The Memorial Hall Murder (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

Homer had another look at Harvard Square the next morning, when he stopped at the newsstand on the corner for a copy of the
Crimson.
The full surge of the square flowed around him, collecting in pulses at the crossing and then streaming forward, trucks thundering and squealing around the corner of Mass Av and Brattle, pedestrians seething on the curb beside the clock, the pavement trembling with the vibration of trains passing through dark tunnels underground. Homer had once supervised the throbbing tides of traffic from a kind of lighthouse on the curb across the street, but now the lighthouse was gone, and the traffic lights alone held sway over the square.
STOP,
they commanded.
GO. WALK. DONT WALK.

He looked at the spot on the sidewalk where his tiny house had stood, and remembered the occasional resentment that had risen in his breast as he had watched his peers shoulder their way across the street. They had seemed to him in those days insolent with privilege. It had been a judgment tainted with envy. Night school at Northeastern had not gilded his head with the kind of light that fell on these students now, as they ran boldly across Mass Av to the Yard against the oncoming traffic as if by a kind of divine right. Harvard, after all, was a kind of religion. One said the word with reverence, or ironic awe:
Haaaarvard.
Strait was the gate and narrow the way that led through the admissions office into the sanctified inner spaces of the Yard. And that was why, when old Dr. Summer had asked Mary if the two Kellys would teach a course in the Department of English and American Literature and Language, there had been on Homer's part a small unspoken sense of triumph. Not for Mary. For Mary it was home ground anyway. She had gone to school here herself, and most of her male ancestors had come to Cambridge for their higher education. Modest Concord farmers they had been for generations back, riding in on the cars with the Concord sons of bankers and senators and railroad men. Hoars and Keyeses and even Emersons. And of course Henry Thoreau had gone to Harvard, walking from the country into town sometimes, or picking up the coach at the Middlesex Hotel before the railroad had pushed west through Concord to Fitchburg.

Homer wormed his way into the crowded newsstand and paid for his
Crimson
and a copy of the
Globe.

HAM DOW DIES IN MEM HALL BOMBING

ran the banner at the top of the
Crimson's
front page. Halfway down there was another headline:

U.S. UNCONCERNED WITH PLIGHT OF NEPALESE

The
Globe
had a feature on Ham Dow:

BOMBING VICTIM HARVARD FAVORITE

Outside the Harvard Coop two girls were hawking the
Boston Phoenix
and the
Real Paper.

FRUSTRATED NEPALESE STRIKE AGAIN?

suggested the
Phoenix.

HARVARD GOES BOOM!

said the
Real Paper

“Homer, for heaven's
sake.
”

“What? Mary, dear, what are you doing here?”

Mary Kelly was shaking him, her big breast heaving. “Didn't you hear me shouting? I've been chasing you ever since you left the house. Screeching at you, making a fool of myself.”

“Good God, no. What's happened?”

“The President of the Overseers, she called you. The Harvard
Overseers.
Julia Chamberlain, her name is. I didn't know how I was ever going to reach you in Memorial Hall. So I raced down two flights of stairs and I've been galumphing across half of Cambridge trying to catch up.”

Homer looked around vaguely. “Telephone. Where's a telephone?”

“There's a pay phone in front of the movie. I've got the number in my pocket. Here, dear, here's a dime.”

“Mrs. Chamberlain?” said Homer, staring into the dark cave of the entrance to the Harvard Square Theatre. “This is Homer Kelly.”

“Oh, Mr. Kelly, thank you for calling me back. I've just got a couple of things to ask you. It's about this horrible thing at Memorial Hall. We're all just miserable about Ham Dow. I just can't believe he's not going to be around any more. I mean, he was the best-loved person in this whole place. It just makes you want to—Well, I don't know why those crazy Nepalese couldn't have blown up somebody else. Ham probably
agreed
with them, for heaven's sake. Well, we're all just sick.”

“Yes,” murmured Homer, “I get that from every side. I understand he was a good man.”

“Well, I'll stop complaining and come to the point. Peter Marley of the Harvard Police tells me you have a background with the forces of law and order here in Cambridge, as well as being on the faculty, and he says you were almost a witness to the disaster. So I wonder if you'd be willing to help us out with a couple of things.”

“Well, certainly, Mrs. Chamberlain. I'll do anything I can.”

“Well, first of all, there's the funeral. There's going to be a big funeral service for Ham in the church here in the Yard on Sunday afternoon. The students are in charge. They've just taken over the whole thing. Ham didn't have any near relations, so the kids were insisting on doing it themselves, and nobody could think of any reason why not. They're going to sing their hearts out, naturally. You know, things from that oratorio they were all doing together, Handel's
Messiah.
Ham's assistant is going to be in charge of the music, a girl named Victoria Van Horn.”

“Oh, yes. I know Vick.”

“Well, I understand the chairman of the Music Department has appointed her to be chorus director pro tern in Ham's place. I mean, she's just a senior, but everybody seems to think she's the one Ham would have picked himself. And Charley Flynn's going to give the eulogy. Young chemistry professor, Ham's closest friend on the faculty. Well, we've had some trouble about that. He's the faculty radical. But he's the one the students wanted. And after all, they're in charge. That's what I said to President Cheever and Sloan Tinker. I mean, they were raising serious questions. I think they thought he might blow up the church.”

“Was Ham pretty far to the left himself? I mean, it just occurs to me to wonder whether he was or not.”

