The Memorial Hall Murder (16 page)

Mr. Crawley came out of his office just as Homer lifted his hand to knock on his door. “Sorry. Gotta go. In a hurry,” said Mr. Crawley.

“Oh, Mr. Crawley, I just wanted to ask you if you know anything about that guy who lives upstairs.”

“Upstairs? There ain't nobody living upstairs.”

“Haven't you seen that character in the white sheet who stands up there on the balcony sometimes?”

“Oh, you mean that weirdo.”

“Well, could you tell me how he might have acquired a key to the room above your office, right upstairs?”

“Upstairs? I don't know about no rooms upstairs. It's all them little rooms in the basement. Dow, he had a master key. You know, the guy that got his head blowed off. He let them practice all over the basement. There was all this noise coming out all over. Terrible. You couldn't hardly hear yourself think. Go ahead. Go on down there. See for yourself. Whole place, full of them, like rats in the wall. Coming out of the woodwork.” Crawley pulled his hat down further over his face and shambled off in the direction of the south entry, where he nearly ran into Mary Kelly, who was hurrying in from out of doors.

“Oh, hello, there.” Mary smiled at Mr. Crawley. “Oh, Homer, I'm sorry to be late. Those kids, I don't know where they all come from. There's more of them every day.”

“Coming out of the woodwork, right?”

“Exactly. And they all want to talk. They cluster around. They're all eating
lunch
down there now. It's like a picnic. It's really nice. Oh, Vick, dear, hello.”

“What's that?” said Vick. She was standing stock-still, her arms full of music, staring at the shoe under Homer's arm.

“What's what?” said Homer. “Oh, this? It's a glass slipper. Cinderella's glass slipper. No, no. It's somebody's shoe. I found it on the balcony up there. I'll bet it's Ham Dow's shoe, blown off his left foot.”

“That's not Ham's shoe. Ham would never have worn a shoe like that.”

“He wouldn't?”

“No. He wore thick laced-up boots. Or sneakers. Not the yachting kind of sneakers. The cheap kind that lace above the ankle. You know, the kind that say ‘Coach.' We used to kid him about being the coach.”

“Well, what kind was he wearing the day he died?”

“I'm not sure. I don't remember. But not anything like that one there. He would never have worn anything so sort of yukky and disgusting as that shoe there. Never. Never in a million years.”

“Hello, Mr. Ratchit? This is Homer Kelly. You remember me. I came to see you about the bombing victim at Harvard.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure, sure. I remember you. What's on your mind?”

“Can you tell me if the man still had both shoes on his feet? I know most of his clothing was blown off or burned in the explosion, but I wondered if his shoes …?”

“Sure, sure, I remember his shoe. He only had the one shoe. The other one was gone. You mean, you got the other shoe? Big shoe, black, with like a buckle on the side? Left shoe? That's right. That's it. The right shoe was almost burnt to a crisp, but you could see what it was. Where'd it turn up?”

“On the balcony. It must have blown right up in the air and landed on the floor of the balcony.”

“It's all run down on the outside, right? That's it. You get a really overweight individual, they wear their shoes down fast on the side.”

“Well, thanks, Mr. Ratchit. That's fine. You're a big help. Thank you very much.”

Women, thought Homer, putting down the phone. They were supposed to be so observant of small detail. Well, this time they hadn't been. Vick was wrong. Yukky and disgusting or not, the big black shoe with the silver buckle had once belonged to Hamilton Dow.

Homer tapped the shoe on the palm of his hand thoughtfully. There was something else he ought to do. Just out of curiosity. He should explore the basement. He should take a look at the basement and see what the woodwork was like—the woodwork from which the rats were so abundantly pouring.

Chapter Twenty-three

Lying flat on his back on the floor gazing upward, it occurred to Ham to wonder if he were blind. It was stupid of him not to have thought of it before. Perhaps the reason he couldn't see his hand in front of his face was not because there was no light, but because he had lost his sight. But if this accident or disaster, whatever it was, had blinded him, then why was there no great pain in his eyes? His eyes felt all right. At least they didn't hurt any more than any other part of him hurt. It was his head that bothered him most. The knobs on the back of his head. But even his head was feeling a little better. The great lumps were subsiding. They were less like huge swollen eggs. He must have had a concussion of some sort, perhaps even a fractured skull. There had been some kind of disaster or explosion. It must have been an explosion, to have created so much havoc around him, the fallen beam and the litter of brick and the chunks of concrete block, the bits and pieces of rock, the drifts of gritty plaster dust.

Maybe there had been an explosion in the gas line. Maybe all of Cambridge had gone up in smoke, or in some gigantic atomic blast. Maybe the whole city was buried in ruins. Otherwise you would think he'd be hearing picks and shovels, the hangings and hammerings of a rescue party, all his old friends and students digging out their old professor. Even if they thought he was dead, you'd think they'd be trying to remove his body from the rubble.

