Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red (26 page)

David Small went over to the railing and peered into the water below. “Nice. Very nice,” he said and inhaled deeply of the salt-laden air.

“I’m always a little sad when it’s time to close the old place up for the winter.” said Ames. “I make a point of choosing a nice day; and after I’m done I like to sit out here and take a last look at the ocean and have a drink or two before returning to the city.” He motioned to the bottle on a glass-topped wicker table. “Can I offer you something, Rabbi? You people do drink, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, we’re not abstainers.”

He filled the glasses, and seated in the large wicker armchairs they toasted each other silently. “I imagine you’re interested in Roger Fine,” Ames said at last. “He’s a member of your congregation?”

“No, but he’s a member of the Jewish community of Barnard’s Crossing, and as the only rabbi in town –”

“You feel some responsibility.” Ames chuckled. “And as the only rabbi on the Windemere faculty, you can claim similar responsibility for any Jewish faculty member, eh?”

“That hadn’t occurred to me.” the rabbi admitted, “but now that you mention it…”

Ames squirmed in his seat as though trying to scratch his back against the chair: “Well, I’m happy to discuss Fine with you. Rabbi. I guess you earned it when you pulled my chestnuts out of the fire by getting those students to file for bail.” He had squirmed so far down into the chair that his round head was just above the level of the table top. “I mention that. Rabbi, to suggest that I’m not interested in convictions for the sake of mere convictions.”

“All right.”

“I’m going to tell you what we’ve got on Fine. I’ll give you our whole case. I’ll put our cards on the table, face up, all of them.” He twisted his head around and peered up at the rabbi. “Now ask me why I’d want to do that?”

The rabbi grinned. “All right, why would you want to do that?”

“Because I want to help the young man. Oh, I’ve got a good case against him and I’m going to get a conviction. But the sentence, that’s something else again, that can be anything from here to there.” He held his forefingers an inch apart and then spread his arms wide.

“You mean you’d like me to influence Professor Fine, to convince him to plead guilty?”

“That might be a good thing – for him –” said Ames, “if you could bring it off. Oh, there’s nothing underhanded in my suggesting it to you. I’ve discussed it with his lawyer, Jerry Winston.”

“And?”

Ames shifted again so that he was back at full height. “It’s a kind of game we play: Rabbi. In the courtroom we are distantly polite to each other, the assistant D.A.‘s and the criminal lawyers, we’re not above playing any courtroom tricks we can think of and lambasting each other. But outside the courtroom, we’re all pretty friendly, that doesn’t mean that Winston doesn’t fight for his client for all he’s worth Just as I do for the Commonwealth, we’re professionals, you see. But there’s one big difference. Winston will fight tooth and nail for an acquittal, but I’ll fight for a conviction only if I’m convinced the man is guilty, that’s because while we are in an adversary system, the district attorney is also concerned with the protection of the innocent.”

“I understand.”

Ames took another swallow of his drink. “All right, let me tell you what we’ve got, and then I’ll explain how you can help. You understand Professor Fine was under suspicion from the beginning simply because he was in the building at the time. But we really got interested in him when we started checking you out.” He chortled at the look of surprise on his visitor’s face. “Oh yes, Rabbi, for a while you were Sergeant Schroeder’s prime suspect, he was able to make quite a convincing case against you, too.

There was your failure to mention you had left your class early.”

“How would –”

“That meant that instead of just passing the time of day with Hendryx on your way home, you were closeted with him for about an hour, there you are, the two of you, in a dinky little office with only one desk and a somewhat rickety and uncomfortable visitor’s chair, as I can personally testify.” He wriggled against the fan shaped back of the wicker chair. “No chance of you two sitting there, each absorbed in his own work, correcting papers. If you were there for an hour, you were talking – a rabbi and someone who was generally considered an anti-Semite, and in an hour there was plenty of time to argue and get angry., and if you got angry enough…”

“I see. I get so angry that I decide to kill him, and how do I go about it? I just can’t reach up and pull the statue down. It’s way above my reach. Did the good sergeant have an explanation for that?”

