by Jane Langton
And that afternoon their fame attracted the defectors back. By four o’clock there were eighty-one campers at Harvard Towers. The good women of the Congregational church had to make a second vat of split-pea soup, and rush over to Sage’s to get more eggs for the cornbread. The loyal kids from Phillips Brooks House turned out batch after batch of cookies.
“Oh, God, I keep burning them,” said Millie, the idealistic freshman, yanking another tin out of the oven and slapping it down on the counter.
“Just scrape off the black,” said Brad, the idealistic sophomore.
That evening, back home in Concord, Homer and Mary turned on the news to see if Palmer Nifto had succeeded in attracting national publicity. Oh, yes, he had. There he was, and there were the sofas with their wheels, and there was the anchorwoman announcing that in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where these homeless people were living in tents out-of-doors, the temperature was about to plummet to ten degrees below zero.
The next piece of news was also of flabbergasting interest.
“General Confection,” said the anchorwoman, “the manufacturer of many popular brands of candies and candy bars, is rushing to take off grocers’ shelves the product believed to have caused the death of Thomas Cobb of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Arsenate of lead was found in Cobb’s stomach, which otherwise contained only the ingredients of a candy bar called Tastychox. Some malicious person is thought to have injected the bar with this highly toxic substance. No other illnesses connected with Tastychox have been reported, but shoppers are warned to avoid it.”
“A candy bar!” said Homer. “Of course, I should have guessed. All that chocolate and cocoa powder and so on. Naturally, it was a candy bar.” He looked at his wife in triumph. “So it was murder, all right, just as I thought. Somebody injected Tom’s candy bar with arsenate of lead. What the hell for? What did anybody have against him? Mary, dear, for Christ’s sake, what’s the matter? You’re white as a sheet.”
“Homer, oh, Homer.” Mary jumped to her feet, but she was too weak to stand up. Sinking back in her chair, she tried to explain it. She could only tell it in short bursts, how Tom had offered her his candy bar, how he had taken it out of his pocket and held it out to her only an hour or two before he fell writhing to the floor of the stage in Sanders Theatre. If she had accepted it, if she had not already used up her appetite on a liverwurst sandwich and a couple of sugary doughnuts, she was the one who would have died in anguish on the operating table. “Oh, Homer.”
Homer said nothing, he merely swept her up and held her in his arms.
Gretchen Milligan had still not come back to Bright Day. Her counselor went out in the cold to look for her at Harvard Towers and in the shelters at University Lutheran and Central Square, but no one knew where Gretchen was.
The counselor was darkly pessimistic. “Don’t blame me,” she said to the other social workers at Bright Day when she got back and climbed the steep steps to the front door and warmed her cold fingers around a mug of hot coffee. “Don’t blame me if we have a dead mother and a stillborn child on our hands. What else can I do?”
CHAPTER 30
O then bespoke Joseph,
With answer most unkind,
“Let him pluck thee a cherry
That brought thee now with child.”
“The Cherry Tree Carol”
Arlo Field came running back to the astronomy lab in the middle of the hilarious encounter between the Cambridge Police Department and Palmer Nifto. Something more important was on Arlo’s mind.
It was Friday, December twenty-second, the shortest day of the year. He had an appointment with his camera. He wanted to be on hand at eight-thirty in the morning to make sure it took its last picture of the sun, the image that would appear on the film at the very lowest point of the curve of the analemma. Then he would remove the filter and set the timer to take a picture later on in normal light, to give foreground to the forty-four bright suns in the dark sky—a view of the tower of Memorial Hall in the normal sunshine of afternoon. Thank God, it was a clear day.
Arlo was early enough in the astronomy lab to have time on his hands. He ambled around the room staring at the floor, thinking about sofas, shutter speeds, solar flares, and Sarah Bailey. It wasn’t until he had looked at the marks on the floor three times that he at last really saw them.
The legs of the tripod had been moved. They were taped to the floor, but they were not on the marks.
