A Rare Murder In Princeton

by Ann Waldron

  Twenty-one

  THE NEXT MORNING, Tuesday, McLeod was happy to see that it had not snowed heavily—not even an inch. Life in Princeton could go on. She would get dressed and go to Rare Books and finish that box of van Dyke papers. Surely the police were through with it.

  First her office, though, to check the mail and messages. She hung up her coat on the rack downstairs and went in the Humanities Council Office. Frieda had a quotation ready: “ ‘God sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.’ ”

  “He doesn’t send snow in winter everywhere,” said McLeod. “It never snows in Tallahassee. I can’t get used to it up here.”

  It sounded like I was complaining, she thought as she climbed the stairs. In her alcove, she laid her mail on the desk and looked around. Something was out of whack, she thought. What was it? She looked around and saw that someone had forced open the drawers on her file cabinet. She pulled open a desk drawer and immediately felt that the intruder had also riffled through her desk. What was going on? First the house was burgled, and now her office. “I’m glad I took that book and those other things over to Rare Books,” she said to herself. “Thank heavens.”

  She went back downstairs and reported the damage to Frieda. Frieda’s eyes widened and her mouth opened. “ ‘O, it’s broken the lock and splintered the door . . . Their boots are heavy on the floor.’ Remember the Auden lines I quoted to you last week? Now it’s happened.”

  “Hadn’t we better report it to Public Safety?” asked McLeod.

  “Of course, I’ll do that now,” said Frieda. “Was anything stolen?”

  “I don’t think so,” said McLeod. “I don’t keep anything valuable up there.” At least, not anymore, she thought.

  “No, it’s not a good place for safekeeping,” said Frieda. She punched a number on her phone.

  McLeod waited around to talk to the two proctors from Public Safety. She took them up to her cubicle. “Vandalism,” said one of them when she told them nothing had been taken. They went through the whole building looking for other signs of breaking and entering and found none.

  McLeod went downstairs with them and they stopped in the Humanities Council Office. Everyone agreed that Joseph Henry House was pretty easy to break into.

  “And those cubicles upstairs are open to the world,” said one of the proctors.

  “Frieda complains that the last person out doesn’t always lock the doors,” said McLeod.

  “Isn’t Public Safety supposed to check the doors at night?” asked Frieda.

  “We do, but a burglar could come in after everyone left, go through those cubicles upstairs, and leave before we checked the doors,” said the proctor. “We’ll do what we can,” he said, and the two men left.

  Frieda promised she would call somebody about repairing the locks on McLeod’s file drawers.

  MCLEOD FINALLY GOT to Rare Books. As she was signing in, Nick Perry was leaving. He stopped to greet her and asked her if he could come by Edgehill Street later and talk to her. “About seven?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Nick made sure he had the right address and left. McLeod was delighted he was coming. Maybe she could tell George that she, too, had a date.

  On her way into the Reading Room, she stopped in Natty’s office.

  “Good morning, dear girl,” he said, getting up.

  “Good morning,” she replied. “Sit back down, Natty. I’m not going to stay.”

  Natty shook his head and remained standing, so McLeod slid into a chair. Natty was so old-fashioned—he wouldn’t sit down while she was standing. It was kind of nice, really. “Did you find out anything yet about the treasure?”

  “Buster’s working on it like a bull dog,” said Natty. He paused portentously. “You know, George came by this morning to have a look at it.”

  “Did he take it away?”

  “No, no, it’s all still here.”

  “Oh, Natty, I forgot to tell him about it until last night. Isn’t that awful? He was furious. But I just bumbled along, doing first one thing and then another and living one day, one half-day, at a time.”

  “Not to worry,” said Natty. “George will understand eventually, if he doesn’t already.”

  “Oh, my office was burgled,” she said. “I’m very glad I got that book and the other things over here to you yesterday, or they might have been stolen.”

  “And so you should be,” said Natty. “Buster and I are very glad you did. Buster has high hopes that dear George will give them to Princeton.”

  “I hope that nothing I did will keep that from happening,” said McLeod.

  “No, no, dear lady. I’m sure everything you did was for the best.”

  WHEN SHE FINALLY got to the Reading Room, McLeod saw that Celestine Swallow, the old lady—she corrected her thought to “older woman”—who had been researching flower painters before the murder, was back. She was in the work area outside the Reading Room and she was somewhat agitated, twisting a pencil in her hand.

  McLeod greeted her and asked if there was anything wrong.

  “It’s rather troubling,” said Miss Swallow. “I put in a call slip for it yesterday. And they still can’t find it.”

  “What is it that they can’t find?” asked McLeod.

  “Oh, it’s the plates from the Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala—Augusta Withers illustrated it. In fact, she painted the originals that the lithographs are based on. I really want to see them.”

  “They will turn up, won’t they?” asked McLeod.

  “I certainly hope so,” said Miss Swallow.

  As often happened when conversation was taking place outside her office, Fanny Mobley appeared and asked crossly what the problem was.

  When Miss Swallow explained about the missing plates from Orchidaceae, Fanny shook her head despairingly and said, “They do things like that,” implying, McLeod deduced, that Rare Books lost things but manuscripts never did. Then she went back in her office and slammed the door.

