Shortest Day (25 page)

But if he did, they didn't know it. They clung together for only a few minutes, and then Sarah pulled away and wiped her face and glowed at Arlo and ran down the stairs.

Arlo changed his clothes in a lovesick daze. He almost forgot his camera, although the exposed film was waiting for him in the astronomy lab, with its image of forty-four suns in a giant figure eight above the roof of Memorial Hall. All he had to do now was remove it from the camera and dunk it in a tray of developer. Grinning to himself, he headed for the memorial corridor and the north door.

T
he Henshaws and the Beavers had come to the Revels together. The arrangements for the evening's entertainment had been made by Helen Henshaw, who was still trying to convince herself that life was perfectly normal, that her husband was not out of his mind, that he was only going through a rather peculiar phase.

“Oh, wasn't it grand?” she said, pulling on her gloves.

“The usual riotous success,” said Ellery Beaver, winding his red scarf around his neck.

“Utterly delightful,” said Margo Beaver, buttoning her coat.

Ernest Henshaw said nothing.

Ellery shouldered his way forward to walk beside his chief. “Oh, say, Ernest, did you hear the news? The General Counsel has determined that the overpass is definitely the property of the university. It's too bad. It means we've got to do something.”

Henshaw glanced at him nervously and muttered, “Do something.”

“Oh, Margo,” said Helen, “I've been forgetting. I bought something for you. I've got it right here somewhere.” She fumbled in her bag. “Look!” Triumphantly she produced the little snow scene, and shook it to make the white flakes fall around the jolly carolers, who stood in a row with their mouths open. “It's from that shop in the Holyoke Center. They've got ever so many more, from all over the world. You can have a real collection in your bedroom.”

Margo was delighted. She took her new collectible and shook it. “Oh, how perfect. It's like a scene from
The Christmas Carol
.”

“Are you sure we can't give you people a lift?” said Ellery Beaver.

“No, no, we'll just walk across the Common.” Helen Henshaw wrapped her coat more tightly around her as they stepped out the door into a blast of icy wind. She glowered at her husband. “Ernest is such a great walker.”

“Terrible night,” said Ellery. He gave his boss a mock salute and went off with his wife in the direction of the parking garage, calling back over his shoulder, “One good thing … bitter night … tent city … throw in the towel … problem … become moot.”

“What?” said Henshaw, and through the blizzard the words came back faintly, “Moot, I said moot.”

There were no Dickensian carolers on the overpass as the Henshaws took a shortcut to the Common. Nor was the snow falling in feathery flakes as it did in the enclosed world of the little glass ball. It was coming down with a finespun violence that promised a heavy accumulation by morning. On the overpass the fabric walls of the tents billowed in the wind. A clumsy muffled shape swept snow from a sagging roof.

A tall, anxious-looking woman moved from tent to tent, putting her head inside to ask the same questions again and again: “Has anyone seen Gretchen? Where the hell is Maggody?”

The shortcut took Ernest and Helen Henshaw across Cambridge Common. Ernest hardly noticed the blowing snow. He was thinking once again about excess. He dared not look back as they approached the Civil War Memorial, because the dreaded procession of boxes was trailing after him, mounding up around him, engulfing him, threatening to block his way.

Nor did Helen concern herself with the real snow falling on the Common. As her fur-lined boots moved along the path, her vision was filled with the magical little scenes in the shop, the carolers, the snowmen, the laughing Santa Claus, the Christmas angel, the deer with her fawn. They were such perfect little worlds, so fanciful, so charming!

Therefore they both failed to see the snow-covered form of Maggody lying stiff and cold and lifeless at the foot of the memorial to the Union dead.

CHAPTER 32

Now bitter winter binds the earth

And whistling winds bring snow
,

And New Year's Day is almost come

So Gawain now must go
.

“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

T
he shortest day was prelude to the longest night and the worst storm in a couple of years.

Sarah Bailey didn't learn about the death of Jeffery Peck until she and Morgan struggled through the snow all the way home to Maple Avenue. Then they had a phone call from Kevin Barnes, who had heard about it from his girlfriend, Chickie Pickett, who said the news was all over the Science Center.

For Sarah it was the final bursting of the boiler. Scalded, she turned furiously to Morgan and cried, “Where were you this afternoon? Where
were
you?”

Morgan was ready. He smiled at her. “What are you talking about? I was right here. I called you, remember? I couldn't find the graph paper.” Then he showed her the work he had been doing, the population curves for the pied-billed grebe, and talked about his exciting new theory about diving ducks. He was tender and loving. He gathered her in his arms, and said how worried he had been about the stress she was under, and promised they would go somewhere when her work was done, somewhere sunny and warm. Then he brought up the ugly thing that had lain buried between them, the thing they never talked about.

