The Memorial Hall Murder

by Jane Langton

  “Oh, yes, ha ha. He rolled away the stone.” Homer tripped on the sidewalk too, and nearly lost his balance. The old slate blocks along Brattle Street had been heaved up unevenly by generations of winter frosts and thaws, and Homer caught his big foot on a lifted corner, pitched forward, stumbled a few paces, and then caught up with Cheever again. “What did you say, sir? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear.”

  President Cheever had been mumbling to himself. Now he flung out one hand in a gesture of irritation. “But what about the plaque? I’m supposed to dedicate a plaque in Dow’s memory during that concert in Memorial Hall this evening. What shall I do about the plaque? Nobody tells me anything. Nobody keeps me informed.”

  “Well, you see, sir, this new piece of information isn’t common knowledge. I don’t know when it will be made known to the public at large. Perhaps it would be just as well to keep it under your hat. At least for the time being.”

  And then Homer began rambling in a genial way about what an awful responsibility it must be to assume the presidency of so vast and various an institution as Harvard University. Surely it must be difficult enough to deal wisely with the ordinary intramural problems of the day, without random violence from the outside world throwing everything at the university into a tizzy. But how fortunate it was that through the wisdom of the forefathers, some of the heavy burden of responsibility could be carried on the shoulders of the Harvard Fellows and the Board of Overseen! So many loyal hands clasping the rod of authority! In union there was strength! How wonderful to think of the good will and self-sacrifice of the men and women who—it truly struck Homer as remarkable—would even gather from across the face of the land to meet at the very moment of the Harvard-Yale game. The fellows and the Overseers. Truly extraordinary devotion to duty.

  Again the President of Harvard stopped short. “The Harvard-Yale game? What are you talking about? The Fellows and the Overseers? They had a meeting during the Harvard-Yale game?”

  “Why, yes, I believe they did. You mean, they didn’t tell you? Strange. I suppose it was. just some slip-up in the normal processes of communication. A mistake, no doubt.”

  James Cheever’s steps quickened. He began puffing and jogging in his haste. Homer suspected he was frantic to arrive at the presidential office in Massachusetts Hall and begin throwing his weight around. Counter-conspiracies would be set afoot with Sloan Tinker. Heads would roll.

  Homer galloped easily along beside the President of Harvard, adjusting his long-legged gait to the shorter span of Cheever’s. They were more than halfway to the square. Cold puffy clouds were boiling across the brilliant blue sky. A chartered bus was pulling up at the Longfellow House. Homer was suddenly possessed by a demon. He raced ahead of Cheever and stopped beside the bus just as the door opened to discharge sixty members of the Historical Society of the North Shore. Throwing out his arms and bowing from the waist, Homer welcomed them all to the gracious house that had once been the headquarters of General Washington during the siege of Boston! the home of Longfellow! author of “Evangeline!” and “Hiawatha!” and “The Village Blacksmith”! and “The Courtship of Miles Standish”! and “The Wreck of the Hesperus”! And then, as James Cheever drew abreast, his face turning pale with horror, Homer took his arm and thrust him gently into the middle of the enraptured throng. “Allow me to present to you the President of Harvard,” cried Homer, “who wishes to welcome you to Cambridge, to sign his name for any of you who would like his autograph, and to answer any questions you may wish to put to him about this historic city and our ancient university!”

  Then Homer stepped gracefully aside and waved good-bye and hurled himself away in the direction of Mason Street and the brisk west wind whipping across the Cambridge Common in the direction of Memorial Hall.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Vick’s final rehearsal was nearly over when Homer walked into Sanders Theatre. She was standing on the podium on a platform built out from the front of the stage, leaning across the crowded orchestra, waving her arms at the chorus massed behind it. “Not wus,” cried Vick. “Not unto wus a child is born. Unto us. Start again, sopranos.”

  The sopranos started again, lofting the good news of the birth of Christ, and then unfurling a fluttering banner of sixteenth notes. The tenors came next, and soon the basses too were running joyously upward. Even Homer’s tin ears could distinguish the separate voices of the tumbling fugue. He sat down on one of the benches at the side, and then flattened his spine against the back as the chorus burst out in a sudden thunder of major chords. Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace! In the balcony over the stage someone lowered a microphone on a pulley, then reeled it in again.

