Irish Alibi (16 page)

“Yes.”

“And subsequently Philip Knight interrogated you?”

“I thought we were just talking. They acted as if Kelly was the one they were after.”

“They?”

“Knight and Jimmy Stewart.”

“Very irregular.” Evans spoke with some satisfaction. “And did Jimmy Stewart interrogate you as well?”

“He said he would wait until you got here.”

Evans nodded. “Let's regard this as a rehearsal for that interrogation. I shall want to have this over and done with as soon as possible.”

“Good.”

But if his hopes had risen, they sank again when Evans sat in while Jimmy Stewart went over the events of last Saturday and Sunday.

“Who is Philip Knight?” Evans said to the detective.

“Why do you ask?”

“My client tells me that someone called Philip Knight, representing himself to be a detectve, interrogated him about these events.”

“Interrogated him? When was that?”

“When you were talking with Quintin Kelly,” Magnus broke in. “Philip Knight and I came into a room like this—”

“And talked.”

“He asked me questions.”

“Talking often involves questions. What exactly is the point of bringing this up?”

“I want to establish that my client was misled into thinking that he was talking with a member of your police force. I want to establish that nothing he may have said to this Philip Knight can be regarded as having been said.”

“I can certainly agree to that.”

Evans sat back in surprise. “But you acknowledge that Philip Knight quizzed my client?”

“I wasn't privy to their conversation.” Stewart turned to Magnus. “You were good enough to come down here when I brought in Quintin Kelly for questioning. While I questioned him, you and Knight kept out of the way. You say you had a conversation?”

It dawned on Magnus that Evans was after a technicality, but what would it gain him if he found it? Here the three of them sat in order that Jimmy Stewart might conduct an interview with him, his lawyer being present. Any conversation he might have had with Philip Knight was neither here nor there. Stewart couldn't agree more. So Evans had won an uncontested point.

Evans did better when he interrupted Jimmy Stewart to ask if there was any physical evidence suggesting that his client had been anywhere near the scene of the crime.

“You will be in possession of everything we've found if this goes to trial.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Neither.”

Evans began a disquisition on the principle of contradiction but stopped himself. “What I presume interests you in my client is that he has been involved in an unhappy marriage. His wife has set up residence in another city; she apparently had been conducting herself in a way that events of the past weekend have made clear. Stewart, you could learn that my client has expressed outrage at what his wife has done, that he is understandably angry with her. He might even have said he'd like to wring her neck.”

“I never said such a thing.”

Evans displayed a palm. “All that and more you might have learned. I am painting as dark a picture as I can. But you are investigating a murder in a motel where my client has never been.”

“Is that so?” Stewart asked Magnus. Evans sat forward.

Magnus looked at both men. “Only once.”

Evans jumped to his feet and looked sternly at Jimmy Stewart. “I gather from your reaction that what Mr. O'Toole has just said comes as news to you.”

“Not really.”

It went on like that. When at last Stewart left and Magnus was alone with Evans, the lawyer looked at him reproachfully. “You should not have told him that you went to that motel on Sunday. Not that it matters. He would have to establish it on some basis other than your unguarded remark.”

Alas, that is what happened. Phyllis Brickhouse had seen a bearded man go from a car in the parking lot to a secondary entrance of the Tranquil Motel on Sunday afternoon, perhaps at three or four o'clock. On the basis of that, Magnus O'Toole was arraigned, accused of bringing about the wrongful death of his wife, Madeline.

“Wrongful?”

“At least it isn't an accusation of murder.”

“That wasn't me she saw.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I was there at maybe one thirty, and I didn't park in the lot.”

“We may have to prove that.”

Magnus wanted to tell Evans all about his visit to Madeline Sunday afternoon, but the lawyer put him off.

“I will make very short work of his witness.”

Magnus was taken away, and in his cell went back to the Book of Job. He was glad that he had mentioned going to the motel to confront Madeline with what Quintin Kelly had told him. He had expected an angry confrontation, but all she wanted to talk about was Rufus James.

