by Amanda Cross
“Well, I’m new around here, and therefore supposed to have a higher tolerance for local gossip and complaints. Also, he was delivering Leo home, which was nice of him. What are you eying, in your most district-attorney way?”
“Mr. Mulligan,” Reed said. “He may not have orgies, but he’s clearly the fastest worker since Don Giovanni, and with somewhat the same tastes, if I remember correctly the confidence of Leporello.”
“I see,” Kate said, “and so, blast him, has William. But after all, she’s well up in her twenties, and supposedly knows what she’s doing.”
“I doubt very much,” Reed said moodily, “if any of us knows that. Have another drink.”
“I must say your glooming-about is scarcely flattering to me.”
Reed looked at her. “The simple fact,” he said, “is that I love you, and I wish you’d come back to New York and be properly sinful with me in an air-conditioned apartment. If you want my opinion, most City dwellers, one rung beneath the Jet Set and the writers of nasty articles for Esquire, are as innocent as a lamb unborn.”
“Speaking of lambs,” Kate said.
“I know, that’s why the phrase came into my head, no doubt. Do you think he means to seduce her during the cocktail party, or immediately afterward, or will he first tell her all about Form and Function in French . . .”
“We had better go and talk to William.”
“Emmet is talking to William.”
“And clearly he’s sunk twice, and is likely to go down a third time. Can you run interference?”
“Kate,” Reed said, beginning to shoulder his way, not too gently, through the crowd, “you must explain to me about William.”
“I can’t explain William,” Kate said. “I can’t explain Emmet or Leo, or anybody. Emmet was explaining James Joyce to me this morning in agonizing detail, and I’ve decided I can’t explain him either. William!” Kate called, having now edged within earshot.
William obediently swam the short distance toward her through the currents of people.
“Where is Grace Knole?” Kate asked.
“Being told about artificial insemination by the Osterhoffs.”
“Ye gods, we had better go and rescue her. Would you have any great objection to leaving now, if we should be able to disentangle her from the details of a cow’s personal life?”
“Nothing could please me more,” William said fiercely, with a glance toward Mr. Mulligan and Lina, “than to leave this instant.”
“I find, don’t you know,” Emmet said, joining them, “that my interest in artificial insemination is scarcely breathless with fervency. And let’s admit it, non-artificial insemination is much more interesting, and nonartificial noninsemination is better still . . .”
“Oh, shut up,” William ungraciously said.
“Though, of course,” Emmet went on in a small voice, bringing up the rear in their pilgrimage to Grace Knole, “a nondiscussion of nonartificial noninsemination is best of all.”
“Don’t go,” Mr. Mulligan said to Lina.
“But they’re all leaving.”
“Let them. I’ll see you home. You can’t desert me now. I always tire of cocktails parties about this tune, and when they’re your own you can’t get up and leave, the great inconvenience of giving cocktails parties as opposed to going to them. What are you drinking?”
“I think I had better stop drinking.”
“Never stop drinking when you’re still able to think you had better stop drinking, the first rule of a successful life of indulgence. And of course a life of indulgence is the only possible life to be lived in summer houses in the country during the torrid months. Drinking is one of the few simple pleasures left in modern life, drinking and love.”
“Is love really a simple pleasure?”
“To the complex, haven’t you noticed? Norman Mailer has made a small fortune trying to transform love into a simple pleasure. But the only one who succeeds is James Bond, because he’s so simple himself his pleasure can scarcely be otherwise. You puncture a girl’s tires with a little gadget developed for 00 personnel, and then enjoy her in the grass dodging gunfire the while. The great mistake is unnecessarily to complicate life.”
“I’m afraid I’m a rather complex person.”
“Exactly. And as Oscar Wilde has told us, simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.”
