The Letter Killeth

by Ralph McInerny

  Henry drove without talking, carefully guiding the electric cart along the shoveled walks, avoiding students who walked along in a frozen trance. He didn’t need directions.

  When he had parked in the lot next to Brownson, Henry waited for Roger to ease himself out, then took his arm and led him to the entrance.

  “I feel that I’m in custody.”

  “So do I.”

  Roger had to unbutton his jacket to try several pockets, looking for his keys. They had been in a jacket pocket all along. He let them in, switching on the light as he squeezed himself through the narrow door.

  Four walls of bookshelves, the overflow of his library, which continued to overflow as he made new purchases. Phil often asked him to weed out things he didn’t need, but Roger would not have known where to begin. How do you know when you will need a book again? He hung up his great hooded outer garment, went around the desk, and sank with a sigh into his chair. He looked receptively at Henry, who sat opposite him, having dropped his jacket on the floor.

  “They think I did it.”

  Roger smiled. “Who is ‘they’ and what is ‘it’?”

  “Stewart is investigating me. I know it. Your brother works with him, and I suppose he tells you everything.”

  “So we’re talking about Raul Izquierdo?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Has anyone accused you?”

  “Don’t.” His voice almost broke. “They will. Someone is trying to set me up.”

  The office was pleasantly warm, but Roger rubbed his hands, still a little numb from the cold. “Tell me about Izquierdo. I never knew him.”

  “I did. He gave me a lot of his time.”

  “In his office?”

  Henry nodded. “We went through the books on his syllabus.”

  “What course was that?”

  “It was called Criticism. There was a motto on the first page of the syllabus. ‘Nothing is but what is not.’”

  “Shakespeare.”

  “Is it? He hated Shakespeare.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I think he hated literature.”

  “Tell me about your discussions.”

  “We pretty well settled down to Nietzsche. The works themselves. Some secondary stuff. There’s a book, Zarathustra’s Secret—”

  “Kohler.”

  “You know it?”

  “An odd book. But then Nietzsche was an odd man.”

  “So was Izquierdo.”

  “You were going to tell me about him.”

  After Henry began, Roger wanted to stop him, but he doubted that he could have. This was why Henry had waited for him and come to his office. His admiration for Izquierdo had turned to hatred.

  “There was something diabolical about him. It wasn’t just the delight he took in shaking the faith of students. He was a predator. Students, colleagues. He told me that he and his wife had an agreement. Maybe he just meant that she knew what he was up to. She certainly didn’t approve.”

  Once when Henry was in Izquierdo’s office talking with the professor, Mrs. Izquierdo burst in without warning. “She seemed disappointed to find me there.”

  So Henry had been introduced to Mrs. Izquierdo, and then she got in touch with him.

  “She wanted to quiz me about her husband. She actually asked me to spy on him.”

  “And?”

  Henry inhaled. “I fed her a lot of stories, made up, what she wanted to hear. I told myself it was the sort of thing Izquierdo would do. Anyhow, it wasn’t much fun after that, talking about books.”

  “Why aren’t you a student?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Roger opened his hands. “I’d like to hear it.”

  It was the fact that Henry’s mother worked on campus, a member of the crew that cleaned student rooms, that seemed most poignant to Roger. Her long employment might have lowered Henry’s tuition, if he had been admitted. But he had been turned down.

  “There are other universities.”

  Henry shook his head. He had defined his future so narrowly, alternatives were out of the question.

  “What a disappointment that must have been.”

  “To put it mildly.”

  “Yet you took a job here.”

  “That was stupid. I wanted to be here and look at the students and tell myself I was as good as any of them, maybe better. So I became a freelance student. You let me sit in your class? Most of the time I did that without asking. I was flattered when Izquierdo took an interest in me.”

  “Not many professors would have been so generous with their time.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t generosity. He wanted a disciple. I guess he got one in a sense.”

  After Mrs. Izquierdo burst in on them, the tutorials became sessions in which Henry became the unwilling confidante of Izquierdo’s marital woes.

  “He would quote Prince Andre to Pierre. Never marry.”

  Henry fell silent. He looked around the room, then over Roger’s head.

  “Now comes the worst part.”

  Izquierdo had urged Henry to seduce his wife.

  Another long silence. Roger waited.

  The office seemed to have become a confessional of the newer sort, penitent facing the confessor, trying not to make what he had done seem less awful than it was. Henry had fallen in with the scheme. His entree was to go to Mrs. Izquierdo and tell her, as if in shock, that her husband was carrying on an affair with Professor Goessen.

  “She believed me. I believed myself. Maybe it was true. At first she was angry at me, kill the messenger, but then she started to cry, and…”

  And he had taken the older woman in his arms, he had brushed away her tears, he had murmured a line of Swinburne.

  “Then she laughed and pushed me away. Her laughing cleared the air. She made coffee and we sat and she told me what a bastard she had married. I already knew that.”

  She asked if her husband had sent him to her. He denied it but didn’t think she believed him. The question put him in a light that alarmed him. What had he become?

  “That’s when I set fire to his car.”

