That Day the Rabbi Left Town (26 page)

“No way, David,” said Lanigan. “It's a pretty theory, but it's wrong because Miller took the five thirty-two from North station. There's no way he could have driven out to Barnard's Crossing and back between four o'clock and five thirty-two.”

“How do you know he did?”

“Because he left his bag on the five thirty-two. He called the Baggage Department at North station as soon as he got home. I was late coming here this morning because I stopped off on my way to get it. I thought I'd bring it to him and use the occasion to ask him who might have had it in for Kent.”

“That's the bag?” asked Ames, pointing to where it was resting on the floor.

“Uh-huh. His initials are on it.”

“It seems a pretty shabby sort of bag,” said Ames. “One strap is torn off and the buckle seems to be ripped, and it's all scratched up. It looks as though it had been kicking around in the trunk of a car.”

“I suppose it's what's in it that was so important to him,” said Lanigan.

“What
is
in it?” asked Ames impatiently. “It's not locked, is it?”

“No, it's not locked. You want me to look in it?”

“Go ahead.”

Lanigan opened the bag and drew out a copy of the Boston
Herald
dated Wednesday, the twenty-third. He fished in it with his hand and, shaking his head, said, “That's all there is, just the
Herald
.”

“Why was he so anxious about a newspaper that he could get at any newsstand?” asked Schroeder.

“To fill it out,” said the rabbi. “If it were empty, you might wonder why he was so anxious to retrieve it.”

“I suppose,” Ames admitted, “but it does prove that he was on the five thirty-two.”

“If that's its sole purpose,” the rabbi remarked, “then it proves that he wasn't.”

“That sure makes a lot of sense,” said Schroeder, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “You saying that if I can prove I did something, it proves I didn't?”

“Are you suggesting he had someone else leave it there for him?” asked Lanigan.

The rabbi nodded. “Possible, but just barely. You mean he might have met a student going to Swampscott or Salem and asked him to leave his bag on one of the overhead racks of the train? But the student would surely talk, mention it to a friend.” He shook his head. “No, not at all likely. We've got to go back a step.” His voice took on a Talmudic singsong. “I-if the bag proves he was on the five thirty-two, the-en what in turn does that prove?”

Ames glanced at Lanigan, his eyes twinkling as he asked, “You going to give us some of that Talmudic reasoning that you called pul-pul or something?”

“Pul-pil, he calls it,” said Lanigan.

“It's called
pil-pul
,” said the rabbi, “which is the Hebrew for pepper. It denotes making fine distinctions, which you might call hairsplitting. The rabbis of old who developed it were engaged in finding the true meaning of one of God's commandments. They had all the time in the world and they weren't worried if an argument was far-fetched as long as it contributed to their understanding. Now, in the present case, the bag proves he was on the five thirty-two. But that is important only because it implies that he was in Boston's North station at half past five so that he could board the train, which left two minutes later. And that would mean that he couldn't have dropped off the body of Kent in Barnard's Crossing and got back to Boston in time to catch the five thirty-two.

“Bu-ut …” And once again his voice took on the Talmudic singsong. “The train stops along the way. And one of the places it Stops is Lynn. It gets there about twenty minutes later, and the Lynn station is only about ten minutes from Swampscott or Barnard's Crossing. He had plenty of time to get to Lynn after he had dropped off the body of Kent behind the billboard. My guess is, he went to Swampscott station where his car was parked first, got the bag out of the trunk, then drove to Lynn in Kent's car, parked it on Blossom Street, and then walked to Lynn station. There he bought a newspaper, stuffed it into his bag, and boarded the train, the five thirty-two.”

“When were you planning to bring the bag to Miller, Chief?” asked Ames.

“Oh, sometime this evening.”

“All right. I'm going to see this Dr. Cardleigh, and if the rabbi is right about the dissertation, I'd' like to come with you when you go to see Miller.”

“Sure, come to the station house and we'll go from there.”

Ames turned to the rabbi. “And how much were you betting, Rabbi?”

