The Theban Mysteries (13 page)

“Exactly,” Reed said. “I’m an old cynical hand at all this, and have learned to blink at many things. Ask Kate; she’s still honorable, naïve, and interested in the death of Roland. Ask her if she would be satisfied with the happy ending you outline for us. One of my troubles, you see, is that I have some sympathy with the kids.”

“Which I share,” Kate said with feeling. “My brothers, who always stand for the hard hats of the world when I become heated and incoherent, talk about law and order all the time, I mean
all
the time—crime in the streets, the number of burglarized homes, campus unrest, the police have no power, no respect for the law, blah, blah, blah. But if I point out that even the ocean has become polluted with oil slicks, that the automobile manufacturers won’t make bumpers that protect cars because they can better sell bumpers that are only decorative, that the drug companies wanted to market Thalidomide and so on, he—whichever brother I’m talking to, that is—doesn’t get heated at all, he doesn’t even give more than a token tsk tsk. Does all this have anything to do with what we’re talking about?”

“It does, in a way,” Miss Tyringham said, “that is, if we’re talking about honor, which perhaps we really ought to do a bit more, meaning honor, not face, which is what most people who use the word ‘honor’ mean. Still, I must think of the school; that is my job. And, for the sake of the school, we must perhaps assume, if they will let us, that the whole thing was an unfortunate accident. Perhaps it was, you know.”

“Is there really any chance of a cover-up?” Kate asked. “Would the police really let the whole thing lie, like sleeping dogs, to use a singularly appropriate cliché?”

“Yes,” Reed said, “I’m afraid there’s a very good chance, if no claims are made. She did die of a heart attack, assuming they don’t find anything more sinister in further examinations. What’s the point of offending a lot of important people, when the only ones who may be unfairly accused are a couple of dogs who, at worst, will be retired to the country or put on another job? In the end, we are all sensible men who understand one another.”

“So you are satisfied?” Miss Tyringham asked him.

“Satisfied? Compliant, rather. How could one be satisfied? The number of unanswered questions is staggering: How did she get into the building? Why should such a woman go to such a place, which is most unlikely from all we know of her? Why did she have that label in her pocket, the case’s only tangible clue?”

“Was it off a tie you’ve been able to trace?”

“Easy as pie. Grandpa’s been buying his ties there for years.”

Reed began to walk around the room. “Why, to continue acting the elephant’s child, did she repeat her son’s terrifying experience? Why is the school involved at all? Could it be, to take a random shot, that Mr. Jablon thought the school deserved to meet real trouble instead of encouraging their students to be unpatriotic? Was he willing to sacrifice his daughter-in-law, whom perhaps he didn’t care for, to such a fate? I could go on spinning off the questions for hours.”

“Exactly,” Miss Tyringham said. “But you haven’t really answered
my
question, nor has Kate.”

“I have never believed,” Kate said, “that one should stop in the middle of an inquiry because one doesn’t care for the way the problem is working out, or because it is too demanding to go on. Surely that’s the mark of a slovenly and unscholarly mind, if not worse. People’s unwillingness to accept the consequences of their acts—allowing rivers to become polluted, to take an impersonal example—seems to me horrible. Like the cigarette companies’ hiring people to prove smoking doesn’t cause cancer. Oh dear, I’ve wandered off again.”

“One can’t stop in the middle,” Miss Tyringham said, “but one could decline to begin.”

“Once you’ve asked the question, you’ve begun,” Kate said. “Anyway, even if we found an answer, we wouldn’t necessarily have to do anything about it, would we?”

“There, I think, you would be fooling yourself,” Reed said. “I can promise you, both of you, that if you ask one more question, investigate one more occurrence connected with that night, you will be in it up to your necks, without a foothold. If you want to stop, stop now.”

There was a silence of several minutes.

“We had better begin,” Miss Tyringham said, “by trying to find out what went on in the Jablon household that night. Perhaps the grandfather not only knows, Kate, but will tell you.”

“Also,” Kate said, “we’d better find out how those dogs work—I mean, actually ask to see them on the roof and all. Surely Mr. O’Hara won’t object if we succeed in exonerating the beasts.”

Reed stared at them a moment and then, with a massive sigh, refilled his glass.

