Celt and Pepper
Page 17
“If Weber confessed, why hasn’t he been arrested?”
“The prosecutor does not think he could get a conviction. No doubt he is right. A jury would find the elements of the puzzle too hard to piece together.”
“A perfect crime?”
“An unpunished one, perhaps. At least judicially.”
Weber had resigned his post at Midlothian College. Roger had received the news from Brian Elliot. Roger no longer heard from the boy’s father. James Elliot had decided he had been generous enough already to his alma mater. David Simmons found this temporarily devastating, but soon other affluent targets beckoned and he went on with his mendicant task. Doubtless James Elliot had derived some consolation from reading Malachy O’Neill’s estimate of Weber’s work, sent to him anonymously by Greg Whelan.
“You must come for supper.” Roger said when they rose from the lakeside bench.
“Not tonight,” Melissa said. “I have a date.”
“Aha.”
“Arne Jensen.”
“A younger man?”
“Let’s just say not an older man.”
* * *
The following week a waif named Bobbie was arrested while driving a motorcycle Fritz had reported stolen. In the saddle bags was found the now thrice-stolen money Bobbie had ridden off with. Her fate was unsettled. It seemed that she was only sixteen years old.
* * *
Spring came as it annually does, birds sang and the sweet smell of early flowers filled the air. As Roger directed his golf cart up the road from the grotto, squirrels scampered about and overhead the branches of the great trees that formed a tunnel over the road rustled confidentially. At the community cemetery Roger got out of his cart and moved slowly among the graves until he found that of Charles O’Donnell. There was no admonition to the horseman that he pass by, as there was on the grave of William Butler Yeats in far-off Ireland. There wasn’t much traffic of any kind under the rustling trees where row after row of simple crosses marched away from the grave of Edward Sorin toward a future none of those who lay here would ever see but which would not have been possible without them. Roger prayed for them all and hoped that they in turn would remember the overweight Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies. He said as well a prayer for Martin Kilmartin, fragile poet, and for the repose of the soul he had sneezed away one winter day.
ALSO BY RALPH MCINERNY
MYSTERIES SET AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME:
On This Rockne
Lack of the Irish
Irish Tenure
Book of Kills
Emerald Aisle
FATHER DOWLING MYSTERY SERIES:
Her Death of Cold
The Seventh Station
Bishop as Pawn
Lying Three
Second Vespers
Thicker Than Water
A Loss of Patients
The Grass Widow
Getting a Way with Murder
Rest in Pieces
The Basket Case
Abracadaver
Four on the Floor
Judas Priest
Desert Sinner
Seed of Doubt
A Cardinal Offense
The Tears of Things
Grave Undertakings
Triple Pursuit
Prodigal Father
ANDREW BROOM MYSTERY SERIES:
Cause and Effect
Body and Soul
Savings and Loam
Mom and Dead
Law and Ardor
Heirs and Parents
CELT AND PEPPER. Copyright © 2002 by Ralph McInerny. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McInerny, Ralph M.
Celt and pepper : a mystery set at the University of Notre Dame / Ralph McInerny.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-29117-5
1. Knight, Roger (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Knight, Philip (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Private investigators—Indiana—South Bend—Fiction. 4. University of Notre Dame—Fiction. 5. South Bend (Ind.)—Fiction. 6. College teachers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A31166 C45 2002
813'.54—dc21
2002069938
First Edition: December 2002
eISBN 9781466841987
First eBook edition: March 2013