Last Things

by Ralph McInerny

  She did find letters, letters from women, and read them with shocked avidity. Had she imagined that she represented Fulvio’s single excursion into infidelity? She had been one of a series. There were letters before and after the years of their affair and during it. Poor Margaret, she thought. But she meant poor Eleanor. How cheap it made her feel that she was just one of half a dozen women who had been stupid enough to let Fulvio have his way with her and then to write him about it. Some of the letters were embarrassingly graphic, but Eleanor understood their meaning from her own experience. The signatures were all nicknames. Fulvio had called her Mona Lisa, but she had not had the good sense to write under that name. She had signed hers Eleanor. But she could not find them.

  She sat back and tried to feel relief. She was different from the others. Fulvio had respected her enough to get rid of her letters. But why on earth had he kept these? Trophies? Any relief she might have felt at not finding those damnable letters evaporated when she realized he could have kept them somewhere else. But if he had kept them, why not here with these others? Because she was different; it hadn’t been the same thing at all.

  It had been worse. Whoever these other silly women were they were not related to him. She thought of Margaret. Good Lord, she would have to bring her back from the hospital. The inconvenience seemed a kind of expiation.

  24

  The trustees’ board room at St. Edmund’s contained the portraits of past presidents, all but the current one a priest of the order. Alloy had served previously as vice president of one of the lesser campuses of the University of Wisconsin, and he brought to the position experience in everything but how to run a Catholic college. Amos had been in the minority when the vote was taken to hire him. Did Alloy hope to use St. Edmund’s as a springboard to a better job, back into secular higher education, where the politics were fierce but there were no theological complications?

  Alloy took his place at the head of the table and wished them all good morning.

  “Good morning,” they answered, like a grade school class.

  Alloy’s mindless smile gave way to a frown. “I want to begin the meeting with an item not on the agenda, and I will ask Box to explain.”

  Box was the onboard legal counsel to the college, a fellow alumnus of the Notre Dame Law School, a good man.

  “One of our junior faculty came to my office and informed me that he intended to sue the college.”

  Everyone sat straighter. Box went on, telling them of Horst Cassirer, a young professor of English who had applied for early tenure.

  “He was turned down by the departmental committee.”

  “I would have vetoed it if he hadn’t been,” Holder said. “He is one of the most obnoxious young men I have ever met, seething with contempt for the college, convinced that he far outclasses his seniors.”

  “He has hired a lawyer,” Box said.

  Amos asked who the lawyer was.

  “A man named Tuttle.”

  Despite himself, Amos laughed. All but Box looked at him with surprise.

  “Tuttle is the buffoon of the local bar,” Amos explained. “This young fellow could not have made a worse choice.”

  “It still spells trouble.”

  “I doubt that Eugene Box thinks so.”

  It was a sign of the times that St. Edmund’s felt threatened by the likes of Tuttle. In his own mind, Amos formed an image of Horst Cassirer along the lines of Tuttle. That someone described as a brilliant scholar, however defective in the other qualities expected of a permanent member of the faculty, should have regarded Tuttle as an effective instrument of his revenge on the school called into question the meaning of brilliance and scholarship. Revenge had been the provost’s word, in response to a remark that Cassirer must like his job to be fighting to keep it like this.

  “He hates his job, he hates the school, he hates his students.”

  “Then why is he here at all?”

  “He doesn’t hate Horst Cassirer. The universe exists to advance the cause of Cassirer. To the degree that it fails to do that, or fails to do that intensely enough for his liking, he hates the universe too.”

  Alloy smiled wryly at his provost. “Obviously this has weighed on you.”

  Amos asked Box just exactly what sort of legal move Cassirer or his counsel could make.

  “It is not unheard of, after someone has been denied tenure, for that person to demand a review. There are procedures provided in the faculty manual for such a review. The provost appoints a committee, they go over the procedure that was followed, and report to the provost.”

  “Second guessing the departmental committee?”

  “The review emphasizes procedure. Obviously you wouldn’t want people in history deciding who is and who is not a good chemist, or vice versa, but any member of the faculty can determine whether the correct procedures were followed in a field quite different from his own.”

  “Holder has to make such decisions every day,” Alloy said. “Not tenure decisions, of course, but it falls to him to direct the work of all the divisions and departments within the college. And he is an economist.”

  “As I understand it,” Amos said, having consulted the faculty manual that was part of the packet placed before each trustee’s place at the table, “he has not yet actually been denied tenure.”

  “The decision is in its early stages. The departmental committee has met.”

  “Have they reported to you?”

  “Oh no. Nor yet to the dean.”

  “But they informed Cassirer of their vote?”

  “The proceedings of such committees are governed by complete confidentiality.”

  “Then,” Amos said, “from a procedural point of view, Cassirer cannot yet know that a vote has been taken or that it has been unfavorable to him.”

  The provost conceded that this was a delicate point. “Obviously he knows the outcome of the vote. It was all over campus within an hour, to those interested, in any case.”

  “So someone broke confidentiality.”

