by Amanda Cross
“They are not dreary.”
“Good. Let us hope we get out of this mess soon enough to go and see one in Central Park. Odds bodkins!”
It was, therefore, a diminished group which settled down to lunch. Leo was off at camp, receiving the instruction of Mr. Artifoni. “Doubtless,” Kate said, passing around the salad, “he will lecture the boys on the finer points of treating gunshot wounds. With luck, we will learn tonight whether one dies faster of a bullet in the head or the heart.”
“I thought it was a sports camp,” Grace said. “Is treating gunshot wounds a sport?”
“Every American boy should know first aid, my dear lady,” Emmet said. “Surely you can grasp that. If, like me, he faints at the sight of blood, and doesn’t know artificial respiration from Cheyne-Stokes breathing, he is clearly going to be of no use in emergencies, or so Leo informs me. I pointed out that boys are by definition no use in emergencies, but Leo said you never can tell. That’s it, you see, Mr. Artifoni has all those little creatures positively longing for a calamity. Had Mary Bradford bled to death, I should have suspected half the camp of doing it to provide tourniquet practice. I’m virtually certain Leo’s nightly prayer is that William or I will sever an artery and he can save us. Our dinner conversation is of the goriest, isn’t it, Kate? Were it up to me, I would forbid the child to mention so much as a corpuscle. Does that answer your question?”
Grace grinned at him. “Mr. Crawford, I must arrange for you to address the master’s students on Jane Austen, just so that I can come and listen to you.”
“James Joyce, please, or someone equally modern. I’ve been reading through such scads of material, all of it marvelous, that I’m thinking of throwing over dear old Jane and writing on the importance of editors to modern literature. With Kate’s permission, of course.”
“Someone ought to do a book on Sam Lingerwell. How far have you got now?” Kate asked.
“It’s scandalously slow going. Lingerwell did at least arrange the letters chronologically, which is to say each September he took out another huge file box and as he answered them, started throwing in all the letters he received. It would have been much easier, needless to say, for me to arrange the stuff by date rather than correspondents, but that would scarcely be of as much use to scholars. The Lawrence letters are fascinating, but the Joyce letters are the ones which really show up Lingerwell. Particularly the letters about Dubliners. After the Portrait, and with Ulysses under way, he wrote Lingerwell rather less. But the trouble they gave him over Dubliners, you wouldn’t believe it. What the printers particularly objected to, apparently, was the fact that he mentioned real places in Dublin. Can you imagine? Today, if an author doesn’t mention real places, he might just as well be writing for the funny papers. All he has to do is say ‘any similarity to an actual person or place is purely coincidental’ and everyone knows it’s a roman à clef.”
“Wasn’t there something there shouldn’t have been about Edward VII?” Grace asked.
“How you do pick up information,” Kate said.
“Well, why shouldn’t he have something to say about that fat voluptuary?” Emmet asked. “I know, I know, you are going to tell me Edward brought about the entente with France, whatever that was. But he just managed it because he spoke perfect French. The French, who are devoid of any moral sense, can’t help admiring a man who speaks their precious language well. He still spent all his time enjoying himself in a childish way.”
“I have always liked him,” Grace said. “Admittedly he hated abstract ideas or intelligent conversation, and apparently threw a fit if one was dressed a shade less than impeccably. But he had great tact. He was once visited by an Indian prince who, after eating asparagus, threw the stalks over his shoulder onto the carpet. The other guests all stared at him in hopeless fascination, but old Tum-tum just started throwing his stalks over his shoulder, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and soon all the guests were doing it. I like tact on that scale.”
“Better than his mother, anyway,” Kate said, “who is supposed to have been unreasonably upset when some visiting potentate sacrificed a sheep on one of the best rugs in Buckingham Palace.”
“Tum-tum?” Emmet asked.