  Homer caught Mary’s eye and winked at her. Jennifer was standing beside her, looking more swollen than ever, as if she might fulfill the obstetrical prophecy of the chorus at any moment. Betsy Pickett sat in a chair at the front of the stage, wagging her head in time with the beat, and beside Betsy Mrs. Esterhazy’s great red face was suffused with joy. The long stringy kid beside Mrs. Esterhazy was the tenor soloist, Tim Swegle, and the barrel-chested man in the sweater was the bass, Mr. Proctor. Jack Fox was playing a small organ instead of a harpsichord. Rosie Bell was leaning back, reading a book, her tiny trumpet idle in her lap. And there in the very back row of second violins was that funny little old Cambridge lady, her hair ribbon fluttering, her beaming face pressed against her fiddle, her bow rising steadfastly all by itself while the other bows descended, then sturdily plunging as they rose. “Upbow, Miss Plankton!” cried Vick.

  The rehearsal was over. Vick dropped her arms. “Now listen, everybody,” she said. “It’s going to be a long evening, because we need plenty of time to get warmed up before any of the audience comes in, and then, don’t forget, the second intermission is going to be a long one because President Cheever is going to dedicate a bronze tablet in Ham’s memory. Well, okay, it’s all right to put up a tablet, but you know as well as I do that Ham would care a lot more about the concert we’re going to do tonight than he would about having his name out there in bronze forever and ever. So you’ll be singing for Ham, not me. Is that clear? Anyway, we’ve got to start early. Be here promptly at seven o’clock.”

  Homer walked up the five steps at the front of the stage and slapped. Vick on the back. “Good old girl. You’ve really got the thing in shape. It’s going to be just great.”

  Vick laughed and scribbled something on her score. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I mean, I think they’re all right now, if they just don’t get careless. But, oh, God, Homer, it’s me I’m worried about. I’ve never been all the way through the whole thing from beginning to end, and I’m really scared.” Then Vick’s face changed, and she gripped Homer’s arm. “Homer, the pathologist. What did he say?”

  “No calluses.”

  “None? None on the left hand? Oh, Homer, then that means …!”

  “Listen, my girl, all it means is another person is dead. Why don’t you feel sorry for the other guy? Maybe his mother loved him. Maybe he showed great promise in his youth. But as a matter of fact, you know what I think? I think he was the bomber and he blew himself up by mistake.” Then Homer told Vick about the attache case in the motel, and explained his theory about the forgotten wrist watch and the unpunctual tower clock.

  Vick was thrilled. Mary Kelly was pushing through the thicket of departing violinists, and Vick squealed at her, “No calluses.”

  “No calluses?” said Mary. “Oh, terrific.”

  Vick turned back to Homer, her eyes flashing. “Now listen, Homer, where do you think he is? I mean, Ham’s a missing person now, not just a dead body buried in a cemetery.”

  “After all, Homer,” said Mary, “it isn’t as though he were exactly inconspicuous. Somebody like Ham Dow couldn’t just melt away in the crowd.”

  They were both looking at him, demanding a plan of action. Homer sighed, suppressing his own suspicion that the man had been entirely blown up
and completely disintegrated. “Well, of course, there are ways of tracing missing persons. I’ll get to work on it. But who knows, it might be in the man’s best interest never to turn up again. Have you thought of that?”

  “No,” said Vick. “We’ve got to find him.”

  “Now look here, Vick, dear,” said Mary. “When are you going to get some rest? Look at you. You’re trembling.”