  The provost nodded. “Not, I should add, an unusual occurrence.”

  “Perhaps Box should bring a case against the English department’s committee.”

  “I will issue a directive, reminding the faculty of the confidentiality rule.”

  “If he has not been turned down, at least as yet, his suit against the college is still speculative. I mean, he could scarcely file it in any court.”

  “I don’t think he intends to wait. Actually this dispute has been public for some time. I probably should have prepared a dossier on this, but the idea was simply to forewarn the board of a dark cloud on the horizon. Cassirer has already carried his campaign to the pages of the student newspaper.”

  A stir around the table. A recurrent item of their meetings was complaints against the student newspaper, which struck a liberal stance somewhat to the left of the Village Voice, featuring items that seemed aimed at outraging the more sedate of its readers and running Personals that reminded one knowledgeable trustee of notices pinned up in doorways near Piccadilly in London. The president’s allusion to the paper turned the meeting in that direction and when, after some fifteen minutes of needed venting, the president got them onto the prepared agenda, matters settled into their customary dullness.

  Amos was passive for the rest of the meeting, although matters more serious than the fate of young Cassirer came up, matters on which in earlier days he would have spoken with eloquence. Just as the official administrative reaction to the assaults on faith and morals in the student paper was the very stuff of the academic world, so the proposed production of some monstrosity called the Vagina Monologues was regarded as arguably within the bounds of the college mission.

  “It’s been produced on campuses all over the country.”

  Amos sat in frozen embarrassment. Missy Phillips, the newest member of the board, CEO of Dot Dash, supplier of essential computer components, shuffled her papers without apparent unease at the discussion. F
ather Fish, the lone Edmundite on the board, recounted the divided opinion of theologians on the matter of such productions. Was he himself for the production or against it? In response he listed the reasons for allowing the production and went on to list those against. That seemed to be his view, that there were conflicting views on everything. Dear God, if Father Bourke were still on the board, this item would have been stricken beforehand or decided in a trice. What on earth was there to discuss in such a matter?

  “I saw it in New York,” Missy Phillips said.

  “Ah. And what did you think?”

  “Nasty talk at girls camp.”

  God is merciful, and they went on to other items, which meant that the students could produce the propaganda play for perversity. Had the time come for him to resign? Amos felt that he was colluding in the destruction of the Church and of Western civilization, two entities he considered essentially connected. Item followed item, but Amos did not follow the discussion closely. Afterward, there was coffee, but Amos was inclined to slip away. He had reached the door, unobtrusively he thought, when Eugene Box hailed him.

  “Amos, could we talk?”

  He meant in his office, which was down the hall. They went through the outer office, where Box dropped his trustee packet on his secretary’s desk, and led the way into his office.

  “As I mentioned, Tuttle has been to see me,” he said when they were seated.

  Amos just shook his head.

  “If I understood him, Cassirer is considering a wholesale assault on the college, aimed at showing our hypocrisy. Specific faculty members will be named. Do you remember Raymond Bernardo?”

  “The Edmundite? Of course.”

  “And of how he left?”

  Box was still in law school when that had occurred, whereas Amos then as now was a member of the board.

  “I remember it well.”

  “He has a brother on the faculty.”

  “Andrew?”

  “You know him?”

  “I know the family, have for years.”

  “Do you know anything of Andrew’s living arrangements?”

  “Living arrangements!”

  “Tuttle seemed to be insinuating that Cassirer’s foe lived in flagrant violation of the requirements of the faculty manual for personal morality.”

  “Dear God.”

  Amos thought immediately of Margaret Bernardo, a dear woman of the long-suffering variety.

  “Technically, it’s grounds for dismissal, but Alloy has no desire to invoke the requirement for moral rectitude on the part of the faculty. He considers it archaic.”

  After the discussions in the meeting, Amos was not surprised.

  “Whatever Holder says, I think the president wants to placate Cassirer.”

  “No matter what his department thinks of him?”

  Box brought his hands down his cheeks. “He will do anything to forestall bad publicity.”

  Box was letting him know that, whatever happened, it was Alloy’s decision. What did his fellow lawyer think, in his heart of hearts? He was afraid to ask.

  When he rose to go he thanked Box for confiding in him.

  “I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “Holding our heads up is becoming increasingly difficult.”

  Box came with him to the door of his office. “What changes you must have seen, Mr. Cadbury.”

  Amos sighed. “Change and decay in all around I see. Do you know Waugh?”

  Box did not. Amos did not explain.

  “Of course she’s a saint,” Eleanor had said to him two days ago. She crossed her hands on her lap. “Are you Fulvio’s lawyer?”

  “I have done legal work for him, yes.”

  “When he dies …”

  “Is it that certain?”

  “There is said to be little chance that he will ever go home from the hospital. Have you visited him?”

  Amos looked at Eleanor. The suggestion seemed to have more to do with her question about whether he was Fulvio’s lawyer than any friendship that existed between him and the Bernardo patriarch.

  “No.”

  “I wish you would.”