“Ham? Oh, I suppose so. Well, really, I don't know if he was a political radical or not. The way he lived was certainly unconventional. But he didn't upset people the way Charley Flynn does. You know, I sometimes wonder if Charley is related to Errol Flynn, that movie star from way back. Remember those old pirate movies? The way he was always jumping on board some ship with his cloak flying behind him and a knife between his teeth? Really refreshing. Well, Charley's like that. Oh, I know he wants us all to walk the plank, I mean all of us in the Harvard establishment, but God knows he's probably right most of the time. We need people like that desperately, believe me.”

Homer found himself warming to the President of the Overseers. “Just what is it you want me to do, Mrs. Chamberlain?”

“Oh, sorry; back to the point. You see, I volunteered to help out in any way I could, so Vick asked me to take care of the grim practical side of things. So I need to know about the body. Where is it? And can we have it in the church for the service on Sunday? And there's a lot of sentiment about a plain pine box; in fact, the students are really
fierce
on the subject, and they don't want any embalming or anything like that. They just want to let nature take its course. You know the kind of thing. They want a real funeral, with the body right there in the church, not just a polite memorial service. Everybody facing up to death, and so on.”

“I see, Mrs. Chamberlain. You want me to make the necessary arrangements to get the body released for burial. I'll be glad to.”

“Well, that's great. Now, the other thing is this. Could you come to the meeting of the Board of Overseers next week and report to us about the whole miserable bombing episode? I mean, the Overseers will be coming to the meeting from all over the place, and they'll be worried. They'll be wondering if the place is safe for the students. Well, of course, Buildings and Grounds has already given the all clear on the use of Memorial Hall. That man from the Bomb Squad said he was satisfied there weren't any more bombs in there anywhere, and Donald Maderna's got the hole in the floor all fenced in and that part of the basement boarded up, and the poor old rose windows are boarded up too. They're going to seal up the floor and put down fresh cement, but they're going to leave all the debris in the basement till next spring. Next April sometime they're going to gut that whole part of the basement and turn it into new office space. That Donald Maderna works fast. He had people in there all night long, getting the place ready for public use once again.”

“That was quick work, all right. You mean I can use my classroom again tomorrow? Say, that's great. Now, just tell me where and when the Overseers meet.”

“University Hall, right there behind the statue of John Harvard in the old Yard, the Faculty Room on the second floor. Monday morning. Now, the question is, what time? Usually the Overseers don't get together until two, but President Cheever is calling for a joint session with the Corporation, so we're starting early so we can go on with the reports of the Visiting Committees later on. You'll be present at a historic occasion, I guess, Mr. Kelly, a joint session of both groups. I mean, I never heard of them meeting together before. But President Cheever has a building project he wants to bring up before everybody at the same time. I gather the Corporation already turned it down, but I guess in the President's opinion that didn't exactly settle the matter. In fact, I understand it came up before the faculty last week. Anyway, our meeting is supposed to begin at nine-thirty, but I think if you came along about ten o'clock, we could squeeze you into the agenda. Is that all right with you?”

“That's fine. I'll be there. And I'll see about the funeral. I'll call you back this afternoon, Mrs. Chamberlain.”

“Well, good for you. You're a peach.”

Air-conditioned, noted Homer. That was important. You wouldn't want the body of your loved one to smell on a hot day. Pre-need planning was probably a good thing too. More efficient. Pre-griefstricken folks could make plans to get their nearest and dearest into the ground a lot faster when the sad moment finally arrived.

Homer poked around the building and found Mr. Ratchit in a small office at the back.

“Oh, sure,” said Mr. Ratchit. “He's all yours. We've got the permit from the Board of Health. The Medical Examiner saw him at the place where he was blown up, Whatchacallit Hall, that big church there. And they had the autopsy already.”

“Memorial Hall. It's not a church. It's a Civil War memorial.”

“Well, it looks like a church. Say, you know, that individual was obese. I mean, he was heavy.”

“Well, he was pretty tall too, right? I never met the man,” said Homer gloomily. “I mean, when he was alive.”

“Tall, oh, sure, he was tall. But flabby. I mean, he was flabby. Well, you know, really repulsive. I look at it this way. God gives you a magnificent body, right?” Mr. Ratchit arched his narrow chest and spread his scrawny arms. “So you ought to take care of it, right? But look what some people do with it.”

“Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“You should of seen his hands. I mean, like I'm really interested in hands. Well, this guy's hands were soft. White and flabby. Pudgy, really soft. The hands of an extremely obese individual. Take a look at my hands, for instance. No, go ahead, feel. Feel those calluses? That's work, man. Hard work. With a spade, with a hoe. Hard physical work. I mean, I really believe in good hard physical exercise. You take your average sedentary person, they've got hands like bread dough. Sitting there at a desk all day.”

Homer shrank down in his chair and sat on his hands, feeling his stomach brim over his belt buckle. “Well, actually, I don't think Ham Dow sat at a desk all day, exactly. But I suppose he didn't go in much for real exercise. Now, there's another thing, Mr. Ratchit. All we want is a simple pine box.”

“A pine box? Oh, no, you don't want a pine box for a VIP like that. I suggest this casket here. Solid walnut. Solid brass handles.” Mr. Ratchit handed Homer a pamphlet. “After that you go into your metal caskets. Light gauge. Heavy gauge. Solid copper. I mean, I understand from the papers he was really an important member of the university personnel.”

“No,” said Homer, closing his eyes and speaking through his teeth. “We want a plain old-fashioned ordinary box. A plain pine box. And then there's the matter of the embalming. There's to be no embalming.”