Irish Coffee (6 page)

IN 1963 WHEN WHAT WAS
then called the Memorial Library was opened—only later was it named after the longtime president of the university, Father Theodore Hesburgh—the university archives had been assigned the sixth floor, a space that had seemed ample at the time. But the accumulation of archival materials, plus the exponential increase in the number of volumes that caused the library to covet the space, seemed to make it inevitable that someday new quarters would have to be found for the archives. But crowded though it was, and accessible by way of an unassuming single door just to the right of the elevators, those who worked there had come to cherish their working conditions, and none more so than Greg Whelan. Of course the jammed condition made it difficult to accommodate such visitors as Roger Knight, but then Roger presented a problem wherever he went.

On the afternoon of the funeral, Greg had commandeered one of the rooms in the archives set aside for visiting scholars, and it was there behind a closed door that he and Roger discussed the strange passing of their mutual friend, Fred Neville.

“There seem to be two young ladies who expected Fred to marry them,” Roger said.

“I never noticed anything between Fred and Mary.”

“How often did we see them together?”

“Not often.”

“Almost never, Greg. But Griselda led me to believe that at the Joyce Center the two of them were what gossip columnists call an item.”

“It's odd how the meaning of that word developed.”

“Which one?”

“
Item
. Literally, it means
again
. In lists it prefaced different points, functioning much like
a
,
b
,
c
. Then it came to mean the contents of what it introduced. So what was listed became an item.”

Roger listened with pleasure. He always came away from a visit with Greg with some, well, item of information which, whether it came as complete news or not, was welcome. Silently, he shared Greg's delight that with Roger he could be fluent, no trace of his stammer. His little linguistic aside was preparatory to what they had meant to discuss.

“At first it was possible to imagine that Mary had merely imagined her liaison with Fred. Not so, if Griselda is right, as I'm sure she is.”

“But wearing black!”

“Her mother knew nothing of it either, Greg.”

“Of what?”

“The fact that Mary and Fred intended to marry.”

“That doesn't seem like a motive for suicide,” Greg said, with a sly smile. Among bachelors a certain amount of misogyny is de rigueur.

“But it is Naomi McTear who has a diamond ring and who is accepted by the Nevilles as their future daughter-in-law.”

“She looks like a tough cookie.”

“A liberated woman?”

“Enslaved by her job. I don't know what Fred saw in her.”

“Phil says she is stunning.”

“So is novocaine.”

“Phil knows such things.”

A moment of silence during which the two seemed to acknowledge that they did not.

Greg said, “I had the feeling that Mrs. Shuster was measuring Phil for the role of son-in-law.”

“After she saw I wouldn't do.”

“Really?”

“Phil says so.”

The ensuing silence lasted more than a minute. Greg seemed to decide that there was no adequate comment he could make.

“Fred came here a couple of times to examine the materials we have on Maurice Francis Egan.”

“A man of varied interests.”

“A mystery man.”

“Everyone is a mystery.”

Roger loved the archives and sometimes envied Greg the life he led among the boxes and boxes of Notre Dame lore. It was an odd thought that the present would one day be the past and matters of seemingly fleeting moment now be represented here in bits and pieces for some future scholar to make sense of. Doubtless Greg would start a file on Fred Neville and his untimely demise. The fact that the death was no longer ascribed to natural causes made this almost a certainty.

“Poison?” Greg asked.

“So Jimmy Stewart says.”

“Self-administered?”

Roger's expression became pained. “They have to examine every possibility.”

“He had no enemies, did he?”

“So far as I know, everybody liked him. And two women loved him enough to want to be his wife.”

“You have to keep me posted on the investigation.”

“Of course.”

 

That night Phil told Roger of the examination of Fred's apartment. He had changed into comfortable clothing—Levis, a Notre Dame sweatshirt, loafers—and was sitting in a kitchen chair watching Roger prepare their evening meal.

“Phil, it can't be suicide.”

“Probably not. At any rate, he had a visitor during the days he was missing from his office.”

“Who?”

“Mary Shuster.”

“Surely there is nothing suspicious in that, given what we now know.”

“What we know is what Mary tells us.”

“Are you saying that Jimmy Stewart suspects Mary?”

“He intends to interview her.”

THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE
Dame is the nine-hundred-pound gorilla in the South Bend area. The largest local employer, it is the reason 95 percent of visitors come to South Bend, the target of eighty thousand fans at every home football game when the local police are pressed into service to direct the influx of automobiles, vans, SUVs, and their excited occupants. Whenever a police matter involves the university, the local constabulary proceeds with consummate diplomacy, not wanting to offend Notre Dame officials, willing to keep under wraps things that would normally be splashed across the pages of the local paper. Jimmy Stewart did not object to this. In many ways it made such work as he did easier, justifying keeping the media in the dark. So it was with the case of Fred Neville.

That the assistant sports information director should have been found dead in his apartment after being absent without leave for days was already something not to make a fuss about. Such things happen. But Boswell the coroner had complicated matters with the results of his autopsy.

“He died of poisoning.” Boswell seemed to take a lugubrious pleasure in telling Jimmy Stewart this. But then he was a Purdue graduate. Boswell was thin and wore a toupee, which in the ads that had convinced him to buy it promised a return to youth and an enhancement of appearance. Stewart wondered if Boswell really believed his hairpiece wouldn't be recognized as such from anywhere within five hundred yards. Reddish and lush, it sat atop his head in such a way that it immediately called attention to itself. It had sideburns that stood out from the head except where the bows of Boswell's glasses gripped them, seemingly keeping the thing in place.

“You're sure?”

Boswell was sure. That had sent Jimmy Stewart to the apartment where he took possession of the cup on the stand beside the bed in which Fred had been found. Boswell soon reported that he had found in the cup traces of the same poison he had found in the body.

“Suicide?”

Boswell had shrugged. “I have no way to tell. Of course I can't rule it out. It would be much simpler, wouldn't it.”

This was a crack at the special treatment Notre Dame received from the police in delicate matters.

After the funeral, Jimmy Stewart and Phil Knight had gone through the apartment. It was filled with stuff but nothing cast much light on what had happened to Neville. They might have been spared a lot of time if they had gone to the manager of the building first. The fact that he had seen Mary Shuster visit Fred meant that she was probably the last person to have seen him alive.

A call at the Shuster home the following morning brought a somewhat bedraggled Mrs. Shuster to the door, wrapped in a housecoat, edgy and unwelcoming. It did not help much when Jimmy Stewart identified himself.

“I am going to pay that ticket, for heaven's sake. I'll do it today.”

“I'm not in traffic, Mrs. Shuster. I want to talk to you about Fred Neville.”

“Fred Neville? God rest his soul. Can't you let him lie in peace?” The question raised another in her mind. “But he isn't buried yet, is he?”

“That's what I want to talk to you about.”

Either Mary was home or she was not. If not, Mrs. Shuster was an attractive target of opportunity. He had piqued her curiosity and she opened the door.

Stewart was struck by the decisively male note of the furnishings and decorations of the house. The living room walls were hung with certificates, awards, degrees, all honoring the late Nathaniel Shuster. The dining room seemed an anteroom to the study beyond, a book-lined room well-lit by a skylight.

“What a wonderful house.”

“This is an area of wonderful houses. But no longer of wonderful people. No, I shouldn't say that. What I mean is that it is no longer filled with members of the faculty and their families. Of course the whole city has changed.”

Stewart nodded. Everyone had a right to a certain number of philosophical generalizations.

“How long has your husband been dead, Mrs. Shuster?”

“You haven't told me your name.”

He got out his identification again, and she gave a wave of her hand. “You don't think I could read that, do you?”

“My name is Jimmy Stewart. Detective Lieutenant Jimmy Stewart, South Bend police. I am making inquiries about the death of Fred Neville.”

She listened as if he were reciting a set lesson. “Very well. My husband has been dead fifteen years.” And to his look of surprise as he again looked around him, she added, “It is exactly as it was the day he died. I will never change it. I suppose that is why I stay on here while so many others have left. It would be like deserting Nathaniel.”

“I understand.”

“Now what do you mean, looking into the death of Fred Neville.”

“You knew him, of course.”

“I thought I did.”

Stewart lifted his brows and looked receptive.

“My daughter now tells me that she had been seeing Fred, that they intended to marry. I knew absolutely nothing of this.”

“She was engaged to Neville?”

