The Memorial Hall Murder (19 page)

Saturday was mild for the middle of November. Homer and Mary took a walk along the Charles after lunch, and then Mary turned around to go home to work on her half of the index, with which she was as infatuated as Homer. “Now listen, Homer, don't forget to stop at the grocery store when you're through at Widener. Have you got the list?”

“Right here,” said Homer. “The trouble is, I've got two lists. One of them is the references I've got to check, and what I'm afraid I'll do is march up to the call desk in Widener and pound on the counter and demand a dozen tortillas and a can of enchilada sauce.”

“Well, just be sure you don't hand me twelve volumes of the
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society
and expect me to turn them into a Mexican dinner. Oh, Homer, look at the traffic up there on the bridge. It's a good thing you're on foot. What a snarl! Look, it's backed up as far as the eye can see.”

But when Homer made his way to the congested corner of Boylston Street and Memorial Drive, he found the walking almost as bad as the driving. Turning up Boylston in the direction of Harvard Square, he was immediately buffeted by a thick flood of pedestrians moving the other way. What was happening? Where were all these people going? They were like lemmings, pouring toward the river.

“Whoops! Oh, excuse me. Oh, Homer Kelly, isn't this awful?” Somebody else was trying to move in the direction of the square, struggling against the tide. It was Julia Chamberlain. “Oh, Lord, why didn't I go around by way of Dunster Street? I should have known better. Oh, excuse me, ma'am, I'm
terribly
sorry.”

“Well, what the hell is it?” Homer had to roar because all the cars on the street were blowing their horns at once. “Where's everybody going?”

Julia Chamberlain looked at him and screeched, “I just can't believe it. What a nitwit you are, Homer Kelly. I told you on the phone yesterday. It's the Harvard-Yale game. Look, here comes the band.”

“Oh,
football.
Is that it.” Homer couldn't make himself heard above the blare of the trumpets and sousaphones and the thump of the drums. A lot of people in crimson jackets were turning into Boylston Street from the square, while the traffic came to a full stop and the drivers all gave up and leaned out their car windows and the sky lavished sunshine on the dazzling sousaphones and flashing trombones and glittering flutes and glockenspiels. Homer's entire understanding of sporting life at Harvard was limited to a song by Tom Lehrer, “Fight Fiercely, Harvard! Demonstrate Your Prowess, Do!” He was about to quote this in Julia Chamberlain's ear, but then she stopped to buy a Harvard pennant and began waving it over her head, and he decided to forbear.

“You know, it's all I can do not to turn around and follow the band,” shouted Julia. “The fever, it's really catching. But I'd never get into the stadium. You have to get your ticket way ahead. I gave mine to my nephew this morning.”

“But why aren't you going? I should think a loyal member of the Harvard administration like you would be front and center on the fifty-yard line.”

“Oh, I've got a meeting. One of those everlasting meetings. You know how it is.”

“You mean somebody arranged a meeting for the same time as the Harvard Yale game? What kind of a sour puckered-up heartless old creep would do a thing like that?”

“Well, Homer, dear, I'm afraid it was me, as a matter of fact.”

“But what was so important that you had to call a meeting for a time like this?”

Homer's face was very close to Julia Chamberlain's. He had a tight grip around her waist as they rammed their way across Mass Av in a kind of flying wedge, and therefore he could clearly see that something was troubling her. She was incapable of lying, that was it. She was one of those staunch Yankees who would rather throw up their lunch than let a false word cross their lips. Homer knew the breed well. The Puritan Ethic and the stern New England conscience were the glue that held Julia Chamberlain together.

“Well, you know, Homer, you can't always talk about these things, what with one thing and another. Emergencies come up.”

“Touchdown!” cried Homer, and he landed the two of them on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the Yard. Then they had to force their way through the narrow gate, because a crush of football fans was squeezing through it in the other direction. The gate was a mean little entry, a gift to the school from the class of 1875. It was a clumsy piece of architectural braggadocio, all scrolls and pediments and little concrete pineapples, and the message it proclaimed on a marble tablet had irritated Homer in the days of his youth when he had directed traffic at the crossing:

OPEN YE THE GATES THAT THE RIGHTEOUS NATION
WHICH KEEPETH THE TRUTH MAY ENTER IN

The inscription still gave him a pain. He nudged Mrs. Chamberlain and pointed at it. “Arrogance,” he said.

“Oh, I know. Isn't it disgusting. I mean, it's the whole trouble. Look at those alumni, will you? Don't some of the alumni look positively frightening? Sometimes it makes you wonder. It just makes you wonder if the whole thing is worthwhile after all.”

At University Hall she said good-bye. “I'm going in here, Homer, dear. Thank you for running interference for me like that. I really appreciate it.”

Homer asked a polite farewell question about the game. “Who do you think will win this afternoon?” he said, his mind already running through the list of references he wanted to lay his hands on in the library.

But to his surprise Julia Chamberlain grasped him by the coat collar and tapped him on the chest with the end of her pennant. “Yale,” she said. “Fourteen to seven. You see, Homer, it's Goober. Oh, I know, we've got a terrific offense and a couple of really great fullbacks, Puffer and Halloran. But they've got Goober. Their defense is terrible, but with a forward pass like Goober's, there's absolutely no hope.” Julia shook her head earnestly at Homer and started up the steps of University Hall.

