Dead as a Dodo

by Jane Langton

  “Tell me,” said Homer, “do you think you convinced him? I mean, did you persuade him to your point of view?”

  Hal looked at him uneasily. “You know, Homer, usually that sort of disagreement doesn’t get you anywhere. Neither side will budge from its own preconceptions. But this time—well, I don’t know. Afterward I was sorry I’d been so dogmatic.”

  “Do you think you joggled his faith?”

  “I don’t know. He looked so melancholy, so sort of—”

  “Bleak?” supplied Homer.

  “That’s right. Bleak. He looked very bleak indeed.”

  CHAPTER 38

  The Red Queen shook her head. “You may call it ‘nonsense’ if you like,” she said, “but I’ve heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!”

  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  To Mary Kelly’s delight, Helen Farfrae called her to suggest another tour of Oxford’s wonders. She sounded relaxed and normal.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mary. “That would be wonderful.”

  Therefore, while Homer Kelly and Hal Shaw stood talking in front of Ichthyosaurus communis in the Oxford University Museum, Helen and Mary made their way along Walton Street, heading for the Radcliffe Observatory. But as they crossed Little Clarendon, Mary took Helen’s arm. “That woman across the street, coming out of that bed-and-breakfast place, isn’t that Mrs. Jarvis? Oliver Clare’s landlady? I saw her on television. The whole country saw her on television.”

  They stopped and watched Mrs. Jarvis stride majestically away in the direction of St. Barnabas Street. Mary grinned at Helen. “I’m going to poke and pry. We’re looking for a room, aren’t we? Two visiting scholars.”

  “Fine with me,” said Helen gamely.

  Mary rang the bell of the door from which Mrs. Jarvis had just emerged.

  There was a long pause, until at last a portly woman opened the door a few inches and put her head out. “Looking for a room, are you? Sorry, we’re full up.”

  “Oh, not for now,” said Mary quickly. “Two months from now.”

  “Oh, well then, come in.” The door was opened wide. “I’m Mrs. Lucky. And you’re? Very good, come in, Ms. Kelly, Ms. Farfrae. As I was just saying to my friend Mrs. Jarvis, I said to her, we’ll be full up until the New Year, and then things will fall off, but well now, look at this.” Mrs. Lucky swept open her guest book. “I’m getting quite a houseful for January.”

  “Did you say Mrs. Jarvis?” said Mary boldly. “Is that the Mrs. Jarvis we saw on television? The one who owns the house where—”

  “Where that awful murder took place? It is indeed.” Mrs. Lucky led the way down the narrow hall, her wide hips nearly brushing the walls. “Now, this room here is a nice one. View of the garden.”

  “Where’s the loo?” said Helen, wise in the ways of finding accommodations for visiting zoologists.

  “Just up the landing.” Mrs. Lucky wallowed ahead of them up the stairs, and displayed the bathroom. “Oh, wasn’t it dreadful. It made my friend Mrs. Jarvis quite sick, all that blood everywhere.”

  Mary sensed that she was eager to tell all, to partake of the glamour surrounding her friend, the television star. “She told you all about it, I suppose? We’re so interested. I mean, we read all about it in the paper, but it didn’t say much.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Helen. “Was it suicide, do you think?”

  Mrs. Lucky led them to the top of the stairs and said dramatically, “As to that, Mrs. Jarvis has her own opinions.” She opened another door. “Now, this is one of my nicest rooms. Single bed, with a view of the street.” She sat down comfortably on the bed, with a sighing of the mattress and a creak from the springs. “Well, of course, I can tell you all about it.”

  Mary was delighted. It must have been like this in the time of the Odyssey. Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story. The room was very small with Mrs. Lucky in it. Mary found a plastic chair, and Helen sat down beside Mrs. Lucky on the bed.

  “Because she told me,” went on Mrs. Lucky, “she said there was a couple of people who could have cut that young man’s throat, that poor young clergyman! Imagine that! What’s the world coming to, when a man of God isn’t safe from being cut down in his prime? She told me, she said, ‘Isabel, I hope never to see such a sight again in my whole entire life.’ She said—”

  “Wait,” said Mary, “did you say two people might have killed Oliver Clare?”

