Dead as a Dodo

by Jane Langton

  But Johnny was not there. Had he slammed out of the house when she said she’d be working late? It didn’t matter. It was a relief to be alone. Helen filled the electric kettle for a cup of tea, then dumped the water out and poured herself a whiskey.

  Why didn’t she call the police? Well, why didn’t she? It was a question that tormented Helen Farfrae for the rest of her life.

  CHAPTER 9

  Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

  Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

  When the front door of the museum closed behind Helen Farfrae, the museum was still. For the rest of the night the solemn stone figures around the courtyard uttered no word. Aristotle did not turn on his pedestal and say a comforting word to Francis Bacon, Though natural substance is corruptible, species is eternal. Charles Darwin did not shake his head in sorrow at the tragedy taking place on the glass roof over his head, nor did the thousands of insects impaled on pins in the new Entomology Office buzz and flutter their wings in horror. In the display case near the front door the dodo might have cried, Don’t blame me, I’m extinct, but it didn’t. An occasional motorbike on Parks Road made a momentary whine, but otherwise there was no sound.

  When the sun rose next morning, the museum was still silent, but across the street at Keble College there was stir and movement. Milk arrived by van. “Good morning, Arthur,” said the head cook, accepting it, chunking the bottles into the refrigerator and pulling out six cartons of fresh eggs. In the cavernous dining hall, college servants laid the tables with cutlery and dishes and baskets of muffins. Along the nineteenth-century corridors and up and down the concrete staircases in Hayward, undergraduates dragged themselves out of bed.

  Keble was not one of the Oxford colleges delicately spired with golden stone, nor was it rich in story. Erasmus had not visited Keble, Christopher Wren had not matriculated there, nor John Donne nor Lawrence of Arabia nor Evelyn Waugh. True, there had been a Pakistani cricketer named Imran Khan, but he was the only famous graduate so far.

  The college had been founded in the eighteen-sixties for gentlemen wishing to live economically, young men who would be candidates for holy orders. Its founders had been Puseyites, conservative and high church in religion. Keble was That new place near the Parks what’s going to stop us all from saying “Damn!” Over the years its religious dogmatism had faded, but not the color of its brick, nor the giddy stripes and checkerboards of its architectural surfaces.

  In the second-floor bedroom in the Besse Building, at the northwest corner of Liddon Quad, Homer sat up in bed with a book open on his knees. “Hey, Mary,” he said, poking his sleeping wife, “listen to this.”

  “Oh, Homer, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Look, my dear, we’ve got to start adjusting to British time sooner or later. And it’s so clever, you see. He starts with a chapter on domestic selection, how farmers for thousands of years have selected the best cattle and sheep and horses, so why doesn’t nature do the same thing?”

  “What do you mean, he?” groaned Mary. “Who’s he?”

  “Darwin, of course. It’s The Origin of Species. He asks this brilliant question, why doesn’t nature do the same thing farmers do?”

  There was a pause, while Mary thought it over. “Because nature doesn’t wear overalls, that’s why.”

  “What?”

  “Nature isn’t a farmer.”

  There was another pause while Homer digested the joke. “Oh, right, of course not, but the same thing happens by natural selection. The weakest are killed off, and don’t live to reproduce, so only the strong survive. You see? It’s natural selection instead of domestic selection, perfecting the animal in its own way.”

  Mary’s voice was muffled under the sheet. “Horrible, it’s absolutely horrible.”

  “Well, of course it’s horrible. Darwin said so too. What a book a devil’s chaplain could write about the cruelty of nature. That’s what he said.”

  “Well, how could he stand it? I can’t stand it.”

  “Because it’s the truth. You’ve got to stand it. We’ve all got to stand it.”

  Mary threw back the covers and stretched her long legs over the side of the bed. “I could stand any amount of truth if I had a little breakfast.”

  By this, their fourth day in Oxford, they were accustomed to dining in the Common Room set aside for Keble’s talkative dons. This morning Homer greedily loaded his plate with bacon, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, blueberry muffins, slabs of butter and globs of marmalade.

