The Transcendental Murder (27 page)

The barn was back down the driveway near the road. They walked into the cool dark square of the open door and called for Charley, but there was no answer. Dolly, the big brown mare, stood in her stall, looking at them with her large eyes. Jimmy rubbed her nose and told her he wished she could talk. Dolly bobbed her head as though she understood, and stretched her neck and licked his face.

Homer looked at Dolly. Then he slapped his brow. “Oh, for God's sake, Jimmy, these old-fashioned Yankees. When I said ‘Goss,' Mrs. Bewley thought I said ‘hoss' …” They walked back to the big house and finally found Charley out in back working in his garden. He was pulling weeds. He gave a start when their shadows fell across the ground in front of him, and stood up. Homer looked at the honest dirt on Charley's knees and had a misgiving. It just didn't seem possible, there under the hot July sun, to put together the gardener and the murderer. But then he remembered that this gardener had been doing a different kind of planting on April 19th, and he put away the misgiving.

Charley saw something in their faces. He started to talk before they could open their mouths. “You know,” he said, standing up beside his twigged pea vines with a bunch of weeds in his hand, “this reminds me of the times when Philip and I were kids, and we used to have to go into Boston to the dentist. I was always scared to death. And the worst part wasn't having your teeth fixed, it was sitting in the waiting room, waiting for your turn. I couldn't even read the comic books. So look here, Kelly, make up your mind, will you? I want to get out of the waiting room. These comic books are terrible.”

Homer said nothing. Jimmy felt awful. He shifted his eyes to Charley's garden. “What kind of a crop have you got here, Charley?” he said.

“Oh, tomatoes, summer squash, scallions, carrots, oak-leaf lettuce, just the usual. Those are radishes over there. We don't bother with corn because the Hands always let us help ourselves.”

“Are you sure you didn't plant any corn this year, Charley?” said Homer.

Charley's glance turned slowly from his radishes to Homer's grim face, and met his accusing eyes. So it was true, he was out of the waiting room. But he made a half-hearted attempt to face it out anyway, convinced of failure. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we've been bringing in the sheaves, Charley, and one of them is a mighty funny-looking ear of corn. Tom Hand ran across your father's old fowling piece when he was harrowing his cornfield. We have the testimony of a witness that you buried it there, Charley, on the nineteenth of April.”

“You mean somebody saw me?”

“Somebody did.”

Charley gave up then. “Okay. I hate lying. I'm no good at it anyhow. Sit down.” He gestured at the grass and squatted cross-legged on it. “I suppose it was Teddy. I thought I saw him out there on the river. He had his binoculars on me, did he? Has he come back? No? Well, all right, I did bury the damn gun. Look, I'll tell you every single thing I did and thought the whole day, start to finish. You saw me make my famous ride. Well, after that was over, I rode Dolly home, put her in the barn, walked up to my room and changed clothes. It was then about 11:30. I left my Prescott outfit there on a chair, all complete, hat, boots, wig, everything. And then I found this crazy note on my pillow. ‘Meet me in the gravel pit,' it said, ‘between 12:30 and 1:30 …'”

“Meet who? Who signed it?”

“Does it matter? I destroyed it, anyway, the way it said to do, and then after lunch I spent that whole hour hanging around the gravel pit. Since nobody saw me and I saw nobody, it isn't any good as an alibi anyway.”

“Was it from Mary Morgan?” said Homer. “Your brother got one, too.”

“He did? From Mary?” Charley looked up at Annursnac Hill, his face vacant. “Yes, it was from Mary.”

“Then what did you do?” prompted Jimmy.

