That Day the Rabbi Left Town (20 page)

“Was he coming to see you?”

“Nah, he was going to see Professor Miller. That's what the
Herald
said.”

“But the
Globe
said he was found near the rabbi's house.”

“Not this rabbi. There's another rabbi in Barnard's Crossing,”

The rabbi held up both hands in a call for silence. Then he said, “I'll tell you what I know, and then perhaps we can get on with the proper work of the class. The body of Professor Kent was found in a field adjoining the lawn of Rabbi Selig's house. Rabbi Selig succeeded me as rabbi of the Barnard's Crossing Temple. It is presumed that Professor Kent was on his way to visit Professor Miller, who lives just beyond Rabbi Selig. The cause of death has not been determined. He was well along in years, so a heart attack or a stroke is a possibility. The extreme cold probably had something to do with it, and the snow kept him from being seen and possibly rescued. Not too many were out on foot during the storm, but he might have been seen from a passing car, which I am sure would then have stopped to check. Now, if we can get to—”

“But, Rabbi—”

“Don't the police in Barnard's Crossing—”

It occurred to the rabbi that the informal setting of his office made teaching under the present circumstances all but impossible. When he tried, he caught whispers like, “Did you ever take a course with the guy?” and “Naw, he was supposed to be a hard marker.”

Finally he dismissed them with, “I'm afraid your minds are not on our subject today, so I'll end the session now. For next time, please read the last chapter of Isaiah and think about its implications.”

They filed out, still talking about Professor Kent, but Sarah McBride remained behind. He looked at her inquiringly.

She waited until the last student had filed out, and then said, “A policeman came to question me.”

“Came to your house? When? This morning?”

“No, here. He was here when I arrived around half past ten. He'd been talking to Professor Sugrue. He wasn't in uniform. He was a detective, a sergeant. Sergeant Schroeder, he said his name was. He was trying to find the last person who had seen Kent alive. So then he started to ask about Lew. Did Lew know him? Did he know Lew was from Barnard's Crossing? Would Lew have offered to drive him there? When I said Lew didn't have his car with him, his face lit up, and that frightened me. Was I getting Lew in trouble? So I told him I had a class, and he said, ‘Okay, I'll see you afterwards.' I didn't tell him it was a class I was taking, yours, and not one I was giving. I was afraid if I said it was one I was taking, he'd have me skip it and keep me there. You see, Sugrue had left and there were just the two of us.”

“But you've seen Lew, haven't you, since last Wednesday, I mean?”

“Oh, yes, we spent the weekend together.”

“Then why are you concerned?”

She shook her head. “I've never had dealings with the police, not even for a traffic violation. It was his attitude, I suppose, more than anything else.”

“Hostile? Suspicious?”

“Both. I had the feeling that he wouldn't believe anything I might say; that he expected me to lie and that he would catch me out if I did.”

The rabbi nodded, smiling. “Yes, that sounds like Sergeant Schroeder.”

“Oh, you know him?”

“When I was last here, a few years ago, something came up, and I found myself involved with the good sergeant.”

“I wouldn't mind so much if it were just me he was suspicious of, but I don't want to say anything that's apt to get Lew in trouble.”

“Lew is a lawyer, I think you told me. I should think he'd be able to take care of his own interests.”

“Yes, I guess so.” She smiled. “When next I see Sergeant Schroeder, I'll tell him everything that happened.”

“But nothing happened, did it?”

“No, but Sergeant Schroeder strikes me as the sort of man who can make something out of nothing.”

Chapter 31

Rabbi Small left the school shortly after noon. As he walked along Clark Street a car drove up and came to a halt beside him. The front window on the passenger side was lowered and the chubby face of Bradford Ames, the senior assistant district attorney of Suffolk County, appeared, leaning out awkwardly from the driver's seat. “Rabbi Small,” he called, and as the rabbi approached, “Lanigan said you were teaching here now, and I was going to look you up.” He threw open the door, saying, “Hop in, hop in, Rabbi.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just to the corner, to Kent's house. I want to have a look-see. You knew him, of course.”

“Just by sight. I was sort of introduced to him. I said, ‘How do you do,' but other than that, I've never spoken to him. I don't think he answered even when we were introduced.”

