A Rare Murder In Princeton (2 page)

“And people still call it the murder house?”

“Always will,” said Ledbetter. “Things don’t change all that much in Princeton.”

George arrived with a tray that held three martinis and a plate of baguette slices with smoked salmon. He handed out the drinks, and Ledbetter, brown eyes gleaming, proposed a toast: “To your new house, dear boy.”

The murder house, thought McLeod uneasily.

George added another stick of wood to the fire.

“Ms. Dulaney, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance,” Ledbetter said. “As I said, I’ve heard so much about you. And I understand you’ve written a most interesting book about Elijah P. Lovejoy.”

“Elijah P. Lovejoy is my hero,” said McLeod.

“Admirable man,” said Ledbetter. “He was lynched, was he not, out West somewhere?”

“In Alton, Illinois, near Saint Louis,” said McLeod. “He was a Presbyterian minister and the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. A pro-slavery mob came to destroy his press, and he was killed.”

“I see,” said Ledbetter. “And what are you working on now?”

“I’m not working on another book,” said McLeod. “I do have a newspaper job, you know—on the
Star of Florida
in Tallahassee—and they’re good about giving me a leave of absence. This is the third time I’ve come to Princeton to teach for a semester. I’m lucky.”

“I would imagine it makes for a full life,” said Ledbetter.

“McLeod has the energy of three dynamos,” said George.

“Hardly,” said McLeod. “Mr. Ledbetter, you’re not teaching anymore? You’re at the library, George said.”

“Natty, McLeod will interrogate you,” said George, “while I go to the kitchen for a few minutes.”

“What do you do at the library?” asked McLeod, thinking that George knew her pretty well. Curiosity about people —and everything else—ruled her life. And she had found that her white hair—it had been white since she was in her thirties—permitted her to ask even more questions.

“I’m director of Rare Books and Special Collections,” said Ledbetter. “Do you know what that is?”

“Manuscripts? Rare books?”

“You’re right. The term ‘special collections’ includes not just manuscripts, but graphic arts—a wonderful collection of prints—and the theater collection and Western Americana, a coin collection, and a few other odds and ends. It’s a big tent.”

“What’s your special treasure?”

“We have many. We have cuneiform inscriptions on clay cylinders from Nebuchadnezzar’s time. We have papyrus manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts, incunabula—that is to say, books printed before 1501—one of them, incidentally, is
The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
from 1499, and we have . . .”

McLeod had met her match, someone who knew more than even her curiosity demanded. Natty described photographs taken by Lewis Carroll, mentioned an autograph (meaning handwritten) manuscript of a poem by Emily Dickinson, talked about a book of Oscar Wilde’s poems inscribed by Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas. “And of course, we have all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s papers,” he said, “but that’s enough.”

“How did Princeton get all these things?”

“Gifts. Generous alumni over the years have given us their libraries and book collections. And benefactors give us money to make our own purchases. A loyal group called Friends of the Princeton University Library gives money for purchases and lectures and exhibitions.”

 

GEORGE CAME IN to say that dinner was ready.

“I am afraid I’ve bored your guest,” Nat said to George as they went to the dining room. “I do go on. I get carried away.”

“Not at all,” McLeod said. “It’s fascinating.”

“It’s hard to bore McLeod,” said George. “Her curiosity is insatiable.” He smiled at her sympathetically and patted her shoulder. But then he opened the gate for more. “Nat, McLeod is a real Trollope fan,” he said. “You did tell her about your Trollope holdings, didn’t you?”

“No, but I shall,” said Natty. “We have the manuscripts of ten Trollope novels—
The Eustace Diamonds
and
Orley Farm
are the best known of the ten. We also have
The American Senator, The Claverings, Lady Anna, The Landleaguers, Lord Palmerston, Marion Fay, Mr. Scarborough’s Family,
and
An Old Man’s Love.
”

“I never even heard of some of those titles,” McLeod said.

“Natty, I’m impressed that you can remember all ten titles and recite them at the dinner table,” said George.

“Alzheimer’s has not set in for me yet,” said Natty. “Dear lady, come over to Rare Books and I’ll show you our Trollopes.”

McLeod, who really was extremely fond of Trollope, happily agreed to pay him a visit, thinking that being called “dear lady” was not as bad as “dear girl.”

Dinner was outstanding—a creamy cauliflower tomato soup and duck à l’orange, with fruit tarts for dessert.

“George, you’re an even better cook than you were before,” said McLeod.

“Very fine, my boy,” said Nat.

“I spent two years in Brussels—I learned a lot about food,” said George. “But I bought the tarts at Chez Alice.”

It was while they were having coffee in the living room—George had rebuilt the fire—that Natty spoke to McLeod again. “I’ d like to interest you in a man whose papers we have. You might want to write about him—Henry van Dyke.”

“Is that the man who wrote ‘The Other Wise Man’?” she asked.

“Yes, but he wrote many other things, too,” Nat Ledbetter was saying when George interrupted him to ask what “The Other Wise Man” was.

McLeod and Natty spoke at once and then told him together.

“It’s a Christmas short story,” said McLeod. “My mother loved it.”

“I heard it read out loud at church when I was a boy,” Nat said. “It was quite popular. But van Dyke did many other things. He was a famous Presbyterian minister and he was later for twenty years a distinguished English professor here at Princeton. He wrote many books. He is the only member of the English Department faculty whose collected works have been published—in twelve volumes, no less. He was a great fly-fisherman and was ambassador to the Netherlands. He was a most fabulous man. And I do wish somebody would write about him. Do come over to see the Trollopes, and while you’re there, take a look at the van Dyke papers—there are boxes and boxes of them, including letters from, I believe, six presidents of the United States.”

