The Transcendental Murder

Next day Mary walked into the police station and resigned her job. Homer looked at her stupidly, then back at his papers. 'All right, if that's what you want,' he said.

'It is,' said Mary. She went back to the library and examined her desk. She looked for the letter Alice had said she was going to write for her and found no sign of it. Then she received a call from Howard Swan. He was speaking for the library trustees. Would Mary be willing to be acting head librarian for a while? Her official appointment would come through later. Mary would. Then Edith Goss came wandering into the library with a long face, seeking sympathy and comfort. She seemed genuinely distressed. Impulsively Mary offered her a job. They would be short-handed now, and she could use an extra pair of hands. Edith could paste labels in new books and put the returned ones back on the shelves. Edith was grateful. She didn't want to go home. She was restless and wanted to start right to work.

The next visitor to get by the patrolman at the door was Philip Goss. He was leaving town. That was all right because he had been questioned the night before and given a clean bill of health. After dropping Mary off he had gone straight home to his apartment and played poker with George Jarvis and a couple of old friends. He hadn't even left the table. Now he was off to Buffalo to see a client. There were lines of care across his fine forehead. 'Hard times,' he said briefly. He looked at her meaningfully. 'When this awful business is over, maybe we can begin again.'

Roland Granville-Galsworthy was going away, too. (Be grateful for small blessings.) He caught Mary out of doors at lunchtime, and said so. Then he wrestled her behind a bush and gave her a hard time. 'Oi want a little kiss,' he said. Mary was still too much in a state of shock to put up much resistance. The rest of the day she found herself breaking out into convulsive shaking. It would be an enormous satisfaction never to see him again. He claimed to be going back to Oxford to the chair of American Literature. A liar to the end.

Jimmy Flower's men were there part of the day. The District Attorney himself came out, and stood around looking glum, with Miss O'Toole hovering beside him. Homer came in with them, but he hardly spoke to Mary. He merely gave her a moody look and handed her some of the morning newspapers. The headlines were very bad. One of them practically called the District Attorney a murderer of old women. Here was a clever one—LOUISA MAY ALCOTT SLAYS LIBRARIAN.

Mary had had enough of the whole thing. She felt tired and ill. Stiffly she reached up to the shelf labelled Summer Reading and started to take out the books on the High School reading list for the fall. Harden over, that will stop the shaking. Tighten up. Her fingers picked tensely at the books. She dropped one. It was The Poems of Emily Dickinson. That belonged on the list. She picked it up and put it on the cart. Then she took it off the cart again and looked at it. It was the new copy of Volume I, to replace the copy Elizabeth Goss had stolen from the library. What was the page that had been torn out? Page 123, wasn't it? Mary found the page and glanced at the poem printed on it. 'If the foolish, call them 'flowers'...' For once Emily's private language and crabbed mannerisms irritated her. She flipped the page over and began reading the poem on the other side—

In Ebon Box, when years have flown

To reverently peer,

Wiping away the velvet dust

Summers have sprinkled there!

To hold a letter to the light—

Grown Tawny now, with time—

To con the faded syllables

That quickened us like Wine!

Perhaps a Flower's shrivelled cheek

Among its stores to find—

Plucked far away, some morning—

By gallant—mouldering hand!

A curl, perhaps, from foreheads

Our Constancy forgot—

Perhaps, an Antique trinket—

In vanished fashions set!

And then to lay them quiet back—

And go about its care—

As if the little Ebon Box

Were none of our affair!

Suddenly Mary could bear no more. She didn't want to think about Elizabeth Goss, who had gone mad, or about Ernest Goss, who had been shot to death, or about Charley Goss, who was under arrest, or about Alice Herpitude, who had been...

No, no, don't think about it at all! Mary shook herself, snapped the book shut and thrust it back on the cart. Then she walked stiffly to Alice's office, shut the door softly and burst into tears.

*50*

Essential Oils are wrung—

The Attar from the Rose

Is not expressed by Suns—alone

It is the gift of Screws— —Emily Dickinson

Because of the violent nature of her death, Alice Herpitude's funeral was a little delayed. Mary didn't want to go to it. She didn't know how she could go through with it. If she hadn't had to sing the Ave Verum with the rest of the choir she might have begged off. But she had to. So she sat in the balcony of the big white church, facing sideways to the pulpit behind one of the tenors, twisting her handkerchief in her hands. Shrinking back behind the tenor, she looked past the wooden box that held the body of Alice Herpitude to the tiny face of the minister, perched on the tip of the tenor's large nose. Mr. Patterson's words flowed like honey, filling up the empty interstices of her mind, blocking and dulling her awareness. But they must not. Prick up, prick up like thorns the hairs of your attention! Mary glanced over the congregation and remembered the Sunday morning when she had looked down and seen for the first time the look of terror on Alice's face. She had seen it there often after that. Of what had Alice been afraid? The choirmistress lifted her hand, and the choir rose.

'Ave, ave verum Corpus...'