That Day the Rabbi Left Town (23 page)

“That was decent of him,” Lanigan remarked. “You were helping out Mondays and Fridays?”

“The whole week. She was having trouble with her asthma, poor thing, so I'd come in every morning. Lately she's been feeling a little better, so I'd come in just when she felt she needed me. She's going off to visit her sister in Arizona at the end of the week. She was going to cancel when the professor came down with this cold, but he's better now, and wants her to go. She made him promise to stay home for the week, and I agreed to come in every day and do for him, so she'll be off Saturday.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me, was Mrs. Miller interested in Professor Kent, or was she just being nice to him for her son's sake?”

“You mean was she sort of sweet on him? Well, she was a widow lady and he was a widower. And he was like high society, so-o for all that he was pretty old, I guess he was quite a catch, and if he'd asked her, she'd've said yes.”

“Well, thank you, Ada,” Lanigan said, and got up and escorted her to the door. At the door he said, “Oh, and there's no need to mention this little talk we've had to the Millers.”

Chapter 36

Mrs. Bell was a practical, efficient woman of fifty-five. She reminded one of an old-fashioned schoolmarm who maintained discipline and brooked no nonsense. Indeed, she had once taught school, Domestic Science, in a small private school in the western part of the state. Then she had married, but the marriage was not a success. She discovered that her husband could not be trusted to keep sober, or out of debt, or even loyal to her, and she divorced him. Instead of going back to teaching, she began to do housework because it paid more.

When Matilda Kent began having difficulty in maintaining the house on Clark Street, the college engaged Mrs. Bell to help out. She would come in the late afternoon or early evening, straighten out the bedrooms, do some dusting, and prepare a high tea or an early supper for the couple. After Mrs. Kent died, she continued to do for Professor Kent. More often than not, Professor Kent was not at home when she came, but she had a key and let herself in. If he arrived while she was still there, she prepared his supper; otherwise she assumed he had eaten at a restaurant, and didn't bother.

She was sitting now in the office off the hallway, her hands primly folded in her lap, as Bradford Ames questioned her. “You got here at five o'clock last Wednesday? Was that your usual time?”

“Well, when Mrs. Kent was alive, I'd get here around four, or even earlier some days. That's because he'd come home at five and they'd have tea, sometimes a pretty elaborate tea with sandwiches and other stuff which I would prepare. High tea, he called it. I guess they wouldn't have supper then until maybe eight or nine o'clock. So I had everything fixed up nice for him when he came home.”

“You'd serve the tea and wash up afterwards?” asked Ames.

“That's right. She'd have me put on a clean apron when I served, like a maid. I didn't mind. She was a nice old lady and it made her feel good.”

“And afterwards, after she died?”

“Afterwards, I didn't come every day. I'd prepare his supper sometimes if he asked me to, and I'd wash the dishes afterwards. But more often he ate out. A lot of times he had this young Professor Miller over and they'd just sit around and talk and drink—”

“Drink?”

“Yes, beer if it was hot. Sometimes sherry or whiskey. Then I wouldn't hang around. I'd do my cleaning and leave.”

Sergeant Schroeder, arms folded, leaning against the desk, asked, “Did he ever make a pass at you?”

Her small, thin lips relaxed in a reminiscent smile. “Once. He'd asked me to get him a cup of coffee. I was in the kitchen and had just brewed a pot. So I brought in a cup, and as I came to put it on the desk here, he leaned back and sort of stretched and he patted me on the behind.”

“And what did you do?”

“I spilled the coffee on him.”

“Accidentally?”

Again she smiled. “Accidentally on purpose.”

Bradford Ames chuckled. “Weren't you afraid he'd fire you?”

She shook her head. “He couldn't fire me because he didn't hire me in the first place; the college did. And it was for his wife. All he could do was tell them he didn't need me. But then they wouldn't have hired anyone else. He'd have to do it on his own, and pay her on his own. If he told them he just wanted someone else, they'd probably ask me why. And I'd tell them. So I wasn't worried about getting fired.”