Mrs. Shuster nodded. “So you know of the fiancée who showed up for the funeral.”

“Naomi McTear?”

“Yes. The Nevilles obviously accepted her as their son's fiancée, which put Mary in an equivocal position, to say the least. I don't suppose you were there.”

“Yes, I was.”

“I thought I had seen you somewhere. You were at the wake too, weren't you?”

“That's right.”

“The young woman dressed in mourning was my daughter, not the fiancée. Oh, I am so mortified.”

“If your daughter and Neville were seeing one another, others must have known. You don't imagine she just invented such a relationship, do you?”

“I don't know what to think.” She stopped. “Why are the police asking about Fred Neville's death?”

“At first, it was thought he died of natural causes.”

“Didn't he!”

“His death was due to poison.”

“Oh my God.” She brought both hands to her face and stared round-eyed at him over her fingertips. After a moment, she took her hands away to ask eagerly, “Did he leave a note?”

“None has been found.”

“Oh, you must look for it. For anything that could indicate what was going on between him and Mary.”

“You say Mary herself gave you no clue?” He looked toward the stairs. “I assume she isn't home.”

“Oh, she was off to work, bright as a penny this morning.”

“Where does she work?”

“In the registrar's office.”

“On campus.”

“Of course. And no, she gave me no clue. And I can add this. I have looked through her room, her things, for anything that would prove she wasn't living some fantasy.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That is why I would so much like you to find a note from him.”

“Mrs. Shuster, it may not have been suicide.”

She fell back in her chair, but bounced upright again, the cushions were so firm.

“What do you mean?”

“There could have been foul play. We have no evidence of that but in the absence of a note or any indication that the man was despondent…”

“You think he might have been killed.”

A look of horror spread across Mrs. Shuster's face. “Is that why you came here? Are you thinking that Mary—”

Jimmy Stewart interrupted her. “I'm not paid to think, not in that sense. Mary can be of great help to us in finding out what happened. If there had not been an autopsy, if the coroner had not found poison to be the cause of death—either or both of which might easily not have happened—Fred Neville would be safely in the ground and we could all go about our usual work. But there was an autopsy and poison was found and it is my job to discover what that means. Was it suicide or something else? Mary will know things that will help me answer that question.”

Her expression changed gradually during this explanation, and she was wary of him now. He changed gears.

“I have been noticing the study ever since I sat down, Mrs. Shuster. I wonder if I could have a closer look at it.”

“Of course!”

She had trouble getting out of the chair and he helped her and they went arm and arm through the dining room to the living room.

Close up, the study seemed even more a stage setting than it had from the living room. Jimmy Stewart started to move along the shelves, then turned. “May I?”

“Oh, do. Eventually these books will go to the Notre Dame library, a special collection, the Professor Nathaniel Shuster collection, but I could no more part with them than I could with the house.”

“What was your husband's field?”

“Political science. But his real love was American literature.”

“And these are his own works.” He was looking at a special shelf.

“The books yes. I mean to have the offprints of his articles bound. They will make at least four volumes.”

“Very productive scholar.”

“He was a poet too.”

“Really.”

“He said he wrote them just for me, or Mary, but I sent some of them off and they were accepted.” She pulled a slender volume from the shelf.
Poems
by Nathaniel Shuster. “This is the result. It doesn't seem much, does it? But poetry takes a very long time to write. And rewrite. It was very difficult for him to think that a version was the final one.”

Stewart held his peace. They were moving into terra incognita as far as he was concerned, but he now felt Mrs. Shuster to be a far more sympathetic character than he had. Her indignation was motivated by fear of what people would think or say but on the topic of her husband, on the devotion she still felt to him and the life they had lived together, she emerged as a warm and sentimental woman. No doubt Mary's enigmatic actions had jarred with what lay behind this shrine of a house, and it was that, her husband's memory, that was the true measure of her indignation.

They moved back through the rooms and Stewart thanked her for her time.

“Would you like me to call Mary and tell her you're coming?”

“No. I want to stop by a friend's apartment on the way. Philip Knight.”

Mrs. Shuster stepped back, her hands lifting in delighted surprise.

“You know Philip Knight?”

“And Roger.”

“Why didn't you say so, for heaven's sake? They are both dear friends of mine.”

“I will give them your regards.”