by Ann Waldron
McLeod wondered if she was supposed to be ashamed that Jill Murray had managed to avoid burglars while she had not.
“You need a dead bolt on this door,” said Dante.
“What good would that do?” asked McLeod. “They could still break a pane and reach in and undo the dead bolt, couldn’t they?”
“It’s the principle,” said Dante. “A dead bolt is better.”
That was logic for you, McLeod thought. It was unanswerable.
“Mrs. McLeod, you still have that box of old clothes?”
Evidently Dante thought her last name was McLeod. That was all right, lots of people got confused. “No, Dante, I took it to my office.”
“You better get that dead bolt,” Dante said again as he was leaving.
“George is going to get a burglar alarm system,” McLeod said. As she went back upstairs to work on organizing her room, she wondered what a dead bolt had to do with that box of old clothes? Had Dante known about the things wrapped in the dresses? Did anyone else know? She must tell George about that box.
Cleaning up after a burglary is worse than moving, she thought as she hung skirts and dresses on hangers in the closet. It was worse than moving because of the personal threat involved in the ransacking of her possessions. Some of her clothes were too rumpled to put back in the closet, so she set them aside to take to the cleaners.
Who had done such a thing? It was vile, she thought. She gathered up the sweaters and underwear that were lying around on the floor and took them down to the basement to wash them—she could not bear the thought of wearing them after some hideous unknown person had manhandled them.
What on earth had they been looking for among her paltry possessions? Why hadn’t the rest of the house been ransacked ? The burglar must have been interrupted. George was just lucky he didn’t have a mess to clean up like she did.
She made her way up the stairs to her room to get on with trying to restore order. She went back downstairs when Dante came back from Trenton. He quickly inserted the new glass and puttied it in.
“All finished,” he said.
McLeod inquired about payment, and Dante said Mr. Bridges had made an arrangement.
“Fine,” said McLeod. “Thank you so much.”
“Non c’e problema,” said Dante. “Be careful. Be careful.”
McLeod promised she would. It was lunchtime, and she decided to walk over to the campus and get some lunch and perhaps find out if there was anything new about the murder. It had been two days since it happened. Surely there was something to be learned. Just as she was leaving, George drove up.
“You left the office?” she asked, incredulous.
“Yes, I came home to meet the man from the burglar alarm company,” he said.
“I’m off,” she said and started on her way. George was indeed very upset about the burglary, she reflected as she walked.
The little café in the basement of Chancellor Green offered a limited menu, but she bought a roasted vegetable wrap and a bottle of apple juice, turned to survey the room, and saw Fanny Mobley at a table by herself.
“May I join you?” she asked.
Fanny silently moved her purse so McLeod could put her food down on the table but did not speak or smile. She wore a heavy rust-colored wool cardigan over a mauve dress with a long skirt, and to McLeod looked dowdy beyond belief. I wish she would cut her hair and comb it, she thought. Regretting the impulse that had made her approach Fanny, McLeod sat down, smiled in what she felt was an idiotic way, and began babbling.
“I’m glad to see you. How is everything in Rare Books? Have you recovered from the murder? Are you able to get any work done? Such a terrible thing to happen. How are you surviving?”
Fanny, pausing in her steady pursuit of spooning up soup, said briefly, “Yes, everyone is wildly inquisitive about it.”
Oh, dear, thought McLeod, it was one of Fanny’s bad days. “I didn’t mean to intrude, or pry,” she said. “It’s just that I have come to like everybody in the department and I liked Philip Sheridan. . . .”
“Oh, everybody is just crazy about Philip Sheridan now that he’s gone to what might be or might not be his reward,” said Fanny.
What did that mean? wondered McLeod. “Didn’t you like him?” she asked.
“He added to the manuscript collection in major ways,” said Fanny. Having finished her soup, she unwrapped a sandwich she had brought from home, put it down, unscrewed the cup-top off her thermos bottle, and poured a beverage into the plastic cup. She took two gulps, sighed with relief, and took a bite of her sandwich.
“Pâté,” she said. “I love it.”
“It looks divine,” said McLeod, encouraged by a not-illhumored remark. “Did you make it?”
“Oh, no. I bought it at Bon Appétit. It’s the only sandwich I like. I can stand the soup here but that’s about all.” She took another gulp from the thermos cup.
“I think the food is okay here—it’s university food services, isn’t it? And it’s so close to my office in Joseph Henry House.”
“It’s close to the library, too.”
Fanny seemed to be relaxing. Maybe she was basically shy and had to get used to each person all over again for every encounter. “Have you been at the library long?” McLeod asked her.
“Twenty years,” said Fanny.
“I seem to hear a faint English accent when you talk.” McLeod persisted, always eager for more information about people. “Do I?”
“Yes, I suppose you do,” said Fanny. “My mother was English and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in England.”
“Is that where you got interested in rare books and manuscripts ?”
“As a matter of fact it was. My grandfather worked at the British Museum. He was a curator in the manuscripts department.” She took another drink out of her thermos cup. “I was fascinated with what he did from the time I was a little girl. Once in a great while he would take me to work with him and show me something. One time it was a will in Old English from the later Anglo-Saxon Period, about 980 A.D., as I recall. The woman who died was very wealthy and she freed a slave priest in the will, and issued orders for three slave women to chant the Psalms in her memory. I’ll never forget that.”
