Irish Coffee

by Ralph McInerny

  After the funeral, Jimmy Stewart and Phil Knight had gone through the apartment. It was filled with stuff but nothing cast much light on what had happened to Neville. They might have been spared a lot of time if they had gone to the manager of the building first. The fact that he had seen Mary Shuster visit Fred meant that she was probably the last person to have seen him alive.

  A call at the Shuster home the following morning brought a somewhat bedraggled Mrs. Shuster to the door, wrapped in a housecoat, edgy and unwelcoming. It did not help much when Jimmy Stewart identified himself.

  “I am going to pay that ticket, for heaven’s sake. I’ll do it today.”

  “I’m not in traffic, Mrs. Shuster. I want to talk to you about Fred Neville.”

  “Fred Neville? God rest his soul. Can’t you let him lie in peace?” The question raised another in her mind. “But he isn’t buried yet, is he?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  Either Mary was home or she was not. If not, Mrs. Shuster was an attractive target of opportunity. He had piqued her curiosity and she opened the door.

  Stewart was struck by the decisively male note of the furnishings and decorations of the house. The living room walls were hung with certificates, awards, degrees, all honoring the late Nathaniel Shuster. The dining room seemed an anteroom to the study beyond, a book-lined room well-lit by a skylight.

  “What a wonderful house.”

  “This is an area of wonderful houses. But no longer of wonderful people. No, I shouldn’t say that. What I mean is that it is no longer filled with members of the faculty and their families. Of course the whole city has changed.”

  Stewart nodded. Everyone had a right to a certain number of philosophical generalizations.

  “How long has your husband been dead, Mrs. Shuster?”

  “You haven’t told me your name.”

  He got out his identification again, and she gave a wave of her hand. “You don’t think I could read that, do you?”

  “My name is Jimmy Stewart. Detective Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart, South Bend police. I am making inquiries about the death of Fred Neville.”

  She listened as if he were reciting a set lesson. “Very well. My husband has been dead fifteen years.” And to his look of surprise as he again looked around him, she added, “It is exactly as it was the day he died. I will never change it. I suppose that is why I stay on here while so many others have left. It would be like deserting Nathaniel.”

  “I understand.”

  “Now what do you mean, looking into the death of Fred Neville.”

  “You knew him, of course.”

  “I thought I did.”

  Stewart lifted his brows and looked receptive.

  “My daughter now tells me that she had been seeing Fred, that they intended to marry. I knew absolutely nothing of this.”

  “She was engaged to Neville?”

  Mrs. Shuster nodded. “So you know of the fiancée who showed up for the funeral.”

  “Naomi McTear?”

  “Yes. The Nevilles obviously accepted her as their son’s fiancée, which put Mary in an equivocal position, to say the least. I don’t suppose you were there.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “I thought I had seen you somewhere. You were at the wake too, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The young woman dressed in mourning was my daughter, not the fiancée. Oh, I am so mortified.”

  “If your daughter and Neville were seeing one another, others must have known. You don’t imagine she just invented such a relationship, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” She stopped. “Why are the police asking about Fred Neville’s death?”

  “At first, it was thought he died of natural causes.”

  “Didn’t he!”

  “His death was due to poison.”

  “Oh my God.” She brought both hands to her face and stared round-eyed at him over her fingertips. After a moment, she took her hands away to ask eagerly, “Did he leave a note?”

  “None has been found.”

  “Oh, you must look for it. For anything that could indicate what was going on between him and Mary.”

  “You say Mary herself gave you no clue?” He looked toward the stairs. “I assume she isn’t home.”

  “Oh, she was off to work, bright as a penny this morning.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “In the registrar’s office.”

  “On campus.”

  “Of course. And no, she gave me no clue. And I can add this. I have looked through her room, her things, for anything that would prove she wasn’t living some fantasy.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That is why I would so much like you to find a note from him.”

  “Mrs. Shuster, it may not have been suicide.”

  She fell back in her chair, but bounced upright again, the cushions were so firm.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There could have been foul play. We have no evidence of that but in the absence of a note or any indication that the man was despondent…”

  “You think he might have been killed.”

  A look of horror spread across Mrs. Shuster’s face. “Is that why you came here? Are you thinking that Mary—”

  Jimmy Stewart interrupted her. “I’m not paid to think, not in that sense. Mary can be of great help to us in finding out what happened. If there had not been an autopsy, if the coroner had not found poison to be the cause of death—either or both of which might easily not have happened—Fred Neville would be safely in the ground and we could all go about our usual work. But there was an autopsy and poison was found and it is my job to discover what that means. Was it suicide or something else? Mary will know things that will help me answer that question.”

  Her expression changed gradually during this explanation, and she was wary of him now. He changed gears.

  “I have been noticing the study ever since I sat down, Mrs. Shuster. I wonder if I could have a closer look at it.”

  “Of course!”

  She had trouble getting out of the chair and he helped her and they went arm and arm through the dining room to the living room.

