The Book of Kills (28 page)

“Well, he was an historian.”

“He wanted to be one, anyway. They threw him out of the university, you know.”

“Yes. Professor Ranke told me.”

An angry expression flickered on her face and was replaced by a look of wonder. “Imagine him just confessing like that.”

“As a Catholic he’s used to confessing.”

“I suppose. I’m not a Catholic.”

“The Youngers weren’t Catholic?”

“Way back when, they were. My father had been baptized, but I guess it didn’t take.”

“Would you have had your children baptized?”

She looked at him. “We never had any.” And then suddenly she was crying. “I wanted kids. I wanted to quit work and settle down to being a housewife and mother. Women who haven’t worked or have cushy jobs say they don’t want that, but I don’t believe them. All my friends want a husband who earns the money while they raise the kids and take care of the house. I love to cook.” She sobbed as if some impossibly attractive dream had receded beyond her grasp. “He didn’t want kids.”

“Orion?”

“That’s what he said anyway.”

“And now Laverne Ranke is pregnant.”

“Who told you that?”

“She hasn’t kept it a secret.”

“But she isn’t even showing.”

“She blurted it out not long ago, when she escaped back into the library.”

“That’s her all over. What a terrible woman.”

“You might have harmed the child. Orion’s child.”

She looked at him blankly.

“Excuse me for a moment.” Roger levered himself to his feet and went to where she had hung his jacket. He took the tomahawk from the pocket and brought it back into the living room. “I found this.”

She didn’t quite recoil at the sight of the tomahawk, but she pressed back into her chair.

“It was covered with snow. If I hadn’t found it, someone else would have.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You can’t just hold it in, Marcia. Eventually, you’ll go crazy thinking about it, or explode.”

“You think I attacked Laverne?”

“How bitter it must have been to know Orion had gotten her with child when he refused to have children with his own wife.”

“Oh, she seduced him. After all, he was only a man. Even a woman without looks can be attractive in certain situations.”

“Did Orion tell you Laverne was pregnant?”

“Yes! The bastard. All that about waiting, we couldn’t afford a family, not yet. There would be plenty of time later.” She pounded her hand on the arm of her chair. “And then he stood right there, puffing up his chest like the cock of the walk, saying there was something I should know. Maybe he thought he was sterile or something. He was so
proud
. Did he expect me to congratulate him?”

“You were angry.”

“Angry. I could have killed him.”

“And you did.”

She just let it go. She was still remembering her triumphant husband telling her another woman was carrying his child.

“When did he tell you?”

“That night. Before the others got here.”

“And you sat through the meeting hating him.”

“And her. She was here too.”

“But she left with the others. And then Orion left. Did he know you were following him?”

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

“I think it wasn’t very smart of you to kill your husband, Marcia. I think you know that too. How you must have been suffering.”

“If I did, it was his fault.”

“It must be awful to be betrayed by your own husband.”

The tears came again, self-pitying tears. The tears of a woman wronged who had tried to right that wrong and only made things infinitely worse.

“Thank God you didn’t harm Laverne.”

“I hope she loses her baby.”

“Is that what you were trying to do?”

“I don’t know! I had to do something. After all she had done. Orion was bad enough. You say he betrayed me and I suppose he did, but that didn’t surprise me. Men do things like that.”

“So do women.”

“That’s different.”

He was tempted to tell her of those who had suffered for what she had done—of Carlotta’s husband still in jail, of Scott Byers taken away for questioning, of Professor Otto Ranke. But he knew that would be a blind alley.

“You must have been surprised when the body was found where it was.”

“I couldn’t believe it. Why would Russell Bacon do such a thing?”

“To get the body off his doorstep.”

“Orion nearly got to their doorbell.” She stopped. “Would I have struck him if he hadn’t tried to get help? He was going to get the Bacons on his side, they would all be against me. So I did it.”

“Killed him.”

“I struck him. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

A silence developed and Roger Knight sat looking at her. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to kill Orion. That was between her and God.

“I think I should make a phone call.”

It was a moment when she could have gotten hold of herself, denied everything, chased him from the house. But she nodded and Roger went to the phone.

MARCIA PLANT REPEATED
her story when she was taken downtown, and afterward Lieutenant Stewart told Roger that this was absolutely the last confession of the murder of Orion Plant he wished to receive. Phil could not be located to hear this latest twist in the investigation so Stewart offered Roger a ride back to the campus.

“Father Carmody is coming for dinner tonight. Why don’t you join us?”

“As one who has sampled your cooking, I accept.”

“We’ll start with cannelloni, go on to veal Parmesan with a salad of which I am justly proud, and end with spumoni.”

“Is that a wine?”

“The wine will be a Chianti.”

“My cup runneth over.”

“If you like.”

Stewart hovered in the kitchen, telling him of Professor Ranke’s reaction when he was given the news he could go. “After all, we had nothing but his say-so for everything he said.”

“The same can be said of Marcia Plant.”

“Maybe not.”

“How so?”

“The lab finally found a clear set of prints on the tomahawk. I mean the one found with the body.”

“And?”

“We shall see.”

Stewart did not act like a man who doubted the outcome of the match with Marcia’s prints.

“A case is always difficult when you have so many people with good reason to have done the deed.”

“And Bacon and Byers?”

“Byers has been released. Kreps is still deciding about Bacon.”

“For moving the body?”

“It is an offense.”

“What was your recommendation?”

“Send him home to his wife. I hope he never realizes that if she hadn’t shrieked he would very likely have kept his own mouth shut.”

“That is a lot to ask, in the circumstances.”

