Medieval Murders (5 page)

“I shouldn’t. I’m already feeling smashed.”

“Then you should have another,” said Chesterton. He refilled Ray’s glass and pushed it across the glass-topped table. “Were you with Ellen when you came here?”

“No, but I met her soon after, and we quickly became a couple.”

“It’s none of my damn business, and you can tell me to go to hell, but why didn’t you two ever marry?”

“She was married when we met, not living with a him, but still married. He was some sort of crazy, a physicist. He had been fighting the divorce for several years. In fact, we did not move in together until the divorce was final. And I wanted to marry her. I asked her many times. Her answer was always the same. ‘Why should we ruin a good thing?’ Near the end I proposed again, and she said she had always been happy with the way things were. She said the important thing was how we treated one another, not whether we had a contract to be together.” Ray swirled the drink in his glass. “How about you and Stephanie? She’s not your first wife?”

Chesterton looked at Ray and laughed. “You know, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we weren’t both a little bit tight. Ah yes, I was married to someone before, nice woman, someone from graduate school. The first few years here she wrote her dissertation. She was very qualified, but she couldn’t get a job in my department because there was an anti-nepotism policy at the university at that time. She went into the job market and got a job at Johns Hopkins. We had an airplane marriage for a number of years, much longer than we should have. She eventually found someone else. And I had a few romances before Stephanie. She was a graduate student. We’ve had good years together. My cancer a few years back changed things….”

“But there is medicine for that….”

“Too much damage, too much damage from both the surgery and radiation therapy. They gave me my life back, but there was a price. Stephanie is a vital young woman. So we talked about it.” Chesterton finished his drink and set it back on the table. “To outsiders it might look sort of peculiar.”

Ray said nothing. He just sat there holding onto his glass, gazing into his yard and beyond.

“Are you two men ready for dinner yet?” asked Stephanie as she emerged from the twilight.

“Well, we’ve settled most of the major problems in the world,” Chesterton responded. “But if we don’t get some food soon, I think we may pass out.”

8

Wednesday morning arrived too early. Elkins was always awake by six, so he was startled when he looked at his watch and saw that it was almost 8:00 A.M. He laid in bed for several more minutes, placing the cool palm of his right hand on his throbbing forehead.

He stood in the shower longer than usual, and forced himself to eat a granola bar with his coffee before leaving the house.

Elkins settled into a waiting room chair in the Professional Arts Building adjacent to the Medical Center a few minutes before 9:00. He rummaged through the pile of magazines on the end table next to his seat . His choices were limited to dog-eared copies of
Time
,
Car and Driver
,
Sports Illustrated
,
Sailing
, and
Better Homes and Gardens
—all three or more months out of date.

He had just started reading an article on who would win the NBA championship—a championship that had been decided several months before—when the door to the inner office opened and Dr. Margrave came out to greet him. Elkins had met Margrave when Ellen was in the final stages of breast cancer. The doctor led the death and dying group at the medical center. After Ellen’s death, Elkins had also been in individual therapy with him for months.Margrave ushered him into his consultation room. There were two chairs in the room, one facing a window that looked out over the back of the medical center, the other off to the side facing the first. As Elkins settled into the chair facing the window he said, “Since I’ll be asking the questions this time, perhaps we should change chairs.”

“This one was built for me,” said Margrave with a smile. “It’s bigger.”

Before he met Margrave, Elkins had a stereotypical view of what a psychiatrist should look like: a male, small in frame, with delicate features, burning eyes, and perhaps a goatee. Margrave didn’t fit that stereotype; he was a big man, tall, broad shouldered, with red hair and freckles. Although in his late forties, his physique had changed little from his college basketball days.

What had impressed Elkins in both group and individual therapy was Margrave’s ability to ask questions that focused the discussion. Ray felt that it would have taken him months longer to work through his grief without Margrave’s help.

Margrave pointed to a thick manila folder on the table next to his chair. “After you called, I reviewed Bensen’s file.”

“How long was she a patient of yours?”

“She started with me about five years ago.” He paused and rummaged through the folder for a few moments, “ Yes, it was late September, five years ago.”

“It appears that we’re dealing with a suicide. Anything that you can tell me about her that doesn’t violate your professional ethics relative to....”

“I can answer questions relative to dates and times, I can’t discuss anything relative to what was said during our sessions. I’m checking with our ethicist and attorney as to what I can tell you.”

