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“Give me your phone.”

“I hope the battery isn't dead.”

The phone rang and rang, and Francie was about to give up when Roger answered.

“Knights.”

“This is Francie! Vivian has arrived. We're walking around the lake and suddenly had the idea to call you.”

“A splendid idea. Let me talk to her.”

“We were hoping to come over there.”

“Even better.”

And so they reversed direction and headed for graduate student housing, where the Knight brothers had their apartment. Roger stood in the front door as if he had been waiting for them. He reached out for Vivian's hand and soon she was enveloped in his arms, sobbing her heart out. Francie looked on, feeling almost jealous. Roger had never hugged her.

Once they were inside, Vivian brightened as Roger steered the conversation away from her father, instinctively knowing that was the thing to do.

“Has either of you read Trollope?”

Vivian immediately perked up. “The Palliser novels.”

“Of course, of course. They are wonderful, although of the series I prefer the Barsetshire novels. But it is the so-called minor ones that have a special delight. I have been reading
Kept in the Dark
. Not for the first time, but I can't remember enjoying it so much before.”

He went on and on and it was wonderful. He made popcorn and insisted that Vivian have a beer, so Francie took one, too, and they settled down for more discussion of Trollope. They had been there an hour and a half before Roger turned to what had happened to Mortimer Sadler.

“Who might have done such a thing, Vivian?”

“My mother's first thought was my uncle Sam, but that is silly. He's in Minneapolis.”

“Paul's father?” Francie asked.

“He is the elder brother, but he never acted like it. Now he will have to.”

“Why would your mother have had such a thought?”

“It's a long story.”

Roger settled back. “Well?”

And so Vivian told them about the Sadler family. Her grandfather had established an enormously successful insurance agency as well as the Sadler Foundation, and it was her father, Mortimer, who had been his successor, despite being the younger son.

“My uncle taught philosophy.”

“I look forward to meeting him.”

“He should be in tomorrow.”

“Your mother must have imagined he resented playing second fiddle to your father.”

“Oh, but he didn't. It is Paul who resents it. And I understand. I would feel the same way if I were him. But my uncle is one of the most contented men I know. He took early retirement and, being widowed, lives like a recluse on Lake Minnetonka. I think he reads as much as you do.”

“A philosopher,” Roger said wonderingly. “I have always envied philosophers.”

“Isn't your degree in philosophy?” Francie asked.

“That does not make one a philosopher.”

“My uncle is a Thomist,” Vivian said.

“Oh, I really do want to make his acquaintance.”

“Now he may have to take a more active role, at least in the foundation. At least until Paul graduates. Paul is everything his father isn't.”

Roger insisted on taking them back to the Morris Inn in his golf cart. Francie let Vivian sit beside him and took the seat behind that faced backward. She listened to Roger talk and watched the campus slip away behind them, the little puddles of light under the lamps succeeding one another at intervals. Thank God they had called Roger Knight. Vivian was almost her own self again.

23

When Jimmy Stewart heard that the widow of Mortimer Sadler had checked into the Morris Inn, he and Phil came to talk to her. Vivian joined her mother and Roger and Francie took chairs in the lobby. Two glasses of wine had made Francie voluble and she spoke to Roger about Paul Sadler.

“Why is he on campus?”

“He's working here this summer, in the sports camps. And taking a course in botany.”

“Is that his major?”

“No. He just likes it. I tried to interest him in your course last spring, but he was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“I shouldn't have told him so much about you.”

“That would frighten anyone.”

Because she could tell Roger Knight anything, Francie told him the sad story of her parents' separation.

“So there is a real Laura?”

“Laura Kennedy.”

“Your father's undergraduate sonnets were dedicated to Laura. I had thought he was taking over Petrarch's beloved as well as his sonnet form.”

She said, “Greg Whelan found them for me in the ar-chives.”

“So you've read them.”

“I can't. I began but I couldn't go on.”

“I understand.”

And Francie was sure he did, although she was not so sure she herself did. The poems had been written before her parents had even met, but it was impossible for her not to read them in the light of later events.

“Sleep tight,” he said when he rose to go.

She wanted to lean toward him and kiss him on the cheek, but she didn't. Such displays of affection had become so commonplace as to be meaningless. That was why she kept Paul at arm's length. She dreaded to enter into a more decisive phase with him. The two of them seemed carriers of all the troubles of their respective families, as if they bore some virus that would affect them with the folly of their parents.

Francie was still awake when her mother came in, but she feigned sleep, reluctant to enter into a midnight conversation. The sound of her mother's humming as she moved around their darkened room, the only illumination coming from the windows, was not cheering. She found herself praying that the death of Mortimer Sadler would not further fragment both her family and Paul's. The story of her father striking Mortimer Sadler had at the beginning the note of gallantry, but it had proved to be the catalyst for the separation of her parents. Francie drifted into sleep, her lips moving in prayer for herself, her parents, for Paul, and for poor Mortimer Sadler, dead on the golf course of the university he had so crazily loved.

24

Ghostly light played upon the ceiling of Chris Toolin's room, where he lay on the bed, his hands behind his head, reviewing the evening like a lovesick boy. Maureen had been charming, affectionate, confiding, if sometimes disturbing.

“Thank God they found that water in your bag, Chris.”

“Oh, I wouldn't have drunk it. I hate bottled water.”

“So you told me. But it takes me off the hook.”

“How so?”

“Of course, the police thought I was responsible for Mort's death. Cherchez la feminist. I never made a secret of what I thought of him.”

“They could never seriously think you would do such a thing.”

“No? Why wouldn't I?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Of course they will learn, if they haven't already, that I am a gardener. I have some deadly nightshade in my garden.”

“Is it uncommon?”

