In earlier days, suicide was considered a sin. No such stigma attaches itself to Christopher Carrington. In a moment of black despair, he lost control of the precision instrument that is the human mind, and he decided to escape the problems which so brutally oppressed him. In the eyes of God and man, he is blameless.”
Suicides make for difficult eulogies, but Father Henry Henison had been a friend of the Pratt family for years, and he did his best to comfort them. The funeral was held at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in the Back Bay, two days after the discovery of Carrington’s body.
Evangeline Carrington sat in the first pew, her mother and stepfather to her left, her grandmother to her right. She had seen her brother seldom in the last few months; they had little in common beyond their name. But she found it difficult to believe that he would kill himself. He was too full of the sense of his own importance, and he enjoyed life too much.
However, the police investigation had revealed no evidence of homicide, and when she had last seen him, she had sensed that something was deeply wrong. He had told her that he was sick of his work and disillusioned with his uncles’ efforts to retain control of Pratt Industries. She had suggested to him that he quit. He had refused; he was a member of the family company, and he would not desert.
Now he was dead. The stupid sense of family pride and loyalty, which had been hanging around the family neck for two hundred years, had killed him. When he could no longer help the corporation, when he could no longer do the things that Pratts and Carringtons had always done against their business adversaries, he had committed suicide.
After their father’s death, their mother had shielded Evangeline and Christopher from the realities of life. She had protected them and overprotected them. She had never prepared them for failure or tragedy. Now, Evangeline had retreated into a world of plants and tranquillity; Christopher had taken his life.
Father Henison’s voice droned on. “His mother’s love expanded to fill the void left by his father’s death. His education and upbringing prepared him for a life filled with promise. But something was missing in Christopher, something that none of us saw.”
Evangeline wished it had been Philip Pratt whose sense of loyalty and idealism had overwhelmed him. She wished that Philip Pratt were lying in the bronze box next to her. He had presided over the demise of Pratt Industries. It was all his fault. But his sense of survival was too strong.
Philip Pratt was sitting right behind her, staring at the stained-glass windows and listening with one ear to the eulogy. He was not religious. He didn’t need to embrace the hope of an afterlife when he could experience everything in this one. To him, the body in the casket was all that remained of his nephew, and he was convinced that Carrington had committed suicide.
When he had first seen Carrington twisting at the end of the rope, Pratt had thought only of William Rule. He wanted to tell the police that Rule had killed his nephew, but Soames reminded him that Rule was too smart to be killing people, either in Boston or California. Rule was too close to his goal to endanger it now. He was too sensible to make a mistake.
Pratt had agreed. Rule hadn’t killed Christopher Carrington. The young man’s sense of family duty had run straight into his conscience, and the collision had destroyed him. A conscience was a dangerous thing, thought Pratt. In his world, he couldn’t afford to have one.
Father Henison had reached the end of his eulogy. “He was a young man of high ideals, who heeded the words that have motivated so many in his family to greatness: ‘Of those to whom much is given, much is expected.’ He gave us all a great deal.”
A sob shook the pew. Evangeline’s mother began to cry softly. She had taken it well enough to this point, but Evangeline knew that she might come apart at any moment.
A hand closed tightly around Evangeline’s wrist. Evangeline took the hand gently in her own.
“Another generation, another tragedy. I could have stopped it.” For two days, Katherine Pratt Carrington had repeated the words like a dirge while sitting in her rocking chair and staring out at the ocean. This morning, when she had viewed her grandson’s body for the last time, she had neither spoken nor cried, and she had been silent since. The periodic tightening of her hand was her only expression of grief. Her shock was deepening.
Evangeline hoped that the police investigation would end quickly. Whatever the cause of her brother’s death, she knew that a long inquest would be too much for her mother and grandmother to bear. For their sake, perhaps it would be best to accept the verdict of suicide.
Calvin Pratt stepped into the pulpit and straightened his tie. His complexion was ashen, his voice weak. “Ladies and gentlemen, a young man of high ideals has passed from our midst, but as he would remind us, there can be no time for mourning.” His voice cracked, and he fought back his emotions.
William Rule sat with his wife at the edge of the large group of mourners. “Pratts always have something to say,” he whispered, “but all the talk in the world won’t bring their nephew back. Damn shame, a smart kid like that knockin’ himself off.”
“Why do you think he did it, Ruley?”
