by Jane Langton
“Yes, because Charles Darwin didn’t know enough about the individual crustaceans to give them specific names. Well, for heaven’s sake, how could he? When there are so many species in every genus.”
“And he was still so young.”
William smiled at his colleague. Dr. Farfrae always jumped to his thought. It was a pleasure to work with her on something as important as this. “Dr. Farfrae,” he said impulsively, “do you think you could call me William from now on? I’d be very much relieved if you would.”
There was only one answer to this morsel of a question. Helen tried to sound matter-of-fact. “Only if you call me Helen.”
“Her name is Mrs.—John—Farfrae.”
They looked up in surprise, and then Helen turned her head away in outraged embarrassment. How grotesque! Her husband was standing angrily in the doorway. “I wonder, Mrs. Farfrae,” he said sarcastically, “if you are ever planning to come home?”
“That reminds me,” said William gracefully, “that I meant to leave some time ago.” Taking his coat from the back of a chair, he said, “Good night, Dr. Farfrae.” Nodding amiably at Helen’s abominable husband, he walked out into the corridor, turned sharply to the left, and was gone.
For a moment Helen sat with folded arms, staring at the photograph of Darwin, her pulse racing. Her husband too was silent, breathing heavily, listening as William’s footsteps pattered down the north stairwell and faded out of hearing.
Then Helen turned around savagely. “How could you, how could you?”
Johnny blustered back at her, “What do you mean, how could I? What the hell do you think you’re doing, spending every night with Dubchick?”
Livid with anger, Helen stood up. “How could you embarrass me like that, how could you embarrass Professor Dubchick? It was so vulgar, so cheap. I’m so ashamed.”
“Oh, you’re ashamed, are you?” ranted Johnny. It was obvious to Helen that he was in over his head. “The professor might be embarrassed, what a pity! You don’t give a shit for your husband, a mere post office clerk, going without his tea!”
The trick had always worked before. Johnny had only to mention his lowly position to force his wife into an apology. But not this time. “Well?” said Johnny. His voice shook as he struggled to control his shame. “Are you coming home with me or not?”
“No,” she said coldly. “I’m going to stay right here and work a little longer.”
“Well, goddamn you.” Nearly demented with self-loathing, Johnny waved his hand at everything in the room, the picture of Darwin, the bookshelves of Darwin editions, the jars of crabs, the books and papers, the computer, the typewriter, the copy machine, the gecko in its tank. “Shit,” he said in a delirium of bitterness and envy, “all this stuff, it’s just a pile of shit.”
He whirled around and blundered out into the corridor, running away from his wife. In his wretchedness he didn’t care where he was going. The place was black as pitch. In total darkness, head down, tears running down his cheeks, gasping and sobbing, he stumbled in the direction of the stairs. Blindly, carelessly, he ran out on the planking that had been laid over the scaffolding, although it shivered and echoed under his feet.
Helen sank back into her chair and listened to his pounding footsteps, her eyes closed in torment. Tears brimmed under her eyelids. Even in her fury she felt a wincing sympathy for Johnny’s misery, for his virulent jealousy of her Oxford degrees, for his refusal to take pride in his own perfectly good grammar school education. What did they matter, all the spidery filaments of her specialized knowledge? Not a damn, they didn’t matter a damn. Why didn’t he know that?
There was an appalling, shattering noise. She sprang to her feet.
CHAPTER 29
A strong desire to touch the beloved person is commonly felt.… Hence we long to clasp in our arms those whom we tenderly love.
Charles Darwin,
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
By some miracle Hal Shaw and Freddy Dubchick found themselves alone together in the Oxford Playhouse. Alone, that is, except for two hundred fifty-seven strangers who had also bought tickets to As You Like It. Their aloneness consisted in the absence of Oliver Clare and Margo Shaw.
Their seats were far apart, but Hal recognized Freddy’s small neat head from the back, and at intermission he pushed through fifty people moving up the aisle to intercept her. She saw him coming, and thrust through half a dozen bodies, her face glowing.
