by Amanda Cross
“She means a religious, no doubt,” his companion added.
“Ah, of course; and how is she related to you?”
“Perhaps,” Kate said, “we could sit down. Might I offer you something to eat or drink? Mr. Cunningham found the strawberries exceedingly . . .”
“No thank you,” Mr. Stratton said. “Let’s sit down by all means. Go on, Miss Fansler.”
“Miss Lingerwell—perhaps I might just call her that—is no relation to me at all. In fact, I don’t know her very well anymore.”
“Then she is merely the landlord, from whom you are renting the house?”
“Well, you see,” Kate said, feeling like a doubtful swimmer who has just leapt into the midst of a very deep, very cold, quarry pool, “I’m not renting the house. Could we, Mr. Cunningham, begin at the beginning?”
“And where is the beginning, my dear woman?” Cunningham asked. “With Adam and Eve, or the discovery of America, or the settlement of New England, or the founding of the town of Araby . . .”
“Mr. Cunningham.” Mr. Stratton’s voice indicated that he was coming to grips with fundamental matters. “Am I to understand that the members of this household have been instructed by you to answer questions only in your presence, and with your permission?”
“That is within the letter and meaning of the law, is it not?”
“Certainly. On the other hand . . .”
“On the other hand, I quite see your point of view. You would rather pursue your investigations undeterred by me. Well, proceed, my two gallants, I shall return to Boston and to my own affairs, from which this unfortunate occurrence diverted me. Perhaps you will be good enough to indicate whether you intend to take legal action against William Lenehan.”
“He will be arraigned, certainly and then, in all probability, released in the custody of—you if you should choose, Mr. Cunningham.”
“Not however today, I gather.”
“I think not. Tomorrow.”
“Very good. I shall return or, more likely, meet you in the courthouse. Good-bye, Miss Fansler, for now. Thank you for those truly excellent strawberries. Reed, might I have a word with you on my way out?” Kate watched him go, accompanied by Reed, and began to feel, for the first time that day, a rising sense of panic.
“You were telling me, Miss Fansler, that you do not rent this house?”
“Perhaps I do rent it technically. I don’t know. I’m here trying to bring some order into the papers of the late Samuel Lingerwell. Mr. Emmet Crawford is helping me.”
“Mr. Crawford is no relation to you.”
“No. He is a graduate student in the university where I teach.”
“I see. And Mr. Lenehan’s duties are in connection with lie boy? Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Is Mr. Lenehan any relation to you?”
“No. He is a graduate student also. I am really afraid, Mr. Stratton, that I have an unfortunate talent for unconventional situations. I can never decide whether odd things happen to me or, as Shaw suggested about himself, I happen to them. I fear you must find all this dreadfully strange.”
“Then apart from the boy, who is your nephew, no one in the household is related to you at all, or even very well known to you?”
“I cannot think,” Kate, who had been priding herself on the remarkable degree of calm she was maintaining, burst out, “why the matter of relationships is one which strikes you as of such overwhelming importance. True, I am not living in the bosom of my family. However, since my parents are dead, my family is, so to speak, without a bosom—though I have to admit I should not have the slightest desire to throw myself on it, should one be discoverable. I can quite see that from the police point of view, this household must appear a dreadful strain on your descriptive powers, but perhaps if you look at it in the light of a summer study group, complete with casual nephew, it will appear a more orderly phenomenon.”
“Is Mr. Reed Amhearst any relation?”
“I shall go mad, round the bend, completely and absolutely crackers. Reed Amhearst, if you must know, Mr. Stratton, is a man with whom I happen to be . . .”
“Spending what was supposed to be a quiet weekend,” Reed said, walking into the room. “You’ve no objection to my listening in, silently, have you, Mr. Stratton?”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Stratton said, in a voice which admitted no possibility of irritation, “I can conclude my questions on this household. Present here also are, according to my notes, a Miss Eveline Chisana, and a Miss Grace Knole, as well as . . .”
