Celt and Pepper

by Ralph McInerny

  “Could you spell the name again?”

  Maloney did so with little confidence that the reporter would get it right. She was a spare young student whose head kept tipping to the left as she wrote and whose expression, when she looked at him, was skeptical. Or it might have been her contact lenses.

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Pepper.”

  The skeptical look grew puzzled.

  “A sneeze.”

  “Come on.”

  Padraig elaborated but he had lost credibility. When the story appeared the emphasis was on the condescending appraisal of Kilmartin’s verse by Professor Geoffrey Sauer. “A lovely singer of limited range.”

  * * *

  With the basketball season heating up, Phil was relieved to have fulfilled his professional obligations. He had been hired by Deirdre to locate her husband and now Fritz was safely under lock and key.

  “And is he her husband?”

  “He never was. The licence of the man who presided at their wedding had expired. He had been replaced as Justice of the Peace but continued to perform weddings for some months. It was quite a scandal.”

  “I should think so.”

  “Has the money been found?”

  A thirty-second time-out enabled Phil to answer. “Roger, just between you and me and the fencepost, I doubt there was any money.”

  “You doubt your client’s word.”

  “Oh, I think there was a backpack and there may have been some money in it. But a biker going around with three hundred thousand dollars?” Phil shook his head and returned to the game.

  Roger did the Sunday Times crossword according to private rules of his own, moving diagonally over the puzzle from the lower-left corner to the upper right, usually able to follow a jagged avenue as he went. Once he had confined himself to the Down clues, not taking any help from the Across, but that challenge had paled. The truth was that the Friday or Saturday daily puzzles, while smaller, were a greater challenge than the larger Sunday puzzle. And The Observer ran the daily puzzles. Alas, there was no Saturday edition, necessitating the purchase of the complete paper for the one thing worthwhile in it.

  Distracted, he chewed on his ballpoint pen, and considered the consequences of doubting Deirdre’s word. Suspicion had fallen on Padraig Maloney because Deirdre had said he called Kilmartin when they were about to leave for O’Hare and Dublin and persuaded them to detour by Flanner to pick up a going-away present in Martin’s office. When they arrived, there was no present, but then the phone rang and Martin, by answering the phone, had brought on his death because the receiver had been sprayed with pepper. He had ridden the resultant sneeze into paradise. And who had made the call? Who but Padraig? Or so Deirdre had suggested. So much depended on her veracity. But if Deirdre was not to be believed, perhaps none of that had happened. During halftime, Roger pointed this out to Phil, with remarkable results.

  “My first instinct was not to take the case, Roger. And I wouldn’t have, if she hadn’t had Notre Dame connections…”

  “Of course, she may be telling the truth on all counts.”

  “The money too?”

  “Who knows?”

  Phil thought he knew. The following day he met with Jimmie Stewart, who was disinclined to complicate a case the prosecutor thought would be a walk in the park. They were prosecuting Fritz for assault and battery, unlawful entry. A possible charge of kidnaping was in the background, based on the forceful detaining of Deirdre in the Niles motel.

  “And Kilmartin?”

  Jimmie made a face. “I know, I know. But Jacuzzi the prosecutor says he couldn’t make it stick.”

  “He’ll be out in a couple of years.”

  “As far as Kocinski is concerned, my one remaining duty is to testify at the trial.” Stewart’s eyes closed as if to shut out the thought of his chief.

  But Phil was not to be easily dissuaded from pursuing the thoughts engendered by Roger’s remark about Deirdre’s veracity.

  “Jimmie, on her own account, she deserted her husband, or at least a man she thought she had married, taking with her the money they had stolen over a number of months. She wants us to believe that.”

  “You want her prosecuted for those robberies in Wisconsin and Minnesota?”

  “I think she might have used Fritz one last time. Imagine if the two of them colluded to get rid of Kilmartin.”

