The Transcendental Murder (16 page)

2.  If Ch intended murder Dad, why do it in public place wearing own fancy suit? Unless crime of sudden passion. In which case, why? Why have loaded musk with him? What reason for rondayvoo?

3.  Not likely Ch would fall off horse, since expert horseman. But maybe unsteady becuz nervous?

4.  Limp of X might be caused by fall off horse.

5.  Boy Scout's identif. don't mean much, he only saw back of X.

PHILIP GOSS

Motive: weak. Suppose motive was revenge for Dad's making him fire at Ch night before—this mean Ph fond of Ch. Why, then, would Ph wear Ch's Paul Revere suit to murder Dad, thus pinning murder on Ch?

Opportunity: Ph was with Conc. Ind. Battery on arrival Rod and Gun Club noon. Shortly after (he say), he left, walked around fresh air, went to bam, came back. No witnesses. So no alibi. Gone full hour. Time enough.

Fax supporting Ph as X:

1.  Alibi fishy.

2.  Scout idents X as either Ch or Ph. But see above.

3.  Gun handy, could fire it.

4.  Logical he use same gun on Dad that Dad made him use on Ch. (But see under motive, above.)

5.  
VERY IMPORTANT:
Ph nearly killed Dad with can non same morning. Mistake, he say.

6.  Ph's car found in parking lot at bridge after murder.

Fax
NOT
supporting Ph as X:

1.  Motive looks weak.

2.  Character good.

3.  Why commit murder in public place? See above.

4.  If Ph murdered Dad on horseback, didn't bring car. Car probly used by E. Goss to get to bridge from gun club.

QUERIES

1.  Why E. Goss go to bridge?

2.  Where gun?

3.  Where hat?

4.  Who E. Goss fight with before dinner? (Reported by Miss Morgan.)

5.  
DON'T FORGET BAWL OUT KELLY, HIRING GIRLS WITH OUT PERMISH.

The District Attorney threw his head back and dropped peanuts down his throat. “Now for the Alco' Club, An' wha' abou' unknown persons, ou'siders?” he said.

Chief Flower made a sarcastic noise. “You mean beyond a couple thousand visitors to Concord to see the parade? They trampled up the place like a herd of. elephants. But who were they all? Damned if I know. There isn't a prayer of tracking them all down. Say, there was one kind of interesting thing though. Loftus said he noticed a parked car in the parking lot there by the bridge the night before. Let's see, Bernie, that was a green Chrysler sedan, last year's, with a Massachusetts license, right? Bob saw it around midnight, and thought it was just a couple of neckers. Did that registration come in?”

Sergeant Shrubsole looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes,” he said, “it did.”

Homer Kelly, his face red, gave a snort. “Never mind, Sergeant, I'll confess. That was my car. It was me.”

The District Attorney stared at Homer, his mouth open. Then he guffawed and made a lecherous remark. Mary Morgan, who had been doodling a face in the corner of her notebook, added a pair of horns and a set of villainous teeth.

Chapter 30

	I am tired of scraps. I do not wish to be a literary or intellectual chiffonier … let me spin some yards or miles of helpful twine, a clew to lead to one kingly truth …
RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Miss O'Toole leaned forward and placed a scribbled note beneath her boss's nose. The D.A. took it in, cracked a peanut between his fingers and cleared his throat. “Now then,” he said, “perhaps this would be as good a time as any to hear from Ernest Goss's lawyer. Miss O'Toole, would you call him in?” With his tongue sticking out between his lips the District Attorney printed WILL on the top of a clean sheet of paper. “All right, Mr. Twells, here's a chair. You have a copy of Ernest Goss's will?”

“I do,” said Mr. Twells, sitting down stiffly. “Would you like me to read it in its entirety? Or shall I just run down the list of beneficiaries?”

“If you can spare us the whereases, Mr. Twells, we'd be grateful,” said the D.A., crushing another peanut. His own passage of the Massachusetts bar had been very shaky, and he detested high-class lawyers.

