Harvard Yard (Peter Fallon)

by William Martin

  Was he crazy? This boat was moving. If he hit it wrong, he’d kill himself, or the guy would kill him.

  No. With the boat still coming, he jumped the ten or fifteen feet straight into the water.

  Then he started waving. “Hey! Hey! Over here!”

  Perfect, the driver seemed to be saying. He aimed the boat at Fallon again and leaned on the throttle. But Fallon was trying to draw him off course, away from the center of the arch. Right . . . toward . . . the footing of one of the three arches.

  But at the last instant, the driver saw that if he hit Fallon, he’d hit the bridge. He threw over the helm, scraped the side, missed Peter, and went shooting off downriver.

  Gone.

  Now what? Peter swam out of the river to face the guy who owned the bike, shouting and waving his arms.

  Peter picked up the bike and ran it right at the guy. Then he ran toward the crosswalk on Memorial Drive and jumped into a cab that was stopped at the light.

  About two hours later, Peter Fallon limped into the first-floor lounge of the Harvard Club.

  He had showered and dressed in a gray suit complemented by a pair of black cross-trainers, which might be more comfortable on his blistered feet than just about anything else.

  “Ah, Peter.” Will Wedge stood and introduced the gentleman with whom he was sitting. “This is Bertram—”

  Peter put out his hand. “Hello, Bert.”

  “My noted colleague.” Lee extended his hand, though Peter wondered, was Lee surprised to see him?

  Was Will Wedge? No. It was plain that Wedge had been expecting to see him.

  “My noted competitor,” said Peter to Lee.

  Lee looked down at Peter’s footwear. “The latest in fashion?”

  Peter let Lee’s comment pass, because Lee always commented about dress, maybe because Lee was better at dressing than he was at doing business. He favored the English country look—heavy tweed, contrasting vest, white shirt with blue crosshatching, blue regimental stripe tie, interesting brown suede shoes. He could have been on his way to an afternoon shooting party. Except that there was an unhealthy puffiness about Bertram Lee that suggested he hadn’t taken a long walk in ten years.

  But more important than all that, what was he doing here?

  Peter ordered a glass of merlot to warm him up. He crossed his legs, which made the throbbing in his feet less intense, and he waited for one of the others to say something.

  Will Wedge went first. “Bertram came by because he has something that he thought I should see.”

  Will picked up a gold locket and showed it to Fallon.

  It was a beautiful piece of work. Finely engraved around the edges. On the back were the words “From D. to A., With All My Love, May God Keep You.” Inside was a hand-painted miniature of a woman almost ethereal in her beauty.

  Peter remembered one of the photographs of Lee and Keegan. In it, Lee was showing Keegan a locket just like this one.

  “We think it’s Dorothy Wedge Warren,” said Will. “One of the Radcliffe Eight.”

  “One of the women who helped to start female education at Harvard,” said Bertram Lee. “And one of Will’s ancestors.”

  Peter examined the locket. “What makes you think so?”

  Lee said, “I compared this with the portrait of Dorothy done in the 1830s, on display in the Portrait Collection show. This miniature could have been a study of it, or a knockoff. But the resemblance is amazing. Then I did a little research and, sure enough, Dorothy Wedge marries Amos Warren. ‘D. to A.’”

  “Good work, Bert,” said Peter. “But so what?”

  Will said, “Peter, this is something that should be in our family, or in the Harvard Portrait Collection.”

  Lee said, “I’m hoping that we can arrive at a sale before I put it into a catalog or offer it at auction.”

  Wedge looked at Fallon. “What do you think?”

  “I’m no art expert,” said Peter.

  “Come on, Peter,” said Lee sarcastically. “You’re an expert in everything. Remember when they brought you in to do an appraisal on a complete set of President Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf?”

  “Those were books,” said Peter. “Not paintings.”

  In 1909, the president of Harvard, Charles William Eliot, had lent his name to a series of books, called the Harvard Classics, which would constitute no more than five feet of shelf space and would impart, to those who read them, an education as good as any that could be had anywhere, even at Harvard. This, of course, was not true, but Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf had become a fixture in American homes.