“Because he couldn’t bear to see an outsider take over the family company.”
“You?”
A smile curled the edges of Rule’s mouth.
“We must always remember his love of life, his love of excellence, his love of family. They far outweigh whatever momentary aberration caused him to take his own life.” Calvin Pratt’s voice was strong at the end. He had overcome his emotions like a good lawyer and a good Pratt.
The church shook with the solemn tones of a Bach requiem.
Peter Fallon felt the vibrations in his shoes. He was sitting in the last pew, directly beneath the organ. He had visited this church often to hear the Bach Mass sung on the third Sunday of every month. He had come today because he was confused, but not over the questions of faith and morality that usually brought people into churches. His concerns were more mundane: an ancient note that no one knew about; a Revere tea set worth two million dollars or more; the art dealer who rediscovered it after a hundred and fifty years and refused to reveal his source; the writer who claimed it was a fake, then disappeared into a pint bottle of Old Mr. Boston; and now, the suicide of Christopher Carrington—seemingly as secure as the First National Bank—who had discussed the tea set with Fallon over brunch and hung himself after dinner.
Fallon had spent the day after Carrington’s death analyzing their conversation at La Crêperie. He wondered if Carrington’s death was connected to the tea set. He remembered Carrington’s stiffness when the tea set was mentioned and Carrington’s relief when he realized Fallon’s ignorance, but Fallon drew no conclusions. He wasn’t thinking very clearly. Two deaths in seventy-two hours had left him numb.
The following day, Fallon had tried to find two people who might answer a few of his questions. Lawrence Hannaford was in London on business and wouldn’t be back for five days. Jack C. Ferguson had vanished. Fallon combed through the records of alcoholic hospitals, Skid Row drunk tanks, and the city morgue, but found nothing about Jack C. Ferguson.
Now, Fallon was filled with questions, but he didn’t expect to find any answers in the church. He had come today to pay his respects. He wanted to shake Katherine Carrington’s hand, say a few comforting words to an old woman in her grief.
The Episcopal Mass was over and the bronze casket was rolling down the aisle toward Fallon. Philip and Calvin Pratt led the pallbearers. Carrington’s mother and her husband led the line of mourners that trailed out behind them like the train of a black gown.
As Evangeline and Katherine Carrington passed, Fallon tried to attract their attention. One look at the blank expression on the old woman’s face and he knew she wouldn’t recognize him. But Evangeline saw him. She glanced briefly at his seersucker suit and looked away. Her eyes neither thanked him for being there nor criticized him for intruding upon the family’s private grief.
Expressionless in a black dress—and she was still beautiful. Fallon’s eyes tracked her out the door. He wished that he had met her under different circumstances, and he realized that half his interest in the Pratts was in her. When the end of the mourning line passed his pew, he stepped into it. Outside, the group was already dispersing in the eighty-five-degree humidity. The coffin had been slipped into the hearse and was speeding toward Marblehead. Interment would be private, and there would be no brunch for family and friends. Socializing after the funeral was a Catholic custom.
Fallon noticed Evangeline helping her grandmother into the limousine at the curb. She stepped into the car, the door closed, and the black Cadillac whisked away before Fallon reached the sidewalk.
Across the street, a drunk wearing a Red Sox cap sat on the curb and sipped sauterne from a pint bottle. It was Jack C. Ferguson, and he wasn’t quite as drunk as he looked. He rarely ventured so boldly into the open, especially when he thought that Bill Rulick’s men would be around. But Ferguson had to pick up whatever bits of information were dropped at the funeral. He was a good reporter, and he never shied from an assignment.
Ferguson saw Katherine Pratt Carrington for the first time in twenty-six years, and he thought she looked pretty good. Her granddaughter wasn’t bad either. He saw Isabelle, Philip, and all the rest of the Pratts as they ducked into their limousines. He saw Rulick, paying his respects to people he hated. Then, he noticed a young man crossing the street toward him.
Jack Ferguson recognized the Irish face, but he couldn’t place it. Maybe this was one of Rulick’s men, and here was Ferguson caught like a bookie on the toilet with the cops at the door. Ferguson reached into his jacket and grabbed the handle of his switchblade. This guy gets too close or makes one wrong move for a shoulder holster, and he’ll be picking his nuts up off the street.