“I appreciate that fact. When did she enter therapy?”

“As I said, I started seeing her about five years ago. It was in late September. At that time her mother was dying. I can’t tell you much more than that.”

“How long was she in therapy with you?”

“Almost constantly. And that goes against one of my major beliefs. I don’t want patients to be dependent on me. Sheila was, and I wasn’t very successful at extricating myself.” Margrave stopped and looked at Elkins. “I’m fairly eclectic in my approach. I try to get people functioning quickly. Even though my training was Freudian, I don’t find that approach useful for most of my patients; I’ll use it occasionally if I’m convinced it’s the only thing that’s going to work. I ended up involving Sheila in analysis because I thought that if I could get her through her childhood, I might eventually get her to shed that baggage so we could focus on her current problems.”

Elkins broke a long silence, “And?”

“And that didn’t quite work. It wasn’t especially effective. That baggage was too important to her. She wouldn’t let go. She needed a fix of it every day to rationalize the way she dealt with the world.”

“Did you see her recently?”

“I was gone most of July and early August, so we didn’t have our usual appointments. I did see her for forty-five minutes last week and the week before.”

“Was she suicidal?”

“This is one of those odd things. If I were in her situation, I would be suicidal, but I don’t think that she was.”

“I’m not following,” said Elkins.

“Here’s a woman in her forties. She’s in her last year here, her second last year if you know what I mean. They gave her an additional year because her tenure appeals dragged into the next calendar year. She’s burned all her bridges professionally. She would have had a difficult time ever getting another job in her field, a field where there aren’t a lot of jobs to begin with.” He lifted both hands in the air and gestured with agitation, “Yet, she wasn’t upset. I was. She denied the reality of her situation. I was concerned because she wasn’t dealing with it and wasn’t making plans about what she was going to do next. She was denying that there was any problem.”

“Could she have suddenly come to that realization and decided the only way out was suicide?” asked Elkins.

“I’ve speculated on that. I mean, who’s to say for sure. But in the years that I’ve known her, she never let reality intervene very much. So the question I have to ask is, why now? Of course, these things are not unheard of. People deny their reality for years and then suddenly take some action. But a suicide doesn’t seem right. Killing yourself in front of your colleagues, all theatre. Showing them what they’ve driven you to. Sheila was a master at inflicting guilt, but with language, not action.” He stopped and looked at Ray. “Have you found a suicide note?”

“No, not yet.”

“If she were going to kill herself, I would have expected a carefully crafted letter where she identified all those she thought had hurt her, a letter in which she elaborated on every incident where she felt she had been snubbed or harmed. But I have to give you this caveat. I’ve learned in this business to expect the unexpected. However, her suicide just doesn’t feel right.” He gave Ray a long look, “Changing the subject, how are you doing?”

“I’m okay.”

“How okay?”

“Most of the time, during the day I’m fine. It’s just late at night and early in the morning when I get blue, especially in the morning. There are still lots of ghosts.”

Are you still taking the prescription…?”

“No, I stopped a couple of months ago. I don’t think I need pills.”

“Elkins, grieving takes time. Two or three years, sometimes more. Have you given any additional thought to moving to another house, a new environment? You might be able to leave some of the ghosts behind.”

“I’m comfortable there. It’s a beautiful house. Besides the thought of moving—I hate packing.” Ray was feeling uncomfortable.

“Have the place torched.” Margrave chuckled. “You can take the insurance money and buy new. No packing, no unpacking. You once talked about moving back to the area where you spent your childhood, northern Michigan as I remember it.”

“Yes, good memory. That’s a fantasy. I really love it there, but there are no jobs for someone with my credentials. Maybe when I retire.”

“You need some distance. What’s important to you? What will make you happy?”

“Let me go back to Benson,” said Ray. “From your professional view, a suicide is unlikely.”

“You’re forcing me to equivocate a bit, but it’s a prerogative of the professional. We’re almost as bad as lawyers. If she killed herself, I’m surprised. That said, this is a very imperfect science. You never know what someone might do.”

9

The heat of a late summer day was beginning to build as Elkins drove the freshly paved six-lane ribbon of concrete back into town toward central campus. He passed the several miles of new subs that had sprung up in recent years, circling the city like annual rings in a tree trunk. The fields of corn and soybeans had been pushed back, replaced with vinyl-clad two story homes on treeless lots. At the border of the original city limits, the highway abutted against the warren of roads and alleys that had been laid out more than a hundred years before. The once wide thoroughfares of the horse and buggy era were now the congested arteries of the densely populated town.

