The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (9 page)

"No one knows anything of Fry's last hours. No one saw him leaving barracks. We're right where we began."

"Hm. Would someone mind fetching Mr. Stoddard again?"

Back came Stoddard, wriggling like an alewife. A second classman from South Carolina. Son of a sorghum planter. He had a purple-black mole on his cheek, and he had a record, poor soul: some 120 demerits to his name, and two months still left in the year. He was ripe for dismissal.

"Captain Hitchcock," I said, "if a cadet could give us some insight into Leroy Fry's last hours, maybe we'd consider, oh, passing over any offenses he might have committed?"

After some hesitation, it was so ordered.

"And now, Mr. Stoddard," I said. "I'm wondering if you've told us quite all you can."

No, he hadn't. Seems on the night of October twenty-fifth, this Stoddard had been coming back late from a friend's room. It was a good hour or so after tattoo when he crept up the stairs of North Barracks, only to hear the sound of descending feet. It was Sergeant Locke, he thought, on one of his nighttime rounds. He pressed himself as far into the wall as he could go and listened as the steps drew closer...

He needn't have worried. It was only Leroy Fry.

"And how did you know who it was?" I asked.

Stoddard hadn't, at first. But Fry, as he descended, grazed his elbow against Stoddard's shoulder and then cried, in a sharp voice:

Who's there?

It's me, Leroy.

Julius? Any officers about?

No, all clear.

Fry continued down the steps, and Stoddard, not knowing this was the last time he would see his friend, went straight to bed and slept till reveille.
"Oh, this is most helpful, Mr. Stoddard. And now I wonder what else you might tell us. How did Mr. Fry look, for instance?"

Ah, it had been so very dark in that stairwell he couldn't trust himself to say much on that account.

"Did you see anything else on his person, Mr. Stoddard? A length of rope, something along those lines?"

None that he could see. It'd been dark... considerable dark...

No, stop a bit, he said. There was something. As Fry was leaving, Stoddard had called after him:

Where are you off to at such an hour?

And this was what Leroy Fry had said:

Necessary business.

A bit of a joke, you see. When cadets have to relieve themselves at night--don't care to leave it in the chamber pot--they hie themselves to the outdoor privies, and if met by an officer, they have only to say, "Necessary business, sir," and they are suffered to pass (though expected back soon). But what stuck with Stoddard in this instance was the weight Fry had laid on the first word.

Necessary. Necessary business.

"And what did you take that to mean, Mr. Stoddard?"

He didn't know. Fry was half whispering, so it had all come out a little gaspy.

"He sounded urgent, then?"

Maybe he was urgent. Maybe he was just having a lark.

"So he seemed cheerful to you?"

Cheerful enough, yes. Not like a man who was ready to snuff his own taper. But then you never can say, can you? Stoddard had once had an uncle who one minute was lathering up his face and whistling "Hey, Betty Martin" and next minute was drawing the razor across his throat. Never even finished shaving.

Well, that was all Cadet Julius Stoddard had to tell us. He left us that afternoon with a tinge of regret... and a bashful sort of pride, too. I had seen it in the other cadets as well. They were all glad to claim their connection with Leroy Fry. Not because he was great or good, but because he was dead.

Hitchcock watched him go and, without taking his eyes off the door, asked the question that was foremost on his mind.

"How did you know, Mr. Landor?" "About Stoddard, you mean? His shoulders, I think. I'm sure you've noticed, Captain, when cadets are interviewed in the presence of officers, a certain tension creeps into their bodies. Beyond the normal, I mean."

"I know it well. We call it the examination hunch."

"Well, of course, once the ordeal is over, the shoulders naturally go back to their starting point. Not so with Mr. Stoddard. He left the room just as he entered."

Hitchcock's handsome brown eyes regarded me for a short while. The possibility of a smile played along his lips. Then he said, with almost too much gravity:

"Are there any other cadets to be called back, Mr. Landor?"

"Not back, no. But I would enjoy a talk with Cadet Loughborough, if you please."

