A Rare Murder In Princeton

by Ann Waldron

  “Dante, I wanted to ask you something about that,” McLeod said. “I mean when we cleaned out the garage.”

  “I’ll just go upstairs and get my checkbook,” said George and left.

  “Dante, after we cleaned out the garage, did you happen to tell anybody about the box of dresses I brought in the house?”

  A shadow flickered over Dante’s face. “No, I didn’t tell anybody about it. Why would I do that?”

  “Did the police ask you about it?”

  “No. Why would the police ask me about it?” Dante sounded panicky.

  “Lieutenant Perry said he was going to get somebody to talk to you. Don’t worry. There was something in the box besides dresses, and—”

  “I don’t know anything about what was in that box,” said Dante. “You just said it was old clothes and you were going to give them to a student. I just carried the box inside for you.”

  “That’s right. I remember that. Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Dante. I just wondered if perhaps you told Mr. Murray—Little Big, as everybody calls him—about it.”

  “No, ma’am, I didn’t tell Little Big anything.”

  George came back with his checkbook, wrote a check for the amount Dante named (it seemed rather large to McLeod, but what did she know about snow-shoveling prices?), gave it to him, and showed him to the door.

  McLeod reflected while this was going on. Dante had looked distinctly odd when she asked him if he had told anybody about the box of dresses, but then he had forcefully and, she thought, convincingly, said that he had not told Little Big. If not Little Big, then who?

  THE CHICKEN STEW for dinner was a huge success.

  “It was really smart of you to cook this ahead of time,” George said. “Even if you did it just so you could go see Chester.”

  “He told me something very interesting. I forgot to tell you. Everybody knew about Fanny and her drinking. Chester says they didn’t think it interfered with her work.” She ate more chicken, and said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever been so frustrated. Nobody’s getting anywhere on the murder. And we don’t know who was after the treasure. I don’t think it was Little Big Murray. He doesn’t seem interested in anything about the house. I was going to tell him about the treasure, and I did tell him about the letters, but he was totally uninterested. Totally.”

  “I don’t believe he’s interested in much of anything,” said George.

  “Of course, it could all be a front, but it was good enough to fool me,” said McLeod.

  Twenty-seven

  ON MONDAY MORNING, the world—at least the Princeton part of it—was bright and clear, with a blue sky arching over the snow-covered houses on Edgehill Street, the snow seeming to enhance their gingerbread trim. As she walked to work on the neatly shoveled sidewalks that lay between banks of snow, McLeod admired the two fat snowmen in front of one house on Mercer Street, and she liked the way snow lay on the trees. It made a white stripe on the black branches of the bare trees and dusted the needles of the evergreens. Since she was admiring the winter scene, she decided she must be getting used to cold and snow.

  She stopped by Joseph Henry House to check her snail mail (nothing of interest), e-mail (two students wanted extensions for the assignment to write about a person in the arts, and Clark Powell protested that three students in McLeod’s writing class wanted to interview him and he didn’t have time for them all), and her voice mail (nothing). She e-mailed the two students her refusal to extend the deadline and told Clark Powell to suggest some other student workers in Theatre Intime to the people who wanted to interview him.

  She decided to go to Rare Books and see if she could do some work on van Dyke. Surely by now she could resume her work on the box where the murder weapon had been found. If not, she could always start on another box. And she could find out what was going on, if anything, with the murder investigation.

  In the exhibition gallery, she noticed the curtains were at last drawn open on the replica of Governor Belcher’s office. So the crime scene was clear, she thought, as she looked through the glass at the desk and globe. It was almost two weeks since the murder.

  In Rare Books she greeted Molly Freeman and signed in, hung up her wraps—winter was a lot of trouble, she thought for the thousandth time—and noticed that Derek the proctor was no longer seated in the reception area. She went to the Reading Room, where she gave Diane a call slip for the “Other Wise Man” box. She nodded at Miss Swallow, who looked up briefly from the big book she was examining, and noticed a new researcher seated at an empty back table, apparently expecting something to be brought to him. She decided that while she was waiting for her box to come up, she would go see Natty.

