buster. “You had to do it?”

“Yes, I had to do it. Because, you see, I felt that it was never going to stop unless I did something. And I couldn’t stand to see the collection being pillaged like that. You know how I care about the things that are there.”

“I suppose so. Yes, I guess you had to put a stop to it.” She sat down again and tried to smile at him. “But what was he—oh, taking?” She found she could not use the word “stealing.”

“Prints mostly. You know we have a lot of uncatalogued prints, and he was regularly helping himself to them.”

“You mean like Miss Swallow’s flower prints? And that man’s bird prints?”

“Those are the two cases that brought things to a head,” Buster said. “Fanny and I had long suspected something was rotten in the department, but those two losses put the spotlight on him.”

“But he found the orchid prints! Miss Swallow was so impressed and so pleased!”

“He found the orchid prints because he had them at his house. He hadn’t sold them yet, and he brought them back to the library the next day after Miss Swallow raised such a fuss.”

“You’re sure?” asked McLeod.

“I’m sure,” said Buster.

“You mean they weren’t in that cabinet with the wide drawers?”

“They were in that cabinet because he brought them in early the next morning, before anybody else on the staff got there.”

“You’re sure?” McLeod asked again.

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” said Buster. “And furthermore, he has admitted it.”

“This is terrible,” said McLeod.

“It is. And I know how he and George have always been close. I just want George to know how sorry I am for my part in it.”

“Of course,” said McLeod. “I understand. I’ll tell him what you’ve said. If I ever see him again, that is. He’s been very busy, and from what you say, he’s going to be even busier. He will probably be very late tonight. And he usually goes to work before I get downstairs, but when I see him, I’ll tell him.”

“Thanks, McLeod. I am so sorry about it all. I was—still am—quite fond of Natty Ledbetter.”

“I know. Who wouldn’t be? Did you really have to report him? Did you ask him about it first?”

“I asked him about it,” said Buster. “And he admitted it, or practically did. I felt I had no choice.”

“I guess you didn’t,” said McLeod.

“But you know, McLeod, there’s something else that worries me. What if there’s something else, something really bad?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what if Natty knew that somebody else knew about what he had done? And what if Natty wanted to cover up what he had done? And what if he took violent action against that person who knew? What about that?”

“You mean he might take violent action against you?”

“No, McLeod. He can’t cover up anymore. But what if before I presented him with the evidence, somebody else had found out what he was doing and had threatened to expose him?”

“Who do you mean—‘somebody else’?”

“Think,” said Buster. “What if Philip Sheridan, and then Chester, had found out that he’d been taking pieces of the collection home?”

“Do you think that’s what happened? And then you’re implying that Natty took ‘violent action’ against them?”

“I’m just worrying about it, McLeod. I don’t know what to think.”

“Chester did tell me that he heard Philip shouting at Natty,” said McLeod.

“There you go,” said Buster. “I think he’s the murderer. I’m really concerned.”

“Oh, that can’t be true,” said McLeod. “It’s impossible.”

“Is it?” said Buster.

MCLEOD BARELY HAD time to get back to her office when Dodo Westcott appeared, luxuriously attired in a mink coat and hat.

“Those stairs,” puffed Dodo. “They’re terrible.”

“Everybody says that,” said McLeod. “It’s part of having an office on the third floor. How are you, Dodo?”

“I want to talk to you,” said Dodo. “You always help me see things more clearly.”

“I don’t see how I do that,” said McLeod. She stood up, resigned to getting no work done at all. “Let’s go downstairs where we can sit in comfortable chairs,” she said. On the first floor, McLeod waved Dodo to a chair. “Take off that beautiful coat and sit down. I’ll get some tea. You’ll have some, won’t you?”