by Susan Conant
As for Hannah Duston, almost from the moment she returned to Haverhill, she had become a symbol of everything from Motherhood Revenged to the triumph of Puritan Christianity over popish heathenism to the European devastation of Native Americans. But a sexual symbol? The prospect of running the gauntlet naked had obviously been a sexual threat. In 1821, Timothy Dwight had described Hannah Duston as “threatened with torture and indecency more painful than torture.” The Boscawen statue—both the original and the gaudy reproduction on the Jim Beam bottle—had, I realized for the first time, a weirdly erotic element. The clinging drapery revealed Hannah’s buxom body and drooped low over her right breast. But the drapery was a convention of the times, wasn’t it? And the breast an allusion to motherhood?
Dogs were obviously a symbol, too, but, for me, a symbol of the redeeming power of simple love in a world of violent complexity. All dogs and especially all malamutes were like Attla: strength and honesty made manifest. My own dogs were my dispellers of demons and my shelter from the maelstrom of human enigma: In times of overwhelming pain and chaos, there is no greater comfort than the rediscovery that sometimes a dog is just a dog.
Scrubbing my feet with a loofah, I told myself that flowing down the drain with the soap and the water and the sweat I’d worked up splitting wood was whatever irrational sense of responsibility I’d felt for Randall Carey’s aberrant misreading of me and everything about me. Only then did I let myself feel deep relief that I’d been foolishly and wonderfully wrong about Randall Carey’s surprise gift.
When I’d finished drying my hair and getting dressed, I took Rowdy and Kimi for a quick walk, during which, I might add, we encountered neither rats nor madmen—nor anything or anyone else to upset or worry me. When we returned home, Kevin Dennehy’s car was still missing from his driveway. Where was he? He’d left for the stress-reduction and lifestyle-change workshop, or whatever it was, last Friday, a week ago today. In my experience, which admittedly was limited to obedience-training seminars, summer camp for dogs and owners, and other such canine-centered events, a week meant that you arrived on the first day and left on the seventh. Even if Kevin’s week at this retreat in the Berkshires ran from Friday to Friday, shouldn’t it have ended early this morning? Didn’t its organizers need to prepare for the next week’s group? The trip from the Berkshires to Cambridge should have taken Kevin two or three hours. If, as I suspected, he’d broken the journey home from this rice-and-tofu haven by stopping for a roast beef sandwich or ham and eggs with home fries. English muffins, and a side of caffeine, he should still have been here by now. Was it possible that the soles of Kevin’s feet were too charred and sore to let him drive? Worse yet, had he done a beer-to-Buddha about-face in his outlook on life, donned a turban, quit the force, and decided to stay?
The blinking light on my answering machine signaled what proved not to be a message from Kevin proclaiming his permanent retreat from the Cambridge PD. Rather, the message was from Leah. She announced that she had Randall Carey’s dissertation on Hannah Duston. She was calling from a pay phone in the library and would call back in a few minutes.
As I waited, a connection came to me, one I’d missed in my panicked effort to piece together a meaningful whole from pieces that had fit together here and there, but refused to lock in place. The material Leah had brought still lay on the counter. I quickly double-checked her list of references. As I’d remembered, Randall. Carey’s dissertation was dated eighteen years ago. The connection: As my scabbed hands and knees reminded me, among the odds and ends found in and on Jack Andrews’s desk eighteen years ago, after his murder, had been that tantalizing slip of paper that bore the title And One Fought Back. A privately printed book. A dissertation. Both about Hannah Duston. Jack’s interest in her. Randall’s.
With photographic recall, I could see the heading of Jack’s obituary: JOHN W. ANDREWS, PUBLISHER. His profession: publisher. In pursuing his lives, public and private, open and secret, I’d viewed Damned Yankee Press mainly as the scene of his murder. In tracking down his wife, his lover, his dog, and his children, legitimate and otherwise, I’d treated the Damned Yankee guides as Jack’s excuse to make business-as-pleasure trips to bookstores in towns and cities where and when there just so happened to be dog shows. Jack’s profession, however, had been more than a cover for his hidden life in dogs. John W. Andrews, publisher, had also published books: the guides, of course, and books of regional interest, books like the ones still stacked everywhere at the press, including, for instance, a book about Lizzie Borden. It had even briefly crossed my mind that Jack might have thought about reissuing And One Fought Back.
The phone rang. Before Leah had a chance to say more than a few words, I said, “Hang on!” Returning with the photocopy of the privately printed book, I asked, “Leah, do you have that dissertation right there with you?”
“Yes. You want me to copy it?”
“Yes. No. I want you to read me parts of it. Do you have a lot of change with you? Never mind. Give me the number, and I’ll call you right back.” I hung up and dialed. When Leah answered, I said, “First, would you open to the beginning? Does it say who his thesis advisor was? Or the members of his committee?”