The next morning, accordingly, found Kate and Reed at the Theban to keep an appointment with Mr. O’Hara on the roof. He had agreed, with very poor grace, to see them. “I’ve told it all to the police, and I’m not telling it to you again to have you telling me those dogs brought on anyone’s death.” It was only by insisting upon their unswerving belief in the innocence of the dogs that Kate and Reed were admitted onto the roof at all.

“Kitto,” Kate reported as they made their way upstairs, “who is one of the best commentators on the
Antigone
, says: ‘With the first entrance of the Watchman begins that part of the play which is most full of difficulties.’ How true, O muse, how true.”

“Sheridan Whiteside,” Reed retorted, “when he comes on the stage says: ‘I may vomit,’ which seems to me on the whole a far more appropriate quotation.”

They waited in the auditorium for Mr. O’Hara. Kate rather uneasily wondered if he would appear like Heathcliff with snarling dogs at his heels, but he was quite alone and even greeted Reed with mild cordiality. He seemed to find Kate, another female in an institution already overflowing with them, superfluous, and waited with undisguised hope for Reed to bid her adieu at the doorway to the roof.

“Have to have Miss Fansler along, you know. I promised,” Reed said. “But she’ll be very quiet and only ask intelligent questions. She’s really quite well behaved.”

“They have lady district attorneys now, then,” Mr. O’Hara asked, “or she’s connected with the school?”

“She’s connected all down the line, but she’s a proper female and always walks six paces behind. Lead on.”

Mr. O’Hara, with a grunt of annoyance, passed through the door first, holding it for Reed but pointedly not holding it for Kate. They immediately climbed the steep though short flight of stairs to the roof, and once they had climbed out on it—Reed helping Kate while avoiding O’Hara’s eye—O’Hara closed a trap door which, flush with the roof, fitted neatly over the stairs.

“You see,” he growled, “the dogs can’t possibly get downstairs during the day, as some idiots have been suggesting, even if they could get out of the cage, which they can’t. Obviously. Females have eyes but I sometimes wonder if they can see with them, let alone think.”

“An army man, aren’t you?” Reed asked. “Too bad about it’s being a girl’s school.”

“Everything was fine until that pansy boy hid out here to avoid defending his country. It’s a good job. I was not complaining.” Kate thought of mentioning that Achilles had hid among women, but decided against it. If Mr. O’Hara had heard of Achilles, which seemed doubtful, he probably considered him a slacker and a sorehead, or worse.

“Dogs this way,” O’Hara said, “and they’ll growl at you, so if you plan to scream, don’t. You can wait here.”

“Miss Fansler never screams unless you pinch her,” Reed said. “She’s trying to prove the honor and loyalty of the dogs, you know, and to demonstrate that their training held good, so I really do think we ought to encourage her. Good God!”

This last admiring outburst was inspired by the two Dobermans, which stood together in their cage, lightly baring their teeth and growling in a quiet, anticipatory sort of way. Their cage was large, allowing them room to run up and down a bit, should they so choose; connected to the cage was a small house into which, one gathered, they retired to shelter from the elements. Now they stood side by side eyeing Reed and Kate with a suspicion largely tempered by the presence of Mr. O’Hara. “All right, my beauties,” he said. “Lie down and have your naps.”

“Have they names?” Kate asked.

“No questions or I’ll take you home,” Reed whispered.

“Certainly they’ve got names,” Mr. O’Hara said. “This is Rose and this is Lily. Give us a kiss, now.” And the astonishing Mr. O’Hara, whose misogyny evidently excluded the canine breed, bent near to the fence, stuck a finger through the wire and scratched the ferocious beasts, which, Kate and Reed noticed, kept a wary eye on them even as they accepted these loving overtures. But their hackles were down, their coats again sleek.

“How would they react if you weren’t with us?” Reed asked.

“Walk away a moment, let me pop into my house, and find out. But don’t stick any part of you through that fence.” Kate and Reed stepped back onto the trap door as Mr. O’Hara vanished into his apartment, which, apart from a water tank, some mechanism for the elevators, and the dog cages, was all that stood on the roof. The view of the city was unusually open; indeed, Mr. O’Hara had found himself a fine spot.

When he had disappeared, Kate and Reed walked toward
the cage. The response of the dogs was instantaneous and ferocious, but they did not bark. “They work quietly, one gathers,” Reed said. “Even the most besotted dog lover, discovering himself in the company of these beasts, would have a heart attack it seems to me. But we better not say so to friend O’Hara.”

