CHAPTER 72

They who take to force, give a great blow to the Gospel.

Martin Luther

In one of Philip Tower’s blood-soaked pockets Lieutenant Detective Campbell found a driver’s license with his address. “Anybody know he’s got a wife? If there’s relatives, I got to inform them what happened, and then somebody’s got to talk to them. You know, find out what they know.”

“I don’t think he’s married,” said Alan doubtfully.

“Well, whatever. I’ll find out if there’s anybody. Usually everybody’s got somebody.”

In Philip’s case the somebody turned out to be a mother, Mrs. Howard Tower, living at the same Brookline address.

“Jesus,” said Campbell, hanging up the phone, “I wish to God somebody else would interview the woman. She went ballistic. Screamed at me.”

“Well, what do you expect?” said Homer reasonably. “You told her her son is dead.”

“Sure, I know, but this was—I mean it was really—Hey, Homer, how about it? Why don’t you handle it? Right away, okay? We need a report right away.”

“Me?” Homer was taken by surprise. His curiosity rose to the surface. “Well, all right. I’ll bring Starr along. Friend of the deceased. Where does Philip’s mother live?”

Campbell wanted a quick report, but even Homer Kelly didn’t have the gall to interrogate Mrs. Howard Tower on the very day of her son’s death. “We’ll go tomorrow,” he told Alan. “Tell you what, we’ll bring Mary along. She’s good at soothing tortured souls and comforting the bereaved.”

Mary didn’t want to go. “Oh, Homer, the idea of talking to the mother of a recently deceased murderer doesn’t appeal to me at all. She’ll be in a pitiful emotional state.”

“My dear, that’s why we need you.”

“Womanly sympathy, is that it? Well, why can’t men by sympathetic?” But she gave in.

They picked up Alan at the church. It was only the day after Easter, but already a scaffolding had been erected. Huge diagonal timbers buttressed the tower and the one remaining vault.

“There he is,” said Mary, pointing up at the balcony where Alan and Donald Woody were struggling with huge sheets of plastic, draping them over the organ console and the pipes, protecting them from the weather. The plastic sheets kept flapping up in the wind, refusing to be fastened down.

Alan glanced down at them and yelled, “Just a sec.”

“I’ve got it,” said Woody. He grasped a loose corner and stapled it to the floor with a bang.

Alan crowded in next to Homer on the front seat of Mary’s car. “Thank God, now I can stop worrying about the organ.” He pointed down the avenue. “Straight on. Take Beacon Street at Kenmore Square.”

Mary glanced at him as she pulled away from the curb. He was obviously wrought up. His fingers gripped his knees. Reaching across Homer, she squeezed his arm. “Do you think they’ll know what happened to Rosie?”

Homer made a discouraging noise. “Pip Tower’s mother may not know anything at all. How many first-degree murderers talk things over with their female relatives? I doubt they sit down and chat about things over the teacups.”

Homer was half right and half wrong. Philip Tower’s family had not discussed things quietly at teatime—they had screamed them at each other, day in and day out. Mrs. Tower was expecting them. Her small face was elaborately made up, her great hips shrouded in yards of fleecy fabric. She led them into the kitchen and introduced another member of the family, her daughter Helen, who sat in a wheelchair and looked up at them with eyes puffy from crying.

“Lieutenant Detective Campbell has spoken to you, I believe,” said Homer to Mrs. Tower with formal politeness.

At once she began to talk. “He didn’t understood a thing. He didn’t understand my boy at all. I told him Sonny was a genius, but do you think he was listening? All he wanted to know was where Sonny worked, the copy center and Boston City Hospital, and then he kept asking about fires, things like that, and I just kept saying, God, I didn’t know, what did I know? I didn’t know anything! But he kept asking and asking. Police! I should have known. What can you expect from law enforcement in the city of Boston? God!”

Homer stopped listening. He was mesmerized by Mrs. Tower’s large staring eyes. They reminded him of someone. They were rimmed with black, and her eyelashes stuck stiffly up like wires. Of course, she was like the woman who guarded evidence for the Boston Police Department, the one who had demonstrated the uses of the cosmetics in the scorched and blackened pocketbook.

The cosmetics must have belonged to Mrs. Tower. It was she who had supplied the contents of the pocketbook. Homer turned his attention back to what she was saying. Words gushed out of her, whining words of self-pity. The girl in the wheelchair crouched with bowed head while her mother poured out the misery of her life, the injustice of her lot, the sacrifices she had made for others.

“Of course my children get all their talent from me. I was a coloratura soprano, I sang for the Boston Pops when I was seventeen, but then I made the mistake of getting married, and after the kids were born I lost my beautiful voice. The anesthetic, you know, it ruined my voice. I could have sued for malpractice. I could have gotten millions.”

Homer felt bewitched. He unstuck his eyes from Mrs. Tower’s and looked at the ceiling. At once she transferred her gaze to Mary. “My husband was not a good provider. I had to work as a practical nurse. I lived for my children. They were both so gifted. Helen played the violin. She was a genius, my poor little girl.”

There was a murmur from the young woman in the wheelchair. Mrs. Tower glowered at her. “What did you say?”

“I said, stop, please stop.”

Mrs. Tower did not stop. She turned her headlamps on Alan. “Oh, we had problems. Did any woman ever bear such a cross? My husband, did you hear about my husband? Huntington’s disease! He had Huntington’s disease for fifteen years before he died. Look at Helen, she’s got it now, she got it from him. She’ll be a basket case too, just like him. Bedpans, how would you like to spend your life changing bedpans?”

Homer tried to turn the agonizing monologue in a useful direction. “Mrs. Tower, can you tell us anything about Rosalind Hall?”