McLeod was fascinated and listened intently as Fanny told about other wonders her grandfather had shown her. “I knew when I was eight years old that I wanted to work with manuscripts,” she said.
“That’s fabulous,” said McLeod. “I love stories about people who know what they want to do when they’re children. I always knew I wanted to be a newspaper reporter but lots of people don’t have a clue when they’re young.”
“Lots of people don’t have a clue about what they want to do even after they’re grown,” said Fanny. “Buster Keaton never has had a clue.”
“Really? You mean he just happened to become interested in rare books?”
“Staggered into the field,” said Fanny. “I don’t think he has a clear idea of what it’s all about to this day.”
“Heavens,” said McLeod. “But he’s pretty good at his job, isn’t he? He must be.”
“It depends on what you call ‘pretty good.’ I know Philip Sheridan thought he was terrible.”
“Really?” said McLeod. “Did Buster know Philip thought he was no good at his job?”
“He must have known. Philip made it plain to everybody that he thought Buster was hopelessly uninvolved,” said Fanny. “Buster, of course, put up a great show of respect for Philip, deferring to the greater knowledge of rare books that Philip plainly had. But I don’t think that cut any ice with Philip. Subservience did not mean a great deal to Philip Sheridan. And I did sense that Buster was beginning to tire of his role as lifelong learner from Philip. It has occurred to me that he revolted—revolted dramatically.”
“Have you mentioned this to the police?” asked McLeod.
“Of course not,” said Fanny. “I do my job and they do theirs, I hope. They seemed to be interested o
nly in what time I left the library Tuesday and who was there after I left. All I could tell them was that I left right after we closed and everybody else was still there.”
“Let me ask you: Did Philip Sheridan get along well with everyone in the department? Everybody except Buster, I mean.”
“Everybody had to get along with him,” said Fanny. “He was the mighty money man.”
“What about Chester?”
“Chester?” said Fanny. “Of course Chester and Sheridan got along. Chester adored him, worshipped him.”
“That’s what I gathered,” said McLeod.
“Come to think about it, maybe there was some tension there,” said Fanny. She drained the last of the beverage from her thermos, and actually smiled warmly at McLeod. “It was so nice to see you,” she said. “I have to be moving along. I hope everything is going well with Henry van Dyke, and let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.”
McLeod decided Fanny was one of the oddest women she had ever known. It was as if she were manic-depressive—cross as a bear one minute and sweet as sorghum sugar the next. She sat there reflecting on what Fanny had told her. So sweet Philip Sheridan wasn’t always sweet. According to Dodo, he had terrible quarrels with Chester, and according to Fanny, he made no secret of his low opinion of Buster Keaton.
She bused her tray and prepared to go to her office. Students never came for conferences on Fridays, but she would check e-mails and phone messages and leave everything shipshape for Monday. Once there, she found a phone message from Dodo Westcott, but when she tried to call Dodo, she was not at home. McLeod left a message.
As she trudged home, she thought that she really must remember to tell George about the box of dresses.
By Saturday morning McLeod had forgotten the box of dresses and was diverted to another course of action. She suggested to George that they ask Natty Ledbetter to dinner that night.
“Great idea. I have to go to the office so why don’t you call him? He’s probably tied up—he leads a busy social life. Call him.”
McLeod called and Natty, who was indeed free that night, professed to be delighted to come back to the murder house. “Murder’s all over the place, isn’t it?” he said, and then apologized for making a tasteless joke.
“I always say a tasteless joke is better than no joke,” said McLeod.
“Perhaps,” said Natty.
She got busy with a grocery list.
THAT NIGHT, WHEN she was coming down the stairs, she had a sense of déjà vu as she heard Natty saying to George in the hall below, “Dear fellow, so good of you to have me to dinner again in the murder house . . .”
She followed the two men into the living room and sat down with them before the fire for a while, and then went into the kitchen to see about dinner. She was cooking this time, and it seemed to make George nervous—he kept coming into the kitchen to check on things.
“It’s okay, George. It’s fine,” she reassured him. The minute he left the kitchen, her own qualms began. Was it really going to be fine? She did have failures in the kitchen now and then, and it would be just her luck to mess things up when she was cooking dinner in George’s house for George’s old mentor. She wished George were cooking; she would much rather be talking to Natty; she had a million questions for him. But she persevered in the kitchen. Please God, she prayed, let it be all right. It was a heavy meal, but it was the dead of winter in frozen New Jersey, she told herself. A heavy meal was what was called for.
And it was fine. The scallop soup was better than chowder, the men said. The Irish stew was superb, and the dressing for the endive salad was perfect. McLeod sighed with relief, and George insisted on serving the dessert, McLeod’s own chocolate mousse, and making coffee.
“Natty, did you know we had a burglary?” George said while they were drinking coffee.
“No, I didn’t know. When was it?”
“Thursday,” said George. “Two days ago. The burglar must have thought McLeod was an heiress. He really only seemed to be after something in her room.”