“I see,” said Ames. “Now, last Wednesday you came here at five o'clock.”

“Yes.”

“You're sure of the time?”

She nodded her head vigorously. “Oh yes. See, I charge by the hour, so I know exactly what time it is when I get to a job. I called earlier to say I was coming at five and—”

“You spoke to him? What time was that?”

“I called at five past four, right after finishing a job. He didn't answer, so I left a message on the answering machine. It's still there, I suppose,” she said, nodding at the telephone on the desk. “I said I'd be here at five. And I was.”

“Good enough,” said Ames. “And he was gone when you got here?”

“That's right.”

“How could you be sure?” asked Schroeder. “Couldn't he have been up in his bedroom? Did you go up to look?”

“I was there till seven. He didn't come down and I didn't hear anything. Besides, Professor Miller called at quarter past, past five, that is, and when I told him Professor Kent wasn't here, he asked me to go and look in the shed in back and see if his car was there.”

“And was it?”

She shook her head. “No, it was gone. And I came back to the phone and told Professor Miller so. And he said he must have started out on his own.”

“So he definitely left here by five,” said Ames.

“Five past four if he didn't answer his phone when the lady here called,” said Schroeder.

“But we can't be sure of that,” said Ames. “He might have been busy and not want to answer. If he'd been dressing, for instance. If it were at all important, he was sure the caller would leave a message. Let's say five for certain, and four-thirty as probable.”

“Do you want me to start cleaning up now?” she asked.

“No-o. I don't think so. And I don't want anything disturbed as yet. Don't bother to come in tomorrow, if you were planning to. We're still going over things, and I might want a few more pictures taken.”

She glanced at her watch. “It's almost six, and I've been here since five. Can I charge for an hour?”

Ames looked at Schroeder. “Raises a fine ethical point, doesn't it, Sergeant? Does being interviewed by the police constitute work?”

“Well, it sure can't be called housework, which is what she gets paid for.”

“But she came here to work, and we prevented her. You might even say we interrupted her in her work.” He chuckled. “Yes, my dear, I think you can put in for an hour's work.”

Chapter 37

It was still bitter cold and the mounds of snow that the plows had thrown up on either side had narrowed the roads, in some places to half their width. But the highways, salted and sanded, were clear, although full of potholes. Driving was no fun, but Sergeant Schroeder felt he ought to question Baumgold. He had been in town Wednesday afternoon, and was planning to spend Thanksgiving with his wife in Barnard's Crossing, so why hadn't he picked her up at school or at her flat and gone there together? Or had he gone to the school and found she'd already gone? And had he, perhaps, taken the occasion to call on Professor Kent and tell him to keep his hands to himself?

Not surprisingly, considering the weather, Baumgold had no client at the time, and was sipping at a paper cup of coffee when he arrived. Sergeant Schroeder did not beat around the bush: after identifying himself, he put the question bluntly.

“Nope. I was at the courthouse until four or four-thirty and came straight home. Went right to Haymarket and was lucky enough to catch a bus right away.”

“But you were going to spend Thanksgiving in Barnard's Crossing with your wife, so why didn't you pick her up and go out there together?”

“I would have if I had my car, but I didn't. I came in by bus.”

“So …”

“So you remember the weather that afternoon. I live a couple of blocks from the bus stop. I could manage it all right, but I couldn't see her plowing through the snow for a couple of blocks. It was especially bad near where I live because I'm near the water.”

“But she'd have to do it the next day if she was going to have dinner with you,” Schroeder pointed out.

“No, she'd come in by train, and I'd meet her at Swampscott station in my car and drive her home.”

“I would have thought you'd want her with you and she'd want to be with you for the whole vacation. Why didn't you stay over at her place Wednesday night and then you could have taken the train to Swampscott together the next day, that is, if you had to be in Barnard's Crossing?”

