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“Well, you have to be on your way,” Carmody announced abruptly, reaching for Grantley's glass. Grantley immediately brought it to his lips and drained the contents, lest he be robbed of the whiskey. He stood and handed over the glass. Carmody came with him to the door and then outside, where they stood in the cool of the evening, a sky full of stars above.

“Peaceful,” Grantley said.

“Every man in this house would prefer commotion to peace.”

“Sound the fire alarm.”

“What?”

“They're bored in the firehouse, too. They'd like a little commotion.”

“A false alarm?”

“Half of them are.”

“Bah.”

Carmody turned and went back inside. Grantley took the long way to the firehouse and his lonely room on its second floor. He thought of Agnes, felt a twinge of remorse seasoned with desire. He almost wished he had earned the guilt he felt, wished he had risen from the couch and knocked on her bedroom door. For all her flirtiness, she probably would have called the police if he responded to her tireless come-ons. A false alarm.

At the firehouse, he did not go upstairs but to his car parked in the crescent of Flanner Hall. He stopped at the Morris Inn to verify that this was indeed Agnes's night off.

“She was looking for you,” Willa the butterball said, insinuation in her voice. Had Agnes been indiscreet and regaled her fellow waitresses with the story of his night on her couch? “She's in there.” Willa pointed to the bar.

Habitués of bars grow used to the dim and kindly lighting. They were silhouettes at best to Grantley. His name was called, but not by Agnes. He smiled into the darkness, stopped at the bar, and ordered a scotch and water. Be you Dewars of the word and not hearers only. Shame on him. He turned and made out the grinning face of Armitage Shanks, who had called his name. Agnes sat with him at a table. She beckoned to him and he moved, helpless, toward the Siren.

“My night off,” she said brightly.

“And mine on,” Shanks said, and then look horrified at what he had said. Grantley sat.

“How's the arthritis?” But Shanks had taken himself from the game by his ambiguous remark, no matter that Agnes had laughed. To her Grantley said, “Willa said you were asking for me.”

“Willa,” Agnes said with mock disgust, but a simpering smile played on her painted lips.

“Suspicion has settled on Maureen O'Kelly.”

“Shhh,” Agnes said, laying a hand on his arm and tilting her head. And then Grantley saw Maureen O'Kelly at a corner table with Toolin.

44

Grantley's remark reached them at their corner table and Toolin took Maureen's hand.

“It's true,” she said. “They think I did it.”

“They think
I
did it.”

“Not any more.”

“Tell me about it.”

How matter-of-fact she sounded, ticking off the case against herself. Francie's certainty that Paul Sadler had planted the plastic bag of deadly nightshade in her golf bag was dismissed as a daughter's loyalty.

“So how did it get there?”

“God only knows.”

“Someone put it there.”

“Someone?”

“Your husband?”

She smiled. “He doesn't have to get rid of me. He's already left me.”

“For Laura Kennedy.”

“If she'll have him. I broke them up long ago and neither can forgive me now.”

“What exactly have the police said?”

“I was advised to get a lawyer.”

“You must. Someone has to talk sense to them.”

“It's not wise of you to be seen with me.”

“I'll never leave you.” His hand closed over hers.

*   *   *

When Maureen went up to her room Francie was watching television without much interest.

“Mom, let's go home.”

“They won't let me.”

“Who won't let you?”

“The police very politely asked that I stay here longer.”

Francie rose and took her mother in her arms and they stood for a time in silent embrace.

“Daddy was here.”

“Oh.”

“He stayed for fifteen minutes before he left. Maybe you should call him.”

Maureen considered it. “You call him.”

Francie picked up the phone and asked for her father's room. A minute passed. She hung up. “No answer.”

“It's just as well.”

*   *   *

At two in the morning Francie made another call, a frantic summons for help. Her mother was in the bathroom gagging. Two men from the firehouse came in a red pickup and thundered up to the room in rubber coats and huge boots.

“What's wrong?”

A pale Maureen looked out of the bathroom at the firemen.