The young man did not even glance at Ferguson. Most people never made eye contact with a drunk on the street; they always looked the other way or pretended he wasn’t swilling his wine right in front of them. Ferguson knew it was the best way to avoid a panhandle. He relaxed the grip on his knife and studied the face as the young man walked past.
He still had a reporter’s eyes for detail. He noticed a pattern on the crimson tie, and the connections came quickly. The pattern looked like a Harvard coat of arms. Harvard led to Cambridge, which led to an address he had memorized, which led to a name and a picture in the newspaper. Ferguson’s detective work had paid off. Peter Fallon, witness to the murder of a rumdum bartender in Southie, was a family friend of the Pratts and Carringtons.
Maybe it meant nothing, maybe everything.
About the time that Christopher Carrington’s body was lowered into the earth, Peter Fallon was riding an elevator down to the microtext room buried deep beneath Harvard’s Houghton Library.
He was no longer telling himself that this was a scholarly pursuit, that he was investigating the story of the tea set in order to illuminate the character of Horace Taylor Pratt. He knew enough about Pratt already. He was looking for satisfaction. He had to be certain that there were no connections between the death of Christopher Carrington, the disappearance of Jack C. Ferguson, and the crumbling note by Dexter Lovell on August 24, 1814.
For the good of his work, for the four years he had already invested in a master’s degree and a doctoral dissertation, he hoped that his research turned up nothing. Fallon knew that if the story became more convoluted, if Jack Ferguson’s charges against the authenticity of the tea set were convincing, he would not be able to turn back to the disciplined work of writing a dissertation.
He stepped off the elevator into the concrete bunker that housed the microtexts. He hoped that he might find new leads among the old newspapers, and almost simultaneously, he wished that he had never found Dexter Lovell’s note.
He showed his card to the librarian at the entrance and asked if copies of Hubcap, Jack C. Ferguson’s weekly, were kept on film.
The librarian shook his head.
Fallon recalled that they didn’t even keep back copies of the Boston Globe at Widener, Harvard’s enormous main library. He would have to look in the Boston Public Library for Ferguson’s articles. But just as important to him were copies of nineteenth-century newspapers, which the Houghton Library had on film. He requested films of the Boston Gazette, from August and September 1814.
In the darkness of the reading room, Fallon threaded the microfilm into one of the machines. The blue projecting lamp illuminated his face, and the Boston Gazette, dated August 3, 1814, appeared on the screen in front of him. He rolled the film ahead to late August, about the time that Lovell had promised the arrival of the tea set.
He was glad that newspapers of the period were only four or five pages long, because the Boston Gazette wasn’t indexed and he didn’t know what he was looking for. He was simply hunting. He skimmed across headlines screaming alarm at the burning of Washington, editorials summoning Bostonians to the protection of the city, advertisements for felt hats and barrels of salt cod. He paid close attention to the articles usually found on the bottom of the front page. They described the murders, robberies, and other crimes which, even then, sold newspapers in Boston.
On the last page of the September 9 edition, a small article attracted Fallon’s attention:
The body of a Negro man, about thirty-five years old, was found washed up on the Neck yesterday morning. He had met with foul play, having been shot twice. One ball tore a fist-sized hole in his back as it exited. The other entered near his navel, traveled upward, through a lung, and left the body beneath his shoulder blade. He has no papers of identification and is unknown to Negroes on the hill. Hence, he will be buried in Potter’s Field if his body is not claimed before tomorrow sunset. God have mercy on his Soul.
Fallon noted the date and copied the article onto an index card. He knew that Lovell had disappeared with a black freedman. Perhaps Lovell had killed him when the black was of no further use, which meant that Lovell had made good his promise and brought the tea set to Boston.
He rolled the microtext ahead. Nothing Saturday or Sunday, but a headline Monday stopped him cold.
Horace Taylor Pratt III, eldest grandson of the founder and president of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile, drowned yesterday morning in the Back Bay. His death was reported to the constable’s office by his grandfather, Horace Taylor Pratt I.
The lad, only fifteen, was foraging for blueclaw crabs in knee-deep water when he stepped into the Easterly Channel, which is about six feet deep at flood tide. Said to be a strong swimmer by his bereaved grandfather, young Pratt nonetheless panicked and drowned.
