Green Thumb

by Ralph McInerny

Ghostly light played upon the ceiling of Chris Toolin’s room, where he lay on the bed, his hands behind his head, reviewing the evening like a lovesick boy. Maureen had been charming, affectionate, confiding, if sometimes disturbing.

  “Thank God they found that water in your bag, Chris.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have drunk it. I hate bottled water.”

  “So you told me. But it takes me off the hook.”

  “How so?”

  “Of course, the police thought I was responsible for Mort’s death. Cherchez la feminist. I never made a secret of what I thought of him.”

  “They could never seriously think you would do such a thing.”

  “No? Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Of course they will learn, if they haven’t already, that I am a gardener. I have some deadly nightshade in my garden.”

  “Is it uncommon?”

  “Well, you have to grow it on purpose. And be very careful kids don’t get near it.”

  “Is it beautiful?”

  “Not really.”

  “Unlike the gardener?”

  She put her hand on his and he felt enveloped in her smile. Her gesture changed the course of the evening. They had dined well at the Carriage House and were aglow with wine when they left. When they entered the elevator at the Morris Inn, it was understood that she was coming to his room. He felt a sudden panic at this fulfilment of his wildest hopes. But instead, their time in his room had been a continuation of their conversation at the restaurant.

  “What was it that Mort said to your husband?”

  “He suggested that I was running around. Jack’s reaction was prompted more by his own guilt than anything else. He took a swing at Mort in the locker room of the club and caught him on the side of the head. It knocked him to the floor. I could have cheered when I heard about it.” She paused. “Not from Jack.”

  “What do you mean, guilt?”

  “Jack has renewed an old liaison with Laura Kennedy. She was at St. Mary’s when he was here. They would have married if Jack and I hadn’t met. Sometimes I think he felt unfaithful to Laura all along.”

  Chris didn’t know what to say so he said nothing. He took her in his arms when she said she must go and their kiss was passionate. But she stepped away.

  “I want to be in the room when Francie returns.”

  “Of course.”

  “She may be already there. I told you she was going to spend the evening with one of her professors.”

  “Ah.”

  “Better that than Mort’s nephew.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Paul Sadler. The son of Mort’s brother, Samuel. She thinks I don’t know and I think if I don’t make a thing of it she’ll get over it.”

  “Boys don’t get over things so easily.” He held her hand. “Nor do men.”

  Her meeting Jack O’Kelly had spelled the end of their undergraduate romance as well. It was an odd thought that he owed the renewal of their relationship to Mort. From Mort he had learned of Maureen’s separation from her husband and the reunion had provided an opportunity for this evening.

  “When will I see you again?” he asked before opening the door.

  “Whenever you want.”

  She gave him a hurried kiss on the cheek and was gone, and now he lay on his bed, reliving the evening, a wistful smile on his face.

  But it was impossible not to see what they were doing in the light of his reaction to her accusation against her husband and Laura Kennedy. Nor could he avoid the aching sense of guilt he felt when he thought of his own long-suffering invalid wife. At least in the case of the O’Kellys, each retained the possibility of a life without the other, but his wife, Ruth, was wholly dependent on him physically and emotionally. His only justification for what he was doing was that it was merely a fling, nothing that threatened any permanence. Did he even in his heart of hearts imagine that Maureen saw him as her future?

  25

  Roger’s intention to slip unobtrusively into the Galvin Life Sciences Center the following day to talk with Professor Jacob Climacus was thwarted when his entry into the building brought everyone in sight to a standstill. They stared at the enormous visitor, who blinked back at them, smiling cherubically. It was like pausing a movie on the DVD player while one went to the kitchen. When Roger moved toward the reception desk, the others resumed their comings and goings but a half dozen followed in his wake, curious.

  “I’ve come to see Professor Climacus.”

  The woman looked up at him with rounded eyes as if the better to take in his bulk. She put her hand on a phone. “Whom should I say is calling?”

  “Roger Knight. He is expecting me.”

  “Ah.”

  An undergraduate was recruited to lead Roger off to the hothouse where the professor of plant biology spent his days.

  Roger was not surprised to find Paul Sadler there. He lifted a hand in greeting and was led to a little man seated on a stool who looked up at Roger over his glasses.

  “Good day,” Roger said.

  “Good Knight?” A wry smile seemed to form beneath the grizzled beard.

  “I have come to pick your brain.”

  “That is more than I got to do. I accepted the one that was issued to me.”

  “‘Issued from the hand of God the simple brain’?”

  Discolored teeth appeared among the foliage of the beard. “Milton?”

  “Wordsworth. Is there another stool?” Roger looked up and down the rows of plants that flourished fiercely in the heat of the glassed-in addition to Galvin. Climacus wore sandals, suntans, and a T-shirt damp with perspiration. He rose.

  “Let’s go into my office. If you’re not used to this place you’re likely to melt.”

  “Could you show me around first?”

  Paul Sadler seemed to have disappeared. Climacus led Roger up and down the narrow aisles of his domain, now touching a leaf, now admiring a bloom, several times leaning forward to whisper to one of the plants. He turned to Roger.

