The Memorial Hall Murder

by Jane Langton

  “Get away from me. Go on. Get out of my way.”

  The madman dropped the sheet and picked up the satchel. “But I must hand out my pamphlets. I must proclaim my coming to the world.”

  “You heard what I said. Get out of the building.”

  “Not until I distribute my pamphlets. They are of such tremendous significance, you see, to the whole world.” The crazy fool began tossing pamphlets in the air as if he were feeding pigeons. He walked away in a flutter of flying pamphlets, leaving his white seamless garment behind him on the floor.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Tinker entered the tunnel through the door in the basement of Langdell Hall. He had kept the key to the door ever since the Kissinger episode, ever since that time during the war in Vietnam when Kissinger had come to Harvard to speak in the Law School. Some of the more hostile undergraduates and Law School students had been waiting outside Langdell Hall, howling for Kissinger’s hide. So he had conducted the great man into the building by way of the tunnel.

  They had simply finessed the encounter. It had been a perfect example of his favorite maxim, Economy of means for maximum effect. And during the walk underground, as they had strolled along side by side, he had entertained Kissinger with the story of the occasion in his own life when that maxim had proved its enormous effectiveness, way back during World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge.

  “There were only three of us left, you see, sir, out of the entire 325th Engineer Combat Team, and all we had left in the way of ordnance was a couple of satchel charges, and yet the 325th had been given the task of blowing up a bridge over the Meuse in the face of the advancing German army. Well, sir, the other two men said it couldn’t be done, but I was determined to carry out our mission. I took one look at the bridge, and I knew what to do. It was a lift bridge, you see, sir, and it had this tiny little control tower. So we simply forced our way into the control tower, lifted the bridge, left our entire cache of explosives in the tower, and blew up the tower. The entire bridge remained in perfect order, you see, sir, but the German army was faced with a little problem. The bridge was up and not down. Do you see?”

  And Kissinger had been impressed, you could see that.

  But that was a long time ago. He hadn’t been in the tunnel, since. This time he was just going to check up on the success of his experiment with the tank of carbon monoxide. He had been about to go to bed, but then he had decided he just couldn’t rest until he knew whether or not the situation was under control. Jim was taking it so badly. He was beside himself. It was a thousand pities he had ever found out that Dow had not after all been killed in the explosion. Damn that interfering fool Homer Kelly. There had been no need at all for Jim to know that the permanent removal of Ham Dow had been somewhat delayed. What mattered, after all, was that the thing should be accomplished. And accomplished it would be. He would see to that.

  This was the time to make sure. Everybody in the building would be in Sanders Theatre. He would be able to pull those boards out of the way again and listen for signs of life behind the door without fear of interruption. If there was no sign of life, then all well and good. He would go home to bed and forget the whole miserable episode. Dow’s body would come to light sometime in the spring, when some workman discovered it during the reconstruction of those basement rooms. Then, of course, there would be general shock and dismay, but it would be no concern of his. However, if, in spite of everything, it was apparent that the man was still alive, it would be necessary to take action at once. And this time there would be no mistake. That thug from Philadelphia had made a mess of the job, and blown himself up for his pains. Well, after all, one should have remembered that if one wanted a thing well done one must do it oneself. In a case of this kind it was by far the safest plan. The little control mechanism was in his pocket. It was a very simple affair. He would go back home immediately, say good night to his housekeeper, climb into bed, and then press the button in the small hours of the morning.

  Economy of means. It had been so simple. It hadn’t been necessary to bring in tremendous quantities of explosive material. He had simply applied his forces where they would do the most good, at the foundations of the tower. The whole building would fall in upon itself. Gravity would do the work.

  Tinker quickened his pace. The light bulbs in the ceiling stretched on and on, disappearing around the curve. The distant perspective was strange and dreamlike.

