by Jane Langton
“Who is Hal Shaw?”
Homer bit his tongue. Should he get poor Hal in trouble? Should he tell Mukerji that Hal Shaw was a married man who happened to be emotionally entangled with Freddy Dubchick, although Freddy had loved Oliver Clare only a few weeks before? Should he tell him what Oliver had seen at Hampton Court? “Did she hear this person leave?”
“She did. But first she was gone for a couple of hours at her book club. They were reading”—Mukerji consulted his notes—“Sexuality and Health, by Lady Clarissa Montagu. The storekeeper is a member of the same book club, and she told me all about it.” Mukerji looked slyly at Homer. “I now know everything there is to know about women’s intimate affairs. Yes, Mrs. Jarvis heard him leave. She was just coming home from her book club, just approaching the house as he walked out. She claimed he did not see her.”
“Good lord.”
“So there could have been a fight, a life-and-death struggle, but she wasn’t there to hear it. Hal Shaw could have cut Oliver’s throat and seen him fall, then wiped his fingerprints off the knife and put it in Oliver’s hand, and pressed Oliver’s fingers into the blood. And then he could have cleaned himself up at Oliver’s sink and pulled on his parka and left Oliver’s room. And then he could have gone home and sudsed his clothes up and down to remove all traces of blood, and then I suppose he went to bed and woke up all sunny and smiling next morning.” Gopal Mukerji glowered at Homer. “Tell me about this man Hal Shaw.”
Reluctantly Homer began to tell what he knew about the zoologist from Kansas, without mentioning Hal’s infatuation with Freddy Dubchick. Before he was done, there was a scuffling in the hall.
“Sorry, sir,” gasped Detective Constable Ives, glancing in the door, disappearing again. His arms and legs were obviously in violent motion.
Mukerji was amused. “What have you got there, Ives? Bring it in.”
The scuffling stopped. “Well, go ahead then,” said Ives angrily.
At once someone catapulted into the room, a slight wiry man, looking disgruntled. “All I want to do is report a stolen object. You’d think I wanted to blow the place up.”
Mukerji lost his good humor. “Ives,” he said testily, “can’t you handle this?”
“No, he cannot,” insisted the wiry man. “What do you want me to do? Tell him my name’s Charley Firkin? Describe the stolen object? What bloody good does that do? He writes it down, stuffs it in a drawer! Do I get my rope back? I do not! I told my wife, I said, I’m going straight to the top, and she said, Charley, don’t be a fool. I mean, my wife and me, we don’t get along.”
“Rope?” said Homer. “Did you say rope?”
“What rope?” said Mukerji.
“My rope, that’s what rope. A hundred quid the bloody thing cost. On a place like that, you bloody well better have the best, that’s what I told my wife when she complained. She wanted a washing-up machine instead, she said. I was selfish, she said. I told you, we don’t get along.”
“What place?” said Homer eagerly, hardly daring to hope. “Where did you use the rope, Mr. Firkin?”
“Goddamn roof, that’s where. Glass whatchamacallit, pyramid. I spent two weeks up there in all weathers repairing the bloody glass. Had to use a blowtorch, melt the mastic, peel off the laminate, take out the broken pieces, nearly cut off my thumb, replace ’em, stick ’em on again, laminate ’em. Christ, I thought I’d never be done.”
Homer tried to keep his voice from shaking. “You don’t mean the Oxford Museum by any chance, do you, Mr. Firkin?”
“I don’t know what the hell it’s called. Parks Road. You know. Dinosaurs, ek cetera.”
Firkin was one of those people who think every image in their minds is clearly visible to everyone else. Homer glanced at Gopal Mukerji, who pushed Firkin a little further. “The rope,” he reminded him. “What’s this about your rope?”
“Well, how the hell you think I got up there? I got these ropes, I got this belt, I got these pulleys. Steeplejack, church steeples. I get up there, repair the flashing. Nearer to God, my wife says. Bloody fool.”
“Are you saying,” said Mukerji patiently, “you were employed to repair the glass roof of the Oxford University Museum, using a rope?”