  She glanced meaningfully at Helen, who loyally chimed in, “But the paper only mentioned one, Mrs. Lucky, somebody called Hal.”

  “Oh, the paper.” Mrs. Lucky threw up one arm in rejection of the Oxford Mail, bouncing Helen up and down on the bed. “My friend Mrs. Jarvis doesn’t tell them everything.” I, however, am her intimate friend. She tells me all.

  Mary leaned forward in her plastic chair. “But who was the other one? Can you tell us, Mrs. Lucky? Because we’re just so interested in this case.”

  “Oh, yes, we are,” breathed Helen, rising and falling on the bed.

  Mrs. Lucky laughed with satisfaction. Glorying in her role, she too leaned forward until her enormous bosom lay in her lap. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “The other one was a young thing, cute as a button. She came late, it must have been two in the morning, long after Dorothy returned from her book club, but Dorothy sleeps light as a cat, and she heard her unlock the door—the girl had a key of her own!” Mrs. Lucky widened her eyes. “You know what that means. And a clergyman, too, with his collar turned round. Can you imagine, a pretty young girl in the street in the middle of the night? But Dorothy could tell by the way the girl talked that she was uppah clawss.” Mrs. Lucky made a funny face and tossed her hand with a silly flourish. “Well, I don’t know, do you? Society is as society does, that’s what I think.”

  Mary said softly, “What did she look like, did Mrs. Jarvis say?”

  Mrs. Lucky bounced up and down in her excitement. “Dark hair, cut short all round, trim little figure. Dorothy got a good look at her. She was like this, Dorothy said.” Mrs. Lucky’s vast amiable face drooped in a facsimile of Mrs. Jarvis’s imitation of Freddy Dubchick’s melancholy expression.

  Helen was seasick. Gripping the edge of the bed, she said, “Could Mrs. Jarvis hear them talking?”

  “Oh, no, I mean she couldn’t make out what they were saying, just their voices going on and on.”

  “You’re sure of that, Mrs. Lucky?” said Mary. “This was the middle of the night, after the man called Hal came and went away again?”

  Mrs. Lucky nodded wisely. “Oh, yes, he’d been gone for two hours when the girl came.”

  Mary was bewildered. “But Mrs. Jarvis never told all this to the police, did she?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Jarvis keeps her own counsel,” said Mrs. Lucky, shaking her head in admiration of the shrewd wisdom of her friend.

  “What about afterwards?” said Helen. “Could she hear anything after this girl left? To show that Oliver Clare was still alive?”

  “Not a whisper, not a sound.” The tale was ended, the story was complete. Call off this battle now, or Zeus who views the wide world may be angry.

  Recollecting that she was the proprietor of a commercial establishment, Mrs. Lucky heaved herself off the bed, bounced Helen to her feet, and got back to business. “Now, this room here is ten pounds a day, with breakfast in the dining room. Would you like to see the room opposite?”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Lucky,” said Mary. “We’ve seen enough. As soon as we know the exact date of our stay, we’ll call and let you know.”

  CHAPTER 39

  “Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

  … Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know. Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Freddy Dubchick was back. She and her father had been staying with his sister in
Cornwall, in St. Ives, in a house overlooking the ocean.

  William had used the time profitably, wandering along the shore looking for crustaceans. One never knew when something interesting might wash up with the tide. The mid-November days were cool but pleasant. The water lapping over his bare feet was not too cold.

  As for Freddy, she had been coddled by her Aunt Augusta. She had slept late every morning and spent every afternoon trying to catch up on the reading assigned by her tutor. She had tried not to think about Oliver Clare lying on the floor with his throat cut, but the image kept rising up through the page at which she was staring, beginning as a small stain in the middle of a paragraph, then wicking out and blotting the whole page. She would close the book and cry, and Aunt Augusta would hurry in with comforting endearments and a cup of chocolate.

  Freddy was better now. She opened the door of the house on Norham Road and smiled wanly at Mary Kelly.