“Uh, yes. Oh, you know who it was? Carey’s advisor was George Foley. That makes sense. Colonial historian.”
“I know. Leah, flip through, would you? See if you can find the section where he actually describes what Hannah did. Somewhere, there’s got to be a . . . No! I just thought of something better. See if you can find where he talks about Timothy Dwight. Dwight was the president of Yale. He wrote a book called Travels in New England and New York. He discusses Hannah. And Thomas. Is there an index?”
“No, of course not.”
Rapidly leafing through my photocopy of Lewis Clark’s obscure book, I came to a chapter called “In Every View Honorable: The Conduct of Thomas Duston.’”
“Leah,” I commanded, “look in the table of contents. There is one, isn’t there?”
“Of course. Hang on. Here we are.”
“Does there happen to be chapter called anything like ‘In Every View Honorable’?”
“Yes,” she said. “‘In Every View Honorable: The Conduct of Thomas Duston.’”
“Turn to it. Read me the beginning.”
“Uh, here we go. ‘Beneath the pointing finger of Hannah Duston on the Haverhill statue, a relief depicts Thomas Duston on horseback, his gun aimed at an Indian, his children—’”
I interrupted her. “‘—his children clustered behind. The inscription reads: HER HUSBAND’S DEFENSE OF THEIR, CHILDREN .’”
“How did you . . . ?”
“Because I’m reading the same words.”
Together, we cross-checked other sections. Some passages in Carey’s dissertation were obviously his own. We found references in the dissertation that didn’t appear in Lewis Clark’s book. Many phrases, sentences, and paragraphs from And One Fought Back had, however, been rewritten, paraphrased, or lifted in their entirety.
Leah was aghast. “He plagiarized it? Well, when Harvard finds out—”
I did tell you, didn’t I, that in the eyes of Harvard, nearly all serious crimes are, in one way or another, abuses of the printed word? And in Cambridge, the eyes of Harvard are the eyes of God.
“Leah, would they really . . . What do you call it? Expunge him? After all this time?”
“I think so. At a minimum, they’d strip him of his degree.”
Dr. Randall Carey: the name in the phone book, the name on that shabby mailbox, the name by the doorbell. Doctor no more. The back window of my kitchen gave me a view of Kevin’s driveway. It was dark out now, and his mother had put on the outside lights. Her car was in its usual spot. Kevin still wasn’t home.
“Look,” I told Leah. “This is really important. Say nothing to anyone about this. Not a word. Don’t even photocopy that dissertation, okay? Just give it back. Turn it in. I want it out of your hands right now. Until I tell you otherwise, you’ve
never seen the thing in your life.”
“Holly—”
“Do it! I am not joking! Leah, Jack Andrews read Clark’s book when he was a kid. It was in the Haverhill Public Library. He must’ve used it for his report. For whatever reason, he also read Carey’s dissertation. He made the connection. But he didn’t tell Professor Foley. Maybe he didn’t have a chance. He was murdered first. Professor Foley didn’t make the connection, either. And when he finally did . . . ?”
“I get the picture. And you can sort of see why Professor Foley missed it to begin with, because advisors aren’t necessarily all that expert in whatever esoteric topics their students are doing research on. But how did Foley find out now? Why all of a sudden, after all these years?”
“For one thing, one reason he missed it back then and for a long time is what you said yourself: ‘Widener has everything.’ That was probably his mentality, too.”
“Correctly so.”
“Almost. And that attitude is what Randall Carey took into account. He plagiarized a book that wasn’t in Widener and that academic types didn’t even know existed. Also, there’s something Professor Foley told me himself. He said that captivity is in these days. There are books, and there are conferences. Now there’s a field called ‘captivity studies. ’ Professor Foley hadn’t read Clark’s book because it wasn’t an academic book—it was just a local curiosity—and because, eighteen years ago, captivity studies wasn’t his specialty, anyway, because it really wasn’t anyone’s. It practically didn’t exist.”
“So why did Professor Foley read the book now?”
“You never met him, Leah. He was interested in everything, I think. He was a like a kid. He sparkled. Anyway, he’d just been to a conference where he’d been discussing Indian captivity with someone. That’s where he heard that there was a privately printed book about Hannah Duston. This is awful to think about, but, in a way, maybe it was partly my fault. After I asked him about Hannah, he must’ve called up whoever had mentioned the book to him and borrowed it from another historian or from a library somewhere.”
“But if it wasn’t in Widener—”
“Then, miracle of miracles, it might still have been somewhere else. In fact, it was somewhere else until Randall Carey removed it. It was in the Haverhill Public Library and at the Haverhill Historical Society. But it must have been other places, too. Maybe Widener located it for him. Or another historian let him borrow it. Leah, if Foley was Randall Carey’s advisor, wouldn’t he have had a copy of the dissertation?”
“Probably. He’d’ve been given one. Whether he kept it is another matter.”
