The Memorial Hall Murder (15 page)

The place was beginning to get a grip on Homer. Every time he opened the battered door and stepped into the high windy space that ran through the middle of the building, the lofty corridor with its banging doors at both ends and its population of students taking shortcuts from classrooms and laboratories along Oxford Street to Quincy Street and the Yard, he felt pulled farther in, as though Memorial Hall were a kind of labyrinth of varnished wood. There was a spacious compartmented melancholy about it that peculiarly attracted him. Trying to put his finger on it, all he could think of was—of all the idiotic things—old lithographs by Currier and Ives, those jolly Currier and Ives calendar pictures of farmyard scenes, or sleighs dashing out of forests. Only it wasn't the hearty farmer and his wife or the fashionable lady and gentleman in the sleigh that were like the building. It was the woods in the background of all the pictures. All those Currier and Ives calendar pictures had the same thick woods, the same dark tangle of winter branches, or the same dense summer shade of trees in the woodlot, growing darker and darker as one looked deeper and deeper in.

It was the forest into which the farmer and his wife and the lady and gentleman would one day disappear. One by one they would slip into the dark woods. The gentleman in his frock coat and the lady in her thick skirt would move around the trunks of the trees and vanish. This building with its forest of varnished lumber reminded Homer of the woods. Only that moment the dead soldiers whose names lined the walls had slipped through the door into the great hall, or they were ascending or descending a staircase, or hovering in the shadows at the top of the balcony in Sanders Theatre, or moving slowly from level to level in the dim spaces of the tower, or occupying the dusty rooms in the turrets at either side, like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

But the soldiers were not real. Homer wasn't about to frighten himself with a population of ghosts from the Union Army. It was only the hunchback who turned out to exist, after all.

It was Tuesday morning. Tuesday wasn't ordinarily a class day, but Mary was busy with students just the same, making herself available, helping them choose topics for the first paper of the semester. She would be through at twelve o'clock. Homer looked at his watch. He was early. He could hear music in Sanders Theatre. He poked his head in the door to see what was going on, and found Vick Van Horn working with a couple of her soloists. He walked into the amber light and sat down on one of the benches at the side.

Betsy Pickett was standing at the front of the stage. Tim Swegle, the tenor, was waiting his turn. Jack Fox was accompanying Betsy at the harpsichord. “
I know that my Redeemer liveth
,” sang Betsy, “
and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
” Vick was brooding at the back of the hall, staring at Betsy, her elbows on the back of the bench in front of her, her chin in her hands. Betsy's thin trembling voice was a silver wire, a floating spun-glass thread. She was lost in her own miracle. Her seamless outpouring flowed around Homer. He could feel the ethereal spirals of her aria curling around the little iron pillars that supported the balcony, wreathing the rising rows of benches, billowing over the white marble statues of Josiah Quincy and James Otis, filling all the spaces and interstices of the forest of Sanders Theatre. Even the wooden volutes above the stage seemed ready to spring open and flower lush oaken blossoms in celebration of Betsy's faith in the risen Christ, in all things of the spirit, in everything true and—

“Oh, shit,” said Betsy, breaking off in midflight. “I forgot the worms.”

“It's all right,” said Vick. “Just start over. And this time don't come down so hard on the appoggiatura. Just let it happen by itself. Did you want something, Homer?”

“Oh, no. Excuse me, I was just listening.” Homer stood up and grinned and waved his hand and went out, as Betsy put her hands in her back pockets, threw her head back and began lobbing clear notes into the vault high over her head again. “
And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.
”

Her voice flowed after Homer out of the hall in a cascading waterfall. He was still half transported. So it didn't surprise him at all to see the golden vision of the crucified Christ on the little balcony above the entrance to the great hall. In fact, it took him a full three seconds to realize that the little balcony did not usually support a vision, that Handel's
Messiah
was not usually accompanied by visual effects in pantomime. But there it was, a living picture. Someone was standing on the balcony in a white robe with his arms outspread in the attitude of the cross, his hair puffed out around his head: He was staring through a pair of thick glasses at the opposite wall.

“Jesus,” gasped Homer. “Jesus X. Christ.”

Homer didn't mean anything in particular by this exclamation, but instantly a spasm shook the body of the vision on the balcony, and it turned its head to look down at Homer tenderly. “I am,” said the vision in a gentle voice: “You see, I am.”

“Say, listen here,” said Homer. “I saw you there before. How did you get there? Oh, I know. It's that staircase on the other side, isn't it? One of those stairways to the balconies in the great hall, right?”

The smile on the face of the vision faded. He picked up his white skirts and scuttled through the door at the back of the shallow balcony.

He couldn't go far. Homer ran across the creamy new cement of the floor under the balcony, just as the bell in the tower began to chime for noon. The bell sent hollow spheres of sound clanging throughout the building, declaring the end of class all up and down Oxford Street. Homer could imagine professors picking up their briefcases while their students billowed up the stairs of the amphitheaters in the Science Center and down the stairs in the Lowell Lecture Hall, tugging on coats and jackets against the early November chill, pouring along the sidewalks in the direction of the Student Union or Elsie's or the Wursthaus or other eating places around Harvard Square, or heading for dining halls in the river houses or the dorms in the Radcliffe Quad. Homer felt a pang in his own insides. He was starving. Mary would be there to meet him in a minute, and then they'd walk the long mile home for lunch. He really didn't have time to pursue this fool. But he ran into the great hall anyway, and looked around. The enormous room was empty, but he could hear a pattering scramble on the balcony over his head, then the sound of something falling over, and then silence.