“That, I understand, is what his mistresses called him,” Grace said. “I have to admit, you know, that in addition to being fond of Edward VII, I think Dubliners exceedingly overrated. I was looking at it last night, after our particularly fascinating session with Mr. Stratton. If half the Ph.D.’s in the country hadn’t taken it upon themselves to write endlessly about the book, I don’t think anyone would have paid it more than passing attention.”
“That’s what I’ve always felt about Milton,” Kate said. “Once you’ve read Paradise Lost fourteen times, you damn well have to find it interesting.”
“I don’t agree, as you know,” Grace said. “But I do not mean to disparage Joyce. I’m only suggesting that Dubliners is of real interest only because it led to Ulysses.”
“To put it another way,” Emmet said, “Dubliners, being Dublin without Bloom, never quite finds real life, as opposed to real death.”
“We were saying something like that yesterday afternoon to those two gallants. Isn’t it rather heartless,” Kate went on, “speaking of how awful Dublin was, for us to be sitting around gossiping about Joyce with a woman recently dead on our doorstep?”
“Some,” Emmet said, “we know to be dead though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six. I can’t think why they should occur to me in connection with Mary Bradford; perhaps it’s only in connection with you.”
“That quote’s never from Joyce.”
“No,” Emmet said. “I prefer lady authors, really; their wisdom is somehow distilled by the purity of their perceptions.”
“Wow!”
“Do you like it? I thought it up for a beginning sentence of an essay.”
“And where did you find that about some we know to be dead though they walk among us?”
“Virginia Woolf. Pity Lingerwell never corresponded with her. Now if you had any Woolf letters, you wouldn’t see me for the dust.”
“Emmet, don’t joke about such things. The question is, what are we going to do about Mary Bradford?”
“You’re not suggesting first aid after all this time?”
“I’m suggesting, not to put too fine a point on it, that if we don’t find out who put the bullet in that gun, William’s life is not going to be very easy, and I gather it isn’t a bed of roses even now.”
“Nobly spoken,” Emmet said. “I, too, though you may not think it, have grown fond of William, and indeed have suggested that he apply to you for permission to desert Gerard Manley Hopkins, magnificent poet that he is, and write his dissertation on some of Lingerwell’s material. But I’m afraid his block is psychological if not sexual; his whole life, really, is one long orgy of continence. Having committed murder, however unintentional, does not appear to me precisely the method one would choose above all others to help him over the double hurdle of dissertation block and rigid chastity. But what can we do? You are not, I trust, suggesting that we find a rural type and frame him?”
“I am suggesting,” Kate said, “if I’m to be brutally honest, that we at least allow ourselves to assume it is a rural murder, and look for a rural murderer. I hope—indeed, I trust—that we shall be able to keep an open mind in the face of any evidence. At the same time I would rather like to find some evidence. The police, with a single-mindedness that is rather typical of them, appear to be concentrating their powers, on which I am not inclined to place too high a value, on our own poor selves.”
“Well,” Emmet said, “looking on what we know of this rural community as so much clay, let us see if we can design ourselves something of particularly clever construct
ion.”
“To continue your figure, it’s rather a small amount of clay we have.”
“Araby is a small town.”
“Can we be certain the murderer is from Araby?”
“I rather think so. Of course, someone may have told someone, who told someone, who told someone in Detroit, who came all the way east to do the murder, but I can’t help feeling that the neatness of the whole plan involved a particularly local familiarity with the conditions.”
“Might I,” Grace said, “ask a thoroughly tactless question?”
“By all means,” Kate said. “But while we’re mentioning tact, let me grasp the opportunity to say that there isn’t the smallest reason why you should stay here. I’m delighted you agreed to come for a visit, and should I ever again take a house, which is about as likely as that I will allow myself to be launched in a spaceship, I should be delighted if you would honor me by being my guest. Meantime, however, I shouldn’t blame you if you decided to get the hell out of here. If Lina wants to hold William’s hand . . .”
“And I’d be surprised if he lets her go that far,” Emmet said.
