The Transcendental Murder (29 page)

“Oh, some story about just wanting to walk around for the last time under the stars as a free man,” said Morey. “No, he didn't think anybody saw him. He says he cut down to the river behind the Department of Public Works, then worked his way back up to the Milldam, got his car and went home to bed.”

“Well, he's in for it now,” said Jimmy lugubriously. “And so are we. If it hadn't been for the dumb D.A.…Now, we're all going to be drawn and quartered.”

Chapter 49

	Where was I? … the world lay about at this angle …
HENRY THOREAU

Next day Mary walked into the police station and resigned her job. Homer looked at her stupidly, then back at his papers. “All right, if that's what you want,” he said.

“It is,” said Mary. She went back to the library and examined her desk. She looked for the letter Alice had said she was going to write for her and found no sign of it. Then she received a call from Howard Swan. He was speaking for the library trustees. Would Mary be willing to be acting head librarian for a while? Her official appointment would come through later. Mary would. Then Edith Goss came wandering into the library with a long face, seeking sympathy and comfort. She seemed genuinely distressed. Impulsively Mary offered her a job. They would be short-handed now, and she could use an extra pair of hands. Edith could paste labels in new books and put the returned ones back on the shelves. Edith was grateful. She didn't want to go home. She was restless and wanted to start right to work.

The next visitor to get by the patrolman at the door was Philip Goss. He was leaving town. That was all right because he had been questioned the night before and given a clean bill of health. After dropping Mary off he had gone straight home to his apartment and played poker with George Jarvis and a couple of old friends. He hadn't even left the table. Now he was off to Buffalo to see a client. There were lines of care across his fine forehead. “Hard times,” he said briefly. He looked at her meaningfully. “When this awful business is over, maybe we can begin again.”

Roland Granville-Galsworthy was going away, too. (Be grateful for small blessings.) He caught Mary out of doors at lunchtime, and said so. Then he wrestled her behind a bush and gave her a hard time. “Oi want a little kiss,” he said. Mary was still too much in a state of shock to put up much resistance. The rest of the day she found herself breaking out into convulsive shaking. It would be an enormous satisfaction never to see him again. He claimed to be going back to Oxford to the chair of American Literature. A liar to the end.

Jimmy Flower's men were there part of the day. The District Attorney himself came out, and stood around looking glum, with Miss O'Toole hovering beside him. Homer came in with them, but he hardly spoke to Mary. He merely gave her a moody look and handed her some of the morning newspapers. The headlines were very bad. One of them practically called the District Attorney a murderer of old women. Here was a clever one—
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT SLAYS LIBRARIAN
.

Mary had had enough of the whole thing. She felt tired and ill. Stiffly she reached up to the shelf labelled
Summer Reading
and started to take out the books on the High School reading list for the fall. Harden over, that will stop the shaking. Tighten up. Her fingers picked tensely at the books. She dropped one. It was
The Poems of Emily Dickinson.
That belonged on the list. She picked it up and put it on the cart. Then she took it off the cart again and looked at it. It was the new copy of Volume I, to replace the copy Elizabeth Goss had stolen from the library. What was the page that had been torn out? Page 123, wasn't it? Mary found the page and glanced at the poem printed on it. “If the foolish, call them
‘flowers'
…” For once Emily's private language and crabbed mannerisms irritated her. She flipped the page over and began reading the poem on the other side—

In Ebon Box, when years have flown

To reverently peer,

Wiping away the velvet dust

Summers have sprinkled there!

To hold a letter to the light—

Grown Tawny now, with time—

To con the faded syllables

That quickened us like Wine!

Perhaps a Flower's shrivelled cheek

Among its stores to find—

Plucked far away, some morning—

By gallant—mouldering hand!

A curl, perhaps, from foreheads

Our Constancy forgot—

Perhaps, an Antique trinket—

In vanished fashions set!

And then to lay them quiet back—

And go about its care—

As if the little Ebon Box

Were none of our affair!

Suddenly Mary could bear no more. She didn't want to think about Elizabeth Goss, who had gone mad, or about Ernest Goss, who had been shot to death, or about Charley Goss, who was under arrest, or about Alice Herpitude, who had been——No, no, don't think about it at all! Mary shook herself, snapped the book shut and thrust it back on the cart. Then she walked stiffly to Alice's office, shut the door softly and burst into tears.

Chapter 50

	Essential Oils are wrung —
The Attar from the Rose
Is not expressed by Suns—alone—
It is the gift of Screws —
EMILY DICKINSON

Because of the violent nature of her death, Alice Herpitude's funeral was a little delayed. Mary didn't want to go to it. She didn't know how she could go through with it. If she hadn't had to sing the
Ave Verum
with the rest of the choir she might have begged off. But she had to. So she sat in the balcony of the big white church, facing sideways to the pulpit behind one of the tenors, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. Shrinking back behind the tenor, she looked past the wooden box that held the body of Alice Herpitude to the tiny face of the minister, perched on the tip of the tenor's large nose. Mr. Patterson's words flowed like honey, filling up the empty interstices of her mind, blocking and dulling her awareness. But they must not. Prick up, prick up like thorns the hairs of your attention! Mary glanced over the congregation and remembered the Sunday morning when she had looked down and seen for the first time the look of terror on Alice's face. She had seen it there often after that. Of what had Alice been afraid? The choirmistress lifted her hand, and the choir rose.

