The Transcendental Murder

by Jane Langton

  Homer was particularly impressed by her collection of beer bottles (the high-class green ones only). She had a whole lot of matchbooks with pictures of pussycats on them, and a drawerful of miscellaneous mittens. Mary recognized one that had belonged to Annie. She had NEVER SEEN SUCH A DARLING MITTEN.

  “OH, TAKE IT, TAKE IT,” hollered Mrs. Bewley.

  The little room was overwhelming. It seemed bursting at the seams with overstuffed plush decked with antimacassars. Antimacassars were Mrs. Bewley’s favorite swiping material. It was so easy. Just swish, pop, and there you were. Stalking around the room were her little pets, four or five bantam hens and a tiny rooster. They kept getting their claws tangled in the antimacassars. Homer made the mistake of sitting down without looking in one of the chairs. There was a small punksh, and he got up with an infinitesimal egg dripping from his backside.

  “OH, TOO BAD,” cried Mrs. Bewley, dabbing at him with an antimacassar. “BRIDGE’S SUCH A GOOD LAYER, SHE DOES LIKE THAT CHAIR, SEE?” Mrs. Bewley felt around in the voluptuous bulges and crevices of the chair and triumphantly brought up two more small eggs, like a child finding jelly beans at Easter.

  Mary decided to remain standing. “WHAT’S IN THOSE PAPER BAGS, MRS BEWLEY?” she shouted.

  Mrs. Bewley looked ecstatic. “MESSAGES, ALL MESSAGES.”

  “MESSAGES?”

  “FROM JESUS. HE SENDS ME MESSAGES ALL THE TIME.”

  For a wild moment Mary wondered if Mrs. Bewley was a sort of super-Transcendentalist, seeing sermons in stones and lessons in the running brooks. Or was she a sort of innocent natural saint, and were the paper bags filled with long curling ribbons inscribed with Gothic messages in Latin, like the ones you saw in old Flemish pictures with the Virgin and the angel Gabriel?

  But the first thing that came out of a paper bag was a startled hen named Priscilla. (“WHY, PRISCILLA, YOU NAUGHTY GIRL, SO THAT’S WHERE YOU’VE BEEN.”) Next Mrs. Bewley had to scrabble around until she brought out Priscilla’s six teeny-weeny eggs and established them under Priscilla again on top of the sofa. Then she plunged back into the bag again, peering into the top like a skinny Mrs. Santa Claus and then rolling her eyes up at the ceiling while she felt around. “THERE!” She came up with her hand closed around something and held it behind her back coyly. “WHICH HAND?”

  Homer groaned under his breath, but Mary heroically chose the left. That was wrong. She chose the right. Mrs. Bewley brought forth her treasure. It was a message, all right, from the Jubble Bubble Chewing Gum Company. It had once encased a large pink piece of bubble gum, long since chewed and gone to glory. Mrs. Bewley reached for another grab. This time it was a torn campaign poster advertising Harry J. Croney for County Clerk. Mrs. Bewley leaned Harry up against the wall like an icon and beamed at Mary and Homer, expecting homage.

  They were stunned. Mrs. Bewley, taking their gaping for awe, decided to do the thing up brown. She turned the paper bag upside down and dropped a fluttering shower of trash on the floor. And there among the candy wrappers and cigarette containers and throwaway mail advertising specials on pork chops, Mary saw a message from Jesus that was worth the salvaging. She reached for it and picked it up. It was another one of Ernie’s letters, the one that had fallen under her chair at Orchard House. It was the tenderly beautiful letter that Henry Thoreau was supposed to have written to Emily Dickinson. What on earth was it doing here? Mary showed it to Homer.

  “What a stroke of luck,” said Homer. “It never occurred to me that one letter might be missing from that bunch in the bait box.” He read it over. “What a genius that Charley is. This is a masterpiece. Mrs. Bewley must have lifted it off Ernie’s desk before he decided to hide them away. Say, maybe that’s why he had to hide them in the first place. Someone was swiping them.”

  “Ssshh.” Mary looked apprehensively at Mrs. Bewley. But Mrs. Bewley was delighted by their interest in the central feature and mystic heart of her collection. Struggling behind her sofa, which was kitty-cornered artistically across the angle of the room, she moved aside a wickerwork plant table sprouting a hardbitten rubber plant and yanked at a closet door. It opened just wide enough to show what was inside. It was jampacked and bulging with brown grocery bags chock-full of messages straight from Jesus.

