The Transcendental Murder hk-1

by Jane Langton

"But anyway, the point is, it gave me this idea of writing letters from one Transcendentalist to another, making them ridiculous but sort of superficially convincing. I did a whole lot of reading, and I even copied the handwriting, when I could find the originals. There's a glass case there in the library with samples of writing by Emerson and Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott."

  Homer shook his head. "I've got to hand it to you, Charley. You did a magnificent job. Works of art, all of them. What did you do for paper and ink?"

  "It was just good bond paper in various weights and sizes. And brown India ink. I left the paper in the barn a while to get weathered. Any even slightly scientific examination would show that it wasn't old paper."

  "What did you do with them when they were finished?"

  "Well, that took a bit of thought. I finally wrote another letter. This one was supposed to have been written by a sweet little old lady in western Massachusetts by the name of Miss Maria Fuller Alcott Emerson..."

  "Maria Fuller Alcott Em ...Say, that's the mysterious lady in your father's will! Okay, go ahead, what was she for?"

  "She was supposed to be a genteel old lady in reduced circumstances, descended on both sides from Concord greats. She flattered my father up and down, going on about how much she had heard about his integrity and honor and all that bilgewater, and how her grandfather had known his grandfather, and how ashamed she was to be selling the souls of her great ancestors, so she didn't want her name mentioned, but her poverty had reduced her to this extremity. So would my father publish these letters under his own name and divide the royalties with her, that was all she asked, some fraction of the royalties, and would he please memorize her address and burn this? Well, of course, Dad fell for it. He wrote her this big pompous magnanimous letter, agreeing to the whole thing, and then she sent him the letters."

  "He really wrote a letter to some fictitious lady?"

  "Oh, I have an old buddy out there in Springfield. He's a postman. He agreed to send and receive letters for her. I guess he's kept his mouth shut."

  "Well," said Homer. "It all worked just the way you hoped." Charley flushed.

  "Not quite," he said. "Of course I was delighted when I heard he had read them to the Alcott Association and that they had laughed at them. I thought that would be the end of it. I'd had my revenge. But I didn't dream he'd go on taking them seriously after that."

  "Didn't that put you on the spot then?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your father did go on believing in them. That meant that there would eventually be a good deal of notoriety and investigation and damage to literary reputations, and it probably meant that the letters might be traced back to you. How would you have explained to the press, for example, your responsibility for such spectacular forgeries?"

  Charley was silent.

  "And your father. What would have been his reaction to the discovery that his own son had made a fool of him before the world? Had you thought that through?"

  Charley still said nothing. He looked down at the red backs of his hands, which were clutching his knees.

  "Isn't is possible," said Homer, "that you feared your father's anger because you thought he might cut you out of his will? You hated him anyway. Isn't it possible that you decided there was only one thing to do, to kill him? You arranged a rendezvous with him, again by letter, posing as a literary agent or a collector, or something. You also made arrangements to be sure that your brother would have no alibi for the time of the rendezvous. Then you killed your father..."

  "What arrangements?" said Charley. "How could I know Philip was going to leave the Rod and Gun Club and go out for a walk?"

  "We don't have the whole story on that yet," said Homer. "But his slip with the cannon firing that morning was just the break you needed, wasn't it? You counted on the double confession you assumed he would make, on his opportunity to commit the crime and on his unlucky mistake of the morning to so confuse the police that they wouldn't dare to arrest either of you, afraid of condemning an innocent party—the very same ruse you had practiced throughout your life to escape punishment at the hands of your parents. Your Sam Prescott outfit and your false 'confession' were all part of the trick. Isn't that so, Charley?"

  "No, no," said Charley, "that's not so. That just isn't true. It is true that I was unhappy about the letters when my father insisted on going ahead with them. But I didn't think any reputable publisher would take them seriously. Then, I thought, he would drop the whole thing."

  Homer made a church of his fingers, and opened and closed the front door that was his large thumbs. He shifted his ground. "I didn't know your sister Edith was a horsewoman, Charley," he said. "She denied it when we asked her, way back in April."

  Charley was startled. "Why, yes. Yes, she is. It's one of the few things she's any good at."

  "She rides your horse, Dolly?"

  "Sure. It's the only one we've got. She likes to go out mostly at night. It's kind of hard on Dolly, but, heck, it's one of the few pleasures the poor girl has. Say, look, you don't think Edith..."

  "No, as a matter of fact, we don't," said Homer. He clap shut his church doors like the snapping of a trap.

  "I mean, she's just not strong-minded enough..." Charley stopped abruptly, and looked at Jimmy Flower. "Are you going to arrest me now?"

  Jimmy looked at Homer. Homer's little eyes blinked. He rubbed his hair up the wrong way on the back of his head and leaned back in his chair. "No, Charley, you can go on home."

  The door closed behind Charley. "What do you think?" said Jimmy Flower.

  "Well, with Teddy still missing, what can we do? Besides, it doesn't really hold water yet." Homer looked gloomy. "Do you suppose Charley and Teddy were really in it together, and afterwards Charley murdered Teddy to shut him up?"

  "In that case," said Jimmy, "where's the corpus delicti?"

  "That's just it. Where is Teddy?"

  "Well, I'll tell you what I think, Teddy or no Teddy," said Chief Flower. "I'm sick and tired of us being so clever. Here was somebody wearing Charley's own bunny-suit, seen practically at the moment of firing the fatal shot. Charley had the opportunity, he had the motive, stronger than ever now, with these letters to hush up, and he was witnessed by a real live witness. Why do we have to think up all these ifs, ands and buts? I'll tell you something else—all it would take to convince me is one more scrap of evidence against Charley—just one more little scrap."

