The Transcendental Murder hk-1

by Jane Langton

  "Mrs. Annie Bewley, Miss Alice Herpitude and Miss Maria Fuller Alcott Emerson, of Springfield, Massachusetts. Each is to receive one thousand dollars."

  "What?" said Homer Kelly. "Miss Maria who?"

  Mr. Twells giggled nervously. "We don't know who this Maria Fuller Alcott Emerson is, and so far we haven't found anyone in Springfield who knows her. The bequest is not large, of course, but we will continue to look for her. No one in the Emerson family knows of her. Perhaps the similarity of her name is purely coincidental..."

  Homer looked up at the ceiling and twiddled his thumbs. Mr. Twells put down his document and cleared his throat. "There is one thing more which I feel it my duty to say at this time. It concerns Mr. Charles Goss. About a week before his father's unfortunate demise, Charles came to me at my office. He needed money. He asked me to write a letter to a prospective lender stating what his expectations were."

  Homer leaned forward and stared at Mr. Twells. "His 'expectations'? You mean like some young rake in a nineteenth century English novel? Fattening the usurers? Burdening the ancient family manor with debt?"

  "Well, of course it would have been most improper to do so. I refused. I would not have done it without his father's permission, in any case. Charles insisted that he merely wished to be able to leave home and set up independently, and he promised that he would pay back the money as soon as he was employed. But there was no way I could help him. I offered him a small personal loan, but he turned that down."

  The D.A. shuffled his papers around happily. "Say, that's frst rate. Strawberry jam." He found the sheet headed CHARLES GOSS, and added a triumphant, "Needed CASH," under motive. "Thank you very much, Mr. Twells."

  Miss O'Toole leaned forward and tapped the end of her pen on a pair of photographs. "Oh, yes, the sisters," said the D.A. He picked up the photographs and looked at them. "Which one is the smasheroo?"

  Jimmy Flower smiled. "That's Rowena. She came right home from the parade, she said, and went to bed with cotton in ber ears. Didn't wake up until around quarter past one. As soon as she took the cotton out of her ears she heard her mother screaming, went downstairs, found her all alone having a conniption fit. Rowena said she'd had a late night the night before, and that's why she slept so soundly."

  Mary drew a sharp-pointed tail on her devil and started surrounding him with the flames of hell. The District Attorney couldn't take his bulging eyes off the picture of Rowena. It was a studio portrait. Rowena had been wearing a low-cut gown apparently, and the photographer had snipped off the gown, so that it looked as if ... boy. "Anybody see her coming home?"

  "We can practically track her from point to point. When Rowena Goss goes by, people take notice. She must have driven up to the house at about 11:05. She was last seen on Barrett's Mill Road driving toward her house with the top down on her white convertible by a college boy on a bicycle and the fathers of three families driving home from the parade. The families didn't remember her, but the fathers all did."

  Homer Kelly pointed out that Rowena had no particular motive for doing away with her father that anybody could think of, beyond of course his general hatefulness, and the company passed on to the contemplation of Rowena's sister Edith. The contemplation was less pleasant. Edith's introverted blank eyes looked furtively out at them from under her beetling brows. Her hair was gathered back unbecomingly at the base of her neck, and a piece of straggling ribbon showed.

  "Edith drove her mother home from the festivities, and then she says she went for a long nature-walk around Annursnac Hill. She came in around quarter of two just as we were driving out with Charley. Had her hands full of pussy willows."

  "Any motive, in her case?"

  "Well, old Goss picked on her, I understand, more or less the way he did on Charley. Less savagely, maybe."

  The D.A. scribbled some more on his sheets of paper. "Aaalll right," he said, picking up a clean one. "Now, the Alcott Club. You say the members of this club had good reason to have it in for Ernest Goss because he was going to publish some scandalous letters from Louisa May Alcott and people like that. Right? And the letters haven't turned up? Say, let me stick that on my other sheet." He scrabbled among his papers, found the one marked queries, and added, "Letters—where are they at?"