“Obviously, he did. Or he got it just the way you did, from the archives. And he compared. He reached the same conclusion we have.”
“Definitely about the plagiarism. About Jack Andrews’s murder?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. In either case, I think Foley called up Randall Carey and invited him over to discuss the matter. Instead of blowing the whistle, he gave Randall Carey a chance to turn himself in. Professor Foley was a gentleman himself, and I think he offered Randall Carey a gentleman’s way out. Jack Andrews must’ve made the same mistake. It was fatal for him, and it was fatal for Professor Foley. Leah, Randall Carey has killed twice to keep his doctorate and his pride, and the second time to keep his freedom. He’s like Hannah Duston. He’s like the people who took her captive. His motives are just as practical as theirs, and he’s just as desperate. Promise me that the second you hang up, you’ll take that dissertation and return it instantly. And say nothing whatsoever to anyone.”
“But what about you? What—”
“Kevin will be home any second. I’m going to lock my doors and wait for him. I’m going to sit here and play the damsel in distress.”
Reversing our roles, Leah warned, “Don’t open the door for anyone.”
“Of course not. Not for anyone.”
CHAPTER 31
I thought you meant your dissertation on Hannah Duston, I’d told Randall Carey. If it’s a copy of Lewis Clark’s book, I already have one, I’d also said. Now, as I waited for Kevin, I’d have given anything to take back those words. At least I hadn’t mentioned Leah. Or had I? No, I was pretty sure I hadn’t. Unless Randall Carey had suddenly decided to go to Pusey Library and, by wild coincidence, happened to see Leah returning his dissertation, she was safe. I suppressed the impulse to call her number. If she’d followed my instructions by promptly returning Randall Carey’s plagiarized ticket to his doctorate, she’d still have had to sprint across the Yard to reach her room by now. I had no reason to believe that she was even headed there. The chances were good that she’d gone directly to the dining hall. I could imagine her surrounded by friends, swearing about chemistry, and, with a grin, insisting that the mystery meat was substandard dog food. I wished I’d made her promise to call me back.
I picked up the phone and, instead of running next door as I’d ordinarily have done, dialed Kevin’s number. His mother answered. I asked when she expected Kevin home.
“Any minute now,” she replied.
“Have you heard from him this week?”
“Not until an hour ago. He called to say not to worry.” She again assured me that Kevin would be back any minute.
“Well, the second he gets there, would you tell him that I have to see him? Right away.” Feeling foolish, I added, “It’s police business.”
“Police business,” she repeated. “I’m writing it down.” Before I hung up, she said “God bless!”
By now, Rowdy and Kimi were nosing around and woo-wooing in expectation of dinner. “If I feed you,” I informed them, “you’ll need to go out, and I would really rather not leave here until Kevin’s back. So just hang on another few minutes.”
Keeping Kevin’s driveway in the periphery of my vision, I looked up Tracy Littlefield’s number and dialed it.
She answered. “Tracy’s Doggone Salon!”
“Holly Winter,” I said. “Tracy, I have a question that’s probably going to sound off the wall, but . . . Tracy, are you alone? Is Drew there?”
“Yes indeed!”
“Yes he is?”
“Yes.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe you could just answer yes or no? It’s not about . . . Well, okay, here it is. Shortly before Jack, uh, died . . . Let me backtrack. Did Jack ever use the Haverhill library? Did he ever take a book out or go there to look anything up?”
“Funny you should mention it.”
“Shortly before he died?”
“Very.”
“Sunday?”
“No.”
“Saturday?”
“Keep going.”
I worked backward to the Thursday before the murder.
“You got it. Could we make this quick?”
“I’ll try. What he wanted was an old book about Hannah Duston. And One Fought Back. It was in some kind of special collection.”
“Yes.”
“And did he find it?”
“Sure did!” Then she said she had to go. I thanked her and hung up. So Jack hadn’t trusted his memory. Once something had jogged it, he’d gone to the trouble of taking a new look at the old book. Sometime before Thursday, he’d seen Randall’s dissertation. His suspicions had been aroused. He had, however, written his report on Hannah as a schoolboy; he probably hadn’t so much as seen Lewis Clark’s book since then. And the charge of plagiarism was not one Jack would have made lightly. Jack had gone to Harvard. He’d have been fully aware of the extreme seriousness of the crime within the university and of the consequences of discovery for the scholar who’d stolen another’s words. On Thursday, Jack had gone to Haverhill to compare the two texts, Lewis Clark’s and Randall Carey’s. By Thursday night, he’d had proof of Randall Carey’s guilt. Four days later—two workdays later—at sometime after five o’clock on Monday afternoon, when he’d been in his office, he’d drunk coffee that Randall Carey had somehow laced with the sodium fluoroacetate that Jack himself had ob tain
ed to poison rats and had carelessly tossed in the trash.