  Homer clapped his hand to his brow. The worth of Mrs. Bewley as a collector on a par With Bernard Berenson and Andrew Mellon was just beginning to dawn on him. He fell down on one knee and shouted humbly, WOULD MRS. BEWLEY, COULD MRS. BEWLEY SEE HER WAY CLEAR TO LETTING THEM BORROW HER COLLECTION OF MESSAGES? THEY WOULD BE SO CAREFUL, SO VERY CAREFUL …

  Mrs. Bewley climbed eagerly over the back of the sofa, stepping gingerly on either side of Priscilla, and gave them her blessing.

  Chapter 43

  Let such pure hate still underprop

  Our love …

  HENRY THOREAU

  Mary was still hoarse from shouting at Mrs. Bewley. She cleared her throat. “Why don’t we sort them for her?” she said. She was watching Patrolman Vine and Sergeant Ordway turn over mountains of trash, spreading them out neatly on the floor of the firing range on six of Isabelle Flower’s clean white sheets. “Maybe she’d like all the Choko-wrappers in one bag and all the popsicle sticks in another.”

  “No,” said Homer. “She may have some profound system of classification all her own. Let them alone. Mrs. Bewley knows best.”

  It took them two hours to go through the entire collection. Some of the pieces were sticky and had to be soaked apart. Luther Ordway picked up the last of these from a towel in the darkroom and brought it out into the light to look at it. He was whistling, but then he stopped whistling, and read it through again. Then he brought it to Chief Flower. Jimmy read it a couple of times, looking sober and brought it over to Homer’s desk.

  “Oh, good,” said Mary. “Did you find something else?”

  Jimmy glanced at her, looking troubled, then shifted his glance away. Homer read the scrap of paper through twice, then slowly lifted his small sharp eyes to look at her.

  “Well, what is it?” said Mary. She walked around behind him and he held the piece of wrinkled paper so that she could see. It was a short typewritten note.

  Dearest Philip,

  I have something to tell you that I hope will make you happy. Can you meet me at Nicholson’s Barn between 12:30 and 1:30? Please don’t say anything to anyone—and destroy this.

  It was signed in ink. The signature had run, but it had a homely look, and it jumped out at Mary from the page. It was her own.

  Homer looked up at her. His face was still with an arctic calm, his eyes buckets of nails. Mary couldn’t speak. She didn’t say anything at all. She stared at the signature. That was her M, her closed A and careless R, and her Y that was just a bump and a straight line without any loop.

  Then Jimmy snatched the paper suddenly. “I’m going to tear it up,” he said.

  “What do you want to do,” said Homer, “lose your badge? That’s evidence.”

  Jimmy glared at him. “It don’t mean anything and you know it.”

  “Oh, but it does,” said Homer. He stood up and reached out, gripping Jimmy’s wrist. He squeezed the wrist in his large hand until Jimmy’s fingers went limp and dropped the paper. “Thank you,” said Homer. He picked it up. “This note calls Philip away from the place where he was surrounded by witnesses who could furnish him with an alibi for the time of the murder, to a lonely spot where no one would see him coming or going. He could walk to the barn from the Gun Club right across a dry field.” Homer looked at Mary coldly. “Did you meet him there?”

  Mary dumbly shook her head.

  Homer started walking around the room. “Philip Goss received this note some time during the morning of the murder. Expecting a declaration of love he walked eagerly across the field to the barn, arriving around 12:30. Impatiently he waited there for Mary for a full hour, maybe longer, before giving up. Then he tossed the note aside in disgust, returned to the Rod and Gun Club and started to drink himse
lf under the table. Afterwards, when asked about his whereabouts, Philip was gallant. He refused to name the reason he was missing, for fear of getting into trouble the girl he loved. A gentleman of the old school.”

  “That’s more than you are, I see,” said Jimmy, his voice rising. “Listen here, Homer Kelly, if you say a word, just one word, that harms a hair on the head of my Mary, I’ll …”

  Homer interrupted roughly. “Oh, so she’s your Mary now, is she?” Jimmy made an angry lunge for the piece of paper, but Homer snatched it away and held it behind his back. He looked at Mary and spoke softly. “Split the lark, and you’ll find the music. Mary, did you write this?”

