The second officer frowned at him. “Henry Sullivan? You're the same Henry Sullivan from Brookline High class of 1980, right? You were in my brother's class. Jim Norris..."
"He was our catcher.” Henry said it without enthusiasm. He knew the policeman was not there because of his brother's baseball career.
Leona began to speak, before realizing the same thing.
"I knew Jim. He moved to New ... York.” Her voice trailed.
The second officer nodded at him. “My name is Sergeant Norris. I'm afraid I'm here on behalf of the Boston Police. I regret to be the one to tell you this, but someone has died."
Henry's mind scanned other possibilities. One did not fade.
"Who?"
The officer's eyes skated over to where Leona sat in the chair, and then back to him.
"Do you know someone named Morgan Johnson?"
When Henry closed his eyes, he saw her face. She was scolding him, just before he left that morning.
He had stood at the open elevator door.
She was saying, “I have to be going on to California, but you could use the beach house. It's empty now. The pipes and electricity are still turned on there for the real-estate people. And the weather is perfect. You could be swimming right through October if the weather holds."
He had kissed her again. Not a passionate kiss, but not only as a friend. He had told her, “I've got to work. I can't be working on a suntan right now."
She had brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. “You need some color."
He smiled with resignation. “I'm fine. I'll e-mail you about the appraisal. Call me soon if you can."
She kept her fingers to his cheek. She wore a green silk scarf—as if to hide some lines of age in her neck. He had never noticed them. The scarf echoed the flecks of green in her eyes.
She said, “Thank you for coming—for being here—for staying. I needed you to be here."
He had repeated, “Make sure to call me.” He should have said something more.
The elevator door had closed then. She had been smiling, and as he remembered this, he could see a halo of morning sun from a far window caught in the honey-colored edges of her hair.
After he left, he thought repeatedly of the haloed icons of stained glass at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Brookline, and it troubled him with the thought that he might be drifting back toward the religious fervor he had felt once as a boy. He had rejected the Church after his mother's death, as his father had already done long before, and often worried that some unnoticed ratoon might linger in his subconscious, waiting to sprout unexpectedly in a moment of weakness. He fought back at this now with the thought of Morgan's smile. The icons had never smiled from their high places above the marbled walls at St. Mary's. But the image of her face and of the halo came back to him again and again.
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Chapter Seven
Albert leaned in on the bar, resting on his elbows. His inquiry had not been soft, and that seemed right to Henry. He needed someone on his side now who could think clearly.
Albert said, “Did you pick up anything from the way they asked their questions?"
Henry sat back and held the edge of the bar with his fingers. He was tired, his back sore from sitting in hard office chairs and on wooden benches. He had slept badly after he was driven home.
"They have no idea. They thought I did it. That was clear. They were pretty rude. They seemed to know a lot more than they were saying, but their questions were way off base."
Albert said, “How did the killer get in?"
Henry hunched his shoulders. “She must have let them in. It must have been someone she knew. The building is locked and has buzzers. The elevator is keyed. The elevator door wouldn't open unless she opened the door to the apartment."
Was it possible to coldly analyze this? Like a chess move after the fact—like a queen taken by a rook? She was dead. There was no rematch.
Albert seemed to realize that he might be pressing a little too hard. He turned to the mirror across the bar.
His voice dropped. “There would be a stairwell and a fire door for emergencies."
Henry addressed the near-empty ale glass in front of him. “The cops seemed to be interested in that elevator."
Albert asked, “Was anything stolen? That'll be important. There has to be a reason for it. They wouldn't just kill her."
Henry nodded. “There could have been. Maybe that's why the cops searched my apartment."
Her life had been stolen, of course. A theft that could not be returned. So odd. The unexpected. Henry released his grip on the bar, half expecting to fall backward. In a dream he would fall, or float. Instead, the weight of his body sagged forward on the stool.
Albert persisted—the voice of reality. “Do you know if they kept your old friend Leona for long?"
Henry answered, “No. I called her when I got home. She seemed rather excited about getting questioned by the police. I swear, she's as old as I am—she has two kids for Christ's sake—and she acts like she did when we were in high school."
Albert grunted and said, “That could be a good thing."
Henry sagged further. “I don't need that right now."
He did, in fact. He wanted to hold something more than the edge of a bar and a glass of ale.
Albert's tone of voice became apologetic. “Maybe not. But you need your mind off Morgan Johnson. Why don't you read the letters we took out of that little room? Alice wants to read them, you know, and the sooner you finish with them, the sooner she'll stop bothering me about them. She loves to read other people's mail."
That was something. They had already given him a small measure of relief just in their own mystery.
Henry said, “I did. I read a bunch of them last night. I couldn't sleep."
Albert sat back again and looked at Henry as if he had not completed a sentence. “And? Any clue what happened to Miss Mawson?"
Henry tried to change gears. He knew Albert was just trying to divert him, but he had not had time to think about the letters.