“I'm sorry about the baby's dress,” he said, murmuring into her hair, holding her close. “I've been under stress too, but it was a terrible thing to do.” And then he took out of a drawer a new little piece of infant clothing. “Look,” he said, showing her the Donald Duck embroidery on the front, “a pied-billed grebe.”

As a peace offering it was so charming, Sarah's fears diminished. In bed with Morgan she lay quietly, her thoughts in turmoil, thinking about the violent deaths of Jeffery Peck and Tom Cobb and Henry Shady. Her doubts rose and fell, then rose again. But overwhelming her misery was her memory of the warm pressure of Arlo's lips and the tender embrace of his arms. Even with Morgan lying asleep beside her, she did not feel guilty. She lay in the dark staring at the window, watching the snow swirl around the streetlight—but every now and then she held her breath, hoping to feel a thump from the baby in her womb. There was none.

M
ary and Homer Kelly were a long time getting home. It wasn't the awful driving that kept them out of bed, or the fact that Albert Maggody lay dead on Cambridge Common. They didn't know what had happened to Maggody. They were ignorant too of the death of Jeffery Peck. They were late because of their anxiety about the tent dwellers at Harvard Towers.

Arlo Field was with them as they pushed open the door of Memorial Hall and stopped short on the steps to take in the magnitude of what was happening.

“Those homeless people can't stay out in this,” said Mary, “not tonight.”

“Hell, no,” said Homer. “Come on, let's get 'em out of there.”

Arlo was still dizzy with the thought of Sarah. He had to force himself to remember the completed film waiting for him in his camera, the fulfillment of his year of work. “Right,” he said, “but where can they go?”

“There are a couple of shelters,” said Mary. “And, good Lord, what about Gretchen? We've got to find Gretchen first. She can't give birth in a tent in a snowstorm.”

But when they put their heads inside the tents they found most of the people in Palmer Nifto's encampment already gone, including Gretchen.

The girl called Millie, one of the kids from Phillips Brooks House, was unplugging her coffeepot and pouring the coffee out into the snow. Her eyes were all that showed between hat and scarf. “Gretchen?” she said. “No, she hasn't been back.”

“Maybe she's in Saint Elizabeth's, having her baby,” said Mary hopefully.

“Nope,” said Millie, “I called there. Nobody's seen her for a couple of days. Maggody's missing too.”

Homer took the heavy pot from Millie. “Maggody too? My God.”

Mary looked at Homer fiercely. She scowled at Arlo. “We've got to find them.”

Blinding flurries of snow hurled themselves at the crevices between Homer's scarf and his neck and lodged in his hair and beard. He uttered a sepulchral laugh. “Well, goddamnit, of course we've got to find them.”

“Me too,” said Arlo. “I'll look too.” He pulled his knitted hat down over his ears, mopped at his glasses, and tried to dismiss his camera from his mind.

They helped Millie carry her stuff back to Phillips Brooks House, and then they fanned out—Mary to Harvard Square and Homer to the Yard. Arlo's bailiwick was the subway entrances and train platforms and the levels where all the buses came and went.

It was no use. Gretchen Milligan and Albert Maggody were nowhere to be found.

At two in the morning, Homer and Mary met Arlo for coffee in an all-night bistro on JFK Street. They were stiff with cold. Their hats and coats were clotted with snow. Arlo warmed his hands on his coffee mug and passed along a piece of shocking news. In his exploration of the outbound subway platform he had run across a student of his, who had told him about Jeffery Peck's fall from a balcony at the Science Center.

“Jesus!” said Arlo. “Which balcony?” The student didn't know.

In the all-night café Homer and Mary were too numb to do more than shake their heads in horror. The three of them sat wordlessly around the plastic table, crouched under the hideous glare of the fluorescent lights, sipped their coffee with blue lips, and went home to bed.

So it wasn't Homer or Mary or Arlo who found the dead body of old man Maggody. It was Palmer Nifto.

At three o'clock in the morning, while a snowplow clattered and banged along Garden Street, clearing the thoroughfare for the morning traffic, Palmer left his bar in Harvard Square and crossed Cambridge Common, pushing his rubber boots through the drifted snow, heading for his cozy office bedroom in Memorial Hall.

Palmer felt pleasantly lit, and warm as toast in the fur coat flapping around his knees. The coat was a lucky find from the secondhand bin of First Parish Unitarian. He had managed to get there right after a new batch of stuff came in.

Palmer's mind was hot and racing, making plans for the morrow. He would have missed the sight of old man Maggody if the flashing headlights of the snowplow had not flickered over the body stretched out in the snow at the foot of the Civil War Memorial. Then something at the side of his eye registered the familiar shape of
homeless-man-asleep
, and he stopped to take a look.

He knew at once that it was Maggody, and that Maggody was dead. There was a stiffness in the form under the blanket. The face was white with hoarfrost, the beard a nest of icicles. Palmer touched Maggody's old cheek, and his hand drew back. Maggody's face was cold as the bitter air.