Come to Dust

by Emma Lathen

  “But Ed Webster is going to sit in,” Todd continued. “We will hope that helps.”

  “Yes,” said Lucy faintly. Her instincts were kindly but intelligence prevented expansion.

  “Still it is unfortunate. The police are asking everybody to stay for a few hours more until the questioning is complete. That means …”

  That meant more Dartmouth than Thatcher cared to contemplate. He repressed a sigh.

  Before their eyes Todd steeled himself. “I don’t mind saying that I’m not altogether happy with some of the things being said. Patterson for example.” This time nobody could hearten him. “Of course that isn’t so,” said Todd firmly. “Patterson is not a murderer. There must be some other explanation for this tragedy.”

  Possibly it occurred to him that any other explanation of the murder of a young boy, a guest of the college, following a football game on campus, might not be preferable. At any rate, he became preoccupied.

  Suddenly there was a buzz loud enough to interrupt.

  “Well will you look …”

  “Hey.”

  In the doorway was Marsden, very unlike the picture of sartorial elegance he presented on Fifth Avenue. His clothes were rumpled and stained. The greenish pallor of his skin was emphasized by his shadowed staring eyes. As he stood in the doorway, shudder after shudder wracked his lean body.

  “They took me up to my room,” he said staring sightlessly ahead. “There’s blood everywhere and this kid … there’s a knife sticking out of him. In my room!” On the last phrase his voice lost its automaton quality and rose in horror.

  It was Ralph who went to his side. “We’ve been waiting for you Neil,” he said placing a steady hand on Marsden’s shaking shoulder. “We all wondered where you were.”

  The quality of silent accusation came home to him. Incredulously he looked at the banks of faces, instantly reserved and cautious. “Wondering what I was?” he echoed. “You mean you thought …?’

  “No, no Neil, Ralph said. “We were worried about you.”

  “Worried?” Marsden started back at the room defiantly. Unconscious of what he was doing, he wiped the back of his hand across his dry cracked lips. “So you want to know where I was do you? All right. I was drunk, passed out cold. You know that. I just got up, I tell you. Are you satisfied?”

  Still that incredible silence. Marsden had always been a loner. Rapidly his confidence, which could only have been sustained by a furious discharge of nervous energy, was ebbing. Now he spoke more slowly.

  “But I was. Lots of people know it. I’ve got witnesses. Put to bed like a teenager, with the pack of you gloating. But that doesn’t make any difference now. Over at Franklin House they know. They were still laughing themselves sick this morning. Ralph, you know. You were there. Tell them you were there.”

  There had been an internal meter to Marsden’s defense. If Ralph had fallen in with that meter he would have answered the appeal on time. But he let one beat pass, then two, then three, and a pause.

  Then he said, “Sure, sure I did Neil. Now come on in and get some coffee into you.”

  As if on signal the dining room resumed its various hums of conversation. But John knew that he was not alone in wondering. It is normal to feel distaste when a man breaks down pitiably and revealingly in public.

  But had there been something more in Ralph’s voice?”

  Chapter 16

  Midterm Examination

  Meanwhile, across the hall, the police were moving with efficiency hitherto unknown at the Dartmouth Inn. Upstairs specialists photographed, measured, and ultimately removed the late Carter Sprague, then subjected Marsden’s room to the same professional scrutiny. They were not moved by the Dartmouth Inn’s housekeeping either. Two uniformed officers rounded up the entire staff, herded them into the large kitchen, and began taking down names, addresses, and statements. Nothing of interest emerged, except for one aged maid’s hysterical insistence that she had seen a villainous brigand, blood dripping down his arm, lurching down the stairway at dawn. From his long black beard and golden earrings she knew it was Elliot Patterson in disguise.

  Outside squad cars barricaded the Inn from the crowd which was ready to invest catastrophe with a carnival atmosphere. Unknown to the police, however, the enterprising editor of the Dartmouth Daily had infiltrated their defenses and together with two reporters was assembling a quote studded story that was to be the envy of most metropolitan papers. At the same time, state, town, and campus police were fanning out over the campus with questions at pinpointing Sprague’s every move, conversation, and thought since he left New York.