The flood of words stopped. Mrs. Tower looked craftily away. “Never heard of her.”

It was Alan’s turn. “We happen to know, Mrs. Tower, that Pip went to Rosalind’s house on the night she disappeared. We have a tape recording of her screams as he dragged her away against her will. There was blood on the floor.”

Mrs. Tower blinked, and looked sidelong at her daughter, who had closed her eyes and clenched her fists. “I don’t know anything about that. He never told me.” Then she burst out, “My poor Sonny, he was so gifted.” She looked at Alan spitefully, and raised her voice. “And they gave his job to you, the job he should have had!”

Doggedly Homer returned to the subject of Rosie. “Do you mean to say you never saw the young woman called Rosalind Hall?”

Mrs. Tower looked at him sullenly. “I don’t know anything about any Rosalind Hall. My boy didn’t need women. He had his mother, he had his sister.”

And then Pip’s sister screamed at her mother. She writhed in her wheelchair, and shrieked, “Oh, God in heaven, shut up.” She threw her head back and closed her eyes as if praying, and shook her crumpled fists at the ceiling. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Mrs. Tower leaped to her feet and snatched up a bottle from the kitchen counter. “She needs her medication. Helen, it’s time for your medication.”

“No, no,” wept Helen, “no, no.” But her mother came forward with a spoonful of brown liquid and gripped Helen’s head and brought the spoon to her mouth. Helen wrenched her head away and threw up her arm, knocking the spoon out of her mother’s hand.

“Sometimes,” said Mrs. Tower through her teeth, “we have to use force. Now, Helen, hold still.” Pinning her daughter’s fragile arms together with one hand, she held the bottle to her lips.

It was terrible to see. Helen fought and tossed her head from side to side, her mouth clenched shut. The liquid ran down her chin.

Mary touched Mrs. Tower’s shoulder. “Wait,” she said. “Let her alone. She’ll be all right.”

Panting, Mrs. Tower stepped back. Helen reached forward and gripped Mary’s hand.

“Why don’t I take her around the block?” Mary’s voice was calm, ordinary. Homer looked at his wife in wonder. Alan stood up to help, as Mary released the brake and began pushing the wheelchair out of the room. It was the most natural thing in the world, as if she had taken Helen for a spin a thousand times before.

“Now, listen here,” said Mrs. Tower, her voice rising in anger, “Helen, remember what Mother said. You hear me, Helen? Answer me, Helen!”

Helen said nothing as Mary skimmed her out into the hall. Alan dodged ahead of them and opened the door and helped lower the wheelchair to the sidewalk. Then to his surprise Helen thanked him. Her ravaged face cleared in a heavenly smile, and she said, “The xylophone.”

“The xylophone?”

“It’s in the kitchen drawer.”

“We’ll be back sooner or later,” said Mary breezily. Alan watched them speed merrily away along the sidewalk, bouncing over uneven places, leaving the house of torment behind, the tyranny of the mother, the controlling medication. He had the impression of escape, of freedom, of a couple of tramps taking to the open road.

He grinned, and went back indoors, to find Mrs. Tower delivering a lecture on the subject of her daughter’s unreliability. “Poor child, her mind is gone. She doesn’t know the difference between truth and falsehood. I hate to say this about my own daughter, but she’s a liar. It’s her illness. Huntington patients, they all lie.”

Homer persevered. “Rosalind Hall was not burned up in that car, was she, Mrs. Tower? That burned body was somebody else, wasn’t it? Tell me, how did your son get hold of it?”

Mrs. Tower shook her head and closed her huge eyes. Her thousand-legged lashes with their caked mascara lay on her cheeks. “You’re not going to get me to say anything when I don’t know anything.”

But when Alan opened the kitchen drawer beside the sink and found the toy xylophone and thrust it under her nose, she lost her nerve. “Oh, Lord,” she said.

“It was Charley’s, wasn’t it?” said Alan. “He was here. Rosie was here. Where are they now?”

Mrs. Tower stared at the xylophone dolefully. “Oh, my God.”

Triumphant, Homer took the xylophone and ran a finger up the scale. The metal notes tinkled cheerfully. “She was here, the baby was here. Where are they now? Tell us, Mrs. Tower, and then we’ll go away and leave you alone. Where is Rosalind Hall?”

Mrs. Tower shriveled and crouched. She lowered her eyes and stared at the floor. “In Germany. She went to Germany.”

“She’s in Germany?” Alan whispered it, hardly daring to say it aloud. “Then she’s all right?”

“Her? Oh, she’s all right. Thanks to me. How do you think I felt when Sonny brought home a stranger with a fractured skull? Me, he expected me to bring her back to life. It was up to me! After what I’d already been through with my husband and Helen! But I did it. She can thank me she’s still alive. Only she never did. She never thanked me. Oh, Mrs. Tower, you saved my life, I’m so grateful. Never, not once.” Mrs. Tower broke off, and her eyes shifted away. Her self-pity poisoned the air.

Alan could hardly contain his excitement. “Where is she in Germany, Mrs. Tower?”

She looked at him slyly. “Sonny didn’t want me to know. He knew I’d write, asking for money. But I knew where she was, and I knew what she called herself, her new name, so I wrote every now and then, and usually she sent something, not much. Well, she owed me, right? I saved her life, didn’t I? If I tell you where she lives, will you let me alone?” Eagerly Mrs. Tower lifted the strap of a large handbag from a hook on the wall, and groped inside. “Here it is. Heidelberg. She’s living in Heidelberg.”

She handed the slip of paper to Alan. He looked at Rosie’s new name and address, and learned them at once by heart.