“Don’t scoff. Rabbi, the sergeant made out a pretty good case, there are all kinds of discarded library books on those shelves, and in climbing up for one you happen to pull down the statue instead, thus winning the argument conclusively; you might say, the sergeant even conceded that it could even have been an accident.”

“Very generous of him.”

Ames chuckled. “So you are naturally flushed. Your first impulse is perhaps to tell someone, the dean naturally, but just as you round the corner you see her door close. Perhaps you take that as an omen; or perhaps it merely suggests to you that she had heard nothing untoward. In any case, you leave the building. But naturally your mind is in a turmoil, so you drive around for a while in order to decide what to do, and that is why you were late getting home, then when you do get home, you hear about the bombing and you realize that this could give the incident another dimension. So when the sergeant calls up you make an excuse not to see him to give yourself time to find out just what happened and to prepare a story.”

“It does add up to a good case,” the rabbi admitted.

“And I might point out that since you had a key to the office, you could get in without making Hendryx get out of his seat, anyone else would have to knock. It really is a good case,” said Ames almost regretfully.

“But you didn’t buy it.”

Ames shook his head, his mouth set in a wide grin. “I don’t know that Schroeder did either, really. I suspect it was merely justification for him to give you a hard time.”

“A hard time? But why should he want to?”

“Well, he probably considered your treatment of him when he phoned pretty cavalier. It rankled. You’ve got to understand a man like Schroeder, he is pretty near the top of his ambitions, as a sergeant of detectives, he operates largely on his own, he takes orders from his superiors, of course, but with the general public, especially when he’s on an important case, he’s his own boss and not used to having his authority flouted.”

“But he didn’t give me a hard time.”

“Because I vetoed it. I told him I’d question you myself. Your excuses for the long delay in getting home that Friday and for neglecting to tell the sergeant about walking out of your class were so ingenuous I could only believe they were the truth.”

The rabbi grinned.

“But of course that was simply my gut reaction. In all conscience I couldn’t dismiss the sergeant’s interpretation out of hand, a stupid man will offer what seems to him a plausible explanation of his suspicious actions, but there’ll be obvious holes in it and we’ll be able to break it down just from its internal contradictions, a more intelligent man will offer a plausible explanation with no apparent holes or contradictions. It will not necessarily allay our suspicions but we’ll probably have to find additional evidence to disprove it.” He paused. “An extremely intelligent man. Rabbi, might present a completely implausible explanation.”

“Are you saying I’m still under suspicion?” asked the rabbi.

Ames shook his head. “No, you cleared yourself when you pointed out the contradiction between the medical examiner’s report and the cleaning woman’s testimony. If you were guilty, there’d be no point in your demonstrating that the book and the pipe in Hendryx’s apartment was an alibi, and then going on to disprove it.”

“Well, it’s a relief to know that I’m not a suspect.” said the rabbi, “even though it never occurred to me that I ever was. But you said you began to suspect Roger Fine in the course of checking me out.”

“That’s right. You got us to thinking about how that statue could have fallen, now that we were quite certain it had not been jarred loose by the bomb. It could be knocked down by somebody climbing up there, like you, but it’s not too likely. It’s pretty heavy, for one thing, sixty-two pounds, seven ounces, not easily toppled by a sideswipe of the hand, and Hendryx wouldn’t just sit there watching.”

“It’s what occurred to me when you first suggested it.” said the rabbi, “my preparation for the defense, you might say.”

Ames nodded. “So what would knock it down? We cemented the shards together and experimented with it. You couldn’t do it with a stick – no leverage. If you had a long pole, like a window pole, you could insinuate it behind the statue and then pull, that would do it, but it would fall to one side. But if you had a stick with a hook on the end –”

“A stick with a hook?”

“Like a cane, then it’s child’s play. You just reach around with the handle of the cane and pull. So there you have opportunity: he was in the building at the time, and weapon –”

“But the statue was the weapon and anyone could have used it.” the rabbi objected.

Ames shook his head. “It was there all right, but only a man with a cane could have used it. Professor Fine is the only man in the school who has a cane with him all the time.”