The rest of the story described the boy’s schooling, his family’s background, and the arrangements for his burial. It sounded to Fallon as though it had been written for last night’s deadline. The past drew closer. The sense of danger, vague and imperceptible after his first trip to Searidge, drawn into focus by Christopher Carrington’s death, was growing on the blue screen before him.
In his excitement to copy the article onto an index card, Fallon broke the tip of his pencil. He stepped out to the main desk to sharpen it. When he returned, a big man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap was studying Fallon’s viewer.
The man finished his reading, then smiled at Fallon. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing the Boston Gazette in your machine. When I was an undergraduate, about forty years ago, I wrote my honors thesis on journalistic styles in the nineteenth century, and I always loved the old Gazette. Great reading.”
It was too dark to see the man’s features, but Fallon noticed a fringe of white hair beneath the baseball cap. “They have almost every issue on film,” he offered. “Do you want this one after I’m through?”
“No, thanks. Too many other things to be doin’.” The man said goodbye and returned to a viewing machine in a distant corner.
Fallon had rarely seen an old grad look so tattered, but he didn’t give him another thought. He was too preoccupied with the death of a young boy in 1814 to know that the man who had just been standing beside him was Jack C. Ferguson.
No Harvard graduate, Ferguson was familiar enough with the systems to get a pass into any private library in Boston. He had followed Fallon down to the microtext room, seated himself at a nearby machine, and pretended to read wartime copies of the New York Times until he could look at Fallon’s screen.
Fallon was certain now that Lovell had gotten the tea set to Boston, and he was willing to believe that something had happened to it in the Back Bay. The death of Horace Taylor Pratt III, the week that the tea set was supposed to arrive and the day after the death of an anonymous black who was probably Jeff Grew, could not be a coincidence.
Fallon rattled through another month of the Boston Gazette and found nothing else. He couldn’t concentrate, anyway. He had to talk to someone about his findings, his theories, his suspicions. He packed up his things and left.
Professor James Hayward lived with his books and his clocks in a comfortable old house just off Brattle Street.
He had come to Cambridge in 1941 from an impoverished ranching family. The eighteen-year-old Harvard freshman brought with him an acute case of asthma, which made ranch life miserable and military service impossible, and a fascination with the people who had forced the American frontier from the Appalachians across his own Wyoming to the Pacific.
At Harvard, he found rich soil in which to nurture his passion.
He spent eight years earning degrees, while earning money as a dishwasher in student dining halls, a cab driver in Boston, and a history tutor in Kirkland House. His first book, Manifest Destiny and the American Spirit, was expanded from his dissertation. It was nominated for a National Book Award and secured James Hayward a tenured position on the Harvard faculty.
He bought his house, opened its doors to his students, and settled into a life which had continued to challenge and satisfy him. Or, as he told Peter Fallon one night, after three bourbons had left him especially cynical, “It took me eight years to scrape the cowshit off my shoes and find myself a nice soft spot in all this academic bullshit.”
Over the years, he had lost his hair and the hard edge on his Wyoming accent, while growing a paunch that looked like an air bubble expanding out of his slender body. However, he was still a commanding figure at the podium, a brilliant guide in seminar, and a friend to most of his students. His lecture course, “The West, 1803 to 1890,” began with the Louisiana Purchase and ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee. In his seminar, he turned to the east. “The War of 1812: New England and the Nation” explored the national problems created when Northern Sectionalism clashed with Southern Expansionism. It was always oversubscribed.
James Hayward’s work was his life. He had never needed anything else.
In his ninth book, Hayward was studying the effects of Eastern press coverage on the conduct of the war with the Plains Indians. He was reading an account of the Battle of Little Bighorn when the doorbell rang.
Peter Fallon was standing on the porch with the afternoon sun broiling in around him.
“Come in, Peter. Come in and sit down.”
Fallon stepped into cool darkness, and Hayward went to fetch iced tea or something stronger, depending on his mood.
The shades in the living room were drawn tight to keep out the heat. A lamp next to Hayward’s easy chair provided the only illumination. Fallon found his way to the overstuffed sofa and sank into relaxing gloom. The only sound was the gentle ticking of Hayward’s eighteen antique clocks, each beating with a different pitch and rhythm. They soothed like so many massaging fingers. When Hayward returned with two glasses of Molson’s Canadian, Fallon’s head was thrown back and his eyes were closed.
“Wake up and have a beer,” said Hayward.
