The Memorial Hall Murder (33 page)

“So Tinker hired the man from Philadelphia,” said Mary softly.

“Yes, I suppose they decided it was the only thing left. Of course, they were fools to think the removal of one man would make any difference.”

“But what went wrong? Why didn't it work? Oh, I know your theory, Homer, about the clocks being ten minutes slow, and how the man from Philadelphia forgot his wrist watch. But I really don't see what he was doing on the scene at all. Why didn't he just set the thing to go off at a certain time and go back to Philadelphia?”

“Because he had to be sure the job” got done. Tinker told me. If Dow didn't get blown up, the hired killer didn't get his hundred thousand in small bills. The money came from some discretionary fund of Cheever's. I don't know who the alumnus was who supplied Cheever's office with money like that. Maybe they'll squeeze that information out of Tinker, although I don't suppose there was anything illegal about that kind of gift.”

“But how did the hired accomplice manage to blow himself up?” said Julia. “Pretty clumsy of him, if you ask me.”

“It was Ham's fault,” said Homer. “Ham didn't cooperate. I saw Ham this morning in the hospital. He told me it all began coming back to him, little by little, there in the dark in that little room in the basement. There had been some stranger. Just before the explosion he had been talking to a stranger. A big man. A big fat man. A perfect stranger. Ham was supposed to meet Cheever in the memorial transept at the entrance to the great hall at eleven-thirty. They were going to have lunch in some hotel. Tinker had called Ham and made the appointment on Cheever's behalf. So Ham decided to wait for Cheever outside in the sunshine, because it was a nice day. And then this stranger came gasping up the steps and dragged him back indoors, saying Cheever would be there any minute, and then the guy rushed off again, and then, of course, Ham drifted cheerfully out onto the steps again, and this poor guy rushed back again, sweating and fuming, and tried to jockey him into position again, only his clock mechanism went off ten minutes sooner than he expected it would, because he was judging the time by the new tower clocks, and the clocks were wrong. The damn thing went off and killed him and dropped Ham into the cellar.”

“But I still don't understand why Tinker—I mean, everybody thought the dead man was Ham,” said Mary. “So I should think Cheever and Tinker would have been satisfied. What was Tinker doing later on, hanging around Memorial Hall the way he was, pretending to be a janitor?”

“Oh, Cheever was satisfied, all right,” said Homer. “But not Sloan Tinker. I talked to Tinker yesterday. He was perfectly frank and open about the whole thing. Seemed resigned to his fate.” Fortunes of war, you know the kind of thing. Anyway, he told me he had had an appointment with the man from Philadelphia for one o'clock. The man was supposed to show up and collect his fee. But he never came. So Tinker began to worry. He went over there to Memorial Hall with Cheever on an official expedition of administrative concern, and then while Cheever was pulling his chin and staring at the hole in the floor and falling on his face in the blood and turning green, Tinker was looking under the sheet. And then he saw that the blackened headless remains could belong to the man from Philadelphia just as well as they could to Ham Dow. And he began to fret. Only he didn't tell Cheever. Cheever thought Harvard was rid of its incubus at last. But poor Tinker was left with the whole thing to do over again. And of course the burning question was, where in the name of God was Dow? It haunted him, day and night. He began to pick at his coverlet and gnaw at his blanket. He began to hang around the building. At first he thought Ham might be hiding out in the basement along with all of those Rats of his. But then one day he wandered into Crawley's office and heard him calling for help by knocking on the pipe. And then he knew what had happened.”

“You know, it seems awfully strange to me,” said Julia, “that nobody in Memorial Hall recognized Sloan Tinker. I mean, you say he was walking around in plain sight all the time. He wasn't even wearing false whiskers or anything like that. Why didn't somebody say, ‘Why, Mr. Tinker, whatever are you doing with that mop and that bucket of dirty water?'”

“It's just a matter of expectation,” said Homer. “If you're used to seeing a man in a business suit behind a desk, you just don't expect to find him pushing a broom. Vice presidents of Harvard don't push brooms in the basements of university buildings. And it works the other way around. Old broom-pushers don't guide the planets in their courses. Not in this university. And of course he fooled me too. I kick myself for not even trying to see him face to face. Well, I'm black and blue from kicking myself about one thing or another.”