Alarmed, enraged, he dropped to his knees, tore off the tape, moved the camera back, and shifted it by small degrees until the little scope showed the northeastern geegaw on the top of the Mem Hall tower. Then he taped the tripod down again.
Who the hell would do a thing like that? God, it couldn’t have been Chickie Pickett? Chickie was pretty wild, but she really cared about the analemma project. It couldn’t have been Chickie.
A lot of other students hung around the lab, and some of them were pretty nutty.
Arlo stood up and stared thoughtfully at the camera. Let us now consider Harley Finch. Harley had nearly knocked the camera down once already, because he was clumsy. But this dirty trick wasn’t mere clumsiness. Someone had used great care in pulling off the old tape and fastening the legs down in the wrong places. Harley was the only person with a reason for discrediting the work of Arlo Field. He’d be ensuring his own academic survival.
Grimly Arlo looked at his watch. There was still half an hour to kill before the last exposure of the sun at eight-thirty. Bored, he went out on the terrace and leaned against the railing, looking out over the city of Cambridge and Harvard University. Directly below him was Palmer Nifto’s tent city of homeless people. Some of them were straggling back from the sofa caper in Harvard Square. Yes, there was Nifto, walking briskly in the direction of his command center with a cameraman in tow.
Then Arlo gripped the railing and leaned over a little farther to stare at Sarah and Morgan Bailey. They were walking quickly along Kirkland Street, approaching the north door of Memorial Hall.
Arlo ran into the lab for a pair of high-powered field glasses, then ran back to the railing and aimed them at Sarah.
As usual she was rosy and broad and beautiful, with that mop of tangled hair into which Arlo longed to plunge his fingers. But her eyes were cast down. Why did she look that way? If it weren’t absurd to think it of Sarah Bailey, he would say she was frightened.
He shifted the glasses to her husband. Morgan’s eyes were bright, but his face was pale with a more-than-winter paleness. In the last week Arlo had made an effort to befriend Morgan Bailey, and for a while it had worked. Morgan had his birds and Arlo his sun and stars, and each had tried to take an interest in the other’s profession. But lately Morgan had seemed too absorbed in some silent business of his own to exchange small talk with Arlo Field.
And anyway—Arlo had to admit it to himself—his only reason for getting to know Morgan had been to get closer to his wife. Quickly, before she disappeared inside Mem Hall, Arlo shifted the glasses back to Sarah’s face. At once it jumped up at him, and Arlo’s heart jumped with it. With a wry grin, he recognized the fatal symptoms. Goddamnit, he was in love again.
Greedily he stared at Sarah as she began climbing the steps with Morgan. Then, to his dismay, she turned her head and glanced upward. She was looking straight at him through the lenses of the glasses. And, oh, God, so was Morgan. And Morgan’s pale face was red with anger. His lips were moving, he was saying something, something furious, but there was no giant ear trumpet to amplify the sound, as the field glasses had magnified the sight.
At once Arlo let the glasses drop around his neck. Now Sarah and Morgan were only toy figures opening a faraway door and disappearing inside.
Trembling, Arlo went back into the lab, so agitated that he forgot to lock the glass door. He couldn’t get Sarah’s glance of recognition out of his mind. Had there been a look of appeal on her face? Or was his imagination working overtime?
With an effort he put her out of his mind, because
it was almost eight-thirty, time for the last exposure of his camera to the sun. Would the shutter open on schedule, or had the digital alarm been monkeyed with too? If so, he’d have to depress the button by hand.
He went to the camera and watched the green numbers on the clock change from 8:25 to 8:30. Good—there it was, the soft buzzing click. The last solar image had been recorded. With his tongue between his teeth Arlo delicately removed the filter, changed the exposure setting, and set the timer for three o’clock. Tonight he’d try to get back here and take a look at his year’s work.
The phone rang. It was his mother, calling from Pittsfield. “Arlo dear, is everything all right?”
“Of course everything’s all right.”
“Dear, I know you said you can only come for Christmas Day, but I’m so hoping you can stay a little longer?”