  Amos nodded noncommitally. It might have been a generic invocation of the corporal works of mercy. Visit the sick.

  “His papers will be put under lock and key, won’t they? I am thinking of the probate of Alfred’s estate.”

  “That depends.” Mention of Alfred renewed Amos’s uneasiness about the unsecured money Alfred had turned over to Fulvio, a matter on which Eleanor exhibited something approaching insouciance. Or was this concern about papers related to that?

  “You’re thinking of the money Alfred invested with Fulvio?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s it.”

  “Do you have any records of that transaction?”

  “It must be in his papers. As my lawyer too, you will want to protect me.”

  Amos assured her that she would receive the full benefit of his legal representation. He found Eleanor a difficult person to like, yet two men had been sufficiently taken with her to marry her. Despite her undeniable beauty Amos found her cold. What attracts a particular man to a particular woman was one of those mysteries he had sometimes discussed with Father Dowling.

  Eleanor said, “I’ve made a preliminary survey of the papers he has at home.”

  “And you found nothing.”

  She looked over his head and shook hers. “There were lots of letters.”

  “But none to Alfred?”

  “I could have overlooked them.”

  “How did you come to look over his papers?”

  “It was the children’s suggestion.”

  A call from Father Dowling brightened his day.

  “Marie is eager to prepare a lunch for you, Amos. I don’t make sufficient demands on her culinary talents.”

  “If I were ruthless, I would hire her away from you.”

  “After my noon Mass tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be at the Mass.”

  “Good, just come into the sacristy afterward, and we’ll go over to the rectory together.”

  25

  There is a tide in the affairs of men, and in their deaths, as well, at least the violent ones that occupied Phil Keegan and the detective bureau of the Fox River Police Department. Since losing his wife, Phil had immersed himself more and more in his work, scarcely having any life outside it, save of course for his visits to Father Dowling at St. Hilary’s. Roger didn’t remember him from Quigley, of course—Phil had been several years his junior—but the view up differs from the view down, and little Philip Keegan had been very aware of the older boys in the preparatory seminary. Roger Dowling had impressed him then, and since Roger’s appointment at St. Hilary’s the two men had formed a close friendship. Latin had been Phil’s downfall as far as a vocation to the priesthood went, a blow at the time, which as the years passed struck him more and more as providential. It was bad enough to witness what was happening to the Church from the outside, so to speak, but he would have been undone by all the changes if he had become a priest. Of course, Latin his old nemesis was no longer a factor. Roger Dowling’s equanimity was a solace to Phil. But now he fretted because the workload of his department had dwindled to a few routine matters. Even Cy Horvath, his impassive Hungarian lieutenant, seemed a little edgy. Then Phil remembered something Marie Murkin had said and was able to put Cy on it, wild goose chase though it doubtless was.

  “Does the name Alfred Wygant mean anything to you?”

  “The insurance man?”

  “The dead insurance man.”

  Cy’s expression never changed, but Phil had the impression he was consulting his phenomenal memory bank.

  “Some kind of accident, wasn’t it?”

  “Marie Murkin wonders about that.”

  “How so?”

  “Why don’t you see what you can find out about it?”

  “We didn’t investigate it at the time.”

  “I know.”

  Cy
rose. He was a huge man whose athletic career had been thwarted when he was injured as a freshman at Illinois. He came out of the service, where he had served as an MP, and Phil had been instrumental in getting him on the force. From the outset he had seen Cy as his good right arm, and so it had turned out. Whatever Cy found out, likely nothing important, at least it would serve to placate Marie Murkin.

  When Cy passed the pressroom he heard Tuttle pontificating and went in.

  “Lieutenant Horvath,” Tuttle cried. The little lawyer seemed uncharacteristically jaunty.

  “Why aren’t you out chasing ambulances?”

  “I am moving in a new sphere, Horvath. Academic law.”

  The reporter Tetzel made an obscene noise and turned away to contemplate the monitor of his computer. Tuttle was unfazed.

  “I have a professor at St. Edmund’s for a client. Tetzel is peeved because he knows I will make headlines.”

  “You always do, Tuttle.”

  On the way to picking up a car, Cy stopped in the cafeteria, having seen the lovely Dr. Pippen pushing a tray along the line. He got into the line, wanting just a cup of coffee. If Pippen were alone, he would join her. If she weren’t, he wouldn’t. Cy was made uneasy by his attraction to the beautiful assistant coroner and tried to think of her as a sister, not an easy thing to do. But now she too was married, so his infatuation seemed doubly innocent or at least half as dangerous.

  When he turned with his cup of coffee, Pippen was settling in at a table, alone. Cy went to join her.

  “Where are all the bodies?” she asked. “We have nothing to do.”

  “We’re supposed to be glad at a drop in crime.”

  “The least you could do is go out and shoot someone for me.”

  “Who would you like it to be?”

  Her lips moved but no sound emerged. Lubins. Her boss. Reading Pippens’s lips had its rewards.

  “It would take a silver bullet. I’ll go back with you when we’re done here. I want to look up some old records.”