Mr. Twells was a miracle of brevity. “Well, then. Ernest Goss left nearly all of his estate in trust for his wife. She was to receive the income during her lifetime, with the right to dispose of half of it in her own will, with the other half going in equal shares to her children. The trustees were myself and Mr. Philip Goss. And then there were a few other beneficiaries outside the immediate family. Mr. Goss left his collection of old guns and Indian relics to Mr. Theodore Staples. I understand that both of these collections were quite valuable. And there are a few others who will receive small sums.”

“Could you run though the list of names for us, Mr. Twells?”

“Mrs. Annie Bewley, Miss Alice Herpitude and Miss Maria Fuller Alcott Emerson, of Springfield, Massachusetts. Each is to receive one thousand dollars.”

“What?” said Homer Kelly. “Miss Maria
who?
”

Mr. Twells giggled nervously. “We don't know who this Maria Fuller Alcott Emerson is, and so far we haven't found anyone in Springfield who knows her. The bequest is not large, of course, but we will continue to look for her. No one in the Emerson family knows of her. Perhaps the similarity of her name is purely coincidental …”

Homer looked up at the ceiling and twiddled his thumbs. Mr. Twells put down his document and cleared his throat. “There is one thing more which I feel it my duty to say at this time. It concerns Mr. Charles Goss. About a week before his father's unfortunate demise, Charles came to me at my office. He needed money. He asked me to write a letter to a prospective lender stating what his expectations were.”

Homer leaned forward and stared at Mr. Twells. “His ‘expectations'? You mean like some young rake in a nineteenth century English novel? Fattening the usurers? Burdening the ancient family manor with debt?”

“Well, of course it would have been most improper to do so. I refused. I would not have done it without his father's permission, in any case. Charles insisted that he merely wished to be able to leave home and set up independently, and he promised that he would pay back the money as soon as he was employed. But there was no way I could help him. I offered him a small personal loan, but he turned that down.”

The D.A. shuffled his papers around happily. “Say, that's first rate. Strawberry jam.” He found the sheet headed
CHARLES GOSS,
and added a triumphant, “Needed
CASH,”
under
motive.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Twells.”

Miss O'Toole leaned forward and tapped the end of her pencil on a pair of photographs. “Oh, yes, the sisters,” said the D.A. He picked up the photographs and looked at them. “Which one is the smasheroo?”

Jimmy Flower smiled. “That's Rowena. She came right home from the parade, she said, and went to bed with cotton in her ears. Didn't wake up until around quarter past one. As soon as she took the cotton out of her ears she heard her mother screaming, went downstairs, found her all alone having a conniption fit. Rowena said she'd had a late night the night before, and that's why she slept so soundly.”

Mary drew a sharp-pointed tail on her devil and started surrounding him with the flames of hell. The District Attorney couldn't take his bulging eyes off the picture of Rowena. It was a studio portrait. Rowena had been wearing a low-cut gown apparently, and the photographer had snipped off the gown, so that it looked as if … boy. “Anybody see her coming home?”

“We can practically track her from point to point. When Rowena Goss goes by, people take notice. She must have driven up to the house at about 11:05. She was last seen on Barrett's Mill Road driving toward her house with the top down on her white convertible by a college boy on a bicycle and the fathers of three families driving home from the parade. The families didn't remember her, but the fathers all did.”

Homer Kelly pointed out that Rowena had no particular motive for doing away with her father that anybody could think of, beyond of course his general hatefulness, and the company passed on to the contemplation of Rowena's sister Edith. The contemplation was less pleasant. Edith's introverted blank eyes looked furtively out at them from under her beetling brows. Her hair was gathered back unbecomingly at the base of her neck, and a piece of straggling ribbon showed.

“Edith drove her mother home from the festivities, and then she says she went for a long nature-walk around Annursnac Hill. She came in around quarter of two just as we were driving out with Charley. Had her hands full of pussy willows.”