“Both ladies should be referred to as Professor,” Kate said, with some asperity. Reed might have saved her from God knew what ghastly admission, but she was not about to let Mr. Stratton get away with anything. She had taken quite a dislike to Mr. Stratton, who appeared, insofar as one could perceive anything through his bland manner, to be returning the sentiment in spades.
“Professors of what?”
“English and comparative literature. Professor Knole is a specialist in medieval literature, Professor Chisana in the eighteenth century.”
“ ‘Be not the first by whom the new is tried/ Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,’ ” Mr. Stratton surprisingly said.
“Exactly,” Kate agreed.
“And what are you a specialist in, Miss Fansler?”
“Victorian literature. ‘Ring out, wild bells.’ ‘Oh, love, let us be true to one another.’ ”
“I prefer the eighteenth century. Order.”
“Professor Chisana’s views exactly. I’m sure you’ll get on very well.”
“She and Professor Knole are guests here?”
“Yes.”
“Were they previously acquainted with any members of the household besides yourself?”
“Professor Chisana is a friend of Mr. Lenehan’s, Professor Knole may, before her retirement, have known both of them—I’m not certain. She certainly knew Emmet Crawford, since she recommended him to me. She was head of the department in which both men are graduate students.”
“Mr. Amhearst and the boy are also your guests?”
“Yes. Though Leo might be called a member of the household.”
“In what exactly do Mr. Lenehan’s duties consist?”
“He offers companionship and instruction to Leo. Leo had fallen rather behind in his schoolwork. Under William’s direction, Leo writes essays, does problems in arithmetic, and learns to relate coherently his experiences, at camp and elsewhere.” Mr. Stratton looked as though he thought Kate too could profit from lessons in relating her experiences coherently.
“I wonder,” he said, “if you would have any objection to my questioning the other members of your household? I believe we have determined who all of them are, except for the help, indoors and out.”
“Whether they talk to you seems to be their decision, or the law’s, not mine.”
“Very well. And is there a room in which I might question them quietly.”
“There’s the library, where Emmet works.”
“That will do very nicely, thank you. Only one more question, Miss Fansler, for now. How well did you know the dead woman?”
“Not very well. On the other hand, I’m not sure there was much to know. As you will no doubt gather if you pursue your investigations, she was not widely loved.”
“Had you any reason to dislike her?”
“Apart from the fact that she had all the endearing characteristics of a bobcat, no. Whom do you wish to see first?”
“Since Mr. Crawford is supposedly in the library, we might as well start with him.” They all stood up. “I hope, Mr. Amhearst,” Mr. Stratton said, “that you will not mind answering a few questions later on.”
“Certainly not. Might I, at the moment, usurp the privilege of making a suggestion? After you have questioned everyone in this house, you mi
ght turn your attention to the rural community outside. I strongly suspect that you’ll find the cause of your crime there. Mary Bradford was hated by many, and it seems to me likely that this household, with its lack of surface conventionalities, appeared a likely agent for the carrying out of the murderer’s plans.”
“We have every intention, Mr. Amhearst, of pursuing that line of inquiry. Will you be kind enough, Miss Fansler, to show us to the library?”
“What’s the other fellow for?” Kate asked Reed, as they walked out onto the lawn. “ ‘I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,/ And what can be the use of him is more than I can see;/He’s just exactly like me from my toes up to my head . . .’ I hope the rest of it isn’t appropriate. Do you really think the answer is in the rural community outside, as you so stuffily put it?”
“The other fellow—to take your questions in the order in which they were presented—is notetaker and witness, should one be required.”
“And protector of Mr. Stratton, should any of us go beserk and try throttling the pompous son of a . . .”
“Kate, he’s only doing his job, though I do admit his manner is a trifle unrelaxed.”