  McLeod settled down with a new box that held clips of stories about van Dyke from various publications over the years. She learned that van Dyke was small but “splendidly erect,” and carried a gold-headed cane. He wore white suits before Mark Twain made them famous and smoked tiny cigars. His house in Princeton, built in 1750, had been across the street from Grover Cleveland’s. Heads of caribou and moose that van Dyke had shot adorned the walls of the entrance hall. He kept three horses and liked to drive a carriage and a sleigh.

  “He would turn down a lecture that would pay $1,000 (a huge sum in his lifetime) and then speak for nothing to benefit an orphanage,” said one writer.

  McLeod was glad enough to leave all this behind when Miss Swallow suggested quietly that they go get some lunch. They settled down in Chancellor Green with wraps and tea while Miss Swallow mourned for Augusta Withers’s illustrations in the Orchidaceae. “The book was published in 1837,” she said. “But those botanical books often got ripped apart so people could have the flower pictures for framing. Princeton has many of these loose prints, but they don’t catalog them. Now they say they don’t own any pages from the Orchidaceae, but I know they do. They had some of them in an exhibition several years ago. That exhibition was one thing that got me interested in this project. I wrote her name down. I know they’re supposed to be here. It’s very frustrating.”

  “I can imagine,” said McLeod.

  “The world is falling apart,” said Miss Swallow.

  McLeod could only agree. She told her about her vandalized office. “And the funny thing is that the house where I live was burgled last week.”

  “That’s very strange,” said Miss Swallow. “But maybe people will call it the burglar house now, instead of the murder house.”

  “Maybe so,” said McLeod, who now called it the Murder House in capital letters to herself. “At least nothing was taken at either place,” she added.

  “That’s the
good news,” said Miss Swallow, “but I’m sure you still feel violated.”

  “I do,” said McLeod. She liked Miss Swallow. Perhaps she could be a Miss Marple or Miss Silver, an older woman who was a whiz at solving mysteries. “Well, think about it,” she urged Miss Swallow. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know how I could figure out anything,” said Miss Swallow. “I can’t figure out what happened to those orchid plates.”

  “Is there anything else you can be working on?” asked McLeod.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve filled out call slips for several things,” said Miss Swallow.

  “Rare Books is a nice place to do research, isn’t it?” said McLeod.

  “Very nice,” said Miss Swallow. “The Reading Room is very attractive and everyone is extremely nice.” She paused, and then added, “Miss Mobley seems to be rather odd.”

  “She is indeed,” said McLeod. “Have you noticed how she’s sweet one minute and cross the next?”

  “Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.”

  “It seems to me that she’s always mean as a witch in the morning and cheerful and helpful in the afternoon. Do you suppose that’s a form of bipolar disorder?”

  “Is that the pattern? Cross before noon, not cross after lunch? I don’t think that’s bipolar.”

  “What then?” asked McLeod.

  Miss Swallow finished her wrap, wiped her mouth daintily with the paper napkin, and said, “Hmmmm.”

  McLeod looked at her, waiting.

  “You know what it could be?” asked Miss Swallow.

  “What?” McLeod said impatiently. Get on with it, she thought.

  “I tell you what—I think it just might be alcohol.”

  “Alcohol!”

  “She may have a drinking problem,” said Miss Swallow. “She might have a hangover in the morning, and until it wears off, she’s miserable.”

  “That fits! That fits!” said McLeod. “I bet she starts drinking at lunch—and cheers up. It’s not just that the hangover wears off. I sat down at the table with her here the other day when she was eating lunch and she drank from a thermos she brought from home. She brings liquor from home in that thermos and by afternoon she’s cheered up.”

  “That’s the pattern all right.”

  “It certainly seems possible, but how did you think of alcohol?”

  “I come from a family of alcoholics,” said Miss Swallow. “They didn’t swallow alcohol, to make a bad pun, they swilled it. My grandfather, my father, my brother. They all died of cirrhosis of the liver and my mother died of grief over it. I vowed I’d never touch a drop and I don’t. In a way, I wish I did. I know I miss a lot, but I’m afraid to let a whisper of whiskey pass my lips.”

  “You are very strong, Miss Swallow. And very wise. I love alcohol but you’re not missing all that much, believe me.”

  “Thank you.” She seemed somewhat embarrassed by her revelations, bending down to get her purse beside her chair and then standing up. “I guess I’d better get back to see if they’ve made any progress on Augusta Withers,” she said.

  McLeod absently told her goodbye and stayed on with another cup of tea. She wanted to reflect on this theory about Fanny. It made sense, but what did it mean? Did it have anything to do with the murder? Had Philip Sheridan realized what was going on and threatened to report Fanny for drinking on the job? Would that have given Fanny a motive for murder?

  Twenty-two

  WHEN MCLEOD GOT home that afternoon, she bustled about preparing for Nick Perry’s visit. George came home, took a shower, shaved, and departed without noticing that she had put out cheese and crackers and was building a fire in the parlor. “Have a good time,” she had called out as he was leaving, but her voice had sounded insincere, she thought.