  He wasn’t in his office, but McLeod loitered, knowing it would take a while for her box to appear in the Reading Room, and eventually Natty appeared.

  “Dear lady,” he said, walking with her into his office. “Forgive me. I’ve been downstairs, looking for something.” He stood by his desk.

  “Sit down, sit down,” she said as she hastily sat down herself, as usual. Getting Natty to sit down was like a ballet, she thought. Someone should choreograph it. “I just wanted to congratulate you on finding those prints for Miss Swallow, the orchid prints. Where were they?”

  “Round and about,” said Natty. “Round and about.”

  “Come on, Natty, you know how curious I am.”

  “Dear lady,” he said again but without his usual animation. He rubbed a pencil between his two hands and looked at her. “You know we have many, many storage facilities. And I remembered one particular large cabinet with those wide shallow drawers. It isn’t in the vault; it’s in our storage area outside the vault, and I said, ‘I just bet those prints are in one of those drawers.’ And they were. I’m so glad they were there. Dear Miss Swallow. Such an interesting project that she has undertaken.”

  “You’re wonderful, Natty, to find them.” She stood up, and Natty automatically stood up, too. “I’ve got to get to work on van Dyke,” she said.

  “I’m so glad you’re working on dear Henry.”

  Natty sounded very tired, McLeod thought as she made her way back to the Reading Room. She had just settled down at one of the tables with her paper and pencil before her when a page, the same one Diane had sent for the plastic bag when they found the letter opener, burst into the Reading Room.

  “The vault! The gas is on! Chester’s in there!”

  Diane stared at him. Miss Swallow looked up. McLeod stood and walked over to Jeff. It was obvious that something serious was wrong, but she couldn’t quite understand what it was.

  “What is it?” she asked Jeff. “What is the matter?”

  “Chester’s lying on the floor in the vault. I think he’s dead. He’s blue. The gas is on.”

  “The gas?”

  “The fire extinguisher gas. It kills you in twenty seconds!” said Jeff.

  “Call 911,” said McLeod to Diane.

  Diane seemed paralyzed. Her hand moved slowly toward the phone, but couldn’t quite make it. McLeod moved swiftly, dialed the phone, and spoke to the campus police, who said they’d be there right away.

  “Take me to the vault,” she said to Jeff.

  “What is the matter in here? Diane, can’t you keep order in the Reading Room?” It was, of course, Fanny Mobley in her morning mode.

  Miss Swallow stood and said firmly, “Go ahead, McLeod. Miss Mobley, there is apparently an emergency. Do you know about the gas in the vault? Go on, McLeod.”

  McLeod followed Jeff, as he led her to the elevator and down to the door of the vault. He used his key, plus a combination, to open the door, and stood back to let McLeod enter. She sniffed, smelled nothing unusual, walked farther into the vault—then she saw Chester.

  He was lying on the floor in one of the bays of stacks.

  “Come out now,” said Jeff urgently. He was standing by the door, holding it open. “The gas can kill you in twenty seconds. Come on.”

  “We can’t
just leave Chester here, Jeff,” said McLeod as she tried to lift Chester under his arms. “Help me get him out. We can try CPR.”

  Jeff took Chester’s shoulders and McLeod his feet and together they dragged Chester out into the corridor. He was indeed quite blue. She tried to remember what she had learned in the CPR class years ago—lay the victim flat on his back, make sure he has not swallowed his tongue . . . tilt his head back while lifting his chin with the other hand . . . pinch his nose and breathe into his mouth . . .

  By the time she put her mouth on his, a considerable number of staff people from Rare Books had arrived, as well as two men from public safety. She gratefully relinquished her place to a proctor who had had emergency medical training.

  It was soon clear, however, that it was useless. Chester was dead.

