Shortest Day (17 page)

H
omer Kelly had put on his giant's mask for the first time. It was huge, with a shaggy mop of hair, fierce eyes, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. He had spent all morning waiting around in the great hall, terrifying the children, running at them with loud roars while they scuttled away screaming and giggling. He had taken off the mask to eat lunch, and it still wasn't time to go onstage, roaring and raking the air with his claws.

He was bored. He stood waiting on the steps at the back of the stage while the Morris men went through their paces, gracefully, twirling their handkerchiefs and waggling their legs.

He was sick and tired of waiting. He wanted to drive home with Mary and look at the water level in the furnace. He hadn't checked it lately, and it was probably low. What if the cutoff didn't work? The furnace would start heating up, and then—Christ!—what would happen after that? There were more damned problems connected with domestic life in a New England winter. “Fee-fi-fo-fum,” he grumbled under his breath, swinging his club.

At last Tom signaled the final measures of the dance. The concertina tiddled the end of the tune, and all twelve feet crashed down and stood still.

“Wonderful,” said Walt.

Homer flattened himself against the railing to allow the Morris men to tramp offstage. But, oh, God, they weren't finished after all, they were picking up their swords, they were going to do an entirely different dance. Jesus, this could go on all afternoon.

He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, and pulled his mask up on the top of his head. Now they were stopping again. A sword clattered to the floor. What the hell was the matter this time?

“Tom, are you all right?” Sarah ran up the stairs at the front of the stage. Everyone was looking at one of the dancers, who was doubled over, clutching himself around the middle.

“Oh, God,” groaned Tom Cobb. He fell to his knees.

Sarah knelt beside him. “Tom, Tom, where does it hurt?”

Tom gasped through clenched teeth. “Christ, it's not my appendix. They already took it out.” He rolled moaning on the floor.

Mary Kelly had been watching him dance, enjoying the way Tom's feet seemed to bound up off the floor, the way he grinned as he twirled his handkerchief and laughed as he executed the figures so gracefully. But now the jolly jokester was pale and panting, his face contorted with pain. He tried to get up and fell back with a scream.

“Quick,” said Mary, “Cambridge Hospital. It's just up the street.”

Homer Kelly tore off his mask. “Our car's right outside.” He picked up Tom by the shoulders and a couple of the dancers took his feet, and somebody covered him with a coat. “Okay,” said Homer, “let's get him down the stairs. Gently, gently.”

“Oh, don't,” groaned Tom, “please don't. Oh,
Christ
.”

They were a hushed and shuffling procession, heading for the north door. Walt hurried ahead to hold it open. Children stared from the entrance to the great hall. Mary ran down the north steps, unlocked the car, and opened the two back doors.

Getting Tom into the back seat was a grim struggle, with Homer pulling on one side and Jeffery Peck pushing on the other, and Tom writhing in the middle. At the emergency entrance to the hospital the experts took over. Homer and Mary and Jeffery watched as Tom was hurried away on a stretcher. They looked at one another silently, and Mary shook her head with a gesture of pity and helplessness.

T
om Cobb died an hour later on the operating table. The anesthetist monitoring his life signs threw up her hands. The surgeon cursed. Then there was no sound but the heaving of the stomach pump.

“Turn the fucking thing off,” said the surgeon.

“Pathology?” said the orderly. “Shall I should take him to Pathology?”

“Oh, God, yes. There's no excuse for this. Look at that gooey brown mess! What the hell was he eating?”

CHAPTER 21

Horrible, terrible, what hast thou done?

Thou has killed my only dearly beloved son
.

Traditional British Mummers' Play

I
t was the second funeral in Harvard's Memorial Church for Mary and Homer Kelly. They had sat here in the past, a long time ago, grieving for someone they hardly knew. Now it was the turn of Tom Cobb, estate lawyer for Ropes and Gray, Morris dancer, jazz flutist, and one of the stage managers for the Christmas Revels.

The Kellys had known Tom only slightly as Sarah's colleague and as one of the Morris dancers. But Homer felt a savage sympathy for the young man who had tossed in such anguish on the back seat of his car.

And death always hit him hard, whether natural or unnatural. After investigating a number of cold-blooded homicides in his time, Homer had come to the conclusion that the worst kind of human extermination wasn't murder, it was the everyday continuous slaughter of the entire human race. The older he got, the more often some old friend or acquaintance stumbled and fell off the edge of that terrible cliff. You'd think the survivors would get used to it. But Homer never did. He couldn't just glance back in surprise and say,
Whoops, too bad!
, and scuttle on, scrabbling his way along the ever-narrowing path on the mountainside, minding his P's and Q's.

Sitting beside Mary in the warm air of Memorial Church, he wondered if he ought to reveal himself to Sarah Bailey, and tell her about his old credentials as a lieutenant detective in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County. Except for Arlo Field, nobody in the Revels crew knew about his history as a policeman. Well, it didn't matter. Homer had no wish to volunteer his services. After all, the Cambridge Police were looking into the sudden death of Tom Cobb, working hand in glove with the Harvard University Police Department. They could handle it.

