A Rare Murder In Princeton (19 page)

“I’ll certainly go look at them.”

“Don’t be cross with me,” said McLeod. “If I hadn’t kept the box of dresses, Dante would have taken it to the dump with the other cartons.”

“You are correct,” George said. “You did the right thing. Thank you.”

He was clearly still miffed, thought McLeod as she poured herself a third glass of wine. She would regret it later, she thought, when she woke up at three o’clock in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. But she needed it now.

THE NEXT MORNING, Tuesday, McLeod was happy to see that it had not snowed heavily—not even an inch. Life in Princeton could go on. She would get dressed and go to Rare Books and finish that box of van Dyke papers. Surely the police were through with it.

First her office, though, to check the mail and messages. She hung up her coat on the rack downstairs and went in the Humanities Council Office. Frieda had a quotation ready: “ ‘God sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.’ ”

“He doesn’t send snow in winter
everywhere,
” said McLeod. “It never snows in Tallahassee. I can’t get used to it up here.”

It sounded like I was complaining, she thought as she climbed the stairs. In her alcove, she laid her mail on the desk and looked around. Something was out of whack, she thought. What was it? She looked around and saw that someone had forced open the drawers on her file cabinet. She pulled open a desk drawer and immediately felt that the intruder had also riffled through her desk. What was going on? First the house was burgled, and now her office. “I’m glad I took that book and those other things over to Rare Books,” she said to herself. “Thank heavens.”

She went back downstairs and reported the damage to Frieda. Frieda’s eyes widened and her mouth opened. “ ‘O, it’s broken the lock and splintered the door . . . Their boots are heavy on the floor.’ Remember the Auden lines I quoted to you last week? Now it’s happened.”

“Hadn’t we better report it to Public Safety?” asked McLeod.

“Of course, I’ll do that now,” said Frieda. “Was anything stolen?”

“I don’t think so,” said McLeod. “I don’t keep anything valuable up there.” At least, not anymore, she thought.

“No, it’s not a good place for safekeeping,” said Frieda. She punched a number on her phone.

McLeod waited around to talk to the two proctors from Public Safety. She took them up to her cubicle. “Vandalism,” said one of them when she told them nothing had been taken. They went through the whole building looking for other signs of breaking and entering and found none.

McLeod went downstairs with them and they stopped in the Humanities Council Office. Everyone agreed that Joseph Henry House was pretty easy to break into.

“And those cubicles upstairs are open to the world,” said one of the proctors.

“Frieda complains that the last person out doesn’t always lock the doors,” said McLeod.

“Isn’t Public Safety supposed to check the doors at night?” asked Frieda.

“We do, but a burglar could come in after everyone left, go through those cubicles upstairs, and leave before we checked the doors,” said the proctor. “We’ll do what we can,” he said, and the two men left.

Frieda promised she would call somebody about repairing the locks on McLeod’s file drawers.

MCLEOD FINALLY GOT to Rare Books. As she was signing in, Nick Perry was leaving. He stopped to greet her and asked her if he could come by Edgehill Street later and talk to her. “About seven?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

Nick made sure he had the right address and left. McLeod was delighted he was coming. Maybe she could tell George that she, too, had a date.

On her way into the Reading Room, she stopped in Natty’s office.

“Good morning, dear girl,” he said, getting up.

“Good morning,” she replied. “Sit back down, Natty. I’m not going to stay.”

Natty shook his head and remained standing, so McLeod slid into a chair. Natty was so old-fashioned—he wouldn’t sit down while she was standing. It was kind of nice, really. “Did you find out anything yet about the treasure?”

“Buster’s working on it like a bull dog,” said Natty. He paused portentously. “You know, George came by this morning to have a look at it.”

“Did he take it away?”

“No, no, it’s all still here.”

“Oh, Natty, I forgot to tell him about it until last night. Isn’t that awful? He was furious. But I just bumbled along, doing first one thing and then another and living one day, one half-day, at a time.”

“Not to worry,” said Natty. “George will understand eventually, if he doesn’t already.”

“Oh, my office was burgled,” she said. “I’m very glad I got that book and the other things over here to you yesterday, or they might have been stolen.”

“And so you should be,” said Natty. “Buster and I are very glad you did. Buster has high hopes that dear George will give them to Princeton.”

“I hope that nothing I did will keep that from happening,” said McLeod.

“No, no, dear lady. I’m sure everything you did was for the best.”

 

WHEN SHE FINALLY got to the Reading Room, McLeod saw that Celestine Swallow, the old lady—she corrected her thought to “older woman”—who had been researching flower painters before the murder, was back. She was in the work area outside the Reading Room and she was somewhat agitated, twisting a pencil in her hand.

McLeod greeted her and asked if there was anything wrong.

“It’s rather troubling,” said Miss Swallow. “I put in a call slip for it yesterday. And they still can’t find it.”

“What is it that they can’t find?” asked McLeod.

“Oh, it’s the plates from the
Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala
—Augusta Withers illustrated it. In fact, she painted the originals that the lithographs are based on. I really want to see them.”

“They will turn up, won’t they?” asked McLeod.

