Irish Gilt

by Ralph McInerny

  “They think that maintenance man, Esperanza, killed him.”

  Clare turned to him suddenly. “Paul, I think I know what happened.”

  “What?”

  “One of the places Boris and I went was to Eggs’s room. As soon as I arrived from Kansas City. It was two in the morning, and we went to the Jamison Inn, and they let us in. We went there to look for the diary. Boris was sure Eggs had stolen it.”

  “But you didn’t find it.”

  “No. Look, I was in the bathroom, looking around. I think Boris must have found that bag and taken it then.”

  “Clare, you realize that doesn’t make sense. Why would the stuff from Eggs’s pockets be in a plastic bag in his own room?”

  She stared at him as her explanation crumbled. She turned away. “I don’t know.”

  “The question is, what are we going to do?”

  “Paul, we have to keep it quiet!”

  A tempting course of action. What Paul really wished was that they had not found that bag. Now they faced a terrible dilemma. If they kept quiet about it, they would reinforce the case against Esperanza. But what if he were innocent?

  “I’m going to talk to Boris,” he said.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Clare, it’s the only way. If there is an explanation, he can provide it.”

  She fell silent, then said in a small voice, “And if he can’t?”

  “What possible motive could he have for killing Eggs?”

  She gasped when he said it so bluntly. “That’s the problem.”

  “You’d better tell me everything.”

  “Why do you suppose Eggs was on campus in the first place?”

  Paul listened to her account of Eggs and Boris talking in Kansas City about the Zahm diary and about South American gold and El Dorado. Eggs had already been bitten by the bug of lost treasure; he had invested in and gone on an expedition that had hoped to locate a Spanish galleon, loaded with gold on its homeward voyage, sunk off the coast of South America. “Boris was positive that the diary provided accurate information on the location of El Dorado. He must have convinced Eggs,” she concluded.

  “Did Boris show him the diary?”

  “No. That’s why Eggs must have hoped that Zahm’s letters of the period might contain whatever information was in the diary.”

  “Did he show you the diary?”

  “Paul, I have to tell you that, apart from the diary’s historical importance, and the interest it would have for Notre Dame or others connected with the university, I was sure that all this talk about El Dorado was nonsense.”

  “So you didn’t see the diary?”

  “Oh, I saw it. It’s real. But he wouldn’t even let me read it. And he stashed it in his safe-deposit box in the bank until he brought it here, even though we have a vault in the store.”

  “And while he was here, the diary was stolen?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Don’t you believe him?”

  “Paul, he had high hopes for that diary. He was sure the university would make a handsome bid for it. Its being stolen would have enhanced its value and spurred more interest.”

  “Quite a gamble.”

  She looked at him. “I know all about that, Paul.”

  That saved him having to tell her that her boss was a compulsive gambler. “You two were very close, I suppose.”

  “Not like that.”

  The words seemed to drift toward the Grotto and mingle with the wisps of smoke rising from the votive candles. Paul found that he was elated by her remark. “I wish there were someone I could talk to about this.” He fell silent. “A priest.”

  “There are plenty of them here.”

  “I’ve got it. Father Carmody. He called me recently about contributing to the founding of a Zahm Center.”

  “That was Boris’s idea. I mean the center.”

  “So I can talk with him about that and hope for an opportunity to bring up our dilemma.”

  Our dilemma. At table earlier, struck as always by Clare’s cool beauty, he had wondered what miracle could bring them together. Nonetheless, lovely as she was, and no matter how close this puzzle had drawn them, Paul would give it all up in return for not having found that plastic bag in Boris’s briefcase.

  2

  Father Carmody was still at breakfast when Paul Lohman came to see him at the Holy Cross retirement house. It was not yet eight o’clock, and the priest had timed his breakfast so that he would have fasted for at least an hour before saying the funeral Mass at Sacred Heart.

  “Ah. Are you my ride?”

  Paul Lohman seemed surprised at the question, and Father Carmody explained.

  “Of course, Father. I’ll be glad to take you to Sacred Heart.”

  “Are you going like that?”

  “I’ll have to change first, of course.” Lohman acted as if he had forgotten about his old roommate’s funeral. “Father, I have to talk to you.”

  The old priest felt a tremor of premonition. In the nature of things, he had become reconciled to the violent death of Xavier Kittock on campus. Dreadful things have a way of being domesticated by the passage of time. But Lohman’s manner suggested that more bad news was in the offing. He pushed back from the table, then did not rise.

  “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “No. Thank you. I can get something later.”

  The priest rose then and took Lohman outside to the patio, where they sat on chairs facing the lake, with the golden dome and the spire of Sacred Heart Basilica visible above the trees. Lohman began immediately. Listening to him, Father Carmody felt the weight of this new information pressing on him. When the story was told, they sat in silence for a moment.

  “Who have you told?”

  “I wanted to see you first.”

  “That was wise. Now I know. I will take it from here.”

  Lohman actually slumped in his chair with relief. “There must be an explanation, Father.”

  “No doubt. And I will find out what it is. In the meantime, there is no need for you to tell this story to others.”

  “Of course not. Father, the three of us were roommates.”