  Homer got up and started walking around, one hand roughing up his cowlick. "Do you remember the argument Mary overheard, when Ernest Goss said something about a decision he had made? How he wasn't ashamed of it, he was damned happy about it, or some such phrase? Now suppose his 'decision' was the decision to publish the letters? The visitor might have been anyone in the Alcott Association. It might even have been a woman, threatening him with some sort of weapon. Suppose it was Teddy Staples. He failed, obviously, to persuade Ernie to abandon his scheme, so later on he boldly crashed the dinner party. He was getting desperate. Felt he had to hush those letters up, so people wouldn't laugh at his Henry Thoreau. But he failed again, and Ernie threw him out. So next day Teddy killed him. Now if this was the case, then the rider on Charley's horse might have been Teddy. Or more likely, Teddy came by the way of the river and the rider was more or less an innocent bystander. Well, this would mean that there were three of them there at the bridge—Teddy, Ernie Goss, and maybe Charley Goss. Charley could have brought the musket, Teddy could have fired it. Then Charley galloped away, without the musket, and was seen by the Boy Scout. In the meantime Teddy ran to the bridge and hid under it while Arthur Furry gamboled over the bridge and discovered the body. Then Arthur rushed off to alert the countryside and Teddy simply paddled off, with the musket lying in the bottom of his canoe, the letters in his pocket. By the time the mob arrived on the scene he could have been safely around the bend. What's the matter with that?"

  Mary found herself just as unhappy with Teddy for a murderer as she had been with Charley. She couldn't picture him lurking under the bridge like the wicked troll while Arthur Furry frisked over it like the Little Billy Goat Gruff. She shook her head, scowling at her notes.

  The D.A. was speaking. "You found no trace of the gun, though, at Teddy's house? Nor any letters?"

  Jimmy Flower groaned. "We even got the skindiver into the act again, in the river there at Fairhaven Bay by Teddy's house. No such luck. And that confounded hat wasn't there either."

  The District Attorney yawned. His head was going around and around. What he wanted more than anything else was a can of cold beer. He usually had one about this time of day and then took a little shut-eye while Miss O'Toole held the fort. Wistfully he pictured the shining can, with the moisture condensed on the outside, and the punkshing sound of the can opener and the foam bubbling up through the opening. But it was out of the question. It would put him right to sleep. He shook his head and said drowsily, "Where's the ballistics man? He shown up yet?"

  He had. His name was Lieutenant Morrissey, from the Department of Public Safety. He was ushered in by Miss O'Toole, with a long skinny case in his hand. Inside it was a musket very much like the one that had presumably killed Ernest Goss. In a small box in his pocket was the musket ball that had been found in Goss's body. Lieutenant Morrissey handed the musket around, pointing out its parts, explaining how the flintlock mechanism worked. He obviously enjoyed handling the old piece. He held the musket so that the District Attorney could peer sleepily into the muzzle.

  "See?" said Lieutenant Morrissey. "No rifling. Smooth bore. Nothing to leave a trace on a projectile. So even if we had the musket we couldn't be dead certain that the ball was fired from it. It takes rifling to leave identifying marks. The round musket ball doesn't fit closely either, like a modern cylindrical projectile. This ball is about 60 caliber, and this particular musket I have here is 70 caliber. They always had room to spare. What you did was, you wrapped the ball in a patch, to make it airtight in the bore."

  The D.A. made a heroic struggle to sound intelligent. "What happens to the patch? I mean when you fire it?"

  "It flies out along with the ball. Here it is." Lieutenant Morrissey showed
them a blackened piece of thin leather, cut roughly round. "This is apparently one of a bunch of them that Ernest Goss had in the drawer along with the black powder Incidentally, all of the balls that Philip Goss made up the night of the 18th of April are missing."

  "Humph," said the D.A., leaning his heavy head on his hand.

  "What about the other guns in the collection?" said Homer. "Could this ball have been fired from one of them?"

  "We looked into that, and of course that's possible. One or two of them had a big enough bore. The pocket pistol did, and the duelling pistol. But they were all clean as a whistle inside, and not one of them had lost its flint. And then what would the fowling piece be missing for?"

  "And don't forget," said the D.A., making a supreme effort, "that the dying man said 'musket.' " That clinched it, as far as he was concerned.

  Lieutenant Morrissey was all finished, so he packed up his gun and left, opening the door wide for someone else to come in.

