by Ann Waldron
“Something else came up today that unnerved me,” he said, laying his knife and fork across his plate. “I think I’ll have a brandy. Want one?”
“Sure,” said McLeod.
“Let’s sit over here.” He led the way to the two armchairs in the bay window and handed her a snifter.
“What was it that unnerved you?” asked McLeod. “Was it about Natty?”
“Oh, you knew about it?”
“Buster Keaton came over to tell me about it. He was terribly upset. He wanted to talk to you but your secretary told him you were too busy to talk to him.”
“I was,” said George. “I could have called him back tonight or tomorrow, I guess. Tom had already told me about it. Talk about awful days. It’s been a super bad day for Tom and for the director of libraries. But Tom knows how much I like and admire old Nat. He does, too, of course.”
“What’s not to like?” asked McLeod.
“Exactly,” said George, and then added, “except that he’s a thief.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Oh, yes. He admits it.”
“This is the saddest thing I ever heard of,” said McLeod, and it did feel that way, in spite of the two murders.
“It is even sadder when you think about why he did it,” said George.
“What do you mean? Why did he do it?”
“For his wife. I think I told you that she had Alzheimer’s, and she’s in a very nice home. It’s incredibly expensive, and Natty just didn’t have the wherewithal to pay the bills.”
“What will he do now? And what will happen to him?”
“Nobody wants to prosecute him, but he can’t possibly stay on at Rare Books. It’s not final, but I think he’ll be allowed to retire. He’s past retirement age. And Philip Sheridan left him some money. Sheridan, it seems, knew about Natty’s situation and always planned to help him out. At least he can use the bequest to make restitution.”
“Poor Natty,” said McLeod. “We’ll have to have him over for dinner.”
“I knew you’d say that!” said George. “That’s your remedy for anything, but I guess it’s a good remedy.”
McLeod got up and began to clear George’s dishes from the table. When George tried to help, she told him she could do it and she would load the dishwasher and turn it on. “You must be exhausted,” she said.
“I am,” he said.
She lingered in the kitchen, thinking about Natty. Had he known about the inheritance from Philip Sheridan? And had Philip known about the thefts, and was that what the shouting had been about? It appeared that Natty did have a good motive for both murders. But he couldn’t be a murderer. If Natty had killed Chester, he would have had to do it just before she talked to him that morning—no, Natty couldn’t be a murderer. But then who would have thought he could be a thief?
Thirty-one
TUESDAY WAS COLD and clear—and the snow was still there when McLeod looked out her bedroom window about seven o’clock on Tuesday morning. Gray crusts already topped the tall banks of snow along the street and on either side of the sidewalk.
McLeod sighed and thought about what she would do this day. She took a shower, dressed, and went downstairs to find George still at home, reading the paper and drinking coffee.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said. “You’re up early.”
“You’re here late,” she said. “It’s good to see you at home in the morning.”
“And to see you,” said George, smiling at her. “Chuck Hammersmith said he’d get in early today, so I’ll let him handle the first wave of media. Then I’ll stay late if I have to. What’s on your plate today?”
“I’ve got to plan my class for Thursday. But I thought since the streets look clear today, if it’s all right with you, I’d take those World War II letters around to the Murrays. The letters are from Big’s uncle to his, Big’s, grandmother. I don’t think Vincent Lawrence had any children, did he?”
“I have no idea.”
“Anyway, those letters are on my mind.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Big Murray told you to throw them out?”
“He did, but I thought I’d ask his wife. Somebody must want them.”
“McLeod, you took the treasure away without telling me. I don’t think you should give away anything else.”
“George, when I took that box of dresses over to the university, I had no idea what else was in it. One thing led to another.”
“I know. I shouldn’t have said that. But don’t give the letters away. They show how the treasure got here. If the treasure does belong to the Litzenburg cathedral, those letters will absolve us of any blame. Not that I think anybody’s going to blame you or me, but still—don’t give them away, for heaven’s sake.”
“You’re right,” said McLeod.
“At any rate, I’ve got to start the process of returning the things to Litzenburg. If I ever get a minute, I will.”
“Can I help with that?” asked McLeod.
“I’ll talk to the university lawyer as soon as I get time.”
“I’ll be happy to talk to Cowboy Tarleton about it, if that would be a help.”
“Why don’t you?” said George. “It would be a tremendous help to me.”
“And I’ll find out how to make contact with the right people in Litzenburg, too. Buster Keaton will know—that catalog of stolen art should have that, shouldn’t it?”
“Great.”
If I can’t take the letters to Mary Murray, thought McLeod as George went back to the newspaper, I’ll have to dream up some other excuse to go see her.
After George left, as McLeod was getting ready to go out, she decided that she could tell Mary she was going to write a story about the Murder House. No, that might put her off completely. She couldn’t just drop in—people didn’t do that anymore. Well, she’d telephone Mary and see if she could come by, and if she could, then she’d think of something on the way.
Mary Murray said of course she could come by. “I have to go to a meeting now, though,” she warned. “How about this afternoon?”
