The Book of Kills

by Ralph McInerny

  “What was your recommendation?”

  “Send him home to his wife. I hope he never realizes that if she hadn’t shrieked he would very likely have kept his own mouth shut.”

  “That is a lot to ask, in the circumstances.”

  “Kocinski is beside himself. I hope he likes the company.”

  “You’re becoming a wit.”

  Stewart had been watching Roger roll the cannelloni with close attention. Now it was the turn of the veal.

  “You have the stature of a chef.”

  “You would be surprised how many of the great chefs are thin as a rail. Many of them have bad stomachs and can only appreciate the results of their labors vicariously.”

  Father Carmody arrived, listened to the story of Marcia’s confession, and then put it aside. “I am very uneasy about Saturday’s game.”

  The game would be played far off, under the sun, in hostile territory. Of course the game would be on national television.

  “I find a televised game far harder on my nerves. The camera is almost always focused on the action. In the stadium there are distractions, somehow the tension is less. Where is Philip?”

  Roger had thought to call Ballast with the turn of events and had been told that Phil was performing a service for the university.

  “What service?”

  “I suppose I can tell you,” Ballast said. “The chancellor’s secretary is missing.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Nor can we locate her good friend who works in the computing center.”

  Roger brought this grim news back to his guests. Father Carmody perked up.

  “What is her name?”

  “Trafficant. Anita Trafficant.”

  “Why, I married her to a man named Harold Ivray in the Holy Cross chapel this afternoon. They were unwilling to wait until they could schedule the ceremony at Sacred Heart or the log chapel, they had a license, so of course I was happy to oblige them.”

  He raised his glass and Stewart raised his and they drank a before-dinner libation to the happy couple.

  “Odd middle name the groom has. Cruelle.”

  “The name of the nineteenth-century serial murderer. Whelan has entered it all in The Book of Kills. It was one of the items Orion Plant had turned up in the course of his research.”

  “Why don’t people concentrate on the great things that have happened here?” Father Carmody grumbled.

  “Most do, Father. Most do. Professor Otto Ranke, for one.”

  At the mention of the name, Father Carmody made a face. “And I always thought he was a sensible man.”

  It was nearly seven when Phil came in, a grim expression on his face. “I’m afraid it isn’t over. There are two more people missing.”

  “Anita Trafficant and Harold Ivray.”

  Phil stopped in the process of unwrapping himself. “How do you know that?”

  Father Carmody then told him of the wedding he had officiated at in the chapel of Holy Cross House that afternoon. Phil just stared. He was in an appropriately stunned mood to receive the story of Marcia Plant’s confession.

  “Who will be next?” he asked.

  “No one,” Stewart assured him, watching Roger slide the cannelloni into the oven. “The contest is closed.”

  When Roger stopped by the Ranke home several days later, he found the returned professor getting the treatment his sisters must have accorded Lazarus after the first excitement of his emergence from the tomb was over. He sat in his great leather arm chair in his study, fussed over and tended to by his subservient wife. Schnapps was called for and schnapps was brought, but Freda did not join them.

  “I never drink schnapps,” she said, avoiding Roger’s eyes. Otto Ranke puffed on his pipe and accorded her a deeply affectionate look. The Rankes had been through the fire and, tried and tested, could face their remaining days in peace. Laverne had proved amenable to the suggestion that she go for what Ranke called her confinement to relatives in the East who were under the impression that she had lost her husband tragically.

  “I have submitted my resignation, Roger. My last years will be devoted to my own work. I was offered an office in Flanner, but I refused. Instead, I have been given work space in the Maritain Center and shall work there and here. I must be near the sources, and where better than actually in the library?”

  “And what will you work on?”

  “I have three projects.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First, I will prepare a second and expanded edition of my book on great authors who have lectured at Notre Dame. The list has lengthened considerably since the book appeared, and I attended the lectures of all those I will add. Second, I will write a monograph on Father Petit, the heroic priest who accompanied the Indians who were displaced from here to the southwest. Many did not make it to their destination, including Father Petit.”

  “The influence of Orion Plant.”

  “There is more. If I live, I intend to complete the research Orion had scarcely begun that would have been his dissertation. I was reluctant at the time to give the topic to a tyro, and of course he grew bored with it.”

  “A tragic young man.”

  “I grieve for his wife. I have some intimation of what she is now going through.”

  “Of course. With the difference that she is guilty.”

  Professor Otto Ranke said nothing, just puffed on his pipe.

  “You told a very convincing story.”

  “It was true.”

  “But, professor . . .”

  Ranke held up his hand. “Did you think I could invent so many details? I did follow Laverne that night and stood in the snow outside the Plant residence. Eventually they emerged, but I noticed Plant was not in the group. I waited until he came out. I followed him.”

  “Why?”

  “I intended to kill him.”

  Roger looked at his old friend, stupefied.

  “To my chagrin, his wife then came out of the house and went after him. I crept along in pursuit, awaiting my opportunity. That is why I was a witness to what actually happened. As I watched. I confess I felt a deep satisfaction, not horror. She was doing what I feared Laverne might do. He had put my daughter in a most embarrassing condition, and then was through with her. A woman scorned . . .”

  But the scorned woman who had struck Orion Plant was his wife.

  “Then why did you confess?”

  “In expiation for the ignoble way I felt when I watched a man killed. And to preserve a wife from the consequences of her deed.”

  The fire crackled, Otto Ranke lifted his glass of schnapps. Roger lifted the glass that Freda had insisted on pouring for him and made as if to drink. The aroma of the drink cleared his nasal passages.

  “You could be called as a witness in the trial.”

  “Pray God it will not come to that.” He looked at Roger. “Only two persons know that I was essentially telling the truth when I confessed. I will willingly confess no more.”

  After a long silence, Roger remembered an old school boy’s gesture. He locked his lips and threw away the key.