The Memorial Hall Murder (18 page)

“The game? There's some sort of game tomorrow?”

“Some sort of—Listen, you ninny, it's the Harvard-Yale game. Didn't you know that? Homer Kelly, you amaze me. I'm really surprised. Anyway, how about it? It's a sort of big ceremonial party for all the bigwigs who come up from Yale for the game. I want to introduce you to Jim Cheever. I mean, I think it's important for him to get to know new members of the faculty, especially really refreshing ones like you, Homer. And I'm eager to meet your wife. I understand she's a peach too.”

“Well, of course, we'd love to come. But President Cheever is going to be away. Peter Marley just told me on the phone, there's a conference of college presidents in Chicago this weekend. Cheever's going to be there, and so is Tinker.”

“They are?” There was a pause. “Well,” said Julia Chamberlain.

“So maybe you'd rather withdraw your invitation,” said Homer. “Mary and I would be glad to be sociable another time.”

There was another pause. “Oh, yes. Well, maybe. Well, yes, I guess, as a matter of fact, I will. I mean, if Jim isn't going to be there, I may not go myself.”

“Very good, then,” said Homer politely, and then he waited for Julia to begin the little ceremonial exchanges of courtesy required for a telephone farewell.

But instead there was an awkward pause. The conversation seemed to have come to a dead halt. Homer sensed that the woman on the other end of the line was staring into space. Sportingly he pitched in, casting about for something to say. He brought up the stained glass. He wondered how that campaign was going. He hoped they'd find enough money somewhere to replace the stained glass in Memorial Hall.

Then Julia Chamberlain laughed and came back to life. “Oh, good Lord, who knows what will happen about the stained glass? The only progress so far is an estimate from Connick Associates in Boston. If you could call that progress. Because it will be two hundred dollars a square foot. Do you know how much that comes to altogether? Three hundred thousand dollars.”

“Three hundred thousand—my God.”

“The entire building only cost four hundred thousand, back in the 1870s. I haven't dared mention it to anybody yet. Certainly not to Jim Cheever. He'll have a fit. You say he's going to be away? How long? Did Peter say how long?”

“All he said was they'd be away for the weekend.”

“Mmmmmm. Well, so long, Homer. I'll be calling you and your wife pretty soon about something friendly. Good-bye.”

Homer put the telephone down, picked up a handful of index cards, and began sorting them by color. The colors stood for chapters. He spread them fanwise in his hand and began plucking them out one at a time, a pink one, a pink one, a blue one, a green one. Then he pulled out too many at once, and the entire fistful of cards slithered to the floor. Homer cursed and got down on his hands and knees and scrabbled them together and slapped them on the table. Then he snatched up his coat and went out, persuading himself that what he needed most right now was a breath of fresh air. A brisk walk. A nice hike over to Martin Street. He glanced at the map of Cambridge before he burst out the door, and was surprised to discover that Martin Street wasn't one of the polite streets of large houses running off Brattle Street, where any right-thinking Harvard professor would want to live. It was way the hell and gone out Mass Av on the way to Porter Square. But it wasn't so far from Huron Avenue. He could make a shortcut past the Radcliffe Quad.

Ten minutes later Homer turned into Martin Street and made his way to number 60. It was a small wooden-frame building with a narrow porch close to the sidewalk. Homer guessed it belonged to the same era as Memorial Hall.

Jennifer Sullivan opened the door. Homer remembered Jennifer. She was a member of Vick's chorus, and even in that miscellaneous collection of people she would have been hard to miss. She was a frail-looking moth of a girl in a swollen maternity jumper.

“Come in,” said Jennifer. “You're Mary Kelly's husband, aren't you? A professor or something, like Mary? I mean, Mary and I are together in the chorus. We stand side by side. That is, we will be if I make it to the concert. My baby's due on Christmas day, only who knows? It might be early. What can I do for you? I mean, nobody else is here to talk to. They've all left. I'm all by myself now. And I'm getting out myself next week. The house is all mixed up in some kind of legal tangle. Probate, I guess it is. Here, I'll just move this stuff out of the way. Sit down.”

Homer sat down and looked around. Ham's living room was clean, and it was plain that someone, probably Jennifer, had attempted a kind of tidiness. But beneath the superficial order a more fundamental disorder was apparent. The place was a musical jungle. A baby grand piano stuck out into the hall. A harpsichord was wedged behind the sofa. A cello case lay under the harpsichord. Stacks of music were everywhere. Scattered about the room were a pair of guitars, a banjo, a zither, a trombone, a great gold harp, and an accordion sparkling with plastic mother-of-pearl.

“Don't tell me,” said Homer. “That handsaw on the mantelpiece. It's not just for cutting up firewood, right?”

“Oh, no,” said Jennifer, giggling. “That's a musical saw. You bend it into a sort of double curve on your knee and play it with a bow.”

“You've got enough instruments in here for a concert band,” said Homer. “How many people were living here when Ham was alive?”

“Oh, wow, I don't know. They were always coming and going. There was Mrs. Esterhazy, of course. And her two kids. And Mr. Proctor. They were here all the time. But other people came and went. Like Suzie. Look here.” Jennifer jumped up and snatched something off the mantel. “What am I going to do with Suzie's dollar fifty? Here, listen to this. She left a note: ‘Dear Ham, This is just to thank you for letting me stay while I was so mad. I wish I could pay for all the food I ate, but this is all I've got. Maybe it will pay for the Cokes. Love, Suzie.'”

“Who was Suzie?” said Homer. “Why was she so mad?”

“Oh, she was this little kid. She ran away. She was only fourteen. Her parents had been just so incredibly disgusting. Ham talked to them, and then she went home.”