“I certainly hope so,” said Miss Swallow.

As often happened when conversation was taking place outside her office, Fanny Mobley appeared and asked crossly what the problem was.

When Miss Swallow explained about the missing plates from
Orchidaceae,
Fanny shook her head despairingly and said, “
They
do things like that,” implying, McLeod deduced, that Rare Books lost things but manuscripts never did. Then she went back in her office and slammed the door.

McLeod settled down with a new box that held clips of stories about van Dyke from various publications over the years. She learned that van Dyke was small but “splendidly erect,” and carried a gold-headed cane. He wore white suits before Mark Twain made them famous and smoked tiny cigars. His house in Princeton, built in 1750, had been across the street from Grover Cleveland’s. Heads of caribou and moose that van Dyke had shot adorned the walls of the entrance hall. He kept three horses and liked to drive a carriage and a sleigh.

“He would turn down a lecture that would pay $1,000 (a huge sum in his lifetime) and then speak for nothing to benefit an orphanage,” said one writer.

McLeod was glad enough to leave all this behind when Miss Swallow suggested quietly that they go get some lunch. They settled down in Chancellor Green with wraps and tea while Miss Swallow mourned for Augusta Withers’s illustrations in the
Orchidaceae.
“The book was published in 1837,” she said. “But those botanical books often got ripped apart so people could have the flower pictures for framing. Princeton has many of these loose prints, but they don’t catalog them. Now they say they don’t own any pages from the
Orchidaceae,
but I know they do. They had some of them in an exhibition several years ago. That exhibition was one thing that got me interested in this project. I wrote her name down. I know they’re supposed to be here. It’s very frustrating.”

“I can imagine,” said McLeod.

“The world is falling apart,” said Miss Swallow.

McLeod could only agree. She told her about her vandalized office. “And the funny thing is that the house where I live was burgled last week.”

“That’s very strange,” said Miss Swallow. “But maybe people will call it the burglar house now, instead of the murder house.”

“Maybe so,” said McLeod, who now called it the Murder House in capital letters to herself. “At least nothing was taken at either place,” she added.

“That’s the good news,” said Miss Swallow, “but I’m sure you still feel violated.”

“I do,” said McLeod. She liked Miss Swallow. Perhaps she could be a Miss Marple or Miss Silver, an older woman who was a whiz at solving mysteries. “Well, think about it,” she urged Miss Swallow. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”

“I don’t know how I could figure out anything,” said Miss Swallow. “I can’t figure out what happened to those orchid plates.”

“Is there anything else you can be working on?” asked McLeod.

“Oh, yes. I’ve filled out call slips for several things,” said Miss Swallow.

“Rare Books is a nice place to do research, isn’t it?” said McLeod.

“Very nice,” said Miss Swallow. “The Reading Room is very attractive and everyone is extremely nice.” She paused, and then added, “Miss Mobley seems to be rather odd.”

“She is indeed,” said McLeod. “Have you noticed how she’s sweet one minute and cross the next?”

“Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.”

“It seems to me that she’s always mean as a witch in the morning and cheerful and helpful in the afternoon. Do you suppose that’s a form of bipolar disorder?”

“Is that the pattern? Cross before noon, not cross after lunch? I don’t think that’s bipolar.”

“What then?” asked McLeod.

Miss Swallow finished her wrap, wiped her mouth daintily with the paper napkin, and said, “Hmmmm.”

McLeod looked at her, waiting.

“You know what it could be?” asked Miss Swallow.

“What?” McLeod said impatiently. Get on with it, she thought.

“I tell you what—I think it just might be alcohol.”

“Alcohol!”

“She may have a drinking problem,” said Miss Swallow. “She might have a hangover in the morning, and until it wears off, she’s miserable.”

“That fits! That fits!” said McLeod. “I bet she starts drinking at lunch—and cheers up. It’s not just that the hangover wears off. I sat down at the table with her here the other day when she was eating lunch and she drank from a thermos she brought from home. She brings liquor from home in that thermos and by afternoon she’s cheered up.”

“That’s the pattern all right.”

“It certainly seems possible, but how did you think of alcohol?”

“I come from a family of alcoholics,” said Miss Swallow. “They didn’t
swallow
alcohol, to make a bad pun, they swilled it. My grandfather, my father, my brother. They all died of cirrhosis of the liver and my mother died of grief over it. I vowed I’d never touch a drop and I don’t. In a way, I wish I did. I know I miss a lot, but I’m afraid to let a whisper of whiskey pass my lips.”

“You are very strong, Miss Swallow. And very wise. I love alcohol but you’re not missing all that much, believe me.”

“Thank you.” She seemed somewhat embarrassed by her revelations, bending down to get her purse beside her chair and then standing up. “I guess I’d better get back to see if they’ve made any progress on Augusta Withers,” she said.

McLeod absently told her goodbye and stayed on with another cup of tea. She wanted to reflect on this theory about Fanny. It made sense, but what did it mean? Did it have anything to do with the murder? Had Philip Sheridan realized what was going on and threatened to report Fanny for drinking on the job? Would that have given Fanny a motive for murder?