CHAPTER 74

These hard heads need sound knocks.

Martin Luther

Barbara Inch was as good as her word. Even with her professional career crumbling around her, Barbara kept her promise to Mary Kelly. She spent the week after Easter pursuing the past history of the ex-wife of Martin Kraeger.

The trail of wreckage was easy to follow. In every workplace, classroom or institution in which Kay Kraeger had set foot, the broken glassware was still bitterly remembered. Resentment rankled. Every victim displayed the scars Kay had inflicted, and pointed in the direction of another sufferer.

Barbara invited Mary to lunch, and showed her the list.

They sat sipping sherry in the living room of Barbara’s dark apartment on Marlborough Street, while her roommate whispered on the telephone in the next room. Leaning back in her chair, Mary read the first page of the list aloud. “Oh, this is choice.” By the time she had read all six pages they were doubled up with laughter.

“I could do more,” said Barbara. “Her high school adviser said there was some sort of weird incident in the eighth grade.”

“No, no.” Mary stroked the sheaf of pages and stuffed it into her briefcase. “This is enough. I’ll give it to Homer. He’ll take care of it.”

“Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket, legal firm,” said Martin Kraeger, holding the phone in the crook of his shoulder, trying to open an envelope at the same time. “This is the letter accusing me of child molestation. It’s signed by Archibald Pouch.”

“Archie Pouch!” Homer was overjoyed. “At last I’ll get my own back. I’ve tangled with that rat before. I can hardly wait.”

From the wreck of his ruined church next door, Martin could hear the grinding of trucks backing and filling, the jarring thump of rock rattling from the shovel of a bucket loader, the shouts of working men. He murmured something into the telephone.

“What?” said Homer.

Martin spoke up. “You say Barbara Inch discovered all these things?”

“That’s right. Mary started it, but Barbara carried on.”

“Well, thank you, Homer. Thank all of you.” Kraeger hung up. His church lay in ruins, his career was surely at an end, but at this moment he felt strangely pleased.

The glossy offices of Pouch, Heaviside and Sprocket were on Federal Street. Homer remembered them well. On an earlier occasion he had been humiliated by Archie Pouch. Today he was eager for revenge.

“Hey, like I remember you,” said Pouch, reaching out a finger and prodding Homer in the chest. He was a vilely handsome goon in cowboy boots and a sharp three-piece suit.

“Your client is a nutcase,” said Homer. “Allow me to recite her colorful history. Item one, at the University of Vermont she accused a fellow graduate student of climbing in her dormitory window for purposes of assault, burglary and sodomy. Charges dismissed. Item two, your client charged a number of her fellow students with indecent exposure in the same women’s dormitory. Case laughed out of the dean’s office. Item three, she accused her professor of sociology of trying to kidnap her when he stopped his car to ask if she needed a lift. Resulting scandal rocked the university, your client was expelled. Item four, she was thrown out of another institution of higher learning for reasons described as good and sufficient. Item five, she accused a fellow employee in the Ten Cent Savings Bank on Milk Street of making sexual advances. He proved his innocence with a witness, and your client was fired. Item six—”

“Oh, shit,” said Archie Pouch, “tell you what. We’ll settle for seventy-five thousand.”

“Item six, your client accused a delivery man of drugging a bottle of milk in order to commit rape—you know it’s very odd,” said Homer, interrupting himself, “when you consider that your client is a very homely woman. Well, never mind, that’s beside the point. Item seven, she accused her mother’s physician of—what? You tell me. You lost the case in court.”

Pouch looked chagrined. “Oh, yeah, it was kind of dumb. Necrophilia, having sex with a dying woman.”

“Item eight, your client sued the night nurse in the obstetrics ward of Brigham and Women’s Hospital for failing to attend to her crying baby. Items nine, ten, eleven and twelve, your client attempted to close four separate and distinct daycare centers by spreading rumors about child molestation. Items thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, she brought tumult and interdepartmental strife to three different places of employment with absurd accusations against colleagues, namely—”

“Oh, the hell with it,” said Pouch. “Tell Kraeger we’re dropping the case.” He turned on his heel and shouted at an underling and went out and slammed the door.