by Jane Langton
Freddy walked past the massive entrance, with its great staircase and gesturing statuary, and rang a bell beside a door at one side. They were admitted by a woman wearing a badge on her large bosom.
“Oh, hello, Miss Dubchick. Yes, yes, I’ve been expecting you. Come in. Your friends are—? Oh, how do you do. My name is Ophelia Flatt. Follow me.”
She led them down a narrow hall odorous with the smell of soup, noisy with the clash of cutlery. “The staff kitchen,” explained Ophelia Flatt. “They’re clearing away lunch.”
They followed her down intersecting passages, all painted a gloomy brown. Homer trailed after Freddy and Mary, who followed close on the heels of Ophelia Flatt, who kept up a mournful eulogy on the virtues of Oliver Clare. “So sad. Such a charming young man. A member of the Family.” She led them briskly through an enormous old-fashioned kitchen, part of the public tour, and stopped at a narrow door on the other side. They stood back while she opened it with a key, jerked a light string, and took her leave.
It was the old quarters of the housekeeper—a high narrow kitchen-pantry, a small bed-sitting room, and a miniature old-fashioned bathroom. “It’s so pathetic,” whispered Freddy as they stood crowded together in the bed-sitting room.
It was empty, except for an uncomfortable-looking cot and a bedside table with a lamp and a few books. Homer glanced at the books—a Bible, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and one of C. S. Lewis’s religious books, The Case for Christianity. Homer wondered if Oliver had been examining the two sides of an old-fashioned argument. Well, actually, he reminded himself, it wasn’t so very old-fashioned. It was still a mighty question that rattled around the world. This very day it overarched the city of Oxford like a canopy stretched from the tower of the University Museum to the spire of St. Mary the Virgin, and the canopy still trembled and jerked and swayed from side to side.
There was nothing else to look at. Homer felt like a fool. Well, it was another fool’s experiment, a flop from the beginning.
They moved into the narrow pantry. Dark varnished cupboards rose to the ceiling on three sides of the room. There was a small sink in the middle of the wooden counter. A window on the fourth side admitted no light at all. The tiny lavatory was little more than a closet.
“Isn’t it sad?” said Freddy dolefully.
“I’ve seen enough,” said Homer. “Let’s go.” Rebellious hairs were rising on the back of his neck. His Irish ancestors had been in service in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and on their behalf he felt uncomfortable. He wanted to get out.
“No, no,” said Mary. “Not yet. How about it, Freddy, do you think we could look in the cupboards?”
“Of course.” At once the two of them began opening doors.
One of the lower cupboards revealed Oliver’s supplies—half a loaf of moldy bread, a large cheese, a jar of instant coffee, another of sugar, three cans of soup, and a few plates, mugs and utensils. On the counter a kettle sat on a hotplate.
“Well, all right,” said Homer testily, “I can see it was possible to live in this mouse hole. Let’s go home.”
“Wait, Homer,” protested Freddy, flinging open more doors and shutting them again.
“I’ll bet I can reach the high ones,” said Mary. To Homer’s alarm she climbed on the counter and stood up carefully. Tall as she was, her head was still far from the ceiling. Reaching high, she tugged at the remotest of the cupboard doors. “This one’s empty.” Bang. “This one, too, and this one.” Bang, bang. “And this one. No, wait, I think there’s something in here.” Standing on tiptoe, Mary stared into the fourth cavernous cupboard.
“Well, what do you see?” said Homer.
Instead of answering, Mary reached up and brought something out into the open air. It was a jar. “The label says pickled peaches. But wait, there’s something else.”
Freddy took the jar, and Mary groped in the darkness. Then she said, “Oh.”
“Oh, what?” said Homer.
“Oh, Homer!”
“You can’t just say, oh,” said Homer indignandy. “What is it?”
“A book.”
“Well, bring it down.”
Tenderly Mary brought the book into the light. “It’s got a leather binding, but I don’t see any title or name or anything.”
She climbed back down and put it on the counter beside the dusty jar.
