for another grab. This time it was a torn campaign poster advertising Harry J. Croney for County Clerk. Mrs. Bewley leaned Harry up against the wall like an icon and beamed at Mary and Homer, expecting homage.
They were stunned. Mrs. Bewley, taking their gaping for awe, decided to do the thing up brown. She turned the paper bag upside down and dropped a fluttering shower of trash on the floor. And there among the candy wrappers and cigarette containers and throwaway mail advertising specials on pork chops, Mary saw a message from Jesus that was worth the salvaging. She reached for it and picked it up. It was another one of Ernie's letters, the one that had fallen under her chair at Orchard House. It was the tenderly beautiful letter that Henry Thoreau was supposed to have written to Emily Dickinson. What on earth was it doing here? Mary showed it to Homer.
'What a stroke of luck,' said Homer. 'It never occurred to me that one letter might be missing from that bunch in the bait box.' He read it over. 'What a genius that Charley is. This is a masterpiece. Mrs. Bewley must have lifted it off Ernie's desk before he decided to hide them away. Say, maybe that's why he had to hide them in the first place. Someone was swiping them.'
'Ssshh.' Mary looked apprehensively at Mrs. Bewley. But Mrs. Bewley was delighted by their interest in the central feature and mystic heart of her collection. Struggling behind her sofa, which was kitty-cornered artistically across the angle of the room, she moved aside a wickerwork plant table sprouting a hardbitten rubber plant and yanked at a closet door. It opened just wide enough to show what was inside. It was jampacked and bulging with brown grocery bags chock-full of messages straight from Jesus.
Homer clapped his hand to his brow. The worth of Mrs. Bewley as a collector on a par with Bernard Berenson and Andrew Mellon was just beginning to dawn on him. He fell down on one knee and shouted humbly, WOULD MRS. BEWLEY, COULD MRS. BEWLEY SEE HER WAY CLEAR TO LETTING THEM BORROW HER COLLECTION OF MESSAGES? THEY WOULD BE SO CAREFUL, SO VERY CAREFUL...
Mrs. Bewley climbed eagerly over the back of the sofa, stepping gingerly on either side of Priscilla, and gave them her blessing.
*43*
Mary was still hoarse from shouting at Mrs. Bewley. She cleared her throat. 'Why don't we sort them for her?' she said. She was watching Patrolman Vine and Sergeant Ordway turn over mountains of trash, spreading them out neatly on the floor of the firing range on six of Isabelle Flower's clean white sheets. 'Maybe she'd like all the Choko-wrappers in one bag and all the popsicle sticks in another.'
'No,' said Homer. 'She may have some profound system of classification all her own. Let them alone. Mrs. Bewley knows best.'
It took them two hours to go through the entire collection. Some of the pieces were sticky and had to be soaked apart. Luther Ordway picked up the last of these from a towel in the darkroom and brought it out into the light to look at it. He was whistling, but then he stopped whistling, and read it through again. Then he brought it to Chief Flower. Jimmy read it a couple of times, looking sober and brought it over to Homer's desk.
'Oh, good,' said Mary. 'Did you find something else?' Jimmy glanced at her, looking troubled, then shifted his glance away. Homer read the scrap of paper through twice, then slowly lifted his small sharp eyes to look at her.
'Well, what is it?' said Mary. She walked around behind him and he held the piece of wrinkled paper so that she could see. It was a short typewritten note.
Dearest Philip,
I have something to tell you that I hope will make you happy. Can you meet me at Nicholson's Barn between 12:30 and 1:30? Please don't say anything to anyone—and destroy this.
It was signed in ink. The signature had run, but it had a homely look, and it jumped out at Mary from the page. It was her own.
Homer looked up at her. His face was still with an arctic calm, his eyes buckets of nails. Mary couldn't speak. She didn't say anything at all. She stared at the signature. That was her M, her closed A and careless R, and her Y that was just a bump and a straight line without any loop.
Then Jimmy snatched the paper suddenly. 'I'm going to tear it up,' he said.
'What do you want to do,' said Homer, 'lose your badge? That's evidence.'
Jimmy glared at him. 'It don't mean anything and you know it.'
'Oh, but it does,' said Homer. He stood up and reached out, gripping Jimmy's wrist. He squeezed the wrist in his large hand until Jimmy's fingers went limp and dropped the paper. 'Thank you,' said Homer. He picked it up. 'This note calls Philip away from the place where he was surrounded by witnesses who could furnish him with an alibi for the time of the murder, to a lonely spot where no one would see him coming or going. He could walk to the barn from the Gun Club right across a dry field.' Homer looked at Mary coldly. 'Did you meet him there?'
Mary dumbly shook her head.
Homer started walking around the room. 'Philip Goss received this note some time during the morning of the murder. Expecting a declaration of love he walked eagerly across the field to the barn, arriving around 12:30. Impatiently he waited there for Mary for a full hour, maybe longer, before giving up. Then he tossed the note aside in disgust, returned to the Rod and Gun Club and started to drink himself under the table. Afterwards, when asked about his whereabouts, Philip was gallant. He refused to name the reason he was missing, for fear of getting into trouble the girl he loved. A gentleman of the old school.'
'That's more than you are, I see,' said Jimmy, his voice rising. 'Listen here, Homer Kelly, if you say a word, just one word, that harms a hair on the head of my Mary, I'll...'
Homer interrupted roughly. 'Oh, so she's
Mary hugged her arms and shivered. She found herself noticing the way Homer's head was arranged on his neck, the way his neck grew out of his collar. His head was different from the bald knob that rested on Jimmy's shoulders like a friendly turnip. It was erect like a dog's, furry and cocked and alert. Cocked. Cocked like a gun. 'No,' she said. 'I don't think I did. I mean, of course I didn't. I know I didn't.'
Homer blinked. He lowered his eyes to her desk and touched her typewriter. 'We can find out what machine it was typed on. probably. I'll bet it was Charley's. And anybody could have traced your signature. Charley had letters from you?'
Then he wasn't—it was all right. Mary nodded without speaking.
Homer glanced at the note again. 'Elite type. Small portable, most likely. Is that what yours is? I mean the one you use at home?' Mary nodded again, and looked at the piece of paper. Even with its soaking it looked grubby, and she was reminded of the dirty typed sheets of plagiarized scholarship turned out by Roland Granville- Galsworthy.
'Jimmy,' said Homer, 'have you got some typewriter experts up your sleeve?'
Jimmy was still glowering. He shook himself and spoke grudgingly. 'We'll look into it.'
Mary took Jimmy's phone call in her library office. 'Well,' said Jimmy, 'his lordship had to admit that it couldn't have been your typewriter that wrote that note. The expert identified it as Charley's, all right. The A tended to skip, the type needed cleaning, the E was tipped off-axis to the right, and so on and so on. But of course the Great Kelly hastened to add that you or anybody else could have used Charley's typewriter. But what this really amounts to is one more little piece of evidence that doesn't do Charley Goss any good.'
'But why would Charley forge a note from me to Philip?'
'It's like Homer said. To get Philip away from witnesses, to take away from him the alibi he would have had for the time of the murder.'
'But if Charley was planning to kill his father and pin the murder on Philip, why did he wear the Sam Prescott outfit and do it in a public place?'
'Just so that you would ask that very question.'