  About 1985, Peter Fallon got a call from one of his clients, who asked if a set would be worth $20,000. Peter had said that they had published so many sets that they were virtually worthless, unless Shakespeare, Homer, Dickens, and all the other authors had signed them.

  Bertram Lee had been the bookseller. And he had never forgiven Fallon.

  “Are you saying you don’t know anything about this miniature?” asked Lee.

  “Not enough to comment.”

  Lee turned back to Will. “I’m prepared to do business at fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Well,” said Wedge, “if Peter doesn’t have a figure, and you don’t want me to have it appraised, I’m not sure we can do business at all.”

  Lee looked at Peter. “Tell him you think this is worth fifty grand.”

  Peter just smiled. “Where did you get this?”

  “From a motivated buyer, who came to me because he knew of my relationship with the Wedges.”

  “Assistant Professor Bob O’Hill?” asked Peter.

  The name caused Lee to sit back a moment, furrowing his brow.

  Wedge said, “What would he have to do with this?”

  That gave Lee the chance to regain himself. “Yeah. He’s not part of this.”

  “Just a wild guess,” said Peter.

  As if he were taking his toys and going home, Lee bundled up the locket with the marvelous miniature of Dorothy Wedge Warren and stood. “Mr. Wedge, this is solid gold, a superb likeness, an important artist. If you can’t buy it, I’ll find someone who will.” Then he stalked off.

  Will Wedge looked at Fallon and said, “Lee is bringing me material all the time. Sometimes I buy, sometimes I don’t.”

  “A wise attitude.”

  On the way into the dining room, Will said, “You were quoted in the Globe. A lot of people saw it. Maybe it will bring a few out of the woodwork.”

  “Either Love’s Labours Won is out there,” said Peter, limping along, “or Lydia and Reverend Abraham were just enjoying Love’s Labours Lost.”

  “What’s wrong with your feet?”

  “I was chasing someone who tried to kill me tonight.”

  Wedge turned white. “Kill you? Over what?”

  “Who knows?” Peter shrugged. “My quote in the Globe. My suspicions about Professor O’Hill and his friend Bertram Lee.”

  “Are they friends?”

  “I’ve seen them together. Maybe Lee wanted to have me killed before I told you not to buy that locket.”

  “I’m wondering where he got it.”

  “Did Dorothy have any descendants that you know of?”

  “She had a son named Douglass. There’s a picture of him in a scrapbook somewhere. He’s wearing a uniform.”

  His feet were killing him, so Peter took a cab back to his office. It was late, and no one was there. He was thinking that he would have been happy to see Bernice sitting at her desk, with her purse at her feet and her Beretta in her purse. Things were getting a little too dangerous.

  He called Detective Scavullo to tell him about the evening, though he decided to keep the business about the locket to himself.

  “So,” said Scavullo, “they spoil your good name, then they try to kill you. Maybe I’ll have a couple of state police come by and take a report from you.”

  “Not yet,” said Peter.

  “Not yet? Attempted murder, and you say ‘not yet�
�?”

  “It could have been an accident,” said Peter. “Maybe we should let it play out. Harvard might get more back if we do it this way.”

  “And what if the next attempt succeeds?”

  “We won’t know who it is until they try, will we?”

  After a long pause, Scavullo said, “We should stay in touch.”

  Then Peter called Evangeline and told her what had happened.

  “Like I said this morning, Peter. It can be fun. But it’s dangerous.”

  “Maybe you’d best stay in New York, if people are trying to kill me.”

  “No. I have work in Boston. I’m coming back to Boston. Nobody is going to keep me from it.”

  “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Now . . . you’ve been reading about Dorothy Wedge Warren. Do you know anything about a locket she might have given to her husband?”

  “Amos? Her husband’s name was Amos Warren. A strong abolitionist. He was killed running guns to free-state settlers in Kansas in 1856. It was like a little prologue to the Civil War. Her son Douglass served in the war, in the Twentieth Massachusetts . . .”