“I’m not asleep.”
“Have a beer anyway. It’s after four, and I’ve been reading all day. A positively fascinating book written in 1933 by a doctor who lived with the Sioux and the Cheyennes. It’s called Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself. He got to know the old warriors who fought Custer at Little Bighorn. They told him that the men of the Seventh Cavalry panicked, and better than half of the troops committed suicide. Imagine. The vaunted Seventh Cavalry!”
Their meetings had always begun like this—Fallon catching his breath while Hayward rattled on about some new book or especially good student paper. Hayward had been the senior reader of Fallon’s undergraduate thesis and had advised Fallon all through graduate school; Fallon was Hayward’s teaching assistant. A solid friendship had developed between them, although enough formality remained that Fallon never considered addressing his teacher as anything but Professor Hayward. First-name familiarity would come with the doctorate.
“I’m having a few problems with the dissertation,” said Fallon. “I could use a little guidance.”
Hayward smiled. “That’s what I’m here for. Of course, if I had seen the last three chapters when you promised them, I could be of more help now. Any idea of when I can expect to be reading about Horace Taylor Pratt?”
“I don’t know. I’ve come across so much information about him that I really don’t know what I’m going to do with it all.”
Hayward sensed a note of defeat in Fallon’s voice. “I’ve never met a historian before who was disappointed when he ran across new information.”
Fallon did not respond directly. Instead, he described Dexter Lovell’s note and everything that followed it, including the news stories he had just read. “The point of all this,” he concluded, “is that someone is lying, or at least mistaken, about the story of the tea set, either Hannaford or the facts which I have uncovered in the last week.”
“So what?” Hayward had little patience when he thought a student was wasting time.
“I want you to tell me what you think of all this. Should I keep digging? Should I forget about it? Should I try to find this Ferguson guy?” He realized he was whining. He took a swallow of beer and lowered his voice. “I’m confused. I know it’s almost out of the question that the tea set in the museum is a fake, as this Ferguson claimed before he disappeared. I’m fairly certain that Hannaford’s researchers just made a mistake when they blamed the original theft on Captain Prendergast. I’m probably the only person who knows for certain that Lovell took the tea set.”
“Peter,” Hayward interrupted, “what bearing does any of this have on your contention that New England emerged from the War of 1812 with more political and economic power than any other section of the country?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “None! What bearing beyond a footnote or two does any of this have on your analysis of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile? None! I don’t know what’s come over you lately, but whatever it is, get out from under it. Week by week, your discipline deteriorates, the quality of your work diminishes, you disappear for days on end, and now this! Tea sets when you should be trying to draw serious conclusions about four years of work!”
Fallon tried to defend his activities as important research. “If Pratt saved his company or bought himself a little extra time by fencing the tea set in Europe, I think that knowledge has bearing on my dissertation.”
“Then use it! Don’t come wandering in here like Little Boy Lost and ask me what you should do. You’re a big boy. Plug your information in and get on with your work.”
“But right now I can’t prove that Pratt sold the tea set. I’m sure it reached Boston, but I don’t know what happened to it after that.”
“Then speculate, for God’s sake. What do you think historians do? We aren’t lawyers. We’re interpreters. If you can’t find specific evidence to support a conclusion that the tea set saved Pratt’s ass, take a stand on the basis of what you have, then be prepared to take the heat.” He was on his feet now, gesturing grandly to make each point, as though he were giving a lecture. “It’s all part of the process. You make a judgment, and somebody says it’s bullshit. You argue, and pretty soon, you’ve both learned something. The dialectic of history.”
Fallon smiled at that last phrase. It was one of Hayward’s favorites, and he found a way to sneak it into every lecture.
The Seth Thomas on the mantelpiece struck five o’clock. The grandfather in the entrance hall and the banjo in the kitchen began to sound, and within a few seconds, every clock in the house was chiming. The symphony lasted about a half minute, just long enough for Hayward to sit down and cool off.
“Peter, you’re too bright to need guidance on something like this. You’re not having trouble deciding what to do with this note. Your problem is a lot deeper. It’s been boring its way to the surface since last fall, when you started applying for jobs.”
Peter nodded. His professor knew him well. “I’ve been second-guessing myself lately. When you realize you’ve spent four years at something that offers you no immediate future, you begin to wonder if you’ve wasted your time.”
