Styx & Stone (21 page)

“Do you have a moment, Professor Bruchner?” I asked, peering into office 602.

“I suppose . . .” he said, looking up from his reading. “Come in.”

“I won’t take much of your time,” I said. “Just a couple of questions.”

Bruchner nodded.

“You said you had lunch with my father last Friday, and that he told you about his book.”

“That’s correct.”

“Did he mention Ruggero Ercolano in connection with the book? Perhaps he had shown it to him.”

“Not that I recall,” said Bruchner, his gray face looking more and more like granite. “He told me Princeton University Press was planning to publish it in the autumn. Then we exchanged ideas on the content of the book. He did not mention Professor Ercolano.”

“Did you say you’d read it?” I asked.

Bruchner shook his head determinedly. “No, I did not say that.”

I poked around the department until noon, and then retired to my father’s office. There, I stumbled across a portfolio of magnificent charcoal drawings, the ones he had sketched when I was young. The first in the series was three beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. Then there was a wild-eyed, broad-backed giant of a man, white hair and beard whipping in a fierce wind. His ashen arms bulged with sinewy muscles, and his rugged hands gripped a great wooden spar, which he wielded to push his bark through the rough waters. Dad had drawn him rearing up, at the apex of his backstroke: the infernal gondolier about to plunge his pole into the heaving river’s pitch. In the bottom right-hand corner, it read,
The Ferryman, Charon, on the River Acheron. A. Stone, Feb. 24, 1940.

I pulled up a chair and spread the large pages out on my father’s desk. His talent impressed me even more now that I was an adult. With nothing but a pencil and his fantasy, he had scratched onto paper fearsome and unholy beasts. The lines of each drawing were like scars rasped across the page; wounds that had healed on paper. His art filled me with a silent awe.

There followed pages and pages of beasts, demons, netherworld landscapes, and tortured souls. Some were drawn in rich detail, some left unfinished, others were almost minimalist in their austerity, but all eloquent enough to move me. One drawing in particular,
Beatrice Beholding God, Canto XXXIII, Paradiso,
was virtually a blank page. But the soft lines, so deftly placed, so hushed, so delicate, presented the faint image of an angelic face, in rapture in the brilliant light of God’s glory. It was beautiful. I wondered if I could create a similar effect in a photograph by overexposing it. Then I laughed at myself and my mechanical artifice.

I replaced the sketches carefully in their case and tied the portfolio together. Just then, Bernie Sanger tapped on the open door. He stood in the hallway, refusing to come in.

“Got to run to the library,” he said. “I just stopped by to tell you Chalmers is looking for you. Wants to take you to lunch.”

The Faculty Club is not exactly the stodgy, genteel fraternity one might think. In essence, it’s no more than a cafeteria. Besides the waiters, the only difference between it and the student dining halls is the napery; the students get paper, the faculty get linen. The food, though doled out onto the plate in fancier patterns, smelled no better than what I remembered from my undergraduate days.

The colored man who checked our coats greeted Chalmers by name, and the professor shunned him as if he had a virus.

“Bucking for a tip,” he whispered to me.

We sat at a table for two not too far from a window that looked over the common. A handful of students were crossing the green. They seemed so carefree and unburdened, and I thought of my college days with nostalgia; ours was a complete family then. I watched for a moment while Chalmers bickered with the waiter over our table.

“I usually sit over there,” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the waiter. “But the chancellor and his guests are at your table today. Would you like me to ask them to move?”

Wrestling with the waiter’s sarcasm, Chalmers twisted in his seat to see the party at his table.

“Well, they’ve already started,” he said finally. “I suppose we’ll have to eat here.”

The waiter disappeared, and Chalmers smiled at me.

“So, Ellie, tell me more about your father.”

“The same. But I’ve hired a guard.”

“A guard? What for? I thought it was clear Ruggero hit your father on the head and stole
Daughters of Eve
. Ruggero is dead; he can’t harm Abe now. Isn’t that what the police think?”

“They’re willing to accept that scenario if nothing else develops.”

“I can see you still don’t believe it. Why not?”

“Because yesterday someone disconnected the tubes on my father’s respirator.”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’d forgotten.”

“That’s the most compelling reason. But I can’t dismiss the absurd attempt someone made to discredit Ercolano with my father’s manuscript.”

Chalmers shook his head violently. “But how can you be sure he didn’t mail it? A preponderance of evidence indicates that he did. And while he was not a medievalist, he worked a great deal on poetry. Maybe he wanted people to think he was a scholar of great versatility. Is there any evidence to suggest he didn’t mail that manuscript?”

“The package was too big to fit in any mailbox I’ve ever seen. Would you agree?” Chalmers nodded grudgingly. “Therefore, he would have had to drop it off at a post office. In such a case, he would have had it weighed and used the proper postage. The book never would have come back if Ercolano had mailed it.”