Kate and William walked home together. William having declared a frantic need for fresh air and Kate, downing all her civilized impulses, having decided to accompany him. Reed drove Grace Knole home, together with Emmet, whose eagerness to return to the Lingerwell papers was barely disguised. Kate had very mixed feelings about William, which were in no way simplified by the conviction that her determination not to interfere in his affairs was going, finally, to be overborne by the necessity of interfering in them. She ought not, of course, to have let Lina Chisana visit. But she had too late realized the intensity of the relationship between Lina and William. No doubt that relationship was such that only Henry James could have done it justice. Either William would have to let down the bars, or Lina, if she stuck with him, would have to dedicate herself to a life of placid friendships on the order of Grace Knole’s, and between these two extremes Kate was hard put to decide which was the most unsatisfactory. Still, whether dalliance with Mr. Mulligan . . .
“What is that unspeakable blackguard’s first name?” William asked. Kate dearly wanted to say “What blackguard?” but, never very good at sudden assumptions of naïveté, she merely said, “Padraic, spelled in transliterated Gaelic. I believe,” she added, “he is known to his friends as Paddy.”
“Where did he find his friends,” William asked, “in the nearest seraglio?”
“The nearest seraglio is probably in Istanbul.”
“I expect he’s got one upstairs, the . . .”
“Now look here, William, I don’t wish to sound middle-aged and assume any auntilary attitudes, but you have got to choose, you know, between a life of absolute celibacy and the love of a young woman. You simply can’t have both, and the sooner you stop fooling yourself, the better.”
“I know there are no standards left anywhere,” William said, “but surely fornication is not yet the only way of life possible, even on the part of older women who are widely assumed to be models of virtue while seething with lust.”
“All right,” Kate said, standing quite still. “I myself admit a perhaps distasteful disinclination for either continence or matrimony, which doubtless makes me a criminal in your eyes. Don’t interrupt. There are, however, crimes of omission, you know. If you spend hours and days and weeks with a young woman without even kissing her, you’re asking for trouble and ought to take your lumps when trouble comes. I might add,” Kate said, viciously kicking a stone from her path, “that since we are exchanging ad hominem remarks in this shameless fashion, let me suggest that if you want to be a priest, by all means go and be one. I’ll give you all the support I can. But if you choose a life of noncelibacy, then try noncelibacing. Now, if you want to take the first train out of here, I’ll try to find someone for Leo.”
“There’s a train from Pittsfield tomorrow morning. I’ll call a taxi and take the train, since that seems to be what you wish.”
“Oh, come off it, William, I wish nothing of the sort. What would Leo do without you, particularly at five-thirty in the morning? Of course, I’d like you to stay.”
“I can’t have you thinking I meant to accuse you, I mean, it never occurred to me to suggest that you were . . .”
“A fornicator? Never mind. All relationships are changing, William, and rather to my surprise, for I have a great many old-fashioned tendencies, I think they’re changing for the better. I still like courtesy, perhaps even formality of sorts. But I also think, as some pundit said, that the only crime sex can commit is to be joyless.”
“I
wish I could explain to you how I feel.”
“Never mind. Concentrate on explaining the finer points of Hopkins’ prosody, since that’s the subject of your dissertation and you must, you know, get past your dissertation block. Remember, as C. S. Lewis so wisely said, it is easier to describe the threshold of divine revelation than the working of a pair of scissors.”
Later that night, when Kate, having pleaded total exhaustion, had gone to bed with a stiff nightcap and fallen, not without much tossing and turning, into a troubled sleep, she was awakened by someone calling her name and knocking on her door. She thought at first that the house was on fire, and then that Leo had been kidnapped, these being the worries uppermost in her mind. But it was Lina, clearly on the verge of hysterics and prepared, Kate realized at a glance, to fly over the edge in the absolutely next moment. When Lina’s sobs had subsided, however, and Kate had braced herself for another heart-to-heart with the younger generation about the perils of fornication on which she was prepared, with Lina, to take a decidedly spinsterish view, Lina sobbed out the name of Mary Bradford.
“Mary Bradford! What now, what possibly now?”