  “Talking to them does help, you know.”

  “Do they ever answer?”

  Climacus made a sweeping gesture. “This is their answer—just being the best they can be.”

  Stories about Climacus had come to Roger over recent years and it had always been one of his hopes to meet the professor of plant biology. Now, with the death of Mortimer Sadler, he had reasons other than collegial curiosity to look him up.

  Climacus’s office was just off the hothouse and its contrasting chill elicted a sneeze from the professor. Climacus removed some pots from a bench and pulled it toward his desk.

  “This should accommodate you.” Climacus went around the desk and sank sighing into a chair, then took a package of cigarettes from a desk drawer. He offered one to Roger, who refused. Climacus lit up, inhaling with obvious delight.

  “You realize that I am conducting an experiment on the tobacco plant. This is a smoke-free campus.” The beard adjusted to his smile.

  “Of course. Tell me about poisonous plants.”

  “Almost all plants are poisonous to some species of animal.”

  “And humans?”

  “We are rational animals.”

  “More an ideal than a description, I’m afraid. Have you heard of the death on the golf course?”

  “Only what you told me on the phone.”

  “The man was poisoned. With deadly nightshade.”

  Climacus looked pained. “A much-maligned plant. Like hemlock. Poisonous plants often have great medicinal benefits. But that is as incidental to them as their harmful effects. Of course, we ingest vegetation and other animals but that is our doing, not theirs. The harmful ones have been known from time immemorial, discovered by hit or miss. Nowadays, we classify and rename them, but by and large we are codifying the folklore of centuries.”

  “But surely not all are equally harmful.”

  “When I go into a house I always notice the plants, of course.
A good portion of them are lethal. Poisonous effects are a plant’s way of protecting itself.”

  “Teleologically?”

  “Of course. Don’t believe all the nonsense you hear about science. A purely mechanical explanation of a plant suggests that its mature state is a happy accident, happily repeated. Nonsense. The plant is present in the seed because the seed has come from another plant. The point and purpose of seeds is to perpetuate a species. If that is teleology, let my enemies make the most of it.”

  Roger laughed. “Surely you have no enemies.”

  “Other than poisonous plants? No. But talk to me about Milton.”

  Thus it was that Roger, having been assured that the species of plants provided a veritable cornucopia of poisons to one who knew their properties, found himself discussing Milton with Climacus, who proved to be remarkably knowledgeable.

  “My interest was inspired by the line in Lycidas: ‘To sport with Amaryllis in the shade.’”

  “A lovely line.”

  “The amaryllis is a lovely plant.”

  “I think the poet meant a girl.”

  When Roger eventually rose to go, he had made another friend. He and Climacus had agreed that the professor of plant biology must come to the Knight apartment for dinner at his earliest convenience.

  “I should tell you that I am not a vegetarian,” Climacus said.

  “I should hope not.”

  26

  Later that day, Phil told Roger of Jimmy Stewart’s reaction to learning that Maureen O’Kelly was a renowned gardener. A phone call to Minneapolis, requesting discreet inquiries, had turned up the fact that Maureen had several deadly nightshade plants in a special fenced garden in her yard devoted to herbs. Motive and means being established, the question became one of opportunity. How could Maureen, or anyone else, for that matter, have put the bottle of poisoned water in Mort Sadler’s golf bag?

  “The answer is, easily. He had dropped off his bag at the first hole of Burke the night before his fatally interrupted practice round.”

  “But how would she have known?”

  Phil shrugged. “That is the question.”

  Roger could not help but think how this affected Francie. “It all sounds pretty speculative, Phil.”

  “Oh, Jimmy isn’t likely to make any accusations on what he has now. Of course, he will be pursuing it.”

  “Will you go with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep me posted, won’t you?”

  “You don’t seem to like the possibility.”

  “All your theories are based on the assumption that the water bottles were put into the bags here.”

  Phil just stared at Roger, who went on. “They brought their golf bags here, didn’t they?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Only what I’m saying.”

  “Bah.”

  After Phil went off to meet Jimmy Stewart, Roger did the dishes and tried not to think of what his brother had told him. The only way to counter Maureen as a possible suspect was to produce an alternative. The suggestion that the victims had brought the poisoned water with them to Notre Dame was a logical possibility. But so many things are. And then, after he had turned on the dishwasher and shuffled off to his computer, he remembered Paul Sadler’s interest in botany. The boy had been in the hothouse, confirming that interest. This suggested a possibility hardly more welcome than Maureen O’Kelly. To wonder about Paul was also to affect Francie, who obviously liked the lad. But an additional factor was Francie’s account of Paul’s dislike of his uncle Mort as they sat in the lobby of the inn.

  “Why?”

  “Oh, it’s a family thing. And he blames Mort for the trouble my parents are having.”

  Then she had told him of the episode when Jack O’Kelly had angrily struck Mort to the ground for some insinuation about his wife.

