A Season in Purgatory (17 page)

“Do you know, Jerry?” asked Grace.

“No.”

“Constant, what did she mean?”

“I don’t know, Ma.”

“She meant it was out of order, the natural order of things, for a child to die before her parents,” I said.

“Oh.”

There was silence in the car.

“What do you say, Gerald? Do we have to go? I sent flowers. I sent a note. I sent a Mass card. We went to the funeral. We signed the book in the church so they’ll know we were there. Why should we go to the house?”

“We’re going, Grace,” said Gerald. “We’ll go through the line. We’ll all say, ‘Sorry for your trouble,’ and we’ll leave. No one take a drink if drinks are offered. Does everyone understand? No drinks. Nor a sandwich. We’ll just go through the line and then we’ll leave.”

“But why?” insisted Grace.

“Because our son was one of the last people to see her alive, that’s why. It’s a courtesy.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Don’t go too fast, Charlie,” said Gerald to the chauffeur. “We don’t want to arrive at their house before the Utleys do.”

“Did you notice our flowers, Gerald? The cross of white orchids? With the purple centers? I thought ours was the prettiest wreath there.”

The atmosphere in the Utley house was subdued. In the sunroom a bar had been set up. A maid in a black uniform passed cheese puffs. Most people stood in line quietly, waiting to offer their condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Utley. Gerald and Grace stopped to speak to friends. I stood behind Constant in the line.

“I’m Constant Bradley, Mrs. Utley,” he said. He held out his hand.

Luanne Utley looked at Constant and nodded. She did not offer him her hand in return.

He returned his hand to his side. “I am so terribly sorry about Winifred.”

Luanne continued to look at Constant. Then she turned to look at her husband, who followed her gaze back to Constant.

“I saw her on the night it happened. At the club dance. I am so sorry.”

She nodded.

“I don’t know if you remember, but you once gave me a ride home from Milford right to the door of my house when I was hitchhiking with my friend, Harrison Burns. You were so nice and went out of your way. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” replied Mrs. Utley. “I think there are people behind you waiting to say hello.”

He turned to me behind him. Grace and Gerald had caught up. “This is my mother and father, and Harrison Burns, whom you have met. He was at the club the other night, too.”

Grace and Gerald held out their hands. “I’m sorry for your trouble,” said Gerald. “I am so terribly sorry, Mrs. Utley,” said Grace.

“It makes you question if there is a loving God,” said Luanne Utley. “I believe there is, I suppose, but I don’t understand His plan. I don’t know why this had to happen to a girl as innocent as Winifred was, with so much to live for.”

Then Mrs. Utley looked beyond Constant to the next person standing in line to speak to her. “Hello, Felicia,” she said, holding out her hand. “Thank you for coming.”

If Constant was aware that he had been snubbed, he gave no indication of it. Leaving, someone—Buzzy Thrall we later heard it was, from the Utleys’ maid who told Colleen—said, “He roughed up Weegie Somerset last summer in Watch Hill.” We walked on as if we had not heard.

As the weeks went by, there was an outcry by the residents of Scarborough Hill, fueled by a reporter named Gus Bailey, who seemed to have an obsession with the case, that no arrest had been made in the Winifred Utley murder. Back at Milford for the spring term prior to graduation, we read the accounts of the police work in the newspapers. Constant discussed them with a curious detachment, as if they had to do with other people than ourselves. Finally, in response to the ever increasing criticism, the police chief answered his critics in a press conference that was televised in part on the local news.

“I believe I know who killed Winifred Utley,” said Police Chief Dennis Quish in an opening statement.

I watched the television set, scarcely daring to breathe. I could feel the more rapid pace of my heart. We were in the Common Room of Hayes Hall, in the free period between dinner and study hall. It was crowded with boys. I looked over at Constant. He watched the set, surrounded by the coterie that always gathered around him during this period, the bridge-playing group. He seemed unperturbed by Quish’s statement. There on the screen behind the police chief was Captain Riordan, who had quizzed us, separately and together,
gether, for hours, who had taken our fingerprints, who had taken hair and blood samples from us.

“It is my theory that there were two assaults, the first in the wooded area that separates the Somerset and Bradley estates, where a struggle occurred, and the second where the actual killing took place, nearer to the Utley house,” said Chief Quish.

“Are you willing to share your thoughts on who it is?” asked Gus Bailey. Bailey had followed the case from the beginning.