"Maybe. I don't know. They're not all dated. I don't know half of what they're talking about—mostly about people doing this or that.” Henry swallowed the dregs in his glass. “She seems to be the friendliest person you can imagine. She made friends wherever she went. She made friends with a couple in Cornwall, the Wrights, just walking along the road. Next thing, she's staying at their cottage for a nephew's baptism. A real thatched cottage! Then she's there again for a visit in the summer, and they have all the eligible bachelors coming from miles around, to meet her and she dances with every one. Twelve farm boys in a row, and her feet are so sore from being stepped on she can't walk the next day. She must have been a good-looking girl to get them all to dance ... She sounds like a real sweetheart."
Albert mused, “I wonder how she could afford it. That little house in Dedham didn't show a lot of money."
Henry had thought a little about that himself. “That's the thing. I don't think she had a lot of money. Perhaps a small inheritance from her mother. She was just something of an adventurer. She wanted to write travel articles for the Herald. But they evidently rejected her. I think she wanted to write books about her journeys, but there is nothing listed on the internet, so I don't think she ever managed that. I found one reference, but not to her—to someone I think is her father. He was part owner of a coal company in Dedham. I was thinking that might be why she went to Cornwall. There's coal there. She might have had a contact there through her father. But she spends most of her time with that couple in that cottage. The wife was a beekeeper. She liked to hunt mushrooms and had taken Helen with her on several rainy-morning expeditions. She's the one who wrote many of the letters. Mr. Wright, the husband, was a retired military gentleman. ‘The General,’ she calls him. Always properly dressed. Mustache waxed. Erect. Helen is shocked the first time she sees him in work clothes mucking out the enclosure for his prize bull. Real characters. The Wright
s had no children of their own and seem to have adopted her. But beyond that, she walked. She had written to one person about the best kind of walking shoes to buy, and they thanked her profusely. It was her intention, I believe, to walk all over England and visit the homes of the great English writers. She had definitely visited Thomas Hardy. There's a reference to visiting him more than once. She called him the ‘sad man,’ and I suspect she might have even stayed in his house. Mr. Wright did not approve. You can't help wondering what kind of person she must have been."
Albert finished his ale. “But nothing about her getting sick?"
Henry almost grunted at the thought and stopped himself. He did not need any more bad habits. “Nothing. She must have been healthy—even robust for all the walking."
Albert hit the edge of the bar with the flat of his hand. “She might have died of pneumonia from mucking about in all that English weather."
Henry shrugged. “There is nothing in the letters to say. But I was thinking.... Last night, as I was reading, it occurred to me that she might have been murdered."
Now that he said it out loud, he realized how stupid that thought was.
Albert grunted definitively. “That's just your frame of mind,” he said and stuck his finger up for Tim to notice.
Tim had lodged himself at the end of the bar, where he had a radio on low and listened to talk shows when business was slow. He grabbed a fresh glass, pulled another ale, and set it down in front of Albert, but looked at Henry.
"You can tell a lot about people by the books they read .... You said that once, and a guy on the radio just said the same thing."
Henry was always amazed that Tim could listen to two conversations at once and not lose track of either. Henry had already wondered about the books. “She was quite the reader. She seemed to read anything popular at the time. Even Fra Elbertus—old Elbert Hubbard..."
Tim shook his head. “I meant your friend Morgan Johnson ... You looked at her books, right?"
Henry was confused. “Yeah. But they were mostly her husband's books."
Tim pressed forward at his side of the bar. “You said she was practically running the business for the last few years. Maybe you could just say they were all her books, too."
Tim's eyes stopped at Albert, who had leaned forward himself and was staring at Tim purposefully almost nose to nose.
Albert said, “It might be a good idea for Henry to get his mind off all that now. He can't do anything about it."
Tim retreated down Henry's end of the bar, speaking as he went. “You know how many unsolved murders there were in Boston last year? Dozens ... It can't hurt if the cops got a few hints."
Albert grunted loudly before making his voice heard anywhere in the room. “People get hurt every day by sticking their noses where they don't belong."
Tim retreated further and answered again. “Henry was the last person to see her, except for one ...."
Albert rose from his stool and headed for the door. “I've got better things to do. I could be taking a nap."
Henry stayed where he was, studying the light reflections on his glass. He could see a miniature of Albert there, his body made even wider by the curvature.
Henry said, “See you later."
Albert gave an extra grunt and left.
Henry had another ale and then decided to leave when the after-work crowd started showing up. The subway was already crowded, forcing him to stand too close to a woman who bathed in perfume. By the time he reached the Charles Street station, the sidewalks were thick with people going in both directions but most of them turning toward their apartments up the Hill. He was almost home before he saw the police car, a wide Crown Victoria without markings, parked up over the stone curb onto the brick of the sidewalk to let other cars pass and directly in front of Mrs. Prowder's door. He stooped by the side of the car and interrupted the officer sitting alone in the passenger seat, who was writing something on a pad.
Henry had already seen enough of the cops. He was tired and suddenly raw. “Is there anything I can help you with?"