“You’ve wasted it only if you’ve learned nothing, and if you’ve been listening to me for four years, I can guarantee that you’ve learned something. Moreover, you have two job offers, which is more than most history Ph.D.s can say. This is a damn tight job market, and you should be glad you have anything, regardless of tenure. Go home and finish your dissertation, then accept one of those positions, no matter what you think of the schools.” He took out his pipe, scraped the bowl, and packed it with tobacco. In a moment, his head was enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke. “If you want somebody to solve your problems for you, I’ve just done it.”
“Stop trying to make me feel stupid.” Fallon rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. “Every time I see my old man, he tells me I should have gone to law school. Lately I’ve begun to agree with him. That in itself makes me feel about as stupid as I can get.”
Hayward shook his head. He hated to see one of his best students so confused. “I told you four years ago that law school was a practical choice, a sensible alternative to a career in history, where there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find work. I also told you that the historian has a very important role in our society, a position of tremendous responsibility. Whether he’s a university professor, a high school teacher, a writer, he is the controlling voice in the events which have shaped our society and our national character. When he writes about the American Revolution or the Federalist Papers, the Dred Scott Decision or the campaign against the Plains Indians, he decides for the rest of us what is significant. He’s the window through which we see our past, the mirror in which we see ourselves.”
“You were always the master of the aphorism,” cracked Fallon.
“I’ve been lecturing for thirty years,” answered Hayward a bit crankily. “I’ve given that speech before. Next time I deliver it to a prospective student, I’ll emphasize the hundreds of hours of research and the loneliness of the work. Somehow I thought you were mature enough to know that the glamour came after the drudgery.”
“I always knew it,” said Fallon. “I embraced your philosophy, and I believed that what I was doing was vital. I still believe it. But something’s wrong. The jobs I’ve been offered promise no excitement, no prestige, and damned little money. The daily routine of classes, writing, and research has dulled me, made me feel flaccid…” He hunted for a better word. “… emasculated. I sometimes wish I’d been drafted and sent to Vietnam. I could at least feel that I’d seen a little bit of life before retiring to the library.” He finished his beer.
Hayward began to laugh. “You make all scholars sound like eunuchs. We lead very active lives, my boy. Just ask my old colleague Mr. Kissinger. Not everyone gets to be Secretary of State, but we serve on presidential committees, we participate in political demonstrations, and we write excellent angry letters to the Times. Some of us who are balding, paunchy, and charismatic also have wonderful luck with female graduate students.”
“I’m not talking about you.”
“You’re not talking about too many people I’ve ever known here, either.” Hayward stopped joking and leaned forward. “If you have the brains, aggressiveness, and ego to get into this program and perform well for four years, I don’t understand how you can feel emasculated at the end of it.”
Unconsciously Fallon bounced his legs up and down on the balls of his feet. He sensed that Hayward wasn’t going to be much help. “Can I have another Molson’s?”
“Help yourself.”
Fallon sucked down half the beer in the kitchen. He always felt more eloquent when he had a buzz going in his head.
“I hate to admit failure,” he said as he sat down again. “I hate to accept my father’s prediction that ‘all this history bullshit,’ as he calls it, will be useless. But the study of the past has been losing its fascination for me. Until I stumbled onto this note, I was working on nothing but stubbornness. Now, I’m excited again. I’m tracking down clues to an ancient mystery.”
“And who cares if you solve it?” Hayward grunted.
“I care.” Fallon finished the second beer. “What if that tea set in the museum isn’t the real one? What if I figure out where it is, just by being a good historian? And what if I find it?” Fallon’s voice rose with excitement.
Hayward cleaned and packed his pipe. Whenever he needed a moment to think, the pipe became his prop. “Peter, I think you’re crazy.” It wasn’t quite the answer he’d been reaching for.
Fallon laughed. “The more I listen to you, the more you sound like my father.”
“Look, there’s nothing more I can offer you, Peter. Your choices seem fairly obvious. You can quit right now and start collecting material for law-school applications. You’ll have a helluva time explaining why you left graduate school a few months away from the doctorate, but I’m sure you’ll think of something. Or you can take whatever time is necessary to satisfy yourself about this tea-set business, but when it’s over, you’ll still have to confront your disillusionment with your work. Harvard puts no time limit on the completion of dissertations, so you can come back and finish it any time in the next fifty years. Of course, those two schools out west won’t be too interested in hiring you this September if you don’t have your doctorate. Or you can go home, sit down at your desk, put all your problems out of your head for three months, and finish. You’ll have better perspective when it’s over.”
