A Rare Murder In Princeton (21 page)

“I’m so glad,” said McLeod. “Congratulations.” She left Natty and headed to Joseph Henry House, wondering again if Philip Sheridan had known about Fanny Mobley’s drinking and perhaps threatened to report her. It seemed to her, now that she thought about it for the second time, that such a threat provided a very good motive for murder. At least, the best motive she’d thought of so far.

 

CLARK POWELL ARRIVED promptly for her first student conference. He seemed very pleased when she commended his rewriting efforts and then offered her two tickets to the opening night of
The Learned Ladies.
“It’s tomorrow night,” he said.

“That’s very soon. You just got the dresses last week,” she said.

“True. We were desperate for costumes. Do come if you can.”

“I certainly will,” she said.

After three conferences, she was dead tired and walked home, looking forward to a nap before they went out to dinner. Nap and shower refreshed her and she dressed in her good long black wool skirt and black cashmere sweater with anticipation.

 

GEORGE WAS A little late getting home so they were a little late arriving at the Westcotts’ big house on Cleveland Lane and had to park some distance from the front door.

“Dodo must be having a crowd,” said McLeod as they walked slowly, watching for slippery spots on the sidewalk.

“Not on a weeknight,” said George. “I bet some of these cars belong to the temporary help.”

Dodo, dressed in a bright blue caftan trimmed with wide gilt braid, met them at the door with great enthusiasm. “I’m so glad to see you both. Do come in. George, it’s good of you to come; I know how busy you are. Do you know my husband? Bob, dear, this is McLeod Dulaney—she teaches writing at Princeton and she’s writing a book on Henry van Dyke.”

“I’m not sure I’m writing a book about—” began McLeod, but Dodo didn’t stop or listen.

“And this is George Bridges, the new vice president for public affairs at Princeton,” she was saying to her husband. Dodo finished introductions and led them into a large living room, where two other couples were standing in front of a fireplace, in which pristine birch logs were arranged beautifully but unlit. When she began further introductions, Bob Westcott said sharply, “Dorothy, let me get drinks for these people and then you can introduce them.”

McLeod and George asked for martinis and agreed with a glance that Bob Westcott had his priorities straight.

The others turned out to be Cowboy Tarleton, a Princeton lawyer McLeod had met before, and his wife, Shirley, and to McLeod’s astonishment, Mary and Little Big Murray. Dodo had told her, McLeod was thinking, that Mary Murray had murdered her mother-in-law, yet Dodo had invited her to dinner.

“Mary, this is McLeod Dulaney,” Dodo was saying, “and George Bridges. McLeod, this is Little Big Murray. Big, you know George, don’t you? He bought your old house.”

“Oh, right,” said Little Big. “But he didn’t buy the house from me, Dodo. He bought it from that man from Texas.”

Mary Murray was a diffident-looking woman with short wavy brown hair, whom McLeod thought she might not have even noticed under other circumstances. It was hard to picture her as a murderer. Little Big, on the other hand, was big. You would notice him anywhere, McLeod thought, because of his sheer size. But his face was curiously blank, and McLeod remembered that Dodo had said he was stupid.

McLeod was dying to ask Mary Murray who she thought had murdered her mother-in-law and ask Little Big why on earth he hadn’t cleaned out his mother’s garage before he sold the house to the man from Texas, but obviously both of these gambits were unacceptable as dinner conversation.

George and Little Big began to chat about, of all things, golf. McLeod asked Mary Murray if she had grown up in Princeton. “I know your husband did,” she said.

“Yes, I did, too,” said Mary Murray. “And where are you from?”

“I live in Tallahassee, Florida.”

“And you’re an old friend of George Bridges?”

“Yes. He kindly offered to let me stay with him in his new house for the semester,” said McLeod. “At least it’s new to him. It’s an old house, isn’t it? I know it used to belong to your mother-in-law. How old would you say it is?”

“I think it was built in the 1880s.”

“And your husband was born there?”

“In a sense. He was born in Princeton Hospital, but his parents were living there when he was born. He hasn’t lived there in thirty years, and he doesn’t like to talk about the house.”

“I can understand that,” said McLeod. “I knew his mother was murdered there. I’m sure it’s a painful subject for him.”

“It is. He found the body, you know.” Mary Murray took a sip of her white wine. “His mother had grown up in that house and she died there.”

“I don’t think I knew that,” said McLeod.

“Oh, yes. It was known as the Lawrence house for years.”

And then it was known as the Murder House, McLeod thought. Would it someday be known as the Bridges house? “Jill Murray’s name was Lawrence before she married Bigelow Murray?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. And she was very proud of being a Lawrence. After she was married, and her parents had died and her two brothers had grown up, she insisted that she and my father-in-law move back to that house. They bought out her brothers’ interest—her brothers were crazy about their sister, anyway. She was quite a charmer.”

“And she charmed you, too?” asked McLeod.

“Oh, no. Little Big was her only son, and nobody was good enough for him. But she charmed everybody else.”

Dodo summoned them to the dining room, where McLeod found herself seated between Bob Westcott and the lawyer Cowboy Tarleton. “You commute to New York, don’t you?” she asked Westcott. “Isn’t it hard to come home to a dinner party?”

“It is,” he said, smiling at her, “but Dorothy’s wish is my command. She likes to have people in on weeknights, and I try to get here on time.”

“You’re the only person who doesn’t call her Dodo,” said McLeod.

“I hate that nickname. It began when she was a child, and it makes her sound like an idiot. And she’s not an idiot. Anyway, how do you like Princeton?”

McLeod answered that she loved it, and the conversation became general. Looking around the table, McLeod wondered how Dodo was considered such a social climber—this was not a glittering group, unless the Murrays glittered socially, which she doubted.

