Chalmers stared straight ahead as he talked about his wife as though she weren’t there. “I had no reason to kill Matheson. I knew if I forced Renata to choose between him and me our marriage would be over, so I decided to endure it as long as they were discreet. I was sure that Matheson would soon tire of her and move on to some new conquest, although that hadn’t happened yet.”
“Discreet?” I echoed. “Molly Crocker heard you and Matheson arguing about it in a bar before a meeting of the Anglo-Indian Club!”
“That was an aberration, something that only happened once. He’d just lost an important case that day and had too much to drink. Apparently he felt the need to mortify me by a graphic explication of his relationship with my wife. That’s how I first found out about it.”
“And you couldn’t stand the public humiliation,” I said. “That’s why you killed Matheson.”
“I assure you, Renata knows quite well that I did not.”
She looked away from him.
“That book from your dresser drawer says otherwise,” Lynda told Chalmers. “That’s why you bopped me on the head to keep me from finding it.”
In response to shocked looks all around, we gave the Cliffs Notes version of Lynda’s morning adventure.
“Why would Woollcott render Lynda unconscious to prevent her from finding the Beeton’s, then leave it in the drawer?” Mac objected. “That is, even assuming he had the physical stamina to do so.”
“He was scared away by the sound of me calling for Lynda,” I reasoned. “Things aren’t always so neat in real life.”
“Granted, but you’re saying our killer was so frightened by your arrival that he forgot the object of his quest?” Mac said. “That is hardly likely. And getting past you once you were in the house would have been impossible. There is no exit directly outside from the guest suite. Moreover, from the timetable that you have presented, all of the events at my house must have taken place during my talk on ‘Humor in the Canon.’”
“So?” Lynda said.
“So I personally noted Woollcott’s presence in the audience during my entire talk. I assure you, he could not possibly have been the individual who hit you over the head, my dear Lynda.”
Chapter Thirty-Two - On the Hook
The earth twirled on its axis and revolved around the sun. Eons passed as Woollcott Chalmers stared at Lynda and me, letting Mac’s last words hang in the air like humidity in August. Renata looked confused, as if unsure whether to accept the witness that her husband wasn’t a murderer after all.
Finally, Lynda said, “Maybe we went around the curves a little too fast with this idea.”
“If that’s supposed to be an apology,” Chalmers said, “I’ll have to talk to my lawyer before I accept.”
“This game has gone on too long,” Mac said. “I must tell you that the murderer is-’’
“Mr. Chalmers!”
It wasn’t an accusation this time, just the always-annoying Graham Bentley Post calling to Chalmers from the doorway. Even on a Sunday afternoon the man from the Library of Popular Culture was dressed for business. His three-piece gray suit had the requisite stripes and if the shirt had any more starch in it, it would have been one big Roman collar. His thick, gray mustache was trimmed with precision.
“I have interrupted nothing important, I trust.” Post’s manner as he approached Chalmers was so patently ingratiating that it almost made me ill.
“Nothing important,” Chalmers agreed with a sideways glance at Lynda and me.
Post ignored the byplay and heard what he wanted to hear as he approached the old man. “Good, because what I have to say is important, Mr. Chalmers. It is about the Woollcott Chalmers Collection.”
“Then you should be saying it to these men, not to me.” He waved vaguely in the direction of Mac and me. “They represent St. Benignus College, which for good or ill owns the Collection now.”
“Not irrevocably,” Post said with a triumphant smirk. “It is quite obvious that the collection has been treated shabbily by its new owner. Books have been stolen, a man murdered. The college clearly has not maintained the security of the collection as promised in the agreement under which you made your donation. As a result, I believe that the donation can be voided, freeing you to put the Chalmers Collection in the hands of an institution that is prepared to give it the proper care it deserves.”
“Such as the Library of Popular Culture,” Lynda interpreted.
Post executed a little bow in her direction. “I am virtually certain our lawyers can make it happen.”
“Your lawyers,” Mac drawled, “will have to go through me and the college’s lawyers first. They will find the task neither easy nor enjoyable.”
“On the contrary,” Post said. “You don’t know my lawyers. These particular legal talents will enjoy it. In the case of the Renfield Collection of Disney cartoon cells-”
Lynda pulled on my arm and kept pulling until we were through the doors of the Hearth Room. “I couldn’t stand anymore of that,” she explained.
“It wasn’t a lot of fun,” I agreed. “I guess we aren’t very good sleuths. We kind of made fools out of ourselves back there.”
“What do you mean, ‘kind of’’? We’ll never live this down. McCabe won’t let us.”
We started wandering through Muckerheide Center. I took Lynda’s hand and she didn’t jerk it back. I still wasn’t sure where our relationship was going, but at least it looked like we had one. So I wasn’t as depressed as I should have been about the fiasco we were leaving behind us.
“Maybe Post killed Matheson,” I said. “He was on Mac’s list. And look at how he benefits from this whole mess if he can use it to convince Chalmers to back legal action against the college.”
Lynda shook her head. “That’s too indirect and too uncertain to be a motive for murder.”
“I know,” I sighed as we passed the President’s Dining Room, “but it’s too bad. I’d love seeing that prig in prison gray.”
“What do you suppose Mac has up his sleeve?”
“Don’t ask me. As far as he’s concerned I’m just his idiot Watson. He hasn’t even explained to me the part about Matheson not stealing the books. That could be the solution to the murder for all I know.”
Without destination in mind we found ourselves heading aimlessly down the back stairs. The main level of Muckerheide looked as if it had been hit by a neutron bomb. The bookstore, the gallery, the main dining room were all dark. The only living being in sight was the Viking girl at the information desk and the only sound was the small TV she was watching, probably WWE wrestling.
As we kept walking down the stairs toward the next level, Lynda pulled the agenda for the colloquium out of her purse.
“This is practically a timetable of events leading up to the murder,” she said. “There must be a clue in here somewhere. It always worked for Hercule Poirot.”
“Max Cutter does not use timetables.”
She went on, ignoring me. “Obviously, the crucial time period is between the end of Kate’s talk - Matheson was still alive then - and when I found the body an hour or so later. Where was everybody then?”
I mentally worked my way through Mac’s list. “I don’t know about Pfannenstiel, Pinkwater, or Post - three P’s in a pod! - but we’re not looking at any of them as serious suspects. Molly Crocker and Noah Queensbury alibi each other. Renata Chalmers was getting dressed and putting her hair up in those fancy ringlets. Her husband supposedly was discussing some obscure point in a Sherlock Holmes story with Mac, but you’ve effectively questioned that.”