Sham Rock (4 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Sham Rock
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ROGER TOLD PHIL THAT FATHER CARMODY would be stopping by, accompanied by a David Williams.
“An alumnus?”
“Class of 1989.”
“It has to be the same one.”
“Father Carmody described him as a benefactor of the university. He's given the money to put up the building that will rob me of my parking place.”
Roger, of course, had told Phil about the contents of the box Brother Joachim had sent to the archives and Greg had left with Roger, seemingly glad to get it out of his hands. It hadn't elicited much interest from Phil, even after he read the story and the final typed page.
“Did you check to see if the marker is there, Roger?”
“I drove along the road below Old College. There is a large rock where Joachim said there would be.”
“All you have to do is dig up the body,” Phil said wryly.
“Is that your suggestion?”
“No. Forget about it, Roger. Father Carmody would say the same.”
“He already has.”
 
 
Father Carmody didn't knock or ring the bell but came right in, as befitted a close friend. The man with him bore a prosperous look and seemed unsure why he was being brought to see the Knights.
“I have heard of you,” he said to Roger, trying not to show surprise at Roger's bulk. “My son is in your class.”
“Jay? Of course.” Roger stepped back and squinted. “I see the resemblance.”
Phil joined them, then got beer for himself and Williams. Roger and Father Carmody had coffee.
“This is left over from breakfast, Father.”
“I like aged coffee.”
“Jay says he has never taken a class like yours, Professor.”
“That has the makings of an insult. You should have brought him along.”
“I haven't seen him yet. I went first to Father Carmody. I am here to explain that I will have to postpone my promised gift to the university. The financial mess has given me a little trouble.”
“I don't understand what is happening,” Roger said.
Williams smiled sadly. “Who does?”
Phil said, “I have everything in government bonds and municipals.”
“Lucky man. If you'd been my client I would have argued against that.”
“I don't want to have to think about money.”
Father Carmody, having tasted his coffee, lit a cigarette.
Williams was surprised. “I thought this was a smoke-free campus.”
“It is, it is. I just like to contribute something for it to be free of. We can smoke in Holy Cross House, you know. The only smoke-free zone I'm interested in is in the other world.”
The sound of the game on in the next room caught Williams's attention, and he and Phil drifted in there. Roger took Father Carmody into his study.
“This isn't the ideal way to show you this stuff. The stuff that was sent to the archives by Brother Joachim.” Roger took an envelope from the box and handed it to Father Carmody.
“What's this?”
“What I told you about on the phone.”
Father Carmody read it, indifferently at first and then with growing concern. When he had finished, he folded it carefully and returned it to the envelope. He didn't look at Roger. “What are you going to do about that?”
“That is my question to you.”
Father Carmody thought. Whatever moral drama was going on in his mind, Roger knew that any judgment would be made according to its possible effect on Notre Dame. Father Carmody might be critical of this or that in the current administration's doings, but all that was on the surface, something that would pass away, while Notre Dame endured forever.
“Seal it and put it back in the archives.”
Roger nodded. It was the answer he had expected, and it wasn't just self-serving. What could possibly arise out of a Trappist monk's fictional claim of responsibility for a fellow student who disappeared twenty years ago?
“This is the other letter.”
He handed it to the priest, who glanced at the envelope. “David Williams.”
“They seem to have been classmates.”
“They were close friends. They were roommates.”
Father Carmody tapped his forehead with the envelope. “Do you think he would repeat that suggestion of murder in this?”
“There's only one way to find out.”
“If he does, I will regret giving Dave this letter.”
 
 
“I have a letter for you,” Father Carmody said brightly when they joined Phil and David Williams.
“For me?” Williams took the letter and looked at his name written on it.
“Who's it from?”
“Pat Pelligrino.”
“But he's a monk.”
“You don't have to read it now.”
“Of course I'll read it now.” Moments went by, though, before he opened the envelope. Two official sheets, looking like a legal document. Williams was stunned when he looked up. “He's made me his heir.”
It was indeed a legal document, dated some twelve years before. Pelligrino had inherited an uncle's estate and, before entering the monastery, had made out this will, bequeathing everything to David Williams, effective immediately.
“He must have been very sure he had a vocation,” Father Carmody said.
“I can't accept this!” Williams said in a strained voice.
“How much would it amount to?”
“I don't care.”
“Why don't you evaluate what the uncle had before you decide.”
“I have decided.”
“Dave, all you can do is give it away yourself now. You'd want to know what you're giving away, wouldn't you?”
“Notre Dame can have it.”
“It may amount to little.”
“How did you get the letter, Father?”
“He knew the address of the university, Dave.”
Suggesting that Brother Joachim would have sent the letter directly to David Williams if he knew his address. Perhaps he would have. Father Carmody would have said that he had no control over what others thought his statements implied.
 