“I intend to kiss you,” he said, leaning over her, “sometime in the next thirty seconds. I mean, life is short, and we’ve got to get in as many kisses as possible.”
“Not here,” said Freddy, laughing. “Not in front of all these people.”
“I’ll tell you what we need,” said Hal impulsively. “You know that thing they have on the streets of Paris called a pissoir, so that men can relieve themselves in the open air? Well, what we need right now is a kissoir. It’s the same sort of thing, but for people in love. Oh, God, Freddy, I love you so.”
In the lobby of the theater people were buying drinks, standing in clots and clusters, talking cheerfully. Hal touched Freddy’s face and kissed her.
“Are you really eager to see the rest of the play?” breathed Freddy.
“No, no, I hate Shakespeare.” Hal put his arm around her and they went outside.
Beaumont Street was the usual Oxford mixture of seediness and grandeur. Across the street the Ashmolean stretched left and right. On the crest of the roof the white figure of Apollo was half-submerged in a low-hanging mist. Rain had been threatening all day. Trucks rumbled past. Hal remembered to look to his right before hurrying Freddy across.
They walked all the way to Norham Road. On the way it began to mizzle with rain, and Freddy popped up her umbrella. “Our kissoir,” she said, and under its skimpy protection they clung together and walked and kissed. They didn’t say anything. There was nothing that needed to be said. Somewhere in the world there were a couple of enormous obstacles in the shape of Margo Shaw and Oliver Clare, but right now under this amorous umbrella they were totally irrelevant. It would be vulgar to mention them.
There were lighted windows in Freddy’s house. “Oh, dear,” she said, “my father’s home. I thought he was working late.” She steered Hal into the side garden, and they sat down on a damp wooden bench. Hal held the umbrella.
Indoors, Freddy’s dog jumped up on a windowsill and whimpered. William rose from his chair and looked out. He could see the two figures on the bench, and in spite of the umbrella he recognized the young man who was embracing his daughter so passionately. He didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry.
CHAPTER 30
What a trifling difference must determine which shall survive and which perish!
Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray
John Farfrae lay at the bottom of the south staircase for six hours after his wife rose from beside him and moved away. In the first hour the blood drained from the right side of his body, which was lying uppermost, and pooled in the vessels of the left, which lay below. While Helen sat brooding on a chair beside the stone image of Isaac Newton, her husband’s body heat seeped through his skin and mingled with the surrounding air. By the fourth hour, the muscles of his face began to stiffen. In the fifth and sixth, his arms and fingers locked in rigor mortis.
In death John Farfrae’s sprawling posture was exactly like that of Bobby Fenwick. His head was skewed sideways at the same impossible angle.
“You’re joking,” said Homer to Edward Pound. “It’s not another broken neck?”
“I’m afraid so. Mr. Farfrae seems to have lost his way in the dark, and somehow he got out on the boards they laid over the stairs and he fell from the end.”
“My God.” Stricken, Homer stared at Pound, who responded with a sorrowful shake of the head.
“Dr. Kelly?” Someone was calling from the end of the arcaded corridor. It was Detective Inspector Mukerji, examining the scaffolding on the south st
aircase.
Homer went to him at once, and for a doleful moment they looked at each other and said nothing. Then Homer glanced up at the wooden planks that had provided a platform for the workmen, Ben Cobble and Dan Tuck. “He fell from up there?”
Mukerji shrugged. “One assumes so. They have taken him to the Radcliffe, but he is very, very dead.”
“Well, Christ, how did it happen? Couldn’t he see where he was going? What about the sawhorses that were here yesterday?”
“Sawhorses?” Mukerji looked puzzled. “Ah, I see,” he said, making a sawing gesture with his arm, “it is an American expression. You mean the trestles. Yes, the men who were working here insist they left one at the top and one at the bottom.”
“Then someone must have removed them.” Homer looked up at the landing. Within the glass-enclosed hive attached to the high south window he could see the bees moving around slowly. “You don’t suppose the bees were after him? I remember a case—”
“No, no, the bees cannot get into the museum. They can only go out.” Mukerji grinned at Homer. “I confess, I asked the same stupid question.”