“Someone,” Kate continued, ignoring Emmet, “will be glad to drive you home. I love you, I love having you, but please don’t feel you have to stay, on the same theory which induced King Edward to throw the asparagus over his shoulder.”
“Nothing could induce me to go. Unless you feel you can no longer bear my company, or find my presence, under the circumstances, the proverbial straw.”
“Nonsense.”
“Then let us say no more about it. I accepted your invitation, you know, not only because I like going places since I retired, and because dear Lina was driving up anyway, but also to serve my own ends. Should you ever become extricated from this preposterous situation, Kate, I would like to talk to you about something rather special.”
“How enticing. Let’s go to it immediately after lunch.”
“Certainly not. First things first. I insist, since I’m to remain, on asking my thoroughly tactless question.”
“Ask away.”
“Are we certain that it was William who shot the woman? Or was it, possibly, Leo, for whom William is assuming the blame or, more exactly, shouldering the burden of inevitable guilt.”
“Naturally,” Kate said, staring into her coffee cup, “that occurred to me, right off like a shot, to be perfectly frank. I taxed William with being a chivalrous idiot, and suggested, with more forcefulness than delicacy, that I had never noticed lying to be a help, however gallant the lie, however compromising the circumstances. William agreed with me most sweetly, and assured me that he, in fact, had taken the gun from Leo and fired it. Leo, whom naturally I didn’t want to interrogate too closely, seemed to agree with this account. My own suspicion, for what it’s worth, is that William convinced Leo that he, William, had shot the lethal weapon when Leo had actually done so. A case, you might say, of brainwashing. Leo thinks the world of William, and would gladly accept William’s word, forcefully enough presented, against the evidence of his own senses. But whether William is actually telling the truth, or protecting Leo, we may never know. Clearly, it’s impossible, at this point, to pursue the matter any further.”
“For some reason,” Grace said, “I think it’s important.”
“Of course it’s important. Apart from everything else, I have assumed, albeit unwillingly, summer custody of my nephew, only to involve him in a murder case, if not in the actual murder. What I shall say to my brother I scarcely dare to think.”
“You haven’t, I take it, heard from him.”
“Fortunately, he is in Europe, and it is to be hoped that the European edition of the Times, which he is almost certainly reading, will not carry the story of our relatively minor rural murder. But a day of reckoning will come. I shall have to arm myself with a still brandy and say ‘I told you so.’ I don’t know what I told him, but I always find that statement leaves the opposition searching for the retort glorious, during which hiatus one departs from the scene of combat. I’m worried about Leo, naturally, but that’s mostly because it seems a worrying sort of situation. In point of fact, he’s done wonderfully well this summer, though whether due to the presence of William, the absence of his parents or the simple transformations of time I couldn’t say.”
“Thank you for letting me get that off my mind,” Grace said. “Let us return then to our clay, as Emmet called it. Araby. How small is it?”
“About four hundred, including babes in arms. About one hundred and forty odd households, I think, pay taxes. Of these, well over half are summer people with large, highly taxed establishments, who do not use the schools, the nursing service or the library—which, incidentally, I have discovered to be a fancy name for a few tattered volumes available between the hours of two on Thursday.”
“What made Sam Lingerwell ever decide to buy a house here?”
“A good question it only recently occurred to me to ask. I’ve written a letter to his daughter, and with luck may get answers to a number of things. The reason, however, is probably simply that he visited here and liked the country. We know that the rural community is not exactly to the taste of the urban devotee, but that was hardly likely to emerge on a casual weekend. The views are beautiful, the air cool, and somehow country life seems so simple when one is contemplating it from a New York office in the middle of a frantic afternoon. He certainly couldn’t have known, for instance, that Mary Bradford would be a neighbor.”
“Well, then,” said Emmet, getting down to it, “who have we in Araby who might have put the bullet in William Lenehan’s gun? There’s us, the Bradfords, Mr. Mulligan, Mr. Artifoni and his camp—who else can we mold into a suspect nearer to the heart’s desire?”