  Father Carmody took the point. It was on the face of it absurd that these events were explained by the falling-out of old friends. Notre Dame alumni did not fall out. This article of Father Carmody’s creed was easier to state than to apply to Boris Henry.

  “And the lady, Clare Healy? She must trust me, too.”

  “She will be as relieved as I am that you’re taking responsibility in the matter.”

  “Good,” Father Carmody said. “But just to make certain, you might specifically enjoin her to silence.” No need to add that a woman might find silence more difficult than a man.

  “Do you think I should talk to Boris?”

  “No need for that. You run along now and get some breakfast and change. I can get to Sacred Heart all right.”

  Lohman left like one released from a great burden, and, watching him lope away, Father Carmody once more felt a massive weight on his shoulders. A weight that he intended to share with Philip Knight.

  * * *

  Curious students and faculty, plus prurient townies drawn by the insinuating accounts in the local newspaper, made the funeral of Xavier Kittock a well-attended event, but Father Carmody addressed his remarks to the mourners in the front pew. Natural death is shock enough, but to bury one whose death was due to violence calls upon the deepest resources of the homilist. Mrs. Nobile, sister of the deceased, was the closest blood relative, and she wept silently, bracketed by her husband and daughter. Boris Henry and Paul Lohman were on either side of a woman who must be Clare Healy.

  The old priest went lightly on the grim stakes of life but avoided suggesting that even now Xavier Kittock was enjoying the beatific vision, no longer vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It occurred to Father Carmody that the devotees of Father Zahm who sat before him must know of that priest’s in
terest in Dante. How in the modern world had the Florentine’s robust faith in the great either/or of the next world survived? So Father Carmody consoled the mourners but did not canonize the departed. Afterward, the friends and family came along to Cedar Grove, where a plot had been found for the slain alumnus.

  “This used to be the sixteenth fairway,” Father Carmody said, as he and Philip Knight walked away from the grave site.

  “The final divot?”

  “Ho ho. You have a car?”

  Phil pointed.

  “Good. I’ll say a last word to these folks and be with you in a jiffy.”

  While he spoke with Mrs. Nobile, her husband took the priest’s hand and pressed something into it.

  “What’s this?”

  “With our gratitude, Father.”

  The glimpse Father Carmody took revealed a denomination he had never before seen on the legal tender of the nation.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “All the more deserving, then.”

  Well, well. Father Carmody put the money into his pocket. Secular clergy were used to stipends and gifts on such occasions, he supposed, but he was not.

  Boris Henry came up to him. “You gave Kittock a perfect send-off, Father.”

  In the light of what he had learned a few hours earlier, Father Carmody found the remark freighted with ambiguity. Henry’s gaze seemed untroubled, but Father Carmody had long since realized that the guilty do not often wear their sins upon their faces.

  “I wonder who of us will be next?” Father Carmody sighed.

  Boris Henry stepped back in surprise. “Not me, I hope.”

  “More likely myself. Well, I am off.”

  Philip Knight stood beside his car, gazing westward. “Was that the sixteenth green?”

  “It was. This was the longest hole on the course, a par five. I was always happy to get a bogie.”

  Now a fence separated the expanded cemetery from the remainder of the fairway and the green beyond.

  “It’s odd, a golf course becoming a cemetery,” Phil said.

  Father Carmody had opposed halving the old course to accommodate residence halls and the cemetery, but he must not be tempted along that path of resentment. He was anxious to tell Philip Knight what he had learned from Paul Lohman. Not that he thought that even Phil would be able to cushion the university from further bad publicity.

  3

  Bernice had thought seriously about attending Xavier Kittock’s funeral but reluctantly decided not to, mainly because Marjorie had thought it a good idea.

  “You’d wear a veil, of course. It wouldn’t do to be recognized.”

  Then what was the point of going? Bernice imagined people looking at her, whispering to one another, fascinated by the tragic woman who had come to mourn her husband’s victim.

  “Ricardo would kill me.”

  “How could he?”

  They stopped at the dry cleaner’s to pick up things Bernice should have claimed weeks ago. Marjorie professed to be moved by the sight of Ricardo’s clothes—his good suit and some dress shirts.

  “You send his laundry to the dry cleaner?”

  Bernice just looked at her. Throwing things of little Henry’s into the washer was one thing, but she was not going to be Ricardo’s washerwoman. In any case, these clothes were the second batch of things he hadn’t taken with him when he moved out, and she hadn’t wanted to send him a bag of dirty laundry. The shirts were individually wrapped and then enclosed in a larger plastic bag.

  “Let’s have lunch,” Marjorie suggested.

  Marjorie was back in the role of best friend, come to Bernice’s side in her time of misfortune. How many women had a husband accused of murder? Bernice hadn’t gone to work since Ricardo had been arrested. She reminded Marjorie that Ricardo was her former husband.

  “Oh, I know that, all right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Good Lord, you’re not going to be jealous, are you?”

  “Jealous of what?”

  “As you said, he’s your former husband.”

