Shortest Day (24 page)

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!

J
eff 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”

O
utside 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.

Sarah Bailey joined the slow-moving crowd, grateful that the first performance was over but afraid to go home, hearing what people said, but not caring whether they had liked it or not.

“Didn't you think the Doctor was hilarious? Let's hope the car doors aren't frozen shut.”

“It was even better than last year. Jesus, it's a long walk to the parking lot.”

“Oh, no, not half as good as last year. Oh, God, why didn't I wear my boots?”

“Why do they always have to kill poor old Saint George?”

“Oh, sir, you must allow me to instruct you. I think you will be interested to learn that among the Musurongo of the Congo the king is put to death on the first day of his reign.”

Sarah was on the edge of exhaustion. She wanted to cry. Where in this enormous building was there a hole she could crawl into?

Pushing her way across the tide of people, she found her way to the steps leading upward to the balcony above the great hall. Halfway up she stopped. Below the balcony, on the floor of the enormous room, dozens of performers were changing into their street clothes, bundling up. The puppeteer covered his tall creations with a protective cloth. The Morris men laid out their sticks and swords in perfect order for tomorrow. Some of the children were sleepy and drooping, others raced around the hall.

Here on the stairs, neither up nor down, Sarah was alone. The tears she had feared might come, did come. She leaned on the railing and gave way.

“Sarah?” Someone spoke to her softly.

Sarah turned and looked down. Arlo Field was climbing up to her, still wearing the shirt of the Red Cross Knight.

At once Sarah knew what it was that had been missing in Morgan, what it was she had tried not to hunger for. It was Arlo, it was Arlo Field. He was a secret she had been keeping from herself. He was normalcy, he was common sense. He was clever and funny and kind. He was not twisted into a desperate knot of narcissism and suspicion and fear.

Sobbing, she held out her arms, and Arlo reached up and gathered her in, murmuring her name, knowing that this time she wasn't loving the whole world, she was loving him. It was his own face she was kissing and wetting with her tears.

If Morgan had seen them, if he had happened to look up the stairway and catch his wife in the arms of Arlo Field, it would have been like a bad movie—the wrathful husband opening the door at just the wrong moment, while the guilty couple sprang apart.