  Mary hugged her arms and shivered. She found herself noticing the way Homer’s head was arranged on his neck, the way his neck grew out of his collar. His head was different from the bald knob that rested on Jimmy’s shoulders like a friendly turnip. It was erect like a dog’s, furry and cocked and alert. Cocked. Cocked like a gun. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I did. I mean, of course I didn’t. I know I didn’t.”

  Homer blinked. He lowered his eyes to her desk and touched her typewriter. “We can find out what machine it was typed on, probably. I’ll bet it was Charley’s. And anybody could have traced your signature. Charley had letters from you?”

  Then he wasn’t—it was all right. Mary nodded without speaking.

  Homer glanced at the note again. “Elite type. Small portable, most likely. Is that what yours is? I mean the one you use at home?” Mary nodded again, and looked at the piece of paper. Even with its soaking it looked grubby, and she was reminded of the dirty typed sheets of plagiarized scholarship turned out by Roland Granville-Galsworthy.

  “Jimmy,” said Homer, “have you got some typewriter experts up your sleeve?”

  Jimmy was still glowering. He shook himself and spoke grudgingly. “We’ll look into it.”

  Mary took Jimmy’s phone call in her library office. “Well,” said Jimmy, “his lordship had to admit that it couldn’t have been your typewriter that wrote that note. The expert identified it as Charley’s, all right. The A tended to skip, the type needed cleaning, the E was tipped off-axis to the right, and so on and so on. But of course the Great Kelly hastened to add that you or anybody else could have used Charley’s typewriter. But what this really amounts to is one more little piece of evidence that doesn’t do Charley Goss any good.”

  “But why would Charley forge a note from me to Philip?”

  “It’s like Homer said. To get Philip away from witnesses, to take away from him the alibi he would have had for the time of the murder.”

  “But if Charley was planning to kill his father and pin the murder on Philip, why did he wear the Sam Prescott outfit and do it in a public place?”

  “Just so that you would ask that very question.”

  “Oh. Well, did you ask Charley about it?”

  “Oh, he denied it. Categorically. Then we talked to Philip, and he admitted receiving the note. He said he found it on his pillow before the parade. Said it got him all excited. (You sure have a powerful effect on us men.) But then he got very angry when you didn’t show up. He didn’t remember dropping the note, but he supposes he probably did. And it could have blown into the road where Mrs. B. could have found it. And, say, we found the letter that your signature was traced from. It was one of the letters you wrote to Charley from Amherst, that summer when you were working on that female poet. What’s her name?”

  “Emily Dickinson. What did my letter say?”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry. It sure wasn’t any smoldering billy doo, it didn’t even smell pretty. Say, Mary, listen here, were those boys jealous of each other over you?”

  “I told you,” said Mary. “I turned them down, both of them, a year ago. They weren’t really serious about me any more. I just came in handy to take out.”

  “Is that so? Did they have any other girl friends?”

  “Well, no, not that I know of.”

  “Do you think they still hoped to win you over, either of them?”

  “Oh, maybe, but I did everything I could to discourage it.”

  “Well, I just wonder if one of them could have been all worked up with jealousy on your account, and tried to eliminate the opposition by getting it accused of murder.”

  “Oh, no, no, I’m sure not.” That was absurd. Mary hung up and turned away from the telephone, looking troubled. She folded her arms on the sash of the window and stared out at the rain that had been coming down obstinately for a week now. But she didn’t see the lowering sky and the sodden leaves. She was aware only of a heavy feeling of increasing guilt—the more she took part in the investigation of Ernest Goss’s murder, the more deeply entangled in suspicion Charley became. Whether you loved someone or not, if they loved you, you had a certain responsibility not to hurt …

  Alice Herpitude was looking at her, questioning her, picking at her sleeve. Mary had to say it out loud, and admit it to herself as well as to Alice. “Things look pretty bad for Charley Goss.”

  Then Miss Herpitude did an odd thing. She started trembling all over. Her pale old lips looked thin and tight. “Are you sure?” she said. “Do you think they’ll accuse him of—of—?”

  “I just don’t know,” said Mary.