“Well, forgive me for putting in my two cents,” said Homer, “but it strikes me that if these two deaths were deliberate homicides, they were the work of an amateur. A professional killer would have used a gun, or a knife, or—oh, I don’t know—poison or something. An amateur, on the other hand—well, take me, for instance—if I wanted to kill somebody, I’d take him to the edge of a cliff and give him a little push. Easy as pie. No weapons lying around, no sticky jars of cyanide to be found later in a drawer.”
Mukerji had a dazzling smile. His cheeks were ripe pieces of fruit. “You are a man after my own heart, Dr. Kelly. I would do precisely the same. In fact, I sometimes imagine inviting a certain superior officer to a picnic on some rocky promontory above the sea. Quite often I imagine it.” Mukerji stopped smiling, and turned solemn. “So if we take the classic triad of weapon, motive and opportunity, we can in this case eliminate the weapon. But we must still consider the motive. We seek to know the meaning as the moon would fathom the sea. Forgive me, I cannot help myself, it is the poet Tagore. Do you know, Dr. Kelly, why anyone would want to kill Mr. John Farfrae?”
“Homer, please call me Homer.”
Mukerji shook his head, bemused. “Americans, they are so informal. What would my constables think if they heard me addressed as Gopal? They would lose all respect.” He threw back his handsome head and laughed. “Soon they would be slapping me on the back and sending me out for coffee.” He sobered once again and shook Homer’s hand. “We will chance it. Thank you, Homer. Call me Gopal. My question remains. Why would anyone want to kill this man Farfrae?”
“All I know about him,” said Homer, “is that he browbeat his wife. Have you talked to her? Have you spoken to Dr. Farfrae?”
“Oh, yes. It was she who found him. She called us, although she waited for several hours before doing so. She was very frank. She said she and her husband had been quarreling in her office on the upper floor, and then in a fit of anger he slammed out of the room and hurried away while she remained in the office. The next thing she heard was the crash. She ran to him at once, feeling her way down the stairs past the scaffolding, and found him lying dead at the bottom.” Mukerji shrugged. “Perhaps the reason she did not call us immediately was that he was not yet quite dead. She delayed, thus preventing any lifesaving care. Who knows?” Mukerji looked keenly at Homer. “You will remember that it was Dr. Farfrae who saw a miraculous vision on the roof when the night watchman fell to his death.”
“Yes, of course.”
“It is a very strange story. And on that occasion also she did not inform us right away.”
They climbed the stairs in single file, edging past the scaffolding. At the top they found one of Mukerji’s detective constables interviewing Daniel Tuck.
Tuck turned at once to Homer in appeal. “I’ll swear on oath, we left them barriers all the way across, top and bottom, top and bottom, right, Professor? You saw them, remember?”
Once again he sounded like a choir of angels and looked remarkably like—which one would it be? This time Homer settled on the colobus monkey he had seen in the zoo, a little primate with a wild spray of hair sprouting from its forehead.
“Of course I remember.”
“And anyway, why couldn’t he see where he was going? They leave the lights on, don’t they? Every night they leave them on, so how the bloody hell?”
William Dubchick appeared beside them, walking down the gallery corridor from the Zoology Office. “No,” he said solemnly, “the lights were not on. It was completely dark. I was here with Dr. Farfrae last night. When I left, I used the other staircase, but I had to grope for the railing to keep from missing my footing.”
“Ah,” said Mukerji, “Professor Dubchick! Is it not unusual, Professor, for the lights to be turned off at night?”
“Indeed it is. I don’t remember ever seeing them turned off before. In fact I have never seen the museum so black. It was a rainy night, which increased the darkness.”
Homer watched as the polite exchange continued. Detective Constable Ives flipped a page in his notebook and scribbled furiously. Daniel Tuck picked up his trowel with a conspicuous gesture of getting back to work.
