Read Online Irish Coffee by Ralph McInerny - Free Book Online Page B

he!”
    â€œHis death was due to poison.”
    â€œOh 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?”
    â€œNone has been found.”
    â€œOh, you must look for it. For anything that could indicate what was going on between him and Mary.”
    â€œYou say Mary herself gave you no clue?” He looked toward the stairs. “I assume she isn’t home.”
    â€œOh, she was off to work, bright as a penny this morning.”
    â€œWhere does she work?”
    â€œIn the registrar’s office.”
    â€œOn campus.”
    â€œOf 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.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œNothing. Absolutely nothing. That is why I would so much like you to find a note from him.”
    â€œMrs. Shuster, it may not have been suicide.”
    She fell back in her chair, but bounced upright again, the cushions were so firm.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThere 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…”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œI have been noticing the study ever since I sat down, Mrs. Shuster. I wonder if I could have a closer look at it.”
    â€œOf 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?”
    â€œOh, 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.”
    â€œWhat was your husband’s field?”
    â€œPolitical science. But his real love was American literature.”
    â€œAnd these are his own works.” He was looking at a special shelf.
    â€œThe books yes. I mean to have the offprints of his articles bound. They will make at least four volumes.”
    â€œVery productive scholar.”
    â€œHe was a poet too.”
    â€œReally.”
    â€œHe 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