“She said she didn’t think there was anyone home except just him. And naturally she leapt to the conclusion—there was a positive light in her eye, and nothing had happened, I mean, nothing really, but Padraic said he thought someone would probably slit the bitch’s throat if she didn’t watch out, so naturally, she won’t waste any time spreading the story . . .”
“He said that to her?”
“Yes. When she walked into the house to see him, after the party. Kate, would you mind if I asked you about something?”
“Let’s go down to the kitchen. I’m going to make some cocoa.”
“Cocoa?”
“Why not? It’s a soothing drink, isn’t it? Now listen to me, Lina, I don’t want to hear a lot of confessions you’re going to loathe me in the morning for knowing. If Mary Bradford walked in before you met a fate worse than death, it may have been her best act in what has clearly been a misspent life. Padraic Mulligan isn’t all that bad, even if I suspect him of not having a clue about either form or function in fiction of any nationality, but if you want to go off on a fling, I’m sure you could wait for a moment a little more spontaneous, if not affectionate. Coming down?”
“But,” Lina said, when they were in the kitchen, “virginity can become a burden.”
“Everything is a burden, especially nephews, students and the early letters of James Joyce. But remember, my dear, as Keats so wisely said, life is a vale of soul making. Do you know, I haven’t the faintest clue how to go about making cocoa? Let’s have a hot scotch sling.”
Chapter Six
The Dead
“Damn, blast and to bloody hell,” Reed said. “Operator, Operator. We live in an age of automation, but Araby, of course, does not have dials. Moronic operators apparently lured from the nearest institution for retarded baboons. If I knew the number in Boston, my dear young woman, I would scarcely be troubling you. I know there are probably eighteen John Cunninghams in the Boston telephone book, we are simply going to have to try them all until we find the right one. Yes, it’s Sunday, I do know the days of the week. No, I do not want to receive another call at this number, I want to find the right Mr. John Cunningham. Do you know,” he said to Kate, covering the receiver with his hand, “I do believe I have gotten through to some functioning part of the child’s brain.”
“They’re going to put dials in next year,” Kate said.
“By next year,” Reed said, hanging grimly on to the receiver, “I humbly trust that whatever happens in the town of Araby will be a matter of the most supreme indifference to all of us. Hello, hello, is this Mr. John Cunningham? I am sorry to be bothering you so early, but did you by any chance attend Harvard Law School, class of ’44? Believe me, sir, it is not my idea of a joke—an official of the electricians’ union; I see. I’m sorry, but it is a matter of the greatest importance, I do assure you. Operator. Operator. On to the next John Cunningham, my child. From the list that Information has given us. The area code, like the city of Boston, remains unchanged.”
“Reed,” Kate said. “Couldn’t you get his address from the Harvard Alumni Office, or some index of lawyers or something?”
“If they functioned on Sunday, no doubt I could. The police will be here in about five minutes, and we need a Massachusetts lawyer. Yes, Operator, well, let it ring. It was considerate of you,” Reed said, turning to Kate, “since you were intent on opening a boardinghouse in the midst of rural iniquities, to open it in Massachusetts. As I went to Harvard Law School, I can at least draw upon some acquaintances and not throw myself on the mercies of just any lawyer. Very well, Operator, they have no doubt gone away for the weekend. Let’s try the next John Cunningham. Kate, for God’s sake, don’t start crying. The woman isn’t worth a tear, not a sigh. Miss Knole, take her off and see if you can talk some sense into her. Yes, Operator, I’m still here, though gladly would I be in city pent. Mr. Cunningham? Jack? Thank God. Reed Amhearst here. Fine, until an hour ago. Listen, do you happen to remember that night in Scollay Square when you said if there was ever anything you could do for me? Well, I hope when you said anything, you meant anything. I’m in Araby, and a woman has just been murdered. Araby. Near Tanglewood. Berkshire County. I think you’d better, if you don’t mind. We’ll arrange the details later. Good. If you can find Pittsfield, I’ll tell you how to get here from there. By all means stop for a cup of coffee; I’m reasonably sure they can’t arraign us for homicide in under four hours, particularly on a Sunday. Perhaps my being from the district attorney’s office of New York will help some—anyway, I’m certainly going to try it. Someone I cared for? That’s the whole trouble, Jack, she was someone no one cared for. Righto. Hello, Operator. Thank you, my child, and bless you, we have come through.” Reed hung up. “Come on, Emmet, let’s see how our lady professors are doing.”
