The Transcendental Murder

and eccentric. Another thing. Isabelle Flower told me that she saw Mary on the subway the other day, you know, the day she went to the dentist, and after the train started up Mary started to laugh, and after a minute she was doubled up, she was laughing so hard, and everybody was looking at her. Isabelle went up to her and asked her what was funny, and she said she was on the wrong train.'

'What's the matter with that? Struck her funny.'

'Well, it's just part of the whole picture. I think she needs a vacation. She's at the library all day trying to do everything Alice used to do and everything she used to do, too, and then at night and Saturday and Sunday she's working on those lady Transcendentalists of hers. Sometimes I hear her typewriter thudding away up there in the middle of the night. And when she's not doing any of those things, she's off to East Cambridge to cheer up Charley. And that's guaranteed to bring on the glooms.'

'Look, stop brooding. I'm going to get the cider press going and surprise John. He's been nagging at me all summer. Do you feel up to washing some bottles?'

'Don't be silly, of course I do. Grandmaw'll help me after she and Freddy are through with their naps. Where's that long bristly brush we used to have?'

Gwen loved the look of the roadside stand in the fall. There was bittersweet hanging from the top of it, and on the counter there were chrysanthemums in a blue granite kettle and purple eggplants, green acorn squash, white and purple turnips, half-bushel baskets of Tom's apples, so far just the Cortlands and the Macs. Much of the produce was grown by Harvey Finn, but not the apples, of course, nor the cider. The squash and pumpkins were Harvey Finn's, piled up along the road—the Hubbard squash, so graceless in its shape, so delicate in color, like the lichen on the stone walls that bordered Tom's fields, and next to it the humble screaming orange of the pimpled squash and the mellow yellow color of the pumpkins.

Gwen scrubbed out the old washing machine that stood outside the cider shed, and got it ready to wash the burlap cloths. Then she ran the hose over the cheese-frames that would separate the layers of ground-up apple pomace. Tom unloaded the boxes of drops he had brought down from Harvard and carted them into the shed. He dumped some of them into the feeder bin. Then he connected up the hose that ran to the big wooden keg, and adjusted the belts on the little motor that pumped the squeezings into the keg. He oiled the grater-motor. He looked around for the 18-ton truck-jack that was supposed to go between the top cheese-frame and the press, and finally found it in the back of the pickup. It was rusty and dusty, so he blew on it, and wiped it off. Gwen trundled John's old metal wagon across the road with two cartons of clean gallon bottles on it, unloaded them and picked up some dusty ones. 'All set?' said Gwen.

'Yup,' said Tom. He turned on the switch of the pump, then flipped the toggle on the grater and turned to dump a box of apples in the feeder. There was a most tremendous terrible noise.

'Jesus X. Christ,' said Tom, and he grabbed at the switch on the grater. The racket ceased.

'Some of those dern kids must have put rocks in it,' said Tom. He stepped up on the edge of the press where the words American Harrow Company were painted on and looked into the grater.

'Oh, fer...'He stepped down again.

'Well, what is it?' said Gwen, standing still with the handle of the wagon in her hand.

Tom, as though he couldn't believe what he had seen, climbed back up again. Then he got down again and turned to Gwen. 'I'm sick and tired of it,' he said. 'I'm just plain sick and tired of having muskets and pistols and machine guns and various odd pieces of artillery showing up on this place and stripping the gears of my machinery. Next thing you know we'll find a howitzer in the raspberry patch and it'll blow us all to blue blazes. I hope it does. I'm sick and tired of it. Those blades have got big bites taken out of 'em. Look at 'em.'

He helped his wife up and she looked into the grater. 'For goodness' sake, Tom, it's another old gun.'

'That's what I said, didn't I? I said it's another old gun.'

'But they looked around in here, the police, they looked all over.'

'Yes, but don't forget they were looking for a gun about the size of a canoe. They never would have thought of looking in the grater. It's only eight or nine inches across.'

'Tom!' Remember I told you Freddy saw someone on a horse, he called it a funny lady, someone who broke his balloon—that day, April 19th? Well, suppose it was the murderer, the way we thought—'

'Suppose it was? We kept our mouths shut to keep Freddy out of it.'

'Yes. but the point is, he was right here, right outside the cider shed. And he broke Freddy's balloon. It's almost as though he wanted to draw attention to his being there—because of the gun—so that the gun would be found right away.' Gwen climbed up on the press again and looked at the gun. 'Look how big the hole is. That's plenty big enough to have fired a musket ball. Oh, golly, Tom, I'll bet that's the gun that killed Mr. Goss, not the other one. And the murderer wanted it found. Why?'

'Say,' said Tom, 'remember those boxes of apples that turned up in the spring, way last May or June? I'll bet somebody brought them to get us to make cider so we'd find the gun right away.' He brooded darkly. 'Unless somebody's just plain got it in for this farm and all my blankety blank machinery.'

*52*

Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

'So what do you think of that?' said Jimmy. 'And Charley's fingerprints on it as pretty as can be? I'll tell you how I feel, and that's a whole lot more comfortable. The pistol's so small Charley could have stuck it right in his pocket. So the problem we had with Arthur Furry not seeing any weapon is solved. Good boy, for sticking to his guns. Ha, ha, no pun intended.'

The D.A.'s voice sounded tired and buzzy over the phone. 'Was it one of Goss's old guns, too?'

'Sure. It was one of a pair of flintlock duelling pistols he had in that highboy.' Jimmy looked at his notes. 'Engraved Wogdon and Barton, made in London around 1800. That kind usually came in a case, so they tell me, a fancy case fitted up for two pistols. But Ernie didn't have a case, so they just lay loose in the drawer. So nobody noticed that one was gone. Charley should have spoken up that it was missing. So should his brother, for that matter. And Kelly cussed himself out for not having noticed it. You should've heard him.'

'What about the flint?'

'Well, of course, this one still has a flint. Which is annoying. The only flintlock without a flint in the whole collection was the musket. But this thing has Charley's prints on it, and the ball fits it perfectly, and it's been fired. The prints were well preserved. That shed's nice and dry, but not too hot.'

'But the musket? What about that? Why did Charley bury that?'

'Well, that's one of the things we've got to work out yet. We grilled Charley and he said, yes, he'd killed his father twice, once with the musket and once with the pistol. Then he denied knowing anything about the pistol. Said he must have handled it, putting it away the night before, but he hadn't seen it since.'

The District Attorney rocked gently in his chair with the phone tucked against his ear and looked at the beer can he was holding on his stomach. 'What about Charley's lawyer? Has he requested a delay in the trial?'

'No. He wanted to, but Charley wouldn't hear of it. So all we've got is ninety days.'

'Hmm,' said the D.A. sleepily. 'Don't forget this is an election year. Let's hurry it along faster than that. I'd like to try this case myself, and get a fat conviction before November 4th.'

Miss O'Toole, listening humbly in the corner, raised her eyebrows and looked worried. The last time her boss had tried a court case her elaborate system of communication by notes had proved impossibly cumbersome, and the D.A. had fumbled badly. She would have to think up something else. What about a set of hand-signals? If she touched her hair it would mean, 'No further questioning.' Putting her glasses on would mean, 'Make an objection.' Yes, perhaps that could be worked...

*53*

Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel. —Henry Thoreau

The Governor of Massachusetts had called Homer into the State House for a confidential chat. It was a nice day, and Bulfinch's gold dome rose glorious over Beacon Hill. Far below it in his handsome office in the west wing,