  “Rest!” Vick threw back her head and laughed. Then she clutched her shivering arms and shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly. Besides, you know what? Of all the really dumb incredible things, I’ve got a test in Chem 2 on Monday. I’ve got to study. I’m flunking. I know I’m flunking. So I’m going to hole up in Mr. Crawley’s office and go over my notes for Chem 2. He’s not there. He must be goofing off again today. Just when I needed him most this morning, he wasn’t there. I had to set up the risers all by myself. So I went downstairs and found the Esterhazy boys running around in the basement. Those little kids are all muscle, except, oh, ouch”—Vick hopped on one foot and made a face—“one of those damn little kids dropped a riser on my toe. Anyway, I’ll have Mr. Crawley’s nice comfy office all to myself.”

  “Can you get in there?” said Homer. “Doesn’t Mr. Crawley lock his office when he’s not there?”

  “Yes, but he gave me the key to the instrument storage closet, and guess what, it turns out it’s a master key. It opens everything.”

  “Well, I’m going home right now and have lunch and take a nap,” said Mary firmly. “What are you going to do, Homer? Are you coming with me?”

  “No, I’m going to stick around here and keep an eye on things. I had something to eat at Elsie’s. I never felt more wide awake in my life.”

  But left to himself, Homer yawned. He felt an overpowering impulse to lie down. He controlled a desire to run after Mary and go home and share her bed. Something held him, an air of excitement in the building, a sense of forces gathering, of preparations coming to fruition. He walked down the steps at the front of the stage and looked at the long cushion on the bench in the front row. The sound-absorptive capacity of one meter of Sanders Theatre seat cushion had once been a standard scientific unit; Homer had read that somewhere. Right now the cushion looked capacious enough to absorb his entire six and a half feet, stretched on it flat from head to toe. Homer lay down and covered himself with his coat and went to sleep immediately.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  At the south door Vick said good-bye to Mary Kelly, after promising her faithfully to eat a good supper and try to get a little rest if she possibly could. Then she hurried across the hall to Mr. Crawley’s office, put her book bag on the floor beside the door, pulled the key on its string over her head, fitted the key into the lock, and opened the door. She threw open the inner door. Then she stopped short.

  The room was not empty. A man was kneeling in the corner with his back to the door.

  “Oh,” cried Vick, “you surprised me.” It wasn’t Mr. Crawley. It was that old man who must be his assistant. Vick was always seeing him pushing a broom down a hallway or swabbing the floor with a wet mop.

  The man was as startled as she was. He stood up suddenly and dropped something. It clattered to the floor. It was a tank, a small tank of gas under pressure, and the gas was still hissing from the valve. The tank skittered violently across the floor and whammed against Vick’s sore foot. She shrieked. The man lunged at the tank, but before he could lay his hands on it, Vick snatched it up and turned the stopcock.

  The hissing stopped. For an instant the two of them stood staring at the tank. “Oh, wow,” said Vick. She laughed shakily. “It was like one of those movies, you know? Where a cannon gets loose in a storm at sea and rolls around the deck. Boy, for once I’m glad I’m taking that course in chemistry. We use these things in chem lab. What is this stuff anyway?” Vick turned the tank around and read the label. “Carbon monoxide? Gosh, what are you doing with carbon monoxide? That’s really nasty stuff.”

  The man looked at her. He reached for the tank. “A rat,” he said. “I’ve got a big rat cornered downstairs. I’m just finishing him off. Sending the stuff down the pipe.” He gestured at the pipe in the corner. There was a hole in the pipe near the floor.

  “Well, but, my God,” said Vick. “I think that’s a pretty dangerous way to go after a rat. You might finish off some of the other kind of rats instead. You know”—Vick laughed again—”rats like me.”

  The man turned away. “Well, I think I’ve finished the job anyway.” He took a rag from his pocket and stuffed it in the hole. Then he picked up his box of tools and his tank of carbon monoxide and left the room.

  Vick shook her head and shrugged her shoulders and followed him out into the hall to get her books. But then it occurred to her that carbon monoxide was as odorless as it was poisonous. She ran back into Mr. Crawley’s office, unlocked the window, threw it open, hurried out into the hall, slammed the door, locked it, picked up her book bag, marched into the great hall, found a table under the balcony, and sat down. Taking a sandwich out of her book bag, she began flipping through her chemistry textbook.