Mary Kelly put her hands to her head. “Oh, Homer, it really sickens me to remember how they went through all that debris down there, and didn't find Ham. How could they have missed him? They kept saying they had examined everything so carefully. I mean, they came up with tiny pieces of dynamite caps, but they missed Ham entirely. I just don't see how they could have made such an awful mistake.”

“There were a few teeth missing from that fine-tooth comb,” said Homer. “That was the trouble. And it just never occurred to any of us that they could have made a mistake. I asked McCurdy how it could have happened, and he said it wasn't his fault,
he
didn't look behind the door, it was supposed to be Tom that was going to look behind the door, and he asked Tom, and Tom said
he
didn't look behind the door, because Bert was supposed to look behind the door, and he asked Bert, and Bert said
he
didn't look behind the door, because somebody else said he'd already looked behind the door. And you know who it was? Only he didn't look behind the door either. He just said he did. Who do you think it was?” Homer looked drearily at Mary.

“I don't know, Homer. Who was it?”

“Crawley.”

“Crawley!”

“Crawley. That vile, peevish, careless, dead letter Crawley.”

“But—” Mary flapped her hands in horror. “Oh, Homer, there was Ham, right there on the other side of the door. You mean, because of Crawley, he was sealed up for almost two months, all that time without food or light or any hope of discovery, there in the dark? Oh, Crawley, Crawley.”

“That's right. It was old creepy Crawley.” Homer clenched his fist and pounded it on the table and quoted “The Man with the Hoe,” dropping his voice an octave, ominous and dire:

“Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

I mean, talk about bestial creatures snuffling about at the bottom of the great chain of being! Crawley is the bottom, the very bottom. And if Ham Dow hadn't been carrying around a lot of extra fat, he never would have made it. I asked the doctor this morning. He told me he'd seen people go for a year without eating, if they were terribly overweight. Only, of course, people like that are under supervision, and they're given vitamins and protein supplements. It was the protein that mattered most, he said. The body breaks down protein to get glucose. The brain can't get along without glucose.”

“The brain,” said Julia. “But does that mean … Homer, is he all right?”

“Oh, you bet. I talked to him. He was obviously his old self. Well, of course, I don't know what his old self was like. But I don't see how it could have been any better than the man I met this morning. And he told me he hadn't been entirely without protein because he had some candy in his pocket. Peanut brittle. The peanuts had a little protein and a little salt. The candy gave him a little sugar. It may have saved his life.”

“Well, thank God, his ordeal is over.” Julia reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of the Crimson. “Of course, things are never going to be the same again. Did you see this?” She held up the front page.

Mary leaned forward. “What is it? Some kind of map?”

“It's the tunnel. It's a map of the entire tunnel system under Harvard University. What are we going to do now? I ask you. We'll have people pouring into the tunnel from all over. Donald Maderna told me he's going to have to change every one of the locks on all those doors, just to be sure nobody but authorized people have the keys.”

Homer reached for the paper and laughed at the picture of Assistant Professor Charles Flynn. “Look at Charley. That chase through the tunnel after Tinker, it's made him a hero. Poor old Charley; he told me he thought Tinker wasn't going to give him any more trouble, because he had just finished knocking him down with a brick. But then Tinker got up and threw Charley down the stairs and disappeared down the hall. Charley picked himself up and ran after him and then they had another tussle at the entrance to the tunnel, and Tinker got away again and tried to lose himself in the labyrinth of branching corridors down there. But he made a big mistake. He headed for the part of the tunnel that goes under Massachusetts Avenue with a little cart.”

“A little cart?” said Mary. “You mean, under the street?”

“That's right. A little flatbed cart. Because of the subway. The tunnel is shallow under the street because the subway runs right underneath. So Tinker jumped on the cart and started hauling himself across with the rope. But good old Charley just pulled out his trusty pocket knife and cut the rope, and then he hauled the cart back hand over hand and nabbed him. Look at those headlines, will you. They must be six inches high. CHEEVER DIES IN TOWER PLUNGE. ASSISTANT PROF TRACES ROUTE OF HEROIC CHASE.”