“I hadn't thought about it. Would a dollar be about right?”

Ames gurgled a chuckle. “A dollar it is. You're faded, Rabbi.”

Chapter 41

Thorvald Miller himself, fully clothed, opened the door to them.

“You better?” asked Lanigan.

“Well, my temperature is down, so I got out of bed.”

“And your ma?”

“Oh, she's off to Arizona to visit her sister.”

“This is Bradford Ames,” said Lanigan. “He's assistant district attorney for Suffolk County. He's got a place on the Point. We were visiting and he thought he'd come along when I said I had to return your briefcase.”

“Oh, good. You brought it.”

“Yes. Here it is. Tell me, what was there in the
Herald
that made you so anxious to get it back from the railroad?”

“You opened it?”

“Yes, we opened it. And all that was in it was the day's
Herald
.”

“Well, there was an editorial—”

“You bought it in Lynn?” asked Lanigan.

“After you parked the car on Blossom Street near the station,” suggested Ames.

“Somebody claims they saw me? Was it the newsstand fellow?”

“No, but you couldn't get back to Boston in time to take the five thirty-two, not from Barnard's Crossing,” said Lanigan.

Suddenly Miller relaxed. He even smiled. “Then you know.”

“Yes, we know,” said Lanigan.

“Why did you kill him?” Ames asked. “Was it because of the thesis?”

“And just how did you do it?” asked Lanigan.

Miller laughed, and Ames thought he detected a note of hysteria in the laugh. “As to how, I tied his bow tie very, very tight. It seemed appropriate because that's how he first approached me, asked me to tie his bow tie. And then in gratitude insisted I come to his place for a drink. That's when he showed me the copy of the Horton dissertation. As to why, because he was blackmailing me. Oh, not for money. I don't have any to speak of. But for companionship and service. I had to spend practically every afternoon with him. And if he had a fancy affair in the evening, I'd have to help him get dressed, like kneeling down to put his shoes on. When he'd come here, we'd take his car and he'd have me drive. So I was chauffeur and butler and valet to him. He got me tenure to make sure I wouldn't be dropped and go someplace else. There's a job in Arizona that I had a chance at. It's only a junior college, a technical school at that, but when I told him I wanted to take it because Arizona would be good for my mother's asthma, he said that they'd be sure to ask for references from Windermere and he'd hear about it and write to them about the dissertation. So I figured I was stuck here until he died, and that could be a long time. So I knew I had to do something about it.”

“You planned to do it the day before the vacation so he wouldn't be found until Monday four or five days later,” Ames suggested.

“That's right. I knew I had to get him out of there. I put his coat on him and was going to get his rubbers, but somebody came to the door, and if I went to get his rubbers in the hallway, I might be seen. The person at the door knocked and then waited and knocked again and then again. So I walked him out the back door, like you walk a drunk. His car had a seat belt and a shoulder belt that came down automatically when you closed the door, so I wasn't worried about his falling forward or sliding off his seat if I put on the brakes.”

“That accounts for the discoloration on thighs and buttocks,” Ames said in an aside to Lanigan.

“My idea was to drop him off the road at some wooded place, but when I got on the State Road, I found that there were snow mounds three and four feet high on either side and plenty of cars coming along in spite of the storm. So then I decided to swing over to the old Boston Road when I got to Barnard's Crossing and drop him off behind that billboard. I swear it wasn't to get that rabbi fellow involved.”

“And what were you going to do with the car?” asked Lanigan.

“I realized I couldn't leave it there because then the question would be why he didn't drive up Evans Road if he were coming here to my house. What came to mind then was to drive to Swampscott station and swap his car for mine. But that wasn't too good either because the police would be able to check the few local cabs, and besides, would a cabbie drop him off at the bill-board instead of taking him here? He certainly couldn't walk from the station to my house.