  Henry waited for Roger to express shock, but Roger only nodded.

  “The fire in his wastebasket suggested it to me. That and the threatening letters.”

  “Tell me about those.”

  “We composed them. I delivered them, the invisible messenger in his campus security uniform. He delivered the one to Wack himself, slipped it under his door. What a pair.”

  In the parking lot outside the window, car engines were starting up. It had grown dark, an early winter evening.

  “Why did you and Larry Douglas go to his office that night?”

  Henry smiled. “I was already there when Larry showed up. I don’t know which of us was more scared when he came in and saw me.”

  “You were already there?”

  “Izquierdo had given me a key. He told me I could use the office whenever he wasn’t there. The idea was that in the evening it would be free.”

  “You went there often?”

  “At first, when I was still impressed by him.”

  “You were just there working when Larry showed up.”

  Henry shook his head. “I was trying to figure out some way to really shake him. I thought his Corvette going up in flames would do it, but he was almost calm. He was sure his wife had done it.”

  “I can understand why you are worried.”

  He had a key to the office; he had come to loathe Izquierdo, feeling he had turned him into a monster like himself. Of course that would be considered motive enough to kill the man.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  But which “I” hadn’t done it? It is all too easy for us to separate ourselves from our deeds. Augustine had developed that in the Confessions. The telephone rang and they both stared at it. Seven rings and then it stopped.

  “That will be my brother, wondering where I am.”

  “Tell me what to do.
”

  “Come home with me and have supper.”

  “I’ll have to call my mom.”

  Roger pushed the phone toward him. He swung away while Henry talked to his mother. How his voice changed, softer, gentle. Then a long silence before he hung up.

  “Stewart has been there. With a warrant.”

  As he got into his hooded outer garment, Roger said, “What I don’t understand is the scarves.”

  “Neither do I.”

  * * *

  Phil was waiting anxiously when Roger came in. “I’ve brought a guest.”

  “Jimmy’s coming.” Phil’s tone told Roger that something was up.

  In the kitchen, Roger donned his baseball cap and wrapped himself in a huge apron and put water on for pasta.

  “There’s beer in the icebox.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “That’s more for me,” Phil said, trying to sound cheerful.

  Roger had already dished up when Jimmy Stewart came. He tried not to look surprised when he saw Henry Grabowski at the table. But he waited until they were finished, and the dishes taken away.

  “I’ve been to your house,” Jimmy said to Henry.

  “My mom told me.”

  “With a warrant. You’re in trouble, son.”

  Henry looked at Roger as if everything he had told him could help him now.

  “I found this scarf in your drawer. Want to tell me about that?”

  “My mom bought it for me.”

  “Now we have three of the damned things.”

  “Maybe I will have a beer.”

  Henry got up, started toward the kitchen, then dashed for the outer door, pulling it open and rushing outside. It took quite a struggle before Phil and Jimmy subdued him. Roger, still wearing his baseball cap and apron, brought Henry his jacket. The boy looked desolately at him when he was put in the backseat of Jimmy’s prowler. Phil got in beside him. Roger stood in the snow watching the red taillights disappear into the night.

  PART FOUR

  1

  The case against Henry Grabowski was, as had been that against Larry Douglas, circumstantial—only there were more circumstances. In Larry’s case, it had been the fact that he had surreptitiously gained entry to Izquierdo’s office, plus the scarf found in his room and thought to be the murder weapon. Mrs. Izquierdo’s production of the identical scarf from the hall closet in the Izquierdo home led to the release of Larry, to the disappointment of Fauxhall, the deputy prosecutor, and to the relief of Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy had never been able to convince himself that Larry could have done such a thing. He was having a similar problem with Henry.

  Listening to Jimmy and Phil discuss the arrest, Roger was of two minds as to whether he ought to tell them things that he knew only because Henry had confided in him. Of those things, the most significant was Henry’s claim that he had set fire to Izquierdo’s Corvette. At the moment, that seemed only slightly more important than the fire that had been set in Izquierdo’s wastebasket, except of course that it suggested something more than a mild dislike for Henry’s quondam mentor.

  It was the testimony of Oscar Wack that Henry was a frequent visitor to Izquierdo’s office, and Henry’s own admission that he had a key to the office and had been told he might use it when the professor was not in, that weighed heavily against Henry.

  “How often did you go there?”

  “For a while, it was several times a week.”

  “During the day?”

  “No. He would be there during the day.” Henry made a face. “And of course I work.”

  “So it was only at night that you used the office.”

  “During the day, when I went, it was for tutoring. That’s what we called it.”

  “You’re a student?”

  “I work in campus security.” There was a bitter edge to his voice.

  “It sounds to me that you were working more than any student.”

  “But less than a cop?”

  Jimmy found him a smart-ass, but he liked him. Larry Douglas was the kind of eager beaver it was hard not to like, whereas Henry made it tough. But Jimmy had talked with Bat Masterson, and he knew the lifelong dream that had been smashed when Henry had not been admitted to Notre Dame. Sure, it was stupid for a kid with that much talent not to alter course and get an education, but Jimmy kind of liked the stubbornness of Henry’s decision. It reminded him of himself in arguments with Hazel—and similarly disappointing consequences.

