The Memorial Hall Murder (34 page)

Julia protested again, and tried to give the piece of paper back, but Jane Plankton put her hands behind her and giggled, and then Julia hugged her, and Miss Plankton trotted away, hallooing to a portly man who was coming in the door, taking off his coat.

Homer laughed and sat down again. “What an old darling. It must give her a lot of satisfaction to pretend to be a public benefactor like that, going around writing colossal I.O.U.'s. I only hope nobody ever tries to cash in on them. Then she'd be in terrible trouble, the poor old thing.”

“Cash in on them?” said Julia Chamberlain. “You bet your life they cash in on them. When Jane Plankton says she made a killing, she means it. That's the Jane of Janeway and Everett, the most successful firm of investment people in Boston. Her two brothers have the know-how, Wayland and Everett Plankton. Jane has the intuition. You see that man she's with right now?”

Homer was dumfounded. “Haven't I seen him before somewhere?”

“That's Eliot North. Treasurer of Harvard College. Eliot has lunch with Jane Plankton here every Friday. Of course, he depends on her two brothers for sturdy dependable blue-chip advice, but it's Jane's pixie audacity and derring-do that really count.” Julia Chamberlain snapped her pocketbook shut on Jane Plankton's three-hundred-thousand-dollar I.O.U., while Homer with dropped jaw sat stiffly upright on the edge of the sofa.

“Upbow, Miss Plankton,” cried Mary, collapsing backward.

“You bet your boots I'm going to cash in on it,” said Julia Chamberlain.

Chapter Fifty

Ham was back. The word went up and down the basement corridors, and in and out of the nine doors. It flooded all over Mem Hall 201, where Homer was lecturing on the last day before the Christmas break. He threw up his hands and dismissed the class, because everybody was leaving anyway. They were all surging out of their seats and running out of the building and around to the north entry and in again, shouting a welcome. Homer went too, trailing Mrs. Esterhazy, who was pounding up the stairs carrying a tray of Viennese pastry she had manufactured by some kind of witchcraft in her room in the basement.

They found Ham leaning against the wall in the corridor with his arm around Vick. Jack Fox stood in the balcony over his head, playing a saxophone in triumphant screeches and blats. Betsy was singing at the top of her lungs.

“Shut up, everybody, shut
up. Quiet!”
shouted Tim.

There was a sudden silence, and then Ham made a deprecating face, and they all laughed. Mr. Proctor poked him in the stomach. “Why, the poor man is nothing but skin and bone.”

“Well, I was working on getting my stomach back,” said Ham, “eating everything I could lay my hands on. But then Vick said she wouldn't have me unless I stayed thin. Keeps talking about my health. Good heavens, Emma, what's that? Sort of a chocolate-lemon-meringue-whipped-cream delight, is that it?”

Mrs. Esterhazy was holding a tray under his nose, beaming at him. “For you,” she said. “I vork my fingers to zuh bone.”

“Oh, Mrs. Esterhazy, that looks really incredibly delicious,” said Vick. “Oh, Ham, go ahead, eat all you want. Any time Mrs. Esterhazy wants to give you something to eat, take it, take it! Oh, mmmmm, Mrs. Esterhazy, this is really just fabulous.”

“Come on, everybody,” said Ham, “pitch in. Put some in your pocket. You never know when one of Mrs. Esterhazy's little tidbits is going to save your life. What about Putzi and Siegfried, Emma? What mischief are they up to today?”

Mrs. Esterhazy frowned. “Zey are in school. Zuh city of Cambridge, zey made me put zem in school.”

“Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. If I ever get to be President of Harvard, I'll pull a lot of strings and throw my weight around and get them admitted to the freshman class as child prodigies. How would you like that? Of course, I'm not at all sure I really want to be President of this place or not.”

“Oh, I hope to
God
they pick somebody else,” said Vick. “I don't know if I could stand it, being married to the President of Harvard. I mean, I'm still young. I've got my whole life ahead of me. Tea for the faculty wives! Oh, it would be so incredibly ghastly.”

“Say, listen,” said Ham, “where's Jennifer? I don't see Jennifer Sullivan. Did she have her …?”

“Nine pounds,” squealed Betsy. “She had this really darling nine-pound baby boy. And guess what, Ham? She named it after you.”

“Oh, no, she didn't. Oh, my God, she didn't name it after me? Oh, well, what the hell, who wants to be President of Harvard? Not me. No, sir. I'll tell you what I do want. Lunch. A bottle of beer. Who wants a beer on me? Come on, you Rats.” Ham put his head back and shouted up at the balcony. “Say, Jack, do you know ‘He That Drinks Is Immortal'?”

“No,” said Jack, leaning over the railing. “How does it go?”

“Like this.” Ham began to sing.

He that drinks is immortal,

He that drinks is immortal
   and can ne'er decay,

For wine still supplies,

for wine still supplies
   what age wears away.

How can he be dust,

how can he be dust
   that moistens his clay?

