Irish Gilt (19 page)

“It's a sad day when one alumnus is accused of murdering another.”

“You mean when one roommate is accused of murdering another.”

“That sounds like a mitigating circumstance.”

“They were roommates?”

“In Zahm.”

“Isn't that hall ten thousand years old?”

Debbie paused to refill water glasses. Cosmo said he wanted another drink.

“I thought you were the designated driver.”

“The National League doesn't accept that rule. Pitchers hit.”

Debbie looked ready to hit him with the water pitcher. “Another Bloody Mary?”

“Another round.”

“On you?”

“Of course on me. I am a retired professor in possession of limitless funds. Buy your own drink.”

“I would never order or pay for a drink called a Bloody Mary. It is sheer anti-Catholic bigotry.”

“I checked my old grade books. I never had either of them in class.”

“Are you proposing that as an alibi?”

“Elsewhere.”

“What?”

“That's what alibi means.”

“You always were a pedant.”

“Does knowing the meaning of Latin words make one a pedant?”

“Only when one parades his knowledge.”

“Parading knowledge. What an odd phrase.”

The new round of drinks arrived, and arthritic hands closed around glasses.

“How did the one roommate murder the other?”

“By pulling a plastic bag over his head and smothering him.”

“Ingenious.”

“What kind of a plastic bag?”

“The kind shirts come from the laundry in.”

“Not strong enough. It would have torn.”

“Tell that to the dead man.”

“Have you kept all your old grade books?”

“Of course.”

“Why? To blackmail former students?”

“I intend to donate them to the archives.”

“They can rest there with the grade books of Father Zahm.”

“For ten thousand years.”

An overweight matron passed their table, enveloped in a cloud of perfume.

“This place is getting to smell like a brothel.”

“I defer to your experience of such places.”

“You should marry again.”

“And honeymoon at Viagra Falls?”

While this was being explained, the waiter brought their separate bills. The Old Bastards bent over them with the eagerness of accountants.

9

Roger could not, of course, keep from Phil what he had learned from Clare Healy. The fact that Boris Henry had been dressed and waiting for Clare in the lobby of the Morris Inn when she arrived from Chicago, added to the discovery of the missing contents of Kittock's pockets in his briefcase, tightened the noose around Boris's neck. The Knight brothers were sitting in on the session, largely because Boris Henry regarded them as allies. He explained to his lawyer that he had engaged Phil to find the missing Zahm diary. Then Jimmy asked Boris where he was during the hours when Xavier Kittock was murdered.

“You don't have to discuss this,” Foster said. The Kansas City lawyer gave no sign of his hurried journey to Boris Henry's side. That was where he sat, literally, in the brightly lit interrogation room.

“Why wouldn't I discuss it? I was in the Morris Inn.”

“In your room.”

“What time are we talking of?”

“I've been told you were seen in the lobby in the wee hours of the morning, dressed.”

“It's not likely I'd go down there in my pajamas.”

“The time of death has been placed around midnight or slightly after.”

“Okay. You say you were told I was in the lobby of the inn.”

“At two.”

“Before that I was in my room.”

Roger said, “Why did you go down to the lobby?”

“Clare called from Chicago when she started out in the rental car.”

“What time was that?”

“Eleven, eleven-thirty. She let me know she was leaving Chicago. I suppose it was after one when I dressed and went down to meet her when she arrived.”

“You never left the inn?”

Boris shifted in his chair. “I was there when she arrived.”

“And then?”

Boris looked at his lawyer, who sighed. “The question seems a little prurient. What Mr. Henry did after the time that interests you should be of no interest to you.”

“The night man at the Jamison Inn says you showed up there after two and got the key to Kittock's room. He thought you were Kittock.”

The lawyer sat forward, but Boris seemed undisturbed by the remark. “Roger can tell you why. Letters were missing from the archives. Letters of Father Zahm's. Well, I found them in Kittock's room, as I had thought I would. After his death, I thought there was no point in telling Greg Walsh who had taken them.”

“You found the letters there?” Roger asked.

“That's right.”

“Clare Healy can corroborate this, I suppose.”

“For God's sake, leave her out of this.”

This little outburst of gallantry brought an approving nod from Boris's lawyer.

“Now, about the plastic bag full of Kittock's effects that we found in your briefcase.”

“What did you do, put it there before you asked me to get my briefcase? You must have noticed it in the car.”

Foster shook his head slightly. Accusing the police was seldom a good tactic. “Doubtless you have looked for fingerprints on that bag or other indications that my client had handled it.”

Jimmy just smiled. The fact was that there were none of Boris Henry's fingerprints at all on the bag. That Paul Lohman's and Clare Healy's had been found was adequately explained.

“I gather you drew a blank,” Foster said.

“It doesn't matter one way or the other.”

“Doesn't it? Lieutenant, your case against my client is flimsy in the extreme. You know he was in the Morris Inn when the crime was committed.”

“I know he was sitting dressed in the lobby several hours afterward.”

“Hardly an indictable offense. In any case, he has explained his presence. As for the slain man's effects, anyone might have put them into the briefcase.”

“Why?”

“Why indeed? It seems to me that you have your work cut out for you. I must ask that you release my client.”

Jacuzzi, the prosecutor, did not agree. “Look, when he went to the Jamison Inn and gained admission to Kittock's room, he knew the man wouldn't be there. And at that hour of the night? Come on. I'm going to arraign him.”

When he did, Foster tried manfully to suppress his feeling that his client had fallen afoul of an inept small-town constabulary. Nonetheless, Boris Henry was bound over for trial. Bail was refused.