  Nick was so late that McLeod had to go outside for more wood to keep the fire going. When he appeared, she offered him a drink, expecting him to say no.

  “Yes, I will,” he said.

  “Scotch? Gin?” she asked. “I don’t think we have any bourbon or vodka . . .”

  “Scotch on the rocks would be fine,” he said. “I’ll get out the ice,” he added.

  “Good,” she said and led the way to the kitchen.

  “George not here?” he asked as he popped ice cubes out of the tray.

  “He’s out. He has a date,” said McLeod.

  “Oh,” said Nick. “I thought you and he—never mind.”

  McLeod handed him the bottle of scotch and poured herself a glass of red wine. They went back to the parlor, and Nick began to eat crackers and cheese at a rapid rate.

  “Tell me about your burglary,” he said.

  “How did you know about it?”

  “I’m a policeman,” he said.

  “Why do you want to know about it?”

  “I’m a policeman.”

  “Oh, Nick, I know that, but you’re a policeman in charge of a murder investigation—what do you care about a burglary? Or maybe it’s a good thing you want to talk about the burglary, not the murder. At least you’ll have a drink. I don’t think I ever saw you have a drink before.”

  “Look, I’m still investigating the murder, but I have to cover every possibility. Sergeant Popper told me he saw a breaking and entering at this address on the record and I thought I’d better look into it. I sent him home—he’s been working nonstop—and came over here to talk to you. And I’m clandestinely having a drink. Okay? Now tell me about the blooming break-in.”

  “You’ve been working nonstop, too, haven’t you?” said McLeod.

  “The break-in,” said Nick.

  “All right, all right, I’m sorry,” said McLeod. “It happened last Thursday, the day after I found Philip Sheridan’s body.” She described the broken pane in the door and the ransacking of her room. “But nothing was taken that we know of. That’s the funny thing.”

  “They were looking for something,” said Nick. “Did you bring anything home the day you found the body?”

  “Not that I know of,” said McLeod. “And the funny thing is that somebody rifled my office last night.”

  “Really? Did you report it?”

  “Frieda, the office manager at the Humanities Council, reported it to Public Safety—you know, campus security,” said McLeod. “But I don’t suppose anybody reported it to the police.”

  “McLeod, you must have something that somebody wants.”

  “I can’t imagine what it is,” she said. “Another drink?”

  “Yes, but I’ll make it half as big as the first one.” When they had settled down again, she asked him if Chester had identified the knife in the van Dyke box.

  “He’s sure it’s the one that belonged to Sheridan,” Nick said.

  “And was it the murder weapon?”

  “Yes, it was. I just got the report from the state lab. That’s why I was late.”

  “Does that help toward a solution?” McLeod asked.

  “We knew it was somebody that works in Rare Books,” said Nick. “This is just icing on the cake.” He took a sip of his very mild drink. “Tell me, what do you think of Ledbetter?”

  “I like Natty,” McLeod said. “He’s full of that ‘dear boy’ and ‘dear lady’ stuff, but he seems to care about the collections and I think he must be good at his job. He’s not a suspect, is he?”

  “Everybody is a suspect,” said Nick.

  “Is Chester still a suspect?”

  “Everybody is a suspect,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Are you hungry?” asked McLeod. “It’s after nine o’ clock.”

  Nick looked at his watch.

  Does he have to check everything I say? wondered McLeod.

  “Yes, I am. I’d take you out to dinner, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think I’d better. As soon as we sat down, I’d get a call.”

  “And you don’t want to be seen having dinner with a suspect, do you?” said McLeod.

  He looked at her. “You’re not
really a suspect, McLeod, but people might think you were. At least you’re involved; you found the body. I told you I was having a clandestine drink. The whole thing is clandestine.”

  “That makes it interesting,” said McLeod, smiling happily.

  “Good. Could we order in a pizza or Chinese or something ?”

  “We could,” McLeod said without any enthusiasm. “Or I can make grilled cheese sandwiches or scramble some eggs or something.”

  “Great,” said Nick. He did grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches while she made a salad and found an unopened bag of potato chips.

  They ate at little tables in front of the parlor fire, and McLeod seized the chance to ask him questions she had always wanted to ask. Where did he grow up and where did he go to school?

  “I grew up right here in Princeton,” he said. “I went to the high school and then to Yale.”

  “How did you happen to become a policeman?”

  “It’s a long story. My father was a lawyer—he’s retired and lives in Florida—and I thought I’d be a lawyer. I liked the idea of being a lawyer, but by the time I was a senior in college, I couldn’t stand the idea of going to law school. I decided to be a policeman. I used to read a mystery story a day. So I got a master’s in criminology at Rutgers. It wasn’t nearly as bad as law school and it only lasted half as long. Anyway, here I am—a law-and-order man in my hometown.”

  “That’s great,” said McLeod.

  “It’s all right,” said Nick.

  They were drinking coffee before the fire when George came home. He looked in the parlor, and then came in.

  “Well, Lieutenant, how do you do?” he said.

  “Fine,” said Nick, getting up and shaking hands. “And you?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You’re home early,” said McLeod.

  “So I am,” said George.

  “Would you like some coffee?” asked McLeod.