  “I was hoping to find you at home,” said Mary. “May I talk to you? I’ve been speaking with a friend of Oliver’s landlady, Mrs. Jarvis, just this morning, and I’d like to ask you—”

  “Of course, Mrs. Kelly. Come in.” To Freddy, Mary Kelly looked like another Aunt Augusta. “I was afraid you were that policeman, but I suppose he doesn’t know we’re back. I’m really glad to see you.”

  She brought Mary into the sitting room, with its high carved mantel and family photographs, its worn oriental rugs and sagging upholstered chairs.

  “I just wondered—” said Mary, plunging in at once without preamble, fearing to come up against a polite barrier of resistance.

  But Freddy was eager to talk. “Mrs. Jarvis saw me, didn’t she? I saw her, of course, looking up at me from the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Nosy landlady,” suggested Mary.

  “Well, it’s her own house.”

  “It was awfully late, wasn’t it? Can you tell me why you were there?”

  Freddy hesitated, then looked bravely at Mary and said, “It was Hal. He called me. It was really late, and I was sound asleep. I could tell he was calling from a pay phone, because somebody broke in to ask for another ten p. He said Oliver was in a bad way, and perhaps I should do something to cheer him up.”

  “Hal! Hal Shaw? Did he tell you he had just been there?”

  “No. I didn’t ask him. He just said he thought I’d better talk to Oliver.” Freddy’s eyes brimmed. “It was sweet of him, really, because Oliver was—” Freddy couldn’t finish, but Mary knew what she meant: Oliver was his rival. They both loved me. Freddy pulled herself together and went on. “When he hung up, I decided I should talk to Oliver in person instead of just calling him. So I got up very quietly and crept out of the house so as not to wake my father, and biked over to St. Barnabas Street.”

  “In the middle of the night? It’s a long way,” murmured Mary.

  “Not if you know Oxford as well as I do. After all, I’ve lived here all my life. It was more or less a straight line. I mean, I’d done it before. Oliver gave me a key, so I could get in without—um—disturbing Mrs. Jarvis.”

  Mary smiled. “What did you find when you got there? Was he despondent?”

  Freddy shook her head. “Not despondent exactly. It was so strange. For weeks he had been pressuring me, begging me to give him my answer. You know, about whether I would marry him or not. He couldn’t seem to understand that I just wasn’t ready to say yes or no. So this time I told him I was just too mixed up. I was in love with two people at once.” Freddy paused, looking thoughtful. “The funny thing was, he didn’t seem to care. It occurred to me that he hadn’t asked me for my answer for some time. And there’s something else.” Freddy leaned forward eagerly, her small face tense. “Something very strange. I haven’t told anybody about it, not even my father. It was in the cathedral, one day that last week.”

  “Which week?”

  “The week before Oliver died, I forget which day it was. A couple of paleontologists were visiting the museum, and Father asked me to show them around Oxford. So there we were in the cathedral, and I saw—”

  “The cathedral?”

  “At my college, Christ Church Cathedral. It’s where the bishop is. It’s the cathedral for the diocese of Oxford. Well, of course, first I showed them the St. Frideswide window in the Latin Chapel, and then we walked down the north aisle on our way out and stood for a minute looking back. And then I saw someone approaching the sanctuary, far away at the east end. It was Oliver.” Freddy stared at the carved heraldic shield over the mantel, but she was obviously seeing something else.

  “I remember now,” said Mary. “One of his parishioners told us he was an important person in the cathedral.”

  “Oh, no, he wasn’t important,” said Freddy, shaking her head. “He wanted to be important, he wanted the bishop to notice him. But I don’t think the bishop paid much attention. Anyway”—Freddy sat up straighter in her chair and looked at Mary—“we saw him there, and I wasn’t surprised, knowing how much he loved the cathedral. And I wasn’t surprised when he fell on his knees in front of the bishop’s throne.”

  “The bishop’s throne?”

  “The bishop sits on this big throne near the communion table. And then, do you know what Oliver did? He gave a sort of muffled cry, and then he stood up and tried to push it over.”

