"Meet who? Who signed it?"
"Does it matter? I destroyed it, anyway, the way it said to do, and then after lunch I spent that whole hour hanging around the gravel pit. Since nobody saw me and I saw nobody, it isn't any good as an alibi anyway."
"Was it from Mary Morgan?" said Homer. "Your brother got one, too."
"He did? From Mary?" Charley looked up at Annursnac Hill, his face vacant. "Yes, it was from Mary."
"Then what did you do?" prompted Jimmy.
"Well, I came in the house shortly after 1:30, and found my mother weeping and having hysterics. She had just hung up the telephone. Some fool had called her up and told her that her son had killed her husband with a musket at the bridge and gotten away. She rushed up to me and screamed it at me. Well, I assumed, of course, that Philip must have had a fit and done something nutty. I didn't know then that he had been wearing my outfit, and that he was actually trying to lay the blame on me. All I could think of was the danger he was in. I left my mother weeping in her chair and ran to the living room to see if the musket was there. It was still in its place in the cupboard. I didn't see how it could have been the murder weapon because there it was. But I knew one thing that you didn't know. You saw Philip fire the gun the night before, and then you saw my father clean the inside of the gun and wipe it all off on the outside. But I had seen Philip using that same gun that very morning. He came home from the sunrise salute in a sour mood, walked into the house, grabbed up the musket and went out again. Said he was going out to the gravel pits to whale away at a tin can. Said he had to get something out of his system."
"That would account for the missing musket balls. And the dirty barrel of the gun. Go ahead."
"Anyway, I knew he had been the last to fire the gun, and that his fingerprints were all over it again. So I decided to get rid of it."
"Why didn't you just wipe the prints off again?"
"I did. But I was sure there'd be latent prints, or something. or some way of tracing it to Philip—you people have such scientific methods now."
"You do us too much credit," said Homer wryly. "So then you buried it in Tom's plowed field."
"It was the first thing I thought of. I had seen Tom out there with the planter on my ride back home. If it had worked for the Minutemen I thought it might work for me. I ran to the barn for a spade, and then I stood in the trees along the edge of the field to see if Tom was gone. He was, so I buried the gun."
"Why didn't you dig it up again later? You must have known it would get plowed up again when the corn was ripe."
"This will sound silly to you, but I couldn't remember for the life of me where I had buried it. All I had on my mind was the idea of getting it under fast. It was out in the middle there somewhere. And I kept the line of trees along the road between me and the Hands' house. Anyway, my interest in saving Philip's neck began to fade a bit, later on."
"Then you went back to the barn and hung up the spade and came running up to Jimmy as he drove in. Right?"
"That's right."
Homer's small eyes darkened. "Isn't it a whole lot more likely, Charley, that you were burying the gun you yourself had used to kill your father?" Homer picked up a stick and began drawing circles in the dirt and talking about Ptolemy and Copernicus. Jimmy couldn't believe his ears. What was Kelly up to now?
"Now here's another diagram, Charley. Copernicus put the sun in the middle instead of the earth, and then everything became much simpler. Instead of Ptolemy's crazy orbits with epicycles all over them, Copernicus had the planets moving in simple circles. It was simpler, you see, everything was simpler. Now suppose we do the same thing. Let's take everybody else out of the center of suspicion and put Charley Goss in there. Instantly all confusion vanishes. Isn't that right, Charley? You rode to the bridge a second time, wearing your own outfit, you killed your father and then came home and buried the murder weapon. So simple, like the system of Copernicus. But Teddy Staples saw you. Charley, where is Teddy? What have you done with Teddy?"
Charley got up, all color drained from his face. He threw his handful of weeds to the ground. "I swear to you, I don't know what's happened to Teddy. I swear ... But what's the use? You don't believe me, no matter what I say. It's all gone to hell anyhow."
Homer went in the house to telephone the District Attorney. "Congratulations," said the D.A. He paused to pass the word along to Miss O'Toole. "That's great. And it just proves the rightness of holding off long enough. And I've got to hand it to you, pulling a confession with a scrappy piece of evidence like that Teddy's diary. Yes, sir, Kelly, my boy, I've got to hand it to you."
"It's not a confession. All he admits doing is burying the gun. But I'm about to detain him for a preliminary hearing. Is that all right with you?"
"Sure, it is. Hey, no it isn't either. Couldn't you just hold off till tomorrow?"
"No, I couldn't. What for?"
"Well, look here, Homer, old man. You know how the papers have been after me, you know me, "The Do-Nothing D.A.'? Well, here's what I want those bastards to do. I want them out there on the front steps of the Goss mansion taking a picture of me, and of you and Jimmy, too, naturally, looking on while one of your boys clamps handcuffs on Charley. How about it? Let's make those bums eat crow. Besides, I sure need a little glory—this being an election year, you know how it is."
"Well, come on out here right now, and bring them with you."
"Aw, Homer, it's practically five o'clock. And you know me. I'm a family man. Besides, I bet it's going to be one of those misty nights. Do those Gosses have cows? You know how scared I am of cows. What's that, Miss O'Toole?" Homer, exasperated, could hear whimpering sounds from Miss O'Toole. Then the D.A. barked into the telephone. "You heard me, didn't you, Kelly? Who's boss around here, anyway? Put a man on Charley, and I'll be out first thing in the morning."
"But, sir," said Homer. The receiver at the other end of the line banged down, and Homer stood looking at the mouthpiece, enraged. Just because the stupid ass was petrified of the country. Homer shouted into the empty telephone line, "They haven't even got any cows, you crazy fool."
*47*
How many water bugs make a quorum? —Henry Thoreau
Howard Swan was on the line for Jimmy when they got back to the station. "Hello, Jimmy? I just want you to pass the word along to everybody there at Fire and Police to try and get to the Special Town Meeting tonight. The Armory. You know how hard it is to get a quorum in the middle of the summer, and the Water Commissioners are mighty anxious to get this motion through."
"Sure, I'll pass the word along. Tell me again what the meeting's for?"
"To vote $80,000 for resetting the pipe to Sandy Pond in Lincoln. Don't you know about the wet mess we've got there in the Milldam? All that melting snow in the spring, and the spring rains, and then so much rain on and off the last six weeks—the water table rose eighteen inches and overflowed the dam there in Lincoln, washed out the ditch, loosened up the pipe, and the water's coming down here like Noah's flood. Make all your boys turn out, and bring their wives."
"You bet," said Jimmy. Then he hung up and called up Mary at the library to tell her about Charley Goss. It looked like everything was winding up.