  Bernice would have liked to laugh at the hint that Ricardo had been chasing after Marjorie, but she found she was angry. If he had to see other women, why would he pick Marjorie Waters? The answer to that seemed suddenly clear. It was Marjorie who picked him.

  “I don’t want to have lunch.”

  “Bernice, you have to eat.”

  “I have errands. Where should I drop you?”

  “I told you. I’m at your disposal.” She made it sound like the thing in the kitchen sink.

  Marjorie seemed almost to be enjoying the drama in which Bernice found herself. Bernice wanted to free herself of this suffocating sympathy. She headed for Marjorie’s apartment and came to a stop before it.

  “Bernice, I mean it. You really shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  Marjorie had no choice, but she took her time getting out of the car. When she went to her door, she put a lot of rhythm into her walk.

  * * *

  Finding a parking place downtown within walking distance of the County Building was no easy matter even though the once thriving center of the city had been depleted by the transfer to the malls of department stores and boutiques and just about everything else but banks. Bernice finally found a spot near the College Football Hall of Fame and walked three blocks to the County Building. Inside, she had to go through a metal detector, but that gave her time to ask the security woman where the jail was.

  Trousered and in shirt and tie, poured into the outfit, the woman looked at her with faint curiosity. “Take the elevator.”

  Upstairs, Bernice identified herself as Ricardo’s wife and asked if she could see him. She was taken off to a room empty save for a table and several uncomfortable chairs. A clock on the wall moved so imperceptibly you would have thought that the earth was slowing down in its passage around the sun. After ten minutes, a door opened, and there was Ricardo.

  He stopped after coming into the room and looked at her. “They said my wife was here.”

  “Oh, Ricardo.”

  Then, incredibly, she was in his arms. All her discontents seemed to evaporate, not least because she imagined Marjorie seeing this tender scene.

  “How’s Henry?”

  “Fine.”

  “Does he know I’m here?”

  “Ricardo, he wouldn’t understand if I told him.”

  “Don’t tell him. They’re going to have to let me go.”

  “Of course they are!” The thought that Ricardo could have killed X was silly. They sat side by side at the table.

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “I won’t need one now.”

  “Why?”

  “The police have found something. I should have been let go hours ago.”

  4

  Paul Lohman told Father Car-mody, and Father Carmody told Phil Keegan, and Phil brought the news to Jimmy Stewart.

  “Where is it?”

  “In Boris Henry’s briefcase.”

  “And where the hell is that?”

  “I thought you’d want to talk to Henry when you go out there to get the briefcase.”

  “Good God, Phil, he could have gotten rid of that bag.”

  “Lohman is keeping an eye on him.”

  Jimmy didn’t like it, and Phil didn’t blame him. On the other hand, he understood why Lohman and Clare Healy had been reluctant to be any more directly involved than they already were in what was about to befall Boris Henry. The drive to campus was largely silent until Jimmy said, “I never thought Ricardo was guilty.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “You’re thinking immigrant? Forget it. It turns out he is a very educated man, no matter his current employment.”

  “The wife doesn’t suggest that.”

  Jimmy nodded. “She seemed almost ashamed of him, didn’t she?”

  “How’s his English?”

  “As good as yours.”

 
; “That bad?”

  So they were once again on easy terms when Jimmy turned into the parking lot of the Morris Inn. Before they went in, Phil led Jimmy to the rental car Clare Healy had driven from Chicago. The briefcase was still visible through the window.

  * * *

  Boris Henry was in the bar with Paul Lohman and Clare Healy, and there was no apprehension in his manner as the two men approached the table. Paul pushed his chair back, and Clare did the same.

  “Boris,” Phil said. “We’d like to talk to you alone.”

  Boris looked excited. “Have you found it?”

  “Clare and I will skeddadle,” Lohman said, avoiding everyone’s eyes.

  “What’s the secret? Stick around, you can hear this.”

  Stewart indicated to the others that they should go. Boris hunched forward at the table, accepting that he was to get the news solo. His manner seemed to suggest he now thought that was just as well.

  Jimmy said, “Mr. Henry, why are you trying to fool my good friend Phil Knight?”

  “Fool him?” Boris tried frowning. He tried a laugh. Finally he just looked at Jimmy.

  “I think you still have that diary.”

  “Why the hell would you think that?” Henry turned to Phil. They were all seated now. “What is this, Phil?”

  “It has been suggested to the police that you have what we’re looking for in your briefcase.”

  Boris shook his head. “Do you think I would fake the theft of Father Zahm’s diary?” His tone suggested this would have been akin to sacrilege. Suddenly, he looked hard at Jimmy. “Who told you such a thing?”

  “Where is your briefcase?”

  “Now, look here—”

  “Boris, if the information is false, that can be established easily. Get your briefcase.”

  Boris considered this. It was pretty clear he was as disgusted with Phil as he was with Jimmy Stewart. He got to his feet. “Come on.”

  They followed him out of the bar and up the stairs to the second floor. A cleaning cart was in the hallway near an open door. Boris’s room. They walked in, startling the maid.

  “We’ll just be a minute,” Boris told her. He stood by the bed and looked around the room. Of course, the briefcase wasn’t there. His face screwed into thought. “It’s not here.”