The Memorial Hall Murder Read Free Page A

stop? Oh, Christ, it hurt his head to listen. He had thought at first they were angels, only angels wouldn’t sing like that, and when he had got a look at them by the light of the candles in their hands, he could see immediately that they were his old great-aunts, the ones in the picture on the bureau, back home in New Jersey. He had never met them in real life, because they had all died before he was born, but now they were all lined up just like in the picture, with their fuzzy hair and their shirtwaists and high collars and their staring faces, singing ROCK OF AGES, CLEFT! FOR MEEEEEEEE! LET ME HIIIIIIIDE MYSELF IN THEEEEEEEEE! Oh, God, why didn’t they stop?

Chapter Six

    From the sidewalk on the other side of Kirkland Street, Homer Kelly looked up solemnly at the sunless north façade of Memorial Hall. The building rose above him like a cliff face, mass piled upon mass, ten thousand of brick laid upon ten thousand. It was ugly. Majestically ugly. Augustly, monumentally ugly. It was a red-brick Notre Dame, a bastard Chartres, punctured with stained-glass windows, ribboned around with lofty sentiments in Latin, finialed with metallic crests and pennants, knobbed with the heads of orators, crowned with a bell tower and four giant clocks. Homer knew that the colossal edifice contained a theatre and a great hall and a memorial transept and a lecture room and a radio station and a lot of small offices and classrooms, but now in its gloomy grandeur it was a gigantic mausoleum as well. When it had been erected in the 1870s it had been intended as a half-secular, half-sacred memorial to young graduates who had died in the Union cause in the Civil War. Now it was an actual coffin.
    Some of the people on the sidewalk had stopped to stare across the street because they were merely curious, glad of some excitement between a class in Nat Sci 4 and another in Soc Sci 2. But most of the people pressed up against the rope barrier were mourners. Homer listened while Ham Dow’s students and choristers and friends murmured bitterly among themselves. A large woman in a red dress was weeping, clutching two fat boys in her arms. Mr. Crawley, the custodian of the building, was repeating his impressions of the morning over and over again. “Jeez, you should of seen him. His head was blowed right off. Blood running out of him down the hole. You should of been there.”
    A short girl standing in front of Homer gave Crawley a savage look. “Oh, shut up, Crawley.”
    But he gabbled on. “Hey, lookit. See that big car? That’s Cheever, President Cheever. He was here yesterday. Jeez, if they’d of blown up the place yesterday they’d of blown up Cheever. You see that other guy with him? That’s whooseywhatsis. Tinker. Sloan Tinker. Vice President or something. Excuse me, I think they’re going to need me over there. It’s all right, officer, I’m the super. I got all the keys. They can’t unlock nothing without the keys.”

    â€œOh, Homer, there you are.” Homer’s wife was reaching around shoulders and over heads, touching his arm. He took her hand and squeezed it. Someone was trailing after Mary, hanging on to her. Homer recognized the girl who had arrived on the scene of the disaster just as he was rushing upon it himself. And he had talked to her, he remembered now, before his class had even begun. Earlier this morning she had been a thin, handsome girl with long hair pouring over her shoulders in a violent mass of red. Now she was tear-stained, rumpled and pale, her hair hanging in lank dripping strands over her shirt.
    â€œHomer, this is Vick Van Horn,” said Mary. “She was Ham Dow’s assistant. She’s really pretty shaken up.”
    â€œWell, hello again,” said Homer. “I know Vick. She found my classroom for me this morning. Here, just let me speak to Officer Corcoran, so he’ll know where I am. Come on, we’ll find someplace to