Jimmy and Homer wandered off to the cellar and started rooting around. Mary, with Rowena's 'dear' sounding unhappily in her head, climbed the stairs and went back to Elizabeth Goss's bedroom. Downstairs Rowena was playing 'Liebestraum.' She played with plenty of vibrato and when she got to the end she started over again. She played it through six or eight times. Mary closed the door and began to look around.
The bookcase—the bed—the flower prints—the draperies—the dresser—the carpet. Everything seemed to fit the image of the woman Elizabeth Goss had been before she had gone out of her mind. Tasteful and uninteresting. Go around again. The bookcase—the bed—the flower prints—the draperies—the dresser—
The dresser. There was a chest on the dresser, a small black box. Mary moved closer and reached out to touch it. That wasn't black paint on the surface—the wood itself was very dark, nearly black. She lifted the lid and looked inside. There wasn't much in it. Jimmy's men must have examined the contents already. Sentimental keepsakes, most likely. Like that old dried-up daisy at the bottom—the memento of some girlish romance? (He loves me, he loves me not.) There was a small jewel case in the corner of the chest, half hidden by a fat envelope. Mary groped the case out of its corner and opened it. Inside it was an old ring with a purple stone, set in an antique fashion. Mary took the ring out of the case and held it to the light. Amethyst, probably. Now what about the envelope? Across the front of it someone had written, 'great-grandmother's.' She had to open it carefully because it was swollen from its contents and brittle at the edges. Why, it was hair, a braided mass of auburn hair—great- grandmother's? But it was as beautiful and shining as if it had been cut and braided only yesterday. She drew it out and held it in her two hands. It was wound in an intricate pattern, and Mary found her fingers picking at it, trying to find the beginning. She shouldn't be doing this, she shouldn't be doing this at all. But she went right on pulling at it. She just had to see. As she twisted it loose from its braiding, the hair sprang loose in deep ripples, like the silky fur of a spaniel's ears. Beautiful, it was beautiful. Awestruck, Mary lifted her right hand gently and let the hair fall over her left arm in a shining waterfall. She had forgotten that human hair could grow so long...
Then Mary shook herself and began to struggle with the problem of getting the hair back into the envelope. It was like trying to pour a river into a glass. She would have to braid it all up again. Furtively she glanced at the door. Rowena was still sawing away downstairs. Mary struggled to separate the cloudy mass into threes. What a job. It would take a good five minutes. Her fingers worked hastily. Left over right, right over left...
Red hair must run in the female line in Elizabeth's family—from great-grandmother to Elizabeth to Elizabeth's children. There was a picture downstairs in the dining room, painted in the style of John Singer Sargent, that showed Elizabeth as she had looked when she was married. She had been a redhead, all right, like her children, with a pretty, bushy bob. But not this color, surely? The hair in the portrait was a light red like Rowena's, not this deep, lustrous red-brown, the color of a sorrel horse...
Then Mary was struck by a thought, and her fingers shrank from the hair she was twisting. There was an old wives' tale (or was it true? perhaps it was true!) that the hair of a dead man goes on growing in the grave. A picture blossomed in her mind before she could stop it, a picture of a beautiful young corpse in a flowing white dress, with a pale pre-Raphaelite face, her white hands folded on the heliotropes of her breast, and her dark coffin filling and filling with the ever-lengthening coils of her glorious ghostly hair...
*36*
The D.A. had finally come out to Concord. He didn't do anything in particular while he was there except spend an hour in Jimmy's office, whining. Miss O'Toole was away on vacation, and the D.A. felt naked and defenseless. And it was a misty night. He hadn't liked the way the trees had hung over the road on the drive out. The country was spooky, with those
And the newspapers were at him again. A district attorney * as supposed to come through with brilliant solutions to crimes and spectacular prosecutions. And here he was, getting nowhere is usual, the 'Do-Nothing D.A.' again. Well, they couldn't arrest the wrong man, could they? Then the papers would have at them for sure. And they couldn't arrest Teddy Staples, because they couldn't
After the D.A. left, Homer sat with his knees wedged into the kneehole of his desk, playing idly with his tie. He rolled it up from the bottom and then let go. As it unrolled, Mary and Jimmy Flower could watch the girl who was diving off the diving board go through the various positions of a swan dive and end up with a big splash at the bottom. 'Holy horsecollar!' said Jimmy.
'It would look a whole lot better on a horse,' said Mary.
Homer wasn't listening. He looked up from his tie slapped the desk. 'I know one place we didn't look for th letters, or that gun or the missing hat—the Gun House.'
'The Gun House?'
'Where the Concord Independent Battery keeps its cannon Come on. How can I manage to be so everlastingly dumb?'
Mary squeezed out of her chair and loomed up behind her card table. 'Well I never,' she said. 'Homer Kelly being humble. What a nice change.'
Homer laughed a huge basso laugh and lifted Jimmy right out of his chair. He dandled him up and down. 'Well, if a person knows he's the cat's pajamas, why try to cover it up?'
'Ow,' said Jimmy. 'For Chris'sake, lemme down.'
Jimmy didn't have a key to the Gun House, so they drove or by Harvey Finn's farm on Lowell Road and picked him up. The Gun House had been erected in the field next to Emerson's house by a patriotic town, the popular subscription taken up in a few days. Outside it a sign hung on a pole, displaying the crossed cannon insignia of the Battery. Harvey Finn opened the side door and turned on the light. The single room was like a big garage with a high beamed ceiling. Around the walls hung the harnesses for the horses. The two gleaming guns, copper-cent color, faced toward the big front doors, with the high-wheeled limbers behind them, their shafts resting on the floor. Homer stood between the guns and looked at them.
'What's today? May 6th. They won't be used again until Memorial Day, right? Suppose Ernest Goss was looking for a temporary place to stick his letters where he could get at them any time he wanted to. He had a key to the Gun House, didn't he? He might have planned to take them away again before Memorial Day. He didn't expect to die in the meantime.'
Homer was stooping over, peering into the muzzle of the right-hand gun. He took out his flashlight and pointed it inside. 'Nothing here.' Then he tried the other one. 'Oh, hell.' He sat back on his haunches and scratched his head.
Mary tried the ammunition boxes on the limbers. They were empty, too.
'It was a cute idea anyway,' said Jimmy Flower.
'Harvey,' said Homer. 'Show me how they work. You use blanks to start them with?'
'That's right. See, here's the box that holds the charges, black powder in little red bags. The powder monkey puts it in the muzzle, the rammer rams it home, and the thumber, he stands in back and puts a blank cartridge here under this little screw (it used to be a thumb-hole) like this. Then the lanyard man pulls the rope on it when I yell 'fire.' Like this.' There was a colossal BLAM. Mary shrieked, totally unprepared.
'Hey, hey,' said Homer. 'M-my God, man.'
'That was just the blank. There wasn't any charge in it.'
'Even so. Jesus. Say, what's in that bucket there, with the rag on top?'
Harvey Finn lifted up the rag and glanced underneath. 'Oh, it's just...' He put the rag back hastily. 'It's not anything.'
'Well, what is it?' said Jimmy. He picked up the rag. The bucket was full of empty beer cans. Harvey Finn snickered. 'Some of the boys must have had a party. Well, it's not like the good old days, though. We've really