The woman was as transparent as a pane of glass. Homer thought about it as he turned away. She should have been going to the game. She was dying to go to the game. Why had she called a meeting for the same time as the game?

Homer walked slowly up the gigantic staircase of Widener Library, and puffed his way up another grandiose set of marble stairs, and gasped his way into the catalogue room and approached the call desk. But then he stopped short, turned around, ran headlong down the two great staircases and loped in the direction of University Hall. As he rounded the corner of the building he slowed down and craned his neck to see what he could see.

Yes, there was Julia, standing on the porch, talking to a couple of men who looked faintly familiar to Homer. They were Overseers. He had seen them before in the Faculty Room, along with President Cheever and Senior Vice President Sloan Tinker and the five Fellows. This must be another meeting of the Board. But this time Cheever and Tinker would not be there, because they were away in Chicago. Who was that? That old gentleman wasn't an Overseer. That was Shackleton Bowditch, the Senior Fellow. Were the Fellows and the Overseers meeting together again? Maybe the thing had become a habit. But surely you would think they could contain their enthusiasm for each other's company until after the Harvard-Yale game?

Something was up. Another huddle of Overseers was hurrying in the direction of University Hall. Some of them were carrying suitcases. They had come from far away. Homer suspected they had come in a hurry. He leaned his back against the monumental base of the statue of John Harvard and pretended to examine the roof of Massachusetts Hall, as the newcomers lugged their suitcases up the stairs. One of them was the girl who had looked so young among the gray-headed men and women sitting in all those tall uncomfortable chairs upstairs a few weeks ago. Why were they meeting so soon again? Weren't their regular meetings supposed to happen only every couple of months? “Emergencies come up,” Mrs. Chamberlain had said. Well, what emergency was it this time?

“I dropped everything,” said the girl who looked too young to be an Overseer, struggling with the heavy door. “I had to get a baby-sitter only six months older than Bobby. She's only about two feet tall, but she can twist Bobby around her little finger.”

The Overseers disappeared inside. Another bunch of them came pouring up the stairs. Homer idled around the outside of the building for five more minutes, and then he couldn't stand it any more. He went inside and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door to the Faculty Room was open. Homer didn't see any reason why he couldn't just saunter casually by the door as if he were on his way to somewhere else. Slowly he ambled past the door and glanced inside.

They were all there. The meeting had been called in a hurry, but the great square of stately chairs was packed. The President himself was missing, and so was Senior Vice President Sloan Tinker. But Julia Chamberlain was not alone at King Arthur's table. The Treasurer and all five Fellows sat on either side of her central chair.

Once again Homer stared inquisitively at the Harvard Corporation. It was a little band possessed of fabled power, he knew that, chosen from hand to hand, its members touching One another on the shoulder down through the generations, going back in time to the year 1650, when Harvard College had been little more than a scrap of ground with two or three drafty buildings and a handful of shivering students, back during the presidency of Dunster, who had been forced to resign because he was an Antipedobaptist. A pretty shocking thing to be. Everyone had been scandalized by a president who didn't believe in infant baptism. Homer suspected the Corporation had always been a conservative body. After all, they were Fellows for life, the five of them. They must grow old and crusty on the job. Surely they were a force for the status quo. No radicals or Antipedobaptists in that bunch.

Homer leaned against the wall, out of sight, and cocked his ears in the direction of the open door. The Overseers and Fellows were still shifting about in their chairs and exchanging the time of day. They were noisy, excited, positively effervescent. Something of an unusual nature must be in the wind. Could it be the stained glass in Memorial Hall? Mrs. Chamberlain had talked about the stained glass on the phone yesterday. But Homer couldn't believe she would have dragged all these people here to talk about the cost of the new stained glass.

Her strong voice was rising above the tumult, calling the meeting to order. Immediately the room quieted down.

“Well, now,” said Julia comfortably, her voice level in the silence, “let's have the reports of the Visiting Committees.”

It was a joke. It must be a joke. They were all laughing. Laughing and laughing. And it wasn't ordinary laughter. Homer leaned against the wall and shook his head in wonder. There was a slightly hysterical note in the laughter, something explosive. They were laughing with the kind of abandon that comes with the release of tension bottled up for a long time.

“We can't go on this way much longer,” said Mrs. Chamberlain. “The time has come.”

“Hear, hear. Right you are.” There was a general murmur of approval and thumps on the table and shuffling of feet. Homer could imagine backbones bracing themselves staunchly against the rock-ribbed backs of chairs.

Someone else spoke up. “We've waited far too long already. We should have done it last year.”

“That's right. You know, I just can't help but wonder”—Homer could picture Julia Chamberlain's strong honest face leaning forward over the table—”whether if we had had the courage of our convictions two years ago, if we Overseers had encouraged you people in the Corporation to do what had to be done, then this awful thing might never have happened. Ham might no longer have been a professor at Harvard University. He wouldn't have been in Memorial Hall at all. He might never have been blown up.”

“Oh, Julia, don't torture yourself like that. The question is, what to do now?”