A Rare Murder In Princeton (4 page)

Nat Ledbetter did not sense, or just ignored, her lack of enthusiasm. “Now for the papers,” he said cheerfully. McLeod could do nothing but acquiesce.

Nat led her back out to the receptionist. “Molly will get you signed in and show you how to get started.” It seemed that Nat was washing his hands of her. Molly asked McLeod to sign the daily register and gave her a form to fill out for permanent registration. Then she showed McLeod how to stow her purse and everything else she had brought with her in one of the lockers—not ugly metal lockers, but lockers with wooden doors that measured up to the generally lofty tone of everything in Rare Books and Special Collections.

“You can only take loose pieces of paper and a pencil with you,” said Molly. “And the key to your locker.” Then she led McLeod back to the John Foster Dulles Reading Room, an octagonal space with tall windows and long tables for researchers. McLeod filled out a call slip for the first box in the van Dyke collection and gave it to the keeper of the Reading Room, who in turn gave it to a page, who quickly disappeared.

MCLEOD WAS SO overwhelmed by the masses of boring papers in the first van Dyke box—sermons written by Henry’s father—that she soon gave up and left the Reading Room and Rare Books and Special Collections. However, she was sufficiently curious that she went to the library stacks and found a copy of “The Other Wise Man” and a book that van Dyke’s son, Tertius, had written about his father, and checked them both out.

Outside, she buttoned up her coat, pulled her hat down over her ears, and trudged home to Edgehill Street. Checking telephone messages, she found one from George saying that he would be home that evening and asking if she would like to go out to dinner.

She called him back. “It will be nice to see you for a change,” she said.

“Likewise,” George said. “I had no idea that I’d have so little time when you were here—”

“Never mind,” said McLeod. “And we don’t have to go out. I’ll be glad to cook supper.”

“Excellent,” said George. “Believe me, I’d love not to go out. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. What time will you be home?”

“About seven, with any luck,” said George.

McLeod hung up and thought about what to cook, decided on a pork chop and sweet potato casserole, made a shopping list, put her heavy coat and hat and gloves back on, and set out for the grocery store.

She was peeling the sweet potatoes—the most tedious job involved in assembling the very easy pork chop casserole —when the doorbell rang.

A very old, dark-skinned man stood at the door, holding his hat in his hands in spite of the cold. He smiled a dazzling smile at McLeod while she looked at him inquiringly.

“You’re the new owner?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m a houseguest.”

“I used to work for Mrs. Murray,” he said. He shivered and put his knitted cap back on. “I just wondered if the new people needed any help.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Yard work—I’m good with plants—and I’m a handyman, too. I was always fixing things for Mrs. Murray, building shelves and things like that.”

He sounded like a home owner’s dream to McLeod. Although it did occur to her that he might be Jill Murray’s murderer, it was cold and he was old. She took pity on him and said, “Come in.”

She got his name—Dante Immordino—and his phone number and told him that George Bridges was the new owner. “It’s so sad that Mrs. Murray was murdered.”

“It was sad,
molto triste,
” he said. “She was a very nice lady. Good to work for.”

“You remember her well after all those years,” McLeod said.

“I’ll never forget Mrs. Murray. She was a great lady.”

BY THE TIME George got home at seven twenty-five she had made cheese straws and a salad. The casserole was in the oven and a bottle of wine was open.

“Good Lord, the house smells great!” George said when he found McLeod fussing with a newly laid fire in the parlor. “Here, let me do that.” He took the tongs from her.

“Why is it that no man on earth can stand to let a woman handle a wood fire?” asked McLeod.

“Some gender roles are immutable,” said George firmly.

While they sipped drinks and munched on cheese straws (“I haven’t had homemade cheese straws since my mother died,” George said), McLeod told him about Dante Immordino. “He used to work for Jill Murray and he sounds like just what you need to help with the yard—if it ever gets warm enough to work in the yard.”

“I’ll keep him in mind. Do you know how to get in touch with him?”

“He lives with his daughter. He left his telephone number. He said that he loves this house. The people that bought it after Jill Murray died didn’t use him and they let the yard go to rack and ruin. He said he missed working here.”

“He sounds great,” George said.

 

THEY ATE DINNER on small tables beside the fire, and George loved the pork chop casserole.

“It couldn’t be easier,” said McLeod.

“You always say that,” said George.

“But everything I cook nowadays is easy,” said McLeod. She told him about her visit to Rare Books. “There sure are a lot of van Dyke papers,” she said.

In turn, George told her a little about a crisis on campus involving the Alumni Office. Then they cleaned up the kitchen and climbed the stairs somewhat wearily and went to their bedrooms. It was still early, and after McLeod was in bed, she opened the biography of Henry van Dyke. It was hagiography—Tertius van Dyke had adored his father —and slow going, but she persevered. Then she got interested in what she was reading and began skipping the worshipful parts to get a quick picture of Henry’s life. By the time she slammed the book shut at one o’ clock in the morning, she was hooked.