“Well, I came in the house shortly after 1:30, and found my mother, weeping and having hysterics. She had just hung up the telephone. Some fool had called her up and told her that her son had killed her husband with a musket at the bridge and gotten away. She rushed up to me and screamed it at me. Well, I assumed, of course, that Philip must have had a fit and done something nutty. I didn't know then that he had been wearing
my
outfit, and that he was actually trying to lay the blame on me. All I could think of was the danger he was in. I left my mother weeping in her chair and ran to the living room to see if the musket was there. It was still in its place in the cupboard. I didn't see how it could have been the murder weapon because there it was. But I knew one thing that you didn't know. You saw Philip fire the gun the night before, and then you saw my father clean the inside of the gun and wipe it all off on the outside. But I had seen Philip using that same gun that very morning. He came home from the sunrise salute in a sour mood, walked into the house, grabbed up the musket and went out again. Said he was going out to the gravel pits to whale away at a tin can. Said he had to get something out of his system.”

“That would account for the missing musket balls. And the dirty barrel of the gun. Go ahead.”

“Anyway, I knew he had been the last to fire the gun, and that his fingerprints were all over it again. So I decided to get rid of it.”

“Why didn't you just wipe the prints off again?”

“I did. But I was sure there'd be latent prints, or something, or some way of tracing it to Philip—you people have such scientific methods now.”

“You do us too much credit,” said Homer wryly. “So then you buried it in Tom's plowed field.”

“It was the first thing I thought of. I had seen Tom out there with the planter on my ride back home. If it had worked for thé Minutemen I thought it might work for me. I ran to the barn for a spade, and then I stood in the trees along the edge of the field to see if Tom was gone. He was, so I buried the gun.”

“Why didn't you dig it up again later? You must have known it would get plowed up again when the corn was ripe.”

“This will sound silly to you, but I couldn't remember for the life of me where I had buried it. All I had on my mind was the idea of getting it under fast. It was out in the middle there somewhere. And I kept the line of trees along the road between me and the Hands' house. Anyway, my interest in saving Philip's neck began to fade a bit, later on.”

“Then you went back to the barn and hung up the spade and came running up to Jimmy as he drove in. Right?”

“That's right.”

Homer's small eyes darkened. “Isn't it a whole lot more likely, Charley, that you were burying the gun you yourself had used to kill your father?” Homer picked up a stick and began drawing circles in the dirt and talking about Ptolemy and Copernicus. Jimmy couldn't believe his ears. What was Kelly up to now?

“Now here's another diagram, Charley. Copernicus put the sun in the middle instead of the earth, and then everything became much simpler. Instead of Ptolemy's crazy orbits with epicycles all over them, Copernicus had the planets moving in simple circles. It was simpler, you see, everything was simpler. Now suppose we do the same thing. Let's take everybody else out of the center of suspicion and put Charley Goss in there. Instantly all confusion vanishes. Isn't that right, Charley? You rode to the bridge a second time, wearing your own outfit, you killed your father and then came home and buried the murder weapon. So simple, like the system of Copernicus. But Teddy Staples saw you.
Charley, where is Teddy? What have you done with Teddy?
”

Charley got up, all color drained from his face. He threw his handful of weeds to the ground. “I swear to you, I don't know what's happened to Teddy. I swear … But what's the use? You don't believe me, no matter what I say. It's all gone to hell anyhow.”

Homer went in the house to telephone the District Attorney. “Congratulations,” said the D.A. He paused to pass the word along to Miss O'Toole. “That's great. And it just proves the rightness of holding off long enough. And I've got to hand it to you, pulling a confession with a scrappy piece of evidence like that Teddy's diary. Yes, sir, Kelly, my boy, I've got to hand it to you.”

“It's not a confession. All he admits doing is burying the gun. But I'm about to detain him for a preliminary hearing. Is that all right with you?”

“Sure, it is. Hey, no it isn't either. Couldn't you just hold off till tomorrow?”

“No, I couldn't. What for?”

“Well, look here, Homer, old man. You know how the papers have been after me, you know me, ‘The Do-Nothing D.A.'? Well, here's what I want those bastards to do. I want them out there on the front steps of the Goss mansion taking a picture of me, and of you and Jimmy, too, naturally, looking on while one of your boys clamps handcuffs on Charley. How about it? Let's make those bums eat crow. Besides, I sure need a little glory, this being an election year, you know how it is.”