“He told me he can get me a better publisher, a New York publisher.”

“For your stuff?”

“Magnus, he told me a secret. He writes thrillers under a pen name.” She whispered this. “Now don't tell a soul. I think he was sorry he told me.”

And so he had driven back to the condo, where he found Quintin still asleep in a bedroom. Magnus had left the television on when he left, muted, and for a moment he stood looking at the screen. He sat on the couch. The game would be a soporific. And it was. In minutes he was sound asleep.

17

Roger was reading
Dixie Coup
by Rufus James with a fascination verging on disbelief. The attempt to tell of the disintegration of a Southern family in the wake of Appomattox while keeping the story locked in the mind of a retarded eleven-year-old girl who was also mute would have challenged Faulkner himself. The language of the book was apparently a mode of communication one could imagine being invented by someone who had never heard the sound of another human voice. Or perhaps one couldn't imagine that. It was difficult to keep disbelief suspended, and the author seemed to challenge the reader more and more as the novel progressed—if progress be defined by the sequence of natural numbers to be found at the bottom of its pages. Not to finish the book would have seemed a moral fault to Roger, as if he had abandoned a Lenten penance. The obligatory sexual scenes ranged from self-abuse through rape to bestiality, and it was these that critics had praised to the skies, a judgment Roger neither shared nor wished to contest since that would have required dwelling on them.

It was of course absurd to hope to catch the flesh-and-blood author of a novel peeking through his prose. The most imaginary character in any novel is the one that is not in it but writing it. Nonetheless, Roger found himself wondering what sort of fellow Rufus James was. As an author, he made few concessions to the ordinary expectations of a reader. Indeed, the novel might have been written in order to show that a novel that violated all the canons of fiction could be written if not enjoyed.

From time to time, Roger had to come up for air, and he would lay aside the book and think of the odd events at the Tranquil Motel in which Rufus James had been involved. Phil and Jimmy Stewart seemed content to let the outcome rest in the hands of Fauxhall. Granted that Madeline had given Magnus motive enough to do her in, his link to the scene of the crime consisted in the fact that a bearded man had been seen in the vicinity of suite 302 more or less at the time of Madeline's death.

“Surely his lawyer will point out that Rufus James has a beard.” As it happened, the photograph of James on the dust jacket of his novel showed a clean-shaven face, but then the novel was nearly a decade old.

“O'Toole admits he was there Sunday afternoon, Roger.”

“He does?”

“When Jimmy was questioning him, he said he was there.”

“In the presence of his lawyer?”

“Not that it matters.” The statement could hardly be used in the trial, but there was an eyewitness.

“Phyllis Brickhouse? She said she saw a bearded man.”

Phil was engaged in peeling an orange in such a way that the skin came off in one piece. That was on a par with Roger's doing the
Times
crossword with a ballpoint pen. What other eccentricities awaited them?

“Would they let me talk with Magnus O'Toole?”

“As long as you don't represent yourself as a South Bend detective.”

Phil tried to make a joke of it, but he had not liked the suggestion made by Benjamin Evans that there was something underhanded about the conversation he had had at headquarters with Magnus O'Toole. After all, O'Toole knew who and what he was. Not that they were just passing the time while Jimmy questioned Quintin Kelly.

Phil drove Roger downtown and took him to Jimmy's office to arrange for a visit with the accused Magnus O'Toole.

“I'll stay here with Jimmy,” Phil said, perhaps mindful of Evans's interpretation of his own talk with O'Toole.

Roger was led away by an officer. As they approached the visiting room, the door opened, and a dapper little man emerged. He stopped and stared at Roger.

“It's all me,” Roger said with a smile. “Roger Knight.” He put out a hand, which Evans examined as if for fingerprints before taking it.

“Benjamin Evans. I understand you want to talk to my client.”

“I'd like to talk with you as well.”

Evans looked at his watch like the rabbit in Alice.

“About Rufus James. If I were you, I would make every effort to get in touch with that man,” Roger advised.