  Close up, the study seemed even more a stage setting than it had from the living room. Jimmy Stewart started to move along the shelves, then turned. “May I?”

  “Oh, do. Eventually these books will go to the Notre Dame library, a special collection, the Professor Nathaniel Shuster collection, but I could no more part with them than I could with the house.”

  “What was your husband’s field?”

  “Political science. But his real love was American literature.”

  “And these are his own works.” He was looking at a special shelf.

  “The books yes. I mean to have the offprints of his articles bound. They will make at least four volumes.”

  “Very productive scholar.”

  “He was a poet too.”

  “Really.”

  “He said he wrote them just for me, or Mary, but I sent some of them off and they were accepted.” She pulled a slender volume from the shelf. Poems by Nathaniel Shuster. “This is the result. It doesn’t seem much, does it? But poetry takes a very long time to write. And rewrite. It was very difficult for him to think that a version was the final one.”

  Stewart held his peace. They were moving into terra incognita as far as he was concerned, but he now felt Mrs. Shuster to be a far more sympathetic character than he had. Her indignation was motivated by fear of what people would think or say but on the topic of her husband, on the devotion she still felt to him and the life they had lived together, she emerged as a warm and sentimental woman. No doubt Mary’s enigmatic actions had jarred with what lay behind this shrine of a house, and it was that, her husband’s memory, that was the true measure of her indignation.

  They moved back through the rooms and Stewart thanked her for her time.
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  “Would you like me to call Mary and tell her you’re coming?”

  “No. I want to stop by a friend’s apartment on the way. Philip Knight.”

  Mrs. Shuster stepped back, her hands lifting in delighted surprise.

  “You know Philip Knight?”

  “And Roger.”

  “Why didn’t you say so, for heaven’s sake? They are both dear friends of mine.”

  “I will give them your regards.”

  7

  SOUTH BEND IS RINGED WITH motels, with the greatest concentration to the north and east, particularly the east, where the area around the mall is dotted with motels, inns, and hotels. Their number was explained by the influx of fans for home games, hardly a sufficient basis for yearlong profit, but somehow the number of guests through the year made it a paying proposition. There were condominium apartments as well, which waited empty for the return of alumni and benefactors of the university. The cable company for which Naomi McTear worked had several such apartments and it was in one of these that she was staying. Indeed, her presence for Fred’s funeral was explained by the fact that she had been assigned to a Lady Irish home game.

  “Lady Irish?” Like most successful women she took a dim view of women, and sometimes she thought that it was only former coaches who took women athletes seriously. Heresy, of course, never to be voiced aloud or indicated in tone or manner. Gender equality was a demanding game, most of whose rules were written ad hoc, and it was dangerously easy to overstep some invisible line and be declared a traitor to her sex.

  Naomi’s interest in sports was entirely theoretical, a matter of knowledge rather than practice. She was an only daughter whose older brother, George, had excelled at every sport he had undertaken. George was now in his forties and paying the belated price for having being banged around on the gridiron in college and the pros. He was wracked with arthritis, had two new knees, moved with great deliberateness using a cane and, finding the pain-control pills inadequate, had sought solace in drink. From time to time he was interviewed and the results now were invariably embarrassing. Her brother Tom was another story entirely, one of the voices of the Chicago Cubs as well as the Bulls. It was Tom on whom she had modeled her life. He was inept at sports but his head was filled with lore that was ever at his fingertips, a great asset in his trade. If George could do it, Tom knew it, and George had always deferred to his young brother in the matter of sports statistics. Knowledge is power. Naomi had vowed to become a female version of Tom.

  And she had. She had written sports in college, had devoted more time to absorbing histories of sports, first the major ones, then all the others. By the time she graduated, she was a walking encyclopedia. When she met Fred Neville it was like attracting like. The first time she sat in on one of his postgame performances with the media she recognized a kindred spirit. She asked a question about pre-Rockne football and he rattled off the answer and looked at her with renewed interest. After the news conference she asked him to dinner.

  “I have an expense account,” she explained. “Besides I want to know you better.”

  Directness is the best direction to take with men, as long as it is done in a matter-of-fact, nonthreatening way. Fred accepted, he suggested the Carriage House and as they drove, she was sure he had lost the way. But suddenly, in the middle of nowhere was this excellent restaurant.

  “I don’t suppose you drink,” she said.

  “Don’t you?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you do.”

  They started with a scotch and water and had a bottle of cabernet with their meal. And talked. And talked. They were taking the other’s measure, and it was like a parlor game. Baseball? They both knew baseball like the back of their hand. Football, of course, and basketball. And so on through the roll of sports and each might have been talking to himself rather than the other. Fred could have been a clone of Tom.

  “He’s your brother? I should have known.”

  “Why?”

  “You have the same command of your subject.”

  They were among the last diners to rise and go. Outside it was a lovely fall evening and high above them stars were visible in a clear sky. And it was so quiet.

  “You all right?” she asked when they got to his car.

