everybody asks him to do the hard jobs nobody else really wants.'
'Mmmmm,' said Homer, scribbling it all down. Jimmy Flower came into the office, pulling on his coat. He picked up his Chief's hat and put it on. It was the smallest regulation size, but it still left a draft around the edges and rested on his ears, folding them over. 'Jimmy,' said Homer, looking up, 'did you get a report yet on Howard Swan's story that he was in New York?'
'Yes, that's in. Those business buddies he said he was having lunch with all agreed he was with them on Patriot's Day, just the way he said they would. At one o'clock he was sitting right there in that restaurant off Wall Street. He was there all right.'
'He's some kind of big wheel in banking, isn't he? What about the men he was lunching with? All solid citizens?'
'They sure were. Above reproach. Jeez, what a nice thing to be. I wisht I was above reproach.'
Mary laughed and told him that he was, if anybody was. 'Tell that to Isabelle,' said Jimmy, going out again.
'Well, that's enough on Swan. We've been all over his house there on Main Street anyhow, and didn't turn up anything. He's not married?'
'No. There is some talk about an unhappy love affair, long igo. But then that's what people always say.'
'All right, now what about Teddy Staples?'
'Teddy?' Mary smiled. 'He certainly is a little nutty about Thoreau.'
'Let's begin with Teddy.'
Teddy's cottage on the Sudbury River was approached by a mile-long driveway off Fairhaven Road. Another driveway branched off his, leading to Alice Herpitude's house. Both houses looked out from pine woods on the wide bend of the river called Fairhaven Bay. Teddy's house had been built by the son of his illustrious ancestor as a summer camp, and basically it had once been a simple little house with a front porch toward the river, standing high and straight like an upright piano. But Teddy in a slack season for stonemasons had begun engulfing his front porch in a surging tide of cobblestones. Homer pulled up his car and stared at it, unbelieving. Mary explained that the Antiquarian Society was all upset about it, and was trying to make him stop. 'But really,' she said, 'that would be too bad. Houses like the way it used to be are a dime a dozen. Now it's unique.'
'Absolutely one-of-a-kind,' breathed Homer.
Teddy was making a cobblestone birdbath in his front yard, which was really a beaten-down part of the woods, marshy at the bottom by the river, with ferns pushing up sticky fiddleheads, and skunk cabbages, greener than anything else, putting out red snout-like flowers. It was chilly, and Teddy had on several layers of pants. The top one was split down the back seam where the staples had given way, showing a checkered pair underneath. Teddy waved his mortar trowel at them.
'You'll f-f-forgive me, if I go right on. I've got to work fast before the mortar dries.'
'Oh, Teddy, isn't that a nice birdbath,' said Mary. Teddy looked up at her, his thin face shining. 'Mary, I saw some red crossbills yesterday, in the very p-p-place
'He... ?' asked Homer.
'Henry Thoreau,' said Mary. 'Teddy is bound and determined he's going to see every bird Thoreau saw in Concord. How is your list coming, Teddy? How many more to go?'
Teddy turned back to work. His eager look was gone, his face seemed to have closed in. 'Oh,' he said, 'there's a few more...' He buttered a big round boulder with mortar and jammed it into place.
'I suppose it's harder now than it was in his day,' said Homer. 'Now that the area is so built up...'
'That's right,' said Teddy, sounding grim. 'And some of the birds were rare even for his time, even then.'
Homer asked him what he thought about the death of Ernest Goss.
Teddy flushed and looked miserable. 'I suppose you want me to say I think it's terrible. Well, I don't. The d- d-damn fool...'
'Were you at the parade on the 19th?'
'Me? At the parade? No, I was too busy.'
It turned out after some pressing that Teddy had been out in his canoe on the river, watching a bluebird try to claim a nesting site in the hollow of a dead tree.
'Well, what did you do before and after that?'
'Before and after? Heck, I must have spent three, four hours watching the bluebird. It was having an argument with an English sparrow over its property rights, and they took possession one after the other. The sparrow finally won out, I'm sorry to say.'
'Where was this hollow tree?'
'Where was it? Oh, I can show you the place. It wasn't far from the North Bridge, as a matter of fact. In fact every time those dern guns went off I was afraid the bluebird would give up and fly away. But she stuck to it. And unfortunately s-s-so did the sparrow. The black ducks didn't, though. There was a flock of them there, floating on the water, and one of the gunshots sent 'em all up—up and aw-w-w-ay.'
'Which gunshot?' said Henry. 'What time of day?'
'What time? Heck, I sort of 1-1-lose track of time.' Teddy was arranging small cobblestones artistically in a circle around the edge of his birdbath. 'It was a long time after the others, though, I'm pretty sure. Most of the people must have g-gone home.'
'That was probably the shot that killed Ernest Goss. I don't know what good it does us, though. We have other witnesses to the sound of the shot, a little before one o'clock. Besides the Boy Scout there was Mrs. Parsons with her baby carriage. The baby woke up and started to cry. But anyway, maybe you'd better show us just where you were.'
Teddy finished off his birdbath and cleaned his trowel. Mary made room for him beside her in the front seat of the car, and he sat down with his long bony hands hanging between his knees. She made small talk about birds, trying to ask sensible questions. Teddy answered in stammers, ill at ease. He showed them where to park on Monument Street, and then led them down to the river. 'Here we are,' said Teddy. 'Right beside where the Mill Brook comes in. Here's the tree. See? The high water killed it, many years back. Those must be my footprints there, coming up from the shore. See there, where the g-g-ground is soft?'
'Did you see or hear anything else, Teddy, while you were here, any time during the course of the day? Anything that might have had a remote connection with the killing of Ernest Goss?'
'Me? Oh, no. No.'
'Did you have those binoculars with you?'
'These? Oh, sure, I always carry my glasses and my f-f-field notebook.' He patted his pocket. Then he stopped, his hand on his chest, and stared at the sky.
'What is it?' said Mary, turning to look where he was looking.
Teddy's voice trembled in a fusillade of stuttering. 'I-I-I d-d-don't know. I-I-It's s-s-so h-h-h-high...'
He fumbled to free his binoculars and jerked them up to his eyes. Mary saw a dark speck wheeling and soaring very far up. It disappeared behind a clump of alders. Teddy, breathing rapidly, plunged along the shore and then into the water. He strode out, the water soaking up his trousers to his thighs, his eyes clamped to his glasses.
'What is it?' said Homer. 'Looks like a gull.'
Teddy stood silent, transfixed. Then his shoulders sagged. He lowered his glasses, and with his back to them, seemed to be trying to get hold of himself. 'It's a d-d-duck hawk,' he said. He started to cough.
'Come on out, Teddy,' said Homer. 'We'll take you home and you can put on some dry clothes.' Mary wondered if he had another pair of trousers to put on. They drove him home, and she watched him stumble out of the car and start up the steep stony steps of his cobblestone porch. She felt extremely sorry for him. His trousers slapped against his legs, he was hunched over with uncontrollable spasms.
Homer backed the car around. 'If you had to pick out one word to describe his mood, what would it be?'
Mary thought about it, then picked the right one. 'Afraid.'
'And there's another thing. Did you notice how he always repeated each question as though he were giving himself more time to think? That's an odd trick I associate with liars.'
'Oh, no. Teddy isn't a liar. Not usually, anyway. I'm sure of it.'
'Well, look. He could have paddled up to the North Bridge, bumped off Goss and paddled home again, and no