The food was catered, but not bad, and the wine flowed freely. At one point she had a chance to talk to Cowboy Tarleton. “You were Philip Sheridan’s lawyer, weren’t you?” she asked him.

“I was. He was one of my favorite clients. He was a gentleman of the old school, to use a trite phrase.” Cowboy was a pleasant man, tall and thin, and he smiled a lot. McLeod liked him.

“Everybody loved him, but somebody murdered him,” she said.

“It can happen to the best of people,” said Cowboy. “Or I guess it can. Though in fact, I don’t think I ever knew anybody so universally admired who was murdered before.”

“It wasn’t an accident, or a random act of violence,” said McLeod, “so he must have had an enemy.”

“I don’t think it was an enemy, exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t mean anything. I don’t know why I’m saying that. I just don’t think Sheridan was killed because of his character.”

A maid in uniform was removing the plates. McLeod supposed George was right about the Westcotts’ temporary help, or maybe the caterers provided it. “You handled his will, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Chester Holmes told me that Philip Sheridan left him some money, but the bulk of the estate goes to the university, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not breaking any confidences, since the will has been filed for probate. He left his sister a substantial sum, but of course, he left the collection—the books and manuscripts—to Princeton, plus a sizable amount of money to maintain the collection and to pay for a curator.”

“That was all pretty straightforward, wasn’t it?”

“Absolutely. He brought in a hot-shot New York estate lawyer to oversee me on that part, to make sure it was airtight.”

“Did that annoy you?” McLeod asked.

Cowboy looked at her shrewdly. “A little,” he said. “But not enough to make me kill him, if that’s what you mean. That was a long time ago, anyway.”

“And you don’t hold a grudge?”

“Not that long, believe me.”

“What did you mean about his not being killed because of his character? I don’t understand.”

Cowboy was quiet while the maid put dessert plates before them. “I meant that Sheridan was a good man, a truly good man, but like all truly good men, he thought he knew best,” Cowboy said. “He wasn’t a bad man, not at all, but he had his little quirks.”

“What kind of quirks?” McLeod asked.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Cowboy said, smiling again. “You knew him.”

“I didn’t really know him. I met him and talked to him and he showed me a Trollope manuscript and even gave me a Trollope first edition—”

“That is so typical!” broke in Cowboy. “He gave me a pair of Daumier caricatures of lawyers, all matted and framed for my office. They were prints, but original prints from the eighteenth century. They’re among my proudest possessions.”

McLeod plowed on. “But I didn’t really have anything but the most superficial acquaintance with him. So what kind of quirks did he have?”

“He was a stickler about people doing what they were supposed to do. He was good to Chester, but if he thought Chester neglected some task, he would be very stern. Not rude, but stern.”

“Chester has only the warmest praise for him,” said McLeod.

“Sure, working for Philip is all that Chester knows,” said Cowboy. “But still sometimes Sheridan could be quite demanding. I think sometimes the people in Rare Books felt that he went too far.”

“Did he shout at people?” McLeod asked, remembering what people had told her about loud arguments between Sheridan and Fanny, Sheridan and Natty, and who else?

“Not often, that would be the ultimate. But he had a little quirk that could be quite annoying. He was always changing his mind.”

“About what?”

“About everything. ‘We’ll go out to lunch,’ he’d say. ‘We’ll go to the Nassau Club.’ Then he’d say, ‘No, we’ll go to Lahiere’s.’ Or maybe, ‘No, let’s not go out to lunch today. Can we send out for sandwiches?’ It could be—well, inconvenient.”

“I’m sure it could. I wonder if he did that with the people in Rare Books?”

“He must have. He sure did it with me. And I know he called his broker often to tell him to buy or sell and then called him back to tell him not to do it. He was always talking to me about changing his will. Sometimes he did change it and sometimes he didn’t. It was annoying, but I couldn’t tell him to stop.”

“But on the whole he was a good client?”

“Oh, yes, and I shouldn’t complain. I started billing him for telephone time, and he paid.”

Dinner was finally over, coffee was served in the living room, and everybody left fairly early, complaining that the next day was a workday.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Dodo told them when they left. “George, I hope you enjoyed meeting Little Big. I thought it would be such a coup to bring you two together.”

“It was, Dodo,” said McLeod. George said nothing.

ON THURSDAY MORNING, McLeod read in the
Times
of Trenton that Nick Perry had held a brief press conference the day before. When reporters asked him if the murder of Philip Sheridan was a “cold case,” or otherwise abandoned, he replied, “Absolutely not. This case will never be closed.”

“Do you think it will end up like the Jill Murray case—unsolved ?” a reporter asked.

“Not at all,” Nick had said.

“Does that mean you’re close to a solution?”

“It means I think we’ll solve it,” said Nick.

Good for Nick, she thought. Meanwhile, she had to get moving—this was Thursday, class today.

When she met the class that afternoon, she talked about their new assignment: to write about a person involved in the arts.

“Henry van Dyke said the two most important things in life are art and friendship,” she said.

“Does that mean we have to write about a friend next time?” asked one of the students.

“What a good idea,” she said. But for this assignment, they could write about people in the visual arts, or music, or the theater, she said, and she urged them to look for people who had not been publicized before. She pointed out that Clark Powell, who was in the class, was involved with the production of
The Learned Ladies,
which would open at Theatre Intime, Princeton’s student-run theater, that night.

She went by herself to see the play, enjoyed the youthful actors in the performance, and paid a great deal of attention to the women’s costumes. It was fun to see the long-sleeved black velvet and the pale blue lace dresses being worn by young and beautiful “learned ladies.”