“Well, you have to grow it on purpose. And be very careful kids don't get near it.”

“Is it beautiful?”

“Not really.”

“Unlike the gardener?”

She put her hand on his and he felt enveloped in her smile. Her gesture changed the course of the evening. They had dined well at the Carriage House and were aglow with wine when they left. When they entered the elevator at the Morris Inn, it was understood that she was coming to his room. He felt a sudden panic at this fulfilment of his wildest hopes. But instead, their time in his room had been a continuation of their conversation at the restaurant.

“What was it that Mort said to your husband?”

“He suggested that I was running around. Jack's reaction was prompted more by his own guilt than anything else. He took a swing at Mort in the locker room of the club and caught him on the side of the head. It knocked him to the floor. I could have cheered when I heard about it.” She paused. “Not from Jack.”

“What do you mean, guilt?”

“Jack has renewed an old liaison with Laura Kennedy. She was at St. Mary's when he was here. They would have married if Jack and I hadn't met. Sometimes I think he felt unfaithful to Laura all along.”

Chris didn't know what to say so he said nothing. He took her in his arms when she said she must go and their kiss was passionate. But she stepped away.

“I want to be in the room when Francie returns.”

“Of course.”

“She may be already there. I told you she was going to spend the evening with one of her professors.”

“Ah.”

“Better that than Mort's nephew.”

“I don't understand.”

“Paul Sadler. The son of Mort's brother, Samuel. She thinks I don't know and I think if I don't make a thing of it she'll get over it.”

“Boys don't get over things so easily.” He held her hand. “Nor do men.”

Her meeting Jack O'Kelly had spelled the end of their undergraduate romance as well. It was an odd thought that he owed the renewal of their relationship to Mort. From Mort he had learned of Maureen's separation from her husband and the reunion had provided an opportunity for this evening.

“When will I see you again?” he asked before opening the door.

“Whenever you want.”

She gave him a hurried kiss on the cheek and was gone, and now he lay on his bed, reliving the evening, a wistful smile on his face.

But it was impossible not to see what they were doing in the light of his reaction to her accusation against her husband and Laura Kennedy. Nor could he avoid the aching sense of guilt he felt when he thought of his own long-suffering invalid wife. At least in the case of the O'Kellys, each retained the possibility of a life without the other, but his wife, Ruth, was wholly dependent on him physically and emotionally. His only justification for what he was doing was that it was merely a fling, nothing that threatened any permanence. Did he even in his heart of hearts imagine that Maureen saw him as her future?

25

Roger's intention to slip unobtrusively into the Galvin Life Sciences Center the following day to talk with Professor Jacob Climacus was thwarted when his entry into the building brought everyone in sight to a standstill. They stared at the enormous visitor, who blinked back at them, smiling cherubically. It was like pausing a movie on the DVD player while one went to the kitchen. When Roger moved toward the reception desk, the others resumed their comings and goings but a half dozen followed in his wake, curious.

“I've come to see Professor Climacus.”

The woman looked up at him with rounded eyes as if the better to take in his bulk. She put her hand on a phone. “Whom should I say is calling?”

“Roger Knight. He is expecting me.”

“Ah.”

An undergraduate was recruited to lead Roger off to the hothouse where the professor of plant biology spent his days.

Roger was not surprised to find Paul Sadler there. He lifted a hand in greeting and was led to a little man seated on a stool who looked up at Roger over his glasses.

“Good day,” Roger said.

“Good Knight?” A wry smile seemed to form beneath the grizzled beard.

“I have come to pick your brain.”

“That is more than I got to do. I accepted the one that was issued to me.”

“‘Issued from the hand of God the simple brain'?”

Discolored teeth appeared among the foliage of the beard. “Milton?”

“Wordsworth. Is there another stool?” Roger looked up and down the rows of plants that flourished fiercely in the heat of the glassed-in addition to Galvin. Climacus wore sandals, suntans, and a T-shirt damp with perspiration. He rose.

“Let's go into my office. If you're not used to this place you're likely to melt.”

“Could you show me around first?”

Paul Sadler seemed to have disappeared. Climacus led Roger up and down the narrow aisles of his domain, now touching a leaf, now admiring a bloom, several times leaning forward to whisper to one of the plants. He turned to Roger.

“Talking to them does help, you know.”

“Do they ever answer?”

Climacus made a sweeping gesture. “This is their answer—just being the best they can be.”

Stories about Climacus had come to Roger over recent years and it had always been one of his hopes to meet the professor of plant biology. Now, with the death of Mortimer Sadler, he had reasons other than collegial curiosity to look him up.

Climacus's office was just off the hothouse and its contrasting chill elicted a sneeze from the professor. Climacus removed some pots from a bench and pulled it toward his desk.

“This should accommodate you.” Climacus went around the desk and sank sighing into a chair, then took a package of cigarettes from a desk drawer. He offered one to Roger, who refused. Climacus lit up, inhaling with obvious delight.

“You realize that I am conducting an experiment on the tobacco plant. This is a smoke-free campus.” The beard adjusted to his smile.

“Of course. Tell me about poisonous plants.”

“Almost all plants are poisonous to some species of animal.”

“And humans?”

“We are rational animals.”

“More an ideal than a description, I'm afraid. Have you heard of the death on the golf course?”

“Only what you told me on the phone.”

“The man was poisoned. With deadly nightshade.”

Climacus looked pained. “A much-maligned plant. Like hemlock. Poisonous plants often have great medicinal benefits. But that is as incidental to them as their harmful effects. Of course, we ingest vegetation and other animals but that is our doing, not theirs. The harmful ones have been known from time immemorial, discovered by hit or miss. Nowadays, we classify and rename them, but by and large we are codifying the folklore of centuries.”

“But surely not all are equally harmful.”