“Well, Jesus, haven’t you been listening? And then some thief stole my best rope. I cleaned up everything, gathered up all my stuff, scrapers, laminating fluid—horrible smell it’s got, toxic, I bet, and they don’t give you no insurance, only for falls—blowtorch, ladders, so on and so forth. Left my best rope there coupla days. And when I come back, it’s gone.” Charley Firkin glowered balefully at Detective Inspector Mukerji. “I know who took it too, kid working on the gallery. I’m gonna bring charges, see if I don’t.”
He was talking about Daniel Tuck, guessed Homer, the workman with the golden voice. “Mr. Firkin, can you tell us when you found it missing?”
“Jesus, how would I know? You think a person remembers one day from another without they take notes?”
“Well, could you describe the rope to us, Mr. Firkin?” said Mukerji.
At once Firkin was specific and businesslike. “Special first-grade eleven-millimeter Dacron. Best there is. You think I’d trust my life to anything less, you got another think coming.”
“What—uh—color was the rope, Mr. Firkin?” said Homer.
“What color?” Firkin narrowed his eyes, instantly suspicious. “Why, you got my rope? You trying to trip me up? What color rope you got? I’ll tell you if it’s my rope or not.”
Mukerji glared at him. “Mr. Firkin, what—color—was—your—rope?”
Firkin turned sulky. “Well, jeez, it was yellow, wasn’t it? Special first-class eleven-millimeter Dacron, best there is, and if you’ve got it, I want it back.”
Mukerji sighed and nodded at Homer, who picked the bundle of rope out of the box of Oliver Clare’s possessions.
Firkin reached for it. “You’re damn right, that’s my rope. My God, it’s been here all this time? It’s me daily bread, this here rope. You’ve purloined property essential to my livelihood. And, Christ, what’s this? It’s been cut!” Wrathfully Firkin held out a slashed end. “Bloody hell! You’ll pay for this.”
“I assure you, Mr. Firkin, we didn’t touch your damn rope,” said Mukerji.
“Oh, sure, a likely story. It’s your goddamned fault. You owe me a hundred quid.”
CHAPTER 37
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
On the first wintry night of the Michaelmas term the growing canes on the edge of the narrow ditch beside Motorworld were frozen out, along with the water plantain and the alders hedging the little stream. By morning the banks of the creek had lost every trace of green. Dead leaves hung from gray twigs. Every one of the new seedlings was cut down by frost.
But during their few weeks of life the stolons under the burgeoning plants had spread in all directions. The new arrivals from the north were merely hunkering down.
Hal Shaw was asked to put in an appearance at St. Aldate’s in order to be fingerprinted. When he approached the front desk, Police Constable Gilly conducted him through the gate and into an office in the rear.
“You have a right to refuse,” said Gilly, looking at him questioningly, “unless you are charged with an offense.”
“Why should I refuse?” said Hal, his heart sinking. He held out his right hand.
“All right then.” Gilly took it and rolled his fingers on the ink pad one by one. “Now the left.”
Hal smiled wryly. He felt like someone in an old American film. The process seemed primitive and old-fashioned, as though police technicians had learned nothing new in thirty years.
He soon learned that they had. His fingerprints went by overnight dispatch to the main office at Kidlington, where they were compared electronically with those taken from the knife that had slit the throat of Oliver Clare.
N
ext morning Police Constable Gilly found Hal in the Zoology Office, where he was examining one of the mysterious jars of crabs in the company of William Dubchick.
“It’s obviously a decapod,” Hal said, following Gilly to the door, “possibly from the Beagle Channel,” and then he was gone. William was deeply distressed.
Once again Hal found himself under suspicion at St. Aldate’s. This time he faced Detective Inspector Mukerji. Wordlessly Mukerji held up the printout from Kidlington, so that Hal could see the patterns of lines, ovals and curlicues of two thumbprints side by side. One was smudged, but it was obviously identical to the other.
Still silent, Mukerji held up something else, an evidence bag. Through the clear plastic Hal could see a jackknife. “Well, yes, it looks just like mine,” said Hal. “Oh, God, it’s not the one—”
“I’m afraid it is the one,” said Mukerji, looking at him gravely. “This knife was found in the hand of Oliver Clare. It is certainly the knife that cut his throat. Underneath Clare’s fingerprints are many overlaid prints from the hand of someone else. As you can see, our computer identifies them as yours.”