  "Hello, there, Mr. Campbell," said the D.A. "Come right in and make yourself at home. We're all ready for you. This is Lieutenant Morrissey's colleague from the Department of Public Safety, Mr. Robert Campbell. Anything he doesn't know about fingerprints you could write on your thumbnail. Ha ha, say, Mr. Campbell, how about that? Anything you don't know about fingerprints you could write on your thumbnail. Ha ha. Say, that was pretty sharp." (The District Attorney felt himself waking up again.)

  "All right, Mr. Campbell," said Homer, "I know you haven't got any nice fat prints on a murder weapon, because we haven't got any murder weapon. Have you got anything else of interest? What about the other guns?"

  "You mean in the collection? Well, they were all pretty well smudged from being handed around the night before. Except for a small one, like a pistol, with a flintlock. That one was nice and clean."

  "That would be the other duelling pistol," said Homer. "We only passed one of them around."

  "I suppose so," said Mr. Campbell. "I don't know one gun from another. One thing that most people don't realize is that you don't get good prints on a gun anyway. The rounded surfaces don't take a full print. But we got fragmentary prints on one gun or another from everybody who was there that night, including Staples. And we took prints off everything else we could think of, too, of course. The horse's gear didn't show anything. We took prints all around Charley's room, where Charley said he left his fancy-dress outfit after the parade. Turned up prints of Charley, his mother, his father, the maid, his brother Philip. Now, interestingly enough, there were no prints at all on the front of that dresser where the gun collection was kept nor on the front of the musket cupboard. They had been wiped clean, although the servant claims she hadn't done so in some time. (Say, do you think you can trust what that old woman says? She struck me as kind of...) Well, anyway, if someone had wiped them clean in order to erase his own fingerprints, he forgot something. There is a row of thumbprints as neat as you please up and down the inside of the musket cupboard door. You know how you hold onto a door that opens out to the left with your left hand while you're reaching in with your right? This door has a knob, but the door is hung in such a way that it swings around and bangs against the wall if you don't catch it, and when you catch it you leave a nice set of four fingerprints on the outside and a thumbprint on the inside."

  "So whose thumbprint have you got?"

  Mr. Campbell consulted his notes. "Oh, everybody's, just about. Here's the list. Philip Goss, Charles Goss, Ernest Goss. Edith, Rowena and Elizabeth Goss, Thomas Hand, Mary Morgan, Teddy Staples, Howard Swan, and a few strangers."

  That was the end of Mr. Campbell's information. He sat down. The District Attorney stood up and attempted to gather his wits. He then proceeded to make a very creditable summation, greatly assisted by the notes placed in front of him in large print by Miss O'Toole.

  "It is my opinion," he said, "that the Commonwealth can make no arrest at this time. The case against Mr. Charles Goss is entirely too surrounded by doubt. Speaking personally let me say that I do not wish to add to my record in office a suit for false arrest. Let me point out that Charles Goss is not the only one who lacks a substantial alibi. Also there is the fact that the horseman was seen only from the rear. And it's difficult to see why Charley would commit a murder in such a highly public place dressed in an outfit uniquely associated with himself..." (The District Attorney stumbled over this phrase, and Miss O'Toole made a humble mental note, chastising herself for overreaching the District Attorney's vocabulary.) "May I suggest further investigation of that Teddy fellow, the nutty one that thinks he's Thoreau? He sounds like a good bet to me. And I assume that the search for the missing weapon will continue. And now, gentlemen," said the District Attorney, looking at his watch, which had stopped two days ago, "you must excuse me. I'm expecting a call from—ah—His Excellency, the Governor." With remarkable speed and efficiency the D.A. shooed everyone out of his office, while Miss O'Toole swiftly gathered up his disordered papers and took them out to her desk for her own superb recasting and thorough-going reorganization.

  As the general exit began, the newsmen in the outer office came suddenly alive. The District Attorney showed his thin weary face only long enough to say, "No arrest at this time, fellas, that's all I can say now. Nope, no arrest. Excuse me, my phone is ringing. That must be my call from the Governor." The D.A. shrank back into his office, slammed the door of his sanctuary and collapsed with a contented sigh on his sway-backed cot.