  Mr. Crawley’s assistant walked along the basement corridor until he found the boarded entry to the subbasement. Cradling the tank carefully in his hands, he looked at the boards he had hammered back into place so securely. On the other side of the boards the stairs led down to a door against which the litter from the explosion was piled high. And behind the door … The question was, had the administered dose been enough to do the job? He wasn’t sure how much of the stuff it would take. Did that room at the bottom of the stairs still harbor a very stubborn rat? Probably not. The man was surely dead by now. Dead as a doornail. But what if one had miscalculated again? It was better to be sure. He must be ready to finish the job. To provide that extra increment of security. To be thoroughgoing. Again it was just a matter of thoroughness and economy of means. It would be wise to prepare his equipment. Readiness was all.

  One only had to know where. And he did. He knew precisely where to place his material, at the four corners of the tower, high on the basement walls, hidden in the forest of pipes that ran along the ceiling. He was pleased to observe that after all these years he still had an instinct for the job. (Well, it was an instinct based on a hell of a lot of experience). And then he would only need to lay a single wire. The stuff was right there in the closet where he kept his change of clothing: He would take care of that part of the job right now. And then later on if there was any need, he would be ready at a moment’s notice with the control switch. The switch was one of those clever little wireless gadgets the size of a man’s hand. It had belonged to his nephew George. Poor feckless simple-minded George! The boy was his mother’s despair. He would never make it to any institution of higher learning, never mind Harvard. Flying model airplanes was the only thing the poor kid cared about at all. Well, for once it was a good thing. The shaft of the rudder servo from one of George’s old kits would turn at a flick of the transmitter switch and connect the battery with the detonator. The wretched boy was about to be of some unwitting service to the world at last.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Homer woke up smiling. A little nap always made him feel like a newborn babe. He sat up and looked around the empty forest of Sanders Theatre. His watch said one o’clock. He still didn’t feel like going home. He decided to go downstairs where the Rats lived and find somebody to talk to. His nap had made him feel friendly and talkative, eager for the society of his fellow man.

  The first person Homer ran into downstairs in the basement was a chap who was fixing something behind a door. Jolly-looking feet were sticking out of the doorway. Some competent fellow was down on his knees doing something in the corner. Bzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzz. Whine of electric drill.

  “Hello, there,” said Homer, all geniality and willingness to serve. “Do you want some help? I’d be glad to lend a hand.”

  The feet jerked, but they stayed behind the door. “Just rewiring in here,”
mumbled the person attached to the feet. “Putting in more outlets. Old building. Not enough electrical outlets anyplace down here.”

  Homer poked his head around the door. It was Mr. Crawley’s right-hand mail again, drilling a hole in the baseboard. A great coil of black cable lay on the floor beside him. He had his back to Homer. He didn’t look up. He just went right on drilling the hole. “Oh, say,” said Homer helpfully, “I don’t know if you noticed it, but there’s an outlet a couple of feet down the wall. See there? You’ve got your drill plugged into it.”

  “Wrong voltage,” mumbled Crawley’s assistant.

  “Oh, I see,” said Homer, who didn’t know voltage from wattage, or AC from DC. “Well, if you need any help, just holler.” He backed out of the room again and tripped over the cable, which ran out the door and down the hall. Homer followed the cable to Mr. Proctor’s room. Mr. Proctor’s door was open. Mr. Proctor was sitting in an upholstered chair reading the paper and eating a bowl of soup. “Mind if I come in?” said Homer. “Mmmmm, doesn’t that smell delicious.”

  “Oh, come right in, Professor Kelly.” Mr. Proctor was delighted. “Won’t you join me? Just canned soup, I’m afraid.” He stood up and waved Homer into the chair.

  “Oh, no,” said Homer, “I couldn’t take your chair.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right. I’ll just sit on the bed.” Mr. Proctor took a pan of steaming soup off his electric hot plate and poured another bowl for Homer.

  “My, my, doesn’t that look good. Say, isn’t this a nice room you’ve got here.”

  “Oh, yes, we’re very comfortable down here. I’ve even got a window. See my window? I can watch the world go by. Nice and warm. All the comforts of home.”