  Gravity! Gravity would do the work! He had figured it out, starting with the weight of a single brick, calculating the number of bricks in walls that were, say, two feet thick and forty feet wide and one hundred and sixty feet high. A wild approximation, but close enough. It came to ten thousand tons. Ten thousand tons of brick would fall toward the center of the earth in obedience to the law of gravitation. Ten thousand tons of brick would take care of Ham Dow. And it would take care of the threat to the Harvard community that was implicit in Dow’s continued existence. He would be perishing in a good cause. Tinker smiled to himself as he approached the exit from the tunnel into the basement of Memorial Hall. He said it aloud. “Moritur pro suo collegio!”

  Chapter Forty-six

  What they needed, of course, was a wrecking bar. They had found a small tool kit in Mr. Crawley’s closet, but it contained no wrecking bar. Charley pried at the edges of the boards with a claw hammer, lifting the nails, hammering the boards down again to free the nailheads, jerking the nails out with the claw of the hammer. Homer stood to the side, getting in the way, trying to tear at the other ends of the boards with his bare hands.

  “That’s enough, I think,” said Charley. “See if you can get through. Here, wait a minute, I’ll do one more. Look, get that wire out of the way. What’s that wire doing there? Good for you. If you can get through that little, hole, so can I.”

  They crawled through the opening. “I can’t see a thing,” said Homer.

  “Maybe there’s a light switch,” said Charley. “Yes, here it is.”

  Light flooded the sub-basement. And in that instant they beheld the door to Ham’s prison. It faced them at the foot of the short flight of stairs. The other rooms were a rubble of fallen walls and broken timbers littered with chunks of marble from the floor of the transept up above. A mountain of debris had been shoveled to this end of the short corridor. It was piled in front of the one remaining door. Only the top of the door was visible. The wooden panels were shaking in the doorframe.

  Homer stumbled after Charley down the stairs. He was laughing, waving his arms. “The fine-tooth comb,” he said. “So much for the fine-tooth comb.”

  They tore at the debris. They picked up chunks of concrete and brick and hurled them aside. They were shouting at Ham, saying they knew not what, that they would have him out in no time, that he would be out of that goddamned hole in half a sec. They scooped up handfuls of plaster dust and flung it behind them. They kicked at piles of brick. They dug and scrabbled and shoved their way down to the doorknob. Homer tried to turn it. It wouldn’t turn. Maybe it was caked with plaster dust. Maybe the door was locked. Charley snatched up more handfuls of clotted plaster. Homer slapped his pockets for another one of Mr. Crawley’s keys. He found one and stuck it into the lock and turned it. He tried the knob. It turned easily in his hand. The door was unlocked. He pressed against it with his shoulder. But something was holding the door shut. The door panels had stopped shaking. He raked his fingers through the rubble once again.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Homer looked up. Charley looked up. Sloan Tinker was standing at the top of the stairs. Homer could see at once that he was the man with the broom. He was not holding a broom now. There was something else in his hand, something small. He was holding it carefully, like a precious dish. “How did you get in?” said Homer.

  “I must ask you to leave this area at once,” said Tinker. “It has been officially closed off. It is out of bounds. It is highly dangerous.”

  And then Homer remembered an entran
ce where they had failed to post a guard. “The tunnel,” he said, looking at Charley Flynn. “What a fool. I forgot the entrance to the tunnel.” He looked back up at Tinker. “It was the tunnel, wasn’t it? You came in by way of the tunnel.”

  Tinker gestured with the thing in his hand. “I tell you, you are to leave at once. This part of the building is scheduled for reconstruction. It is in a dangerous condition. Come out of there immediately.”

  The thing in Tinker’s hand was a little wireless contraption. Homer recognized it, and he cursed himself for being twice a fool. It was a little control panel of the kind that makes a model airplane dip and soar or land gently in a field. They had been wrong about the man, altogether wrong. He had not been poisoning the ventilating system. He had been running a loop of electric cable around the entire foundation of the tower.