McLeod promised she would indeed be over to see him and his treasures as soon as she could. And soon after that, she yawned, apologized, and said she really had to go to bed.

“I’ve been driving all day for three days, and I’m exhausted,” she said.

Natty Ledbetter said he had to go, too, and George helped him on with his coat, hat, scarf, and gloves.

 

“I’M SORRY I had a guest your first night here,” George said after Natty had gone. “But I wasn’t sure which day you’d get here, you know.”

“This time I only stopped twice on the way up—Thursday night with my mother in Atlanta and last night with Rosie in Charlotte. I should have telephoned. But I wasn’t sure I could make it from Charlotte in one day. Don’t worry. I enjoyed Natty.” She yawned hugely. “George, I’m going to bed. Sorry I’m not helping with the cleanup.”

“It’s all right,” said George. “You’re excused. Go to bed.”

It took McLeod’s last ounce of energy to get up the stairs, into her room, and snuggle under the down comforter on the bed prewarmed with an electric blanket. She was asleep before she could dwell on all that Nat Ledbetter had talked about: cuneiform and incunabula and Henry van Dyke—and the murder house.

THE NEXT MORNING, McLeod had a chance to get a better look at the murder house. She and George had a leisurely breakfast and tried to catch up on all that had happened to them both in the past three years.

She did like George Bridges, McLeod thought after breakfast as she buckled down to unpacking and settling in. He had called her in Tallahassee as soon as he learned she was going to teach a writing class during the spring semester. He had for years worked as assistant to Princeton University presidents, three presidents in all, then he had gone off to Brussels for two years to work for one of these former bosses at some European Union education apparatus. He was back in Princeton now, back at the university with a huge promotion—vice president for public affairs.

“I’ve bought a house,” he had told McLeod when he called to congratulate her on her appointment to teach non-fiction writing at Princeton. “It’s on Edgehill Street—you know, the little one-block-long street between Stockton and Mercer. You can stay with me while you’re here. You can have your own room and private bath.”

“That sounds palatial,” McLeod had said.

“The whole house is tiny, but it seems palatial to me—I’ve lived in apartments for years. It’s wonderful, but it’s bewildering, too. I look at the yard, and I ask myself, ‘Now what is all that space for?’ ”

“Mowing?” suggested McLeod.

“Not just mowing,” George said. “It all needs lots of work. I could see that when I bought it. But it obviously used to be a nice yard.”

“You’ll deal with that eventually,” said McLeod cheerfully.

“I know,” said George. “Oh, well. Do stay here. I’ll be very glad to see you.”

“And I’ll be glad to see you,” said McLeod. “Thanks so much for calling.”

And she
was
glad to see him, she thought now as she hung up clothes in the guest room closet. She and George had had a little fling two years ago, the second time she taught at Princeton, but she had not seen him since. Still they had kept in touch. It would be nice to resume the friendship, even on the platonic basis he seemed to have in mind, she thought.

George had urged her to try to arrive on a Saturday or Sunday so he could be home when she got there, and when she had turned into his driveway on Saturday, he came out on his little porch, grinning at her, his black curly hair rumpled, and looking as full of vitality and brio as ever. She cut off the engine, popped the trunk open, and got out of the car, as George came down the steps and gathered her, thick coat, tote bag, and purse into a huge bear hug.

“McLeod, I am so glad to see you,” he said, holding her tight and rubbing his cheek on hers.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” she said. “And I love your house. Aren’t you cold? You don’t have on a jacket even—just that sweater. And it’s cold up here.”

“Your blood is thin from living in Florida,” he said. “But it
is
cold.” He pulled two of her suitcases out of the trunk and started up the steps to the porch “Come on in. You’ll love it.”

“I love it already,” McLeod said as she went in the door, with its stained glass panels, and saw the square hallway with a staircase winding upward.

The house was indeed tiny, she thought, but darling. On the left was a small parlor and on the right a large dining room with bookshelves and a bay window at one end. Through the panes of the bay window McLeod could see the backyard, which didn’t look too bad, she thought. A door led from the dining room to a kitchen that was small but surely big enough to allow George to cook more of his wonderful food. “It looks like you’ve really settled in,” said McLeod.

“The downstairs is in pretty good shape,” said George, “but upstairs is still a mess.”

Upstairs were three bedrooms—one for George, a guest room, and a third that George was setting up as his study with more bookshelves and a desk and computer, copier, and fax.

“Impressive,” said McLeod, although the room was in some confusion, with cartons, as yet unpacked, stacked on the floor and no curtains or shades at the windows, no pictures on the walls.

“Lots of work to do in here,” said George, “but you can use any of this equipment anytime.”

“I brought my own laptop and a little printer,” she said.

“And here’s your room.” George made a wide gesture, ushering her into the guest room, which was at the front of the house, facing Edgehill.

“It’s charming,” she said. “I love the wallpaper.”

“Don’t the flowers look like camellias?”

“A little bit, I mean they have petals,” said McLeod, “but camellias don’t grow on trellises.”

“Picky,” said George.

“I love the wallpaper,” McLeod said again. “What more can I say? Actually, I can say I like all of it. I love the pictures —where did you get the watercolors of the campus?”

“Oh, I bought them at a charity auction,” George said. “I knew you liked watercolors and these were done by a local artist.”

“They’re great,” said McLeod. “Nassau Hall and Stanhope and Murray-Dodge . . . It’s the perfect guest room, George, the desk by the window and a wing chair”—she was walking around—“the big closet and the nice bathroom and the ancient oriental rug. . . .”

“Don’t you like all the old rugs? I bought them in New Hope last weekend at a secondhand store—I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it an antique store.”