  Mary looked at his plate and raised her eyebrows. “My God, Homer.”

  He defended himself, leaning across the table to his friend Joe Jamison, who was joining them for breakfast in order to introduce them to the other Keble dons. “After all,” said Homer, flourishing his fork, “gor-blimey, here we are. When will we ever get a chance like this again?” He stopped, and clapped his hand to his mouth. “Oh, excuse me, you people do say gor-blimey, don’t you?

  “Homer!” spluttered Mary, convulsed.

  Joe laughed. “I haven’t actually heard anyone say it, except perhaps in films.”

  Homer shook his head in embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to help myself. Every now and then some weird impossible British expression comes out of my mouth. Forgive me.”

  Joe forgave him, grinning. Then he interrupted a couple of mathematicians deep in a discussion of nonlinear systems to ask for the basket of muffins, and explained to Homer the arrangements for his lecture hall. “Normally it would be the Examination Schools in the High, but I’ve bent the rules a bit. I thought you’d rather be nearby in the museum. Friendlier, don’t you see.”

  “Well, you’re the boss there, aren’t you?” said Homer. “You can do what you want.”

  After breakfast Mary went back to Liddon Quad to study the map of Oxford. She was plotting a campaign of exploration. What did it matter, after all, if Joe Jamison had not invited both of them to lecture on American Literature under the sponsorship of Keble College, the way they taught it together at home? It didn’t mean her time in England would be wasted. There were other things to do. She would see everything worth seeing—she would squeeze Oxford dry of aesthetic wonders. After that she’d explore the countryside and perhaps go to London, and then to the Lake District and all the cathedral cities. There were maps to be studied and books to be read.

  Homer wanted to see the lecture hall in the museum, the auditorium where he would be holding forth. He walked across the quad to the gatehouse, said good morning to the porter, and emerged on Parks Road.

  There across the street rose the Oxford University Museum, flat-faced and sharp-edged in the morning light. It had a distinct character, like a person. All the Ruskinian didacticism that had gone into its design was visible at once, the absurdity of the notion that the only proper architecture for a science museum was medieval, the irrepressible playfulness of the sculptors, the founders’ conceit that art and science should be united in order to inspire the young, because God himself was the master Artificer.

  Somewhere a bell chimed eight o’clock. At once someone popped out of the front entrance like a cuckoo from a clock. It was Professor William Dubchick. Seeing Homer, he lifted one arm and called to him, “Oh, Dr. Kelly!”

  He was obviously in distress. Homer ran across the lawn. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. But something terrible has happened.” William grasped Homer’s arm. “Is it true, Dr. Kelly, that you were once some sort of detective in Massachusetts? It is? Well, then, good! Perhaps you can help us in our trouble now.” He led the way indoors, then stopped in the corridor to explain. Homer stopped too, politely attentive, although he could see nothing of Professor Dubchick’s face against the glare of the courtyard behind him, where the iguanodon stood bathed in morning light. “It’s the night watchman, you see,” said Dubchick. “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  “Good lord,” said Homer. “What h
appened?”.

  “One moment.” Professor Dubchick turned away as the porter burst out of his office.

  “Sir, I reached the detective inspector. He’s on his way.”

  “Thank you, Edward. When he arrives, would you bring him right up?”

  Edward Pound was a solid man, big through the shoulders. He looked capable of handling any problem that might come up in the museum, from the whereabouts of the ladies’ room to a matter of sudden death. “Yes, of course, sir.”

  “This way, Dr. Kelly. We’re going all the way to the roof.”

  Homer followed obediently as Professor Dubchick led the way up the broad south staircase. On the gallery floor he strode along the west side, then stopped before a narrow door in the wall. It looked to Homer like the entrance to a dungeon keep. There would be a spiral staircase of stone, going down, down, down.