“If he dislikes females so much, human that is,” Kate said, “perhaps he took the job and talked Miss Tyringham into the dogs just to give women’s education a bad name; had you ever thought of that?”

“Nonsense. He’s the sort right out of Dickens, who probably has a little girl who’s the apple of his eye, or wishes he did. Like his dogs, he growls but does not bite.”

“So,” Kate darkly said, “we are supposed to believe.”

“Well, we can’t stand here talking; he’ll think we’re conspiring against him.” The dogs watched them walk toward the house, their growls rumbling in their throats.

“Satisfied?” O’Hara asked.

“Thank you,” Reed said. “Do you mind if we ask you a number of silly questions? That’s the name of the game, I’m afraid.”

“The police have already asked me.”

“Of course they have. But we would rather not believe the dogs are to blame, which sets us off from the police and makes us distinctive and interesting. What time do the dogs begin their rounds?”

Mr. O’Hara, with a sigh Kate recognized as the sort she was wont to draw when she found herself trapped into a cocktail party, dropped into a chair, invited them to do likewise with a barely gracious wave of his hand, and began to make a great business of lighting a pipe.
He did not answer until they were all surrounded with clouds of smoke.

“Smells lovely,” Kate said.

“I’ll join you if I may,” Reed said, taking out his own pipe. Mr. O’Hara’s scowl deepened.

“Ordinary days,” he said, “I let Rose and Lily out on their rounds about eight o’clock, when I’ve finished my supper.”

“Cook for yourself?” Reed asked.

“Of course. What do you think I’ve got, a blooming maid?”

“I thought perhaps you got food from the school kitchens.”

“Cottage cheese,” O’Hara said.

“And wet tuna fish,” Kate added. Reed glared at her.

“What do you mean by ordinary days?” he asked.

“When they aren’t planning some blooming fling,” he said. “Dances, meetings, and the like. A school’s a school and ought to steer clear of all that nonsense, but they hired me to guard the place, not to run it.
Those
nights I don’t get the doors shut and the last of them out till nearly eleven.”

“Do the meetings run that late?” Kate asked.

“Over at ten-fifteen on the nose; Miss Tyringham is very clear about that. But of course the ladies stand around the halls gabbing away, and if it’s raining the men, poor slobs, have to try to get cabs, and one thing and another, it’s damn near eleven before the last of them is out of the building and on her way.”

“Do you wait down there to see them off?”

“I do. I’m there to see them in, too. Has to be someone, or you might have anyone wandering in, now wouldn’t you?”

“Is any real check kept on who enters?” Reed asked.

“Naturally; we are not a public theater. I know the teachers, to look at anyway, and the teachers know the parents.”

“All the same,” Reed said, “if two people, a man and a woman of the right age, and looking right, were to wander in, I bet they could even attend the meeting. The teachers can’t all know all the parents. If there’s a perfectly acceptable couple there, is anyone likely to confront them and say ‘Name your daughter or abandon these premises’? One assumes they’re somebody’s belongings and lets it go at that.”

“Not quite,” Kate said. “The Theban is more organized than it looks to the casual eye. You are asked to say if you’re coming to meetings, in the first place. Admittedly, someone might neglect to send back the form, or to telephone, or she might say she wasn’t coming and then discover she was. But, you see, each parent has a name card with that new sticky stuff that sticks to clothes without leaving a mark. It says, for instance, Mrs. or Mr. Fred Jones, Esmeralda II, Sylvia IV, and each parent sticks that on when she arrives. The box with the correct tags is already out and waiting for the parents having the meeting, and everyone sticks on a tag, the theory being that even if there’s a mama or papa whom everyone doesn’t instantly recognize, she would hardly be likely to stick on Mrs. Jones’s tag when she might sit next to someone who knows Mrs. Jones perfectly well, or Mr. Jones if a man. I do hope you’re following all this.”

“Like all the Theban arrangements, it is simpler to work than to describe; I still say that if someone made herself a tag saying Mrs. Montmorency, no one would
challenge her. Everyone would assume she belonged. It’s something to keep in mind anyway. Let’s say an eye is kept for interlopers. Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. O’Hara, but we have to get everything straight and in order. Do go on.”