The Memorial Hall Murder (13 page)

The surface over which he was dragging himself forward was lumpy with gravel and rock, but he persevered, making a slow journey over small sharp hills and valleys, until he was brought up short. His head cracked against a barrier. Falling back on his heels, Ham opened his mouth in a soundless cry. Then his shoulders sagged and he breathed heavily, recovering from the blow. The air in his mouth tasted of plaster dust. He closed his mouth and breathed through his nose, and the darkness around him smelled dank and wet. Reaching out with his hands, he felt the barrier. It was a flat wall with a painted surface. Slowly he lurched forward again, keeping his left shoulder against the wall. Soon the dry grit under his hands and knees gave way to a bare floor, seamless and smooth like linoleum. One of his hands slipped. The floor was wet. Ham put his wet palm to his parched lips, and then, panting with eagerness, he lumbered forward, groping for the source of the moisture. His shoulder ran into something, and he stopped and explored it with his hands.

The obstruction was a pipe, running up the wall over his head. His trembling fingers tried to follow it down to the floor, but the lower end of the pipe was broken. A slight trickle of moisture seeped from the broken rim.

It was water. Plain cold water. The wetness on Ham's fingers tasted slightly metallic, but otherwise it had no taste. The trickle was hardly more than a drop or two coalescing on the metal rim, but it was continuous. Painfully Ham got down on his elbows and lapped at the end of the pipe. He lapped and lapped, then sat back to rest, then lapped again. Ham lapped up the water trickling from the broken pipe like a thirsty dog until the fiery need of his body was a little abated, and then he stretched out on the floor and put his aching head on his arm once again and went to sleep.

Chapter Twenty

Homer told himself it wasn't inconsistent. It wasn't a positive action on his part to call up Marley. It was just curiosity. There was no harm in finding out how things were going. “I just wondered what's happening,” he said to Peter Marley.

And then Peter told him about Ham's appointment book. It had turned up in Ham's house. They had searched Ham's house on Martin Street from top to bottom and found the appointment book. “And the appointment for eleven-thirty, October sixteenth, was in there. On the page for October sixteenth there's an entry, ‘11:30, J.C.'”

“J.C.? Who did Ham know with the initials J.C.?”

“Lots of people. After all, half the people in the world are named John or Jack or Jean or Joan or Jim, or something like that, and you'd be surprised how many of them have surnames beginning with C. Of course, we looked for an address book too, to find out who he did know, but so far we haven't turned up anybody at all likely.”

“I know somebody with the initials J.C.,” said Homer.

“Jesus Christ.”

“No. James Cheever.”

“President Cheever? Oh, wow.”

“Why don't you take a look at Cheever's appointment book for October sixteenth? Maybe it says, ‘11:30, Ham Dow.'”

“Oh, no. Not me.” There was a small silence. “Well, of course, Ham did know Cheever. They were classmates. I know that for a fact. Only I doubt they had much in common.”

“Except for Harvard. The welfare of this vast educational slaughterhouse, if you'll forgive a scholarly quotation. I'll tell you what. I'll do it for you.” Homer could feel his big nose twitching with eagerness to violate Cheever's sanctuary in Massachusetts Hall. “I'll just barge in on Cheever and see what happens. All he can do is throw me out.”

“Good. Only leave me out of it. Whatever you do, don't mention my name.”

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

was written in white paint across the lintel of the door of Massachusetts Hall. Homer admired the small neat letters. They had been executed by a skillful hand. The O's were round, the spacing ample. You didn't need a big gold sign if you were the President of Harvard.

The receptionist wasn't at all sure Mr. Cheever would be free to see Mr. Kelly. She passed him down the hall to Mrs. Herbert. Mrs. Herbert wasn't at all sure either, but she said she'd find out. She knocked on the door at one side of her office and poked her head into the next room, while Homer stood modestly waiting, studying the patterns in Mrs. Herbert's rug.

“Who is it, Mrs. Herbert?” said James Cheever. “Tinker and I still have a good deal to talk over this morning. I'm not at all sure—”

“It's Professor Kelly. He's teaching in the English Department. He says it's urgent.”

“Oh, yes. Kelly.” Cheever made a gesture of impatience and glanced at Sloan Tinker. “He was the one who gave that report at the Overseers' meeting the other day. What do you think?”

Tinker got up from the sofa and stood by the fireplace. “Better find out what the man is up to,” he said.

“Well, then, send him in. You'd think he would have the courtesy to make an appointment.” A sense of what was due to his dignity rose up in the breast of the President of Harvard, and when his visitor walked into the room, James Cheever did not offer him a chair. “How do you do, Professor Kelly,” he said, looking intently at the grumpy portrait of William Stoughton on the wall. “I think you know Mr. Tinker. Now, what exactly is it you want to see me about?”

The man was so thick-skinned he didn't know he had transgressed in any way. He was grinning at Tinker, walking over to shake his hand, pulling up a chair on his own initiative and sitting down. The chair happened to be a particularly fine nineteenth-century chair with a needlepoint cushion. It had once belonged to President Pusey's mother-in-law. Kelly was tipping it back on its rear legs. Next thing you knew, he would be putting his feet on the desk. The man was preposterous. Now look at the fool; he was jumping up and peering into the glass case at the Great Salt.

“Good heavens, what's that thing? Some sort of silver spittoon? Haven't you got it upside down?”

President Cheever shivered with loathing. “No, I haven't got it upside down. Those prongs on top were meant to hold a napkin. It happens to be part of the Harvard silver collection, a rather precious seventeenth-century saltcellar.”

“Oh, right, right. I see how it works. The salt goes in that little hole in the top. Funniest-looking damn thing I ever saw.”