  The staircase was there, but it went both down and up. At the top there would be a castellated rampart and armored defenders with cauldrons of boiling oil. William Dubchick led the way, running lightly, his feet slip-slapping on the triangular steps. Homer had to stop halfway to catch his breath.

  At once his guide turned back. “Are you all right, Dr. Kelly?”

  “Oh, certainly,” choked Homer, wishing he too had ascended mountains in the Andes and climbed trees with the woolly monkeys of Ecuador. Heroically he flung himself at the stairs again, and reached the top in a single burst of effort.

  They were high in the tower above the museum entrance. The room was a tall chamber crowded with boxes and files. Homer wanted to look at the view from the huge west windows, but Professor Dubchick was stooping through a small door and reaching one foot into the open air. “It’s all downhill from here,” he called to Homer, dropping out of sight.

  Homer stuck his head out and watched Dubchick descend the steep metal ladder. Cautiously he followed, holding fast to the railings on either side. Before him as he descended rose the central peak of the roof, its glass panes overlapping like slates.

  “Oof,” said Homer with relief, stepping down from the bottom rung onto the wooden boardwalk.

  “This way,” said Dubchick, swinging around, hurrying to the right, then turning sharply left. At once he stopped, and Homer almost collided with his back.

  At Dubchick’s feet lay the body of a young man in uniform.

  “Excuse me,” murmured Homer. Professor Dubchick moved out of the way, and Homer knelt down to feel under the boy’s sleeve for a pulse. He felt nothing. The brown eyes were open. The plump childish face was turned up to the sky. It was heavily scratched and lay at an odd angle to the shoulders. Homer said softly, “Broken neck.”

  William stooped and turned over one of the dead hands to see the scratched and bloody palm, then laid it down again. He looked up at the sheet of glass soaring above them to a distant horizontal ridge. “He must have fallen from up there.”

  “It looks like it,” said Homer. “But what the hell was he doing? How could he climb so high? It’s too steep, and there aren’t any handholds. It’s impossible.”

  There was a noisy clumping of heavy feet and a metallic shivering of the ladder. Edward Pound stepped off the bottom rung, with three men in his wake. In a moment the four of them were crowded together beside Homer and William Dubchick. The three police officers introduced themselves and shook hands over the body of the night watchman.

  The good-looking dark-skinned man in the business suit was Detective Inspector Gopal Mukerji from St. Aldate’s police station. The two younger men were Detective Constable Ives and Police Constable Gilly. The three officers leaned down to examine the body, while William explained how he had found it.

  “I came in early and noticed that the door to the tower was open. I was concerned, because a lot of useful stuff is stored in the room above. So I went upstairs, and at once I felt a draft from the open door to the roof, so I came down the ladder to investigate.” William stopped talking and looked down pityingly at the young man lying at their feet.

  “What about you, sir?” said Mukerji, looking politely at Homer. Mukerji had a good-humored manner. His face was handsome with strongly marked features, a bold nose, a strong chin, arched brows and dark flashing eyes.

  Homer hastened to explain that he was a visiting fellow at Keble College. Clumsily he reported his connection with the district attorney of Middlesex County in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but, humbly truthful for once, he admitted its antiquity. Then he stood back and watched the action of the British constabulary in the handling of a random unnatural death.

  On the crowded boardwalk he had to edge back still farther as the detective inspector and the two constables were joined by a pathologist from the John Radcliffe Hospital at Headington. Now there were four officials huddled over the body.

  Professor Dubchick looked at Homer and nodded, and touched Edward Pound’s sleeve. The three of them made their way back to the ladder. Homer let the other two start up ahead of him, then put his hands on the shivering iron railings. With his foot on the bottom rung, he reached down and picked up a shiny object lying between two of the wooden slats of the boardwalk.

  It was a small elliptical piece of stainless steel shaped into a pair of rings. He put it in his pocket.

  “What are these bloody boxes doing here?” said plasterer Daniel Tuck, speaking to himself indignantly. He had come to work early, meaning to busy himself with the vaulted ceiling of the south gallery, and here were these cardboard boxes in the middle of the floor. Some high and mighty scientist must have chucked them out, expecting somebody in the lower orders of the human race to carry them to the rubbish bin.

