A Slepyng Hound to Wake

by Vincent McCaffrey

  Her eyes narrowed. The anger returned. It was in the stiff line of her delicate jaw. It was in the flat line of her lips. They looked very hard to him now. Her eyes darkened, just enough to surprise him. And then it all faded. The lips rounded to a soft pout. The blue of her eyes became jewel-like with tears.

  “It was the book I told him to write,” her voice was barely audible at first. Her eyes were on her hands, examining the odd cut of her nails. “I did the research. I handed it to him, and he ignored it. He wasn’t interested. All he cared about was Scipio. The underappreciated Scipio, he said. There was no history of when Hannibal died. And why would the great general tell so much to an illiterate slave girl? The apparent coincidence in the history was only a lack of our own knowledge, he said. He couldn’t see the point. But I had found the real story. I found it first. And then Duggan wrote it. … How could he know? Why did he pick that story? That was no coincidence … I knew she must have told him. Nora was always so smart. She saw it. But not Jim. Jim could be so stupid. So arrogant. It was right there in front of him. …” Sharon faced Henry for one moment as if he might confirm her words. Henry had nothing to offer. He felt empty. Her eyes searched his for help. She said, “I am not such a bad person. … You know, I could have stabbed her. They would have thought we had been robbed. So simple. She would be dead now. But I couldn’t do it … I couldn’t—I saw the thing with the exhaust on some TV show. They said it was painless .… I wanted it to be painless.”

  She held her hands out again, and looked at the palms. He wondered what she was thinking. He had no idea what should happen next. The weight of his body seemed to growing by the second.

  He needed to sit down. He needed coffee.

  “Do you want to sit down?” he asked her.

  She moved for the couch. He picked up the phone and sat in his chair. She turned again and was out the door.

  Mrs. Murray looked up the stairway at him as Sharon pushed her way past. The screen door snapped shut before his hand, and his weight broke the catch loose from the frame. Sharon had parked her car just outside the gate and was in, with her car door locked, as he reached it. The engine grunted. She did not look at him. She appeared to have no expression at all. He hit the roof of the car as it jolted away.

  “What happened?” Mrs. Murray called from the porch.

  “Call the police. She lives at fifty-seven Phillips Street. She tried to kill Barbara.”

  The five blocks to Benny’s garage to get his truck was in the wrong direction. Henry began to run for Phillips Street. It was easily the farthest he could remember ever running since he was a kid at Brookline High running away from Stuart Maslow. As his breath shortened, he remembered Stuart very well. Where was Stuart now? Was he a lawyer, like Boyle? Henry had lost those fights. Was it two? Three? Some bullies don’t run away when the going got rough. Some bullies liked it rough. Maslow had chased him for blocks. And then, at the end, Henry’s own father had locked him out. Maslow had beaten him right in front of his own house.

  The memory was still so fresh. He remembered the metal taste of his own blood and the ringing in his ears. He took his beatings on the spot after that. It didn’t make him a better fighter, but it made him get the confrontations over with. At least he never ran again … That was his freshman year. He would have been fourteen. There were more than a few fights after that.

  It began to feel like there was too little oxygen in the air to breathe. A sharp pain suddenly ran up the side of his body, bending him before he could stop the motion of his legs. He staggered, then stood, bent over, hands on his knees in the middle of the sidewalk, until the pain faded. People passing asked if he were all right. He nodded, still catching his breath. He had really always hated running.

  Henry walked the rest of the way to Phillips Street. He expected the police would be there before him.

  But they were not. Sharon’s car was illegally parked at the corner. She did not answer her bell. He rang the other bells. No answers. While he waited for the police, another tenant entered the building and Henry slipped in the door. He ran the stairs to the third floor, his energy renewed by the frustration of waiting.

  Sharon did not answer his knocking. There was no sound. He cut the debate with himself short and kicked at the door. Nothing happened. He rammed his shoulder into it. Nothing. And again. Nothing, except a new pain in his shoulder.

  His father had shown him something once. Henry sat down in the hallway, braced his feet against the door with his back against the opposite wall, and pushed with his legs. The wood split, cracked, and gave way. He was lying on the floor, looking up, when he first saw Sharon’s body.

  Pushing the dining-room chair away, he lifted her with his hands in her armpits. She was limp, and her head fell forward above him. Her face was white, almost grey. Her eyes were shut tight. The yellow of her bleached eyebrows seemed artificial against the skin.

  Henry held her body up on his shoulder to take the noose away—plain clothesline. She had only tied a simple slip-knot in it. She seemed so light—so thin. It must have been terribly difficult for her to carry Barbara all the way from the second-floor office to the van at the back of the basement.

  Her neck was not broken. The thin dark bruise left by the cord could have been painted on. She had choked to death. Her body was still very warm. Her lips, darkened beneath the red of the gloss, were open just slightly to the blue of her tongue caught between the edges of her teeth, as if anticipating a kiss.

  The police rang the doorbell just as he put her down on the carpet.

  He wondered about it afterward. The hook over the entry to her dining room where she had hung herself was painted over and so oddly placed. What was it used for? Why was it there?