“Unrelaxed! He makes a stuffed shirt look like a crumpled nightgown. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that you are something special in the way of a district attorney: you’re neither familiar nor pompous with people you meet, and that’s not only commendable, it’s extraordinary.”
“To answer your second question . . .”
“I take it back; perhaps you’re pompous after all.”
“I don’t know if the crime is really outside this household. I’m reserving judgment, but I thought it well to direct Mr. Stratton’s attention in that direction. Kate, will you please behave yourself? You were allowing him to annoy you into admissions you would not ordinarily make, and that is exactly his intention. Whatever were you about to say when I came in?”
“None of your business. If you wanted to find out, you should have stayed outside and listened. Reed, you’re not really worried that I’m going to land us in some frightful situation by letting my tongue run away with me? I’ve nothing to hide, really, and you yourself said we weren’t to withhold . . .”
“Do you know why I want to marry you? Because if it’s not exactly legal to beat your wife, it’s less illegal than to beat a woman to whom you’re not related in any way. Shall we get married?”
“You just want to marry me so I can’t testify against you in court. You’re afraid I’m going to tell Mr. Stratton that you wanted to marry Mary Bradford in order to stuff your socks up her vacuum cleaner. Reed, Reed, where is this going to end?”
“Do you know, I’m frightfully worried about where it’s going to end, and I think, far from being a mare’s nest, this whole situation may well be a hornets’ nest about to explode. But though I’m certain I ought to be lecturing you about the proprieties, and brooding about what all those innocents are saying in there, and feeling mournful over the death of Mary Bradford, who met, God help her, a mean and violent death, I’m aware of only one desire . . .”
“Which had better, according to your own precepts, be unexpressed. Do you know, you’re beginning to talk like me, full of subordinate clauses, and penultimate climaxes, interspersed with periodic sentences. We can’t possibly disappear, can we?”
“Not possibly.”
“Why did Cunningham disappear? Do you think he’s given us up as a bad job, or were we taking too much of his time?”
“He felt that for all of us to talk only in the presence of a lawyer would not give the tone of innocence it is so important to convey. Cunningham’s clever as hell, and he knows the police know it. If he walks off leaving us to their tender mercies, it’s as good as saying he doesn’t even think they’ve got a case.”
“Doesn’t he?”
“All Cunningham’s clients are innocent by definition, didn’t he tell you?”
“I hope we are innocent. But if we don’t find the murderer, and I don’t see, really, how we can, won’t it be a dreadful cloud hanging over us all?”
“Oddly enough, I don’t believe the innocent need fear the clouds, not in this case. Hello, speaking of innocents, we appear to be about to entertain Mr. Mulligan.”
“The news must be all over the valley. You see before you a man making straight for the horse’s mouth.”
“Ah, Miss Fansler,” Mr. Mulligan said, approaching, “What sad news.”
“You refer to the death of Mary Bradford?”
“Death is always sad. But I referred, actually, to the inconvenience to your household. Might I offer any assistance?”
“Come in and have some lunch. If the police should join us, you can help me to behave myself in their austere presence. If not, we can exchange gossip. Had any orgies lately?”
“Kate,” Reed said between his teeth, “I have definitely decided not to wait for marriage. I tell you what, Mr. Mulligan,” he said, raising his voice to its normal range, “perhaps Miss Fansler will allow us a little sherry before lunch, since the circumstances are, shall we say, a bit exceptional.”
Kate stuck out her tongue at him.
Chapter Eight
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
By four o’clock Mr. Stratton had finally worked his way through the household, including the cook and gardener. Mr. Pasquale, indeed, was never there on Sunday, but aware of lie presence of the police, he had arrived and begun weeding an already weeded flower bed, making it manifest that he hadn’t the smallest intention of leaving until the fall of night or the departure of the police, whichever should occur first. The news of Mary Bradford’s gruesome death had spread far and wide, beyond the bounds of Araby, and the sightseers were already beginning to converge. The police were coping with these, but Kate was heard to mutter that they had better get some ‘No Parking’ signs, as in the case of the automobile accident, to which Reed answered that there were always, in any community, rural or urban, people to whom a murder was an experience invigorating in the extreme, and the scene of a murder fascinating beyond description. He supposed these were the sort who attended hangings in the eighteenth century, and drawing and quarterings in Tudor times.