  “Did you say reconstruction?” said Homer. “Scheduled for reconstruction? Or do you mean demolition?” He picked up a brick and threw it at the man at the top of the stairs. His aim was wild. Charley’s was better. Charley heaved up from the floor a lump of bricks embedded in concrete the size of his head. He hurled it at Tinker. Tinker fell backward with a cry, sprawling on his back halfway down the stairs.

  And then the room went dark. A pale shape was bending over Tinker, flapping down above him like a shroud. “Take it, you fool,” cried Tinker, “take it, take it. Do you know what it is? Go on, take it.”

  The dim white shape was gone again, flipflopping through the gap in the boarded entry at the top of the stairs.

  “After him,” shouted Homer. “He’ll blow us all to kingdom come. It’s that crazy Freddy Fulsom.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  They had been careless fools. They had left all the doors open when they had finished exploring the tower that afternoon. Freddy Fulsom was in the tower. He had run up the stairs to the balcony, as if he were heading for his old room, and then he must have seen the dark orifices of the open doors at the summit of the ceiling. One of the doors was swaying. The crazy half-wit was climbing all the way up into the tower.

  “Freddy, come down,” shouted Homer. His voice was hoarse. He was exhausted. He stumbled slowly up the last flight of stairs, taking his time. “Oh, come on, Freddy. It’s not time yet for the end of the world. Not now. You’re not supposed to come in glory now. Why don’t you just come on down?”

  Where were the guards at the west doors of the building? They were nowhere in sight. They must be waiting out of doors on the stone porch in the cold. And where was Charley Flynn? Charley had started after Homer. He had followed him through the opening in the boarded doorway, but he had fallen behind. He was gone. Homer was dogging the footsteps of an irresponsible fool or a homicidal maniac all by himself. Timidly he stepped into the dark emptiness of the turret room at the top of the stairs, leaving behind him the huge lighted volume of the great hall, and began climbing from one turret room to the next, feeling his way, aware of a prickling sensation on the surface of his skin and a feathery feeling in his chest. It was all very well to chase a lunatic through brightly lighted corridors, but it was another thing entirely to blunder after him in dark attics in total blindness. At any moment Homer expected to be fallen upon by a madman with destruction in his hand. He felt his way along the narrow boardwalk in the direction of the wooden bridge across the great open space over the vaults, then stood for a moment with his hand on the railing. The full moon was shining somewhere in the sky beyond the high south window. Homer was reluctant to come out of the darkness into the bright cluttered space of the tower, where he could be seen, but where he himself could not see into the shadows behind the shiny surfaces of the ventilating shafts. Through a hole in the east wall he could hear the chorus in Sanders Theatre. Soft voices were drifting solemnly out of the hole, drawing out long grieving notes in a rising scale—Since by man came death.

  Homer began walking heavily along the shaking catwalk, looking over the railing at the shadowy crevasses of the wooden vaults below. He told himself he was an imbecile to accompany this madman, to climb up and out so far on the topmost fractured limb of the shattered tree of his lunacy. But he kept going in spite of himself. He set his hand on the railing of the steep ladder stair on the east wall and began to climb, feeling the whole framework of the stairway spring and shiver beneath his feet. The hushed voices of the chorus floated through the hole in the wall: As in Adam all die.

  Yes, there was Freddy, climbing above him in his white sheet, moving more and more slowly. Poor crazy Freddy. He must be tired too.

  It was no good. It was no good at all. It was altogether grotesque. It was like some evil sort of nightmare, that he should find himself climbing higher and higher in the dark, that he should be trapped in a corner like a common criminal. The man in the white sheet paused, looked down, and then started climbing again, nearly catching his foot in his encumbering garment. He had seen the white sheet lying on the floor. He had picked it up and thrown it over himself in the first moment of his panic, like a child hiding his face in order to become invisible. Because invisibility was his due. It was unthinkable that he should be seen. But he had been overwhelmed by a furious impatience, by the need to find out for himself if what the girl had said was true. “Oh, yes,” Tinker had said, “there’s been a hitch. It’s being attended to. Just trust me.” Trust him! Trust Tinker! But he had had nothing to do with Tinker! It was Tinker’s doing, not his!