“Dear girl, he didn’t find the Dulaney family jewels, did he?” asked Natty.
“He found them and wasn’t interested in my bracelet,” said McLeod.
“That’s good,” said Natty. “But now it’s the burgled house as well as the murder house. How did he get in?”
George gave Natty the details, and Natty said that burglaries were disturbing. “I have an alarm system. Do you have one, dear boy? No, I thought not. You should if you have anything remotely valuable—”
“I don’t,” interjected George, “but I’m getting one. The man was here yesterday.”
“I’ve had one for years. I have some very nice pictures, you know, some choice books of my own, and some prints that I treasure.”
“I’d love to see them,” said McLeod.
“Natty doesn’t show off his treasures,” George said.
“No, I hug them to myself, dear lady,” said Natty.
McLeod ate her mousse and drank her coffee and then turned to Natty. “Is it true that Philip Sheridan was not as nice as he seemed?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “How nice did he seem?”
“He seemed very nice to me,” she said. “You know that. But in talking to other people since then, I gather he had feet of clay.”
“What do you mean?” Natty repeated. “Nobody’s perfect.”
“Well, to be frank, Dodo Westcott told me that she thought Chester and Philip Sheridan had problems, and Fanny Mobley told me how Sheridan felt—and talked—about Buster Keaton.”
“You know, everybody in Rare Books is temperamental to some extent,” Natty said. “That’s why the university brought me in from the English Department to take charge. Everybody used to have his own little fiefdom. Nobody could stand anybody else and they were always feuding. Fanny Mobley was fine one minute and a beast the next. Buster Keaton lost his temper continually and every day he yelled at somebody until she—and sometimes, he—was in tears. It was impossible to set up an exhibition anymore because no two people could agree about the contents.”
Natty stopped talking long enough to finish off his glass of wine. George got up and brought out a bottle of brandy, offering it to Natty, who accepted gratefully. McLeod declined ; she wanted to listen with a clear head.
“McLeod, you realize all this is confidential,” said George.
“George, I wasn’t about to put it in the paper,” she protested. Turning to Natty, she asked, “But you straightened out the situation, didn’t you, when you came in?”
“Oh, yes, certainly. Sure I did. I fixed it so that now everybody has his own little fiefdom. Nobody can stand anybody else and they are always feuding. Fanny Mobley is fine one minute and a beast the next. Buster Keaton loses his temper once a day and yells at somebody every day until she—and sometimes, he—is in tears.” He took a huge swallow of brandy, and grinned at his own wit.
“But they do put up exhibitions,” said McLeod.
“Only because I listen to everybody’s arguments and then I simply issue a fiat: We will do this and include that, and so on.”
“I suppose that’s all fixed, then,” said McLeod, smiling.
Everybody was quiet for a minute or two, until George suggested they go back to the living room and he would poke up the fire. Carrying the brandy bottle, he led the way.
The men settled down, and McLeod went upstairs to get her knitting. “Natty, did Philip Sheridan take part in all these battles and feuds? I would have thought he’d stay aloof,” she asked when she came back.
“He tried,” said Natty. “He really wanted just to work with his own collection and keep everything shipshape. His collection was to be his immortality and he wanted it to be as perfect as he could get it. He and Chester were as happy as clowns puttering around in there in their lair. I don’t believe that Philip was involved in serious altercations with anybody on the staff. For one thing, as I said, he didn’t pay that much att
ention to anything but his own collection, and all of us were understandably respectful of him. He was already our benefactor, but besides that, everybody saw him as a source of potential power and a source—of course—of funding for future pet projects. And they were always swarming over him—I guess we were all always swarming over him.”
“But did he really get mad at Chester?”
“Chester was deferential to a fault,” said Natty. “Sometimes Philip may have been impatient with him, but I think at heart he was very fond of Chester. He should have been. Trust Dodo to bad-mouth Chester.”
“And did Philip Sheridan really dislike Buster Keaton? Fanny said he did.”
Natty reached for the brandy bottle and refilled his glass. “I don’t know how Philip really felt about Buster,” he said. “He brought his collection to Princeton when Old Clement Odell was in charge of Rare Books. He was a classmate of Philip’s and a gentleman collector himself. Philip loved Princeton and it was natural for him to bring his collection here, but Old Clement Odell was certainly a factor. Buster became curator of Rare Books when Old Clement died.”
“How old was Old Clement Odell?” asked McLeod.
“He was Philip’s age, but he died several years ago, when he wasn’t all that old. He just acted old and everybody always called him ‘Old Clement.’ People who knew him still refer to him that way.”
“Are you saying that Philip Sheridan would not have brought his collection to Princeton if Buster Keaton had been curator?”
“Who knows? I know Old Clement was a factor in Philip’s choice at the time, but that’s not the only reason he did what he did. Buster is a reputable rare books person. He is widely respected. On the other hand, anybody might lose patience with him occasionally. He blusters, and Philip Sheridan didn’t like bluster.”
“I see,” said McLeod. She was silent. While George and Natty chatted about some university matter that she’d never heard of, she knitted industriously on George’s sweater and thought about all that everyone had told her about Rare Books and Special Collections.