Ray parked in a near-empty faculty lot and stopped by a Starbucks for a large coffee and raspberry scone. The coffee and food seemed to help lessen the effects of the hangover. He started to go to his car, and then decided he could use the walk. The campus religious center was in an area of newer buildings on the east side of the central campus. Most of the buildings in the area had been erected in the 60s on land reclaimed from old homes and apartments, when enrollments exploded with the arrival of the baby boomers. Most of the steel framed, concrete block buildings were faced with thin tan bricks, aluminum, and glass, built in a style that started looking dated and dowdy a decade or two later.

The center was built in the style of its neighbors, streamlined gothic windows and doors suggested the edifice’s devotional intent. Ray stood for a moment in the cool, dull interior, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Then he followed the signs to the office of Father Robert Durning—known on campus as Father Bob—at the back of the building on the lower level. The door to the office was ajar, and Ray could hear Father Bob. “Listen, I’ve got an appointment in a few minutes. I’ll get back to you tomorrow with an answer, okay? God bless.”

Ray knocked and pushed the door open. Father Bob stood up and reached across the desk to shake hands. “Please,” he motioned to one of the two unoccupied chairs, “have a seat.”

Elkins settled into the chair, the same chair he had sat in when he and Father Bob had discussed the details of Ellen’s funeral. He was struck again by the intense blue of Father Bob’s eyes, the color heightened by his deep tan and his thick blond hair.

“You mentioned on the phone that you wanted to talk about Sheila Benson. Don’t know how much I can tell you. It’s strange, really. I had almost daily contact with the woman, but I can’t say I ever really learned much about her.”

“Well, just start by telling me about the daily contact,” said Ray.

“As you know, this is an ecumenical campus ministry. My office is here, but I conduct services at our campus chapel down the street. We don’t have an organized altar guild like a regular parish. Sheila filled that role. She came in every morning about six-thirty and helped me with the seven o’clock mass. This has been going on for years, long before I arrived. She hardly ever missed a day.”

“How long have you been here?”

“This is the start of my fourth year.”

“So, she was here on Monday morning?”

“Yes,” Father Bob answered. Elkins waited until it became clear Father Bob wasn’t going to say anything more.

“Monday, did you notice anything unusual?”

“No, she was here when I arrived and had taken care of everything. I’m not much of a morning person. I come in, do the Mass. It’s a ritual, it’s sort of automatic, and then I go down to the Brown Jug. After an hour of coffee, breakfast, and the paper, then I’m fully awake.”

“How did she get in?”

“She had her own key.” Father Bob slid back in his chair, pulling his athletic frame into a more erect posture.

“To the exterior door?”

“Well, actually I’ve never thought about it. She must have had keys for most of the doors. She would need several.”

“How many?”

“Let’s see. One for the chapel door, it’s kept locked during the night. Another for the vestry. And then she had a key for the storage cabinet where we keep the wine, communion wafers, chalices, and other valuables. Again, before I arrived, there were several instances of theft and vandalism, so we have this heavy steel cabinet to keep things safe. So that’s three keys.

“You gave her....”

“No, I didn’t give her anything. Sheila came with the Ministry. She had performed the same function for Father Timothy. He probably gave her the keys. If you need to know, I could find out where he is, and you could pursue it with him.”

“Monday, did you see her leave?”

“I don’t remember. Days blend. As I said, after the service I go down to the Jug.”

“How many people were at the service?”

“There are never many, as few as three or four, occasionally around ten. And I’m not sure about Monday. They’re mostly foreign students—usually from South America, Asia, and Africa—occasionally a staff or faculty member. Our kids don’t like to get up that early. But then, I didn’t either when I was a college boy,” he gave Elkins a wry smile.

“Can you remember anyone who was here Monday morning? Someone I might talk to. Are there any regulars?

“Monday morning was a bit of a disaster, and the subsequent events have made things even more of a blur.” He opened his hands.

“How so,” Elkins pushed, hearing impatience creeping into his voice as he moved forward in his chair.“I was out with a friend till very late. I’m afraid I had a very bad hangover,” he said sheepishly. “It’s been years since I’ve had a head like that.” He ran his right hand along his temple, pushing his carefully styled hair back. Elkins noted the early hints of a receding hairline.