“I think I've been poisoned.”

45

Roger sat at his computer playing chess with an opponent halfway around the world, but his mind was full of a conversation he had had with Jacob Climacus. The botanist acted like the defense attorney for deadly nightshade.

“If you ate the plant, or any part of it, sure, that would do you in. But in water? I doubt an amateur could pull that off.”

Was Mrs. O'Kelly less of an amateur in this sense just because she had the plant in her garden? Climacus referred to the skill necessary to extract the poison and mix it with water. That was not the skill of a gardener.

“How would it be done?”

“A prescription for belladonna would make it easy.”

On the screen, after ten minutes of inactivity, a move was made. Roger smiled and began to tap on his keyboard. Checkmate.

Roger rose, the game of chess forgotten, and walked as if in a trance to the door. Outside, he got behind the wheel of his golf cart, turned the cart, and moved silently off across the campus walks to the Morris Inn.

He found Phil in the lobby, sitting in on the exchange between Jimmy Stewart and Maureen O'Kelly. Roger summoned his brother, led him past the entrance to the restaurant and outside where he eased himself into a chair. Phil sat and listened as Roger spoke, what he said suddenly casting recent events in a wholly different light.

“It should be easy to check on, Phil.”

“I'll make a call immediately.”

He went inside and Roger watched abstractly the antics of insects in the freighted air where the aroma from the flower beds seemed the very definition of summer. Climacus had suggested that nearly every plant is harmful to some animal species or other. Potentially. Roger rose with an effort he described as weight lifting and went inside.

Dr. O'Kelly came out of the elevator, a suit bag slung from his shoulder, a briefcase in his hand, and went to the desk. Roger joined him.

“We haven't met, Doctor. I'm Roger Knight.”

O'Kelly stepped back and his incipient smile became full. He put out his hand. “Francie has told me of you.”

“She is a very intelligent young lady.”

“On her mother's side.” But the gallant remark dimmed his smile.

“You're checking out?”

“I've stayed too long as it is. I have engaged Alex Cholis, the best lawyer in South Bend, for Maureen.”

“Surely you don't think she is guilty.”

“It's not what I think, I'm afraid.”

“Could we talk?”

“Now?”

“Please.”

He hesitated when he saw his wife with Jimmy Stewart. He crossed the lobby to her. “I've called a lawyer, Maureen. Alex Cholis.”

“You're going?”

“Would you like me to stay?”

“What do you think?”

“Then I will. Professor Knight and I were going to have a little chat.”

“Have you checked out?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“You can stay with Francie and me.”

“We'll see.”

Once more outside, Roger lowered himself again into the snug but adequate chair. A large umbrella was open above the table.

“What more can I do?” O'Kelly asked as he sat. “Cholis is said to be a very good lawyer.”

“You'll need one.”

“I can't believe they suspect her.”

“No, I don't suppose you do.”

O'Kelly looked closely at Roger. “I don't understand.”

“Oh, I think you do.”

The doors of the inn slid open. Phil came out, and his expression told Roger all he needed to know. Once again he indulged in weight lifting. “I'll leave you to my brother, Doctor. He will explain.”

Phil took the chair that Roger had vacated and Roger went inside. Jimmy Stewart was standing and Maureen wore a stunned expression. Obviously, Phil had already told Jimmy what he had learned. Roger waved to her but continued to the front entrance. He felt no sense of triumph. Maureen and her daughter would be relieved, of course, but then other emotions would come.

46

Alex Cholis, the lawyer Dr. O'Kelly had summoned for his wife, became his own now as the case against him was spelled out. The prescription he had written for belladonna could not be explained away by the imaginative story he concocted. It had been an easy matter for him to put the bottles of poisoned water in the golf bags of Mortimer Sadler and Toolin. They were all members of the Minikahda Club that overlooks Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. The assistant to the pro was prompted by questioning to remember the doctor busy at a number of open lockers before Mort and Toolin had gone off to Notre Dame for their rump reunion.