The rabbi was silent for a moment and then asked quietly, “And motive? What was his motive?”

Ames waved a hand in airy dismissal. “Who knows what really motivates a man? Frequently he doesn’t know himself, we can only surmise or guess-until he confesses, we know they had quarreled, that Fine considered him an anti-Semite –”

“He made sly little digs, an occasional joke, nothing that would justify anything more than a sharp rejoinder.” said the rabbi.

“From you. But Professor Fine is a much younger man. Still. I’ll go along with you, not enough motive for murder. But then we picked up this Ekko, the fifth member of that student committee, and after a while he talked, and it turned out that Professor Fine had opposed that meeting with the dean and even had opposed the student campaign to make the school change its mind about dropping him.”

“But why?” asked the rabbi.

“Exactly,” said Ames. “That’s what we couldn’t understand. Until Ekko revealed something Fine had told him in confidence. You see, at the end of the summer session. Professor Fine leaked the final exam to one of the students, Hendrix found out about it and reported it.”

“Fine admits this?”

“In writing. Rabbi, in writing.” said Ames. “His written confession was in the safe in the dean’s office. It was an earnest that he would not make trouble if they let him continue to the end of his contract.”

“And Ekko tried to blow up the safe to destroy it?”

“No, no,” Ames said hastily. “That’s what we thought at first. But it turns out he had nothing to do with the bombing, nothing at all.”

The rabbi waited to hear who in fact was responsible for the bombing, but when he saw Ames was not about to amplify his remark, he said: “Surely you’re not suggesting that Fine killed Hendryx because he reported him to the dean?”

“It gives him a motive.” Ames pointed out.

“You say that all happened last summer, he certainly seems to have taken his time about it.” remarked the rabbi dryly.

“Sometimes these things smoulder.” Ames said.

“And they usually continue to smoulder until the resentment dies out and is forgotten.” said the rabbi.

“But suppose something happened the day of the murder that was quite capable of puffing it into flame?” suggested Ames. “What if something happened that made it look as though Fine might never get another teaching job? How do you think Fine would feel about that?”

“What was that?” asked the rabbi.

“Well, I’ll admit I don’t know too much about college hiring practices.” Ames said lazily, “but I’d guess that while references from an acting head might not be necessary, since his function is purely administrative, one from the permanent head of the department is, and the very day of the murder. Rabbi, Hendrix was made head of the English department!”

The rabbi pursed his lips. “Hendryx didn’t mention it to me.”

“He wouldn’t be likely to since it had not been officially announced. President Macomber told the dean not to say anything until the board met and made it official.”

“Then how could Fine know of it?”

“Ah, my guess is that Hendryx told him.” He looked at the rabbi, obviously enjoying his puzzlement. “You see, Hendrix and Betty, the president’s daughter, were going to be married and she got her father to make the appointment.” He chuckled. “Dean Hanbury had been campaigning for the appointment right along without success, but then a daughter, an only daughter, carries more clout. I imagine. I can see how Macomber would find it hard to refuse her.”

The rabbi still didn’t see how that involved Fine.

“Oh come. Rabbi, use a little imagination. Remember, this Ekko has told us Fine was against the student campaign on his behalf because he has promised the dean, and presumably Hendryx, he will not make trouble, and here’s a committee coming to present a petition in his behalf that very afternoon. So with the dean tied up. Fine goes up to Hendryx’s office to assure him the committee was not his idea. I can imagine Hendryx, who’s heard of his appointment the night before from Betty Macomber, leaning back in that way you’ve described and relishing the situation to the hilt. I can imagine him taking a certain sadistic pleasure in informing the young man that now he was the regular head of the department, and that Fine was not to expect any letter of recommendation from him: perhaps he’d even better begin thinking of going into another line of work.”

“Perhaps.” said the rabbi. “It seems that the motive is mostly your imagination.”

“You’re not speaking objectively there. Rabbi,” Ames said reproachfully. “You’re speaking like the attorney for the defense. It’s not time for that yet.”

“All right, go on. Or is that all of it? How about the alibi? Have you worked out how Fine could have got into Hendryx’s apartment?”