The Transcendental Murder

and asked for his congratulations. Teddy looked a little crestfallen and stuttered badly trying to say something nice. But then Mary exclaimed over the swamp nettle, and Teddy got quite enthusiastic telling her its botanical name and how the Indians had used it to swat flies. After a while he left, looking cheerful. After all, he had all the flora in Concord to find and catalogue, and it might take him years.

Mary smelled her flowers and wished she hadn't. She made a face and laughed. 'Did you notice? Teddy's stuttering is better.'

Homer looked at her sentimentally. 'And your color's coming back. You know what? Your cheeks are like red roses.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake, Homer...'

'Look, if a person's cheeks happen to be like red roses it's merely a fact of scientific observation to point it out. I've tried a whole lot of other flowers from time to time, and none of them was right. It's red roses they're like.'

Down by the river where the green grass grows,

There sat _____, as pretty as a rose.

Along came ______ and kissed her on the cheek.

How many kisses did she get that week?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...

*60*

He is moderate. I am impetuous. He is modest and humble. I am forward and arbitrary. He is poor but we both are industrious. Why may we not be happy? —Mrs. Amos Bronson Alcott

Tom, Homer and Grandmaw were colliding with each other in the kitchen, clearing away Sunday dinner. It was Mary's first day home. Struggling awkwardly with her crutches she got the tablecloth off the table and stumped to the front door and shook it out. Then she stood and smelled the fresh air. The ragged leaves that were left on the old elm by the road were turning a rusty yellow. There were leaves growing even from the trunk and along the lower reaches of the limbs, like hairs in an old man's ears. Miraculously the storm had spared it, although it had taken nine young apple trees behind the house. Mary folded the tablecloth again and made her way laboriously to the kitchen to put it in the drawer.

'If you ask me,' said old Mrs. Hand, 'I could get along a whole lot better all by myself. What did you people all have to grow so big for? You're all over the place. Why don't you all get out of my way and go off somewhere?'

'Can I come?' said Annie.

'Me, too!' said John.

'No, not you children. Freddy has to go to bed and I need the rest of you to wipe.'

'Okay,' said Homer. 'But don't you let that John lick the dishes clean.'

Tom, who didn't want to sell his apples on a flooded market, went off to truck them up to the town of Harvard, where there was a big storage warehouse. Homer helped Mary out to his car and lifted her into the front seat. 'We'll take an old-fashioned Sunday afternoon buggy ride,' he said.

First they drove down Fairhaven Road to Alice Herpitude's house, and looked possessively out of the car window at its modest white clapboards. 'Maybe Teddy will build us a nice birdbath for a wedding present,' said Homer.

'He'll make a charming neighbor, anyway,' said Mary.

Then they headed back across Route 2 to the center of town, and up into Sleepy Hollow cemetery to Authors' Ridge. 'Do you think Henry would mind a couple of quiet neckers on a Sunday afternoon?' said Homer.

'Not as long as they kept things pretty transcendental,' said Mary.

'Don't forget, if Howard Swan was right, Henry was no slouch himself when it came to romance.'

'It's a lovely story. It pleases me, somehow, that those two might have found each other. But, Homer, there are still some things I don't understand. How could Howard Swan have killed Ernest Goss? He was supposed to have been in New York on the nineteenth...'

'It's Longfellow's fault, that's whose it is. That old cornball poem of his. What immortal lines does every man, woman and child in the country have engraved across his memory in letters of gold?

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five...

The eighteenth of April. Howard went to New York on the eighteenth, not the nineteenth, and then made a big point with his lunchtable companions about its being Patriot's Day in Massachusetts. 'You remember, boys, Paul Revere and all that kind of thing—on the eighteenth of April in 'Seventy-five. They're having a big parade back home today—' It wasn't until I discovered there in the Amherst library that Elizabeth Goss had once been engaged to Howard Swan, that Howard came back somewhat forcefully to my attention. And then I remembered an extremely small fact Jimmy had told me. He said that Howard's business friends had all agreed Howard was with them on Patriot's Day—remember?—'just the way he said they would.' Howard must have said to Jimmy, 'Ask them where I was on Patriot's Day,' so Jimmy, the obedient little fellow, did just that. Well—by nearly asphyxiating myself in a phone booth for an hour and a half I got hold of all of them. And sure enough, one by one, they all told me that Patriot's Day was the eighteenth of April. 'Don't you remember?' they would say condescendingly, and I could hear the words coming out of the telephone in red, white and blue, 'On the eighteenth of April in 'Seventy-five?' Then I would hang up and salute the flag. So you see what happened—Howard flew to New York on the eighteenth, got back in time for the dinner party, left early, then came back again when everyone was gone, to set things up. The only person still in the house would have been Mrs. Bewley, and he didn't have to worry about her as long as he kept out of her sight. Now—the first thing he had to do was prepare the weapons. One of the duelling pistols was to be fixed up as the official 'murder weapon.' It was the one that Charley had handled, putting it away. The other pistol would be the true murder weapon, but it would be cleaned out afterwards, wiped off and returned to the drawer so that it would not seem to have been touched. At this point he never touched the musket, because it didn't enter into his plans at all. The next thing was the manufacturing of the notes that were to lead Charley and Philip and Ernie to the right places at the right times the next day. For these he used Charley's typewriter in Charley's room, tracing your name for the notes that were to be sent to Charley and Philip from a letter of yours he found in a drawer. Then his preparations were about done. All he had to do was drive off somewhere far away from houses and fire the 'official murder weapon' into the woods so that it would be blackened inside. That was tricky because he didn't want to disturb Charley's prints. He must have used tools to do it with, clamps or something.'

'But next morning he had to look as if he were going to New York.'

'That's right. He headed off toward Boston, then just circled around wide and came back the back way and parked in some inconspicuous place like, say, the little road that leads in to Annursnac Hill. Then he snuck over to the Goss place and just hung around there, ducking in when he could to leave his notes. He watched Charley come back from his ride on Dolly and enter the house in his Prescott outfit. Then he saw him come out again in his own clothes and head lickety-split for the gravel pit, hell-bent on high romance. So then Howard just went in the house, snatched up the outfit, took it to the barn, changed clothes, leaving his own behind the hay somewhere, and galloped off through the woods on Dolly, keeping away from the road. It was all right to be seen, in fact that was the whole point, but not up close. He galloped up to the bridge, killed Goss, galloped back, giving Arthur Furry a good rear view, deposited the 'official murder weapon' in the cider press, leaving behind him his horse's hoof prints and a lost balloon to point the way, changed clothes in the barn and slunk into the house once more to leave the real murder weapon, all polished and cleaned up, back in the drawer. But then he struck his first snag.'