35

Can we be indolent? Shall we not exert ourselves?

Dr. Ezra Ripley
Concord, 1792

If Homer Kelly was determined neither to see, nor speak, nor hear any evil, Flo Terry was just as determined in the opposite direction. Flo was opening her eyes and ears as wide as she could; she was talking a blue streak. If her husband, the chief of the Nashoba police department, wasn’t going to do anything about all the funerals in Old West Church, and if Homer Kelly, the famous detective, wasn’t even curious about what was happening, then she, Flo Terry, a reference librarian by trade, was going to put to use her expertise at tracking down stray bits of information. It was something she was good at. Why shouldn’t the facts she was looking for be sought in the minds of living people as well as in dusty old books on a shelf?

Self-righteously, Flo set out one Saturday morning to talk to all the bereaved husbands and wives. She would go straight to the heart of the matter by trying to find some common thread in the lives of the deceased.

“Tell me about Bill,” she said to Judy Molyneux. “I don’t even know what he did for a living.”

Judy was glad to talk to Flo about her husband. She opened up right away. “He was a technical writer at Digital, in Maynard,” she said. “He graduated from Bates and then he took a special course at Wentworth Tech in word processing. What else can I tell you? Oh, of course, he loved ballroom dancing. Well, we both did. We used to win prizes before he began to get so sick. He played jazz piano. Let’s see, what else?”

“He was a member of Old West Church,” prompted Flo.

“That’s right. He was on the Parish Committee for a while. Lately he’d been going to church meetings at Ed Bell’s house on Sunday afternoons.”

“What sort of meetings?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Social concerns, I think. Picking out charities for the church to give money to.” Then Judy’s face lighted up. “Stamps! He collected stamps. You want to see his collection?”

At the Shookys’ house, Flo drank a cup of Deborah’s orange-blossom tea and learned that Phil had earned his veterinarian’s degree at Cornell after spending the Second World War wading ashore under fire at various islands in the South Pacific. He had been crazy about animals, from a child. He was especially fond of German shepherds, which he had been breeding for forty years. And of course there were the meetings of the local kennel club. Phil had been vice-president. “Before that he was president for years and years,” said Deborah Shooky. “Oh, and the church, of course. He really believed in going to church Sundays.”

“Did he do anything in the church?” said Flo. “Wasn’t he an usher, lots of times?”

“He was head usher. He was supposed to arrange a regular schedule for the ushers, but often it was easier for the two of us to do it ourselves. And lately there was that Sunday-afternoon group at Ed Bell’s. Bible study, I think they were doing. You know. The Epistles of Paul. Things like that.”

For information about Arlene Pott, Flo Terry had to call on Arlene’s neighbor Ethel Harris. Ethel apologized for knowing so little about Arlene, even though they had been good friends. “She loved her garden,” said Ethel. “But everybody knows that. You should have seen her out there working on it every day, all through June and July. There wasn’t a weed anywhere. It was neat as a pin. And she grew the most beautiful vegetables. Oh, poor, dear Arlene.”

“She was really regular about church attendance, wasn’t she?” said Flo. “How about Sunday afternoons? Did she attend something else on Sundays besides church in the morning?”

“Not as far as I know,” said Ethel, wrinkling her forehead, trying to remember. “No, of course she didn’t, because Fred and I used to drop in on Wally and Arlene Sunday afternoons, and the boys would watch football or baseball on the TV and we girls would sit in the kitchen and talk.” Ethel’s eyes widened. “Oh, if I’d known we were socializing with a murderer! Poor darling Arlene!”

Hilary Tarkington, like Judy Molyneux, was glad to talk about her dead husband. She went on and on, grateful to spill it all out. Talking about George was like dedicating a small memorial to him, it was prolonging his memory a little farther in time, it was doing him honor of a kind. So it just gushed out of Hilary.

Flo listened and scribbled it all down in her notebook—engineering degree University of Michigan, forty-two years employment with Ma Bell, Mason Third Degree, organizer Nashoba Little League, drinking problem, Alcoholics Anonymous, heavy smoker until five years ago, church work, school committee, Mr. Fixit, carpentry, car repair, his brother in the nursing home, Sunday-afternoon committee meetings on purposes and goals for the church at Ed Bell’s house every week.

Flo’s pencil stopped. She looked up. “Purposes and goals? Are you sure that’s what they talked about?”