“Hey, what the hell's going on?” Mr. Crawley popped out of his office. Ham took Vick's hand and began running down the hall. He grabbed up Mr. Crawley and carried him along, and Vick snatched Mrs. Esterhazy's hand, and Mrs. Esterhazy caught Tim's, and everybody else ran after them hand in hand. They all burst out the south door, singing Purcell's praise of wine.

Homer watched them go. He couldn't help thinking, one last time, about the great chain of being, and James Cheever's way of looking at the world. Those people running across Cambridge Street, all linked together, they were a chain too, a chain chock-full of being, only it was horizontal. Nobody was climbing up' over anybody else to sit at the right hand of God. They weren't on any kind of ladder at all. It was all on the flat.

At the north door Homer turned to go outside, but then he stopped and looked back again at the full length of the memorial corridor in which so much had happened since last October, since that day when he had first set foot in the place and found Vick Van Horn and demanded to know where his classroom was.

“Excuse me.” A girl with her arms full of books was brushing past him, lugging a suitcase, running the whole length of the hall, her hair blowing in front of her. She was taking a shortcut to Quincy Street and the Yard. When she went outside, a gust caught the south door too, and blew it open, and then the wind went blustering through the building, sucked from one end to the other, barreling particles of old snow before it, and scraps of wastepaper and clumps of wet dead leaves.

Homer went out of doors too, by the door on the north side. Carefully he clapped that door shut behind him, because the building was too huge and hospitable for its own good. It was altogether too big and prodigal and open to the weather. Then he went in again by way of the service entrance, and down the stairs to the basement.

Who was living downstairs now? Homer guessed some of the Rats would be moving back into the house on Martin Street—Mrs. Esterhazy and her children, Jennifer and son. Before long Ham would be squeezing new vagrants into crannies and cupboards and lofts in Memorial Hall to fill the empty rooms when the old trespassers left. There was many a corner in the spacious hold of this enormous creaking ship that was hove to in the squalls and crosscurrents rolling down the broad cold wastes of Cambridge Street and Kirkland.…

Homer strolled along the corridor, looking once again for somebody to talk to. There was an open door at the end of the hall. A wisp of smoke was trailing out of the door. The smoke smelled strongly of incense. The incense was fragrant with the mysterious East and the temples of the Ganges. A familiar voice was chanting a mystic succession of syllables.

Maaaandaaaalaaaa. Maaaaaaaandaaaaaaaalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

To whom did that reedy voice belong?

“Good God,” said Homer, looking around the door. “Is that you, Freddy?”

Freddy Fulsom was taken by surprise. He jerked to his feet. A small brass incense burner clattered off a stand, emitting coils of greenish smoke. In a blur of saffron robe and shaved head and skinny arms clanging with bangles, Freddy made a rush for the door, and shut it with a shivering slam.

Homer stood in the hall and stared awe-struck at the door. Beside it the white card on the doorframe was dog-eared and grubby, but it still said
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTINT.
Homer put his face close to the door. “It's all right, Freddy,” he said loudly. “I do not require administrative assistance.'But listen here, are you a Buddhist or something now?”

Silence.

“But what about your theory, Freddy? You know, your idea about Jesus Christ being reborn into every generation? The Messiah returned to earth? Who's going to take care of that sort of thing from now on?”

Freddy wasn't telling. Homer shook his head and turned away. The chanting began again. At the other end of the corridor a baby cried.

Acknowledgments

Many people have helped this book along. I could not have written it without the help of Michael Lane, the energetic custodian of Memorial Hall, who is the opposite in every way of his fictitious successor, Jerry Crawley. I am also indebted to Frank Marobella, Mechanical Foreman for the North Yard; David Gorski, formerly Director of University Police and Security; Elizabeth Rigby, Librarian in the Planning Office; Kenneth John Conant, Professor of Architecture Emeritus; Louise Ambler, Curator of the Portrait Collection; Elizabeth Keul, Administrative Assistant to the President; James Sharaf, Attorney in the Office of the General Counsel; and F. John Adams, Director of Chora] Music at Harvard and Radcliffe. The kind instruction of John Ferris, University Organist and Choirmaster, was most important of all. I have tried to correct most of the mistakes some of these patient people uncovered in the manuscript, but of course they are not to blame for the ones I clung to.

Others whose advice and assistance were invaluable were Allen Lannom, Conductor of the Masterworks Chorale; cellist Philip Moss; William Cremins, Chief of the Cambridge Fire Department; Sergeant Robert Rigollio of the Boston Police Department; art historian Robert Shaffer; Dr. George Hewitt; Dr. Gordon Winchell; and Robert Lunning of Bastille-Neiley, the architectural firm which recently restored part of Memorial Hall.

Included in the plans for this restoration was a new roof for the tower, to replace the one that burned in 1956. The first stage of the work has been completed, but unhappily the forlorn stump of the tower continues to loom over the city of Cambridge. Since my story is set in some near but vaguely defined future, I have written it as though the reconstruction of the roof had been accomplished. I hope the money will someday be found to crown the old tower with a new steeple in actual fact, so that Memorial Hall will at last be restored to its old dignity and grandeur.