The Transcendental Murder hk-1

by Jane Langton

  The nurse was touching Homer's arm. He shrank back in dismay. "Oh my God, I'm hurting you."

  "No, no. Do it some more."

  He did it some more very carefully, while the nurse grinned. "I thought I'd lost you. And you were the only one that would ever do. I knew that right away, the first day I saw you. You spoiled all the others that ever were or ever could be."

  "I did? Oh, I'm so glad. How lovely. Oh, that's nice."

  Homer leaned back and glared at her. "And, by God, you're going to marry me right away, before you slip through my fingers again. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Please, Mary."

  Mary closed her eyes. Her head hurt. What was it she had been trying to decide? Had it been something to do with jumping? She had decided not to jump, that was it. Like the Transcendentalists ... Then Mary put her head back on the pillow and her mind began slowly to unclench like an opening fist. She opened her eyes. "I'll tell you what," she said. "I'll marry you if we don't have to go away for a honeymoon. Could we spend it in the library? I've got a whole new idea—oh, ouch. What's the matter with my foot?"

  "It's broken. Compound fracture. You had a concussion, too. You're all beat up."

  "Then that's why my head hurts. Listen, Homer. You know how Henry Thoreau would jump rope? He wouldn't refuse. No sir, not Henry. He would just take the rope right away from the two little girls and swing it for himself, at his own pace, with those two strong legs of his leaping up and down. Isn't that right?"

  "Oh, sure," said Homer, nodding fatuously (humor her).

  "And Emily, too. Emily would have a little rope, like a whip, and she'd swing it quickly, jumping in her small white dress, with her little black shoes tripping up and down in a tight rhythm like a verse, skipping all the way to the stars and back."

  "There now, my darling, you just go back to sleep, there's my good girl. And of course we don't have to go away. Libraries are my favorite for honeymoons. We'll live in Alice's house on Fairhaven Bay, and we don't ever have to go away at all."

  Next morning Mary woke up feeling a little more like herself. Homer came in again after breakfast, and took a good deal of time kissing her tenderly and telling her exactly why he loved her. Then he helped her out of bed and into a wheelchair and pushed her down the hospital corridor. "There's someone upstairs who would like to see you."

  "Oh, oh, it's not Gwen?"

  It was Gwen. She was sitting up, eating breakfast, looking wonderfully flat. Tom stood up as they came in, and started to complain. "I wanted to call her Augusta, for Augusta Wind. I mean, how many children do you ordinarily have born in the teeth of a howling gale?"

  "No," said Gwen, "that won't do. Oh my, isn't the food good? Just think I didn't cook it. Do go see the baby. She's the nicest one yet."

  Homer made a literary suggestion. "What about calling her after Prospero's daughter, in The Tempest? What was his daughter's name? Miranda."

  "Oh, good for you. That's it. Miranda. Miranda Hand. I hope you like it, Tom, because that's what it's going to be. You do like it, don't you?"

  "Oh, I do, I do."

  Homer wanted to know what it had been like, getting Gwen to Emerson Hospital in the middle of the storm. Had they had any trouble?

  "Oh, no trouble at all," said Tom. "You don't call driving seventy miles an hour in a hundred-mile-an-hour gale trouble? The only little mishap we had with the pickup, which was all that was running at the moment, was picking up some broken window glass and puncturing a tube. But we didn't even stop. We bumped all the way to the hospital and got here on three wheels and a bent rim."

  "Say," said Homer, "that gives me a good idea. Why don't you call the baby Tube-blows Begonia? All these Morgan girls look like flowers.".

  Mary felt dizzy and silly. "Flat-tirey will get you nowhere," she said.

  "Oh, please don't make me laugh," said Gwen. "It hurts."

  Homer pushed Mary down the hall and they looked in the window at the baby, which didn't look like anything much yet, and then they went back to Mary's room. Out of the window they could see the Sudbury River, glittering in the morning sun. Down below in the garden someone was tidying up, sawing a fallen aspen into small lengths of firewood.