When she got up late the next morning, she was sorry—but not surprised—to find that George had already left for work. She would have liked to tell him what she had found out about Henry van Dyke. Since she had no class and no student conferences scheduled that day, she decided to stay home and finish reading the book.

Then it began to snow.

After she had finished breakfast and
The New York Times,
she went upstairs and settled down with her book, glancing from the page often to look out the window at the falling snow.

George called that afternoon to say that the university was closing early because of the heavy snow and that he would go to the grocery store on his way home from work. What would she like for supper?

“I eat anything,” said McLeod. “You know that.”

“All right, I’ll use my own judgment.”

George arrived with bags of groceries. “I decided to stock up,” he said. “It’s getting messy out there. Watch me as I put the stuff away—then you’ll know what all we’ve got in the larder.”

“We’ve got a lot,” she said sometime later, after George had put chicken in the refrigerator and steak and a roast in the freezer, and left quahogs on the counter to make clam chowder for supper.

“And I thought we’d have hamburgers with the chowder,” said George.

“Chowder sounds divine, but no hamburger for me. Chowder will be plenty—I haven’t been out of the house all day. I don’t want to gain any more weight. And all this food—if you’re not home more than you have been, it’ll never get eaten.”

“As you like,” said George loftily. “I’ll build a decent fire before I make the chowder. Thank God I bought lots of wood last fall.”

“I have to say I’ve gotten interested in old van Dyke,” she said as they ate bowls of chowder before the fire in the living room.

“Really?”

“Yes. You know he was a Presbyterian preacher—he was at Brick Church in New York and had all sorts of famous parishioners, including General Ulysses Grant. His sermons were so popular that the New York newspapers reported on them and hordes of people came to hear him—they couldn’t all get in the church and lined up outside on the sidewalk. He tried to visit all his parishioners twice a year. He wrote books, too.”

“What kind of books?” asked George.

“Every kind. He wrote about religion and he wrote about art. He wrote books about fly-fishing—he was named one of the ten outstanding outdoorsmen of the United States one year, along with Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote a book about Tennyson—he had fallen in love with Tennyson’s poetry when he was thirteen years old—and Tennyson himself liked his book so much that he invited van Dyke to visit him in England. While van Dyke was there, the Tennysons had him say grace at meals and conduct the family morning prayers.”

“It was a different age, wasn’t it?” said George. “Well, I guess he was an interesting old guy. Maybe Nat was on to something good. He sometimes is. More chowder?”

“Yes, please. It’s very good. How do you make it?”

George got up and headed back to the kitchen with their bowls. When he got back, he said, “How do I make it? I’m not one of those purists—they won’t use anything but potatoes and clams and salt pork. I use onions and thyme and bay leaf and parsley.”

“And cream,” said McLeod.

“And cream,” agreed George. “The purists use milk and a little butter. People in New England can get quite upset when they talk about how to make chowder.”

“Cream’s good,” said McLeod, gobbling up her second bowl.

“Cream’s good,” agreed George.

“I didn’t finish telling you about van Dyke,” she said, when she had finished her second bowl of chowder and refused a third.

“Go ahead,” said George, who was now concentrating on a large juicy hamburger.

“Some friends of his were so impressed with his knowledge of literature that they raised the money to endow a chair for him at Princeton and he taught English there for twenty years—students stood in line to register for his classes. Members of his church put up the money for him to buy a big house at the corner of Bayard Lane and what I think is Paul Robeson Place. He named the house Avalon.”

“The street was called Avalon when I came here,” said George. “They changed it to Paul Robeson Place not too long ago.”

“Oh, I see,” said McLeod. “Later Woodrow Wilson named van Dyke ambassador to the Netherlands, and van Dyke was so upset by the United States’ neutrality during World War I that he resigned and went home to urge America’s entry into the war.”

“Do you think you might do a book about him?”

“No, I don’t think so. Who cares about him today? I’ve had my stroke of luck—a publisher was interested enough in a book about Elijah P. Lovejoy to give me an advance. I’m afraid nobody cares about van Dyke. But I’ll go back and look at the van Dyke papers and see what’s there—now that I know more about the man, I feel interested after all. And I reread ‘The Other Wise Man.’ ”

“How was it?”

“Oh, it’s dreadfully overwritten, but it’s still a great Christmas story. It’s about a fourth wise man who was supposed to start out with the other three to worship the Christ child, but he keeps getting delayed because people ask him for help. He never fails to lend a hand and spends all his money on other people and only gets to Jerusalem as Jesus is being crucified. But it illustrates van Dyke’s big point: Helping other people is more important than worship.”

“Can’t fault that,” said George. “For dessert, I bought some more fruit tarts. Coffee?”

“I’d love decaf,” said McLeod.

While the coffee was brewing, George went out on the little front porch to look at the snow. “I think I’ll call your new friend—what’s his name—Dante?—tomorrow to see if I can get him to help me shovel the snow,” he said when he came in. “It’s really coming down.”

After dinner they settled down companionably to watch television. McLeod knitted, and George worked on a crossword puzzle, occasionally taking time off to compliment her on the progress she was making on his sweater. It was the most leisurely evening they had had.