“Why?” Greg Whelan asked, a word he had no problems with.

“Because his beloved would never marry a divorced man. A widower was another matter.”

“But why kill Sadler and Toolin?”

“Once Maureen became the prime suspect in those crimes, he would stage her suicide. That was meant to seal her guilt.”

Roger and Phil were entertaining Jimmy Stewart and Greg Whelan in the aftermath of Dr. O'Kelly's arraignment. Roger was swathed in an enormous apron and wore a baseball cap with
ND
emblazoned on it. He stood over the stove with steam from the kettle of pasta enveloping him.

“But Paul Sadler?” Greg brought out on the second try.

“Self-administered.”

“Why?”

“Everything Paul did was meant to protect his father. He really thought his father was the murderer.”

“Poor Francie.”

Roger waved away the steam. His expression was a tragic mask. “Indeed.”

She had gone back to Minneapolis with her mother—who was accompanied by Chris Toolin, much to Francie's dismay. She could not understand what her mother saw in Toolin.

“It's just a rebound,” she had said to Roger. “She can't live without a man to lean upon.”

“What woman can?”

“I'll lean on you.”

“It's not the same thing.”

“I hate Paul for what he did.”

“Do you? Wouldn't you have done as much for your mother?”

He left her with that thought. After the horror of her father's trial, she would look on what Paul had done in a different light. He and Climacus had gone off to Purdue, where Paul was to be acquainted with the work done there on plants inimical to animals.

“Animals, vegetables, minerals,” Greg said smoothly. He was with Roger in the kitchen. Phil and Jimmy Stewart were settling down to watch the Cubs.

Father Carmody had not been philosophical when he stopped by earlier, brought by Dennis Grantley.

“His degree should be revoked,” the old priest growled.

“I thought you told me that not even God can undo the past.”

“God didn't give him a degree.”

A more surprising visitor had been Cal Swithins. He brought a copy of the
The Shopper
that had carried his story of how Maureen O'Kelly had murdered Mortimer Sadler. The story was the basis of the libel suit Maureen O'Kelly had Cholis file against the reporter. He was sheepishly proud of the commotion he had caused.

“Do you know Agnes, the waitress at the Morris Inn?”

“What about her?” Grantley snapped.

“A lovely woman. It turns out she is a fan. She has clipped all my columns from
The Shopper.
”

Like Kierkegaard, Swithins had found his single reader, but Dennis Grantley did not rejoice with him. He abandoned Father Carmody and left, doubtless on his way to the Morris Inn. Swithins was happy to stay for pasta and salad.

While they ate, Roger went on and on about belladonna. “Women used it on their eyes, to dilate them, a condition thought to enhance their beauty.”

“Bah,” said Father Carmody.

“I could write a column on that,” Swithins said.

“Better not,” Roger advised.

*   *   *

When the fall semester opened, Francie and Paul were reconciled. Alex Cholis was indeed a good lawyer, as goodness is measured in the law. The charge against Dr. O'Kelly was reduced from murder to homicide, and the lawyer tried to depict his client as motivated by medical concerns. It was irrational enough an explanation to sway the jury, which urged clemency when they found O'Kelly guilty. Cholis, of course, intended to appeal the verdict. In November, Samuel Sadler announced his engagement to Laura Kennedy, providing Francie and Paul an occasion to lament the folly of adults.

*   *   *

It was Greg Whelan who remembered that Maureen O'Kelly had been seen on the first tee doing something at Mortimer Sadler's golf cart while he finished on the practicing putting green. Francie had provided Roger with the explanation.

“It was a practical joke. She put a dozen whiffle balls in his bag. She had seen him slip out of the inn when she was about to set out jogging. Guessing what he was up to, she got the whiffle balls out of her car and put them in his bag.”

Swannie's crew thus had an explanation for the dozen whiffle balls someone had thrown angrily into the rough along the third fairway of the Burke golf course.

ALSO BY RALPH MCINERNY

MYSTERIES SET AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME