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A Rare Murder In Princeton

Page 12

by Ann Waldron


  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “I found it in a box of old clothes that had been in the garage at George’s house for twenty years.”

  “Then it was Jill Murray’s, I guess. Now it’s George’s—he bought the house and contents, I presume.”

  “I have no idea,” said McLeod. “He doesn’t even know I found it.” She told him about the box of dresses, bringing them to Clark Powell, finding the book and forgetting about it until this morning.

  “I guess the murder investigation drove the book and the other things right out of my mind,” she said.

  “What other things?” asked Natty.

  She told him about the crucifix and the heavy ivory box.

  “Where are the other things?”

  “Locked in a file drawer in my cubicle in Joseph Henry House,” she said.

  “Anybody can jimmy a file drawer,” said Natty. “Bring them over here and we’ll keep them in the safe in the vault.”

  “Oh, good. But tell me about the book.”

  “I can’t tell you much at first glance. It’s medieval. It’s valuable. I don’t know its provenance. You have no idea where it came from, do you?”

  “Of course not,” said McLeod.

  “Let me get Buster in here. He knows more about this kind of thing than I do.” He dialed, waited, and asked Buster to come to his office. “I have something spectacular to show you,” he said.

  Buster was there almost instantly. He pulled up a chair to Natty’s desk and took the book that Natty handed him. He looked at it a long time, examining the cover, and carefully turning pages. He was whistling, not whistling a tune, but saying, “Whew, whew, whew,” ever so softly. His dark eyes glittered when he looked up, and his dark hair seemed to quiver.

  “Where did this come from?” he asked. “Is it ours?”

  Natty, with occasional help from McLeod, told him all they knew about the manuscript.

  “It’s early and it’s of exceptional quality—I can tell that,” said Buster. “It’s the four Gospels. It’s written in gold and it’s illuminated with unusual skill. It’s immensely valuable—worth millions, I’d say. Is there any way we can claim it for Princeton?”

  “I don’t see how we can claim it,” said Natty.

  Buster turned to McLeod. “Is it yours?” he asked.

  “Heavens, no,” she said. “Natty said he thought it would be George’s since he bought the house and contents.”

  “George is a loyal alumnus and employee—he’ll give it to us,” said Buster.

  “Do you have any idea where it came from?” Natty asked.

  “No, not offhand. It’s medieval—” Buster began.

  “That’s what I said,” interjected Natty.

  “Tenth century, maybe ninth century. Where was it done? Since it’s in Latin, it’s hard to say immediately what its origin is. But books do tell secrets. Let me think. Let me look at it.” He was studying the book closely.

  “You can leave it with us, McLeod,” said Natty. “And bring the other things over here, too. I would say that box is a reliquary.”

  McLeod promised that she would.

  Buster looked up. “I’ll find out about it,” he said. “Let me do a little research. I wonder how it got to Princeton.”

  “All paths lead to Princeton,” said Natty. “Take the book and find out about it. I’ll walk McLeod back to her office and get the other two things.”

  “Let me get something from conservation to keep this glorious thing in,” said Buster as he left.

  Natty found a shopping bag from Barnes & Noble in a cabinet and took it with him as they left. McLeod had intended to spend more time in Rare Books, but decided it was a good idea to get all the treasure into the safe hands of Natty Ledbetter.

  “Any news on the murder?” she asked as they walked across the court to Joseph Henry House.

  “Not that I know of,” said Natty. “At least the police are no longer all over the place.”

  WHEN SHE HANDED over the ivory box to Natty, he took it reverently and said, “I’m sure it is a reliquary, and it probably has a shard of some saint’s bones in it.” He put it and the crucifix in his shopping bag and departed.

  McLeod sat down to check her e-mail and phone messages. When she found nothing crucial, she decided to trail back over to Rare Books and see if she could pick up anything new about the murder. And she might even do a little work on van Dyke, who somehow didn’t seem as interesting as he had once. Still, at least she could finish reading that box of papers she had planned to finish last Wednesday. She would dearly love to talk to Nick Perry and find out what the police had learned about the times when people left Rare Books on Tuesday. Could she ask people herself? Possibly. She put on her coat and set out once more for the library.

  “BACK AGAIN?” ASKED Molly when McLeod came into Rare Books.

  “I’m back again but this time I’ll hang up my coat and sign in formally. I shall try to do a little work on van Dyke. How’s it going, Molly? Everything back to normal?”

  “Hardly,” said Molly. “How can things be normal where there’s been a murder. Who did it? Are we safe? Is it a maniac? A serial killer?”

  “Oh, it can’t be a serial killer,” said McLeod. “It can’t be an outsider. It was somebody that works here. So relax.”

  Molly digested this. “But that’s even worse,” she said after a minute. “I should relax because somebody in this office where I work every day is a murderer?”

  “I see what you mean,” said McLeod. What could she say to reassure a very young woman in the circumstances? “I’m sure we’re all safe. Isn’t that a proctor over there?” She nodded her head and smiled at a man in a black blazer with the Princeton crest on the pocket who sat in the shadows of the reception area. Princeton’s Public Safety Office called its plain clothes officers by the old academic name of proctor.

  “Oh, yes, that’s Derek. Derek, this is McLeod Dulaney, one of our patrons, so to speak.”

  “How do you do?” said Derek.

  “So you’re guarding the staff, aren’t you?” asked McLeod. “They’re safe?”

  “That’s right,” said Derek. “There are two of us here. We’re helping out the Borough. Nothing else is going to happen here—staff and patrons, they’re safe.”

  “See, Molly. You’re safe. Well, I’ll get to work. I’ll stop off and speak to Chester—I’ve become quite fond of him. You know, Molly, he’d be a nice beau for you.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Molly. “I’m sure. But he hasn’t come in this morning.”

  “I hope he’s not sick,” said McLeod.

  “I don’t know,” said Molly. “He hasn’t called in.”

  “Hasn’t called in? That’s odd.”

  “I know,” said Molly, “but everything’s out of whack.”

  Eighteen

  MCLEOD CARRIED HER pencil and sheets of paper to the Reading Room, where Diane greeted her warmly. “Nobody else here?” McLeod asked.

  “Nope, you’re the only one.” Diane was a young black woman with a smile as welcoming as sunshine. McLeod always felt cheered when she entered the Reading Room.

  “And it’s late. I thought Barry Porter was so anxious to get on with the O’Neill stuff,” said McLeod. “Didn’t Natty call him? And where’s Miss Swallow?”

  “I don’t know about either one of them,” said Diane, “but they’re not here.”

  McLeod filled out a call slip for the box with all the letters about the writing of “The Other Wise Man” and gave it to Diane, who summoned a page and passed it on to him.

  Since there was no one else in the Reading Room, McLeod decided it was all right to talk to Diane. “How’s your little boy?” she asked. “Have you heard anything from that school?”

  “No, I’m still waiting—and hoping.”

  “Good luck, Diane. How did you get along with the police last week?”

  “Good. I guess,” said Diane. “At least they didn’t try to blame me for the
murder. Everybody knew I left way before it happened. I think I was the first one to leave.”

  “That’s great,” said McLeod. Things had come to a pretty pass, she thought, when you felt like congratulating somebody because they weren’t under suspicion of murder. She rolled her pencil between her fingers and asked Diane a question she had long wanted to ask: “Do you ever catch anybody actually trying to steal anything?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Diane. “It was a couple of weeks ago. There was this Greek Orthodox priest that was coming in here working with some old English books that had some woodcuts in them. Later, one of the curators made a routine check of the books when he finished and discovered some plates were missing. She looked at the call slips and the register and saw that this Greek Orthodox priest had used the books last. So she told Mr. Keaton and Mr. Ledbetter and they went to see this priest—he lives real near here—and he had the prints! He admitted it right away. Apologized. Said he just wanted to look at them at home. He had taken them out under all those black robes.”

  “And they got them all back?” asked McLeod.

  “Every single one.”

  “That’s amazing. But how did the priest get the prints out of the books?”

  “With a razor blade,” said Diane.

  “How did he do all that with you sitting here?”

  “That’s what they all kept asking me,” said Diane. “And I said I had never, never left him in here alone. He always gave me the heebie-jeebies, so I watched him. Finally, we figured out he could have slipped a book under that robe while I had my back turned for a second. Then he would go to the men’s room and cut out the pictures.”

  “Good heavens! That’s an amazing story.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Diane with a satisfied air. “But that’s how he did it—he admitted it.”

  “Is the university going to press charges?”

  “I don’t think so. He said he was sorry. But they told him he never could come back here. But I bet if Molly leaves and I leave, he’ll just come straight back and come right in and get himself some more pictures.”

  “Don’t ever leave, Diane,” said McLeod.

  “If I get a better job, I’ll have to.”

  “That Greek Orthodox priest. I’d love to see him in here in his patriarchal robes and a hat—didn’t he wear a tall black hat?”

  Diane laughed heartily. “I never saw him in a tall hat.”

  “So people do steal things if they can?” said McLeod. “That’s why you take all these precautions and keep these records.”

  “That’s it. They sure do steal things if you don’t watch them like hawks. I saw a student take a Scott Fitzgerald letter and put it in his pocket one time. I asked him if he had meant to do that and he was flabbergasted. But he was like the priest—sorry—and he said he was just absent-minded, so I didn’t do anything about it. I did ask one of the curators to check the box he had been using and see if anything else was missing. That’s harder to do with letters —every single letter is not listed in the index. But I think that’s all that student took. It’s a good thing he wasn’t wearing long black robes, isn’t it?”

  “I’m amazed,” said McLeod. “Who was the curator who discovered the woodcuts were missing?”

  “It was Mary Woodward.”

  “Mary Woodward? I don’t know her. I’m realizing there are lots of people here I don’t know. How many curators are there?”

  “Five or six, and then there’s all the conservators.”

  “These are people who could have stayed late last Tuesday ?”

  “That’s right,” said Diane. “The professionals usually stay after we close. The clerical help—me and Molly and the others—we leave as quick as we can.”

  Jeff, the page who wrote novels, brought McLeod’s box up from downstairs just then, and she turned her attention to the folders inside.

  She took a few notes on the letters about “The Other Wise Man,” but her heart wasn’t in it. It was clear, she thought, that she was more interested in the murder than she was in van Dyke. But van Dyke was her best excuse to be in Rare Books.

  She put the letters back in the folder, started to put the folder back in the box, and to her annoyance, dropped her mechanical pencil into the box. She groped around in the box looking for the pencil and couldn’t locate it. She started taking folders out.

  “Just take one folder out at a time,” warned Diane, in a much more official voice than the one that she had used to tell about the thieving priest and student.

  “I dropped my pencil down in there,” said McLeod.

  Diane got up. “I’ll get it out,” she said and came over to the table where McLeod was working, and peered down into the box. Then she began taking folders out. “What’s this?” she said. “This isn’t your pencil.” She held up a slim ivory knife.

  “That’s the murder weapon!” said McLeod. “That’s Philip Sheridan’s paper knife. Put it down. Don’t touch it again. Get that proctor out there.”

  “You get the proctor. I’ll wait here. I can’t leave you alone with the papers . . .” McLeod was gone before she could finish, and back in seconds with the proctor.

  The proctor looked long and hard at the knife. “I need a plastic bag,” he said.

  “The conservators must have something,” said Diane. She rang for a page and, when Jeff came, asked him to get a plastic bag from the conservation room downstairs.

  While they waited, the proctor called the Borough Police on his cell phone. “Lieutenant Perry will be here as soon as he can,” he said.

  The page returned with a conservator, whom Diane greeted as Oscar. Oscar carried a large plastic envelope. The proctor told him to put it down on the table. “We’ll just wait for the lieutenant,” he said. Nobody left.

  “How did it get in that box I was working on?” asked McLeod. “That’s what I want to know.”

  Nobody answered. They had to wait for perhaps twenty minutes before Nick Perry came rushing in. He nodded at everyone, thanked the proctor, listened to what he had to say, and finally focused on the knife lying on the table.

  “Did you touch it?” he asked McLeod.

  “I did not,” she said.

  “I touched it,” said Diane. “I didn’t know what it was.”

  Perry took a card from his pocket, carefully nudged the knife into the plastic envelope, and left it lying on the table. Then he sighed and looked at the people again. “What happened here?”

  “This is supposed to be a quiet room,” said an angry voice. “What’s going on in here, Diane?” It was Fanny Mobley at her most unpleasant. Today she wore a heavy gray sweater over a navy blue sweater and long black skirt with a fringe around the bottom.

  “We found the murder weapon,” said Diane.

  “You found what? Are all these people signed in properly?”

  “This is the policeman and this is a proctor,” said Diane. “And you know Oscar from conservation and Jeff the page. And Ms. Dulaney is signed in.”

  “Oh,” said Fanny.

  “Nick Perry, lieutenant, chief of detectives with the Borough,” said Nick.

  “Oh, yes,” said Fanny. “I see. I see. And that’s the weapon that the murderer used?”

  “It may well be,” said Nick Perry. “I need to ask these people a few questions. Will it be all right if we sit in here?” He waved his hand to indicate the Reading Room.

  “No, this is supposed to be a quiet room. Please use the work area,” said Fanny.

  “Too much coming and going,” said Perry patiently. “If it’s all right, I’d like to get this done. It shouldn’t take long.”

  Fanny frowned at Diane, nodded at Perry, and said, “As you please, Lieutenant,” and swept from the Reading Room.

  “Let’s sit down. We can see each other if we sit at the front desks. Tell me what happened here,” said Perry.

  “Nick, I dropped my pencil in this box of van Dyke papers, and then I couldn’t get it out,” said McLeod.

&
nbsp; “She was taking all the folders out of the box and that is not allowed,” Diane interrupted. “So I came over to help, and when I had most of the folders out, I saw this knife. I pulled it out and I said, ‘This is not your pencil, is it?’ And she said, ‘Don’t touch it. Put it down. That’s the murder weapon.’ So I put it down right then. And she went to get the proctor and I sent for a page to go get a plastic envelope from conservation. And then you got here. That’s all.”

  “And I brought the plastic envelope,” said Oscar. “From conservation.”

  “I see,” said Perry, and went back over it, asking more questions this time.

  How does he stand it? McLeod asked herself. Listening to the same story over and over.

  “All right, everybody,” said Perry. “Very good. Let me get your names and addresses and let me call somebody to come get everybody’s fingerprints. Nobody else touched the knife? Good. All right.” He wrote down names and addresses for Diane, Oscar, and Jeff, and thanked them, asking them to make themselves available when the fingerprint man arrived. “And thank you, Miss Diane, for the use of your space. Now I need to know who had access to this box. Who could have put the knife in it?”

  This was the question McLeod had asked just before he arrived, so she waited for the answer.

  Diane hesitated. “I guess you should talk to Miss Mobley. The manuscript curator. She was just in here.”

  “I will,” said Perry. “But you tell me who you think could have done it.”

  “Any of the curators could have done it,” said Diane. “A conservator. A page. Anybody who has access to the vault.”

  “You could have done it?”

  “I don’t go to the vault myself,” said Diane. “I could have done it only when the box was up here in the Reading Room.”

  “How long has it been in the Reading Room?”

  “It just came up a few minutes ago this morning. It hasn’t been up here since Ms. Dulaney was working with it a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Before the murder, you mean?” asked Perry.

 

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