Irish Gilt

by Ralph McInerny

  16

  Because of the delay in releasing the body of Xavier Kittock, the relatives and friends who had come to campus for his funeral had a prolonged visit. This proved to be a bonus for Roger Knight, who was able to have a number of extended conversations with the interesting father of Rebecca de Vega Nobile.

  “Her mother was at best tolerant of that middle name,” David Nobile said with a smile. “But then, Rebecca was her own mother’s name, and that gained her assent.”

  “Quid pro quo.”

  “Exactly. But tell me about the edition you ordered through Boris Henry.”

  Phil slipped discreetly from the room to the solace of the television while Roger brought out the recent acquisition and handed it to his guest. For an hour the two men examined the prize.

  “I wonder if he has other things,” Nobile murmured.

  “We can find out.” Roger wheeled to his computer and brought up the Web site of Boris Henry Rare Books.

  While this feast of reason went on, Mrs. Nobile and her daughter were enjoying one another’s company whenever Rebecca was not in class. With maternal wariness, Mrs. Nobile had met Josh Daley and wondered what this new friendship portended.

  “We have a class together. And we run.”

  “Run?”

  Rebecca explained. It all sounded wholesome enough. Mrs. Nobile was torn between the desire that her daughter should graduate and emerge into the wider world still single and the equally strong desire that she might meet the companion of her life here on campus. Was Josh Daley that companion? It was clear to her that the young man didn’t have the mind of her daughter, nor share Rebecca’s interests, but then there are so many facets to a life together, as she had learned. David’s bibliophilic bent had not been evident during the years when her husband had amassed the wealth that had brought him leisure enough in midlife to pursue his surprising interest in the golden age of Spanish literature. Rebecca was her father’s child, and Mrs. Nobile began to weigh the possibility that Josh might be the complement to her daughter that she herself was for her husband. Such thoughts distracted her from the grief she felt at her brother’s death.

  The realization that Xavier’s death had not been natural added to the horror. When the young man employed in campus maintenance was arrested under suspicion of having killed Xavier, Mrs. Nobile took to her room in the Morris Inn, inconsolable in grief.

  “It’s better for her to be alone just now,” Rebecca said, as she and Josh prepared for their run. With practice, her endurance had increased, and she found it oddly pleasant to run in relative silence at Josh’s side.

  The route they took had become a familiar one, around both lakes and then from the Grotto along the road to St. Mary’s and back again. This was far shorter than the distance Josh was used to, but he did not want to push her beyond her present strength. They ended on a bench beside a campus walk that led to Old College, the most ancient campus building. It overlooked the lake.

  “My father is with Roger Knight, They’re asking him to help fund the Zahm Center.”

  Josh was now regularly auditing Roger’s class devoted to John Zahm, a pleasant relief from Continental epistemology. “It’s odd that both your uncle and Boris Henry developed such an interest in Zahm.”

  “Not only them. Paul Lohman is another. They all roomed together. The Three Musketeers.”

  * * *

  Paul Lohman had arrived from Chicago, where he had been on business. Rebecca and her parents had dined with him, Boris Henry, and the elegant Clare Healy. Lohman was a short, cheery man who relieved what might have been the lugubrious atmosphere at their table with a lengthy account of the Red Sox’s prospects for the season. Boris Henry seemed to regret the loss of the Zahm diary as much as he did his old roommate.

  “Is there only the one copy?” Paul Lohman asked.

  “It was never published. Of course there is only the one copy.”

  “You should have photocopied it.”

  Boris Henry stared at him. “Have you any idea what such an item is worth? It is as fragile as it is valuable. You don’t subject a thing like that to a Xerox machine.”

  “You might have made a longhand copy, then.”

  “I intend to get it back! I have hired Philip Knight for that purpose.”

  “Roger Knight’s brother?” David Nobile’s interest had finally been engaged.

  “He is a private investigator.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “He only takes on very special projects these days.”