Hayward lit a match and sucked the flame into his pipe. “I know what I’d do.”
Peter Fallon brooded his way home beneath a summer downpour that lasted ten minutes and left everything steaming. He could almost drink the rancid air in his apartment, and the floor beneath the front windows was soaked from the rain.
He took a Narragansett from the refrigerator and sat down at his desk. Hayward had made it simple enough. Drop out and go to law school. Drop out and look for the tea set. Or be responsible.
His copy of Boston: A Topographical History was on his desk, open to the map of the Back Bay in 1814. He had outlined the path of the Easterly Channel in red ink, and as he started at it, he began to sense that something was not quite right. The night before, he had been reading the last chapter, a hundred and fifty pages away.
At first, he thought the wind had turned the pages. However, on the rare occasions when he enjoyed a breeze, it came through the windows. To turn the pages backward, the wind would have to blow through the bathroom wall.
Someone had been in the apartment.
He yanked open the bottom drawer. His Nikon was still there. He spun round in his chair. KLH receiver and turntable remained bolted to the wall. It wasn’t a ripoff. Why were they here?
Something fell in the kitchen. Fallon froze, his heart pounding in his ears. Quickly, he calculated the distances between himself, the kitchen door, and the closet, where he kept a baseball glove and a thirty-four-ounce Louisville slugger. He sprang for the bat.
The noise again. He stopped in midair. Across the alley, Mrs. Luskinski was closing her kitchen windows. She worked nights at Elsie’s and always locked her windows, even though she lived on the third floor.
Hayward’s right, thought Fallon. You are crazy. No one’s been in here. Your imagination is getting the best of you.
He sat down at his desk. He sipped his beer and looked around. The whole place seemed slightly askew. He noticed little things, subtle indications that his apartment had been searched. A feeling of revulsion crept over him. His privacy had been violated.
He wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but he was compulsive about keeping his work material and books carefully organized. He kept twenty-six piles of notecards on the coffee table, and he noticed several cards lying on the floor. They had not been there when he had left. As he picked up the cards, he saw traces of mud and water, the remains of a Cambridge mud puddle, drying on the braided rug. They were not his footprints. Desk drawers were open by an inch or two. The filing cabinet, which protected his bankbook and the completed portions of his dissertation, showed scratches around the master lock. Someone had tried to get in. He couldn’t tell if they had been successful, but he knew now that he wasn’t crazy.
Excitement quickly replaced revulsion. There was only one reason why anyone would break into his apartment and go through his papers—the Dexter Lovell note.
He had hidden the note in an old geology textbook. He jumped to the bookcase. The note was still there, but a few shelves away, he noticed that one of his pewter mugs, which he used as a bookend, was out of place. The handle of the mug was scratched and bent. It had been knocked to the floor when somebody explored his bookcases.
Had they seen the note and decided to leave it there? Had they missed it? Or had they inspected only a few books? On the shelf with the mug, Fallon kept works from the Elizabethan Renaissance—The Pelican Shakespeare, Seventeenth Century Prose and Poetry, The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson. He knew the intruders weren’t interested in Shakespeare. They had been looking for the note.
Fallon heard footsteps in the hallway. He locked the door and took the baseball bat out of the closet. The footsteps drew closer, passed his door, and stopped near his fire door. Fallon kept his hand tight around the bat. The footsteps started back down the hall and stopped at his front door.
Fallon could tell from the heavy step that whoever was out there weighed more than two hundred pounds. Fallon felt the adrenaline rush through him. After several minutes, the person began to move again. The footsteps receded down the hall.
Fallon ran to the window and looked down into the street. A big man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap stepped out of the building and mixed into the pedestrian traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. It was the old grad in the library. Big, burly, white hair, and the smell of cheap wine. Fallon remembered Jane Cooper’s description of Jack C. Ferguson.
There he was—alive, well, and right on Fallon’s doorstep.
Fallon raced out of the apartment and down Mass. Ave., but Ferguson had already disappeared. For the next half hour, Fallon searched the subway stations and the local bars. But Jack C. Ferguson was a master of concealment. He would pick the time and place that they met.