“Self-important, was he? Or didn't he like rabbis, or the people they serve?”

“I don't know.”

“Ah, here we are. Come on in, Rabbi.” He mounted the two or three steps and knocked on the door while the rabbi peered curiously through the glass panel on the side. The door was opened by Sergeant Schroeder, who said, “Oh, hello. We're about finished.”

“Good. Look who I brought you, Sergeant. You remember Rabbi Small, don't you?”

“Oh yeah. He involved in this?”

“Oh no. Rabbi Small teaches here. I just happened to catch him as I was driving by.” He swiveled around to survey the hall and the room beyond. He pointed at a shallow basket beside the wall near the door. It contained a pair of rubbers and a pair of overshoes. “Did you get a picture of that, Sergeant? It's most important.”

“Why?” asked the sergeant.

“Because according to the pictures Chief Lanigan brought in this morning—brought them in himself—a good man, Lanigan. Remember him?”

The sergeant nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, according to the pictures, he wasn't wearing any rubbers. Under his melton coat he was wearing a tuxedo and patent leather pumps. Lanigan thought they might have slipped off as he plodded through the snow, but now we know he wasn't wearing rubbers because they're right there.”

“Maybe he had another pair in the car,” Schroeder suggested.

“True, and we haven't found the car yet. And if he parked on the street somewhere, and was plowed in, we might not find it until we get a thaw. Coming here, I passed streets where there were rows of cars, bumper to bumper, and all almost buried in the snow.”

“Lanigan spoke to a Professor Miller, who thought he was coming to his house. Miller thought he might have parked somewhere along the road because he found the driving too difficult and taken the bus; that he got off at the bus stop at this rabbi fellow's driveway. There's a hedge there, and the other side of it is a right-of-way to this Miller's house. What do you think, Rabbi?”

“I didn't know Professor Kent well. I know only that as far as I'm concerned, it would have to be a matter of life or death before I would have got behind the wheel of a car during that storm Wednesday afternoon. But then, I'm a very nervous driver.”

“Well, I drove out to Barnard's Crossing myself in the early part of the afternoon,” said Ames. “It was pretty bad then, but the State Road had been cleared. What are you suggesting?”

“We have a lot of people, students and faculty, living on the North Shore: Lynn, Salem, Beverly, Barnard's Crossing. Maybe he got one of them to drive him.”

“Who?”

The rabbi shook his head. “I'm new here. I know where a few of my colleagues live, but that's about it.”

“All right. You might ask around, Sergeant. Maybe there are one or two that he used regularly.”

“Will do. How about the desk over there?” he asked, nodding at the open door of the study leading off the hall where they were standings “You want me to go over the papers in the desk?”

“No, I'll have one of the assistant D.A.s, someone with accounting experience.” Idly curious, he pulled open the wide center drawer. In the pencil ledge there were pencils and ballpoint pens, to be sure, but there was also a single key. “That looks like a safe-deposit key. And there's a number on it. In all likelihood, it will be in the same bank where he has a checking account. So you check with them, and I'll get a court order to open it. If he made a will, that's where he'd keep it.”

“He banks with the Boston Trust. At least that's where he had a checking account. I bank there myself, the main bank on Washington Street. Chances are he uses the local branch because it's just around the corner from here. I know the manager, Mike Sturgis, because he used to be at the main bank. I helped him once; a little trouble with his son. I'll bet he'd let us take a look at his safe-deposit box, if that's where it is, even without a court order, where it's a police matter, I mean.”

Ames gave a gurgly chuckle. “There's no harm in trying. It could save us a little time. It's box 552.”

Michael Sturgis, short, fat, and with a wide, balding dome glistening with the perspiration of anxiety, drew out the box and said, “I'll have to be with you and watch.”

“No problem,” said Schroeder.

Sturgis took the box to one of the cubicles adjacent to the safe-deposit room. “Oh dear,” he said, “three of us won't fit in here. Look, let's go to my office.”

He set the box down on his desk and sat down in his swivel chair as Ames and Schroeder pulled over visitors' chairs. “All right, gentlemen, go ahead.”