  “Give me a break!” Jimmie cried, throwing up his hands. They were having a beer in a bar across from the courthouse that called itself a pub and where Guinness was on tap, flown in weekly from that little bit of heaven that fell from out the sky one day and nestled in the ocean in a spot so far away. Jimmie sought solace in the creamy foam of his glass.

  But Phil stubbornly laid out the scenario that suggested itself. Fritz tracks Deirdre to South Bend, intent on recovering the money she stole from him. The sight of her softens his anger and she sweet-talks him into going off together. But first there is the impediment of Martin Kilmartin. Fritz is persuaded to spray the phone.

  “I told you what Jacuzzi said about the pepper spray.” Jimmie waved for another round. “But the biggest flaw is that they have no motive for killing the poet. If they want to run off together all they have to do is do it.”

  Phil was taken aback, and regretted not having run through the theory with Roger. Later, he told his brother about the collapse of his theory.

  “But, Phil, they did have a motive.”

  David Simmons who had access to such confidential information and passed it on as confidential told Roger that Martin Kilmartin had made Deirdre the beneficiary of his university perks—an insurance policy, an admittedly still minuscule retirement policy and, besides, a bonus coverage from the Credit Union from which Kilmartin had borrowed money to buy his car.

  “How much in all?”

  “Several hundred thousand dollars. Where are you going?”

  “To call Jimmie.”

  20

  When David Simmons told Roger of the arrangements Martin Kilmartin had made to leave money to Deirdre, this was only a bump in a conversation that drove toward the fund-raiser’s point in coming to Roger’s office.

  “You said you would decide after the second semester began.”

  “Not a very precise deadline.” Roger smiled, but Simmons was too tense for jollity.

  “Have you made up your mind?”

  “There is one more conversation I wish to have before I do.”

  “With James Elliot?”

  “Good heavens no. I speak with him once a day. He is more importuning than you.”

  “Father Carmody?”

  Obviously Simmons was seeking a clue as to who else might be pressured on behalf of Roger’s acceptance of the directorship of the Malachy O’Neill Center of Catholic Literature.

  “Father Carmody is my confessor, so of course we talk.”

  “Your confessor?” That cut off a possible avenue. Father Carmody would not violate the seal of the confessional even for the benefit of Notre Dame.

  “Greg Whelan is all for your taking the position, you know.”

  “Have you talked with him?”

  “It’s a shame that so brilliant a fellow has such a terrible impediment.”

  Greg had told Roger that he had encouraged his own stammer when Simmons, seeking ways of persuading Roger to take the appointment, called on him in the archives.

  “If I can be of any help?” Simmons said now, fishing, fishing, but Roger gave him no clue as to the person he must yet talk to.

  * * *

  That afternoon he pushed away from the desk as it came on three o’clock, bringing the chair to a halt when he had a good view of the parking lot from his window. Below was his golf cart, beyond under snow-laden trees the grotto, and then the lake where ducks were busy keeping some open water against the gathering ice. The scene conduced to contemplation and for a time Roger forgot his expected visitor and what that visit might reveal.

  The building i
n which his office was, once Brownson Hall, once the convent of the nuns who had baked and cooked and laundered for the nascent community of Notre Dame, had been used for a variety of purposes over the years. It had housed the Freshman Year of Studies when that brainchild of Emil Hoffman was an innovation and then had become Earth Sciences, the name it still kept for many though it no longer named anything under its roof. The building came stepwise down from the level of the church and main building to the level where Roger’s office with classrooms above it was flush with the ground. As old a building as there was on campus, save for Old College overlooking the lake, it gave a sense of continuity with Father Sorin and the other pioneers who had brought this institution from improbable hope to achieved reality. A road from the grotto led toward the community cemetery where those heroes lay. The nuns were buried across the road at St. Mary’s. Roger remembered his recent trip up that road in his golf cart with Greg Whelan beside him when they had visited the grave of the poet president of Notre Dame, Father O’Donnell. All but forgotten, like the person in his poem “For One Departed.”