Homer sat down again, and smiled at the man on the other side of the table. All at once he saw him for what he was, and for the first time he felt a pang of sympathy for the President of Harvard. Cheever was a beleaguered scholar who had been promoted by the Peter Principle beyond the utmost reach of his capacity, when he should have been left to browse in the field of his own competency as a professor of fine arts, over there in the Fogg Museum on the other side of Quincy Street. He should never have been raised to a position of authority over living men and women who refused to stay poised like Homeric figures on a vase or icons from Byzantium in the perfection of eternity. Here he was, the poor fool, enthroned at a handsome old table upon which was dumped every day an untidy sack, tumbling and squirming with human problems. The poor man had to put his shrinking hand into it every single day and get his fingers bitten off. A good chap on the whole. A scholar. You had to have scholars. Homer was a scholar himself, after a fashion.

“I just wanted to talk to you about the death of Hamilton Dow,” said Homer. “And I'm glad Mr. Tinker is here. I'd like to get your perspective on the matter, see things from your two points of view. I mean, I understand, sir, you were one of Mr. Dow's oldest acquaintances. I'm told you were members of the same class here at Harvard.”

“Yes, we were,” said James Cheever. “But, I must say, I hardly knew the man. I mean, we always moved in different spheres.”

“Would I be wrong in thinking that it was fundamentally a matter of educational philosophy?” said Homer, not having the least idea what he meant at all. “The two of you had rather different outlooks on the whole?”

He was blundering around in the dark, but to his amazement, his fumbling finger had touched a vital nerve at the first try.

“Radically different,” said President Cheever firmly.

“Different persuasions altogether.” Sloan Tinker moved away from the fireplace and sat down at the table that had been the desk of Harvard presidents since President Eliot's day. “In fact, I think I can say frankly that it is no secret that President Cheever was responsible for denying academic tenure to Hamilton Dow.”

“Tenure? You denied him tenure?” Homer stared at Cheever. “But that's the first time I've heard anything but enthusiasm for the man. He seems to have been so universally popular.”

“Popular,” said Tinker, with a dry laugh. “Oh, yes, he was popular.”

“He certainly was,” said President Cheever bitterly. “He was the kind of man who never went anywhere without his little band of disciples. I think he had some romantic notion of himself as a sort of beggar king, with a ragged band of lackeys, vassals, and cupbearers dragging along behind him like some sort of patchwork cloak.” The President of Harvard made an elaborate sweeping gesture in the air.

“The man had a messiah complex,” said Tinker. “It's as simple as that.”

Homer studied the emptiness behind the President's chair, where Cheever had been flapping his arm. It contained no disciples of any kind. “No one would ever accuse you, sir,” he said, “of being a messiah.”

Warmed by this compliment, Cheever expanded. “When I think of the influence for good the man might have been, with that mob of supporters he swept up from the streets of Cambridge. But instead—oh, I know one should not speak ill of the dead, but so much sheer foolishness has been spoken about Ham Dow, Mr. Kelly, it's about time somebody revealed the truth. After all, facts are facts. Did you ever see the man in the flesh?”

Homer shook his head. He had lost his tongue. He was astounded. The two of them were letting themselves go. They were enjoying themselves, digging their spoons feverishly into a blood pudding. He sat back, trying not to let his jaw drop too far, and let the repast go on.

“Tell me, Mr. Kelly,” said James Cheever, “did you ever read Pico della Mirandola's
Oration on the Dignity of Man?
”

Homer shook his head dumbly from side to side.

“Well, it's simply the old universal chain of being again, only Pico was a child of the Renaissance, and he had an extraordinary view of the chain of being. Man alone of all created things, he said, has the power to move freely on the chain, to fall by his own free choice to the level of beasts or even to the condition of vegetable life, or to rise to the heights, to become an angel, or even to ascend to the very summit to become one with God himself. A noble view of the creation, I've always thought. Well, Dow was one of the beasts. Whenever I think of Pico's great chain of being, I see Dow groveling at the bottom of the ladder of human possibility.”

“Well, I guess I see what you mean,” said Homer. “He was somewhat lower than the angels, as people say. Is that it?”

Sloan Tinker made a hooting noise in his throat. “Lower than the angels. I should think he was. He was a slobbering pig of a man. Not exactly what one would like to see as an example for the young men and women in this institution. Think of the gluttony! To have become so obese!”

It was a shame Ratchit wasn't here, thought Homer. Ratchit could have made some remark about the magnificent human body God had given you, so you ought to take care of it, right? But then he forgot about Ratchit, because Cheever was talking again about Pico della Mirandola, and it was clear to Homer that he was witnessing James Cheever at his best, warming to a subject in which he was at home.

“You know, Mr. Kelly, when I read the
Oration on the Dignity of Man
, I often think of Harvard University. Pico speaks of the friendship through which all rational souls shall come into harmony in the one mind which is above all minds, how they shall in some ineffable way become altogether one. I think of this university as Pico speaks of the soul, that it may be adorned with manifold philosophy as with the splendor of a courtier, surrounded by a varied throng of sciences, to become the bride of the King of Glory. Of course, in my opinion what Pico meant by the King of Glory was simply those things that are of eternal value—truth, beauty, justice—all that I hope we cherish in this university. I mean in the fundamental sense. Our ultimate purpose as educators here.”

“Well, yes,” murmured Homer, who was becoming more and more befuddled. “You mean, like
veritas
and all that sort of thing.”

Sloan Tinker leaned forward. “The point is, Mr. Kelly, some of us think of this university as setting a standard. Our students, after all, are the most sifted of the sifted, the best the nation has to offer. And therefore we owe them something rather out of the ordinary. And one man's truth can be another man's poison. We must choose what we offer them very carefully.”