  So Henry had opportunity; there were witnesses galore to that, along with Henry’s own admission. He said he had never worn the scarf found in his room, the one identical to that found in Larry’s loft and the other found in the Izquierdo hall closet. The lab couldn’t verify that. All three scarves looked new. Motive?

  Henry shrugged. “He was an arrogant SOB. At first I was flattered by the attention, but that didn’t last.”

  * * *

  Oscar Wack was sure that the pogo stick was the key to the whole thing. What more did anyone need? Admittedly, it had been planted in Wack’s room by Henry’s accomplice, the previous suspect, but there it was.

  “Where is what?”

  Wack narrowed his eyes. “They were both tools of Izquierdo. He had enlisted them in his war against…” Wack worked his lips. “Against his colleagues.”

  “Oscar, don’t be ridiculous.” Lucy Goessen sat at the table in the Decio eatery with Jimmy and Wack.

  “I am not in the habit of being ridiculous.”

  “All it takes is practice.”

  “Did they or did they not put Izquierdo’s pogo stick in my office?”

  “Oscar, even if they did, he did, whoever did, there is nothing sinister about it.”

  “Has anyone ever left a pogo stick in your office?”

  “I wish they would.”

  Oscar sniffed. “Perhaps Raul bequeathed you his.”

  “I’ll ask Pauline.”

  * * *

  Jimmy asked Mrs. Izquierdo about it and she just looked at him.

  “A pogo stick!” He began to describe it, and she stopped him. “I know what it is. Belonging to Raul?”

  “For exercising?”

  “‘Exercise is the simulated labor of the decadent.’ I am quoting. One of his peeves was all the emphasis on healthiness. Wellness.” She shuddered. “That I could sympathize with him on.” She didn’t have a spare pound on her, so she could afford to make light of exercise.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I run. It’s all these machines, the factory look of the wellness center, that gets to me. Running is as ancient as cavemen.”

  “And cavewomen?”

  Jimmy found himself responding to what he would have hesitated to call her flirtiness. Call it an irrepressible femininity. He hadn’t felt this way since … Forget about it.

  “So he didn’t own a pogo stick?”

  “Never.”

  Not to waste taxpayers’ money, Jimmy mentioned it to Larry Douglas as something it would be nice to figure out. Larry got the message. Jimmy half expected him to lay a finger alongside his nose.

  * * *

  Jimmy himself sat in his office, staring at the wall. Someone had strangled Raul Izquierdo, and it looked as if Henry Grabowski would stand trial for it. By the time it got to court, the charge might have been whittled down to manslaughter; the jury would follow along, in their minds correcting procedures by reference to all the television dramas they had seen. The cops were the bums, the accused not only presumed innocent but all the more so because he had been accused. By the time it was over, Henry might be awarded a scholarship to Notre Dame.

  Not funny.

  Furlong had wangled a court appointment to defend Henry, who assured the lawyer he didn’t have a dime.

  “Justice isn’t for sale.”

  “How much do they give you for representing me?”

  Furlong ignored that. Jimmy left lawyer and client to their own devices. It was a dark thought that Fauxhall, the as
sistant prosecutor, had colluded in the appointment of Furlong. The little lawyer with the darting eyes could be the prosecution’s secret weapon.

  2

  Philip Knight still talked with Jimmy about the case, but he thought his work was done.

  “At least it wasn’t a student,” Father Carmody said. He was getting his cigar ready for the match. Holy Cross House was smoke free, but when reminded of it Carmody always replied, “All right. Where are the free smokes?” The nurses weren’t likely to insist on the rule with someone who had the gravitas of Father Carmody. Roger’s phrase. The lawlessness of gravity? Phil shook his head. He had to get away. The next thing you knew, he would be auditing classes.

  “More snow is predicted,” he told Father Carmody.

  Father Carmody smiled. He liked a snowbound campus. Notre Dame was the universe for the old priest, so he didn’t feel deprived. His traveling days were over. Once he had spent a good portion of his time visiting various alumni around the country—around the world, for that matter—and bringing home the bacon for Notre Dame. He didn’t miss it as much as he claimed. In any case, alumni came to him. Quirk. Reminded of Quirk, Father Carmody lit his cigar and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t moved back here. Like Bastable.”

  “Bastable.”

  So Phil got the story on Bastable. Roger had called Phil’s attention to the op-ed page in the Observer that had recently appeared. After a few swipes at the publication in which he was appearing, Bastable settled into the persona of an Old Testament prophet. His was an open letter to the president. Recent events on campus were the beginning of a divine judgment on the university. Warnings. There was still time to turn back. That a professed atheist had been on the faculty of Notre Dame indicated the extent of the decline from the days of yore. Who knew what other horrible revelations might be made? And please don’t be deluded into thinking that the resurrection of the Fighting Irish was a sign of divine approval. Whom God would destroy, he first makes mad. Fanatic.