“But when I got to the station it wasn't quite half past five. That meant that I could drive to Lynn, park somewhere near the Lynn station, and board the five thirty-two there because it didn't get there until almost six. Then I thought I'd leave something on the train to prove I was on it. I had an old pile of junk in the trunk of my car in a large trash bag that I was planning to drop off at the Salvation Army depot first chance I got. But it was shoes, pants, shirts, an old sweater—nothing you could leave on a train. And the crummy old briefcase. Nobody would make a fuss over a briefcase like that, so I had to fill it. With what? I had nothing in my car, no papers, no books, no magazines. So I bought a paper and stuffed that in.” He grinned broadly. “And just in case somebody should pinch it, thinking there was something worthwhile in it, when I got off the train at Swampscott, I told the fellow whose car was next to mine that I had left my briefcase on the train. I didn't know him, but I'd seen him around. I memorized the number on his license plate so if necessary I could locate him. Seven-two-three-CBE. It's an easy number to remember because it rhymes.”

“You realize you're confessing to murder,” said Ames gravely.

“Not murder,” said Miller, “justifiable homicide. No jury is going to convict me when they hear how he treated me, especially the part about my ma.”

“Yes, you've got a good chance, the way murder trials have been going in this state lately,” said Ames, “but you could be found guilty of second- or third-degree murder and have to do time.”

“So I'd do some time, but when I got out I'd be free.”

“Look, with your mother gone, you're alone here, and you shouldn't be since you've been sick.”

“I'm all right now. It was a twenty-four-hour flu.”

“Still, there could be a recurrence. I suggest you come down to the station house and stay there for a while. There's always somebody there.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“Let's just say we're taking you into protective custody. So pack what you're going to need for the next couple of days and we'll go along.”

“All right.”

“Why don't we just arrest him?” asked Lanigan as Miller left the room.

“Because we didn't read him his Miranda rights, and a smart lawyer could make something of it. Down at the station house we'll read him his rights and have him make his confession to a stenographer who'll type it up and we'll have him sign it.”

Chapter 42

The rabbi had just drawn a cup of coffee and sat down at a table in the cafeteria when Dean Cardleigh approached puffing at his pipe, a coffee cup in hand. He sat down opposite the rabbi.

“I didn't read Miller's dissertation through by any means. I read a chapter or two because I wondered how anyone could spend two or three years of his life working on such tripe. We have it somewhere in the archives if you want to have a look at it. You know, if I were not a dean with all the duties thereunto pertaining as they say in diplomas, I'd be inclined to applaud Miller for having the good sense to copy his dissertation instead of wasting his time doing the research and the writing of it.”

“That bad, was it?”

“This Suggs wrote some occasional verse, filler stuff for magazines and newspapers. He worked for his father-in-law, who was a printer. Some people who later became sort of important came there to have their work printed and published at their own expense. But they never said anything noteworthy to him, or if they did, he never noted it in his diary. Believe me, it wasn't worth the two hundred and eighty pages of paper it was written on.”

“But wasn't he hired on the basis of it?”

Cardleigh laughed. “He was hired because we needed an English teacher at the time. And our silly rules at the time required a Ph.D. And the even sillier rules of the Ph.D. require an original dissertation that no one ever reads.” He puffed at his pipe, found that it had gone out, and lit another match. “An interesting case of one faker imposing on another.”

He tamped down his pipe, took a sip of coffee, and leaned back in his chair. “Tim Bishop was a textbook salesman who used to drop in on me whenever he was in the area, although I never changed the textbook of Greek Literature that I was using. One day, after I had become dean, he came into my office and said, ‘I see you've got Mike Canty teaching for you.' I told him we didn't have a Michael Canty on the faculty. And he answered, ‘I saw him in Room 103 as I came down the corridor.'

“So I looked at my chart and said, ‘That was Professor Malcolm Kent in 103.' To which he answered that he must have changed his name. He was sure it was Mike Canty, who'd worked at the International Correspondence School of St. Louis when he'd worked there. And according to Bishop, he'd been merely a clerk and had never been to college. He'd gone to London when they opened an office there, Canty or Kent had. And on the basis of when the office in London closed and when he started teaching here, he couldn't have gone to college, let alone acquired a master's degree.