A Rare Murder In Princeton (28 page)

AS SOON AS McLeod came into the Reading Room, Miss Swallow got up and drew her out to speak to her.

“That nice policeman, the one who seems to be in charge, was asking me about you.”

“You mean Nick Perry, the lieutenant?”

“That’s the one. He asked me if you would be in today. I had to say I didn’t know whether you would or not.”

“You mean he questioned you about the case today?”

“Yes, they are now interviewing everybody who was in Rare Books yesterday. It’s wonderful that they have such good records of everybody who comes in. Anyway, they’ve realized that the killer didn’t have to have the combination to the vault himself, that the young man, the victim, could have let the murderer into the vault if he, or she, had a plausible excuse.”

“You know I was thinking that about Dodo,” said McLeod. “I really think she’s crazy.”

“I see what you mean,” laughed Miss Swallow. “But aren’t we all?”

“Did Nick Perry want to see me about the case? Do you know where he is?”

“No, I don’t. He may still be interviewing people in the conference room.”

“Thanks, I’ll find him.”

She looked through the glass windows and saw that Nick was indeed in there, with Lieutenant Popper and no suspect. He must have felt her gaze upon him, because he looked up and saw her. He got up immediately and came out, drawing her to one side of the work area.

“Can I come by again tonight?” he asked.

“Come for dinner,” she said.

“It couldn’t be until pretty late. Why don’t I just come by late?”

“You need to eat. I’ll wait for you. What time can you make it? Nine?”

“I’ll try to get there by nine. Go ahead and eat if I’m too late. Really.”

“It will be fine, Nick. I’ll cook something. It won’t be elaborate. I’d love to talk to you.”

“Thanks,” Nick said. “I’ll call if something comes up that means I absolutely cannot make it.”

McLeod was feeling quite sunny as she went back into the Reading Room, where she was at last able to finish the box with the material about “The Other Wise Man.” Van Dyke had done a great deal of research, he said in one letter, for an article on the legends of the Magi. Then the idea for the story of a fourth Wise Man came to him. He remembered getting out of bed in the cold, groping his way over to the table, and writing down the first few sentences. He spent a year working on the story, and then read it to his congregation at Brick Church in lieu of a sermon on the Sunday before Christmas.

 

COWBOY TARLETON HAD said he could see McLeod at two o’clock, so she left the Reading Room about noon. Instead of working, she decided to take a walk and think—perhaps figure out who had done the break-ins and who had done the murders—while she walked. The walkways on campus were all clear by this time, and she decided to go down the hill and see the new Carl Icahn Laboratory building, where she knew there was a little café. Once she was inside the building, she was very glad she had come. She had read that it was designed by Rafael Viñoly but nothing prepared her for its huge atrium and immensely tall windows—they must be forty feet tall, she thought—looking out on a wood-bordered grassy field and the sweeping curve of the new ellipse-shaped dormitories.

She got a cobb salad and sat at one of the tables scattered in the atrium. The windows and the Frank Gehry “sculpture” competed for her attention and she looked from one to the other. The sculpture was called the “Armadillo” and it looked just like a huge armadillo. It was big enough to hold in its interior a small conference room with a table and chairs and a bulletin board. It was odd to have a conference room inside a sculpture, but it was interesting.

It was too bad that she had no talent at all for integrative genomics, or whatever it was that people did in this building. She still loved the older Princeton buildings like Georgian Nassau Hall, Romanesque Murray-Dodge, and soaring Gothic McCosh, but this was something else. What a place.

Then her mind dropped architecture and took up treasure hunting again. She tried to think it through. Of course, the burglar could have searched her room and been scared off before he got around to the rest of the house. But if the burglar had been looking for the
Gospels
and the crucifix, and had thought they were in her room, he, or she, must have known that Dante had carried a box up there. Dante denied telling anybody. But people lie, she thought, all the time. Or they just forget what they said. And then the burglar had suspected the treasure might be in her office—Dante must have told someone that she had taken it to campus.

How else could the burglar possibly have known all this?

Natty couldn’t have. Could he? And how could Natty be the murderer, as Buster contended? It was insane. Buster’s theory would be that he killed Philip Sheridan and then Chester so his thefts would not be revealed. When did Buster denounce Natty? Was it Monday morning, right after Natty killed Chester? Wait a minute. Chester had known something about Natty on Saturday night, so Buster must have made the accusation Friday. Either way, it was no wonder Natty had been in such bad shape when Chester’s body was found.

She still clung to the hope that it wasn’t true about Natty, but she could see how the chain of events seemed to hang together. And if Natty wasn’t the murderer, then who was? Were the two killings even connected? And were they connected to the burglaries?

I give up, she thought as she finished her lunch and walked back toward Nassau Street and Cowboy Tarleton’s office.

SHE HAD TO wait a few minutes for Cowboy to get off the phone. She could hear him explaining to a client that it would really be better if he didn’t expect Cowboy to accompany him to traffic court to protest a ticket for failing to stop at a stop sign. “I’ll have to charge you more than the fine would cost you. Anyway, if you show up at all, they’ll probably reduce the fine.”