Well, give them time. Ham wasn't about to panic. He was going to get out of this somehow. After all, he hadn't really tried to free himself yet by his own wits. He had found the door, and the door had refused to open, and he had given up in exhaustion. But now he was feeling a little stronger. Ham breathed in great chestfuls of air, and pulled himself to a sitting position. Then he stood up shakily, reached out for the wall, and leaned against it. How long had he been without food? His trousers were hanging slack. He was feeling too ill to be hungry—still, it had been a long time. It occurred to him to wonder what was in his pockets. Maybe there was something useful in his pants pockets, something he could use to open the lock of the door. Carefully he removed the contents of his back pockets. He found his wallet. He put it away again. He found a folded piece of paper. He couldn't remember what was written on the paper, but as he unfolded it, a picture floated out of the folds and appeared before him in the dark. It was the face of Vick Van Horn. Vick was looking at him in sharp concern. The image was so bright and clear, her glance so full of dread, Ham grunted with surprise. He folded the paper and put it away again. Then he turned his attention to one of his front pockets and found a big lump. What on earth was that? The lump had a crinkled metallic surface. Aha, aha! Ham felt his face stretching in a smile. It was aluminum foil wrapped around a great chunk of Emma Esterhazy's peanut brittle. God bless the good Esterhazy! Ham broke off a tiny chunk of the peanut brittle and ate it slowly, savoring the sweet salt juices trickling down his throat. Then he reached out for the pipe, knelt down beside it, ran his finger around the broken rim and washed his brief dinner down. Then he finished off the first meal in his dark prison by wetting his hands and washing his face.

His spirits rose. His mind cleared, and something else occurred to him. Not only did the pipe supply him with fresh water, it might be good for something else. Where did it go? Ham crouched beside it until his ear was pressed against the open end. He could hear faint windy sighings in the pipe, slight tringlings and distant thrumming noises. He turned his head and put his mouth against it. “Hello,” he shouted. “Helloooooo, out there. Can you heeeeeaaaar meeeeee?”

He took his mouth away and turned his head so that his ear was pressed up against the pipe. Again he could hear the windy whistling, the thrumming—but nothing more.

He sat back on his heels and thought about the pipe. Where did it go?

Suppose he were buried somewhere under Memorial Hall. Just suppose. Because the last thing he could remember (except for the insistent picture of the stranger's face with its look of surprise—and Ham was beginning to think he must have dreamt the stranger's face, along with all those other crazy things)—the last real thing he could remember was the rehearsal in Sanders Theatre. So perhaps he was walled up in one of those little rooms in the basement. There was no other place he could possibly be. Although for the life of him he couldn't understand why he didn't hear people going and coming in the hall outside, if that was where he was. (For the life of him. Well, that was some kind of joke.)

Well, then, if he was under Memorial Hall somewhere, then the pipe could go in any one of ten million directions. It would be part of the enormous interconnecting plumbing system. It might even pass through rooms and passages and corridors where people were actually passing by. By calling through the pipe over and over again, he might eventually be heard.

No, no, that was wrong. It wouldn't do any good to call through the pipe. It was a matter of simple physics. It wouldn't do any good to make standing waves of air inside the pipe unless by some wild stroke of luck the pipe came to an end against somebody's ear. But if the pipe
itself were
vibrating, then the noise would be heard all along its whole length, not just at the end.

Ham got up off his knees and kicked his way slowly along the floor until he found a brick. Then he knelt down and hit the pipe with it. BANG BANG. He put his ear to the pipe and struck it again. The blow rang in the metal. It sounded musical and loud.

He began with the call for help in Morse code.

bingbingbing BANGBANGBANG bingbingbing

bingbingbing BANGBANGBANG bingbingbing …

Chapter Twenty-four

bingbingbing BANGBANGBANG bingbingbing

bingbingbing BANGBANGBANG bingbingbing

Jerry Crawley woke up. He turned over on his side on the sofa, lifted his head, and stared at the pipe rising from floor to ceiling in the corner of the room. Jeez, the thing was making a hell of a racket. Mr. Crawley pulled his hat down over one ear and huddled his head down in the crevice of the sofa again.

bingbingbing BANGBANGBANG bingbingbing

bingbingbing BANGBANGBANG bingbingbing

Christ, you didn't get no peace. He got up off the sofa, took his coat from the hook on the door, settled down on the sofa again with the coat over his head, and went back to sleep.

BANG bingbangbing! BANG bingbangbing!
bingbingBANGbing! bingbingBANGbing!
bingBANGbingBAAANG BANG

In the room above Mr. Crawley's office, the Messiah of Memorial Hall paid no attention to the rhythm of the “Hallelujah Chorus” thundering in the pipe in the corner of his room. His attention was elsewhere. He was squatting naked on his sleeping bag reading the Book of Revelation.

He who testifies to these things says,

“Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!