Arlo grimaced at his mother’s pathetic tone. “But, Mom, I told you, there are Revels performances the day before Christmas and the day after. I have to be here.”
“I see. Oh, Arlo, dear, I’m so disappointed.”
Arlo relented. “Tell you what, I’ll come for the next weekend, the whole long weekend.”
“Oh, thank you, dear! And remember, you’re not to worry about a Christmas present for me. Just any little thing will do.”
Arlo said goodbye and tore out of the office, leaving the door unlocked as usual.
So the next person to step off the elevator had no trouble getting in.
Morgan entered the astronomy lab with an excuse on his lips, but to his relief the place was empty. His heart was beating rapidly, he was rigid with furious purpose.
But he was too early. Tensely he walked around Arlo’s office, looking at things he didn’t understand. His terrors had expanded, they were sending out fingers in all directions. Arlo Field! Just now Arlo had been staring at Sarah through some kind of powerful field glasses, he had been spying on her. Morgan’s fears multiplied. Jeffery Peck was after her, anyone could see that, and so was Arlo Field, and so were all the rest. They were all after Sarah!
Jeff entered the Science Center at quarter to three precisely, and looked at Sarah’s letter to be sure he was doing the right thing—Darling, meet me at three o’clock—tomorrow in the astronomy lab. It was a crazy place for a meeting, but what the hell did it matter? At three o’clock he would be wherever Sarah Bailey wanted him to be, down in a coal mine or up in a balloon.
The elevator took him to the eighth floor, and at once he recognized the door to the astronomy lab. It was wide open. Eagerly Jeffery went in, calling, “Sarah?”
The office was empty, but the door to the terrace was open.
“Sarah, darling,” called Jeffery.
There was no answer, only an odd sort of hissing sound.
“Sarah?” he called again, and hurried outside.
But it wasn’t Sarah who was waiting for him on the terrace.
The scuffle was short. Jeffery was too surprised to react. As he went over the railing he said nothing at all, but the letter in his hand left his galvanized fingers and flew away. He fell eight floors, and landed with a thud and a crash of splintering glass on the roof of the Greenhouse cafeteria.
At once Morgan stepped back from the railing, ran into the lab and out into the hall and catapulted down three flights of stairs. On the fifth floor he quieted his thumping heart and waited for the elevator. On the ground floor he joined the thick flood of students going in and out of class. A rumor was spreading—“Hey, some guy fell”—and kids were running in the direction of the cafeteria. Morgan ignored them and walked out of the building.
In the meantime, the letter that had brought Jeffery to the eighth floor floated down, drifting this way and that, sailing high over the descending terraces of the Science Center. A strong breeze picked it up, the little white shape fluttering like a dove, and whisked it above the encampment on the overpass. Then it was blown westward, beyond the snarling traffic at the intersection of Cambridge Street and Massachusetts Avenue, to soar over the trees on Cambridge Common. There the wind gave out, and the letter floated down from branch to branch, tipping this way and that, until at last it skimmed sideways in the direction of the Civil War Memorial and came to rest in front of a dark shape sitting on the ground.
Here the frigid wind might have picked it up again and sent it scuttling across the yellowed grass, but a hand reached out—slowly, very slowly—and clutched it and did not let it go.
CHAPTER 31
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Everie nighte and alle,
Fire and slete and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.…
“Lyke Wake Dirge”
Outside the cafeteria the medics from the police ambulance bowed over the body of Jeffery Peck, while Officer Plover shouted at the rubbernecking students to move back out of the way. Inside the cafeteria the manager looked at the mess of broken glass, the abandoned cups of coffee, the smashed crockery, the fallen chairs. A couple of kids had been cut by flying splinters and taken to the infirmary. Confused, in a state of shock, he walked across the floor, crunching jagged pieces of glass under his feet, and stared out at the crumpled body of Jeffery Peck.
“Christ, why didn’t he jump off the top floor of William James?” he said to the checkout girl. “Tallest building around. Nice clean drop. Then we wouldn’t have to sweep up all this mess. Some people are so thoughtless.” It was a joke.
