Harvard Yard (19 page)

The harbormaster flipped back the tarp on the deck. And there was Ridley, face as blue as his jeans, eyes open halfway, fly open all the way.

“That’s him,” said Peter.

“Is that exactly how you found him?” asked the detective.

“Yep,” said the harbormaster, an old-timer wearing fish-stained khaki trousers and soup-stained khaki shirt. “Haven’t touched a thing.”

“Then it’s an accident,” said the detective.

“How can you tell?” asked Peter.

The harbormaster pointed to Ridley’s trousers. “Fly’s open. There’s beer cans on the boat. Yellow dribbles on the transom.”

“Wait a minute,” said Peter. “How do you know it’s an accident?”

“Seen it a million times,” said the harbormaster. “Guy has a few beers, goes to the stern to drain his kidneys, boat lurches and he falls off, but he don’t have the kill switch hooked to his belt, so the engine keeps runnin’ and the boat goes drivin’ off on its own.”

The detective said, “Half the boating deaths in New England are middle-aged men found floatin’ with their flies open.”

“Does this mean you aren’t looking for witnesses?” asked Peter.

“Witnesses? In pea-soup fog?” said the harbormaster.

“Witnesses to what?” The detective closed his notebook. “Accident, pure and simple.”

Ridley Wedge Royce would have called it “the Full Wedge.” That’s the kind of send-off they gave him.

They were all there in the new Old South in the old Back Bay: Will Wedge with his porcelain wife and his English-major daughter and her halfback boyfriend; Will’s mother, Harriet, stifling the kind of cough you didn’t hear much anymore, now that most chain-smokers were dead; the Pacifist Physicist and Olga Basset; and plenty of theater people, too—actors and actresses, set designers and lighting technicians, a pair of New York critics, one of whom whispered to the other that he came only to make sure the no-talent son of a bitch was dead. And then there were the old girlfriends . . . enough old girlfriends, in fact, to fill a whole row.

Of course, Ridley was there, too, in a little urn that would be placed in the Royce crypt at the Mount Auburn Cemetery.

There were hymns, readings, remarks from friends. And just before the organ swelled for the recessional, one of Ridley’s girlfriends delivered the best eulogy of all, in a perfect stage whisper: “I always knew he couldn’t keep his fly zipped, but I didn’t think it would kill him.”

The service was followed by a reception at the Harvard Club on Commonwealth Avenue—five stories of conference rooms, squash courts, and guest rooms, with plenty of places for the hungry Harvard graduate to eat, from a basement snack bar to a baronial dining hall with tapestries and portraits and a massive pipe organ.

The Royce reception was held in the room at the top of the grand staircase. Since Ridley didn’t really have much more family than the Wedges and a few other cousins, there was no long receiving line. Everyone just worked the buffet in the middle of the room, or took the wall space beneath the portraits of famous politicians from Harvard.

Peter, Evangeline, and Orson Lunt collected under a painting of John F. Kennedy in his academic robes.

“All the Wedges are here,” whispered Peter to Orson, “except for that phantom brother. I wonder if he’ll show up.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Mr. Fallon”—Harriet Wedge approached—“it’s wonderful of you and your friends to come.”

Peter started to introduce the others but Harriet said, “No need. Evangeline’s grandmother and I are old friends. We see each other every year in Florida. And who in Boston doesn’t know Orson Lunt? A fixture at charity events and cocktail parties for fifty years.”

“And I’ve seen you at just about every one,” said Orson.

“It’s a shame about poor Ridley,” said Evangeline.

“A shame,” said Harriet. “He was a nuisance, but he was our nuisance.”

“Nuisance?” said Peter.

“Come on, Mr. Fallon. You spent time with him. You were even doing business with him. And he was about to turn you into a nuisance, too.”

“I want him to stay at it.” Will Wedge appeared at his mother’s side and gently suggested that she get herself a plate of food.

Harriet said to Orson, “Care to squire an old woman to the finger sandwiches?”

“So long as sandwiches are the only things that require my fingers,” said Orson.

“You always know the way to a woman’s heart,” she said.

Will Wedge gave a false little chuckle, then turned back to Peter. “Can we talk a little business?”