But in spite of himself Homer felt nosily inquisitive. Once again he was like a dog sniffing the ground, ears cocked, whiskers vibrating. He turned his head left and right and craned his neck over his shoulder to see who had come to the service for Tom Cobb, wondering who might have had it in for him.

The organ boomed massively behind the choir screen. Mary pulled at Homer's coat sleeve and whispered, “Homer, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop staring.”

“Oh, all right.” Homer shrugged his shoulders and transferred his gaze to the high ceiling, wondering if the young estate lawyer named Tom Cobb was worthy of all this splendor of liturgical apparatus and classical pomposity, of coffered barrel vault and polished pulpit, of red carpet and Corinthian capital. Well, of course, his family must think so. Here they were, Tom's relatives, being ushered into the front pews—a tearstained mother, various brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles, and an old grandfather.

Arlo came to the service directly from teaching his freshman class, and found a place in the back of the church—Arlo Field, the resident of Apartment B, 329 Huron Avenue, the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, the expanding universe. He looked at the pulpit, which was draped with a velvet banner, a piece of ecclesiastical haberdashery. He looked up at the lofty white vault of Memorial Church and saw beyond it the thinning layers of air, the glaring winter sun, pulsing so mysteriously within, and the gibbous moon, dented like a collapsed beach ball. Folding his arms across his best jacket, he thought about Tom Cobb.

Arlo hadn't known Tom very well, but he had found him amusing, and he had wished, like everyone else whose life intersected with Tom's, that he, Arlo Field, could be more like him, that he could loosen up somehow and make friends so winningly. Was it just a matter of liking people better? People in general? Not picking and choosing? Sarah Bailey was like that. She acted as though everyone was
wonderful, just wonderful
.

Arlo felt himself getting more cynical rather than less, more critical of his fellow human beings than ever. He glanced around at the people in the other pews, looking for Sarah, failing to find her.

The church was nearly full. On the other side of the aisle Mary Kelly recognized Arlo and a lot of other Revels people—members of the chorus, the wardrobe mistress, the technical director, the music director, the backstage crew. She watched as latecomers hurried in, muffled in coats and scarves, taking off their hats—the friends and relatives of an attractive and successful man who had died much too young.

Mary nudged Homer as Morgan and Sarah Bailey sat down on the empty bench in front of them. At once the Baileys moved to the end to make room for more.

The newcomers were some of the other Morris dancers, almost unrecognizable in their churchgoing clothes. Their faces were grave. Sarah smiled at them as they shuffled along the row and sat down, edging apart to ease their big shoulders.

Mary was directly behind Morgan Bailey. Without meaning to, she began totting up the things she had against him, beginning with the oddities surrounding the death of Henry Shady under the wheels of Morgan's Range Rover. There was surely something rotten in Morgan's relation with his wife. Anybody could see that. It didn't take two or three professional degrees to understand what was staring you right in the face.

But this morning Morgan and Sarah seemed a loving couple. Sarah was crying, and Morgan leaned over her with what looked like genuine solicitude. She put her head on his shoulder and he wrapped an arm around her. Mary's suspicions dimmed. She glanced at Homer, feeling foolish. But when the Morris dancers edged along the bench where the Baileys were sitting, her mood changed.

Morgan's changed too. Looking around, he saw Sarah patting the space beside her and beckoning. He frowned. Who was this guy, pushing past the others to sit next to her? Then, to his dismay, he recognized Jeffery Peck.

Jeff was another one of the Morris dancers. Now he would be taking over Tom Cobb's job as codirector with Sarah. She was whispering to him, weeping again, and the goddamn guy was putting his arm around her. His arm collided with Morgan's, and Jeff glanced at him and murmured, “Sorry,” but he didn't take his arm away. Morgan withdrew his, and sat rigidly beside his wife, fuming, a tide of misery sweeping over him.

The service began with hymns, prayers, and readings from the Bible. One of Tom's law partners talked about the keenness of his colleague's mind and the compassion of his sympathies. Tom's brother spoke about his good nature, and told a couple of his jokes. There were gulps of tearful laughter. Then behind the choir screen Walt sang “Come Away to the Skies.” The last part of the service was the merry music of the concertina playing the “Upstreet Morris.”

The Morris men couldn't bear it. The five men sitting in the row with Morgan and Sarah mopped their eyes.

But Morgan heard none of it. His fear had come back. He had been wrong, wrong all the time. It wasn't Tom Cobb, it was Jeffery Peck. Look at Sarah! She was whispering in his ear, she was patting Jeff's hand. He was shoving his big fucking thigh right up against her, and she was shoving back.
Goddamn you, Sarah!

Mary Kelly watched with surprise as Morgan Bailey grasped his wife's arm, jerked her to her feet, bundled her past the knees of the Morris men, and hurried her out into the shuffling congregation in the aisle, bumping shoulders, pushing through people who were trying to put on their coats. What was
that
all about?

Morgan and Sarah were the first to leave the church. Outside, the air was clear and sparkling. Morgan inhaled a deep shaky breath, but it did no good. Once again his chest was tight and constricted. Once again he could hardly breathe.

CHAPTER 22