  Chapter 44

  There is one field beside this stream,

  Wherein no foot does fall,

  But yet it beareth in my dream

  A richer crop than all.

  HENRY THOREAU

  The rain had stopped at last, and the sun was out, hot and bright. Tom came back from a trip to the Fulton Box Company in Boston with a load of crates for packing corn, five dozen to a crate. He was stacking them in the loft in the barn. John was helping him. “Boy,” said John, “I sure wish we still had some cider froze from last year. It sure is hot. Boy, I sure am thirsty.”

  “We’ll try to make more this year than we did last,” promised Tom. “And we won’t wait for our apples, we’ll get some early drops down from Harvard.”

  “Boy, if we just had a good hurricane, then we’d have plenty of drops.”

  Tom stopped tossing crates and scowled at John. “Don’t you go tempting fate to destroy our apple crop again. Plenty of drops, plenty of cider, sure, but plenty of money down the drain, plenty of kids that don’t go to college.”

  “Well, I love hurricanes anyway.”

  “You just go in and wash your mouth out with soap. I’m going to get put the John Deere and harrow that corn stubble in across the way. You go tell Annie. She’s been wanting a ride.” Tom mopped his forehead and unbuttoned his shirt. A little later he was heading the tractor down the dirt road that led past the cider shed and into the cornfield. Beside the road there were daisies suspended in the delicate grass. The sun bore down, and he pulled his visor lower.

  Annie straddled his lap and hung onto the big holes in the metal saddle. “What do you harrow the cornstalks in for, Daddy?” she wanted to know.

  “What else would you suggest we do with them? We harrow them in and get the dirt turned over, then plant it to rye, and then the rye grows up pretty green before the first snow and gets a good root system and grows some more in the spring. Then we turn it under again. With $2500 a year for fertilizer you’ve got to get all the return from a field that you can.” Tom bounced up and down on the seat and went on grumbling. Running a farm in this day and age was no business for an honest man. Annie stopped listening. She leaned to one side and looked back to watch the big rusty plates of the harrow turn over the ground. One set of disks was curved one way and threw the dirt out, the other set was curved the other way and threw it back in. It was wonderful how nice and smooth and flat it left the ground after churning it up. The dry weedy dusty clods came up dark brown and clean.

  Suddenly over the noise of the tractor there was a clatter and rattle as two of the disks jammed and scrabbled at something caught between them. Tom cursed and stopped the tractor. Annie hopped down and looked. She got excited
and clapped her hands. “It’s not a rock,” she said. “It’s a gun, a big gun.”

  “It’s just a stick,” said Tom, looking over his shoulder.

  “No, Daddy, really, it is, it’s a big old gun.” Annie tugged at it, and hurt herself. She hopped around and flapped her hand. Tom sighed and got down to go and look. By gad, Annie was right. It was a gun, an old flintlock, all dirt and rust. Tom stood up and scratched his head. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “Just imagine!” said Annie. “An old, old gun buried in our field like it says on the sign on the front of our house! And I saw it first! Can I have it? Please, Daddy?”

  Tom bent down again, and began to disentangle the gun from the harrow. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid not. Unless I’m very much mistaken this gun is going to make Mr. Flower very, very happy.”

  The gun did indeed make Mr. Flower very happy. It filled him with joy and delight. “Leave it lay!” he chirruped into the telephone. “We’ll send out the photographer and some lab men who’ll know how to clean it up. Holy horsecollar, now we’re getting somewhere!”

  “It’s not the musket?” said Homer Kelly.

  “You betcher sweet life it is.”

  The harrow had scratched it badly, the metal parts were rusted and the wood was mildewed, but Homer recognized at once the lovely long lines of the old fowling piece Ernest Goss had handed around among his guests on the night of April 18th. Bernard Shrubsole cut notches in a couple of cardboard boxes and he and Jimmy lifted the gun into the boxes with the hooks on a pair of coathangers. Then they took it into Boston to the Department of Public Safety, and handed it over. When Mr. Campbell had worked on it, they carried it down to Lieutenant Morrissey in Ballistics. He was delighted with it. He shone a light down the barrel. “Look at that. See all that black? Wasn’t cleaned after the last firing. Didn’t you say Ernest Goss cleaned it after it was fired the night before?”