“I guess I’ll get a few finger sandwiches, too.” Evangeline excused herself.

Peter said to Wedge, “Why the change of heart?”

Wedge leaned close to Fallon. “I know what Ridley was after.”

“Really?”

Wedge widened his smile, nodded to someone who complimented him on his eulogy, took a sip of white wine, and said to Fallon, “A commonplace book.”

Fallon said nothing. Sometimes it was the best thing to say.

Wedge asked, “Do you know how few commonplace books there are out there?”

“Commonplace books are scarce,” said Fallon.

“Would one be worth twenty-five thousand dollars if you could find it?”

“That would be the jackpot for a commonplace book.”

“It’s for my daughter. A primary source like that would be a wonderful addition to a senior honors thesis. Guarantee her a summa.”

Like hell,
thought Fallon. But he said, “The other day, out on the river, you told me you didn’t want any antiquarians getting in the way of her plans.”

“But if you’re working for me, you’re not getting in the way. You’re helping.”

“Helping to what?”

“To tell the story of Harvard. Isn’t that why you’re in this business?”

“I’m in this business for the money. Why are you in it?”

Will gestured to the walls. “I like to look at old portraits. I look into the eyes and imagine what those people saw, what they were thinking. A good portrait is like a window on the past. So are the books and documents that a man like you tracks down. Once my daughter is done with what you find, I’ll give it to Harvard.”

Fallon liked that, so he said, “Any particular commonplace book you have in mind?”

“John Wedge’s book has come to light recently, as you know.”

Peter nodded. He didn’t know as much as Will Wedge assumed, but he was not giving up what little he had.

“That book offers some marvelous insights,” said Will. “I think Dorothy and I would both like to know if our family left others. And if they did, where are they?”

Peter was wondering how he had missed news of the John Wedge book. He was also wondering how he would begin to look for one that had been lost hundreds of years before, like a needle in the haystack of time. But when Will Wedge offered $25,000 for commonplace books from any of his other ancestors, they had a deal.

Peter had one more question. “What do you know about a troublemaker by the name of James ‘Bingo’ Keegan?”

Wedge stopped, then stepped back, lowered his voice, and brought his face close to Fallon. “Bingo Keegan? You think he’s—”

“You know him?” asked Peter.

Will Wedge, smoothest talker in any crowd, fumbled for something to say until he finally managed, “Everybody knows about Bingo Keegan.” Then he put his smile back. “Being from South Boston, you probably knew him back when the rest of us thought Bingo Keegan was just a game they played at the parish halls.”

That remark made Fallon like Wedge a bit less, but they had a deal. Twenty-five thousand for a commonplace book. And Fallon would be the first to read it.

Evangeline and Peter said good-bye in the October sunshine, in the parking lot behind the Harvard Club. They had to talk in loud voices so that they could hear each other over the roar of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Evangeline said, “So . . . I’m off to the Cape with my grandmother, and it sounds like you’re off on another treasure hunt that’s just gotten more dangerous.”

“You think?”

“
You
do. You think somebody killed Ridley, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. But I owe it to him to follow this business a little bit longer.”

She got into her car and rolled down the window. “Don’t think it hasn’t been real, Peter. We don’t see each other in years, and three hours after we do, I’m looking at a dead body. This is not a good omen, but”—she patted his arm—“stay in touch.”

So he touched her hand. “Give your grandmother my best.”

“She’s always asking for you. Take her to lunch sometime.” And she drove off.

All for the best, he thought. If they spent more time together, they’d be arguing the way they used to. But a good argument would be nice if it ended like their arguments in the old days.

Back in his office, he turned again to
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates
for a little insight into the life of John Wedge:

As far as is known, he spent the first sixteen years of his life on a farm in Sudbury. His father, Isaac Wedge (H.U. 1642), had left the ministry for husbandry. . . .

The article then spoke of King Philip’s War, John’s career at Harvard, and his graduation in 1678, in the class made famous by Cotton Mather.