“Well, come on out here right now, and bring them with you.”

“Aw, Homer, it's practically five o'clock. And you know me, I'm a family man. Besides, I bet it's going to be one of those misty nights. Do those Gosses have cows? You know how scared I am of cows. What's that, Miss O'Toole?” Homer, exasperated, could hear whimpering sounds from Miss O'Toole. Then the D.A. barked into the telephone. “You heard me, didn't you, Kelly? Who's boss around here, anyway? Put a man on Charley, and I'll be out first thing in the morning.”

“But, sir,” said Homer. The receiver at the other end of the line banged down, and Homer stood looking at the mouthpiece, enraged. Just because the stupid ass was petrified of the country. Homer shouted into the empty telephone line, “They haven't even got any cows, you crazy fool.”

Chapter 47

	How many water bugs make a quorum?
HENRY THOREAU

Howard Swan was on the line for Jimmy when they got back to the station. “Hello, Jimmy? I just want you to pass the word along to everybody there at Fire and Police to try and get to the Special Town Meeting tonight. The Armory. You know how hard it is to get a quorum in the middle of the summer, and the Water Commissioners are mighty anxious to get this motion through.”

“Sure, I'll pass the word along. Tell me again what the meeting's for?”

“To vote $80,000 for resetting the pipe to Sandy Pond in Lincoln. Don't you know about the wet mess we've got there in the Milldam? All that melting snow in the spring, and the spring rains, and then so much rain on and off the last six weeks—the water table rose eighteen inches and overflowed the dam there in Lincoln, washed out the ditch, loosened up the pipe, and the water's coming down here like Noah's flood. Make all your boys turn out, and bring their wives.”

“You bet,” said Jimmy. Then he hung up and called up Mary at the library to tell her about Charley Goss. It looked like everything was winding up.

Attendance at Town Meeting was not only a civic duty, it was an entertainment. Everyone who had heard about it came and nearly filled up the Armory. Mary sat near the back of the hall with Gwen and Tom and old Mrs. Hand. Charley Goss was sitting way up near the front with his two sisters. Mary saw Harold Vine, wearing his own clothes rather than a uniform, slip into the row behind them and sit a seat or two away from Charley. Philip Goss, as a member of the Finance Committee, was sitting at a long table in front of the stage with the selectmen. Alice Herpitude scurried into the empty aisle seat next to Harold Vine just as Howard Swan, the Moderator, lifted his gavel to call the meeting to order. There was a noisy pause after the opening prayer while more latecomers were seated, and Mary saw Rowena Goss turn around and radiate at Miss Herpitude. Rowena had her hand out showing Alice something. It was a ring, a giant ring on her left hand. So that was the way the land lay. Homer Kelly was handing out nice little pretty gifts in all directions. A nice spell in jail for Charley, with a pretty little electric chair at the end. A nice pretty ring for Charley's sister, Rowena. And a nice pretty stab in the back for you, my girl. Mary was horrified to discover that her eyes were filmed over with tears. Dimly she saw Homer bungle over a chair on the stage and sit down in his rumpled suit and ghastly tie with a group of other nonvoting observers. Through her head ran some bitter words of Emily's—
finally no golden fleece, Jason sham, too.
One of the other nonvoters on the stage was Roland Granville-Galsworthy. Oh, naturally. The lovely man was slumped down in his chair, his lower jaw drooping down.

Then Mary saw Mrs. Bewley, and she managed to cheer up. God bless thee, Mrs. Bewley, and thrice bless thy fur piece, Mrs. Bewley. Mrs. Bewley was sitting way up front. She was wearing her Clothe-the-Naked dress, and the sharp face of the squirrel around her neck looked clever enough to cast a vote of its own. Mrs. Bewley couldn't hear anything, but she voted both aye and nay on everything anyway.