  The intelligence guiding this activity belonged to Captain Joseph Nivelle of the State Police, and he was presently occupying the manager’s office behind the reception desk. With him to help handle incoming information and act as liaison with Dartmouth was Ed Webster. They were not slow to arrive at the very conclusion George had feared.

  “Bad business. Especially this New York connection,” said Nivelle, a large nerveless man capable of quelling motorcycle riots at lakeside resorts virtually singlehandedly. Like his subordinates, he was not reacting to the poignancy of Sprague’s murder; another difficulty beset him. Scarcely two hours had passed since Vivian, the maid now recovering in the local hospital, had discovered the corpse, but already the phone lines had been busy to remind Nivelle of how important Dartmouth was, how many important people and impatient people were trapped their now.

  Ed Webster grunted.

  “Yup, it is a bad business,” Nivelle repeated. He signed and dismissed a wistful recollection of his last murder which involved three mill hands, a dispute about cards, laced with lots of low grade gin. “Well, let’s get on with it. Either somebody killed this kid for sport,” a euphemism for a wide range of aberrant behavior, “or this must be connected with the Patterson disappearance.”

  Webster cleared his throat to report that it had been rumored Patterson was at Dartmouth.

  “I know,” said Nivelle. He did not have to add that every police force in the state was trying to verify this. Patterson in fact held the promise of a sane reason for the insane murder of a 17 year old boy. Patterson had stolen $50,000. Somehow Sprague had endangered him. So Patterson crept out of the woods, found a sturdy carving knife, and killed Sprague.

  There was an attractive simplicity about this theory but it depended heavily on Patterson’s presence in the vicinity. And this remained highly problematical.

  Nivelle signed again and fell back on routine. “No use wasting time figuring out why somebody killed this kid,” he decided. “The thing to do is try and get a picture of what went on here yesterday.”

  Webster rubbed his chin. “That’s going to be harder than you think, Joe. Marsden’s a pretty good example. He says that he passed out over at Franklin House last night. Didn’t get back here until today. Well a lot of people will swear they saw him put to bed I’ll bet. But can anybody swear that he didn’t get up in the middle of the night and come over here to the Inn? HE could have killed the kid, then gone right back to Franklin House. Heck, people could have passed him on the street and wouldn’t remember today.”

  Nivelle was not given to idle questions, but, for once his patience with the frailty of others wore thin. “You know, Ed, I don’t understand. Will you tell me why a lot of grown men, important men too, according to the Governor’s office, come up here and make fools of themselves every chance they get?”

  Webster grinned. “College spirit; same thing that makes the Senior class smash store windows on Front Street every spring. Myself, I never went to college. So I used to call it something else when we had to clean up a lot of property damage or when a bunch of fraternity boys got beered up and started swinging. But they explained it to me. It’s just college spirit.”

  Nivelle growled and announced that before he was through he would know exactly what Sprague and everybody else had been up to on Saturday, college spirit or not.

  To a point this was e
asy. As time passed information funneling into the manager’s office began to shed light on at least part of Sprague’s last day on earth. Together with his fellow aspirant, he had arrived at Dartmouth shortly before lunch on Saturday. Driver Tony Micolli of the Abelson Charter Service kept detailed records. “11:30 AM., right on the button.”

  “Do you remember this kid Sprague?” asked Nivelle.

  Micolli openly pitied such ignorance. “Listen, two things I do. I drive and I count. Take 32 kids from New York to Dartmouth, they say. So whenever we stop I count 32. That’s all. For all I care they could be 32 midgets.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Micolli however was a nudge. “Now I subtract one and I count only 31,” as he left with a chuckle.

  From arrival at Dartmouth, through lunch and the football game, Sprague was an open book. “No, he was not a particularly cooperative boy,” said the Assistant Dean. “In fact, none of them were particularly cooperative.”