The cop looked up stone-faced and then went back to writing as he answered. “You can get in the back so we can take a ride."
"Where to?"
"Jack will tell you."
The detective who had questioned him the day before was named John O'Connor. Henry got in. “Where is Jack?"
The cop folded his notepad.
"He's upstairs taking your place apart."
Henry protested, “They already did that."
"Well, they're doing it again."
It had taken Henry a couple of hours the previous night to put things back in order. He did not want to see what it looked like this time. He waited quietly. It was not long.
Detective John O'Connor came out the door at the top of the steps with another man, probably also a plainclothes policeman. When he spotted Henry in the backseat, he smiled and spoke to the other fellow.
"Meet us over there. I have the key."
Henry noticed that the other man was carrying a satchel, but O'Connor's hands were empty as he got in the front seat.
O'Connor slapped his hand on the window frame.
"Just in time. If we make this quick, we might all get home for dinner."
Henry asked, “Where are we going?"
"To the Johnson apartment. I want you to take a look with me."
Henry felt a chill.
O'Connor turned on the warning lights and parted the traffic at the bottom at Charles Street fairly quickly with a couple of short blasts of his siren. They were in front of Morgan's building in minutes, and then sat in the car and waited for the other fellow to show up.
O'Connor turned to Henry. “What's with all of those letters on your bed?"
Henry answered, “Something I'm investigating."
O'Connor's eyes went to the cop beside him. “What would that be?"
"What happened to Helen Mawson."
O'Connor's voice lost any shading of interest. “So who is Helen Mawson, and what happened to her?"
Henry noted the flat tone of the detective's voice. He tried to counter it by answering as dryly as he could.
"We don't know what happened to her yet. She used to own all those books stacked in my apartment that you guys made a mess of. She disappeared"—as he said the words, he realized how they must have sounded to a cop's ears; he added a detail—"around 1915. I'm going to be selling her books, and there were all these letters in the same room where we found the books.” He took a breath. “The room had been sealed up and untouched for over eighty years. The books all belonged to the young woman who received those letters. Her name was Helen—"
O'Connor's face began to sag.
"I got it—right ... that's very interesting."
Both men got out of the car and led the way into Morgan's building, with the third fellow carrying the satchel just behind Henry.
The elevator was barely big enough for four men. The apartment appeared exactly the same. The quiet seemed amplified. The air was stale again.
"If you open the windows on that side you get a breeze,” Henry said, not wanting to leave his position by the front door.
O'Connor turned to him.
"How was it when you left the other day? Were the windows open?"
"Yes ... They were closed when I arrived the first day—but she had just arrived, too. She opened those windows first and said that was where the breeze came from."
O'Connor pointed. “Right ... Dave. Check for prints on the windows over there, will you?"
The fellow who had followed Henry went to the windows. Henry watched as he opened his case and pulled something from a plastic tube. Meanwhile, the uniformed policeman had gone around the apartment and turned on most of the lights. The late-afternoon sun entered directly into the living room, making the electric lights seem weak.
O'Connor faced him. “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to look around. Don't touch anything. Just look. Tell me what you see. N
otice things. Anything. Just say it out loud. If I want to hear more about something, I'll tell you. But just start talking. Walk around."
Henry was hesitant at first. He had no idea what was needed. He understood the detective wanted him to notice something that might be different, that might have importance, but it was difficult to guess what that might be, and most things seemed too unremarkable to mention.
He went around the living room first. Nothing there had changed that he could see. Even a dish towel she had used to dry their breakfast dishes was still where she had tossed it over the back of the couch the moment he had said he had to be going. He mentioned that.
In the kitchen, the breakfast dishes were still stacked neatly in the dish holder by the sink. In the breakfast nook, the Patrick Leigh Fermor book was where he had left it on the counter. He had taken it with him from the bedroom and set it aside when she had put the eggs and toast down on the table. He had spent little time at all in the dining room, one of the few rooms without bookshelves, and had not even remembered the pictures on the wall there. In her bedroom, the bed was made. He thought he remembered her making it while he was in the shower. In the bathroom, the towel he had used was in the hamper. He had left it— he thought—in the bedroom, where he dressed.
In the small room she had called her study, next to the bedroom, he saw no difference, but something she had said came back unbidden—a phrase, “It's just a room of my own,” when he asked her what she used it for. He had said she should take Virginia Woolf's direction. She should use it to write a book, just as he had told her long before. She had said, “I have nothing I want to say, and certainly nothing worth reading."
This answer had bothered him at the time and afterward. He did not mention any of that to the detective.
In her husband's bedroom, everything looked exactly the same. He even found the pencil he had forgotten there as he finished looking at the books, still lying on the floor. Bending for the pencil, he noticed a opening. Three books were missing from one shelf. He noticed this very suddenly. They were part of the Boswell journals. When he mentioned that, the detective smiled and said they were beneath the bed, where he had put them earlier. It was obviously some kind of test. Henry objected. It was impossible for him to remember where all of the books had been.
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