by Rick Homan
“He had quarreled with the vic—with Ms. Conrad.”
“Sheriff, if every guy who got dumped by his girlfriend killed her, there wouldn’t be any girls left. Let’s look at this another way. Kate left Marten’s at ten and was alive at least until midnight. Where did she go?”
“So far we have no witnesses who can place her. She might have taken a walk around town or along the river before starting back toward campus.”
“What about Buddy's bar?”
“Unlikely.”
“Is anything else open in Blanton at that time of night?”
Adams seemed to scan a mental picture before saying, “Just the convenience store at the gas station, and we’d know if she went there from the security camera.”
“So she must have gone to Buddy's or gone home with somebody.”
“Nobody from the college goes to Buddy's.”
“Why not?”
“Town and gown. They aren’t welcome. It would be dangerous.”
“You mean someone could get killed?”
Adams’ jaw muscles flexed so hard I expected to hear something snap. “You’re good with words, Dr. Noonan, and you’re probably a lot smarter than I am, but you’re not from around here, and you don’t know how we do things.” He stood up, and I almost got dizzy maintaining eye contact. “Thank you for the information.”
“Sheriff Adams, please!” He stopped in the doorway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I just want the real killer to be caught, and I know you want that too. I won’t get in your way.”
He nodded, said, “Ma’am,” and left my office.
I closed my door, locked it, and turned my chair to look out over the hillside. He was right. I didn’t know how things were done around here. How could I? I came from a city where most people were not “from around here.” In San Francisco, when you met someone, the first thing you asked was, “Where are you from?” because most people, it seemed, had moved to town from somewhere else. Now I was living on the side of a mountain where some English families arrived 200 years ago, some German families arrived 150 years ago, and almost everyone was descended from them. I could not even begin to imagine what it was like to grow up in such a community.
So, I didn’t know how things were done around here, but I knew how to ask questions, gather facts, and draw conclusions, because that’s what my education was all about. That didn’t mean I was smarter than Sheriff Adams, but it did mean I could see things folks from around here might miss. I saw that Kate must have gone to Buddy's Bar, and I hoped I had given the sheriff a reason to look into that possibility.
I also saw that the muralist had hidden clues to the history of the commune among the details of his painting and that Jacob wanted to steal Kate’s idea about “what one of the coffins in the mural might mean.” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. I had the afternoon free, and the library was open.
I had read Jacob’s book about the Eden Commune twice and it had told me nothing that would shed light on the meaning of the spotted child. It was time to look elsewhere. If other communes used such an image, I might find other sources of information about what it meant. A skeleton, for instance, is an image of horror in the gothic tradition, but a symbol of reverence for ancestors in Mexican tradition. Perhaps I could find out whether a spotted child meant something in the tradition of communes in southern Ohio during the mid-nineteenth century.
I made a list of other communes to investigate. Jacob had said Fuchs was probably influenced by John H. Noyes and the Oneida Commune as well as by the Shakers. Lionel had spoken similarly about George Rapp as a contemporary of Fuchs and about phalanxes based on the philosophy of Charles Fourier.
So, on that lovely Sunday afternoon in the college’s library, I did what I usually do when faced with a subject that is new to me. I typed names and subject words into the catalogue to see what would come up.
Chapter 24
There was a lot of information on Oneida and on the Shakers in the library’s catalogue, but not much on the rest. In our first conversation on the subject, Jacob had said Oneida was “different in many ways.” That sounded intriguing, so I jotted down the titles of some books on it along with the call numbers and hit the stacks.
There are few things more satisfying than wandering through a library’s collection, picking up books you are looking for and finding others along the way, stacking them on a table by a large window, flipping through them for a few hours, and comparing what they have to say on a subject. We take this for granted, but this is a luxury enjoyed by relatively few people in human history. Perhaps only since the institution of public libraries have most people had ready access to collected records of the thoughts and experiences of the human race.
Jacob was right. The Oneida Commune was unusual in many ways. For one thing, it went beyond providing a secure, comfortable life for its members by pursuing profit-making enterprises. For another, it encouraged its members to educate themselves and develop artistic talents. Most notably, its founder, John H. Noyes, wrote about Oneida’s successes and failures, researched the progress of neighboring communes, and published newsletters that circulated to communes throughout the East and Midwest.
I discovered one other unusual quality of life at Oneida that seemed to overshadow the others. Although it was not unusual for communes at this time to practice complex marriage, in which men and women had sexual relations with more than one partner, Oneida took this practice a step further. Noyes developed a theory of “stirpiculture,” a word he made up to describe breeding human beings in order to improve the species, just as farmers had bred livestock for thousands of years.
In the twentieth century, this came to be called eugenics and was among the horrors practiced by the Nazi regime. It was not entirely benign as practiced in the Oneida community: Noyes and a handful of those closest to him were considered the most promising breeders and given access to the greatest number of sexual partners.