“I shall be talking to him within the hour.”

“Good. Good. Is he still in town?”

“He is holed up in a motel near Niles.”

“Holed up?”

“He's a writer.”

“I know.” The thought that another novel like
Dixie Coup
was in the works was not cheering. “He could very well be your client's alibi.”

Evans gave him a prim little smile, nodded, and went off down the hallway. Obviously, it was that possibility that explained the lawyer's locating James.

Magnus O'Toole seemed delighted to see Roger when he came into the room and found the massive Notre Dame professor seated precariously on a chair of inadequate size.

The conversation understandably began with the topic of Rufus James. O'Toole had been informed by Evans that he had located the author and was certain that producing him at the trial would counter any effect the testimony of Phyllis Brickhouse might have on the jury. Indeed, Evans was hopeful that the second bearded man would dismantle the case against O'Toole.

“But you yourself went to the motel on Sunday afternoon?” Roger asked O'Toole.

“I didn't kill her.”

“I'm sure you didn't.”

O'Toole looked as if he might weep. “I can't tell you how good it is to hear someone say that. Evans acts as if he were engaged in getting a murderer off on a technicality.”

“He told me James is up in Michigan writing.”

“Have you read any of his novels?”

“I am reading one now. I believe it is his only one.”

“Apparently not. That seems to be why he and poor Madeline hit it off.”

“I don't understand.”

So Roger heard of Rufus James's bibulous confession to Madeline that he, too, wrote trash. Under a pen name, of course.

“He even offered to interest his publisher in taking on Madeline. With the prospect of more money. That's what we talked about. Think of it, our last conversation, and all we talked about was her damned career.”

Again O'Toole looked as if he might weep. Who knew what had led him to seek out his wife last Sunday afternoon? A reconciliation? Roger did not dare to ask. Marriage was more of a mystery to him than it is for those involved in one.

*   *   *

He left O'Toole with the confidence that the man would soon be free. When the Knights arrived home, the phone was ringing as if it had been doing so since they left. It was Father Carmody with the news that Malcolm Kincade had confided to Grafton that he had murdered Madeline O'Toole. The young man and the reporter must have arrived at headquarters while the Knight brothers were there.

PART FOUR

1

Phil went to Holy Cross House to fetch Father Carmody, and the three of them discussed this strange turn of events over dishes of Roger's lasagna.

Roger thought he understood what had happened. “It's a ruse, Father. Obviously, Grafton had convinced young Kincade that his brother was now the prime suspect in the murder of Madeline O'Toole.”

“A Notre Dame student confessing to murder!” The reputation of the university was dearer to Father Carmody than his own, and he felt anguished by the prospect of the local, and doubtless national, media bringing the story to the four corners of the country. “One should never underestimate the animus against Notre Dame. Think of the Heisman Trophy.” Father Carmody was certain that Brady Quinn had failed to win this award because of anti–Notre Dame prejudice among the voters.

“What do you mean, ruse?” Phil asked.

“I told Father Carmody how the twins were going to handle it if any real trouble developed over pulling down the statue of Father Corby. You can bet that the other Kincade will shortly confess to the same crime. No witness will be able to tell them apart.”

“That's crazy!”

Father Carmody apparently didn't think so. A little smile formed on his lips. Did he imagine that such a ruse would put the intelligence of Notre Dame students on display?

Phil, too, began to see it as a joke rather than a problem. “Which twin has the Toni?”

Father Carmody looked blankly at Phil. Of course he wouldn't remember that advertising slogan of years before. Who would?

“Toni?”

“It was a home permanent,” Phil told the priest. The explanation didn't help, so he dropped it. “One identical twin as alibi for the other.”

The amusement value of the Kincade confession was considerably diminished when Fauxhall, deprived of Magnus O'Toole as his suspect—Evans had rousted out the judge who had arraigned O'Toole and won a quick dismissal—started leaning on Jimmy Stewart to make the case against Malcolm Kincade.