Homer galloped up the stairs. The first balcony was a dusty place, cluttered with broken chairs. The Jesus vision was nowhere in sight, but the chair he had knocked over was lying on its side. The door to the tiny balcony over the memorial corridor was ajar. Homer wandered out onto it and looked down at students coming and going on the floor below. There was very little room on the balcony, only enough space for an orator making a speech, or a row of trumpeters blowing ruffles and flourishes. In Homer's brief acquaintance with Memorial Hall the little balcony had so far been unoccupied. He turned to go, but then he noticed something wedged in the shadows in the corner. It was a shoe. A man's shoe. Big and black with a buckle on its side. The Jesus vision had rushed away like Cinderella, leaving his glass slipper behind him. Well, he couldn't have rushed far.

Homer carried the shoe back out onto the big balcony over the great hall and looked left and right. Then he remembered the turret rooms at either side. He moved softly into the alcove at one side of the balcony and peered into its hollow depths. At the other end of the little hall there was a door, and through the stained glass in the window of the door shone the light of day.

Homer rattled the knob. The door was locked. “Hello, in there,” he said loudly. Immediately he heard a
bump
on the other side of the door and then a scurrying noise like a mouse in the wall. Then silence.

“Hey, in there, open up.” Homer shook the door handle. Then he noticed a white card on the door frame.

ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTINT

said the white card.

“Hey, open up in there,” thundered Homer, knocking on the glass. “I require administrative assistance.”

There was more scuffling. Then more silence. Then a shape loomed up in the glass and opened the door slowly. A frowzy head looked out, the wispy strands of hair around it catching the sunlight like an aureole. The thick glasses peered out into the dim corridor. The narrow face was in shadow. “May I help you?” said the administrative assistant, speaking softly through the crack.

Homer waggled the big black shoe at him and said the first thing that came into his head. “I am—ah—looking for assistance from the curriculum committee of the university faculty of general education and the fellowship for undergraduate health services,” he said, letting his eyes rove from the pale face downward to the too-large sweater and the trousers, which were strangely wadded and bulging. The corner of a white sheet trailed from one pant leg. The orange sneakers were very small. The big glass slipper would never fit those tiny feet. This was not Cinderella, after all. Homer stuck the big shoe back under his arm.

“Oh, of course,” said Jesus. “You want Bellweather Hall. The second floor. Room 242.” He was nodding his head up and down in the kindliest way.

“I've already been there,” said Homer. “They told me to come here.” Behind the frowzy head he could see an untidy sleeping bag on the floor. An open can of SpaghettiOs stood on a large box trunk. One of the windows was propped open with a stick, and on the sill stood (aha!) a carton of milk.

“Oh, so many people make that mistake.” Jesus smiled. “But we don't take care of that kind of thing in here any more. Perhaps it is Muggleby Hall now. Muggleby, you see. Not Memorial Hall.” He pointed vaguely over Homer's shoulder in the direction of a possible Muggleby Hall, and began closing the door. “I remember now. There was some talk of moving that committee from Bellweather to Muggleby. Yes, I feel sure that must be the case. Just proceed down Oxford Street. You'll find Muggleby on the left-hand side. A big yellow-brick building.” He was nodding through the crack. The door was closing. “You can't miss it.” The door clicked shut.

Homer was enchanted. He stood staring at the blurry shape of Jesus as it faded away from the door on the other side of the glass. The man was living there. He had found a home complete with heat and light and a magnificent view of Harvard Yard and the traffic swarming around Cambridge Common. Free, free! But the question was, had he been manufacturing bombs in there in his spare time? Had he blown up a chunk of Memorial Hall as a portent of the wrath to come? Homer rapped on the door again. “Now look here, friend, No nonsense, now. Open up.”

Once more the door opened. Again the round glasses blinked amiably at Homer.

“I want to know what you think you're up to. What were you doing out there on the balcony? Just what the hell is going on?”

“But you heard.”

“I heard? What did I hear? Go ahead. Tell me what I heard.”

“You know. The music. What they were singing.”

“Singing? You mean in Sanders Theatre? You mean, the
Messiah?
Handel's
Messiah?”

Jesus smiled modestly. “Exactly. You see, I was handing out pamphlets out there on the street one day last week, and I heard them singing. So I came in to listen. Because, you see, I am. I told you.”

“You said that before. You am. You mean, you
personally
am? You am what?”

“The Messiah. Reborn into this generation. Come back to earth. I am only awaiting the moment. The right moment to announce my return.”

“Oh, go on,” said Homer. “You don't really mean it.”

“Why, certainly. Certainly I do. You see, the Messiah is reborn into every generation. It is a fact. There have been others. Many others. But in this generation—”

“In this generation it just happens to be you, is that it? Oh, look here, now,” said Homer, “that's the nuttiest thing I ever—”

“Listen. Listen to the music!”

Faintly from Sanders Theatre the voice of the tenor soloist wavered upward:
Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow.
The wispy-haired Messiah lifted his arms to right and left and stood in the position of the cross, beaming at Homer, the ragged edges of his hair and the fluffy sleeves of his sweater and the knobby silhouette of his trousers outlined in the yellow light of broad noonday. Homer was appalled. Between them as they stood staring at one another floated the melancholy rising sevenths and the lost bereft dyings away of the tenor aria, casting into outrageous perspective the callow posturings of the self-styled Messiah of Memorial Hall.

Homer closed his eyes. “Oh, no. Oh, no, I can't stand it. Oh, Jesus Christ.”

The Messiah smiled and laid his hand on Homer's arm in a gesture of gentle blessing. “He stands before you.”