 
The bequest amounted to a lot. Arturo Pelligrino, Patrick's uncle, had eschewed brokers and bought in such a conservative way that his holdings were largely unaffected by the current economic situation.
Then there was the gold.
There were those who succumbed to the blandishments of dealers in precious metals, who touted the stability of those metals against currencies. Arturo had succumbed; he had bought half a million dollars' worth of gold, whose current value was many times that.
There seemed no need to tell Williams that his benefactor had all but accused him of the murder of their common friend, Timothy Quinn.
SARAH WIGGINS LIKED THE COMPANY in Brownson, but the truth was that her office there was an outward sign of her secondary status. A not unimportant aspect of her hope to be given a tenured position would be a move to an office in Decio, where most of the members of her department were, making her a full-fledged member at last. For all that, it was lovely to have the chance of visiting with Roger Knight and the old curmudgeon Chadwick. They seemed always to be in their offices, particularly Chadwick, who was emeritus and, in his phrase, hors de combat.
“My dear, it is good to have the losing battles all behind one,” Chadwick said, putting a match to his pipe. The tobacco smelled so good at first, but that didn't last, maybe because newly lit tobacco had to compete with all the pipefuls of the past whose ghosts haunted Chadwick's office.
“When did you join the faculty?”
“In 1955.” His eyes were on her when he said it. “Before your parents were born, I suppose.”
Good Lord. Sarah wouldn't have been more surprised if Chadwick had said he had been a contemporary of Father Sorin, the founder of Notre Dame. To her, 1955 sounded as long ago as 1842, and he was almost right about her parents' birth.
“What was it like then?”
“The same and different. That's a definition of analogy.” Chadwick had taught philosophy and called himself a repentant professor. “It took me a lifetime to learn that I know nothing.”
Chadwick's office was a chaos of books and papers and memorabilia. He told her about the old days. Father Hesburgh had been president; Frank O'Malley and Leo Ward were colleagues. “We all knew one another then. The fraternity of penury.”
The student body had been all male when Chadwick came, and the faculty as well. Discipline was enforced. Football games were won. O'Shaughnessy Hall had opened just before Chadwick joined the faculty. There were fewer than half as many buildings then as now. He had taught six days a week.
“Six!”
“There were two sequences, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Saturday classes were a problem on football weekends. So classes began an hour earlier.”
That old Notre Dame was spoken of condescendingly now, but Chadwick was a distinguished scholar, author of eight books, one of which Sarah had heard of before she and Charlie came to Notre Dame.
The Unknown God: An Essay in Natural Theology.
Chadwick had spent sabbatical years in Europe, in Paris, in Rome, a term at Oxford. He had been a widower forever, as he put it. There was a photograph of his wife on his desk, emerging from scattered papers. “My Last Duchess. My late wife. In every sense, she was always tardy.”
“She's beautiful.”
“Isn't she?”
Chadwick dismissed Sarah's continuing anxiety about the note that had been slipped under their doors.
Your days are numbered.
“A prank, my dear. And a not very imaginative one.”
Nor did Roger Knight encourage her concern. “A reminder that one's days are numbered is scarcely a threat.”
“It is when you print it out and slip it under people's doors.”
“Sarah, you have to understand the student mind.”
“Do you?”
“What there is of it.”
“You don't know it was a student.”
He thought about it. “That's true. Any word on the articles you sent out?”
She shook her head. “Referees take forever, and even if they're accepted it will be a year and more before they appear. But just an acceptance would add to my résumé.”
Publish or perish. Publish
and
perish in many cases. All the standards were subject to the interpretation of members of the appointments and tenure committee. They could arbitrarily decide that certain journals were not really journals. They were like an election board after a close contest.
Her husband, Charlie, wasn't much help. “You can be part-time at St. Mary's. Or Holy Cross College.”
“Oh, Charlie.”
He felt bad enough about having a tenured position while Sarah did piecework. From the time they had met, he had treated her as the smarter of the two. “I'm a technician, Sarah. You use your mind.”
The letter from
Speculum
arrived at home. Sarah did not open it until Charlie returned, then asked him to. He blithely opened the letter, glanced at it, smiled. “Congratulations.”
“Really?” She had already snatched the letter from him. An acceptance, and from
Speculum
!
She could hardly wait to let the department chair know; the following morning she was in the departmental office before he was,
half an hour before, trying to control her eagerness, trying to act blasé.
“Very nice, very nice,” Tuttle said, reading the photocopy of the letter she had made for him. “I'll see that the committee gets this.”
When she left the office, there was the inevitable reaction and her spirits dropped. Tuttle hadn't exactly jumped into the air and clicked his heels. Of course, she had no idea where he stood on her case, but he was allegedly under the influence of Braxton. Not even Braxton could deny that
Speculum
was as good as it gets in medieval studies.
Chadwick's reaction was more satisfactory. As a Thomist, he had subscribed to
Speculum
, and there was a shelf of ancient copies in his office. “You must give me an offprint when it appears.”
Would he still be alive? Shame on her.
Your days are numbered
.
She waited until Roger Knight came back from his afternoon class. When told her news, he looked as if he were about to embrace her, then looked sheepish. So she gave him a hug, or as much of one as she could. He made the coffee then and asked for a summary of her article.
“I'll print you out a copy.”
“Good. Good.”
Roger Knight's one publication was his monograph on Baron Corvo, which had been the excuse for offering him the Huneker Professorship of Catholic Studies. Sarah had read it; it was a delight, but Roger was not a publishing scholar. Yet he seemed to know everything. Who had said that the academic life was now geared to mediocrity? Most scholars knew more and more about less and less. Next to Roger Knight they seemed narrow. Of course, anyone would look narrow next to Roger.
The acceptance from
Speculum
drove away all her silly anxieties
about the note under the door. She and Roger left together, going out to the parking lot beside Brownson. She went with him to his golf cart, where they went on talking until Roger noticed how low his vehicle seemed to be. No wonder. Someone had let the air out of all its tires.
Sarah just looked at him. “Come, I'll drive you home.”
When they got to her car, they discovered that all the tires were flat.
“What about Chadwick?” Sarah asked, all her panic returning.
“Sarah, he cycles here from Holy Cross Village.” Chadwick's three-wheeled cycle gave him a magic mobility that more than compensated for the hoots and stares his passage elicited.
“Roger, it couldn't possibly be …”
“Coincidences do not require causes, Sarah.”
But she could see he didn't believe that this was a coincidence.
The next day they learned that a tire pump had been propped against Chadwick's door.

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