  After Peter hung up, he went out to the case where he kept his Civil War editions, including signed firsts of books as disparate in time as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Killer Angels. He also had several regimental histories, including that of the Twentieth, which came to be known as the Harvard Regiment.

  Chapter Nineteen

  1860-1864

  “A MOTHER does not show her face in Harvard Yard on the first Monday of the fall term,” said Theodore. “Don’t you know what the students call this day?”

  “Bloody Monday?” Dorothy Wedge Warren sat in a chair opposite her brother’s desk, her bonnet on her head, her hands folded on her lap.

  “Bloody Monday . . . bloody foolishness. And if you’re a freshman, the only thing worse than being hazed is to have your mother—”

  “Douglass knows how to defend himself,” said Dorothy. “His late father taught him well . . . perhaps—” She was interrupted by the sound of a drum.

  Theodore went to his window. Outside, a gang of sophomores were marching behind the drum, and behind them was a cart on which a tub of water sloshed and splashed, ammunition for the water syringes they carried. And another gang, similarly armed, was appearing from somewhere on the far side of Appleton Chapel.

  Theodore turned to his sister. “The annual football match between sophomores and freshmen was banned because it always ended in a fight. So now, the sophomores dare to haze the freshmen in broad daylight on the first Monday of fall.”

  “Boys will be boys,” said Dorothy.

  “Hazing should be prohibited. The oldest and richest college in America . . . the second-largest library, public or private . . . heritage that reaches to the beginnings . . .”

  “You sound like our brother.” Dorothy put on a deep voice, to impersonate George Jr. “‘If America must have an aristocracy, let it be borne in the bower of our own of good breeding, good learning, good faith, and hardheaded business sense.’”

  “You didn’t come here to berate George,” said Theodore. “And you say you didn’t come to protect Douglass from the sophomores. So why are you here?”

  “Mr. Garrison asked me to sound out the sentiments of Harvard College on the candidacy of Mr. Lincoln. We may, at last, elect a president who agrees with us.”

  “It just so happens that”—Theodore went to his desk, piled high with books for cataloging and newspaper clippings for the Triennial Report of Graduates—“a straw vote was taken and”—he shuffled papers—“fifty percent support Lincoln.”

  “Certain sons of the Broadcloth Mob seem to have developed consciences, then.”

  “Some have, but thirty percent of our students are sons of the South, and they have their influence, even over our nephew, Heywood, who is usually seen in company with a well-dressed bully from Virginia named Hannibal Wall.”

  Just then, a roar came echoing off the old brick buildings, reverberated off the new-set granite blocks of Boylston Hall and the sandstone of Appleton Chapel, and rattled the windows of the library. It had begun.

  “You and you,” shouted the big one with the trimmed beard and stovepipe hat.

  Douglass Wedge Warren pointed to himself. “Me?”

  “Yes. You. Who do you think I’m pointing to?” His name was Hannibal Wall, and even when he wasn’t wearing the stovepipe, they called him Tall Wall. He pointed again at Douglass, then at a skinny minister’s son named Smithson. “You, too.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Douglass, who was near the height of Tall Wall, but skinnier, clean-shaved, with an adolescent face, all nose and jawbone.

  “We want you to box!” Someone shoved Douglass into the middle of a circle that was forming, sophomores all, bent on punishing freshmen as they had been punished a year before.

  “Box?” Douglass turned to the one who’d pushed him. “Why?”

  “Because we say so,” shouted a familiar voice, and Douglass saw his cousin, Heywood Wedge, shoving little Smithson into the middle of the circle.

  All around the Yard, similar circles were forming, gangs of sophomores clustering around smaller gangs of freshmen, giving out beatings and soakings, knocking off hats, and cutting out those who looked compliant, because they would make the best fags.

  Douglass had already resolved that he would be no one’s fag, no one’s errand boy, not even his cousin’s.

  “Come on, Douglass,” shouted Heywood, “take it like a man. All in good fun.”