  The Dean’s weekend of chaperoning the New York contingent, crowned by murder, had destroyed perhaps permanently his conviction that our good young people outnumber juvenile delinquents by a large margin. “But he was with us at lunch,” he continued listlessly. “And he was at the football game. It was after the game that we got separated. That was the last I saw of him. I reported to the president’s office when he wasn’t in the dorm this morning. I don’t know what more I could have done. I couldn’t put leashes on them could I?”

  Nivelle interrupted this self-pity. “When he was with you, did you see him show any particular interest in anybody he met? Or did you see anybody who was unusually interest in him?”

  The Dean passed a trembling hand over his eyes. He dredged up a pep talk given by Lyman Todd, together with personal greetings to each boy. At lunch Sprague may have conversed with almost anyone. The Dean did not remember as well as personally not feeling very well.

  Sprague’s peers were made of sterner stuff although this brush with death had visibly shaken them. Nivelle and Webster confronted three unnaturally solemn youngsters. “Now you were the boys who spent the afternoon with Carter,” Nivelle said sternly. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

  After an exchange of glances, Douglas Younger emerged as the spokesman. “We didn’t know Carter very well, Sir.”

  Webster put his recent exposure to the young to use. “Tell us everything,” he directed.

  The picture of Sprague’s afternoon that finally developed was lacking in surprise. Airily Carter had explained that he was submitting to Dartmouth’s outmoded notions of entertainment only because of parental pressure. He had deprecated football as a sport and a spectacle. He had commented, without approval, but without suspicions intensity, about the appearance of Dartmouth alumni and families. He had said that he certainly wasn’t going to spend his evening treated like a child. He had even invited them to join him.

  Clearly Sprague had not endeared himself to his companions, although wild horses could not get them to admit it now.

  With a troubled look Pete Fursano spoke up: “The only thing Doug left out is that we spent a lot of time chewing over that meeting in New York. You know when he, Carter, stayed behind to talk to Mr. Patterson.” Fursano seemed to feel that justification was necessary. “Well, you know, everybody has been so excited about those folders. I mean, why did Mr. Patterson take our test scores.”

  Doug Younger seconded him. “It kind of made him,” he gulped slightly, “I think it made Carter feel important. The police and everybody wanted to know what he saw Mr. Patterson taking with him. Then the other day they called up and asked some more questions. The rest of us were pretty fed up with the whole thing but he, Carter, wasn’t.”

  They all looked ashamed of themselves. This was where things began to get complicated. After he set out on his own, Sprague became more difficult to trace. Indeed, the picture became a collage of many accounts, including brief statements from Thatcher and the Lancers. By the time the long day was finished, however, Nivelle had pieced together a birds eye view of Sprague’s path from stadium to death in a bed at the Inn. Not every minute was accounted for, but most of the hours were.

  From a junior at Pierce House: “So I was throwing a party right after the game and this kid turns up. I’m not going to pour good beer into a complete stranger so I told him to beat it. Yes, it was just about 20 minutes after the game. No I never saw him before.”

  From a faculty wife, proceeding from library to home with one infant and book bag: “Yes, officer, I am quite sure. It was exactly 5:15 PM. People were still pouring out of the stadium. I was hurrying home to cook dinner early and I had to get things defrosted. He stopped me and asked where the Deke House was. No, I knew he wasn’t a student. He was too polite.”

  From the president of the Dekes: “No, I don’t know when he got there but it must have been pretty early because he was already tanked up by 9 PM, let me tell you. Guess I shouldn’t say that now. Well I can tell you one thing; I’m recommending we forget this Homecoming Open House. What? No I didn’t see when Sprague left. But he was hanging around for a long time. Look the general idea is for the grads to drop by for a quick one and then scram. We’ve got girls up for the weekend and better things to do that sit around listening to a past class gas about the old days. But this bunch! We couldn’t really get the party going until past midnight.”

  Neville knew that the party had still been in process when the police arrived on the doorstep Sunday. Furthermore he sensed rightly that it was going to prove difficult to keep Sprague in focus at Deke House and after. But this was the critical point. What had taken Sprague from the Deke House?