  Mary gasped. “He tried to push over the bishop’s throne?” Freddy threw out her arms, outlining a huge object in the air. “It must weigh tons, but he shoved it and dragged it, and of course we were watching from the other end of the nave, and I was horrified to see him so desperate. Finally he managed to tip it sideways, but it was too heavy, and it rocked back and came down with a crash, and then Oliver ran into the chapel that’s there at one side, and I didn’t know what to do, but I had these friends of Father’s to take care of, so we went away.”

  Mary stared at her, astonished. “Did you ask him about it afterward?”

  “I didn’t see him again until—until the night of his death. And then I didn’t have the courage to tell him I’d seen him in the cathedral. And I didn’t ask why he tried to knock over the bishop’s throne. Oh, of course I talked and talked, mostly about myself and my feelings, but Oliver didn’t seem to be listening. He kept looking out of the window, only there was nothing to see out there but the moon. Excuse me, I’ll make coffee.”

  Freddy jumped out of her chair and disappeared. Mary wondered if she had innocently spun this version of events out of nothing, this impression that Oliver had been indifferent, that he hadn’t cared what her answer was going to be. Perhaps her story was an unconscious protective device, avoiding responsibility for his death.

  Mary stood up and walked across the room to look at the pictures on the mantelpiece. There was a black-and-white studio portrait of a pretty woman in a dress from the nineteen-seventies, probably Freddy’s mother. Beside it stood a silver-framed color photograph of little Freddy in her father’s lap. William’s whiskers were yellow as straw. And here was an older Freddy dressed as Nanki-poo in a class play. At the end of the row was a snapshot of William sitting on the branch of a tree with a tiny primate in his arms, grinning down at the photographer. Mary thought again of the strange climber on the glass roof of the museum. She tried to imagine William scrambling up the steep slope in the dark, and couldn’t do it.

  Freddy came hurrying in again. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything yummy to go with the coffee,” she said, setting down the tray. “Just dry biscuits. You call them something else. I forget.”

  “Crackers. They’re fine.”

  Sitting down again, Freddy needed no encouragement to carry on. “So after a while, I saw that he wasn’t paying much attention to me and I was in the way. I thought he probably just wanted to go back to bed. So I left. And you know, it’s terrible to say this, but I felt better. Because if it wasn’t me he was grieving for, I didn’t need to feel so guilty.”

  Wordless, afraid to interrupt, Mary sipped her coffee.

  “Of course when I heard n
ext morning that he was dead, everything changed. I saw that I had failed him, that I had left him just when he needed a friend more than anything. I couldn’t bear it. I went running back. Oh!” Freddy’s composure vanished. Tears ran down her face. She mopped at her cheeks with her napkin.

  “Who told you what had happened?”

  “It was on the morning news,” said Freddy, sobbing.

  “So it was.” Mary waited, wanting to put her arms around her, deciding against it.

  Freddy recovered. “I’m sorry.”

  Then Mary thought of a way to comfort her. “What you’ve just said about Hal should get him out of trouble. It’s been touch and go. Detective Inspector Mukerji found his fingerprints on the knife that killed Oliver.”

  “Oh!” said Freddy, her eyes round and frightened.

  “But you saw Oliver after Hal left him. And he was alive and well.”

  “Oh, yes, he was,” exclaimed Freddy. “That is, he was alive. I don’t know about well.”

  Mary leaned forward and looked at her earnestly. “Tell me, Freddy, do you think Oliver could have killed himself?”

  “What else can I think? He was so odd with me. He seemed almost unaware that I was there at all. He seemed so hopeless.” Freddy sought for the right word. “So bleak. He kept looking out of the window.”

  “Bleak?” repeated Mary softly. According to Homer, Hal had used the same word. Surely it was grammatically wrong. Situations were bleak, landscapes were bleak, but people were something else—wretched? gloomy? depressed?

  But bleak was the word Freddy wanted. “That’s right. He was just so bleak.”

  Mary changed the subject to something more comfortable. “How did you two meet, you and Oliver?”

  Freddy’s taut face softened. “Oh, it was last winter in Switzerland, at Zermatt. There was this whole group of people, and one of them was Oliver. He told me he lived in Oxford. And he sort of took me under his wing and taught me the ropes.”