  “I’m sure he will find it,” Clare Healy said.

  Boris Henry reacted to this with impatience. “Clare, I needn’t tell you of the shadier aspects of the rare book trade. God knows where the thing might have been spirited off to.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Mrs. Nobile said. Her loss had brought on a bout of piety. “Have you all been to the Grotto?”

  “Not yet,” Paul Lohman said.

  “Tell me about it,” Clare urged, and Mrs. Nobile was only too happy to oblige. The replica of the shrine at Lourdes was a token of Father Edward Sorin’s devotion to the Virgin Mary, the name of the university he had founded being another.

  “You must take me there, Boris,” Clare Healy said.

  Rebecca could not figure out the relationship between Boris Henry and this woman with the patrician air whom he had described as the effective manager of his rare book business. How so serene a woman could radiate such femininity was a marvel.

  “Has Philip Knight turned up anything yet?” Paul asked.

  Boris shook his head.

  “I suppose the police are involved as well.”

  “No! Good Lord, the less publicity the better. You realize that everything I have said is confidential.”

  They all realized it. Paul Lohman twisted an imaginary key in his lips and tossed it over his shoulder, getting a laugh from Clare, but immediately afterward, he was talking again. “Didn’t Eggs join an expedition in search of sunken treasure?”

  “Sunken treasure!” David Nobile perked up, and the story was told, Boris and Clare spelling one another.

  “That was the basis of his interest in Zahm,” Boris concluded, and began to talk about Father Zahm’s South American travels and his interest in El Dorado.

  Rebecca tuned him out. Who could compete with Roger Knight on the subject of Father Zahm? Knight’s course, spurred by recent events, had veered into a discussion of Father Zahm’s travel writings, interrupting his account of the priest’s interest in Dante. The subject had taken him far afield, leading to a long and fascinating hour on the subject of rare metals.

  “Gold has practical uses, of course,” Roger said to his class. “And not merely dental. But it is its comparative rarity, and, of course, its beauty, that explains the fascination it has always had. Mere rarity would not be enough, would it? And yet one thinks of the bars of gold bullion sleeping unused and highly protected at Fort Knox, Kentucky. They are still there even though the gold standard is a thing of the past. Once paper currency had been an implicit claim on that treasure, but no more. I find that there is a brisk trade in gold, quite independent of money and stocks and bonds.” He grew more pensive. “But its value is expressed in dollars.”

  There was a ruminative, almost melancholy tone to his voice, and Rebecca commented on it.

  Roger smiled. “I am mimicking Father Zahm’s tone as he wrote of such things. Who has read Treasure Island?”

  Josh, of course. The class had ended with Roger and Josh exchanging delighted memories of the novel.

  Thinking of this, sitting beside Josh on a bench overlooking the lake, deliciously tired, Rebecca, said, “For a history major, you certainly know a lot of things.”

  “Not epistemology.”

  “Epistemology isn’t everything.”

  His hand found hers, and they sat on in silence.

  17

  “I haven’t sat on a bench since this happened,” Armitage Shanks said with what might have been a shudde
r—but then, he shook all the time.

  “Have you stopped sending your shirts out?”

  “I always have them back on hangers.”

  The Old Bastards were at lunch at their table in the University Club, happy to have the new twists in the death of Xavier Kittock to enliven their day.

  “I got out my records,” Goucher said. “I never had him in class.”

  “The maintenance man?”

  “Kittock.”

  “Class of ’74.”

  “You’ve been reading the Observer.” A low growl went around the round table, and the conversation threatened to get diverted onto the topic of the student newspaper.

  “What was the motive?” Shanks asked querulously.

  “A jealous husband,” Debbie, the hostess, said, sitting on the edge of an unclaimed chair.

  “Chaucer.”

  “No, Esperanza.”

  “When’s the funeral?”

