Read Online Irish Coffee by Ralph McInerny - Free Book Online

couple of times to examine the materials we have on Maurice Francis Egan.”
    â€œA man of varied interests.”
    â€œA mystery man.”
    â€œEveryone 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.
    â€œPoison?” Greg asked.
    â€œSo Jimmy Stewart says.”
    â€œSelf-administered?”
    Roger’s expression became pained. “They have to examine every possibility.”
    â€œHe had no enemies, did he?”
    â€œSo far as I know, everybody liked him. And two women loved him enough to want to be his wife.”
    â€œYou have to keep me posted on the investigation.”
    â€œOf course.”
    Â 
    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.
    â€œPhil, it can’t be suicide.”
    â€œProbably not. At any rate, he had a visitor during the days he was missing from his office.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œMary Shuster.”
    â€œSurely there is nothing suspicious in that, given what we now know.”
    â€œWhat we know is what Mary tells us.”
    â€œAre you saying that Jimmy Stewart suspects Mary?”
    â€œHe intends to interview her.”

6
    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.
    â€œHe 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.
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œSuicide?”
    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