  Barbara told him later. She had seen it at a party there once when Jim was alive, before Christmas. It was where they hung the fresh mistletoe.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Barbara was released that afternoon. Henry went with her in the cab. He was exhausted, but it seemed like a better idea than going home at the time. She complained of feeling weak but looked fine. She had little to say, and he spoke too much. Her part-timers, Trudy and Karen, were managing the store without her. He told her he would check on things later. He told her a little about Sharon. She did not want to know more. She seemed upset that the store had been opened, under the circumstances. Henry made excuses about her need for money, which seemed inadequate to the events.

  He reached home before dark and never undressed. Della was there and held his hand as he fell asleep in his chair.

  When he awoke later in his bed, in the middle of the night, Della was still there, and he held her, glad not to be alone.

  In the morning, Della called in to work to say she would be late and Henry drove her over to Charlie’s on Columbus Avenue for breakfast. Afterwards he drove her downtown to her office, kissed her goodbye, and went back to the bookshop by himself. It was still early, but he tapped on the window and Barbara came to the door.

  She hugged him in a full body grip that took his breath away. Then she cried. When she could speak again, she surprised him, as if she was so full of words she could not contain them any longer.

  “Do you think Sharon killed Jim?”

  She mashed the tears from her cheeks with the palms of her hands.

  Henry had never thought about it. Now, it seemed obvious that Sharon might have done that as well.

  “Why? For the insurance? How does a person kill someone else and live with it? For so little?”

  People did that kind of thing on television shows, all the time, he thought. Barbara pinned her hair back for work. The cat circled her feet expectantly.

  She said, “It could have begun with an accident. … You know, when Jim died, the detective questioned me three or four times over the space of a week. Now that I look back at it, I suppose he was trying to pick up on some little thread. He might have guessed she was involved. … They could have argued. She could have hit him with anything
—with a frying pan, for all we know. If she could carry me, she could carry him. I was thinking about it yesterday in the hospital. … She never planned things very well. She worried about the details but never the big picture. I even knew at the last moment that she had given me something—put something in my coffee. I had asked earlier about what kind of sugar she had used, because it didn’t taste just the same as always. I thought she had used the artificial stuff she likes herself. But I knew for sure when I was passing out in the office, and I tried to get up to the phone—I had fallen, I think—but even then, I was thinking that Sharon had done something. And when I woke up in the hospital—I woke up with that thought as if no time at all had passed. I told the nurse that. … Sharon really didn’t think it all through.” Barbara knelt and took the cat up in her arms and hugged it like a teddy bear. Homer’s motor-like purr scored the momentary silence. “Well, I guess if I had died, there would have been no one to tell, and she would have gotten away with it, but once you pulled me out of the van, I suppose it was all over for her.”

  Henry told Barbara what Sharon had said about stabbing and robbery. There were no tears left for this. She just shook her head and speculated on all the lives that had been made a mess of. It seemed incomprehensible to him.

  “She was so smart. She could write a whole book in a few weeks. Why didn’t she just write one on her own?”

  Barbara responded quickly with a thought she had obviously gone over in her mind more than once.

  “It’s the sad part about working in a bookshop like this.” She waved her hand at the book-lined walls around them. “Look at them all .… Thousands and thousands of novels by writers who had high hopes and dreams of their own. Not even counting the ones who were never published to begin with. And they’re all forgotten. They’re like gravestones on a shelf. …I remember thinking about that the first time when I was in Rome during college and I took one of those tours down in the catacombs. In those narrow spaces, like aisles in a bookshop, the bones were filed away on shelves.” Barbara stopped, looked at him for some answer he did not have, and then continued. “Beyond the money involved, I think she might have been discouraged by all of this.” Barbara’s eyes scanned the shelves around them now. “There is something discouraging about this—about the way people always want to read something new, whether it’s better or not. Most people don’t even read, but of those who do, very few would even think of buying a used book—‘What’s new?’ I hear it every day—And Sharon was not the type to struggle to write something new and then pin her hopes on the chance of the market.”

  Henry’s thought came out loud. “Taking some of Duggan’s money must have seemed like a better bet. What might an accusation of plagiarism be worth to a writer like Duggan?”

  This idea silenced them both now. Even the cat appeared to be quietly mulling the possibility.

  Barbara suddenly spoke in the voice of his old boss. “You ought to call George Duggan and tell him.”

  “I should.” Henry had not thought of that.

  “Go ahead.” She handed him the phone. Obviously she felt some guilt over her support of Sharon’s cause.

  George Duggan answered his phone at Red Hill Camp. Henry explained as much as possible in the fewest words he could manage. Duggan was silent at first, then obviously disconcerted. He asked about Sharon’s family. Henry had no idea. He asked about Barbara, and Henry assured him things were well enough.

  As they spoke, it became obvious Duggan needed someone to talk to as well. Nora was no longer there. He was alone and his children had left for the summer. He was having trouble starting a new book.

  Barbara simply stared at the window from her usual perch by the register, Homer nestled in her lap, until a few seconds before ten, and then she arose and unlocked her door for the day’s business. By the time Henry hung up the phone, she appeared tired again. Henry stood in front of her at the desk.