Instinctively Hal looked at his right hand. “Of course. It’s my knife. I use it all the time. I’m a practicing zoologist.”
“Practicing?”
“I mean I’m out in the field. You know, poking at things, prying things apart, cutting up worms, fish, insects, inspecting the stomach contents of raptors. I wondered what I’d done with it.” Hal flushed. “No, of course that’s not true. I knew at once where I’d left it. I should have come forward.”
“Indeed you should have.” Mukerji’s eloquent eyes drove into Hal’s, piercing the pupils, illuminating every corner of his brain. “As has been said by the great Bengali poet Tagore, Do not keep to yourself the secret of your heart, my friend. What,” he went on softly, “was your knife doing in the hand of the dead man?”
Hal looked troubled. “I will explain.”
“Please do so. Sit down, Mr. Shaw.”
Hal looked unhappily at the chair, and sat. “I’m afraid it was carelessness on my part. I left it on the table by mistake.”
“By mistake. Please explain your mistake.”
Hal sighed. “You won’t believe me.” He reached into one of his trousers pockets, brought out a miniature plastic box, and dumped the contents on Mukerji’s desk.
It was a small spider. At once it began walking delicately toward Mukerji. “There, look,” said Hal, “did you see it hop? It’s a jumping spider.” He scooped it up and held it in his hand, and produced from the same pocket a folding lens. Reaching spider and lens to Mukerji, he said, “Here, take a look.”
Gamely Mukerji took the lens and inspected the spider on the palm of Hal’s hand. Its two principal eyes looked back at him hugely. Mukerji shuddered, and gave back the lens. “I suppose it pounces on its prey?”
“Of course. That’s why it has those big eyes. Web spiders don’t have eyes like that. Their vision is poor because they don’t really need to see well. They can feel the threads vibrate when something lands on the web, and then they just home in on it.”
Mukerji shook his head. “I still don’t see—”
“You will,” said Hal patiently. “I showed the spider to Oliver. He was going on and on about God’s plan and the perfect balance of nature, and he even brought up the rattlesnake.”
“The rattlesnake!”
“How its rattle is meant to warn its prey before it strikes, as though God were insisting on fair play.”
“And you debunked this sentimental idea, I suppose?”
“Of course. People are always bringing up the rattlesnake. Darwin disposed of it in his book. He said it rattles to alarm its enemies, not to warn them. He said his theory would be destroyed if any part of one species was there only for the good of another. So I told Oliver about that, and then I showed him my jumping spider.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious? As an example of the way the world really works. Its eyes are big to identify its prey. It jumps to capture it, then inserts its toxin to dissolve the contents of the body.” Hal looked anxious as he dropped the spider back in its box. “Under the circumstances perhaps I shouldn’t have shown it to him.”
Mukerji’s patience was running out. Exasperated, he said, “Mr. Shaw, you still have not explained the knife.”
“I’m getting to that. I took everything out of my pants pocket, trying to find this little folding lens—my change, my knife, my billfold. I set everything down on the table. Then later, when I put everything back, I forgot the knife.”
“Aaah, you forgot the knife.” Mukerji sounded intensely skeptical.
Afterward, discharged by Mukerji, at least for the moment, Hal went back to the museum and waited for Homer Kelly, buttonholing him as he came out of the lecture hall. Together they walked downstairs and drifted into the courtyard. They were alone on the floor. The soft echoing of the building was at its lowest level—it was only the basic underlying hum of the terrestrial wheels.
Homer went right to the point. “What in the hell were you doing on St. Barnabas Street in the middle of the night?”
Hal stared at Ichthyosaurus communis Conybeare, a swimming reptile flattened by some convulsion of the earth sixty-five million years back in time, when all of southern England had been covered by water. He nodded at the exhibit, which was a squashed mass of vertebrae and skewed ribs with a long reptilian skull at one end and a tail at the other. “Oliver wanted to talk about this.”