  Not Daniel Tuck. Tuck was a professional, a bricklayer and plasterer. He was a craftsman, not a dustman. He stared at the boxes angrily. They were in his way. Impulsively he picked them up and tossed them over the railing.

  One fell with a soft thunk on the top of a display case below. The other landed upside down on the stone head of James Watt, hiding the anxious face of the father of the steam engine.

  When Homer Kelly, Edward Pound and William Dubchick came hurrying along the gallery corridor, dodging around tarpaulins and scaffolding, Tuck was already at work on a long crack running up the wall above the door of the Zoology Office. He picked up his chisel as Edward Pound and Homer Kelly disappeared down the stairs. Professor Dubchick nodded at him solemnly and walked into the office. Tuck thrust his gouging tool deep into the crack.

  CHAPTER 10

  “In that case,” said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, “I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies—”

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  “Good lord, sir, it’s gone.”

  “Gone?” said Homer. “What’s gone?”

  “The painting, the picture of the dodo.” Edward Pound had stopped in his tracks at the bottom of the stairs. He was staring up at the blank wall beside the bony remains of the dodo.

  Homer looked too. The wall was certainly empty. Only the label remained, A Portrait of the Dodo by John Savery, 1651. “Perhaps it was removed for cleaning?”

  “Oh, no, Dr. Kelly. I would have known about it, and surely it would not have been removed for cleaning in the middle of the night.” Pound hurried away to call Director Jamison with his two pieces of terrible news.

  Homer gaped at the empty wall, told himself sorrowfully that his dream about the dodo was coming true, and headed for the door. At once it burst open in front of him, and an anxious-looking woman hurried in, tearing off her coat.

  Homer didn’t know her name, but he remembered standing next to her at the reception during Professor Dubchick’s talk. There had been no chance to speak to her, because someone, probably her husband, had removed her. Removed was the right word. She had left under protest.

  Helen breezed past him, then stopped and turned around. “Aren’t you Dr. Kelly? I’m Dr. Farfrae. Helen Farfrae. I work with Professor Dubchick.”

  “Oh, good
,” said Homer. “Then perhaps you know what’s happened to the picture of the dodo that was hanging here yesterday.”

  He led her to the empty wall, and Helen stared up at it. “Why, no. Nobody said anything to me about having it cleaned. It was here yesterday, wasn’t it? Yes, it was, I remember seeing it yesterday afternoon. And last night—” Her expression changed. She looked at Homer fiercely. “Is it true, Dr. Kelly, that you’ve taken part in criminal investigations from time to time? Professor Dubchick thinks so. I wonder if you could—” Then Helen stopped and looked beyond Homer at the south stairway. Homer turned and looked too.

  A mournful procession was descending. It was the official team from the police station on St. Aldate’s, along with the pathologist from the Radcliffe Infirmary. The two constables carried a stretcher, holding it steady, setting their feet down carefully as they moved from step to step. A plastic sheet was draped over it, but the deadness of the human object under the sheet was plain.

  Helen sucked in her breath. As the stretcher approached, she whispered to Homer, “Who is it?”

  “The night watchman,” said Homer gravely. “He fell from the glass roof. At least that’s what we think. He was lying at the bottom with a broken neck. Professor Dubchick found him.”

  “Oh, poor Bobby.” Helen sobbed once, then burst out at Homer, “Please, please, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  Homer was wary. He was enough of an old-fashioned male to think of women as the hysterical sex, while men were of course always perfectly reasonable. Homer cherished this opinion in spite of his own tendency to outbursts of emotion, forgetting also that his wife was far more sensible than he was.

  Helen Farfrae’s eyes were wet, but she smiled at him and pointed to the other side of the courtyard. “I like to sit over there sometimes. I pull up a chair between Darwin and Newton, and imagine them conversing about their health.”