  He had fled. Run, run, and cover your head. He would have run to the ends of the earth. But instead he had been pursued by this ruffian, and it had been dodge, twist and dodge, dodge and turn, until now at last he found himself climbing this perilous ladder in the dark toward no escape, no hiding place at all.

  The matter was not of his doing! He had made a decision, that was all. At a particular moment a long time ago he had made a certain decision, and it had been the only right course, the only, possible resolution of the issue for the good of the institution. It had been the kind of difficult judgment that one had to make from time to time, a man in his position. A strong measure was absolutely necessary. It was required by circumstance. It was the only proper solution. After all, he was not himself a man of action. He had never pretended to be a man of action. He had always looked upon his task as one of perceiving the issues, of leaning slightly in this direction or that, because the whole future of the university depended on the direction in which he tentatively set his foot. It was entirely a matter of vision, of having the foresight to guess the probable shapes looming beyond this alternative or that. And this possible outcome had seemed to him so dangerous, so menacing. He had agonized over it with Tinker. They had tried in every traditional way to put a stop to it. But, one by one, the customary means had failed. The moment had come at last when no other course had been left to them. And therefore it had been necessary for him—sole guardian as he seemed to have become of the precious thing he had inherited, whose stewardship had been so universally abandoned by almost everyone else—to do something drastic. He had recognized the moment, he had made the decision, and then he had turned the matter over to Tinker, as was only correct. It was the kind of delegation of duty that was perfectly routine, that came up a dozen times a day. And Tinker had merely said, “Good. I’ll see to it,” and slapped the table and walked out of the office. Nothing more had been said. They had never discussed it further. Tinker had gone out and done what had to be done.

  But unfortunately he had failed.

  So it was Tinker’s fault. Tinker had been entrusted with a matter of the gravest importance, but Tinker had proven untrustworthy. The job had been bungled from beginning to end.

  Once again he pulled his awkward garment out of the way. He took a last cautious step upward. There was a trap door over his head. He pushed at it feebly with his free hand. The trap door was locked. He could go no farther. Below him he could hear that barbarian blundering up the ladder after him. Homer Kelly was another one of them, just one more of the rabble that had begun to close in from
every side.

  There was no way out. He had been driven into a corner. Slowly he turned around on the steep open stairway, grasping the railing with his right hand, shifting his feet one at a time, until his back was braced and he could look down at the man ascending below him. Carefully he shifted the object in his left hand to his right, and held it out into the void over Homer Kelly’s head.

  It was not Freddy Fulsom at the top of the ladder. Looking upward as he climbed, Homer could see the man crouched above him. The jag ends of the sheet drooped down like the wings of an albino bat. It was not Freddy. And then the moon slipped across the flat brick face of the tower and reached the window in the south wall and sent a long finger pointing past the giant ventilating shaft to touch the face of the man who was hunched on the top of the ladder with his back pushed up against the trap door. At the summit of the tower his robe was dazzling in the moonlight. He squatted there like a caricature of an angel at the pinnacle of a cathedral. He had removed himself as far as it was humanly possible from Ham Dow at the bottom, from the brute beast who had refused to perish in his subterranean cave.

  But when the man at the top of the ladder spoke, it was not of angels or beasts. He reached his hand down to Homer as if to hand him something, and addressed him.

  At the top of so many ladders, Homer felt dizzy and lightheaded. In a careless trance he reached up obediently and took the thing. “What did you say?” he said.

  “I said, he rolled away the stone.” And then the man in the white sheet leaned forward and dropped into the air, falling away from Homer. The tumbling white shape plummeted, grazing the iron side of the ventilating shaft in the center of the tower, sliding down its vertical flank, and then falling perfectly, headfirst, into the very center of the tapering vault below.