  “I’m the designated hitter.”

  “Then I hope you strike out.”

  The words hung there in the silent air, meaning more than she intended. It was the first thing either had said that suggested that he was male and she female. Scoring and striking out took on new meanings.

  The moment passed, they got in, and he drove with great care back to South Bend.

  “My treat next time,” he said when he dropped her off.

  “Wasn’t this time a treat?”

  “In every sense.”

  That had been several years ago, during the Bob Davie years. Naomi had angled to get her assignments changed, but it was difficult to get Notre Dame games, since so many others wanted them. But she got more than her share and each time she was in town she and Fred got together. The intervals gave Naomi time to think what it was leading to, if anything. But first Fred had to be introduced to Tom. This was arranged and the three of them got together for a postgame dinner to discuss the incredible loss the Irish had just suffered because they had let the clock run out when they were on the opponent’s six-yard line. A field goal would have given them victory. They had a time-out left. But the clock was allowed to run and a confused squad left the field in defeat.

  What Naomi had expected to happen did not happen. Tom had not liked Fred. Of course, Tom was drinking, the family weakness, and became surly as the dinner progressed. If the nation is divided into those who love Notre Dame and those who hate her, it became clear that Tom fell among the latter. His criticisms of the school, particularly of the treatment of its teams by the national media, began as humorous asides, and might have been directed against Naomi and her colleagues on national television, but as the meal progressed, the humor receded and bitterness was unmasked. And Fred’s defense turned from being lighthearted deflection of criticism he spent much of his professional life hearing to being serious, an artillery barrage of statistics, with a recurrent mention of the percentage of athletes who actually graduated, a most impressive statistic indeed. But not to Tom.

  “So you have a cadre of soft professors who take it easy on the jocks.”

  “We do not. Nor are there any bogus majors in basket weaving or physical education. Check it out.”

  The success of the teams? As even the rah-rah tradition acknowledged, it was largely a matter of luck. Nor were the schedules played as demanding as other schools faced. And of course, like the Yankees—Tom hated the Yankees—Notre Dame could buy any coach they wanted and lure to the campus any athlete.

  Again and again, realizing what a mistake she had made, Naomi tried to get the conversation on other matters, but it was far too late for that.

  “Oh, Tom, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Oh, Tom, for heaven’s sake,” he echoed, mimicking her tone. She could have hit him. He was her favorite brother, the one she was almost desperate should like Fred, and he was behaving like this!

  Eventually, as happened when he drank, Tom passed into a further bibulous phase, from argumentative to sentimental. It was not welcome. He decided to tell Fred what a wonderful sister he had.

  “It’s why I never married. Where could I find someone like her?”

  “Oh, Tom.”

  He did not mimic her. She almost wished he had. He became moist-eyed, reminding her of their idyllic childhood, about their sainted mother. Throughout all this, Naomi had avoided meeting Fred’s eyes. She knew what his reaction must be. The talk about marriage was too much. She went off to the Ladies and stared at her face in the mirror. She saw there a woman in the cruel position of having to choose between her favorite brother—and there was, after all, Tom sober to offset the awfulness of Tom dru
nk—and Fred Neville. But did she have the choice after this? Fred had been attentive, he obviously liked her, but what would he think of any future that involved a relationship with Tom?

  But when she returned to the table, Tom had entered into the final, good-humored endearing stage. He and Fred were in happy conversation. They had agreed on the immortal status of Joe Paterno, which was insufficiently acknowledged by the sportswriting fraternity. “And sorority,” Tom added as she joined them.

  If it were only this final effect drink had on Tom, Naomi would have welcomed his drinking. The evening ended on a high note.

  “Let’s have an Irish coffee,” Tom said.

  It seemed a peace offering. They all three had Irish coffee, a drink Naomi liked about as much as she liked eggnog. Outside, they put Tom in a cab and Naomi turned to face Fred.

  “That wasn’t what I planned,” she said.

  “It was fun,” he said, his tone false.

  “I’ll make it up to you.” Impulsively, she lifted her face and kissed him. Almost to her surprise, he took her in his arms in a crushing embrace and pressed his lips more firmly on hers.

  If that dinner with Tom had been the result of a plan, it would have been successful so far as its ultimate outcome. They ended up at her suite where a somewhat woozy Fred, collapsed in a chair, took off his tie and kicked off his shoes.

  “I haven’t had that much to drink in a long time.”

  “Me either. Or is it, neither have I? Or is it, can I get you anything?”

  He had put back his head and his eyes were at half-mast.

  “Don’t fall asleep!”

  “I don’t even remember driving here.”

  Naomi looked down at him in silence. Then she took his hands, heaved him to his feet, and led him down the hall to the bedroom.

  During the week, she got a call from Tom.

  “I hope you’re not serious about that guy.”

  “I’m surprised you remember him.”

  “You better forget him too.”

  8

  WHEN PHIL SUGGESTED THAT the three of them have lunch on campus while they talked, Mary frowned.