  Homer walked to his car with Mary Morgan. The Middlesex County Superior Court was surrounded by some of the scruffiest streets in Cambridge. On the clapboards of the dingy houses there were peeling election posters. It was too early in the year for the new ones to be in blossom, but before long the D.A. himself would be wooing the public once more—no easy task—his press was very bad. Homer looked back at the gold letters on the courthouse that said "District Attorney," and commented aloud on the shrewdness of Miss O'Toole. "What a jewel. It's a shame she's such a dog."

  Mary made a face. "On behalf of all homely girls, I resent the word dog. It's not a nice word at all."

  Homer looked at her curiously, and Mary bit her lip and (oh, damn) blushed. "Come to think of it," he said, "you sure do have an awful lot of mouth. It sort of goes on and on, like the big bad wolf's."

  Mary opened her mouth up wide and gave a contralto roar. Homer clung to a telephone pole to keep from falling in. "Why can't you be sweet and nice like other girls?"

  "Because I'm natural-born nasty and mean, that's why."

  *31*

  I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on their trail ... 1 have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. —Henry Thoreau

  Then Teddy Staples disappeared. When the District Attorney was informed of this fact he thanked God that they had not been in a hurry to arrest Charley Goss. Teddy had last been seen by Tom Hand. It had been the last day of April, and raining. Tom was driving along Barrett's Mill Road in his pickup when he came upon Teddy at the foot of Annursnac Hill, leaning against the tattered bonnet of his old Chevrolet, coughing his heart out. "I stopped to see if he was all right," Tom said to Homer Kelly. "He looked terrible. His face was grey, and he could hardly stop coughing long enough to talk. But he insisted he didn't need any help, and he turned right away from me, and started walking up the dirt road there toward the hill. His knees seemed weak, and he had trouble walking. I got out of my car and started after him. But then he flung around at me, and told me in no uncertain terms to leave him alone. So I did. I went on home. After a while I came back, oh say an hour later. My conscience was hurting me for having left him when he was so obviously sick. But his car was gone by that time."

  A couple of times during the day Tom had tried to call Teddy's house. No answer. When there was still no answer by eleven o'clock at night, Tom, a grim picture in his min
d, drove across town and down the long dark lane to Teddy's house. It was pitch-dark, and groping his way up the path to the steps, he collided with Teddy's birdbath. Wincing, he shouted for Teddy, then felt his way up the steps, tried the door, went in and turned on the lights. Teddy wasn't there at all. His bed was rumpled, but Teddy wasn't in it. His trusty stapler lay on the chipped porcelain table in the grubby kitchen, his wooden flute beside it. When Tom poked around in the shed with his flashlight, he discovered only Teddy's canoe and his rowboat. His car was gone.

  When Teddy still didn't answer the phone next day, Mary had called up Jimmy Flower and told him about it. Jimmy said, "Holy Horsecollar," and got on to it right away. He tracked down Teddy's only known relative, a sister living in Braintree. She hadn't heard from Teddy since Christmas, nor did she seem to care to. No, she hadn't the slightest idea where the fool had gone.

  "He always was a bit cracked," she said.

  Homer got out of his car with Mary and Jimmy Flower, and together they looked up at the bleak little house Teddy had called home. "Suppose," said Mary, "that Teddy had something to hide, like the letters." She stared at the birdbath. "Could he have stuck them in that?"

  Jimmy and Homer looked at the birdbath. Then their two heads turned slowly as on a swivel and stared at the cyclopean breastworks Teddy had thrown up around his front porch. "Oh—my—God," said Jimmy Flower.

  So Jimmy had his work cut out for him. Not only did he have to set in motion a statewide and at last a nationwide search for a slightly potty birdwatcher and possible murderer named Theodore Staples, but he also had to hire a crew of jackhammer operators to demolish the fruits of all of Teddy's labors with mortar trowel and cobblestones. For a week Teddy's quiet glade was hideous with noise.

  But nothing turned up. Jimmy Flower looked at the shambles and smote his brow. "What do you bet Teddy comes driving up tomorrow, innocent as a newborn babe? Who's going to put all them rocks back?"