“You know, Julia”—Mary laughed—”we thought coming to teach here might be a little bit tedious. I mean, to tell the truth, we thought the place might be too genteel and academic and refined for red-blooded people like us. We'd be bored, we thought, and want to go back home and do exciting things in Concord, like canoeing on the river and looking for pitcher plants in Gowing's swamp—staggering things like that. We never guessed we'd be in the middle of anything like this.”

“Well, I don't know when things will ever quiet down,” said Julia. “Our Search Committee is getting to work, looking for new candidates for president. Nominations are already pouring in Half of them are for Ham Dow. Of course, the fame of his sensational survival hasn't hurt his chances any. Oh, good heavens, that reminds me. Did you hear about our other tragedy? The news of what happened to President Cheever was too much for one of the Fellows, and the poor thing is gone.”

“Oh, dear, not Mr. Bowditch?” said Homer.

“Oh, no! Mr. Bowditch is fine, just fine. It was the youngest Fellow, Pendleton Waterhouse. Pendleton apparently heard the news over his car radio, and he promptly stopped at a local bar and downed the first glass of liquor he had ever drunk in his life, and then on the way home he ran into a telephone pole.”

“Good Lord.”

“So they've got to appoint a new Fellow. It's not common knowledge yet, but I'll let you in on a secret, because I know who it's going to be.”

“Who is it? We won't tell.”

“Me. I don't know if I'm going to like it or not. Well, of course, it will strike a blow for womankind.”

“Oh, Julia, congratulations,” said Mary.

“Hail, Fellow—!” began Homer.

“Oh, shut up. It gives me a pain, it really does.” Julia put both hands on her head and looked at them mournfully. “There's so much to do. The place is in an uproar. I don't know when we're going to get back to nice normal simple little problems like whether or not to replace the stained glass in Memorial Hall.”

“Why, Julia Chamberlain, of
course
you're going to replace the stained glass in Memorial Hall!” Someone was planting a kiss on Julia's cheek, brushing Julia's forehead with a great furry hat.

Mary jumped up. “Oh, Miss Plankton, how nice to see you again.”

Homer rose too and shook Miss Plankton's eager little outstretched hand.

“Oh, wasn't it
thrilling
” said Miss Plankton. “Didn't we all just go
wild?
” She clasped her hands, then sat down firmly beside Julia Chamberlain. “Now, Julia, dear, do tell me, what's all this about the stained glass? I heard some horrid rumor about corrugated plastic. Dreadful! You wouldn't do that? Surely not! Oh, that would be perfectly frightful!”

“But, my dear Jane, the trouble is the same as always. You know. That damned stained glass costs two hundred dollars a square foot. That comes to three hundred thousand dollars altogether. That's what it would cost to reproduce every little fragment and lead it together and put it back up in the right place. And the powers that be have got their backs up about it. Nobody wants to raise three hundred thousand dollars for a useless expenditure like a couple of enormous old stained-glass windows. It's too bad, but that's the way it is.”

Miss Plankton lifted her hands in dismay. “But, Julia, they were so beautiful! So red! So blue! Oh, the mystery, the splendor! Oh, how they always made me think of Chartres! Our grand tour back in 1932!” Miss Plankton's eyes shone with rapture. She snatched up her bag and tugged at the string. “I'll write an I.O.U. This very minute. You'll have a check for three hundred thousand dollars this afternoon. Why not?”

“But Jane, dear, I can't ask you to do a thing like that. Not on the spur of the moment. I didn't mean that you should—”

But Miss Plankton, her face flushed with pleasure, was scribbling in a rumpled little notebook, tearing out a page, thrusting it at Julia. “There, now. That settles it. If it isn't enough, just let me know. Brother Wayland and I just made a killing. It was something about the way the apple tree in the back yard cast its shadow on the snow this morning. I just had a hunch. And then, you know what? The New England Cider Syndicate went up fifteen points.”