“Maybe he put the stamps on and dropped it off. I saw stamps on the package, not a metered ticket.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Whoever dropped off that package knew there was not enough postage to get it to Princeton.”

“But why?”

“To discredit Ercolano. Look, you knew Princeton University Press was publishing my father’s book, and Bruchner told me he knew it too. This was no state secret. So how could Ruggero Ercolano be foolish enough to paste his name across the title page and try to pass it off as his own? With the very people who knew better than anyone that Abraham Stone had written it, his publishers?”

“You tell me,” said Chalmers, confused.

“Because he didn’t. The person who mailed it didn’t want Princeton to get it either. He wanted it to come back and, if push came to shove, he wanted the police to find it. Let’s face it; the police don’t know anything about academic publishing. Whoever mailed that manuscript counted on the police taking it for a simple case of plagiarism. You know that nineteenth-century scholars don’t just tear off books on Dante, whether they like poetry or not. But the police? The police would think it was a case of an Italian professor filching a book on an Italian poet. Motive and opportunity, end of story.”

Chalmers nodded. “You may have a point there.”

“Victor!” A portly, ruddy-faced, middle-aged man in a gray suit slapped Chalmers on the back. “Victor, who’s that at your table?” He said, cocking his head toward the chancellor. Then he roared with laughter.

“Hello, Brad,” said Chalmers, rising from his seat to shake the man’s hand. They chatted for a few minutes about a recent vote in the faculty senate, confirming a nominee to the board of trustees. Finally, Chalmers remembered himself and introduced us.

“Bradley Harrower, professor of English, Eleonora Stone, distinguished Barnard alumna.”

“No relation to Abe Stone,” said Harrower, his statement really a question.

“His daughter,” I said, taking the hand he’d offered.

Harrower’s red face grew serious. “It’s a tragedy what happened to Abe. We’re all pulling for him, you know.”

“Brad and your father are old nemeses on the rules committee in the senate,” said Chalmers. “Brad, here, thinks your old man is too rigid and old fashioned in his thinking.”

“Torquemada was progressive compared to my father,” I said. “But I suppose the world needs old rugs like him as much as new ones.”

“Well put, Ellie,” said Chalmers, patting me on the shoulder. “Please excuse us, Brad, we have some delicate business to discuss.”

“Abe’s manuscript?” asked Harrower, aping a wince, as if the subject were so distasteful.

“What about it?” asked Chalmers.

Harrower wiped the expression off his face, replacing it with equally affected horror at his faux pas.

“Why, that Ercolano stole it,” he said. “I heard it from Rob Bryant in History. He said he’d heard it from a graduate student or a lecturer. Is it true?”

Chalmers frowned. “My God, word travels like wildfire.”

“But is it true?”

“We’re not sure, Ellie and I.”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I know with certainty that Ruggero Ercolano did not take my father’s manuscript. In fairness to your deceased colleague, Professor Harrower, you should debunk that ugly smear whenever you hear it. It’s a lie.”

“Well, if he didn’t steal your father’s book, who did?”

“Someone who got access to the keys in the Italian Department.”

“You mean a faculty member? Or a graduate student?” asked Harrower, his incredulity passing to itchy curiosity. “My God, Victor, what’s going on in your house?”

When we were alone again, Chalmers begged me not to announce my suspicions in front of gossips like Brad Harrower.

“Once this mess has been cleared up, I don’t care who knows the truth,” he said. “But for the time being, Ellie, please grant me this one favor: don’t fan the fire with conjecture.”

“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you, Dr. Chalmers,” I said. “But someone should stand up for Ruggero Ercolano.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “But it’s not yet opportune, don’t you see? Someone from the department leaked the rumor about Ruggero stealing
Daughters of Eve
. I can’t do anything about that now. But to deny the rumor right now will only invite questions of just who was responsible for stealing the manuscript. It’s unfair, I know, to hear Ruggero slandered, his reputation maligned, but for the time being it’s the only way to proceed.”

“You’re understandably concerned for your own reputation,” I said.

“Because I’m innocent, damn it! I’ve told you and the police that I was out of town when Elijah’s grave was vandalized. I liked Elijah, even if he didn’t like me. And I was at dinner with friends on Friday, so I couldn’t have seen your father, let alone club him on the head.”

“You were in Bronxville that night, correct?” He nodded. “With Mrs. Chalmers and Billy?” Another nod. “Where was Ruth?”

Chalmers choked. “What?”

“Ruth,” I prompted. “Where was she that night?”

Now he laughed. “You can’t possibly suspect Ruth. Oh, Ellie, that’s absurd.”

“I’m just asking. Why didn’t she go to Boston or Bronxville with you?”

The smiles disappeared. “Look here, Ellie,” he began. “I don’t quite see how Ruth’s business is your affair, but out of respect for your father, I’ll answer. Ruth was with friends those nights. That’s all she told me; she’s a big girl, and I trust her.”

“Any idea who her friends are?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”