After he hung up, he came out, smiling as usual and looking even taller than she had remembered, and waved McLeod into his office.

“I’m really here to ask you about something for George,” she began as soon as the greetings were over. “It’s about this stuff from Germany . . .” and she launched into an account of the treasure. “And so they’re temporarily—I hope, temporarily—at the Rare Books Department of the university library. George says that the things don’t belong to him, that they belong to the cathedral at Litzenburg. But he’s not sure how to proceed. So this morning I asked Randall Keaton, the curator of Rare Books at the university who identified the
Gospels
and the other things, for the address. Buster wants the
Gospels
for the Rare Books collection badly, and he insists that George can keep the things and, of course, give them to Princeton.”

“He’s wrong,” said Cowboy. “The news that you found the
Gospels
is going to get out—I’m surprised that it hasn’t already—and since you know who the rightful owner is, you must indeed return everything. It’s hard to believe a curator would take that attitude. A few days ago I would have told you to appeal to Nat Ledbetter. He was Keaton’s boss.”

“Natty Ledbetter is no longer head of Rare Books and Special Collections,” she said. “I may as well tell you. He’s been stealing prints from the collection.”

“I know. He’s a client of mine,” said Cowboy sadly. “Tell me again how Keaton discovered the provenance of these objects that you found.” He pulled a yellow legal pad forward and took up a pen.

“I forget the name of the agency, but they have a database on the Internet that lists stolen art from around the world. These things were listed in it and, I think, described in detail.”

“McLeod, I’d advise you and George to get busy on the Internet and find this listing, or get some cyberwhiz of a student to find it. And then notify whoever you need to notify.”

“Thanks. We can do that.” McLeod hesitated. “I have another question for you, if you don’t mind.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about Philip Sheridan. You mentioned to me at Dodo Westcott’s that he changed his mind a lot and sometimes wanted to change his will. Did he make any changes just before he died?”

“Why do you ask?”

“From all I’ve learned about his murder, I’ve come to wonder if he planned a change in his will that would motivate a murder.” She was thinking about Natty but didn’t want to say so.

“I don’t believe so. In fact, the police suspected his young assistant for a while and wanted to know if his bequest was in danger. It wasn’t. Philip did call me about one quixotic change he was going to make, but he was killed before we could get it written.”

McLeod waited. Would he tell her what the change was? Had Sheridan been about to cancel the money for Natty?

Cowboy was hesitating. Then he seemed to shrug and went on talking. “He told me he wanted to remove one thing from the legacy to Princeton, and asked me if he could still do that. I told him he could. The university might be disappointed but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. So he said he wanted to leave the
Bay Psalm Book
to Bowdoin College.”

“Oh, I remember somebody said the
Bay Psalm Book
was the jewel of his collection. It’s the first book printed in America, and there are practically no copies around.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Cowboy. “Princeton was very excited indeed at the prospect of owning it.”

“But why Bowdoin?”

“Love,” said Cowboy. “It was where Will Trueheart—he was Philip’s companion for many years—had gone to school. And Philip told me he decided he had never provided for a proper memorial for Will and he would do this final thing. Besides, he felt that his copy of the
Bay Psalm Book
should be in New England. It was originally published in Massachusetts. I thought it was a whim of Philip’s. He was a devoted Princeton alumnus. He had been quite fond of Clement Odell, who was Nat’s predecessor, and of course, he liked Nat himself. The agreement with Princeton was a win for both him and the university. I must say I didn’t hurry about preparing the change. But I shouldn’t tell you that.” He shook his head. “You’re too easy to talk to.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said McLeod. “I do appreciate your talking to me. And I’m sure George will be grateful.”

“He won’t be when he gets my bill,” said Cowboy. “Don’t worry, I won’t charge him anything for this talk. When we have to do something, it will be different.”

“Thanks,” said McLeod again, and left.

She walked back to the campus and down to the parking garage. It was time for her to find the Murrays’ house on Wilson Drive.

SHE WAS ASTONISHED to find that the Murrays lived in an extremely modern house, a severe white box with sheets of glass. Bauhaus comes to Princeton, she thought. Although the other houses on Wilson weren’t really old like the ones on Edgehill, they were all certainly traditional architecture. The Murrays’ box was conspicuous, to say the least.

Mary greeted her without enthusiasm and asked her if she’d like some tea.

“No thanks,” said McLeod, but gratefully sat down on the black leather sofa in the spartan living room-dining room when Mary ushered her in. “Such an interesting house,” she said.

“We love it,” said Mary. “Big and I both grew up in old houses, and we wanted something different, something with clean lines and open spaces and lots of light.”

“Well, you got it,” said McLeod.

“Yes,” said Mary, waiting.

“Mary, I wanted to come and see you to ask you a couple of questions. You know I found all these letters that Vincent Lawrence wrote to his mother during World War II, and I wonder if you wanted them. Vincent was your husband’s uncle and his mother was Big’s grandmother. I asked Big about them, and he wasn’t interested, but I wanted to check with you. I thought they might be of interest to you or your children.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think we’re interested, and we don’t have any children, you know,” said Mary.