“You were here last night, then, Professor,” said Mukerji, “in the company of Mr. Farfrae and his wife?”
“Yes, I was. When I left at about nine o’clock, Dr. Farfrae and her husband were still in the office. I don’t know how much later it was that he fell.”
“Were they arguing, husband and wife, when you left?”
William paused before saying, “I suppose you could call it that. Mr. Farfrae seemed—not altogether himself.”
“And Mrs. Farfrae?”
“Dr. Farfrae. I don’t know. I left only a moment after he came in.”
Detective Inspector Mukerji was serenely relentless. “Did you remove the barrier in front of this staircase, Professor Dubchick?”
“No,” said William quietly. “I knew this stairway was blocked, so I went on around the gallery to the stairs on the other side.”
“In the dark?”
“Yes, in the dark.”
“It was not you who turned off the lights in the courtyard?”
“No. My key will open the porter’s door—that’s where the switches are—but I didn’t use it. I went straight home.”
“Can anyone corroborate your presence at home? Your time of arrival?”
“I doubt that anyone noticed when I got home. But my daughter—” William stopped. Freddy must have known he was at home, or she wouldn’t have sat outdoors in the rain to make love to Hal Shaw. But that was Freddy’s business. He would not get her into it.
“Your daughter was in the house, was she?”
William spoke carefully. “No, she was not in the house. She came in a good while later, about midnight.” It was almost the truth. Freddy had been at home, but not in it.
Homer wondered how Mukerji was going to bring up with William the question of a motive for the murder of John Farfrae. Would he suggest that William might have killed Farfrae in order to free Helen from her abusive spouse? But to Homer’s surprise, the questioning was over.
William walked heavily back to his office. Mukerji excused himself and led Detective Constable Ives down the stairs, keeping to the left to avoid the scaffolding. Homer walked around the east side of the gallery and entered the lecture hall, mulling the problem over in his mind. Perhaps it had never occurred to Mukerji that anyone as old as William could commit a crime of passion. Nor that Helen Farfrae, a woman in her fifties, was worth killing for. Mukerji himself must be no older than thirty. Homer, who was considerably older than that, saw things differently. He found Helen a very attractive woman.
“It’s about time you showed up,” said Tuck. “Where you been?”
“It’s not my fault,” said Charley Firkin, heaving himself over the sawhorse at the botto
m of the stairs. “I been tracking down my rope.”
“Your rope? What rope?”
“Oh, aye, what rope? The rope you stole, that’s what rope. Listen, mate, what I want to know is, who the bloody hell stole my best rope?”
Tuck exploded. “Oh, right. First they accuse us of manslaughter, and now it’s robbery. God damn you, I didn’t steal your bleeding rope.”
“I came down here,” explained Charley Firkin, who was a professional window cleaner and steeplejack, “with some of my stuff. You know, after I finished risking life and limb on that bloody roof. Only I left some of it behind. God, I was worn out, bloody exhausted. Came back to get it, few days later, fucking thing’s been stolen. The whole bloody thing, rope and pulleys. Bloody rope cost a fortune. Best on the market. How much you think it cost me? Go ahead, guess. Well, fuck you, I’ll tell you how much it cost me. A hundred quid, that’s what it cost me. So where the hell is it?”
“Well, my God, man,” said Tuck angrily, “I haven’t got your bloody rope. What would I do with a rope?”
“You’d sell it, stands to reason. I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Get stuffed.”
The argument died out as Director Jamison came along the corridor. He too wanted to know how anyone could have blundered out onto the scaffolding. “How did it happen that the lights were out? The porter assures me he left them on at closing time.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Ben Cobble.
“I been sick,” said Charley Firkin. “I only just come back to work.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake,” said Tuck. He picked up the barrier blocking the top of the stairs and held it off the floor with a massive show of strength. “I put this here trestle right on this spot last night before I left. Me personally. I personally placed this trestle right here to block the stairs, and then I personally put another one at the bottom.” Tuck lifted the trestle higher, and dropped it with a mighty slam.