  There is no memory of you

  In rooms that were your own,

  I labor to construct anew

  The combination known

  So well—to see you in that door,

  Crossing familiarly this floor.

  There was no one living now to conjure the memory of Charles O’Donnell, C.S.C., and yet he and all the others were present in spirit on this campus, all those giants of the past whom only some remembered now. It was one of the great attractions of James Elliot that he retained so sincere and fervent a memory of Malachy O’Neill.

  In the parking lot a vehicle came creeping along looking for a spot and then swung into a vacancy. In a moment the door opened and Donald Weber stepped onto the snowy parking lot. He looked toward Roger’s window but would not be able to see that his arrival had been observed. With a sigh, Roger pushed himself back to his desk.

  There was the sound of stomping, Weber ridding his shoes of snow, and then the creaking of the ancient wooden floor as he came down the hallway. He stopped outside Roger’s door. Half a minute went by before there was the knock.

  “Come in, come in,” Roger boomed heartily, and Donald Weber entered, still redolent of the bracing outdoors. His expression was one he might have fixed on his face in the hallway before knocking on the door. How to describe it. Obsequious, Uriah Heepish, mendicant.

  “Good afternoon, Roger.”

  Meanwhile Weber unzipped his lined coat. Roger told him to hang it on a hook beside the door.

  “Oh, I’ll keep it on until I warm up.” But beads of sweat stood on Weber’s forehead. He sat and pressed back against the chair.

  “You said you had made a decision. About the Malachy O’Neill Center.”

  “I have. You will be the first one I inform of that decision.”

  “Really?” Weber sat forward, beginning to smile.

  “I have decided to decline the offer.”

  “You have!” Weber fought his smile into submission and adopted what must have been meant to be a look of incredulity, even indignation. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “I mean that I will decline, but my intention is firm. It is of course a great honor, far greater than I deserve and certainly more than I could accept. You helped me see that.”

  “I did?”

  “The last time you were here. I mean, in this office.”

  “What did I say?”

  Roger reminded him, in some detail and more or less verbatim. Weber had pointed out the unfittingness of additions to the faculty like Geoffrey Sauer and Martin Kilmartin. “And of course myself.”

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “I believe that.”

  Roger fell silent and Weber waited, his upper body beginning to move like a metronome, as if to urge Roger to continue. Finally he asked if Roger remembered something else he had said on that occasion.

  “I asked you to recommend me for the center. Now, if you are certain you yourself cannot accept it…”

  “I have spoken with James Elliot.”

  “And what was his reaction?”

  “He agreed with me entirely.”

  Weber fairly beamed and Roger chided himself for being so cruel.

  “We were of one mind that you would never do as director.”

  “But, you don’t want it…”

  “And you want it too much. You want many things too much. And you have done things for which it is unlikely you will ever be adequately punished.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Causing the death of Martin Kilmartin.”

  Weber sat back. “That is totally and completely absurd.” But he seemed to be waiting.

  “I wonder if I wasn’t in a way your accomplice. Would you have known how fragile his hold on life was if I hadn’t told you? I think you knew from the beginning that I would not accept the offer of the center. And you expressed my reasons rather eloquently. My mistake lay in telling you what a fine director Martin Kilmartin would make.”

  “The man knew nothing of Notre Dame and cared less.”

  “He did not have your exaggerated devotion, no. But he judges truly. And he judges the same no matter who is his audience.”

  “I want that job!”

  Roger shook his head.

  “You don’t understand what it is to love this place.”

  “I have begun to think that I understand that far better than you do.”

  “Did you call me all the way down here to tell me this garbage?”

  Weber rose slowly to his feet and seemed to grow as he stood there, breathing through his nose, staring down at Roger with hatred.

