The Book of Kills (20 page)

The president said the Mass, assisted by the chancellor and a vice-president. The sanctuary was packed with members of the Congregation. Marcia Plant would have been alone in the pew reserved for mourners had not Carlotta Bacon joined her there. In the front pew on the opposite side of the aisle were the trustees who had been flown in by Schippers on Friday and had remained with him after a series of unsatisfying conferences with the administration. The upshot of their meetings was the strong suggestion that the university not rely on the forgetfulness that time might bring but to prepare and issue a detailed White Paper that would spell out the events that had preceded Father Sorin in this place and the way in which he had gotten title to the land. The university’s own treatment of Native Americans was to be highlighted, among them the inclusion of Indians as students from the first. The idea was not simply to answer questions and accusations but to swamp them with a full picture of the university’s record on matters that had recently come to the fore.

Orion Plant lay in his casket in the middle aisle where it had been wheeled by the six students acting as pall bearers. The casket was covered with a white silk cloth. Thus, honored and blessed and being sent on his way into eternity lay the man who had been at the origin of recent troubles on the campus. Stewart’s cohorts had discovered incontrovertible evidence that Orion had been involved in the kidnapping and were trying to find out who his fellow felons had been. Roger wondered if
perhaps some of them were among the pall bearers. He had identified Bacon and Byers and Wilson, another student of Otto Ranke’s. All of them were resident in graduate student housing and would have known of Roger’s golf cart.

The Mass proceeded with great solemnity, not a requiem Mass as it would once have been, with the vestments black and a black cover over the catafalque and the dirgelike refrains of the
Dies Irae
reminding the living of the dire day that lay ahead when they must answer for their deeds before one who could neither deceive nor be deceived. The new liturgy had a way of suggesting that any and all of the departed were transported swiftly to heavenly bliss. The doctrine of purgatory was not so much denied as ignored, and as for hell, well, this did not seem the time to introduce so sobering a topic.

The homily was preached by Gumble, a young priest who served as chaplain in married student housing and was a marvel of generic praise of graduate students that seemed only tangentially related to the life of Orion Plant. When the Mass was done, two speakers mounted the pulpit and reminisced about the deceased. Russell Bacon was first and was followed by Professor Otto Ranke. Bacon directed his remarks to Marcia and soon had both her and Carlotta weeping uncontrollably. Otto Ranke extolled the life of scholarship, the lure of research, and spoke of the deceased Orion’s passion in the pursuit of the past. That he had been cut off so young in his endeavors was a loss to them all, to the university and to the profession. Of course nothing was said of the fact that Orion had been dismissed from the graduate program.

Orion was buried in Cedar Grove, the cemetery where he had desecrated the graves, or had been responsible for their
desecration. It had proved easier to link him with the kidnapping than with that outrage. When the body was lowered into the earth on what had once been the sixteenth fairway of the old golf course, Marcia once more broke into tears, her weeping rivaled by that of Carlotta Bacon. The two women clung together as the party dispersed.

A luncheon in the University Club was hosted by the faculty senate but not attended by the administration or trustees. They had gone their extra mile and were not disposed to add to it. Roger and Phil, accompanied by Stewart, whose professional interest in all this was constant but indiscernible, went on to the University Club where they were greeted by Quinlan.

“I didn’t think they would dare show their faces here,” he said, feeling no need to identify the administration as the object of his scorn.

“He received the full treatment,” Roger replied as Phil and Stewart escaped from this male Cassandra. The bar was open and promised surer solace.

“What else could they do? It was an exercise in hypocrisy.”

“The tribute that virtue pays to vice.”

“You can say that again,” Quinlan growled, apparently not catching the inversion of the adage. “I wonder if the police will conduct a genuine investigation and find out who killed the poor devil.”

A very genuine investigation was conducted in subsequent days, with the surprising result that Russell Bacon was taken in for questioning and eventually charged with the murder of Orion Plant.

LIEUTENANT STUART’S
crew had successfully pursued the one firm clue they had, the tire imprint at the place where the body had been discovered by Father James while feeding the ducks and communing with them in what he presumed was their language, inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi. Matching or trying to match the imprint with university vehicles that had tires of the required dimensions had led nowhere until someone noticed Roger Knight’s golf cart and the identification was made. But if Roger’s cart was the vehicle in which the body of Orion Plant had been carried to the spot where it was found, new lines of investigation were opened.