“No, I am unwilling. I cannot prove it, so I cannot reveal it,” replied the chief.

“Has this person been questioned?” asked Bailey again.

“Yes.”

“Has this person taken a lie detector test?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Legal reasons.”

“Do you feel you have been impeded in your investigation?” asked Gus Bailey.

“Impeded?”

“Intimidated then?”

“By whom?”

“Wealthy people. Powerful people. Someone who could be protecting someone.”

“I think the police have done a good job. Had there been a cover-up of any kind, I think it would have come to light by now. You cannot keep secrets in America.”

“That has not been my experience, Chief Quish,” said Gus Bailey.

“I have read your accounts of this case, Mr. Bailey,” replied Chief Quish.

“Why has the medial examiner’s office refused to release a copy of the autopsy report?” asked Bailey.

“I do not know that. That is not under my jurisdiction.”

“It is not customary for the autopsy in a homicide to be performed in Farmington?” asked Gus Bailey.

“Usually, yes.”

“Why was it done at St. Monica’s Hospital?”

“I do not know.”

“So what happens?”

“We wait. People have a way of tripping themselves up in time,” said the police chief.

“Have you discussed your theory on who you think killed Winifred Utley with anyone?” asked Bailey.

“I have told Mrs. Utley, Winifred’s mother, the name of the person.”

“Do you believe she will reveal the killer’s name?”

“I believe she will not reveal the name.”

“Why?”

“There is no proof. Only a feeling. But I have a written statement from Mrs. Utley.”

“Will you read it?”

“Of course. This is from Raymond Utley, Luanne Utley, the mother of Winifred Utley.” From his inside pocket Captain Quish took a folded piece of blue writing paper and opened it. The message was handwritten. “I quote: ‘Please, please, if you know anything, come forward. There must be someone who knows something who has remained silent. Somebody knows.’ ”

I looked across the Common Room to Constant. For an instant our eyes met. Then quickly we both turned back to the television set.

“Captain Riordan? May I ask you the same question I asked Chief Quish?” asked Gus Bailey.

“What question was that?” asked the captain. He moved up from behind to take his place beside Chief Quish.

“Has your investigation of this murder been impeded by wealthy and powerful people?”

“I think Chief Quish has already answered that question, Mr. Bailey,” said Captain Riordan.

Years later, at the trial, in the corridor of the courthouse, Captain Riordan, by then retired from the force, recalled that period for me. It was on the day that Kitt cut me in the hallway and Constant pissed on my trousers in the men’s room. Riordan, watching the Bradley family move as a group to the elevator for the lunch break, said to me, “Maybe it was the Bradley money. Maybe it was their position. But I believe I was subconsciously intimidated by them. I always thought you knew more than you were saying. I didn’t suspect you. I didn’t think you were responsible, but I thought you could be protecting Constant Bradley. But also, I didn’t want to believe it, about anyone in that family. Look at the good they’d done for the poor of the city. I mean, I grew up in Bog Meadow. I grew up on stories of the Bradleys. Do you remember Ben Potts, the detective who was with me, the black guy? He said that night after we left the house, ‘Listen, that guy Desmond saved my brother’s life. He operated on my brother wearing a tux. He held my brother’s heart in the palm of his hand while he took the bullet out. My brother’d be dead if it weren’t for him.’ And Congressman Sandro. Senator Sandro now. I voted for him then. I vote for him still. And the crippled one. What was his name?”

“Jerry. Gerald Junior.”

“Jerry. He almost had me convinced it was a transient off I-Ninety-five. And then there was Father Murphy. He was a straight-shooter all the way. I didn’t know until I saw him sitting at that table having dinner that he was an old friend of the family.”

“But he wasn’t. That was his first time there. He was a dress extra, but he didn’t know it.”

“I found that out later. It was a performance they put on for us, everyone participating, everyone playing a part. In all my years of police work I never had a suspect as willing to have his prints taken as Constant Bradley, or to be helpful in every way. In contrast, Billy Wadsworth, the other suspect, was snotty and difficult. And so was his old man. His old man told me Constant had roughed up the Somerset girl the summer before in Watch Hill, but she denied it and so did her family.”