  Natty, looking even grayer than he had a short while ago, was consulting with Sean O’Malley, the director of public safety, who had just appeared. “He died in the vault?” asked O’Malley. “Who moved him?”

  “I did,” said McLeod. “Or we did. Jeff and I.”

  “The gas was on,” said Jeff. “It will kill a person in twenty seconds.”

  “Dear God,” said Natty. “Everybody get back upstairs.”

  Nobody moved.

  “Did anyone turn off the gas? Jeff?” asked Natty.

  “I don’t know,” said Jeff. “I don’t know anything about it. All I know is they told me when I came here that it was a fire-extinguishing system and it was gas and it would kill a person in twenty seconds. It was still hissing. And now I’ve been in there twice . . .” He rolled his eyes and seemed about to faint.

  “You’ll be all right, Jeff,” said McLeod. She wasn’t sure, but it seemed best to encourage Jeff, who had clearly taken this lecture about the fire-extinguishing system very much to heart.

  O’Malley, who had been talking on his cell phone to the police, said he would turn off the gas if someone would open the vault door. “The university uses halon gas here and in the storage areas of the art museum because it smothers a fire instantly.”

  “All right, everybody upstairs,” said Natty again. “O’Malley will want to wait here, but everybody else must leave.” The staff shuffled toward the elevator, but they moved slowly, almost unwillingly.

  “Can’t we move Chester someplace else?” said McLeod.

  “Best not to move him,” said Sean O’Malley. “Wait for the doctor and the police. You moved him once.” His voice was reproving.

  “I thought it was the best thing to do. It never occurred to me that what happened to him could be—well, foul play,” she said.

  “I have to sit down,” said Natty. He went down an aisle of stacks and came back carrying a low, round library stool with a step in the side and set it firmly on the floor and sat down on it. “Everybody else please go upstairs. I’ll stay, and McLeod, you can stay if you insist. Everybody else go upstairs.”

  O’Malley looked up as Buster Keaton escorted Dr. Winchester, Nick Perry, and another proctor from the elevator, where most of the staff was waiting to get on.

  The doctor knelt beside Chester, while the others waited. McLeod thought it was all oddly like the scene in Governor Belcher’s office ten days ago, when Philip Sheridan’s body had been found.

  Nick asked Sean O’Malley if one of the proctors could go upstairs and help Sergeant Popper make sure nobody left Rare Books.

  Dr. Winchester got up and spoke to Nick Perry. “Clearly he died from lack of oxygen—you can see how blue he is—and of course, there will have to be an autopsy.”

  Nick Perry looked at O’Malley. “What can you tell me about this, Sean?”

  “It looks like the halon fire-extinguishing system got him,” said O’Malley.

  “Was this where the gas reached him?”

  “No, it was in the vault, Lieutenant,” said O’Malley. He looked to Natty for confirmation. “Wasn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t here. They said it was the vault,” said Natty.

  “It was in the vault,” said McLeod, deciding it was time to speak up.

  “You found him?” asked Perry, obviously surprised.

  “No, I didn’t. It was Jeff. Jeff’s a page. He came running into the Reading Room. He was very upset. He said it was the gas and Chester was in the vault. I came back down with him and we pulled Chester out here to the corridor.”

  “You should not have moved him,” said Perry.

  “Beg your pardon, sir,” said the proctor who had just arrived. “It’s a good thing they moved him out here. The gas is still in the vault.”

  Everyone was quiet. Perry looked at McLeod. “I apologize, McLeod. Sean, tell me how the system works.”

  “The people at OSHA know more about it than I do—they inspect the system every six months,” said O’Malley.

  “OSHA?”

  “Occupational Safety and Health. Here’s what I know about it. Halon gas is a tetrafluoroethylene polymer. It’s used in high concentration where people do not work and where a water-extinguishing system would do untold damage; it’s used in museums to protect works of art and in libraries with rare books or manuscripts. Halon works by sucking the ozone out of the air. As I said, you can’t use it in offices or in galleries or in reading rooms where people are working, but it’s all right in the vault because people are in and out fairly quickly. Actually, the university was going to replace this system—it was outlawed under the Clean Air Act.”