“Any motive, in her case?”

“Well, old Goss picked on her, I understand, more or less the way he did on Charley. Less savagely, maybe.”

The D. A. scribbled some more on his sheets of paper. “Aaalll right,” he said, picking up a clean one. “Now, the Alcott Club. You say the members of this club had good reason to have it in for Ernest Goss because he was going to publish some scandalous letters from Louisa May Alcott and people like that. Right? And the letters haven't turned up? Say, let me stick that on my other sheet.” He scrabbled among his papers, found the one marked
QUERIES,
and added, “Letters—where are they
at?
”

Homer got up and started walking around, one hand roughing up his cowlick. “Do you remember the argument Mary overheard, when Ernest Goss said something about a decision he had made? How he wasn't ashamed of it, he was damned happy about it, or some such phrase? Now suppose his ‘decision' was the decision to publish the letters? The visitor might have been anyone in the Alcott Association. It might even have been a woman, threatening him with some sort of weapon. Suppose it was Teddy Staples. He failed, obviously, to persuade Ernie to abandon his scheme, so later on he boldly crashed the dinner party. He was getting desperate. Felt he had to hush those letters up, so people wouldn't laugh at his Henry Thoreau. But he failed again, and Ernie threw him out. So next day Teddy killed him. Now if this was the case, then the rider on Charley's horse might have been Teddy. Or more likely, Teddy came by the way of the river and the rider was more or less an innocent bystander. Well, this would mean that there were three of them there at the bridge—Teddy, Ernie Goss, and maybe Charley Goss. Charley could have brought the musket, Teddy could have fired it. Then Charley galloped away, without the musket, and was seen by the Boy Scout. In the meantime Teddy ran to the bridge and hid under it while Arthur Furry gamboled over the bridge and discovered the body. Then Arthur rushed off to alert the countryside and Teddy simply paddled off, with the musket lying in the bottom of his canoe, the letters in his pocket. By the time the mob arrived on the scene he could have been safely around the bend. What's the matter with that?”

Mary found herself just as unhappy with Teddy for a murderer as she had been with Charley. She couldn't picture him lurking under the bridge like the wicked troll while Arthur Furry frisked over it like the Little Billy Goat Gruff. She shook her head, scowling at her notes.

The D.A. was speaking. “You found no trace of the gun, though, at Teddy's house? Nor any letters?'

Jimmy Flower groaned. “We even got the skin-diver into the act again, in the river there at Fairhaven Bay by Teddy's house. No such luck. And that confounded hat wasn't there either.”

The District Attorney yawned. His head was going around and around. What he wanted more than anything else was a can of cold beer. He usually had one about this time of day and then took a little shut-eye while Miss O'Toole held the fort. Wistfully he pictured the shining can, with the moisture condensed on the outside, and the
punkshing
sound of the can opener and the foam bubbling up through the opening. But it was out of the question. It would put him right to sleep. He shook his head and said drowsily, “Where's the ballistics man? He shown up yet?”

He had. His name was Lieutenant Morrissey, from the Department of Public Safety. He was ushered in by Miss O'Toole, with a long skinny case in his hand. Inside it was a musket very much like the one that had presumably killed Ernest Goss. In a small box in his pocket was the musket ball that had been found in Goss's body. Lieutenant Morrissey handed the musket around, pointing out its parts, explaining how the flintlock mechanism worked. He obviously enjoyed handling the old piece. He held the musket so that the District Attorney could peer sleepily into the muzzle.

“See?” said Lieutenant Morrissey. “No rifling. Smooth bore. Nothing to leave a trace on a projectile. So even if we had the musket we couldn't be dead certain that the ball was fired from it. It takes rifling to leave identifying marks. The round musket ball doesn't fit closely either, like a modern cylindrical projectile. This ball is about 60 caliber, and this particular musket I have here is 70 caliber. They always had room to spare. What you did was, you wrapped the ball in a patch, to make it airtight in the bore.”