“Kocinski is beside himself. I hope he likes the company.”

“You’re becoming a wit.”

Stewart had been watching Roger roll the cannelloni with close attention. Now it was the turn of the veal.

“You have the stature of a chef.”

“You would be surprised how many of the great chefs are thin as a rail. Many of them have bad stomachs and can only appreciate the results of their labors vicariously.”

Father Carmody arrived, listened to the story of Marcia’s confession, and then put it aside. “I am very uneasy about Saturday’s game.”

The game would be played far off, under the sun, in hostile
territory. Of course the game would be on national television.

“I find a televised game far harder on my nerves. The camera is almost always focused on the action. In the stadium there are distractions, somehow the tension is less. Where is Philip?”

Roger had thought to call Ballast with the turn of events and had been told that Phil was performing a service for the university.

“What service?”

“I suppose I can tell you,” Ballast said. “The chancellor’s secretary is missing.”

“Oh no.”

“Nor can we locate her good friend who works in the computing center.”

Roger brought this grim news back to his guests. Father Carmody perked up.

“What is her name?”

“Trafficant. Anita Trafficant.”

“Why, I married her to a man named Harold Ivray in the Holy Cross chapel this afternoon. They were unwilling to wait until they could schedule the ceremony at Sacred Heart or the log chapel, they had a license, so of course I was happy to oblige them.”

He raised his glass and Stewart raised his and they drank a before-dinner libation to the happy couple.

“Odd middle name the groom has. Cruelle.”

“The name of the nineteenth-century serial murderer. Whelan has entered it all in
The Book of Kills
. It was one of the items Orion Plant had turned up in the course of his research.”

“Why don’t people concentrate on the great things that have happened here?” Father Carmody grumbled.

“Most do, Father. Most do. Professor Otto Ranke, for one.”

At the mention of the name, Father Carmody made a face. “And I always thought he was a sensible man.”

It was nearly seven when Phil came in, a grim expression on his face. “I’m afraid it isn’t over. There are two more people missing.”

“Anita Trafficant and Harold Ivray.”

Phil stopped in the process of unwrapping himself. “How do you know that?”

Father Carmody then told him of the wedding he had officiated at in the chapel of Holy Cross House that afternoon. Phil just stared. He was in an appropriately stunned mood to receive the story of Marcia Plant’s confession.

“Who will be next?” he asked.

“No one,” Stewart assured him, watching Roger slide the cannelloni into the oven. “The contest is closed.”

When Roger stopped by the Ranke home several days later, he found the returned professor getting the treatment his sisters must have accorded Lazarus after the first excitement of his emergence from the tomb was over. He sat in his great leather arm chair in his study, fussed over and tended to by his subservient wife. Schnapps was called for and schnapps was brought, but Freda did not join them.

“I never drink schnapps,” she said, avoiding Roger’s eyes. Otto Ranke puffed on his pipe and accorded her a deeply affectionate look. The Rankes had been through the fire and,
tried and tested, could face their remaining days in peace. Laverne had proved amenable to the suggestion that she go for what Ranke called her confinement to relatives in the East who were under the impression that she had lost her husband tragically.

“I have submitted my resignation, Roger. My last years will be devoted to my own work. I was offered an office in Flanner, but I refused. Instead, I have been given work space in the Maritain Center and shall work there and here. I must be near the sources, and where better than actually in the library?”

“And what will you work on?”

“I have three projects.”

“Tell me.”

“First, I will prepare a second and expanded edition of my book on great authors who have lectured at Notre Dame. The list has lengthened considerably since the book appeared, and I attended the lectures of all those I will add. Second, I will write a monograph on Father Petit, the heroic priest who accompanied the Indians who were displaced from here to the southwest. Many did not make it to their destination, including Father Petit.”

“The influence of Orion Plant.”

“There is more. If I live, I intend to complete the research Orion had scarcely begun that would have been his dissertation. I was reluctant at the time to give the topic to a tyro, and of course he grew bored with it.”

“A tragic young man.”

“I grieve for his wife. I have some intimation of what she is now going through.”

“Of course. With the difference that she is guilty.”

Professor Otto Ranke said nothing, just puffed on his pipe.

“You told a very convincing story.”

“It was true.”

“But, professor . . .”

Ranke held up his hand. “Did you think I could invent so many details? I did follow Laverne that night and stood in the snow outside the Plant residence. Eventually they emerged, but I noticed Plant was not in the group. I waited until he came out. I followed him.”

“Why?”

“I intended to kill him.”

Roger looked at his old friend, stupefied.

“To my chagrin, his wife then came out of the house and went after him. I crept along in pursuit, awaiting my opportunity. That is why I was a witness to what actually happened. As I watched. I confess I felt a deep satisfaction, not horror. She was doing what I feared Laverne might do. He had put my daughter in a most embarrassing condition, and then was through with her. A woman scorned . . .”

But the scorned woman who had struck Orion Plant was his wife.

“Then why did you confess?”

“In expiation for the ignoble way I felt when I watched a man killed. And to preserve a wife from the consequences of her deed.”

The fire crackled, Otto Ranke lifted his glass of schnapps. Roger lifted the glass that Freda had insisted on pouring for him and made as if to drink. The aroma of the drink cleared his nasal passages.

“You could be called as a witness in the trial.”

“Pray God it will not come to that.” He looked at Roger.
“Only two persons know that I was essentially telling the truth when I confessed. I will willingly confess no more.”

After a long silence, Roger remembered an old school boy’s gesture. He locked his lips and threw away the key.