This took a little more doing. Dinner was done, and Loughborough was in his natural and experimental philosophy section--standing before the blackboard, when the call came like a reprieve from above. It stopped being a reprieve, probably, when he came into that room and saw the commandant, arms folded on the table, and me... what did he make of me, I wonder? He was a short-limbed fellow from Delaware, with dumplings for cheeks and shiny obsidian eyes that looked in rather than out.

"Mr. Loughborough," I said. "You were Mr. Fry's roommate, I believe."

"Yes, sir. When we were plebes."

"And you later had a falling out?"

"Oh. Well, as to that, sir, I wouldn't perhaps call it a falling out. More a matter of diverging paths, sir. I think that's closer to the fact of it."

"And what was it made you diverge?"

A crease formed in his brow. "Oh, nothing so... matter of course, I'd say."

He winced as Captain Hitchcock's voice rang out.

"Mr. Loughborough. If you know of anything pertaining to Mr. Fry, you're bound to disclose it. At once."

I felt for the boy, I admit. If he really was a prattler, as Poe had said, it must have pained him to be at a loss for words.

"It's like this, sir," he said. "Ever since I heard about Cadet Fry, I've been reviewing a certain incident in my mind."

"When did this incident take place?" I asked.

"A long time ago, sir. Two years." "Not so long. Please go on."

And then he said: "I won't tell, goddamn you."

No, what he said was: "It was an evening in May."

"May of eighteen twenty-eight?"

"Yes, sir. I remember because my sister had just written to tell me she was marrying Gabriel Guild, and the letter got here just a week before the wedding, and I had to reply in care of my uncle down in Dover, for I knew my sister would be stopping there the week after her wedding, which was the first week in June--"

"Thank you, Mr. Loughborough." (He had found his wellspring.) "Let's move on to the incident itself, may we? Can you tell us--in brief--what happened on that particular evening?"

He had his task now. His brows bore down on it. "Leroy ran it," he said.

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know, sir. He just told me to cover for him best I could."

"And he came back the next morning?"

"Yes, sir. Though he got hived for missing the reveille roll call."

"And he never told you where he'd gone?"

"No, sir." He glanced briefly at Hitchcock. "But it seemed to me he was a bit on the troubled side afterward."

"Troubled?"

"And I only say that, sir, because even though he could be shy on first meeting, it wasn't so hard to get him talking once you got to know him, and now he didn't wish to talk at all, which I didn't take too hard except he had trouble even looking at me. I kept asking if I'd offended him somehow, but he said no, it wasn't me. I asked him--seeing how we were best pals of a sort--who it was."

"He wouldn't tell you."

"That's the long and short of it, sir. But one night, this was sometime in July, he allowed as how... he said he'd fallen in with a bad bunch."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hitchcock lean forward in his seat, just the merest inch.

"Bad bunch?" I repeated. "Those were the words he used?"

"Yes, sir."

"He didn't tell you the--the nature of this bunch." "No, sir. I told him, of course, if there was anything of an illegal nature going on, he was bound to report it." The second classman smiled at Hitchcock, waiting for a sign of approval, which never came.

"By "bunch," did he mean other cadets, Mr. Loughborough?"

"He never said. I guess I assumed it was cadets because who else does a fellow see here? Unless, of course, Leroy got mixed up with some bombardiers, sir."

I'd been at the Point long enough to know that the "bombardiers" were members of the artillery regiment that shares space with the cadet corps. They're regarded by the cadets the way a farmer's pretty daughter regards an old mule: necessary but lacking in glamour. As for the bombardiers, they think the cadets as coddled as any egg.

"So, Mr. Loughborough. Despite all your best efforts, your friend would give you no more on the subject. And over time, the two of you... I think diverged was the word you used."

"I suppose so, sir. He never wanted to loiter about the room anymore or go for a swim. Even the cadet hops, he stayed away. And then he went and joined the prayer squad for a piece."

Hitchcock's hands were sliding apart: farther, farther.

"Well, that's curious," I said. "He found religion, did he?"

"I wouldn't... I mean, I never knew he'd lost it, sir. I don't think he stuck with it too long, though. He was always one to complain about chapel. But by that time, he'd fallen in with a new crowd, and I suppose I was still the old crowd, and that's--that's how it flies, sir."