After they had settled on four o’clock, McLeod decided to go to the university and see Buster before she called Cowboy Tarleton. She walked up from the parking garage, all the way up Elm Drive, past the construction for the new residential college where the tennis courts used to be, past Dillon Gym, and on to the library. Rare Books was open, and researchers were at work in the Reading Room, even though the police were still around.
McLeod looked in Buster’s door.
“Come in, come in,” he said. “How did George take the news about Natty? Sit down.”
“He had heard it, of course—from Tom Blackman. And as you thought he would be, he was very sorry for Natty. And he doesn’t blame you for reporting him.”
“Good. I’m glad of that.”
“But you don’t really think Natty did the murders, do you?”
“He just seems to be the most likely candidate at the moment,” said Buster. “Of course, I’m not going to say anything like this to the police.”
“It does seem unlikely to me,” said McLeod. “Character means something, doesn’t it? Natty just isn’t capable of murder.”
“He was capable of stealing.”
“But think of why he did it,” said McLeod. “When you think about why Natty did it, it’s very hard to condemn him, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean, why he did it?” asked Buster.
“Because of his wife. She has Alzheimer’s and she’s in that expensive private care place and he didn’t have the money to pay for it.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Buster. “Still, stealing’s stealing, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” said McLeod. “And that brings me to why I’m here. George wants to know the address of the church—or cathedral—in Litzenburg. He wants to return the Gospels and the other things.”
“I thought George was going to give the Gospels to Princeton,” said Buster. “I was real
ly excited about this new addition to our collection.”
“He says he can’t give it to you; it’s not his to give. It’s Litzenburg’s.”
“Return them to Litzenburg? That’s crazy. It’s been so long they probably don’t even know about them,” said Buster.
“They’re listed in that roster of stolen art,” said McLeod.
“They may have forgotten they ever listed it.”
“Well, as you say, ‘stealing’s stealing.’ ”
“Maybe sometimes it isn’t.” Buster did not sound convinced.
“You and George can get this settled,” said McLeod. “When George has time.”
“Who has time? With Natty gone, I have to do two jobs.”
“Are you the new director?”
“Of course not, but I have to do all the work. They’ll bring in some outsider who doesn’t know the first thing about rare books and we’ll have to train him. But for now, I’m doing the best I can. And the police are still around—it’s so disorganized. I thought we should close, but the powers-that-be vetoed that. Oh, well, we’ll manage.”
AS SOON AS McLeod came into the Reading Room, Miss Swallow got up and drew her out to speak to her.
“That nice policeman, the one who seems to be in charge, was asking me about you.”
“You mean Nick Perry, the lieutenant?”
“That’s the one. He asked me if you would be in today. I had to say I didn’t know whether you would or not.”
“You mean he questioned you about the case today?”
“Yes, they are now interviewing everybody who was in Rare Books yesterday. It’s wonderful that they have such good records of everybody who comes in. Anyway, they’ve realized that the killer didn’t have to have the combination to the vault himself, that the young man, the victim, could have let the murderer into the vault if he, or she, had a plausible excuse.”
“You know I was thinking that about Dodo,” said McLeod. “I really think she’s crazy.”
“I see what you mean,” laughed Miss Swallow. “But aren’t we all?”
“Did Nick Perry want to see me about the case? Do you know where he is?”
“No, I don’t. He may still be interviewing people in the conference room.”
“Thanks, I’ll find him.”
She looked through the glass windows and saw that Nick was indeed in there, with Lieutenant Popper and no suspect. He must have felt her gaze upon him, because he looked up and saw her. He got up immediately and came out, drawing her to one side of the work area.
“Can I come by again tonight?” he asked.
“Come for dinner,” she said.
“It couldn’t be until pretty late. Why don’t I just come by late?”
“You need to eat. I’ll wait for you. What time can you make it? Nine?”
“I’ll try to get there by nine. Go ahead and eat if I’m too late. Really.”
“It will be fine, Nick. I’ll cook something. It won’t be elaborate. I’d love to talk to you.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “I’ll call if something comes up that means I absolutely cannot make it.”
McLeod was feeling quite sunny as she went back into the Reading Room, where she was at last able to finish the box with the material about “The Other Wise Man.” Van Dyke had done a great deal of research, he said in one letter, for an article on the legends of the Magi. Then the idea for the story of a fourth Wise Man came to him. He remembered getting out of bed in the cold, groping his way over to the table, and writing down the first few sentences. He spent a year working on the story, and then read it to his congregation at Brick Church in lieu of a sermon on the Sunday before Christmas.
COWBOY TARLETON HAD said he could see McLeod at two o’clock, so she left the Reading Room about noon. Instead of working, she decided to take a walk and think—perhaps figure out who had done the break-ins and who had done the murders—while she walked. The walkways on campus were all clear by this time, and she decided to go down the hill and see the new Carl Icahn Laboratory building, where she knew there was a little café. Once she was inside the building, she was very glad she had come. She had read that it was designed by Rafael Viñoly but nothing prepared her for its huge atrium and immensely tall windows—they must be forty feet tall, she thought—looking out on a wood-bordered grassy field and the sweeping curve of the new ellipse-shaped dormitories.