Mr. Stratton consented, since it was four o’clock, to partake together with his cohort, of a sandwich and a glass of milk. He consented reluctantly, overborne apparently by the obvious hunger pangs of his associate and the information that the nearest restaurant was sixteen miles away, coming and going. Following this repast, he requested to see the three “lady professors” in the library. Food had clearly not improved his disposition, which had in addition been tried to the uttermost by his attempts to grapple with James Joyce.
“Perhaps,” he said when they had all forgathered, “you three, since you are all professors of literature, can explain James Joyce to me.”
“I am reminded, Mr. Stratton,” Grace Knole said, “of a novel by Thomas Hardy, a minor novel I believe, though the name escapes me. In this particular work, a man, courting a young woman, is forced to admit to her that he has also proposed in the past to her mother and grandmother.”
Mr. Stratton looked as though he was already regretting his decision to consult them. “But how,” he began, “could one man . . .”
“I suggest that you not get bogged down in the mathematics of it now,” Grace said. “Turn it over in your mind when you’re trying to get to sleep tonight, remembering that women in those days married and had children at sixteen, and a good thing too, you are doubtless thinking, forced into confabulation with three spinsters of varying ages.” The look on Mr. Stratton’s face indicated that that was exactly what he had been thinking or, to be more exact, had been about to think, for Grace Knole’s mind, working more rapidly than that of any other brilliant scholar, was bound to be several steps ahead of a mere policeman’s.
“About James Joyce,” Mr. Stratton said.
The three looked inquiringly at him.
“There’s a story here, now, called ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room.’ While eating the lunch Miss Fansler was kind enough to offer me, I read that story in a book Mr. Emmet Crawford in his turn was kind enough to offer me. I had asked him, since he seemed to keep mentioning this writer James Joyce, if there was anything short of his that I might read. The story was eighteen pages long, and I didn’t understand a word of it. Neither,” he added, “did my associate.”
“Yes,” Kate said. “It’s always been a difficult story, as a matter of fact. Do you mean, Mr. Stratton, that nothing seems to happen in it?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“But that, you see, is the whole point. Nothing is happening in Ireland at all. All the people are dead, actually; incapable of love.”
“Like Mary Bradford,” Lina said.
“Now that you mention it,” Kate said, “exactly like Mary Bradford.”
“Is that,” Grace asked, “why Forster said of Joyce that he was throwing mud on the universe?”
“Forster was speaking of Ulysses, and in any case I think he’s retracted the statement since. He said that when everyone thought of Joyce as immoral.”
“There’s a story I heard,” Grace said, “of someone’s dining with Joyce, and raising a glass of wine with a toast to immorality. ‘I won’t drink to that,’ Joyce is supposed to have said, turning down his wineglass.”
“It was white wine,” Kate said.
“Does it matter,” Mr. Stratton asked, in tones of one who has suffered long and silently, “what color the wine was?”
“Of course it matters,” Kate said. “That’s the whole point about Joyce’s work. In ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’ the most important thing that happens is a bottle goes ‘Pop.’ ”
Mr. Stratton looked as though he would soon go “Pop” himself.
“What’s Ivy Day, to begin with?” he asked.
“There’s a book, paperback, I believe, called A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce,” Grace said, “by William York Tindall. You must allow me to present you with a copy. I get a faculty discount, a privilege extended even to emeritus professors. Tindall says, if I remember correctly, that everything in the story acquires meaning by reference to Parnell. Do I understand you to be suggesting, Mr. Stratton, that everything in this case acquires meaning by reference to James Joyce?”