  "It was the worst hurricane around here since '38," said Homer. "Trees are down all over, especially the old diseased elms. There's a little foreign car wedged between the columns in front of the Middlesex Savings Bank, and a tree fell on the roof of the Rod and Gun Club. One good thing, though: you know that awful fake Colonial Woolworth false-front? It tore off and blew away, like a sail before the wind. It's probably over Connecticut by now." Homer looked up. There was someone standing shyly in the doorway. "Oh, Teddy, come on in. I guess we don't need to tell you how glad we are you came along."

  There was a big bunch of ugly-looking flowers in Teddy's arms. Mary smiled at him and reached out her hand. "Teddy, you look wonderful. Where have you been? Are you going to try to tell us you didn't know everyone was looking for you?"

  "I sure am. Homer told me the police were after me. But I guess the only way I'd have heard about it was if they'd written it in the sky over Moosehead Lake. I've been down in Maine."

  "In Maine? But why? I mean, what made you go off so suddenly, without saying goodbye or anything? If you knew how worried we've been about you..."

  "Well, I told Homer how it was. I had this crazy notion I only had a few more days to live. Did he tell you? And there was something I had to get done first."

  "I know. There was someone you had to meet..."

  "Someone?" Teddy looked puzzled. "No, not someone. There was something I had to see—my whiteheaded eagle."

  "Your whiteheaded...?"

  "My whiteheaded eagle. You know, our national bird. It was the only bird Henry Thoreau saw that I didn't have on my lifetime list. I just had to see it. So I went up Annursnac Hill one day, feeling pretty poorly..."

  "Yes, I remember. Tom saw you that day."

  "That's right. And I saw it."

  "You saw it?" said Homer. "What, you mean you saw your eagle?"

  "That's right. He came dropping out of the sky far, far away, just as the sky cleared. I knew it was him as soon as I saw the speck. I hardly even needed my glasses. He just hung there in the sky, banking in a circle over my head. Then you know what he did? He veered off and headed in a straight line to the northeast, like an arrow flying to its target. Heading straight for Maine. And it seemed to me like it was Henry himself, beckoning to me, telling me where to go. It was like he said that Maine was where he'd like to have died, not in a stuffy room somewhere, but out in the open woods, in the forest, with nothing but Indians and the wild creatures of the woods around him. S-so I ran down the hill, climbed in my flivver and took off up north. Didn't even stop to pack my clothes."

  "And then you didn't die, after all."

  "No, I began to feel revived as soon as I got up past Bangor. I bought some provisions and a little equipment and headed for the wildest part of the woods. And you know what happened? It occurred to me that, now I'd seen all the birds Henry saw, I might as well tackle the plant life. And I got so busy doing that, I forgot what day it was, and before long May 6th was gone by without my even thinking about it. And I got a darned good list. I saw spotted touch-me-not, and spikenard and several kinds of orchis and the hog-peanut. And I made me some lily soup, the way Henry did when he was there."

  Teddy's clothes were green with rough usage, but he had just mended them and here and there a bright new staple flashed. Homer remembered the staples he had found on the monument at the bridge, and he asked Teddy about it point-blank.

  "Was I at the bridge that day? Yes, as a matter of fact, I was. I was paddling around waiting to see if the bluebird would come back to make one more try for her hole, when I saw Ernie there at the bridge, and went over to speak to him, to put in another word for throwing out those golblasted letters. I pulled my canoe up and went up to him. But I never got a chance to say anything. He was huffy, wanted to know if I was the one wh
o had sent him a note making an appointment to meet him there. Seems he'd gotten an anon-anonymous note, offering him a lot of money for the letters, and he was mighty suspicious, thinking it might be one of the members of the Alcott Association trying to put one over on him. You know, get him there with the letters and then get them away by force. But he was too cagey for us, he said. He'd hidden the letters where nobody'd find 'em, and there they'd stay until someone came along with a real offer or a genuine promise of publication. I said, heck, it wasn't me sent him the note. And then I left, and got back to my birds and forgot all about Ernie."

  "Didn't you hear the shot?" said Homer.