The program ended. Someone switched off the television set. That Constant had been near such a drama, that he was the last person to have danced with the ill-fated Winifred Utley on the night of her death, that he had been questioned by the police, fingerprinted, and released, enhanced his glamorous image at Milford. It was of far greater significance to his classmates than the visit of the Pope to his family’s home. For them, Winifred Utley had achieved the sort of mythic quality accorded to film stars who die tragically and too young, and Constant had become part of her legend.

“What was she like?” the boys asked him over and over. “Tell us about Winifred.”

He never balked at the questions. He seemed never to mind talking about her. “I hardly knew her,” he replied. “I’d only met her once before the night we danced together. She came through the woods at Easter, onto our property. We were playing softball, and she’d been sent over from Billy Wadsworth’s house to tell us we were making too much noise and were ruining the Easter egg hunt at the Wadsworths’. Ask Harry. He was there. She was a pretty little thing, wasn’t she, Harry? So fresh. So lovely. And a wonderful dancer.”

But I went unquestioned by the boys. That I was there, too, that I had an acquaintance with Winifred Utley, meant very little to them, much as Constant tried to include me. I had never amounted to much in the eyes of the boys at Milford, even though I was about to be the valedictorian of our graduating class.

The weeks went by. Nothing happened. The story ceased to appear in the newspapers and on the television news. Only Gus Bailey relentlessly pursued it. People talked of other things. I was tortured by the knowledge I possessed, but Constant seemed untroubled by thoughts of Winifred Utley.

“Does it ever haunt you, about Winifred?” I asked.

He looked away from me. He looked to the right, then to the left, as if in search of an answer. But then he said, quite simply, “I never give her a thought. It happened. It’s over. It was her fault. There’s nothing that can be done about it. We have to go on with our own lives. Why do you keep brooding, Harry, for Christ’s sake?”

There was irritation in his voice as he said the last sentence. He walked away from me. He wanted not to see me anymore. At the door of his room, he turned back. “Besides, murder’s not the big deal it used to be.”

We heard from Yale. We were in. Constant was elated. He ran to the hall telephone to call his father. Their conversation was loud and joyous, with whoops of Bradley delight emanating from Constant. I did not experience the elation I had expected to feel when I became the recipient of such glad tidings. We prepared for graduation. Constant, ever popular, was to be class speaker. I was to write his speech. And I did.

The entire Bradley family arrived in two limousines. I was standing with Aunt Gert as we watched the cars come
slowly down the hill to Hayes Hall. Charlie drove the first with Gerald and Grace, Congressman Sandro, Dr. Desmond, and Jerry. Charlie’s brother, Conor, who was called in on special occasions when the entire family went places together, drove the second with Maureen and her fiancé, Freddy Tierney, Mary Pat, and Kitt. Kitt looked adorable, even with the retainer on her teeth.

Grace carried a garden parasol that matched the silk print of her Paris dress. “It’s the latest thing,” she said to Mrs. Shugrue, the wife of the headmaster, who had remarked on its usefulness on such a sunny day. “All the ladies at the races at Longchamps had them this year.” When she saw me, Grace kissed me on both cheeks. “Hello, Harrison, dear. My, how smart you look in your white trousers and blazer. Gerald, have you seen Harrison?”

Gerald greeted me in a jovial manner, much the friendliest he had ever shown me. I introduced them to Aunt Gert. She, dressed primly, acknowledged the introduction primly. She was no fan of the Bradleys, thinking they had somehow bedazzled me with their excessive lives, but Gerald greeted her warmly, called her Gert, and introduced her in turn to all of his children. “This is Harry’s aunt, who does so much good for the missionary fathers,” he said. “We are all so fond of your nephew, Gert.” Even Gert, by the end of the day, was not impervious to the Bradley charm.

The family moved like royalty through the crowd of parents, students, and faculty, smiling and affable, waving to those they knew, kissing the cheeks of some, chatting, introducing. They walked differently at Milford than they did at Scarborough Hill, as certain of themselves in those surroundings, where they had given the chapel, the carillon, and the new library, as if they were in horse-drawn carriages waving to their subjects at Ascot. Congressman Sandro, Dr. Desmond, and Jerry had all preceded their graduating brother at
Milford, and their return for the ceremonies was the occasion for fond greetings with favorite masters. The faculty all addressed Sandro as Congressman. He was the only Milford alumnus sitting in Washington, and over and over that day they spoke about his future as a senator and then, “with God’s will,” as they always intoned, they predicted that he would one day be in the Oval Office.