Homer’s mouth opened in surprise. “This?”
“Not just this. Evolution, natural selection, Darwin, cuckoos and cowbirds—”
Homer was bewildered. It was an Alice in Wonderland conversation. “Cowbirds?”
“Oh, you know. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, and then the big babies crowd out the smaller hatchlings. It’s an ugly story. Nobody likes cowbirds.”
“Oliver wanted to talk to you about that? He called you?”
“Yes. He asked me if I’d come to his place, and of course I said yes. I thought”—Hal hesitated—“I thought he wanted to talk about something else.”
“About Freddy Dubchick,” said Homer quietly. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of fact.
“Yes. I thought he’d talk like a clergyman and lecture me about a husband’s sacred duty to his wife, and then he’d quote the Bible about looking at a woman to lust after her. I dreaded it, but I went. And then it wasn’t like that at all. He wanted to talk about God.”
“God!” Homer was flabbergasted. God again! Oliver Clare’s final sermon had been about God. “Why did he want to talk to you about God?”
“He wanted to discuss with a scientist his idea that God had set evolution in motion. In his opinion, the transmutation of species went forward through the ages under God’s direction to an eventual culmination in us, Homo sapiens. Everything was providential, he said, even mass extinctions. Well, of course he didn’t invent the idea. It goes back way before Darwin. It’s called natural theology.” Hal looked at Homer and shook his head. “It’s the classic theologian’s way of trying to adapt his faith to modern science. You’d think all those ecclesiastics would come up with something new.”
“So what did you say in answer to that?”
“Well, I’m afraid I brought up some ugly facts about competing species—the nasty habits of langur monkeys and certain kinds of wasps.” Hal took his jumping spider out of his pocket and lifted the lid of its box. “Spiders jumping on their prey, owls disemboweling baby rabbits. That kind of thing.”
“Oh, God, baby rabbits.” Homer looked at the spider and flinched. He had a particular nightmare about rabbits. Once as a child he had heard a rabbit scream in the night, and the scream had pursued him all his life. The rabbit was screaming still. “So how did Oliver take it, your rebuttal?”
“Well, it bothered him, I could see that. I guess he’d been mulling it over all this time, and he’d r
eached some sort of crisis. He kept trying to bring God into it, and I kept pushing God out of it. We didn’t see eye to eye at all.”
Homer opened his mouth to say that in Oliver’s fragile state of mind, Hal might have had the sense to moderate the scariness of his universe. Then he thought better of it. Perhaps Hal was in a shaky condition himself.
A crowd of children thronged into the courtyard and gathered around the iguanodon. Their voices beat against the sculptured capitals and the polished columns and the walls of newly pointed brick, they surged against the glass roof above and the glass cases below, and ricocheted from the stony figures of Linnaeus and Hippocrates, Darwin and Watt. Hal had to speak up over the general roar.
“After a while he stopped responding to what I said, so I got up to go. And then, just before I left he said something very odd—I mean it was odd for him. He was barely whispering. I thought he was talking to himself, so I put on my coat and said goodbye.”
“What? What did he say?”
Hal closed his eyes, remembering. “Natural selection is no more godlike than gravitation. Let the strongest live and the weakest die.”
“Let the weakest die!”
“Afterward those words kept going through my head, because they rang a bell somehow. I knew I’d read them somewhere, and of course I had, in The Origin.”
“Darwin’s Origin of—”
“Yes, of course. He must have been reading it. At home I picked up my copy and leafed through it, and pretty soon I found the passages he was quoting. He didn’t have them exactly right, but they were near enough. I give him credit for plowing through the whole volume. It must have taken a long time. It’s not an easy read.”
Homer remembered the two books beside Oliver’s bed in his small quarters in Windrush Hall. Charles Darwin must have won out over C. S. Lewis at last.
The flood of children divided into rivers and streams. One tributary flowed into the aisle where Homer and Hal stood beside the ichthyosaur. They were small boys in rumpled gray uniforms. At one glance they absorbed the lesson of the imprisoned fossil from ages past—“Look, a shark!”—then poured across the courtyard to stare at the giant crab.