  Unfortunately, reminiscences of Saturday evening grew cloudier with each passing hour. A great many people, including Thatcher and the Lancers, were convincing when they reported that Sprague was alive, if regrettably drunk, during the early part of the evening. Inevitably the reliable witnesses departed; those who had remained at the Deke House showed a tendency to stare blearily at Nivelle and claim a curtain of oblivion had fallen upon them.

  “Still, when I had to report that I had seen Marsden drunk at Franklin House,” Lucy reported after her siege in the Manager’s office, “I thought I had lost ground as one of the reliables.”

  John, extremely tired of the smoke filled dining room, of George’s continuing conferences with fellow inmates, and of Dartmouth in general, agreed that everything sounded deplorable.

  “Who is breaking the news to the Wests?” someone asked gravely. “Lyman, thank goodness,” said George.

  John repressed a shudder and resolutely directed his attention to the line of inquiry being pursued, without apparent result, by Nivelle. A steady stream of witnesses averred that they had been able to place Sprague, quite alive, at the Deke House. But what had happened to him next?

  For that matter what happened to him before that? Had he spent time threatening Patterson? Had he pursued some dark diabolical plot of his own? Had he simply been cadging drinks in places not yet covered?

  Surprising enough, Dunlop provided a partial answer. Grey faced, he was slumped over a nearby table. Next to him, not speaking, was his wife, Lou, who had been admitted some hours earlier. She had not contributed to any recovery on her husband’s part.

  “Dunlop is the picture of guilt,” John whispered to Lucy.

  Lucy was distressed. “And John, he sounded so strange.”

  Ralph extricated himself from a protracted discussion with George to give a rather painful smile. “It is no time for humor,” he said, “but it was funny at the time.”

  Dunlop’s story, first presented to Nivelle, swiftly percolated among the interested parties. He had, indeed, fallen from grace. Exhilarated by the football game, he had deposited Lou with friends and dropped in on the Dekes for a quick one. But the one quick one had transformed by nostalgia into one more and then more and so on and so on.

  “I got pretty drunk,” he admitted tragically. Nivelle remained expressionle
ss at this refrain. “But I knew the Dekes wanted to get rid of us. Nothing cools a party more than a bunch of middle aged men sitting around boozing. The girls don’t like it. Then I saw Sprague. No I don’t remember what time it was. It must have been after midnight. He was pretty far gone, so I thought that was no place for him. You know. Anyway I promoted a move for us older guys to come over here to the Inn and leave the Dekes …” Dunlop shook his head.

  Nivelle leaned forward at this, as John did later at the second reading. The party, including Sprague, had been duly assembled, and a great confused move to the cars commenced. Ralph, returning to pick up his own car had been enlisted to aid Dunlop in handling the sodden Sprague and transport him to the Inn. The whole variegated inebriated party arrived at the bar, safely and ready to join the conviviality.

  “NO, I must have lost sight of him,” said poor Dunlop. “I remember helping in …”

  Ralph, Barnett, and two brokers from Springfield, and other old grads confirmed this story. Even the bartender contributed a vivid piece of corroboration.

  “So I close the bar at two,” he said truculently. “No, I don’t serve kids, and I didn’t serve this one. But these guys had brought their own liquor. They were passing out on the sofa. They were singing. Two guys in the corner were crying.”

  “College spirit,” said Nivelle, depressed. No trustworthy account of Sprague’s sojourn in the Inn could be culled from this group of sinners. He spent 40 minutes finding this out: “Yes, I think I remember. No I wasn’t feeling so well…Well there were a lot of people here…” and so the stories went.

  One man even claimed that he had spent the evening in his room meditating. But an interesting fact did come to light. Dunlop may have forgotten his wife. His wife had not forgotten him. She went to an early dinner with friends, and then fears began to assail her. Could Jim have met with an accident? Where was he?

  Instead of returning to their motel room and waiting with uxorious patience, Lou had been propelled, at a very late hour, to follow her husband’s trail. It led her to a now darkened Deke House, where soulful music echoed through rooms mercifully rid of the embarrassment of adults. Then to the Inn, where at 3 AM, she finally found her husband. He had completely forgotten about Lou’s existence.