“Let me return to Professor Bensen,” pressed Ray, locking his eyes on Father Bob’s. “Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Your relationship with her, how did you get along?”

“If truth be told, when it came to Sheila, I was of two minds. Here in the church she was wonderful. She was pleasant, helpful, and almost too willing to please. But when I would meet her in other settings she was a completely different person. Sheila was schizoid.” He stopped again and waited, letting the word hang.

“How so?”

“Let me give you an example,” his elbows now resting on the desk, he brought his hands together, interlacing his fingers in a prayer-like pose. “Earlier this year I was part of a panel discussing the role of women in the clergy—it was one of those colloquies put on by the Inter-faith Council—and Sheila, representing a women’s group, was also on the panel. It was dreadful. I don’t think that I, personally, have ever been so bitterly attacked.” He stopped and waited again for Elkins to pursue. Elkins was feeling annoyed by the game.

“Yes?”

“Her attack was really against the Catholic Church, but it was directed at me, and she expected me to answer for the Church.” Father Bob’s face reddened, and his voice rose in pitch. “Sheila was vicious, holding me accountable for two thousand years of history. It was all about the oppression of women by the Church, a church controlled by, to paraphrase her, a bunch of old white men committed to the subservience of women. And that was just her opening gambit. She got into the Church’s position on birth control as another weapon of oppression. The most difficult thing wasn’t her arguments, it was her anger. I’ve never confronted that kind of hostility. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Here,” he opened his hands, fingers forward, palms up, “she was the overly deferential helper, but on the outside she referred to us as a bunch of oppressive bastards.”

“Did you think she was capable of a violent act?”

“No. Well, I shouldn’t say that. After that confrontation it crossed my mind. In a society with so many guns floating around, there’s always that possibility.” He brought his hands together again.

“Do you know anything about her private life, who her friends were, was she in any relationships?”

“No, not really. All I know about her is hearsay,” Father Bob responded, his tone calming. “I don’t think she liked men, or at least had relationships with men. And I don’t know about her relationships with women.”

“Are you suggesting…?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. I know so little of Sheila beyond our relationship here. Anything I might say about her sexual orientation would only be conjecture on my part.” He gently rapped the knuckles of his right hand on the desk.

“Given your training and experience in counseling, would you speculate on why Professor Bensen might have taken her own life?”

As I’ve told you several times,” he offered in an irritated tone. “I didn’t really know her. Her death is a tragedy. If I thought that she was suicidal, I would have made every effort to reach out to her. In the past I’ve attempted to build a relationship with her, but she was inaccessible. Now I feel guilty that I didn’t do more, didn’t try harder, but I don’t think I could have ever reached her. Her problems were deeper than I had suspected.”

“Let me go over some old ground again. You don’t remember seeing her leave on Monday?”

“Everything sort of blends together.” He paused, looking at his fingertips as he bounced them together, his wrists now resting on the edge of the desk. “I think I was talking to a couple of worshipers after the Mass. I don’t remember seeing her go. This was the nature of our relationship. She came in and performed her duties, but we didn’t talk very often. That’s the way she wanted it.”

“What time would she have left?”

“7:25, 7:30 at the latest. It’s a very short service.”

Elkins slid one of his cards across the desk, “You know where to reach me. If you have any more thoughts about Monday, or anything else that you think might be useful, please give me a call.” He started to rise.

“Before you go. There’s something I don’t understand,” said Father Bob, his eyes on Elkins’s in a hard stare.

“What don’t you…?”

“Why are you going to all this trouble when the woman obviously killed herself?”

“This is an unexplained death,” answered Ray. “We investigate all such deaths to eliminate the possibility of foul play.”

“Is there any suggestion...?”

“No, not at this time,” said Ray, pushing himself out of his chair. He stopped at the door and held Father Bob in his gaze for a long moment, “Thank you for your help.”

Father Bob nodded, but said nothing more, turning his attention to a stack of papers on his desk.

Ray was glad to get out into the sun. Father Bob made him uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the memory of Ellen’s funeral. Father Bob had gone on and on about how glad Ellen was to be with Jesus. Ray wasn’t sure. Ellen was a fallen-away Catholic who, even at the end, showed no interest in renewing her faith. In her final weeks Father Bob visited her at the hospice. Ray had the impression that she found Bob annoying. She said he was, “too pretty” to be a priest. However, at the end Ellen had asked for a Catholic funeral. She said her mother would find comfort in that.