  “Yes, Douglass,” said Hannibal Wall. “All in good fun!” And Wall squirted him square in the face with a water syringe while all the sophomores roared and skinny little Smithson broke and ran.

  Douglass remembered what his father had always told him: “In a fight, go for the biggest bully.” So he smacked the water syringe aside and knocked Hannibal Wall’s hat off his head, right into the bucket of water.

  “Why, you little turd!” cried Wall, and he flew at Douglass, who sidestepped him and tripped him, delivering a sharp punch to the kidneys as he went by.

  The gasp of the sophomores sounded like a dozen boys gagging on their own vomit. Wall rolled over, looked at his muddy sleeves and trousers, saw his hat floating in the tub of water, and climbed to his feet, but he must have thought better of fighting, because Douglass Wedge Warren stood with fists as ready as if he were posing for the cover of Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

  Wall looked at his mates. “Time to show these freshmen the river!”

  There was another roar, and students began shouting, “To the river! The river!”

  Before he knew what was happening, Douglass was lassoed from behind so that his arms were pinned, then he was blindfolded, and Hannibal Wall grabbed the rope. “Come on, fag!” And he pulled Douglass after him.

  “I’m nobody’s fag!” Douglass began to kick and curse.

  Then he heard an angry voice hiss in his ear, his cousin Heywood’s: “Good fun, Douglass. Take it as good fun, or you’ll never be well thought of.”

  Theodore Wedge was peering out the library window. “Oh, good Lord.”

  Dorothy was still sitting by Theodore’s desk, her hands in her lap, her bonnet on her head. Without turning around, she said, “What?”

  “They’re heading for the river.”

  “Isn’t that where they always head?”

  “Yes, but they’re dragging your son at the front of the mob.”

  Dorothy jumped up so quickly that the hoop on her skirt knocked the chair onto the floor with a resounding crack.

  The sophomores, maybe a hundred, had managed to corral about half the freshmen, many of them blindfolded, most of them intimidated into accepting a rite of passage that they would not forget when it came time for them to torment the next class.

  But Douglass Wedge Warren always tried to live a rule his late father had left him: “Brook no insult, follow no crowd, and never allow yourself to be laid hands on.” So, when
Douglass could smell the river, could see through the blindfold the little chips of sunlight on the brown water, could feel the boat dock beneath his feet, and hear the splashing and shouting as other gangs of sophomores flung freshmen into the water, he resolved to resist.

  But there were four who grabbed him, hands and feet, and they swung him over the water—one—then back, then out—two—and back—

  Then, “Do we let this one go?”

  “Some we scare. Him we punish.”

  Douglass kicked angrily, but on three he went flying through the air like a penny whirligig. He heard screaming, laughter, then a splash—himself hitting the water.

  In an instant, he was struggling to his feet, the blindfold half off but the rope still tight around his arms. And as soon as he stood, Hannibal Wall placed a boot in his chest and sent him splashing backward.

  “Dunk my hat, will you, Douglass?”

  Douglass came up, coughing and sputtering, and Wall’s foot struck him in the chest again.

  “That’ll teach you to strike a sophomore, Douglass!”

  And all the sophomores were roaring now, and shouting, “Doug-lass! Douglass! Ass! Ass! Ass!”

  “Stop this!” Onto the dock strode a tall man with muttonchop whiskers and a birthmark on the right side of his face: Assistant Professor Charles William Eliot, ’53. “Stop this at once.”

  “All in good fun, sir. All in good fun,” said Heywood Wedge.

  Eliot looked at the student in the water. “Who bound him?”

  “Sir,” said Heywood, “it’s all part of—”

  Douglass was coughing and sputtering his way out of the water again.

  Eliot ignored Heywood and glared at Hanniball Wall. “Since you’re so willing to wet others, you won’t mind getting wet yourself.”

  “But, sir . . . it’s all in—”

  “Yes,” said Eliot, his voice dripping in sarcasm. “All in good fun. Boys will be boys. But boys will not bind other boys, hand and foot, and throw them into my river.”