  “You fat sonofabitch. You dog in the manger. You…”

  He had put his hands on the edge of the desk and now began to push, propelling desk and Roger with growing momentum toward the bookcase. The back of Roger’s chair slammed into the bookcase and above him there was the rumble of an avalanche beginning. Weber clambered over the desktop, trying to get hold of Roger’s throat. Just in time the door burst open and Phil and Jimmie Stewart rushed in.

  EPILOGUE

  Months later, the snow had gone at last, winter was past and the voices of ducks were heard on the campus. Canada geese stopped traffic as they crossed the lake road, and mallards led their little ones to water, feathery promises of renewal and continuation. Roger Knight and Melissa sat on a bench, looking out over the lake.

  “He got off easy.”

  “Donald Weber?”

  “No. Fritz Davis. Five years maximum.”

  “It would have been difficult to make the charge of kidnaping stick.”

  In the absence of Deirdre. She had disappeared, embarrassed no doubt by her inheritance from Martin Kilmartin now that her renewed association with Fritz Davis was known. He had followed her to the motel in Niles and held her prisoner, but Fritz, by his own account, which few were willing to credit, said he would have been happy just to reclaim the money Deirdre had stolen from him and bike on down the highway.

  “Twice-stolen money,” Phil said.

  “Like refried beans,” said Jimmie Stewart.

  It was Jimmie’s belief that Deirdre had taken the backpack full of ill-gotten gains with her to Ireland.

  “Paddy Maloney is flying to Dublin during the midsemester break,” Melissa said to Roger.

  “Hope springs eternal.”

  “He’d better be careful,” Melissa said. “His retirement is a good deal more sizable than poor Martin Kilmartin’s.”

  “You’ve looked into it?”

  “Oh, stop it.” She leaned briefly against his arm. “I’m through with older men.”

  “Or vice versa.”

  She punched his arm. “Do you think Deirdre had arranged for Fritz to kill her intended husband?”

  “How would she do that?”

  “Take Martin to the office before they were supposed to go to O’Hare and fly
to Dublin.”

  “You have been misled by believing Deirdre’s earlier story.”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “No.”

  A moment of nobility had illumined Deirdre’s soul. When Fritz located her, she had saved herself from his brutality by turning over the backpack filled with money. He was astounded that she had spent none of it. Unwisely, thinking he was now content with Bobbie, she confided in him the arrangements Martin had made for her. She took on the allure of an heiress and appealed to his greed. Deirdre fled both him and Martin.

  “Martin!”

  “Given the murkiness of her own status—she did not know she and Fritz had never really been married—and having come to admire if not love Kilmartin, she realized she could not be a wife to him. So she decided to part with both Fritz’s money as well as the legacy that would be hers from Martin.”

  “But she got that.”

  “To her surprise. She thought it was contingent on their having married.”

  “Then what did happen to Martin Kilmartin?”

  “Deirdre was not at her apartment when he came for her and, unable to locate her, he went to Flanner, hoping to find her hiding in her office, a too-timid bride. Fritz sought her in the same place when he realized she had run off again.”

  Melissa turned toward him on the bench. “Are you saying that Fritz then sprayed the phone with pepper and…”

  “No, he didn’t do that.”

  “Who did?”

  “Donald Weber.

  Weber had changed from raging bully to craven coward when Phil and Jimmie Stewart burst into Roger’s office in the nick of time. Prompted by Roger, Weber blubbered his confession. He had removed Kilmartin as an obstacle to his ambition to be director of the Malachy O’Neill Center. He had sprayed the phone with pepper, having learned of the poet’s fragility.

  “And then telephoned him?”

  “No. He had no idea Kilmartin was in his office. He did not know that Kilmartin planned to leave the country. If Martin had not come looking for Deirdre, if they had gone off to Dublin, the spray would have lost its effectiveness.”

  “So who made the call?”

  Roger smiled sadly. “You are still in the grips of Deirdre’s original story. There was no call. Kilmartin just picked up the pepper-sprayed phone to make a call. A fatal decision.”