“North of us, all summer people whom, alas, I am inclined to exonerate. They haven’t ‘called,’ as the country people say; they certainly wouldn’t know anything about the household—anyway, not enough to slip a bullet into the gun. Doubtless they’ve heard gossip about us from some of the natives, but that’s always wildly off the mark—certainly impossible for all murder-planning purposes. That leaves the local people on the road, who of course include the Pasquales and the Monzonis, both of which families know all about us and are prime suspects. But did they hate Mary Bradford, really hate her? Make a note, Emmet, we must find out. Of course there are other farmers, and one or two Italian families to whom Mary Bradford always referred as ‘white trash,’ but apart from the fact that they are cheerful and improvident, like the Flopsy bunnies, I know little about them. I’m beginning to find this conversation depressing. More and more suspicion on poor us.”
“Not necessarily,” Emmet said. “Personally, I’m counting heavily on Mr. Mulligan. Who knows how close Mary Bradford was to the truth in her talk of orgies. And while Mr. Mulligan clearly has tenure, and is a full professor at a relatively young age, because he’s published so much, one can be fired from a tenure position for moral turpitude.”
“Surely that means raping a student in the halls, at the very least.”
“Running orgies might do in a pinch. Or seducing young assistant professors. Even if Mr. Mulligan only thought Mary Bradford was a threat, won’t that do? Then there’s Artifoni, into whose affairs I would dearly love to look. Oh, stop worrying about Leo, Kate, I’m sure he’s righteous as all get-out with small boys, but how much was the woman affecting his camp? Also, I don’t want to cast aspersions in these matters, if they are aspersions, but Americans might do well to wake up to the fact that homosexual men who deeply resent women are not absolutely always those who go about prancing like little fawns. My suspicions, were I inclined to have any, would certainly be directed at men who spend their whole working time directing boys’ activities, their whole playtime at games for boys, their spectator time watching male sports, and if they marry, always have five little crew-cut sons. I bet they drown the girls at birth. Mary Bradf
ord may not have figured all this out, but who knows what her suspicions were. That woman had a nose for scandal, you have to give her that.”
“Emmet, are you suggesting that I have not only exposed my nephew to murder, but have placed him in a camp filled with queers?”
“Relax. In point of fact, if Artifoni killed Mary Bradford, it was probably something to do with his precious camp. I’m merely trying to suggest that the most wholesome people may in fact have the personality for murder, which we ought to keep in mind should it be impossible to pin the murder on Artifoni for other reasons.”
“Your language leaves much to be desired.”
“Why not look at it the other way?” Grace said. “What possible motive could anyone in this house have for killing her? For one thing, the body would be unmistakably on their doorstep. For another, however huge a nuisance she was, and I gather that can scarcely be exaggerated, no one here had to kill her to keep her out of his life. At the worst, this summer’s end would conclude any conceivable reason for further relationship. For a third, would anyone among us so stage a murder that a child or his tutor would become the instrument of death? It speaks of a lack of imagination for which I find no evidence here.”
“None of this applies if it was Mrs. Monzoni or Mr. Pasquale.”
“True. Clearly that needs following up. But this discussion does mean we must look at Mr. Mulligan, I agree with that. Orgies or no orgies, Lina’s evidence, should she give it, certainly indicates some lack of imagination on Mr. Mulligan’s part.”
“How do both of you know so much about Lina and Mr. Mulligan?” Kate asked.
“The Lord hath given us eyes; should we see not?” Grace said. “There were moments when those pleasant summer people were telling me about artificial insemination, and the marvelous indications of the proper time for insemination established by the cows’ mounting one another—you may well look amazed, my dear, but I have noticed people often rejoice in discussing sex under the aegis of agriculture—there were moments during this enlightening discourse when I really thought Mr. Mulligan was going to do a little mounting himself, right there in his living room.”