“Well, no, but it was something like that,” said Hilary Tarkington.

Maureen Donlevy had been so shocked by her husband’s violent death on Route 2 that she was still in a traumatized condition. But by probing very tactfully, Flo was able to garner a few facts about Percy. She learned that he had been an investment counselor by day and an enthusiastic member of the Nashoba Players by night, specializing in grandfathers, patriarchs, and old geezers. “He just loved to clap on an old hat and snap his suspenders and talk like an old cowpoke in some Western saloon,” said Maureen tearfully. “He was always trying to get a drama group going in the church, but nobody was interested.”

“They just didn’t have his talent,” said Flo sympathetically. “What else did he do in the church? Didn’t he sing in the choir?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Then Maureen remembered something else. “And there was the Sunday-afternoon retreat. He always went to Ed Bell’s house every Sunday afternoon.”

“A retreat? He called it a retreat?”

“That’s right. You know, they got together and had sort of spiritual discussions.”

“Oh, I see,” said Flo, writing it all down.

Agatha Palmer’s spouse was less forthcoming. Bob Palmer’s principal regret about his wife was obviously that she had lost her figure early in their married life and given birth rather carelessly to seven children. Flo suspected he was casting his eye around for a new girlfriend. Relentlessly she made him rummage in his memory for recollections of poor departed Agatha.

“Church work?” said Bob, in answer to her question. “Oh, gee, I dunno.”

“Wasn’t she director of the Sunday school at one time? What about more recently? Did she ever go to meetings at Ed Bell’s house on Sunday afternoons?”

“Oh, sure, Sunday afternoons, you’re right, that’s right. She used to drive over to the Bells’ house Sunday afternoons. I don’t know what the hell for.”

Bob Palmer was a dreadful man, decided Flo, leaving his house in disgust. But Betsy Bucky was even worse. Betsy was gleeful rather than mournful on the subject of her life-partner’s recent demise. “What did he do with himself?” she said scornfully, repeating Flo’s question. “Nothing, that’s what he did with himself. He just sat around wasting his time, that’s all he ever did.”

“But he went to church, didn’t he?” protested Flo, wanting to stick up for Carl. “What about Sunday afternoons? Did he go to any sort of meetings?”

“Sunday afternpons? Carl Bucky? You bet your boots he didn’t. Sunday afternoon was floor-washing time. He had to move all the furniture and scrub all the floors in the house, every single Sunday. You don’t think he was going to get out of this house on a Sunday afternoon? No, ma’am, not my Carl!”

Driving away from Betsy Bucky’s house, Flo calculated the totals in her head. The Sunday-afternoon meetings at Ed Bell’s house had grown in importance as the day went on, only to let her down in the end. Perhaps they weren’t the common thread after all. Bill Molyneux had attended the meetings, and so had Phil Shooky and George Tarkington and Agatha Palmer and Percy Donlevy. But Carl Bucky and Arlene Pott had not. Of course Arlene Pott didn’t count. What about the others? There was no way of knowing about Eloise Baxter and Rosemary Hill and Thad Boland, because they didn’t have mates to pass on the news.

Yet it was terribly interesting, Flo decided, that the people who did attend the Sunday-afternoon meetings explained the purpose of the meetings in such different ways. They had been an occasion for spiritual retreat, Percy Donlevy had told his wife. A time to discuss the goals of the church, George Tarkington had explained to Hilary. Bible study, the Epistles of Paul, said Phil Shooky. An examination of church charities, said Bill Molyneux.

Clearly they had lied to their wives. They were getting together for some other purpose. What could it have been?

It was the kind of question Homer Kelly was most afraid of. But at the moment Homer was engaged in another kind of investigation. “What do you suggest, woman?” he asked his wife, his face distorted in anguish. “What should I do? I mean, modern science must have come up with some sort of remedy, after all these centuries of human physiological malfunction. You must know of some kind of internal explosive material? Something to loosen up the system?”

“Bran flakes,” suggested Mary Kelly. “Water. Lots of water.”

“Oh, ugh,” said Homer, wincing and holding his stomach.

“Prunes!” said Mary, brightening. “Nature’s remedy for constipation. Stewed prunes!”

“Stewed prunes, good God,” said Homer, closing his eyes in tragic self-pity.