  *41*

  What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. —Henry Thoreau

  Tom and John were helping Gwen load her white elephants into the pickup. John had worried circles under his eyes. One of the white elephants was a huge mahogany-veneer loudspeaker cabinet, and John wanted it desperately. He sat beside it in the truck and followed it possessively into the vestry of the church, where Gwen was setting up her table. She had to shoo him out. "No customers till the bazaar opens at ten o'clock," she said.

  "It seems awfully stupid to me," said Tom, "to haul this thing all the way to church and then all the way back again." But Gwen, who had a stern New England conscience, didn't think it was moral to sell her elephants ahead of time.

  "Please, Mom, you won't sell it to anyone else, will you?"

  "Whoever gets here first," said Gwen piously. "It wouldn't be right to hold anything for my own family."

  So John hung on to the doorhandle outside the entry, scorning the pony rides that had started early. Mary stood beside him, and when the chairwoman of the bazaar opened the door, Mary managed to block a large crowd of greedy-looking children and let John squeeze in first. He streaked for his mother's table.

  "Well, hello there, John. Anything I can do for you today?"

  "H-has anybody...?"

  "No, dear, of course not. It's all yours."

  Later in the day Mary walked back from the library to check on her sister. "Aren't you tired?" she said. "Isn't someone going to take over and let you get some lunch?"
<
br />   "I'm fine," said Gwen. "Grandmaw's going to come over after while and take my place. Do you know, someone actually bought that defunct ant-farm and the inside-out umbrella? They went the first ten minutes. Maybe I underpriced them. I've still got lots of lovely things, though. Don't you want to buy something? We can always take it to the dump on the way home."

  Mary looked the collection over, to see if there was anything less useless than the rest. She passed over the salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like drunks leaning on lampposts, the cut-glass pickle dish, the old phonograph records, the cracked dishes, the yellowed dresser scarves, the Donald Duck doorstop, the dented-in ping-pong ball ... and her eyes came to rest on the tricorn hat.

  "Where did that come from?" she said. "It wasn't here this morning."

  "Mrs. Bewley brought it over. She brought the glove, too, and the half-harmonica and the rusty letter-opener and three pairs of broken sunglasses and this nice trylon-and-perisphere paperweight. She wanted to give me her neckpiece, too, but I made her keep it. I don't think the First Parish should ask for that much of a sacrifice. She helped herself to a few things while she was here, of course, but I was glad to get rid of them anyway."

  Mary bought the tricorn hat for a quarter, and looked around for Mrs. Bewley. She found her at the food table, swiping a cooky and being glared at by Mrs. Jellicoe. Mary clung to Mrs. Bewley's bony arm, bought her a dozen brownies and then drew her out into the corridor. But the uproar from the Children's Midway downstairs was so great that she had to lead her out of doors. Freddy was going by on a pony, with Grandmaw walking beside him, holding him on.

  "MRS. BEWLEY," shouted Mary, "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS HAT?" She waved it at Mrs. Bewley and pointed at it.

  Mrs. Bewley clasped her hands. "THAT'S GOING TO LOOK REAL NICE."

  "No, no, Mrs. Bewley. WHERE DID YOU GET IT?"

  "WHAT?"

  "THE HAT. WHERE—DID—YOU—GET—IT?"

  "OH, OH, I SEE. LET ME SEE NOW, I WAS JUST COMING BACK FROM THAT PARADE, YOU KNOW, THAT THEY HAVE? AND I FOUND SOME REAL NICE THINGS. THERE WAS A NICE BEER BOTTLE, THE GREEN KIND, NOT THE BROWN KIND, I DON'T COLLECT THE BROWN KIND, AND A WALLET WITH TEN DOLLARS IN IT THAT BELONGED TO MR. RICHLEY, I COULD TELL BY THE PICTURES OF HIS FAMILY. WANT TO SEE? THE BABY'S ADORABLE."

  "YOU MEAN THE APRIL 19TH PARADE? WAS THE HAT THERE AT THE BRIDGE?"

  "NO, NO, IT WAS IN THE FIELD THERE, OVER THERE ON THE OTHER SIDE."

  "DID YOU SEE ANYONE THERE AT THE TIME? A BOY SCOUT? A MAN ON A HORSE?"

  "OH, IT DIDN'T BELONG TO A SOUL, IT WAS JUST LYING THERE ALL ALONE."

  "THANK YOU VERY MUCH, MRS. BEWLEY."

  "OH, DON'T MENTION IT."

  *42*

  'Miracles have ceased.' Have they indeed? When? —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  "It's the Prescott hat, all right," said Chief Flower. "This strand of fiber that was stuck inside the band matches that cheap orange wig. But that doesn't tell us whether it was worn by anybody else after Charley wore it the first time."

  "You know," said Mary, "this is probably a waste of time, but do you think there might be any point in our looking around Mrs. Bewley's house? Maybe she picked up something else. You don't suppose she carried home that great long gun, too?"

  Homer threw back his head, convulsed by the picture of Mrs Bewley as a Minuteman. But then they went and paid her a call. She lived in a small house on Lowell Road, with an infinitesimal parlor, a miniature bedroom and a dollsize kitchen. Mrs. Bewley herself was quite large and angular, and she had to bend herself around her furniture. She was overjoyed to see Mary and Homer, and she shouted them in for tea. It was pouring rain outside and Homer and Mary were glad to duck indoors and take off their wet coats. There was no difficulty in getting Mrs. Bewley's permission to look around. She adored exhibiting her Collection of Things.

  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. "BRIDGIE'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 fr
om 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.

  *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.