  Here was a lugubrious topic they could all get their teeth into, artificial or not. They had all long been in that twilit time of life when the daily obituaries are the first items read in the newspaper. Their companions had been picked off one by one, and they had taken pews in Sacred Heart to bid them a last adieu and ponder their own fate. To a man, they had plots awaiting them in Cedar Grove. Shanks, a bachelor, had already put up a marker over his: name, date of birth, and then a blank awaiting the day when the bell would toll for him. He had wrung a promise from the others that “Notre Dame Our Mother” would not be sung as taps at his obsequies.

  “What’s the difference? You won’t hear it.”

  “It’s a tearjerker!”

  “How about the Salve Regina?” This beautiful hymn was sung over the grave of a newly buried member of the Congregation of Holy Cross, but that was in the community cemetery. The Old Bastards never missed a funeral there, watching an old adversary being lowered into the ground.

  “You’re all too mean to die,” Debbie said. She had taken some plastic-wrapped crackers from the bowl in the middle of the table and turned them in her hand as if contemplating a bet.

  “No one means to die,” Armitage Shanks said primly. “It is an end, not an aim.” He looked around brightly as once he had looked when he taught philosophy.

  “A jealous husband, Debbie?”

  At first she thought the question was personal. It took a while to pick up the broken rhythm of conversation at this table.

  “The dead man had become interested in Esperanza’s former wife. He threatened him in front of witnesses,” she explained.

  “What kind of name is Esperanza?”

  “A noun.”

  “It means hope.” Armitage Shanks again.

  “The wife seems to want to hang him,” Debbie said.

  “How so?”

  “She’s been babbling to the press about her husband’s insane jealousy.”

  “Marriage as temporary insanity.”

  “Everything’s temporary.”

  A gloomy pause. Rush began to speak on the nature of time. The past is no more, the future is not yet, the present is merely the division between them, so what is time?

  Armitage Shanks looked at his watch and answered the question.

  Debbie rose. “Who wants another drink?”

  “On the house?”

  “Oh, you can have it right here.”

  Off she went, stirring distant memories in old bodies, as Goucher recited Whitman. Out of the cradle, endlessly rocking …

  18

  Paul Lohman’s firm was located in Chicago, but he had kept the books for Boris Henry’s business as well as his personal finances during all the years since Henry had been left a widower. This made him privy to many things in his old roommate’s personal life that he suspected not even Clare Healy knew. It was because of Clare that Paul’s visits to Kansas City had become a labor of love. Thanks to her, Henry Rare Books was a solid money earner—nothing dramatic, not enough to bail Boris out of his gambling debts, but sequestered, thanks to Paul, from Boris’s personal finances so that, in the event of a crash, it would float free as an eventual life raft. When Paul had made these arrangements, he had been thinking only of Boris, but over time he came to see it as a favor he had done for Clare.

  Had she any inkling of the madness that gripped Boris when he entered a casino? The spread of gambling opportunities across the nation increased temptation exponentially for one with Boris’s proclivities. Once one had to go off to the fleshpots of Las Vegas, and then New Jersey, but now the rivers of the nation harbored gambling boats and the shores of the Great Lakes were dotted with them. Even in the wilderness a glitzy building emerged from a background of primeval forest, a casino run by a local tribe of Indians. It was not a matter of being led into temptation but of needing to be led out of it.

  Of course, concupiscence, an all but universal weakness, was addressed constantly by advertising, fashion, and music, if you could stand it, but there was a natural limit to such vice, whereas gambling was halted only when one’s money had been exhausted. Perhaps there was an analogy there.

  At table in the Morris Inn, with the Nobiles and their lovely daughter, Boris, and Clare, Paul had marveled at the facade Boris showed the world. Portrait of a rare book dealer whose mind was ever on transcendent and lasting things. He had fashioned a business that enabled him to combine the keen pleasure he had in learning with a nice return on his investment.

  David Nobile clearly envied him. “What better life could there be?” he said, sighing.