  "Yes, and I paddled up close enough to use my glasses and see a lot of folks and a p-policeman standing around Ernie Goss, who was lying on the ground. And I knew I'd be better off out of sight, since I must have been the last one except the murderer to have seen him alive."

  Teddy looked down at his bouquet of swamp nettle, and turned to Mary bashfully. "Here," he said. "This is for you."

  Homer decided reluctantly that he had better tell Teddy what the situation was, so he broke the news gently, and asked for his congratulations. Teddy looked a little crestfallen and stuttered badly trying to say something nice. But then Mary exclaimed over the swamp nettle, and Teddy got quite enthusiastic telling her its botanical name and how the Indians had used it to swat flies. After a while he left, looking cheerful. After all, he had all the flora in Concord to find and catalogue, and it might take him years.

  Mary smelled her flowers and wished she hadn't. She made a face and laughed. "Did you notice? Teddy's stuttering is better."

  Homer looked at her sentimentally. "And your color's coming back. You know what? Your cheeks are like red roses."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake, Homer..."

  "Look, if a person's cheeks happen to be like red roses it's merely a fact of scientific observation to point it out. I've tried a whole lot of other flowers from time to time, and none of them was right. It's red roses they're like."

  Down by the river where the green grass grows,

  There sat _____, as pretty as a rose.

  Along came ______ and kissed her on the cheek.

  How many kisses did she get that week?

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...

  *60*

  He is moderate. I am impetuous. He is modest and humble. I am forward and arbitrary. He is poor but we both are industrious. Why may we not be happy? —Mrs. Amos Bronson Alcott

  Tom, Homer and Grandmaw were colliding with each other in the kitchen, clearing away Sunday dinner. It was Mary's first day home. Struggling awkwardly with her crutches she got the tablecloth off the table and stumped to the front door and shook it out. Then she stood and smelled the fresh air. The ragged leaves that were left on the old elm by the road were turning a rusty yellow. There were leaves growing even from the trunk and along the lower reaches of the limbs, like hairs in an old man's ears. Miraculously the storm had spared it, although it had taken nine young apple trees behind the house. Mary folded the tablecloth again and made her way laboriously to the kitchen to put it in the drawer.

  "If you ask me," said old Mrs. Hand, "I could get along a whole lot better all by myself. What did you people all have to grow so big for? You're all over the place. Why don't you all get out of my way and go off somewhere?"

  "Can I come?" said Annie.

  "Me, too!" said John.

  "No, not you children. Freddy has to go to bed and I need the rest of you to wipe."

  "Okay," said Homer. "But don't you let that John lick the dishes clean."

  Tom, who didn't want to sell his apples on a flooded market, went off to truck them up to the town of Harvard, where there was a big storage warehouse. Homer helped Mary out to his car and lifted her into the front seat. "We'll take an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon buggy ride," he said.

  First they drove down Fairhaven Road to Alice Herpitude's house, and looked possessively out of the car window at its modest white clapboards. "Maybe Teddy will build us a nice birdbath for a wedding present," said Homer.

  "He'll make a charming neighbor, anyway," said Mary.

  Then they headed back across Route 2 to the center of town, and up into Sleepy Hollow cemetery to Authors' Ridge. "Do you think Henry would mind a couple of quiet neckers on a Sunday afternoon?" said Homer.

  "Not as long as they kept things pretty transcendental," said Mary.

  "Don't forget, if Howard Swan was right, Henry was no slouch himself when it came to romance."

  "It's a lovely story. It pleases me, somehow, that those two might have found each other. But, Homer, there are still some things I don't understand. How could Howard Swan have killed Ernest Goss? He was supposed to have been in New York on the nineteenth..."

  "It's Longfellow's fault, that's whose it is. That old cornball poem of his. What immortal lines does every man, woman and child in the country have engraved across his memory in letters of gold?

  Listen, my children, and you shall hear

  Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

  On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five...