Since the cart had been parked by Roger in a space in front of the building where he and Phil lived, and since Roger had not used it on the fatal night and had indeed been provably elsewhere, the question arose as to who had used it. Whoever had used it needed the ignition key to start the motor. Although Roger had at first thought he had taken the key from the ignition after his last use of the cart, further reflection introduced the worm of doubt. It was possible that he had not removed the key. Often in the past he had forgotten to do so. That meant that the cart had been there for the taking. But this led on to several presuppositions.

It was likely that the one who had employed it for the grisly purpose of moving Orion Plant’s body had prior knowledge of the cart. While this did not limit the person to graduate student housing, those who lived there certainly had noticed the gargantuan Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies coming and going in what he had made look like a miniature car.

While Orion Plant and his wife, Marcia, had not lived in the graduate student village, their home was not fifty yards to the east on Bulla Road.

After the disappearance of Orion, there was frequent traffic back and forth between the village and the Plant residence. This had taken on a new significance after Stewart talked with Professor Ranke.

Ranke had preferred being interviewed in his home rather than his campus office, and Stewart was happy to oblige. He refused an offer of schnapps but gladly accepted a cup of coffee.

“Would you prefer tea?” Mrs. Ranke asked. The professor’s wife was transformed from the distraught
hausfrau
Stewart had met earlier.

“Coffee, please.”

“Despite her Bavarian origins, Freda has become a devotee of tea.” It sounded like a line from Gilbert and Sullivan.

When the coffee had been served and he was left alone with Ranke, Stewart said, “You realize, Professor, that I am investigating the death of Orion Plant.”

“The murder of Orion Plant.”

“Precisely. I would appreciate hearing anything you think might be helpful.”

“Of course.”

“Who would have had reason to kill the young man?”

“Am I a suspect?” Ranke asked with a puckish smile.

“Not at present,” Stewart said with a chuckle. “Did he have enemies?”

The response was extended, beginning with a sketch of Orion’s career since he was admitted to the graduate program in history at Notre Dame. Ranke described him as a young man with intelligence, not of the highest, but more than sufficient to complete the program successfully. However, things had conspired to prevent this.

“He married, but that is sometimes a spur to swifter completion. That was not so with Orion. He dithered. Not because he was lazy but because his interests diverged from the topic of his dissertation.”

“Native Americans.”

“Yes. I warned him, scolded him, cajoled him. As his dissertation director, I defended him when his case came up for review before the graduate committee, an annual event. But the time came when I too gave up on him.”

“Plagiarism?”

“How odd that you should mention that.”

Stewart had mentioned it because of something Roger Knight had said, and then the story came of Bacon’s presenting as his own a paper that Orion had read to Ranke’s seminar some years before.

“Was he formally accused?”

Ranke nodded. “I am a member of the college ethics committee that heard the case.”

“And?”

“He was exonerated.”

“So he was falsely accused?”

“No. He was guilty as charged. But the incriminating evidence had been destroyed.”

“How did you notice that his paper was really Plant’s?”

“Orion noticed it. It was on top of a pile of papers on my desk. We were talking, the phone rang, and while I was occupied his eye dropped to the paper. Soon he was reading it avidly. When I finished with the phone, he told me the paper was identical with his own. I quickly dispelled the notion that I had kept his original paper there. In any case, this one bore Bacon’s name as author. Orion subsequently proved to me beyond a doubt that the papers were not only identical but that his text had been downloaded from his computer.”

“That was the evidence that was destroyed?”

“The file was erased from Orion’s hard drive. The case evaporated.”

“Did Bacon know that Orion was his accuser?”

“Yes.”

It was not an accusation that one would take lightly, particularly if he were guilty. Ranke might have had to rely on what Orion put before him, but Plant had first-hand certainty that Bacon had stolen his seminar paper and submitted it as his own. Had Bacon seen Orion Plant as an albatross around his neck, the perpetual possibility that in years to come his plagiarism would accompany his career if only as a rumor?

The interview went on, but nothing else was relevant to Stewart’s inquiry.

“Has your daughter come home?”

“Yes, thank God.”