When my eyes became tired and I had to stop reading, I took a walk around the campus to ponder what I had read, and that’s when the real thinking began. At first glance, the history of Oneida did not appear to contain anything relevant to my problem. The Eden Commune was never entrepreneurial as Oneida was, and the only evidence of intellectual or artistic life at Eden was the mural in the chapel. Fuchs was not a promoter like Noyes. I had seen no evidence of complex marriage at Eden.
This phase of research is like working a jigsaw puzzle. You just keep trying different pieces in different combinations until something fits. When I asked myself if any of the things I knew about the Eden Commune were consistent with the deliberate breeding of human beings, something clicked.
What if the recurring, recognizable figures in the mural—Fuchs, Mr. Long Hair, and Smiling Woman—represented lines of breeding? The long-nosed man in the preaching scene had to be Fuchs, but the long-nosed men in the orchard and harvest scenes might represent offspring. Mr. Long Hair in the building scene would have been one of the original members of the commune, but the long-haired man in the harvest scene might be his son. Smiling Woman in the choir scene would also be first generation, but the smiling woman in the cooking scene could be her daughter, and the smiling man in the orchard scene might be her son. The muralist may have been keeping track of those who were deliberately bred, including the two children in the coffins, one long-nosed and one long-haired.
As my mind traced this pattern, my step quickened, and soon I was all but running back to my Hutch to break out my notebook, get all this on paper, and start a new list of research questions. When I got inside, I stopped long enough to put the kettle on for tea. As I wrote, it occurred to me that this new theory suggested a different motivation for Jacob to get Kate’s notebook without telling me. Perhaps he knew or suspected eugenics had been practiced at Eden and wanted to keep a lid on it.
The thrill that came from my idea was tempered by remembering that I had no way to prove this. I would have to find other evid
ence that confirmed my interpretation of the recurring figures in the mural. I still had a lot of information to sift pertaining to Oneida, the Shakers, and others, and that could keep me busy through the end of the semester. There had to be a way to speed up the process.
Perhaps I could pick Lionel’s brain about the communes he had mentioned, now that I knew what I was looking for. It couldn’t hurt to ask, and I could also check on the status of our plans for a trip to Cincinnati on the coming weekend. If Lionel had returned from his weekend in New York with his parents, I would invite him over for a snack.
Lionel didn’t return my call that Sunday evening, but to my delight on Monday morning I found an email from him inviting me to his apartment that afternoon at five o’clock. He suggested I “come by for a snack” and said he would be happy to share what he knew about communes. I wrote back and said I’d see him at five.
Stepping into his duplex on Ohio Avenue reminded me that, though it was just around the corner from the Rabbit Hutches it was a world away in terms of comfort. These were real houses, built of brick, with hardwood floors and full-size appliances in the kitchen.
He welcomed me with that winning smile, and a social hug. After taking my coat, he said, “Make yourself comfortable,” excused himself, and disappeared into the kitchen.
I paused by the shelving along one side of the living room to look at his array of photos in silver frames. The hairstyles and clothes told me that some of these must be portraits of great-grandparents. They looked like sophisticates of the Harlem Renaissance. A man in another photo would have been a grandfather in a U.S. Army uniform of the World War II era. The rest documented the progress of Lionel’s family through the decades, concluding with a recent photo of him and, I assumed, his sister, her husband, and children.
He came back from the kitchen with a platter of cheese, crackers, and fruit. “Could I interest you in a glass of wine? I have a nice sauvignon blanc chilled.”
“Thank you very much,” I replied.
He returned to the kitchen, and I kicked off my shoes and folded myself onto one end of the love seat. He came back from the kitchen, this time with two glasses of wine. He set one on the coffee table in front of me and took the other with him to the oak armchair facing me.
“How is your father?” I asked.
Lionel looked surprised for a moment before he said, “He’s doing fine. It was all routine. He just needs to be patient now, and that will be the hardest part for him.”
I smiled and took a sip of the wine, which was tasty, and reached for a cracker and some cheese.
“What was it you wanted to discuss?” he asked.
“The day we went to Yellow Springs, you said Felix Fuchs was influenced by the leaders of other communes. I’ve done some reading on Oneida and have come up with some things that are helping me understand the mural here on campus.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“But I’ve hit a dead end. So, I’m wondering if you can give me a lead on where to look next.”
“I will if I can. What have you discovered so far?”
“Well, you’re familiar with the history of Oneida, right?”
“The main points.”
“Then you know they practiced free love.”
“Yes, they were well known for that, although many communes did the same. Free love grew out of the feminist movement of the early 1800s. Back then ‘free love’ meant that a man and woman should be able to love one another free of the bonds of marriage, because marriage meant the woman became the man’s property.”
“Did you also know they practiced ‘stirpiculture?’”
Lionel squinted and shook his head, apparently unfamiliar with the term.
“It’s a word John H. Noyes made up. It’s also called eugenics.”
“What? Like the Nazis?”
“Yes. Selective breeding of human beings.”
He took a deep breath and sipped some wine. “I have never read anything about this.”