Wedge later married Mary Cogswell, with whom he had no issue. However, he was welcomed into the merchant business of Mr. Cogswell, and acquitted himself so effectively as an agent of the colony in the West Indies that when he returned, he was asked to become a member of the governor’s council, which led to his appointment to the court of oyer and terminer, convened in 1692 to confront the scourge of witchcraft.

Chapter Nine

1692-1694

T
WO RIDERS,
trailing dry summer dust, galloped hard for Salem.

Isaac Wedge saw the dust before he saw the riders. He was standing near the top of Gallows Hill, surveying all the roads that led to Salem and hoping that there might be some reprieve for his friend George Burroughs.

It was well known that Satan was relentless; he was also patient. Sixteen years he had waited after the demise of King Philip before mounting another attack on the people of Massachusetts. Many believed that Satan had begun by afflicting a handful of girls in Salem. A few, however, believed that he merely used the girls to attack the innocent people they accused of witchcraft.

If Satan were disguised in the crowd that morning, wondered Isaac, would he be happier to see the cart carrying “witches” to their death, or those distant riders who might be bringing reprieves but were as likely carrying saddlebags full of self-righteousness?

They were hanging five that day, one woman and four men. The cart was bouncing up the rutted road to the gallows, preceded by six deputies and Judge Sewall, before whom the crowd made way with all the fearful respect that such a cortege demanded.

How strange, thought Isaac, that the vision of those who founded the college was fulfilled here on this August day, where convened leaders of the colony to the second and third generation—ministers, judges, and one of the condemned, all of them educated at the School of the Prophets to guide the colony.

The girls had named George Burroughs, ’70, as leader of the coven. They said he summoned his minions on Saturday nights with the blast of a horn that ordinary mortals could not hear. The witches and wizards would arrive on broomsticks from across New England; they would all alight in a Salem pasture, and there defile the Sabbath under the direction of Salem’s former minister.

The girls had described Satan as a “dark little man, though not a Negro.” And it was Burroughs’s bad fortune that he had black hair and olive-dark skin, and despite his compact stature, he was legendary for strength that some called superhuman. It was his worse fortune, thought Isaac, that he had run afoul of the uncle of one of these girls during his ministry in Salem.

If the girls had known of Burroughs’s taste for reading Shakespeare, they might have used that against him, too, and perhaps condemned Isaac as well.

But Isaac would not desert his friend. The night before, he had visited Burroughs in a dirt-floored dungeon lit by the greasy yellow light of a single lantern. Four men were imprisoned there, each absorbed in his own thoughts in his own corner.

Burroughs had spoken bitterly of Harvard-taught judges who admitted spectral evidence—visions seen only by the afflicted girls. “They had no physical evidence till the girls came in with bite marks on their arms, claimin’ the devil’s servant had done the bitin’. So the judges—your own smart son among ’em—made me print my teeth on a piece of wax.” Burroughs had opened his mouth wide and slammed it so hard that Isaac had felt his own remaining teeth rattle.

“You are no more guilty than I,” Isaac had said.

“Do not say that too loudly.” Burroughs had looked around. “They have evidence ’gainst you even better than bite marks.”

“Better?”

“A book on insects, given by you to the college, transformed by some dark magic into the work of a devil named Shakespeare.”

Isaac had put that truth out of his mind and said, “I’ve been to Boston, to prey upon the conscience of my son. He may yet bring a reprieve from the governor.”

“The governor has no power here. ’Tis ministers hold sway. And your son be in thrall to one of ’em . . . that damned Cotton Mather.” Then Burroughs had buried his head in his hands and sunk back into the shadows. . . .

But in the bright sun, Burroughs stood defiantly erect. Isaac offered him a gesture of encouragement, then looked toward the riders, who had reached the edge of the crowd: Judge John Wedge and Reverend Cotton Mather. And Isaac knew they brought no reprieve.

Burroughs paid them no mind, however. He was begging permission of Samuel Sewall that he be allowed to speak, and Sewall was consenting.

So the wiry little man mounted the gallows ladder, and with his hands bound behind his back, he looked out at the farmers and goodwives and girls with bite marks on their arms, and he proclaimed his innocence with a conviction so powerful that Isaac could feel it surge through the crowd.

As he was standing close to Sewall, Isaac whispered, “The people are moved.”