The Memorial Hall Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

running outside with the rest of us, you disappeared completely,” said Mary. “You really gave me a turn.”
    â€œWell, I was looking for a shortcut. I got lost in the basement for a while, and then I found a little secret stairway and it took me up into that enormous cavern of a room, and from there I could cut right through into that big memorial hallway where the bomb went off. What about you, Vick—where were you?”
    â€œStill in Sanders. I did some more practicing, and then I had to put away all the chairs again. I mean, Mr. Crawley is supposed to do it, but, well, I told you, he’s pretty hopeless. So I was hauling chairs to the back of the stage, one by one, when there was this big boom, and it sounded sort of dull but tremendous, and I was lifted a couple of feet in the air, and I fell into the chairs, and I didn’t even feel anything, I was so astonished. And the first thing I thought of was my cello, because it had fallen on its face on the floor, but I just lay there in the middle of the chairs for a minute, trying to get myself together. I mean, I could hear all the glass crashing outside, and huge noises as if the whole place were falling down. And I got scared and thought maybe it might all fall down on top of me, so I picked myself up and stumbled out into the hall, and it was raining out there, and I saw the firemen, and I saw you, Mr. Kelly, and—”
    â€œHomer. Call me Homer.”
    â€œAnd I saw the sole of somebody’s shoe and this big shape on the floor with just black shreds of clothes, and I went to look, and it was—” Vick’s face began to come apart again.
    â€œNow, look here,” said Mary Kelly, taking her firmly by the hand. “I’m absolutely starved. I’ll bet you are too. You’re going to come home with me right now and have lunch. I made some soup with the last of the vegetables we grew back home in Concord last summer. You just come on home with me. We’ve got a nice apartment on Huron Avenue. It’s the top deck of one of those big comfortable three-deckers, all lace curtains and overstuffed upholstery and a nice view of the back yard and the laundry hanging out on the back porches next door. You’ll like it.”
    â€œMr. Kelly?” An officer wearing the insignia of the Harvard Police was beckoning at Homer. “They’re going to search the tower now.”
    â€œOh, good,” said Homer. “Listen, you two, save me some soup.”

Chapter Eight

    Homer walked into the memorial corridor by way of the north entry and stopped beside the hole in the floor. It didn’t seem possible that a gap in the flooring only fifteen or twenty feet wide could have dropped that much debris into the basement. But of course the explosion had blown out all those walls downstairs too. That would account for some of the mountains of plaster dust and shattered marble and broken timbers, and all the rubble of brick and concrete block. Jerry Crawley, the building superintendent, was blundering around in the hole, wearing a hard hat, getting in the way of Captain McCurdy and one of McCurdy’s men from the Bomb Squad.
    â€œI see you’re hard at work with that fine-tooth comb of yours, Captain McCurdy,” said Homer.
    McCurdy looked up, his face gray with plaster dust. “That’s right. Tom and I just have to make sure there isn’t anybody else buried down here in all this mess. And then Frank Harvey will take over. He’ll sift through everything, see if he can find pieces of the explosive device. So far we think it’s just dynamite. Tom found a piece of the cap. Fulminate of mercury. Just a bundle of dynamite, that’s all it was, with a fulminate of mercury cap.”
    â€œSort of run-of-the-mill, eh? No imagination? No creative spark? Ha ha, no joke intended.”
    â€œYou should of seen President Cheever,” said Crawley, looking up at Homer, his rheumy eyes