"And this new crowd? Would you know any of their names?"

Five names, that was as many as he could conjure, and they were all in the group we had just interviewed. And still Loughborough kept throwing out the same names, over and over again, slathering them with lore... until Hitchcock raised his hand and asked:

"Why didn't you come forward earlier?"

Caught in midphrase, the young man's lips flapped open. "Well, there it is, sir. I wasn't--I didn't quite see that it had any bearing. Happening so long ago."

"All the same," I said, "we're most obliged, Mr. Loughborough. And if you think of anything else that might be helpful, please don't hesitate."

The second classman nodded to me and saluted to Hitchcock and went to the door. There he stopped.

"Is there anything else?" Hitchcock asked.

We were back to this Loughborough, the one who'd first walked into the room. "Sir," he said. "There's a--there's a particular concern, you might say, I've been grappling with. Pertaining to ethics."
"Yes?"

"If a fellow knows his friend is bothered over something, and this friend goes and does something... untoward... well, then, my dilemma revolves around, should the original fellow feel accountability? Thinking maybe if he'd been a better friend, then the friend in question might still be here, and everything would be, on the whole, better?"

Hitchcock gave his ear a pinch. "I think, Mr. Loughborough, in the hypothetical case you propose, the fellow could enjoy a clear conscience. He did his very best."

"Thank you, sir."

"Is there anything else?"

"No, sir."

Loughborough was almost out the door when Hitchcock's voice went charging after him.

"The next time you present yourself before an officer, Mr. Loughborough, you will take care to button your coatee all the way down. One demerit."

My gentleman's contract with the Academy demanded that I have regular meetings with Hitchcock. On this occasion, Thayer asked if he could also be present.

We gathered in his parlor. Molly brought us johnny cakes and beef dodgers; Thayer poured the tea; the grandfather clock in the hallway ticked away the intervals; the burgundy curtains held the sun off. Horror, Reader.

A full twenty minutes passed before anyone dared to bring up business, and even then it was nothing more than general queries as to my progress. But at precisely thirteen minutes to five, Superintendent Thayer laid his teacup on the table, laced his fingers together in his lap.

"Mr. Landor," he said. "Is it still your belief that Leroy Fry was murdered?"

"It is."

"And are we any closer to knowing the murderer's identity?"

"I'll only know when I'm there."

He gave this some thought. Then, after nibbling a dime-sized hole in a johnny cake, he asked:

"Is it still your belief that the two crimes are linked? The murder and the desecration?"

"Well, as to that, all I'll say is, you can't take out a fellow's heart before he's ready to give it up."

"And that means?"

"Colonel, how likely is it that two different people, on the very same night in October, should have had evil designs on Leroy Fry?"
It was not a question, I could see, that Thayer hadn't already asked himself. But hearing it still had its effect. The grooves round his mouth cut deeper into his skin.

"So," he said, more quietly. "You are acting on the assumption that one man is behind both crimes."

"One man and an accomplice, maybe. But for now, let's just say one. That seems a good place to start."

"And it was merely Mr. Huntoon's intervention that kept this man from removing Leroy Fry's heart on the spot?"

"For now, let's suppose that."

"Having been diverted from his task--please correct me if I go too far--the man thereupon seized his chance to abduct Mr. Fry's body from the hospital, and then proceeded to carry out his original intention?"

"Let's suppose that, too."

"And the man in question. Is he one of us?"

Hitchcock stood abruptly and faced me head on, as if he were making to block my escape.

"What Colonel Thayer and I would like to know," he said, "is whether any others of our cadets may be in danger from this madman."

"And that's the one thing I can't tell you. I'm very sorry."

They took it as well as they could. I had the feeling they almost pitied me for being so ignorant. They poured themselves more tea and busied themselves with questions of a narrower nature. Wanted to know, for instance, what I made of the scrap of paper I'd pried from Leroy Fry's palm. (I told them I was still working it over.) Wanted to know if I'd care to interview faculty members. (Yes, I said, anyone who'd ever taught Leroy Fry.) If I'd be interviewing other cadets. (Yes, anyone who'd ever known Leroy Fry.)