She got a cobb salad and sat at one of the tables scattered in the atrium. The windows and the Frank Gehry “sculpture” competed for her attention and she looked from one to the other. The sculpture was called the “Armadillo” and it looked just like a huge armadillo. It was big enough to hold in its interior a small conference room with a table and chairs and a bulletin board. It was odd to have a conference room inside a sculpture, but it was interesting.
It was too bad that she had no talent at all for integrative genomics, or whatever it was that people did in this building. She still loved the older Princeton buildings like Georgian Nassau Hall, Romanesque Murray-Dodge, and soaring Gothic McCosh, but this was something else. What a place.
Then her mind dropped architecture and took up treasure hunting again. She tried to think it through. Of course, the burglar could have searched her room and been scared off before he got around to the rest of the house. But if the burglar had been looking for the Gospels and the crucifix, and had thought they were in her room, he, or she, must have known that Dante had carried a box up there. Dante denied telling anybody. But people lie, she thought, all the time. Or they just forget what they said. And then the burglar had suspected the treasure might be in her office—Dante must have told someone that she had taken it to campus.
How else could the burglar possibly have known all this?
Natty couldn’t have. Could he? And how could Natty be the murderer, as Buster contended? It was insane. Buster’s theory would be that he killed Philip Sheridan and then Chester so his thefts would not be revealed. When did Buster denounce Natty? Was it Monday morning, right after Natty killed Chester? Wait a minute. Chester had known something about Natty on Saturday night, so Buster must have made the accusation Friday. Either way, it was no wonder Natty had been in such bad shape when Chester’s body was found.
She still clung to the hope that it wasn’t true about Natty, but she could see how the chain of events seemed to hang together. And if Natty wasn’t the murderer, then who was? Were the two killings even connected? And were they connected to the burglaries?
I give up, she thought as she finished her lunch and walked back toward Nassau Street and Cowboy Tarleton’s office.
Thirty-two
SHE HAD TO wait a few minutes for Cowboy to get off the phone. She could hear him explaining to a client that it would really be better if he didn’t expect Cowboy to accompany him to traffic court to protest a ticket for failing to stop at a stop sign. “I’ll have to charge you more than the fine would cost you. Anyway, if you show up at all, they’ll probably reduce the fine.”
After he hung up, he came out, smiling as usual and looking even taller than she had remembered, and waved McLeod into his office.
“I’m really here to ask you about something for George,” she began as soon as the greetings were over. “It’s about this stuff from Germany . . .” and she launched into an account of the treasure. “And so they’re temporarily—I hope, temporarily—at the Rare Books Department of the university library. George says that the things don’t belong to him, that they belong to the cathedral at Litzenburg. But he’s not sure how to proceed. So this morning I asked Randall Keaton, the curator of Rare Books at the university who identified the Gospels and the other things, for the address. Buster wants the Gospels for the Rare Books collection badly, and he insists that George can keep the things and, of course, give them to Princeton.”
“He’s wrong,” said Cowboy. “The news that you found the Gospels is going to get out—I’m surprised that it hasn’t already—and since you know who the rightful owner is, you mu
st indeed return everything. It’s hard to believe a curator would take that attitude. A few days ago I would have told you to appeal to Nat Ledbetter. He was Keaton’s boss.”
“Natty Ledbetter is no longer head of Rare Books and Special Collections,” she said. “I may as well tell you. He’s been stealing prints from the collection.”
“I know. He’s a client of mine,” said Cowboy sadly. “Tell me again how Keaton discovered the provenance of these objects that you found.” He pulled a yellow legal pad forward and took up a pen.
“I forget the name of the agency, but they have a database on the Internet that lists stolen art from around the world. These things were listed in it and, I think, described in detail.”
“McLeod, I’d advise you and George to get busy on the Internet and find this listing, or get some cyberwhiz of a student to find it. And then notify whoever you need to notify.”
“Thanks. We can do that.” McLeod hesitated. “I have another question for you, if you don’t mind.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about Philip Sheridan. You mentioned to me at Dodo Westcott’s that he changed his mind a lot and sometimes wanted to change his will. Did he make any changes just before he died?”
“Why do you ask?”
“From all I’ve learned about his murder, I’ve come to wonder if he planned a change in his will that would motivate a murder.” She was thinking about Natty but didn’t want to say so.
“I don’t believe so. In fact, the police suspected his young assistant for a while and wanted to know if his bequest was in danger. It wasn’t. Philip did call me about one quixotic change he was going to make, but he was killed before we could get it written.”
McLeod waited. Would he tell her what the change was? Had Sheridan been about to cancel the money for Natty?
Cowboy was hesitating. Then he seemed to shrug and went on talking. “He told me he wanted to remove one thing from the legacy to Princeton, and asked me if he could still do that. I told him he could. The university might be disappointed but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. So he said he wanted to leave the Bay Psalm Book to Bowdoin College.”