“The descendants of those who lived in the Oneida commune weren’t eager to publicize it, but materials have been released in the past few years. The diary of a young woman was recently published. In it she details her experience being selected to breed with one of the leaders of the commune.”
“Oh, my goodness.” He marveled at the idea. “Let me guess. The men selected as most fit to breed were Noyes and the other decision makers in the commune.”
“That seems to have been the way it worked out.”
“So really it was just an excuse for the older men to have sex with younger women.”
“I suppose, although, since they thought men and women became leaders because they were intellectually and spiritually advanced, they had a nobler explanation for what they were doing.”
Lionel laughed. “It always helps to have a good story. Did you say this is helping you understand the mural in the chapel?”
“I noticed there’s a preacher with a long nose. Jacob suggested it was Felix Fuchs. Then I noticed long-nosed men elsewhere in the mural. At first I thought this represented Fuchs playing various roles in the community, but now I wonder if the other long-nosed men represent sons. Also, there are three other recognizable individuals in the mural who turn up in several scenes. When I read about selective breeding at Oneida, I started to wonder if the muralist wasn’t keeping track of the offspring of such a practice.”
“Evidence of eugenics in the Eden Commune—that is a significant discovery. What does Jacob say about this?”
“I haven’t told him. It’s a long story, so I won’t go into it, but I think he’s been monitoring my work on this and wants to suppress it.”
Lionel thought about that while he sipped his wine and savored it. “I could believe that. Jacob is protective of the reputation of Fuchs and the commune. That’s understandable. It’s his family’s history too.”
“I will get around to asking him about it, but I want to have my evidence all lined up first, so he can’t deny it.”
“I see. How can I help?”
“The day we went to Yellow Springs, you mentioned the leaders of some other communes that you thought might have influenced Fuchs. Can you tell me a little about them?”
He looked sheepish. “You’ll have to remind me.”
“You said one of them brought followers from Germany.”
“Oh, yes. George Rapp. I’m not sure how his dates line up with Fuchs. He had some extraordinary ideas, but I’m not sure he was very influential in the long run.”
“And there was a French philosopher.”
“Charles Fourier. His ideas influenced many people who came to North America, and they established sustainable communities called phalanxes. He had some brilliant ideas and some crazy ones, but I don’t recall anything about eugenics.”
“I’m also working on another problem,” I said. “The muralist included clusters of coffins as if keeping track of who died.”
Lionel thought for a moment. “I’ve never noticed that. Of course, it’s been over a year since I was in the chapel.”
“They’re up near the ceiling, hidden among the leaves of the tree, not easy to see. You need binoculars. Anyway, in each coffin there is a figure of a man, woman or child, with very little to distinguish them. But in one coffin is a child who seems to have spots all over him.”
“Maybe that indicates the death was caused by measles or some other childhood disease.”
“Possibly, but none of the other figures shows a cause of death. I’m wondering if it symbolizes something.”
He pursed his lips and thought about it. “Nothing comes to mind, but if I think of anything I’ll send it to you. Meanwhile I could give you a couple of references on Fourier. The library has one book in particular that’s good for getting an overview of his thought.”
“That would be terrific. Right now, I just need to cut down on the amount of material I have to sift through.”
As I spoke, Lionel stifled a yawn. “Excuse me,” he
said as he stood up. “I got back from the airport late last evening and didn’t sleep well. I’ll just go and write down those titles.”
He left the room, and I took the hint. I got up, slipped my shoes on, and went to the stand by the door where he had hung my coat. While slipping it on, I noticed some papers on the cabinet along with a ring of keys and a handful of coins. One of the papers was an itinerary for flights to and from Chicago. The return flight was dated yesterday. He had not gone to New York over the weekend. He had gone to Chicago. He had lied to me. I was stunned.
Chapter 25
“Here you are,” said Lionel as he walked back into the room. He handed me an index card with three titles written on it along with the authors’ names. “That first one would be the best place to start for Fourier.”
I did my best to adopt a pleasant expression. “Thanks so much. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.”
“Please do.” He smiled, but somehow it didn’t warm me as it usually did.
We shared another social hug, and I left his apartment.
As I walked down Ohio Avenue, I buttoned my coat all the way up and wished I’d brought along a hat and a scarf. The autumn evenings were getting chillier.
Lionel lied to me. He told me he was going to New York when he was really going to Chicago. I fell for the oldest excuse in the academic book, the sick relative, perhaps because I never expected it from a colleague.
What was in Chicago that he didn’t want me to know about? Perhaps an old girlfriend. Perhaps a new girlfriend. Perhaps a wife. Sometimes academic couples live apart when one has to move for a job, and the other has a job she can’t leave.
Of course, he wasn’t obliged to tell me he was in a relationship with someone else, since we weren’t really starting anything serious, but he shouldn’t have lied to me.
I decided to give him a day or two to tell me about his trip. If he didn’t, I would put him to the test by asking if he was still interested in a trip to Cincinnati. If he still didn’t come clean, I would ask him how his weekend in Chicago went.