Murder at the Library of Congress - Margaret Truman [36]
“Who are they interviewing?”
“Everybody who knew Michele, I suppose. That takes in almost the entire professional staff. The press are being corralled in the theater. There’s lots of them.”
“The TV report last night said he’d been killed by a blow to the head. Do they have the weapon?”
“This is only rumor, but I was told it was a weight of a kind used by our conservation and preservation people.”
“A weight?”
“Yes, pieces of Linotype lead that are melted into bricks and covered with cloth. They’ve used them for ages to hold down curled pages, maps, that sort of thing.”
“I saw one of those on Paul’s desk. He had a bunch of papers under it.”
“Makes a great paperweight.” She picked up such an object from her own desk and handed it to Annabel, who weighed it in her hand.
“But not a perfect weapon. You’d have to really be struck by this for it to kill you. An impetuous act,” Annabel said.
“What?”
“If a lead brick like this was the murder weapon, the murderer picked it up from Michele’s desk because it was handy. Not premeditated.”
“An argument that got out of hand?”
“Possibly. Mac was telling me this morning about another scandal in this division. Someone … a researcher eight or ten years ago? A disappearance or a murder?”
“John Bitteman. He wasn’t murdered, but he was a link, possibly, to what’s been going on.”
“No. How?”
“John was probably the first one here really to start digging into the Las Casas story. It was before my time; I’ve only been here six years. He was obsessed with Las Casas and the idea of his diaries.”
“But you say he wasn’t murdered. I thought—”
“They don’t know what happened to him. He disappeared. The police labeled it suspicious, but he was never found. As I recall, there was some evidence of foul play. His apartment had been ransacked, and there was blood, I believe. But without a body, I suppose they couldn’t officially label it murder.”
“And he’s never been found.”
“As far as I know. Some of the old-timers joke that the Hispanic stacks are haunted by Bitteman.” She laughed. “There isn’t an official building in Washington that isn’t haunted by one ghost or another, including this one. Bitteman isn’t the only supposed ghost around here. You’ve heard about the miserly librarian who hid all his life’s savings in various books in the collection when LC was housed in the Capitol?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
They were interrupted by Dolores Marwede.
“Hi,” Annabel said as the librarian stepped into the office.
“Hello.” Dolores closed the door and leaned against a bookcase. “This is unreal,” she said. “You discovered the body, Annabel?”
“I’m afraid so. Have the police spoken with you yet?”
“No, but I was told to be available this morning. You?”
“Last night. Briefly. They’ll want more. I’m on my way now to Manuscripts to look at the Book of Privileges again.”
“The show must go on.”
“I was telling Annabel about our ghosts, Dolores.”
“Oh?”
“Our miserly poltergeist who hid his life savings in the stacks.” To Annabel: “Dolores is our resident expert on library ghosts.”
Dolores said without smiling, “He didn’t trust banks and hid his cash in books. Poor fellow died of a stroke before he could tell anyone where he’d put the money. When they moved the collection into this building, workers found more than six thousand dollars in old, dusty volumes. People swear they hear fingers desperately flipping through books in the middle of the night.”
“Sad.”
“And, of course, there’s Houdini,” said Consuela.
“The magician?” Annabel said.
“None other. He bequeathed most of his collection of books on psychic phenomena, spiritualism, magic, and witchcraft to us, along with a lot of the mechanical devices he used in his magic shows. We have a reference librarian who says Houdini still uses some of those devices at odd hours.”
“Maybe Houdini killed Paul by popular demand,” Annabel said, quickly uncomfortable with her uncharacteristic flippancy.
There was a knock