“
Ave, ave verum Corpus …
”

In the rainbow coma at the edge of Mary's swimming vision the heads of the mourning friends of Alice Herpitude were distributed in rows like round balls strung on a string, shimmering like decorations from a Christmas tree, glistening with bright glorious lights.

The ceremony at the graveside was over. She stumbled over the dry grass, turning away with the others. She shook her head at Gwen and Tom, and straggled off by herself. But there was someone standing beside her car. It was Homer Kelly. He motioned at the car door. “Get in,” he said.

He was saying goodby, too. He would be assisting the County Prosecutor and the District Attorney in the preparation of the case against Charley Goss, working out of the County Court House in East Cambridge, living in his own rooms off Brattle Street. Then, he said, maybe he could get back to his book on Henry Thoreau. Homer stirred uneasily behind the wheel and glanced sideways at Mary. “Concord is too rich for my blood, anyway,” he said. “I can't seem to think sensibly about Thoreau or Emerson or any of the rest of them unless I'm far away from here, in Kalamazoo or somewhere.”

“You mean you've lost your critical viewpoint? You surely weren't getting fond of them?”

“What do you mean, fond? I don't believe in being fond of the subject of a biography. You lose your objectivity. You've got to be strictly impersonal, strictly impersonal. And all the stuff I've written while I've been here seems to have lost something I used to have. I don't know …”

“That cutting edge, perhaps?”

Homer frowned and was silent. He drove out Barrett's Mill Road to her house and slowed down. Then he speeded up again. “Come on. Let's go rent a canoe at the South Bridge Boat House.”

Mary wondered dully where Rowena was, but she tried to cooperate. Jump, Mary—jump just a little longer. “Shall we have another fight?” she said.

Homer smiled at her. There was a funny expression on his craggy face. “You know I like to fight with you.”

It was a heavy, humid day. Over the river the trees piled up like thunderheads. The duckweed lay in a light green scum along the shore. There were tall spikes of cardinal flower and loosestrife along the edges of the water. They drifted silently. Mary leaned her head back and folded her arms, trying to let her mind go blank. Just listen to the birds, don't think about anything. She turned her head and looked in the pickerel weed for the two that were singing, splitting hairs.

Homer looked at her and started to speak. Then he stopped, cleared his throat and started again. “Charley Goss means a lot to you, doesn't he?”

“Charley? Of course he does.”

“I mean—what I means is, how much?”

“Well, he's a friend of mine in a whole lot of trouble, that's how much.”

Homer digested this, and seemed satisfied. “What about this Ghoolsworthy fellow? How long have you known him?”

“Just since this spring.”

There was a pause. “He seems to think a lot of you,” said Homer, looking carefully along his paddle blade. He dipped it clumsily in the water and pulled hard.

“Oh, that's just me,” said Mary. “I always seem to attract the goofy, adam's-appley ones.”

There was another pause. “I guess they think you're nice,” said Homer. His voice was thick.

“Well, I'm not,” said Mary. “Not to them. After a while I start snapping at them and saying waspish things. But they just droop their tongues out and look pathetic and hangdog around again. He left today, thank heavens, to go back home.”

There was another silence. Then Homer changed the subject. He looked around happily. “Look at that muskrat going along over there,” he said. “Look at all those ducks!”

By the time they got back to Mary's house it was dark. At the door Homer pulled her back and started talking huskily, quoting Emerson. “Mary, Mary,” he said, “a link was wanting between two craving parts of Nature. Oh, Mary, come on. Aw, Mary …”

Mary had been kissed before, but mostly by men shorter than she was. It made her feel maternal. (Run along to bed now, there's a good boy.) Being kissed by Charley or Philip was a nose-to-nose affair, like confronted elephants whose long proboscises were always in the way. But this, now, this was different—Mary struggled against it, then gave in, dissolving altogether. Then she struggled again and broke away. The crazy dope was engaged to Rowena Goss. “Oh, go on home,” said Mary unsteadily. She pulled at the knob of the screen door. It stuck and she had to kick at it. It wobbled open, and Mary went inside and slammed it, and spoke through the bulge of the screen. “You give me a great big enormous pain in the
neck,
” she said. What a stupid thing to say.

Homer stood in the dusk, his white shirt heaving up and down. His necktie was the one that glowed in the dark. “You're like the rest of them,” he said bitterly. “Like your precious Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Witherspoon and all the rest. Cold as ice. Well, go ahead. Wear a white dress, why don't you, and hide in your room and write poetry. Go ahead. It doesn't make any difference to me. I'm going to find me a girl with some blood in her veins.” He turned on his heel and started walking down the road, breathing hard, his white shirt bobbing up and down. Mary went upstairs, lay down on her bed and cried hard. Then she suddenly remembered that they had come home in her car. “Oh, damn,” she said. She got up and went downstairs and out of doors, climbed into her car and drove after him. She leaned over and opened the door on his side. “Here,” she said.