It had seemed to Kate that someone was calling to her, and she was trying to answer the call, but William was marrying Lina and quarreling with Emmet over the ring, which Leo, dressed oddly in velvet doublet and hose, was insisting had to be used as a prize for push shots. Someone in the back of the church was calling. Her unconscious mind struggled vainly to incorporate this sound, which was threatening sleep, into her dream. Kate awoke, to find Grace Knole calling her name.
“What time is it?” Kate said.
“About six thirty, I think. Are you awake, or do you need time to pull yourself together?”
“What’s happened? Leo? Lina and Mr. Mulligan . . .”
“Apparently one of the routine maneuvers in this household included rifle practice at five-thirty in the morning?”
“Has something happened to Leo?”
“Leo is fine, I think. But William has shot some woman who was fetching the cows. Some woman named Bradford. Shot her right through the head. I never did care for guns.”
“There were no bullets in the gun. No one ever knew what kind of bullet went in the gun. Oh, my God. Is she dead? Are you sure?”
“I have seldom been as sure of anything. I took the trouble to go out and look at her, since everyone else seemed to be on the edge, if not in the midst, of hysteria.”
“Is everyone up?”
“Everyone but Lina. Your Mr. Amhearst says we will have to call the police. Emmet wanted to go down and get her husband, but it was decided to wake you first. I hope you can wake up fast enough to formulate some plan, because except for Mr. Amhearst, who says we have to have a Massachusetts lawyer, nobody seems to have a clue what to do next.”
“Emmet had better go tell the husband. No, I’ll go. It isn’t really properly anyone else’s job. It’ll take me one minute to get dressed.”
But when Kate got downstairs she found Reed on the telephone, and the others—all but Lina, who apparently was sleeping the sleep of the troubled young
—huddled about in the dining room, where the telephone was, looking, Kate could not help thinking through her fears, like a group of stockholders meeting to dissolve a corporation. Leo was in the kitchen receiving the illustrations of Mrs. Monzoni. When Kate looked in, she had decided that, in the circumstances, Mrs. Monzoni was coping as well as anybody else could, probably better.
Now Reed, finding Kate recovering over her second cup of coffee, turned to walk out the door.
“Where are you going?” Kate asked.
“To inform Mr. Bradford that his wife is dead. I take it I shall find him in the barn, milking.”
“Do you think,” Emmet asked, “the cows made their own way back, led by the thought of food, and driven by the pressure of their swollen udders?”
“That’s a point,” Reed said. “Are the cows out there now?”
“By no means,” Grace said. “They weren’t even there when I went to look at her.”
“I gather,” Kate said, “from what Leo has told me, that she never actually followed them all the way home. They needed some urging from the rear, but once started, they kept going. I think Bradford waits for them in the barn, where each cow goes to her own stanchion and is then locked in.”
“Well,” said Reed, “I’m on my way, so we will soon know.”
“I’m going with you,” Kate said.
“You’re staying here.” Reed’s eyes met hers. “If Cunningham calls back, by any chance, or if the police arrive, tell them I’ll return shortly. I think you’d better get Miss Chisana up, and make sure Mrs. Monzoni doesn’t leave the house. Of course, no one is to touch the body or go outside.”
“Well,” Emmet said. “The sleuth at work.”
When Kate returned from her errands Emmet was still talking. “William,”’ he said, “hadn’t you better say something—anything, really, just so I know you’re quite all right: shocked of course, but basically sound. William!”
Kate walked up to William, who finally turned and looked at her. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not hysterical. Just horrified and mystified in equal parts. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know there was a bullet in the gun; I didn’t know there was a bullet in the house.”