For a moment Homer ignored the book. He was staring at the jar. “That’s not pickled peaches. It’s another one of those damned dried-up old crabs.”
Freddy was excited. “It’s just like the jars in my father’s office. It must have been Oliver who found them here, all of them.” Then Freddy’s face changed. She looked at Homer, startled. “But that means—”
“It means he was the one who brought them into the museum,” said Homer, pouncing. “He found them here and packed them in a couple of cardboard boxes and drove to the museum and dumped them outside the Zoology Office and covered them with that tarpaulin.”
“Only he missed one,” said Mary.
“But what the hell were they doing here in the first place?” said Homer.
“Maybe the book will tell us that.” Mary held it under the light. “How odd—look, it isn’t dusty. Not like the jar.”
Homer ran his finger over the leather cover. “Maybe Oliver took it down and read it, then put it back. Well, go ahead, open it. Let’s see what it is.” Eagerly Homer and Freddy looked over Mary’s shoulder as she turned back the cover and smoothed the first page.
The title was handwritten in a difficult angular script, but Mary deciphered it quickly and read it aloud, “Oliver Clare, His Journal, 1839.”
“Oh,” gasped Freddy, staring at the page, “is that really what it says, Oliver Clare?”
“I think so.” Mary looked at Freddy. “But surely that’s the same—”
“Yes, yes, that’s right.” Freddy heard herself babbling, but she couldn’t stop. “It’s the same name as the one on that little tombstone in the church, the one that says Forgive.”
“Perhaps this will tell us what there was to forgive.” Mary turned the pages carefully. “Oh, no. Look at this. We may never find out. Some of it’s in code.”
Homer and Freddy looked on as she flipped gently through the book. It was true. The black ink was crisp and clear, but many of the paragraphs were in a strange language.
Then Freddy said impulsively, “Oh, wait, I can read it. There’s nothing to it. It’s really so silly.” She took the book from Mary and ran her finger along a line. “Crabs—small—and—large—”
“Oh, of course.” Mary read on, delighted. “Worms—with—legs—”
Homer bent over their shoulders and took up the decodification. “Worms—without—legs—”
They looked at each other and laughed.
“Have you ever kept a diary?” said Freddy. “I do, but I’m so afraid somebody will read it, I use mirror writing. It’s easy, once you’re used to it. It’s like Leonardo’s notebooks, only I never think of Leonardo, I think of Alice going through the looking-glass.”
“I could transcribe it,” said Mary. She looked at Freddy. “Do you think we could borrow it?”
“Well, technically, I suppose, it belongs to the National Trust. Does all the National Trust property belong to the Crown? Perhaps not.”
“We’ll just borrow it from the National Trust for a few days,” said Homer grandly, reaching for the book. “The Crown won’t mind. Those Royals have plenty of other things to read, like the headlines in the gutter press. They won’t miss the journal of Oliver Clare.”
CHAPTER 43
The spikes stand in such a position that, when the lobes close, they inter-lock like the teeth of a rat-trap.
Charles Darwin, Insectivorous Plants
Margo Shaw had struck up a friendship with Mark Soffit. It wasn’t a man-woman relationship at all, but on the other hand it wasn’t platonic either, because they were both more concerned with the nature of the bad rather than the good.
Mark, detecting a tiny crack in the Shaw union, inserted a prying wedge. “Too bad about Hal. I hear he’s in trouble with the law.”
“Oh, isn’t it frightful! I must say, when he came courting I never expected to find myself in this humiliating position, the wife of a felon.”
“They say,” said Mark, dropping his voice, “that the trouble began with a woman.”
“I know,” whispered Margo. “Professor Dubchick’s little strumpet of a daughter. I knew from the beginning she was up to no good. And Hal is so simpleminded. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, compared with Hal, I know so much more about life. The poor dear doesn’t have a clue.”
Rejoicing, Mark passed along the latest rumor. “I hear he may be indicted for murder. I mean, that’s what people say.”