  “You know, I could stick around. I’d be happy to volunteer for a few weeks until you can hire someone to take Sharon’s place.”

  Barbara laughed once. Then again, just to be doing it.

  “We’ve been there and done that, kiddo. You’re sweet, but you don’t belong behind the counter of my shop. Thanks, but Trudy is going to go full time for a few weeks until school starts. We’ll get by.”

  He was relieved.

  “At least tell me if there’s anything else I can do.”

  Barbara shook her head.

  “It won’t be a problem much longer … I think we’ll close the store after Christmas.”

  He had learned long ago not to argue with her. He had never, in his memory, ever won an argument with her.

  “I was afraid you were thinking like that.”

  “I’ve got to find some form of gainful employment before I get so old nobody will hire me.”

  Her wan smile showed no conviction. He gave her his best wide-eyed pitch. “You can re-open somewhere close by, in a smaller space.”

  She closed her eyes at him.

  “It won’t work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s all I know. It’s what I know. Everything I’ve learned says it won’t work anymore.”

  He continued his protest. “But you’ve been saying that bookselling was a dying trade for years. You don’t know if time has really run out. There may be a few years left. Books are still a way to make a living. Just scale down. Don’t give it up.”

  She shook her head. “I’m tired. I’ve been doing it for too long. Nobody gives a damn. Some reporter will come over from a newspaper and do a piece about the end of a era, or the closing of the book, or the last chapter, or—”

  “You are being cynical. That’s not you. That’s me.”

  “Nobody gives a damn.”

  The cat lifted his head to argue. She stroked his chest. Henry tried to modulate his voice.

  “Everybody gives a damn. There are people who never shop here who care about this place. This is Boston. It’s part of the shtick. People don’t read, but they love old bookstores. They really do. They’re not lying. It’s automatic. They can’t help it if they’ve been sold the sizzle and not the steak. They love the idea of reading more than the crap they’re given to read. But there’ll always be a few who really do.”

  “More people come in to pet the cat than buy books.” She nuzzled Homer and the cat’s eyes half closed in delight.

  Henry ignored her. “And there’ll always be new students coming to town with clean faces and unsullied hearts who think literature is something special. At least until the professors rape them of their innocence and spread the modern pox—they need you. And you can survive off of that. … Maybe I can’t. I can’t stand the maroons. But if you give up, there won’t be anybody at all left who gives a crap about them. The one person in a hundred who really loves books is going to be left with people like me—someone who doesn’t even want to talk to them—who’ll deal with them electronically over the internet. They’ll have to use a computer to get a book to read. You can’t just leave them to people like me. There is no book dust in an email. I won’t chat with them about the binding on a Liveright edition before and after Horace sold the last bit of his soul. I won’t let them fondle the books in my closet. You’ll make me responsible for putting an end to the last remnant of civilization. I would shoot the maroons before I listen to them say another word about how they just love old bookstores as they walk out empty-handed—after they’ve just bought a sack of DVDs and CDs on their way over to tell you they’ll come by again when they have a little more time to browse. … If you give up, I win!”

  She smiled at that. She did not answer so much as begin to ignore him as customers arrived. Henry left, worried that his ranting would lose her a needed sale.

  In the truck, he took a slim pack of index cards from his shirt pocket and fanned them by date. There was an estate auction preview at one o’clock in Worcester. He was a little early, but there was an old diner near there that had gr
eat rice pudding. The process of business would get his mind off things.

  At the auction he bought a collection of Lakeside Classics in the red and green bindings. The repetitive cadence of the auctioneer lulled him, releasing the drift of his thoughts. He worked at concentrating on the lots as they came up, but found himself contemplating other matters over and again. He passed on a collection of Philip K. Dick paperback first editions that he was regretting by the time he was driving home. Turnpike traffic kept him from getting back until just before dark.

  He dropped the books off at the house before he parked the truck at Benny’s and then walked the long way back through the Square. Students were starting to return. The brief and relative quiet of midsummer was past. Clusters of young faces moved hesitantly through the obstruction of tourists holding maps. Uneasy parents followed eager freshman against the flash of crossing lights, through cars drifting slowly, unsure of the traffic patterns. Street hustlers pressed likely victims for spare change. Locals darted around the fringes. Sophomores and juniors, their living spaces already claimed, scouted for familiar faces with whom to rejoice and retell fresh summer tales. An incompetent percussionist, squatting on an overturned milk crate, beat drum-like patterns on an unidentifiable found object at the edge of the pit, where the brick arose in a collar behind the Red Line subway entrance. The fumes of four idling buses drifted over the street.

  Henry looked across at the high brick walled enclosure surrounding Harvard Yard with the thought that he had still not visited sweet Ellen at the Widener Library. She would be back from vacation by now. Into his view, only a few feet away, moved the cop who patrolled the area.

  Henry remembered the eyes first. He was not as tall as Henry would have guessed, but heavyset. Bull-headed. His cap was pulled low. One thumb hung in his belt by his holstered gun. The cop’s eyes stopped, expressionless, on Henry and then moved past him.