*   *   *

That evening the Knight brothers sat in their apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Greg Walsh. Jimmy understandably had the air of a man who had brought an investigation to a successful close. He and Phil reviewed the events leading up to Kittock's death much as had been done earlier during the interrogation of Boris Henry downtown. In the meantime, there had been added to the case against him that the shirts in his room were folded and in plastic bags of the kind that had been used to kill Kittock. One such bag was found in the wastebasket; then again, Henry changed shirts several times during the day.

“I've never seen Jacuzzi more confident,” Jimmy said.

The review might have continued, but the game Jimmy had come to watch with Phil began, so they gave the television set their undivided attention. Roger and Greg withdrew to the study.

“In any case, the missing Zahm letters were returned,” Greg said.

“Do you think Kittock took them?”

Greg thought about it. “He had been reading them in the archives. I suppose he thought it a mere peccadillo to borrow them so he could continue reading them in his room.”

“I wonder where the Zahm diary is,” Roger murmured.

Greg seemed surprisingly indifferent to the question, and Roger asked him why.

“It would not have ended up in the archives, Roger. If Henry has his way, there will be a Zahm Center. Our holdings will be raided, and, of course, the diary would go there.”

“But now?”

“The administration has expressed deep interest in the idea.”

“I doubt that there will be a Zahm Center now. I think the archives will get the diary.”

“It is perhaps a fanciful thought, Roger, but Boris Henry seems capable of faking the theft in order to heighten interest in the diary and indirectly the center. When it reappeared, it would seem the very Q.E.D. for founding the center.”

Roger smiled. “As you say, fanciful.”

“But not impossible.”

“The realm of possible things is a very commodious one, Greg.”

*   *   *

It was the crack of dawn when Roger woke Phil the following morning. His brother emerged from sleep with difficulty, and the ravages of the previous night were visible in his unfocused and bewildered expression.

“What is it, Roger?”

“I've had an idea.”

Phil fell back onto his pillow and groaned.

“It may very well be a wild idea, but until that is shown, I know I cannot rid myself of it. It has kept me awake.”

When Roger explained what had been keeping him awake, Phil again made an exasperated sound, but then he seemed to remember how fruitful Roger's wild ideas had often proved in the past. Even so, he had reservations. “I can't call him at this ungodly hour, Roger.”

“You could leave a message if he doesn't answer.”

Phil squinted at the digital clock beside his bed. Annoyance gave way to a small, not quite evil smile. “Hand me the phone.”

10

Sorin's is the main dining room in the Morris Inn, named in honor of the founder of Notre Dame. On its walls, murals depict different historical periods of the university. Its large windows look out on an expanse of lawn and beyond to one of the new residences built on the erstwhile back nine of the Burke golf course. Roger Knight's luncheon party was placed at a large round table situated in a corner on the window side of the restaurant. The passage of the Hunneker Professor of Catholic Studies through the room caused diners to pause in their eating, conversations to stop, and expressions to register surprise and then awe. Behind Roger trailed his guests.

At the table, Roger carefully squeezed himself into his chair, while David Nobile and his daughter Rebecca, Paul Lohman, and Clare Hearly arranged themselves before him. The stated occasion for the luncheon was the arrival via Federal Express of the rare Lope de Vega volume David Nobile had purchased with Clare's aid. When they got settled, the precious book was produced and passed reverently around the circle. Roger ordered wine for his guests and when it was poured proposed a toast, his own being offered in ice water. This was done with exclamations of congratulation to Nobile.

“Now, David,” Roger said, “I know you want to tell us all about your new acquisition, but the mere fact of it will have to suffice for our celebration.”

“I wish I could feel more in the mood,” Paul Lohman said.

“Ah, poor Boris,” Roger said.

“It is uncanny how things have accumulated against him.”

“He has an excellent lawyer.”

“Do you think he will be acquitted?” Clare asked eagerly.

“His lawyer has every confidence.”

“That is mock bravado, I fear,” said David Nobile.

“If he is innocent,” Rebecca said, “the search will have to go on for the one who did it.”

“Exactly,” Roger said. “A detective's work is never done.”

“Do you yourself think he will get off?” Paul Lohman asked.

“I suppose it is more a hope.”

“But if he is guilty?” David Nobile seemed to have reminded himself that they were talking about the death of his brother-in-law.

Rebecca said to Roger, “I still can't believe that you're a private investigator.”

“It does strain credulity.”

Paul Lohman persisted. “But hope has to have a basis, Roger.”

Roger arranged his napkin over the expanse of his stomach and looked around the table. “Very well, let us discuss the matter
ex professo
and then put it behind us in deference to our reason for being here. What has happened and what do we know?”

Roger's narrative gift enabled him to give a capsule version of events that covered the main points, which he enumerated.

“First, there is the arrival on campus of Xavier Kittock to do research on Father Zahm in the archives. This interest was prompted by what Boris Henry had told him was contained in Father Zahm's diary, the actual location of the legendary El Dorado. Kittock was already bitten by the gold bug, having invested in and gone on an unsuccessful expedition to locate sunken Spanish gold off the coast of South America. His work in the archives seems clearly to have been aimed at finding out if there might be a clue there to what Zahm had put in his diary.”

“Xavier had only Boris's word for what was in the diary,” Clare said.

“That was sufficient for him to act on. Why would he doubt his old roommate?”

“Even if he were spoofing, the diary would still be invaluable,” Paul Lohman said.

“And you think that its value as a rare book rather than the revelation of the site of El Dorado explains its theft?”

“I know I wouldn't mind having it,” David Nobile said.

“Daddy!”

“Oh, I know it falls outside my central interest.”

“That isn't what I meant.”

“Second,” Roger continued, “Boris arrives on campus and expresses displeasure when he learns what Kittock has been up to. His first reaction is to get Kittock banned from the archives by making it look as if he were purloining Zahm's letters. To that end, he himself takes the letters and puts them in Kittock's room.”