Shortest Day (29 page)

Homer flapped his hands. “I don't know what the hell I think. After all, somebody else could have sharpened the sword beforehand, and then one of you just picked it up and—”

“But you wouldn't be able to, you know, cut his throat with it,” said Kevin, demonstrating, holding his neck, “unless you really meant to do it. You know, unless you really, like, slashed at him with what-do-you-call-it, malice aforethought.”

Homer grimaced and changed the subject. “Now, listen. I hate to be the one to mention it, but this makes four—four people hurt—or worse—during this year's Revels. The police aren't going to think it's a coincidence. Henry Shady was killed in a traffic accident. Jeffery Peck died in a fall at the Science Center. Twenty-two witnesses saw him strike the glass roof of the cafeteria at two minutes after three o'clock yesterday afternoon. I'm sure the police will want to know what each of you was doing at the time.” Homer hauled up his red robe and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. It was a list of sources for arsenate of lead. “Tom Cobb died after eating a candy bar into which arsenate of lead had been injected. Tell me, do any of you work with stained glass?”

They looked at him blankly.

“Or battery plates?” said Homer. “No? Ammunition? Metal roof sheeting? Lead-paint removal?”

Shuddering, Sarah moved away and went looking for Walt, the Old Master, to ask him to take Arlo's place as Saint George. But she couldn't pull herself together. She found Mary Kelly instead and fell weeping on her shoulder.

“I know,” said Mary. And of course she did know. She had guessed that a heavy connection had been building up between Arlo and Sarah. No wonder Sarah couldn't stop crying.

But Mary didn't know the other reason. It was something Sarah had remembered about Morgan—he kept a whetstone in his desk drawer. It was just a rectangle of hard gray stone for keeping the knives sharp, so they would cut cleanly, making delicate slices of cucumbers and tomatoes, slitting the meat of a chicken away from the bone, or slicing open the bodies of Morgan's specimen waterfowl.

The whetstone that had sharpened the sword that had cut Arlo's throat was Morgan's own. He had killed Henry Shady and Tom Cobb and Jeffery Peck. Sarah's doubts were gone forever.

CHAPTER 37

Then on the cross hanged I was
,

Where a spear to my heart did glance;

There issued forth both water and blood
,

To call my true love to the dance
.

Carol, “My Dancing Day”

I
t was a routine case of hypothermia. The pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital looked dispassionately at the thawing body of Albert Maggody lying on his metal table. There was nothing exceptional about it at all. It was the cadaver of an aged African-American male exposed to conditions of extreme cold by the criminal carelessness of the city of Cambridge and Harvard University, and most likely God.

“Undress him, will you?” he said to his assistant, turning away to collect his instruments.

“Certainly,” said the assistant. One by one she removed Maggody's cracked shoes and his worn socks, trousers, and underwear. Then she unbuttoned his sweater. As she pulled the sleeve over the closed fist of his right hand, something fell out and fluttered to the floor. It was a piece of paper wrinkled into a ball.

The assistant picked it up and tossed it in the wastebasket. “No, wait, let me see it,” said the pathologist.

Clucking her tongue, she picked up the wadded piece of paper and handed it to him. He pulled it open and read it silently. The first part was in pencil—

Darling,

Meet me at three o'clock?

I love you.*

Sarah

*Passionately!

The second part had been added with a typewriter—

JEFFERY, MAKE IT TOMORROW

IN THE ASTRONOMY LAB
.

Puzzled, he looked up at his assistant. “The cadaver in the next room, what's his name? It's Jeffery, isn't it? Jeffery with an ‘e' in the wrong place? What's this old geezer doing with a letter addressed to Jeffery?”

The assistant shrugged her shoulders. “Only connection I can see, they both came over from Cambridge Hospital.”

“Right, the same hospital. And they must have died within an hour or two of each other. And the Cambridge Common, where this old guy froze to death, isn't far from the Science Center, where the other guy fell and broke his neck. A stone's throw away, so to speak.”

“My, my, aren't we the great detective this morning? What else do you deduce, Mr. Holmes?”

“Oh, hell, it's nothing to me.” The pathologist pocketed the piece of paper, then inserted his knife in Maggody's torso and slit it open with a single stroke. “Just a couple more Christmas cadavers.”

But as he worked, he made up his mind to call the Cambridge Police. They might just possibly be interested in the coincidence about the letter.

PART SIX

THE DOCTOR

A doctor! a doctor!

Is there a doctor to be found

Can quickly raise my noble son

Lies bleeding on the ground?

Saint George and the Dragon

CHAPTER 38

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain
,

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been.…

Carol, “Love Is Come Again”

K
evin Barnes and Chickie Pickett were having lunch in the Greenhouse, the Science Center cafeteria, which had started serving meals again. The smashed glass roof had been covered with plywood. The cashier had done her best to cheer the place up by fastening a small aluminum Christmas tree to the top of her cash register. Her earrings were tiny Christmas balls.

“How is he?” said Chickie, dabbing at her eyes.

Kevin made a
this way, that way
gesture with his hand. “It's touch-and-go. Sarah spent the night in the waiting room of the Intensive Care Unit. She says they just shake their heads whenever she asks how he is.”