“She was one of Ham's—ah—Rats, I gather?” Homer smiled ingratiatingly at Jennifer, not sure whether Rats was an outsider's or an insider's word. Maybe Jennifer would be insulted.

But she laughed. “Oh, no, not really. But the rest of us were Rats, all right. Of course, I'm a Rat and a student too, at the same time. At least I am so far. I don't know how long it will last—being a student, I mean. They won't let you have a baby in a dorm, so Ham invited me to move in here. But now I've got to go someplace else.”

“You're not married, I guess, Jennifer?”

“Oh, no.”

“You can't just go home like Suzie?”

“Oh, God, no. Not home. My parents don't even know.” Jennifer patted her swollen jumper. “I've got some friends. I know a place to go. Sort of a big place with a lot of extra space. I'll be all right there.”

“Well, that's good. Central location?” said Homer innocently.

“Oh, yes, a really great location. You see, I'm going to keep the baby. I'm making little clothes for it and everything. I mean, you know, it's this big sort of primordial
motherhood
kind of thing. I've absolutely lost all interest in the intellectual history of the Reformation. All I can think of is, like, making little quilts for the baby, and, I mean, it's so strange, I just want to sit and sew. Isn't that strange?”

Homer remembered James Cheever's suspicions about the women in Ham's house. He wanted to ask a nosy question, but he didn't dare. But then Jennifer read his mind and she spoke up fearlessly. “And if you think Ham was the father of my child you're just stupid, that's all. Just really dumb like all the rest.”

Well, it was none of Homer's business. It occurred to him that the infant might even have been immaculately conceived, if it was going to be born on Christmas Day. Oh, blasphemy. Oh, sacrilege. He screwed up his courage and asked another question. “Well, what about Ham? Did he have a girlfriend at all? Am I right in thinking Mrs. Esterhazy was …?”

“Oh, no, not Mrs. Esterhazy.” Jennifer laughed. “I don't think he had anybody at all. Well, there was Vick, of course. He did a lot of kidding around with Vick Van Horn, only it was, you know, sort of a teacher-and-student relationship. Except, wow, I've got three friends right now who are living with teaching fellows and section men.”

“So teachers do still have affairs with students,” murmured Homer. “Like good old Abélard and Héloïse.”

“Oh, right. Of course, plenty of people had a thing about Ham Dow. I mean, they would have given their eyeteeth! But I think he was just too sort of, you know,
honorable
to take advantage of anybody. He was just really so kind. I mean, look at the way he took me in. That's the way he was with everybody. Look at Mrs. Esterhazy. He invited her to live in his house, and of course he invited her kids too. Mrs. Esterhazy was having a hard time, I guess, trying to earn enough money singing, and she said she was too proud to live on welfare, so he took her in, and he was getting voice students for her too.” Jennifer jumped up. “I vass alone in da vorld,” she said, rolling her eyes like Mrs. Esterhazy. “My hozband,
poof!
he ron avay vit anozzer vooman. My cheeldren, zey vere
starving!
”

“Starving? Those enormous little cherubs, surely they weren't starving?”

“Well, they certainly weren't starving while they were living here. Ham was a really good cook. He'd whip up a big vat of something every night, and of course we all helped, and people would, you know, drop in. It was just really so much fun. Sometimes it was string quartets, and we'd all sit around on the floor and listen, and sometimes it would be folk singing, and we'd all sing. Or there was some crazy kind of ethnic music, or bluegrass. You know. And people would bring beer, or bottles of wine. And you won't believe it, but we even did folk dancing in here. You wouldn't think there'd be enough room, but we'd just lift the sofa out of the way on the table, and everybody'd be bumping into everybody else, and there'd be the craziest people playing native instruments. And everybody came. Not just all young ones like us. Real old people too. Even Miss Plankton. Miss Plankton used to come and bring homemade cookies and get a little tipsy on a glass of wine, and say things like, ‘Oh, what fun!'” Jennifer clasped her hands and beamed like a little old Cambridge lady. “‘Oh, isn't this a lark?' I mean, it was like a party here almost every night. It was all really just so great.” Jennifer kicked the leg of the sofa. “You know, the funny thing is, this place belongs to me. I mean, I own one sixty-fifth of it. I suppose they'll just have an auction or something and divvy up the money.”

“One sixty-fifth? Oh, that's right,” said Homer. “Marley told me there were a lot of beneficiaries to Ham's will.”

“It was just a joke, you see,” said Jennifer. “His will was just a big joke. He started making it last summer, when some guy from the Law School was here, and this guy told him he ought to make a will. So Ham took a scrap of paper and scribbled something on it, and the Law School guy signed it, and then Ham kept this crazy piece of paper taped up on the refrigerator, and every time anybody new came along he'd add their name to his will. It was just a big joke.”

“But it was legal, I suppose?” said Homer.

“Oh, right. He always put down the date and got witnesses to sign it. But it was just a sort of running joke. It was just for fun.”

Homer said good-bye to Jennifer and walked home again. There was an odd sensation in his breast, and it took him a moment to identify the feeling. He had often been aware of the same thing, reading Henry Thoreau. He had felt it again, just the other day, looking again at Melville's delirious letters to Hawthorne—a sense of affection and loss. He wanted to know them in the flesh. But Thoreau and Melville were dead, irretrievably dead and gone. It was the same with Ham Dow. The more Homer learned about Ham, the more he felt the man had been a force for something which he did not hesitate to call good. Little by little Ham's death had become more than an interesting professional problem. It had been transformed for Homer into what it was for nearly everyone else, a personal disaster. Walking home to Huron Avenue from Ham's house, he was overcome by a foolish and impossible desire to meet and know the man alive.

Chapter Twenty-seven