The news about the guy who had plummeted to his death from one of the terraces above the cafeteria courtyard flew around the Science Center, but it did not immediately make its way across the overpass to Memorial Hall. Jeff Peck was sorely missed in Sanders Theatre—the first performance would be starting shortly, so where in hell was he?—but nobody knew he was dead.
Morgan Bailey knew, but he said nothing. In the great hall he dressed for the performance and polished the pair of clogs he had inherited from Tom Cobb.
“Hey, Sarah,” said Bill Foose, “if Jeff doesn’t show up, we’ll be short one Morris dancer again.”
“But where can he be?” said Sarah. “He wouldn’t abandon us on the night of the first performance. I called him at home, but he wasn’t there. Something must be the matter.” Sarah’s heart misgave her. Once again the overheated boiler was about to burst. The smell of the scalding steam was like a hot mist filling Memorial Hall. In her head the words went around and around: Arsenate of lead was found in Cobb’s stomach, which otherwise contained only the ingredients of a candy bar called Tastychox.
Sarah knew nothing about the arsenate of lead Morgan kept in the trunk of the Range Rover. But she had found three Tastychox candy wrappers in the wastebasket. Morgan didn’t eat candy, so why had he bought them? Why, why? The question terrified her. And, oh, God, it was the Range Rover that had run down Henry Shady.
“Kevin Barnes is here somewhere,” said Bill Foose. “He’s not as good as Jeff, but he’d be okay.”
“What?” said Sarah. “Oh, right. Quickly, see if he can do it.”
Fortunately, Kevin was willing. The Morris dancers loyally spent half an hour teaching him what to do. Even as he practiced the two dances and mastered the order of events, people began to crowd into the corridor, their coats frosted with snow.
The clarity of the morning sky had given way to clouds as dusk fell, and the first flakes began falling around six o’clock. In the extreme cold they were perfect crystals. By the time the twelve hundred people holding tickets to the first performance of the Christmas Revels found their seats in Sanders Theatre, the snow was coming down hard.
For a performance without a codirector and with one of the Morris dancers hauled in at the last minute, it went fairly well. Sarah was relieved, although she sensed that the attention of the audience was distracted by the storm. While Walt led them all in singing carols, and the Morris men clashed their sticks, and the children enacted “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and Joseph stamped his feet in jealous rage, all the people in the long rows of
benches were wondering if their cars would start and whether the streets of Cambridge would be plowed.
But during the intermission they joined the endless chain in the memorial corridor and forgot the blizzard. Clasping hands, they danced around and around, spiraling into the center, squeezing together in the middle, shrieking with joy and spiraling out again—dignified members of the Harvard Corporation, executives from BayBank, mothers and fathers with toddlers and teenagers, grandmothers and grandchildren.
The magic lasted through the second act, as the mummers performed the ancient roles whose sources were lost to history. Miss Funny—the man-woman with her mustache and parasol—the comic Fool, the Hobby Horse, and Little Johnny Jack with his family on his back—they were ritual figures remembered from last year and the year before. The costumes were like illuminations in a book of hours, the men and women of the chorus in long gowns and tunics of scarlet and pink and orange, cobalt blue and apple green. And then there was the haunting darkness of the horn dance, with the dancers moving in intricate patterns, holding their great antlers over their heads. And at last it was time for Saint George and his witty encounter with the dragon, and then the strangeness of his slaughter, and his revival at the hands of the funny Doctor and the Fool. It was all familiar, wonderfully familiar. It was something people wanted to see again every year, blizzard or no blizzard.
But when the second act was over and the performers bowed at the front of the stage—the Fool and Miss Funny and the Morris dancers and Saint George and the children and all the members of the chorus—everyone in the audience came back to the real world and remembered what was going on outside.
This year the season of the solstice was winter at its worst. As they tunneled out of Sanders Theatre there was an urgency in the way they hauled on their coats and hoisted sleepy children to their shoulders and moved north and south under the high wooden vaults, while trumpeters blared farewell from the balcony over the door to the great hall.