Margo had heard the rumor, too, and she had already decided what to do. Now her resolve stiffened.
Next morning at breakfast she came straight to the point. “You see, Hal dear, I’ll be perfectly honest. This is straight from the shoulder. It would be so foolish to carry on as if everything were just the same.”
Hal looked at her dumbly. What goofy thing was she going to say now?
“The fact is, you’re still so immature. And I no longer have confidence in your prospects. You’ve attached yourself to the Wrong man. Dubchick isn’t going anywhere. He’s finished.” This conviction had soothed Margo’s damaged amour propre, after Dubchick had denied her offer to become his assistant. “Everybody says so.”
Hal’s face remained expressionless. “Everybody?”
“Mark Soffit, for one. I mean, he seems to know all about these things. You know, the inside scoop about the pecking order. He says Dubchick is out. He’s too old-fashioned. He’s still making field studies of animals, when that’s not where it’s at. All those years with monkeys, and now eight whole years on crabs! The cutting edge right now is in biochemistry. Dubchick doesn’t know DNA from RNA, that’s what Mark says.”
“Mark is wrong,” said Hal shortly.
“Oh, of course you defend Dubchick because your future is tied to him. You’ll go down with him, Hal! And I’m not going down with you. And then there’s all this appalling nastiness about a probable indictment. I couldn’t bear it. Dear, I’m leaving. I’m moving in with Dolores. We’ll make business arrangements later, you and I. Of course when Aunt Peggy kicks the bucket, I’ll expect a substantial increment. Get a lawyer. You see, I’m being absolutely practical. I want us to part friends.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Hal.
“I don’t know if I’ll marry again,” said Margo dreamily. “Who knows? Marriage is such a gamble.”
But Margo had already bought her outfit for the chase. And that afternoon she wore it to the long-awaited cocktail party in the provost’s lodge at Oriel. The dress was emerald green to go with her eyes. With her triangular face she looked more than ever like a praying mantis, sending out pheromones to attract the male she would consume in the act of mating.
The provost’s lodge was rich in portraits of Oriel worthies. Margo wandered past them, gazing up reverently. By increasing her speed she caught up with another art lover, an extremely attractive man in evening dress, probably an Oriel don. Margo stood close to him, staring up at the muttonchop whiskers of the elderly gendeman in the portrait.
“Do you ever wonder,” she said, “if they talk to each other when we’re not here? Imagine what they must say about us! Terrible things, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know, madam. Excuse me.” The attractive man picked up a tray of wineglasses and hurried off.
Strike one. But Margo had stick-to-it-iveness, and after a couple more failures she was happy to find her old friend Mark Soffit standing in a corner by himself. He too had finagled an invitation. Quickly they entered on the character assassination that was so comfortable a bond between them.
“Poor Dubchick,” said Margo, “I hear his new book is nearly done. Can you imagine what it will be like? He’s such a dinosaur. He’s extinct!”
“Wait till the peer reviews come in,” said Mark, his dim eyes brightening. “They’ll tear him apart.”
“On the contrary,” said someone sharply, joining them. “If you’re talking about Professor Dubchick’s new book, you’re completely wrong. It’s a masterpiece.”
Mark’s face turned an ugly red. Margo said tartly, “And who, may I ask, are you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the newcomer coldly. “But believe me, you are misinformed.”
He walked away. Margo was shaken. “Who in the hell was that?”
Mark spluttered. He could hardly speak. “I’m afraid it was—oh, Christ, it was Jeremiah Heddlestone.”
“Jeremiah Heddlestone!” Even Margo knew the august name. “You mean, the insect man? The Nobel Prize winner? Oh, my God.”
CHAPTER 44
On these grounds I drop my anchor …
Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray
In the Zoology Office, Helen Farfrae was listening to Christmas music on Radio Three. A boys’ choir in some college chapel sang about the e’er-blooming rose. The office radio was turned way down. It was eight o’clock in the morning.