  “That of a professor,” Rebecca said firmly.

  “Please don’t get started on Roger Knight,” her mother pleaded.

  David Nobile nodded to his daughter. “You’re right. But what Boris does comes right after it.”

  Paul Lohman’s eyes met Clare’s across the table. The expression in hers was uncommunicative, but he suspected that she was contrasting this public portrait of Boris with his hectic private life.

  From the restaurant, after bidding Rebecca good night, they drifted into the bar. As he turned from the bar with his drink, Paul saw Clare holding a long-stemmed glass of wine, moving away. He followed her to where she stood looking out at the courtyard.

  Paul pushed the door open. “Let’s get a little air.”

  Her serene eyes were briefly on him. She nodded and went outside.

  There were tables there, and an odd sort of privacy. Through the windows of the restaurant and bar they could see diners and drinkers but were invisible to them. Clare sighed.

  “A sad business,” he said.

  “I have to remind myself that he was your roommate.”

  “And Boris’s. You must have met him.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “There was always competition between Eggs and Boris.”

  “Competition?”

  “I mean long ago.” Had she thought he was referring to her?

  “Paul, do you know what I would really like to do?”

  “What?”

  “See the Grotto. Is it far?”

  “A pretty long walk.”

  “I have a car.”

  “Let’s go.”

  They left their drinks on the metal table and went inside, passing the open door of the bar. When they emerged on the opposite side of the inn, Paul realized he had been holding his breath, fearful that someone would see them and call out. Of course, it was ridiculous to think of this otherwise than as what it was, a visit to the Grotto, no one’s idea of a rendezvous. Even so, as she drove, following his directions, he was suddenly conscious of his life. Returning to Notre Dame always brought memories, of course, but it was here that Paul had fallen in love and failed to win the girl. His reaction had been to throw himself into his work. He flattered himself that he had done better financially than either of his roommates, but suddenly that seemed hollow. What an odd trio they were, the Three Musketeers. None of them had a family; Eggs had never had a wife, either, and Boris’s marriage had been tragically brief. The death of his wi
fe had left him rich, but he had frittered the money away on the stupidest habit in the world.

  “Where can I park?”

  “Anywhere. Campus security won’t bother a visitor to the Grotto.” He picked a briefcase up off the floor and was about to put it in the backseat.

  “Is that your briefcase?” she asked.

  “Mine?”

  “It must be Boris’s. Let me see.”

  He gave it to her, and she snapped it open. “It’s his,” she said, looking inside. She was closing the top when she stopped and opened it again. She took from it a plastic bag.

  Light from a streetlamp illuminated the inside of the car. She held the bag up. It was the kind used to store things in a freezer. “For heaven’s sake. Why would he have his wallet in his briefcase?” She slid the bag open and brought forth a wallet. After she opened it, she turned toward Paul, her face in shadow now.

  “What is it?” She handed it to him. He held the wallet for a moment, then opened it as she had. “My God.”

  The wallet belonged to Xavier Kittock. His keys and other items were also in the bag.

  PART THREE

  THE GOLDEN RULE

  1

  Having put the plastic bag filled with Eggs’s effects back into the briefcase, Clare snapped it shut. After she locked the car, she and Paul Lohman went on to the Grotto, where they sat on a bench and stared at the flickering votive candles. Beyond an initial expression of surprise, neither of them had said anything.

  “There has to be an explanation,” Clare murmured now.

  “Of course.”

  Eggs’s pockets had been empty when he was found, and what had been in his pockets was in a bag in Boris’s briefcase. It was difficult for Paul to see what innocent explanation of that could be found.

  “Someone must have put them in his briefcase, Paul. After all, it wasn’t locked.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever killed poor Eggs.” Clare’s thoughts seemed to be racing. “And it could have been anytime, anywhere. He left the briefcase in the car—we had gone several places together—but before that, it would have been in his room.”