  The eighteenth of April. Howard went to New York on the eighteenth, not the nineteenth, and then made a big point with his lunchtable companions about its being Patriot's Day in Massachusetts. 'You remember, boys, Paul Revere and all that kind of thing—on the eighteenth of April in 'Seventy-five. They're having a big parade back home today—' It wasn't until I discovered there in the Amherst library that Elizabeth Goss had once been engaged to Howard Swan, that Howard came back somewhat forcefully to my attention. And then I remembered an extremely small fact Jimmy had told me. He said that Howard's business friends had all agreed Howard was with them on Patriot's Day—remember?—'just the way he said they would.' Howard must have said to Jimmy, 'Ask them where I was on Patriot's Day,' so Jimmy, the obedient little fellow, did just that. Well—by nearly asphyxiating myself in a phone booth for an hour and a half I got hold of all of them. And sure enough, one by one, they all told me that Patriot's Day was the eighteenth of April. 'Don't you remember?' they would say condescendingly, and I could hear the words coming out of the telephone in red, white and blue, 'On the eighteenth of April in 'Seventy-five?' Then I would hang up and salute the flag. So you see what happened—Howard flew to New York on the eighteenth, got back in time for the dinner party, left early, then came back again when everyone was gone, to set things up. The only person still in the house would have been Mrs. Bewley, and he didn't have to worry about her as long as he kept out of her sight. Now—the first thing he had to do was prepare the weapons. One of the duelling pistols was to be fixed up as the official 'murder weapon.' It was the one that Charley had handled, putting it away. The other pistol would be the true murder weapon, but it would be cleaned out afterwards, wiped off and returned to the drawer so that it would not seem to have been touched. At this point he never touched the musket, because it didn't enter into his plans at all. The next thing was the manufacturing of the notes that were to lead Charley and Philip and Ernie to the right places at the right times the next day. For these he used Charley's typewriter in Charley's room, tracing your name for the notes that were to be sent to Charley and Philip from a letter of yours he found in a drawer. Then his preparations were about done. All he had to do was drive off somewhere far away from houses and fire the 'official murder weapon' into the woods so that it would be blackened inside. That was tricky because he didn't want to disturb Charley's prints. He must have used tools to do it with, clamps or something."

  "But next morning he had to look as if he were going to New York."

  "That's right. He headed off toward Boston, then just circled around wide and came back the back way and parked in some inconspicuous place like, say, the little road that leads in to Annursnac Hill. Then he snuck over to the Goss place and just hung around there, ducking in when he could to leave his notes. He watched Charley come back from his ride on Dolly and enter the house in his
Prescott outfit. Then he saw him come out again in his own clothes and head lickety-split for the gravel pit, hell-bent on high romance. So then Howard just went in the house, snatched up the outfit, took it to the barn, changed clothes, leaving his own behind the hay somewhere, and galloped off through the woods on Dolly, keeping away from the road. It was all right to be seen, in fact that was the whole point, but not up close. He galloped up to the bridge, killed Goss, galloped back, giving Arthur Furry a good rear view, deposited the 'official murder weapon' in the cider press, leaving behind him his horse's hoof prints and a lost balloon to point the way, changed clothes in the barn and slunk into the house once more to leave the real murder weapon, all polished and cleaned up, back in the drawer. But then he struck his first snag."

  "It had something to do with the flint, didn't it?"

  "Good girl. That's right. It was only then, I'm convinced, that Howard noticed that the flint had dropped out of his gun—the real one, the true murder weapon. Crisis. What to do? He didn't dare now to go back and take the flint out of the gun he had deposited in the cider press. But this gun mustn't be found without a flint. Because then its twin in the cider press would be betrayed as a put-up job. So he took the flint from the musket. Up until then he must have been working with gloves on, careful not to leave any prints. With his gloves still on he opened the door of the cabinet where the musket was kept, took it out, and then I'll bet he took off his gloves to work the small screw that holds the flint in place. He took the flint out, transferred it to the murder weapon and put both guns away again, wiping everything off carefully. But he forgot one thing. While his glove was off he left a thumbprint on the inside of the cabinet door. Campbell saw it there, but there were so many others on the door anyway it didn't help us much. Well, anyway, then he was all done. He just had to duck back to his car, swing around by back roads again, bide his time, and then drive home to Concord from Boston around five o'clock as though he had just come back from New York."