“Oh, we sure enough had to because we had a date to have dinner at a hotel and we'd already made reservations, but how would we have got from Swampscott to my place? It's too far to walk.”

“You could have taken a cab.”

“Oh yeah? You think it's like North station with a cab stand because of trains coming in every couple of minutes? If you want a cab, you've got to call, and then you wait—and wait—and wait. You call from a pay phone in this restaurant that's nearby, and I'm not even sure it was open Thanksgiving Day morning.”

“Still, I should think where you're married less than a year, I understand—”

“That I'd want to be with her all the time?” Baumgold smiled condescendingly at the sergeant. “I suspect you've got a rather old-fashioned idea of marriage, Sergeant. Back in the days when a wife had no other interests than keeping house or taking care of children, couples tended to stay together as much as possible. It was the husband's duty to be with his wife because if she had children, she needed an adult to talk to at the end of the day, and if she didn't have children, she was bored out of her mind. But things are different nowadays. Wives work, and she has her own interests. I'm a lawyer and my wife is a teacher. She's involved with the college, and my work has little interest for her. We don't have to be together all the time, and we weren't even when we were in a relationship before we were married.”

Schroeder was not used to being condescended to by the people he was questioning, and he changed the subject abruptly. “You knew Professor Kent?”

“I was introduced to him by Sarah, and I saw him a couple of times when I went to the English office to meet her when I came in to have dinner with her and stay over at her place. A dirty old man.”

“I take it you didn't care for him.”

“No, not one of my favorite people.”

“You knew he'd made a pass at your wife a couple of times?”

“Yeah, she told me. I wanted to go see the old son of a bitch and tell him to keep his hands to himself, but Sarah wouldn't have it. That's another advantage of having your own work and your own interests: you learn how to take care of yourself.”

“So if he'd seen you around last Wednesday and he'd asked you to drive him to Barnard's Crossing in his car, knowing you were going there, you wouldn't have accepted?”

Baumgold shrugged. “I might have, considering the weather. Sure, he was a bastard, but when I take the bus, do I know the driver is not another?”

Disappointed in the results of his meeting with Baumgold, Schroeder thought he might yet justify—to himself—the long trip to the North Shore by dropping in at the Barnard's Crossing Police Station, which was only ten or fifteen minutes away. Not that he had expected Baumgold to break down and confess, but he thought Baumgold might admit to having spoken to Kent; perhaps that he had been offered a ride to the North Shore. He would have felt the trip worthwhile if he had shown nervousness when questioned. It would have been a starting point for further investigation. But Baumgold had been perfectly at ease, had not even tried to conceal that he knew that Kent had been annoying his wife with his unwelcome attentions.

So if not Baumgold, who else might have driven to the North Shore with Kent? Bradford Ames had explained more than once that police in a small town like Barnard's Crossing knew everybody in town, that they were friends and neighbors and knew where they worked and their general habits.

When he entered the police station, Lanigan was out front talking to the desk sergeant. “I had to go to Salem,” he explained, “so I thought I'd drop by on my way home to see if you had anything.”

Lanigan shook his head. “No, nothing. We haven't been working on it since you people took over.”

“I thought you know who in town here teaches at Windermere and might have got a ride with Kent.”

“There's that Pendergast fellow,” suggested the desk sergeant.

“Oh yeah. Where does he live?”

“He didn't go in the day before Thanksgiving,” said Lanigan.

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw him in the supermarket when I stopped off to get some stuff for the missus around four o'clock.”

“Oh. Anyone else?”

“As far as I can make out, not many teachers or students either have classes that late in the day. I was talking to John Aster, who's an engineer and teaches math at Windermere. According to him, he could make twice what he's getting there if he took an engineering job, but he'd have to work nine to five, and at the college he has only a couple of classes in the morning and he's free for the rest of the day.”

“There's that fellow who comes out weekends,” suggested the desk sergeant, “the one who comes to see the Lerner girl.”