Helen was only barely conscious of the music as she watched William’s paragraphs dance up the computer screen. It was the final chapter of his book. There were new entries to be made, new conclusions to be drawn from some of the crabs that had turned up in the jars they had been examining, crabs belonging to species that were now extinct.
… Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As men of old have sung.
Helen’s attention was diverted by the thought of the genetic inheritance of Jesus Christ. If you thought of him as the son of Joseph, some of his genes would have come from David, and before David, from Jesse. And there were a whole lot of other ancestors mentioned in the Bible, going all the way back to Abraham. What sorts of characteristics would have come down from all those people? Intelligence, certainly, and pugnacity. But suppose Mary had really been impregnated by the Holy Spirit, what sort of stunning inheritance was that? All those celestial combinations of deified guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine, combined, of course, with the human material supplied by Mary?
It came, a floweret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.
Across the street in the Besse Building at Keble, Homer Kelly was obsessed with the discovery about Oliver Clare and the jars of crabs. He hauled on his parka, snatched up the jar from Windrush Hall and his lecture notes, strode around the quad, and crossed Parks Road.
Today the museum looked different. Its long flat front was hidden under scaffolding. The complex structure of socketed pipes had been taken down from the inside of the building and reerected on the outside. Homer recognized Daniel Tuck sitting high above the ground, eating his lunch, and he waved to him, and said, “Don’t fall off.”
Tuck waved his sandwich and promised not to, his tenor vowels as melodious as ever.
Homer found Helen Farfrae in the Zoology Office. “Here’s another one for you,” he said, presenting her with the jar.
“Oh, Homer,” cried Helen, “how wonderful. Where on earth did it come from?”
“Well, it’s a long story.”
Homer sat down and told it, interrupted by gasps and exclamations from Helen. “Oliver! Oliver Clare! You mean it was Oliver who brought the crab jars to the museum? Do you suppose he was the one I saw on the roof?”
“That’s what we suppose. Tell me, do you think he discovered afterward that you were here that night?”
“Why, yes, I do.” Helen remembered the morning when Oliver had come looking for Freddy. “Well, of course, part of it was in the Oxford Mail, the fact that I heard someone come in and go out and come in again. The paper didn’t say anything about my going up into the tower and looking out. But Oliver came in here one day and asked me point-blank, was I here that night, and I said yes. And I told him I’d seen the person on the roof, how
he had climbed up the glass like a monkey climbing a tree, or like one of those rock climbers going up a vertical precipice.”
“A rock climber!” Homer thought of the yellow rope left on the roof by Charley Firkin, the same rope that had turned up in Oliver’s room after his death, the very same rope with which an experienced person might have climbed that impossible mountain of glass. Had Oliver been an experienced person? Homer stared at Helen, and saw her plainly. He saw her keen hazel eyes and her big glasses and every strand of her short gray hair. “That’s why, then. That’s why he tried to kill you. You had seen him. He didn’t know that before.”
Helen was shocked. “Oliver didn’t try to kill me.”
“What day did he talk to you? What day did he find out about you?”
Helen thought back. Then she nodded sadly. “It was the same day. The morning of the day my husband fell from the scaffolding. You mean someone moved those trestles, hoping I’d be the one to fall? You mean Oliver was trying to get rid of me? Because he thought I’d recognized him up there on the roof? But I hadn’t.” Helen shook her head in disbelief.
“But he thought you had. And he figured out this nice easy way of getting rid of you. You often worked late, so all he had to do was move the barrier away from the staircase and turn out the lights. It was so simple, nothing murderous about it at all.”
Helen tore off her glasses and protested. “But you’re forgetting. William was there too, and so was my husband. No, Homer. Oliver couldn’t have guessed which of us would fall from the scaffolding.”
For a moment Homer was stopped cold, and then he understood. “Oh, wait, I see what happened. He set things up to catch you, and then he left, assuming you’d be alone all evening. The bounder, he didn’t know the others were coming. Whoops, sorry about bounder.” Homer smiled forlornly. “It’s all those old black-and-white British movies—I can’t seem to get rid of them.”