  The married state was a mystery to Roger and never more so than when there was a falling out of spouses. His memories of his own parents were doubtless affected by his sense of melancholy loss, but in his recollection they had been entirely devoted to one another. He could sympathize entirely with Francie’s sense of desolation when she spoke of her parents’ separation.

  “I said a rosary at the Grotto, praying that everything will be all right again between them.”

  And now Jimmy Stewart was actively pursuing the possibility that Francie’s mother was responsible for the death of Mortimer Sadler.

  Five minutes later, Roger called Francie at the Morris Inn.

  “Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said.

  “I enjoyed our conversation.” But even as he said it, it seemed to Roger that, apart from her confiding about Paul, he had done most of the talking. When he mentioned d’Aurevilley’s novel Le prêtre marié, she had wanted to hear all about it and he had obliged.

  “I can’t wait to take that course.”

  “I can’t wait to give it.”

  Roger had already checked the summer course schedule, remembering that Francie had said Paul Sadler was enrolled in a course in botany. There was only one, and it ran for most of the morning, doubtless involving a lab.

  “Are you free now?”

  “What’s the plan?” she asked with a lilt in her voice.

  “I thought I would come by for you in my golf cart and we could just roll around campus and talk.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “In half an hour?”

  “Perfect!”

  It was a glorious day, with the late morning sun filtering through the trees and squirrels scampering about. In the Lobund Laboratory generations of germ-free mice had been raised for experimental purposes, while on campus, unmonitored and uncontrolled, squirrels had over the generations become fearless of humans and were always on the qui vive for offerings of food. Roger detoured by the Grotto and smiled at the visitors who were feeding ducks near the lake. These ducks, too, were almost domesticated, their food supply in large part coming from people who brought sacks of bread which they scattered among the feathered beasts. The Canada geese, nobody’s favorites, did not receive the benefits of this preferential option but eventually they would enter with awkward strutting into the ceremony and chase the ducks away.

  On the road, Roger followed the great circular road up and past the Rockne Memorial and maintenance shed and then turned off toward the Morris Inn, driving past the row of new residences, one of which was Sadler Hall. The building had indeed become a memorial now, sooner than its donor must have expected.

  Francie was waiting under the canopy at the entrance of the Morris Inn and hopped in when Roger pulled up in his golf cart.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The campus is at its most beautiful. It’s a shame so few students get to see it as its best.”

  He crossed the road, got onto the sidewalk, and they went past the law school into the main mall. As he drove, Francie went on about what he had said of the campus in summer.

  “It was one of my motives for coming with my mother.”

  Her mention of Maureen O’Kelly strengthened Roger in his resolve. “Your friend Paul is one of the lucky ones.”

  She laughed. “You remembered his name.”

  “Perhaps because of his family name. How is he taking his uncle’s death?”

  “I think I told you that he was not a great fan of Mortimer Sadler.”

  “You did.”

  “Families are complicated things.”

  “He lives in Morrissey, doesn’t he?”

  “I didn’t tell you that.”

  “I looked it up.”

  “You did!”

  “Francie, I want you to humor me. I want to take a look at his room.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I asked you to humor me.”

  “All right.” But her expression was a puzzled one.

  At the hall, they went inside, and Roger drew her attention to the portrait of Joseph Evans, the first director of the Maritain Center. He tappe
d on the rector’s door. A rumpled, barefoot young man in a sweatshirt and suntans answered.

  “Hello, Father.”

  The priest stepped back. “You’re Professor Knight.”

  “And you are Father Green.”

  “No, he’s away. I’m sitting in for him this week. No heavy duty with nothing going on.”

  “This residence isn’t used for summer programs?”

  “Not this week, thank God.”

  “What is your name, Father?”

  “Casperson.”

  “C.S.C.?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Francie O’Kelly. We have an unusual request. Paul Sadler is living here, right?”

  “He is.”

  “We have been deputized to get something from his room and neglected to ask him for the key. Could you let us in? It would only take a minute.”

  “Of course.”

  “How did you know who I am?”

  “You’re a legend.”

  “Am I? I had no idea.”

  “I’m stationed in Portland and stories about you reach us even there.”

  “Well, well.”

  Father Casperson took some keys with him, led them to the elevator, and punched the button. Soon they were rising to the third floor. The priest stepped out and they followed him down the hall, where he unlocked a door, opened it, and looked in. When he stepped aside, Roger remained in the open door and looked around. What he had guessed was a window box on an earlier reconnoiter past the residence proved to be just that.

  “Father, could you see if there is a copy of Plato’s Republic on the desk?”

  The priest entered the room and searched for a minute, then turned with disappointment. He shook his head. “I’ll check the shelves.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. I can’t thank you enough.”

  So down they went again, Roger satisfied with the expedition, his two companions clearly mystified. Having thanked the temporary rector, Roger and Francie returned to the golf cart.

  “What was that all about?”

  “You will probably think that I lied to Father Casperson.”

  “Did Paul send you for a book?”

  “If you think of it, you’ll see I never quite said that.”

  “Just implied it?”

  “A venial sin at most.”