Ames opened the box and Schroeder took out his notebook. “Let's see, here's a little cardboard box, and it contains some jewelry. Here's a gold ring with three red stones. Rubies?”

“Probably garnets,” said Schroeder.

Ames looked to Sturgis, who shook his head. “All right, just put down three red stones. I doubt if they're worth very much even if they're rubies. And here's a ring with an opal, and another with a green stone which could be an emerald, but could be just green glass. I suspect the latter since the ring is only silver. And here's a gold tooth and a gold fountain pen point. I think that's about all the jewelry. Now, here's an insurance policy, fifty thousand dollars, and the beneficiary is Lorraine Donofrio. Didn't you say, Sergeant, that Professor Sugrue said an Italian type came to the English office and asked for Kent?”

“Yeah, but it was a man, and Lorraine is a woman's name.”

“True, but it could be her father or her husband. Ah, here's a will. Made out by Alan Spector of the firm of Spector and Dole. They'll probably come to see you in a day or two, Mr. Sturgis, as soon as they get letters testamentary. You don't have to tell them that we looked at this stuff.”

He flipped the pages of the will. “Let's see, ‘all books and other scholarly materials go to Windermere College.' What are other scholarly materials? Pencils? Pens? Eyeglasses? And the sole residual legatee is Josephine Lorraine Donofrio. You suppose it's the same one who is the beneficiary of the insurance policy? And that she doesn't always use her first name for some reason or other?”

“It could be a daughter,” said Sturgis. “Lately, women have begun copying men. I've got a couple depositors whose names are the same as their mothers', like Jane Doe, Junior.”

“Could be,” said Ames. “We'll be finding out pretty soon. Ah, here's a promissory note for a thousand dollars and it's marked ‘Paid.' It was signed by Lorraine Bixby and Antonio Donofrio. And it was made out to the Bixby Hair Salon, nineteen Blossom Street, Lynn. I'd say that clears things up a bit. Lorraine Bixby married Antonio Donofrio and then she gave birth to Josephine.”

“What's that at the bottom in the manila envelope?” asked Schroeder.

“Looks like the manuscript for a book,” said Ames. “Our Professor Kent was probably a secret author. No, it's a doctoral dissertation by an Oscar Horton, which was submitted to the University of Nevada in 1953. And the subject is ‘Simeon Suggs, Twentieth-Century Poetaster.' Never heard of him.”

“Why would old Kent keep it in his safe-deposit box?” asked Schroeder.

Ames shrugged. “Maybe he thought he ought to keep it. Do you have a safe-deposit box, Sergeant? No? Well, I have, and on the rare occasions when I go to it, I always wonder at the junk I have in it. I always think perhaps I ought to remove some of the papers I've stored, like my law diploma. I suppose if I had gone into general practice like most of my classmates, I might have had it framed to hang on my office wall. But I went into the D.A.'s office immediately after passing the bar. Actually, even before. And there's the notice that I'd passed the bar, and a clipping from the morning newspaper that gave the list of those who passed. Then there's my father's watch, a repeater.”

“What's a repeater?”

“Oh, you don't know what that is? Well, it enabled you to tell the time in the dark. You pressed a button and a little bell rang the hours, and then the minutes in five-minute intervals. I am told it's quite valuable, so I suppose it would be a temptation to one of the succession of cleaning women I've had over the years. I suppose that's why I keep it in the safe-deposit box, along with my. father's stickpins. My friend Charlie Waterhouse keeps his overshoes in his safe-deposit box.”

“That so?” Sergeant Schroeder was used to Ames's prolixity and listened with only half an ear. “So I'll go to see this Donofrio,” he said when Ames paused.

“No,” said Ames decisively. “I'll ask Hugh Lanigan to see them.”

“Why Lanigan?”

“Because they're in Lynn, which is Essex County, so it's really their baby.” His real reason was that Schroeder, being from a large city and hence used to dealing largely with professional criminals, was apt to be somewhat peremptory in his attitude toward small-town citizens, who were inclined to view the police as friends and neighbors. “Besides,” he went on, “I'd like you to concentrate on the college here. Talk to the people in the English Department. One of them might know something about Kent. Has there been anything more on the autopsy?”