  “And it’s quite lethal?” Perry asked.

  “It is quite lethal to humans.”

  “The system’s automatic? Nobody can turn it on?”

  “It’s heat responsive. If it feels heat, it starts expelling gas. But there’s an alarm that goes off when it expels gas.”

  “Did anybody hear an alarm?” asked Perry. “Mr. Ledbetter?”

  “I certainly heard nothing, and nobody said anything about an alarm,” said Natty.

  “Let me look at this extinguishing system,” said Perry.

  “Lieutenant, I have to go,” said Dr. Winchester. “There’s nothing more I can do here.”

  “Yes, Doctor, thank you. Somebody should be here from the Medical Examiner’s Office. I want to look at this fire extinguisher.”

  “The vault is full of gas—”

  “Just show me quickly,” Perry interrupted. “Then I want to talk to Jeff and to McLeod.”

  “Mr. Ledbetter, can you let us into the vault?” O’Malley asked.

  Natty rose painfully from the low stool and seemed to totter over to open the door. McLeod and the proctors stayed near Chester. She could hear O’Malley showing the tanks to Perry.

  “All you’d have to do is hold a match or a cigarette lighter to the sensor,” O’Malley was saying. “Look at this! The alarm is off!”

  Perry said nothing. McLeod looked at Natty and the others. None of them seemed to be paying any attention. But if the alarm was turned off, that meant that Chester had almost certainly been murdered.

  Twenty-eight

  AFTER THEY FINALLY took Chester away, McLeod went upstairs to the Reading Room. Miss Swallow had apparently been waiting for her, and led her out to the chairs in the reception area.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You were great,” said McLeod. “We were all just staring at each other and you told us to get going. And you handled Fanny beautifully.”

  “Thank you. She was quite undone when we heard that Chester was indeed dead. She invited me into her office and offered me a drink. She said, ‘I keep a flask of brandy for emergencies,’ and she poured each of us a glass. She said, ‘You know, I’m British at heart, and they all keep brandy around for emergencies.’ ”

  “Handy brandy,” said McLeod. “We all need a shot. But you didn’t have one, did you?”

  “Oh, no. I told you my family history. Miss Mobley drank my shot after she had polished off hers.”

  “Well, let me tell you again: You were great,” said McLeod.

  “I’ve lived a long
time, and I’ve seen many emergencies. Is it true that Chester was killed by the gas from the fire extinguisher system in the vault?”

  “It’s apparently true.”

  “What a terrible accident,” said Miss Swallow.

  “It wasn’t an accident. It was murder,” said McLeod, and told her all she knew.

  “It’s perfectly dreadful,” said Miss Swallow. “So that’s why they told none of us to leave.” They looked at each other a moment. “Well, well, I guess I’ll get back to work.”

  “I can’t do any work. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t shut down. But even if they’re open, I don’t have a box up here and I’m sure they can’t bring anything out of the vault right now. Anyway, I truly grieve for Chester. I liked him. He was so serious and so devoted to Philip Sheridan and he hated to say anything bad about anybody. And it upset him that he thought the police suspected him of Philip’s murder.”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” said Miss Swallow, rising. “Maybe when they let us leave, we could have a bite of lunch.”

  “Let’s do it—if we can,” said McLeod.

  She waited in the reception area until Sergeant Popper came to tell her that Lieutenant Perry would like to talk to her in the conference room. She followed him, and met Jeff coming out.

  “Sit down, McLeod,” said Nick. He intoned the date and the time and her name for the tape recorder. “Now tell me exactly what happened,” he said.

  McLeod told him about her call slip and Jeff’s return to the Reading Room, her trip down to the vault with him, and finding Chester.

  “Come show me exactly where you found him,” said Nick, rising. He turned off the tape machine. “We’ve sealed off the vault temporarily, but we’ll go down—I want you to show me exactly where the body was.”