Steeplechase: A Homer Kelly Mystery Part 2

"Well, no, probably nothing as sensational as that. But I'll bet those pious old church histories don't always tell the whole truth." Mary clattered the breakfast dishes into the sink. "Come on, let's get away from the phone and chase a few steeples. I'll bet all the churches around here have skeletons of some kind or other in their closets."

"Good, where shall we start?"

"Right here in Concord. Why not? We can begin with the First Parish. Then we could talk to the Trinitarians. And who else? The rabbi of Temple Emanuel?"

"Temple Emanuel? No, no, Mary dear, think about it. The temple isn't exactly a hatchling from a Protestant chicken yard."

"Of course not. Moses and Jeremiah sat on that egg. And anyway, temples don't have steeples."

"Right," said Homer. "We gotta have steeples."

1868.

Eternal Remembrances.

Like a spirit land of shadows They in silence on me gaze And I feel my heart is beating.

With the pulse of other days; And I ask what great magician Conjured forms like these afar?

Echo answers, 'tis the suns.h.i.+ne, By its alchemist Daguerre.

-Caleb Lyon, 1850.

"Welcome, Ladies and Gents!"

The brothers Spratt looked so much alike, people couldn't tell Jake from Jack. But their talents were different.

"My Jackie," their mother boasted, "he's the artistic one. Jackie can paint you a bouquet so natural, you could pick the posies. His brother, he's just the opposite. Jakie's always a-tinkering."

Thus it was Jack Spratt who set up the elegant chamber for portrait photography in their horse-drawn mobile studio. And it was Jack who furnished it with a thronelike chair, a bal.u.s.trade, a hollow column, a carpet-covered table, and a velvet curtain with an imposing ta.s.sel.

But it was Jake who understood the wet-plate process and knew how to turn out any number of alb.u.men prints from a single gla.s.s negative.

Then it was Jack's turn again. It was his clever scissors that snipped out the images, his nimble fingers that mounted them on pretty pieces of cardboard, and his high-flown eloquence that fluttered down from the basket of the balloon: Jack and Jacob Spratt.

Aerial and Portrait Photographers Cartes de Visite, cabinet photographs.

Men, women, children and babes Mortuarie images a specialty.

On the Sat.u.r.day in May when the mobile studio of the Spratt brothers pulled up on the green between Concord's Middles.e.x Hotel and the courthouse, there were no mortuary requirements, although Jack and Jake had made tender images of many a dead baby-Jack arranging the little hands sweetly on the infant's breast, Jake comforting the weeping mother.

This morning, they were not surprised to find customers already waiting. The Spratt brothers were accustomed to success. "All kindsa people want their pitchers taken, Jack," said Jake.

"Only natural, Jake," said Jack. "In this cruel world, who knows when a person might take sick and die without no eternal remembrance of their physiognomy while blood still pulsed in their veins?"

Jake jumped down and unhitched the team while Jack s.h.i.+fted the n.o.ble appointments into place and pulled back the shade over the skylight. Then, poking his head through the curtains, he lifted his hat. "Welcome, ladies and gents! Who's first?"

It was a small boy. The boy's mother kept an anxious eye on him as Jack helped him up into the wagon. But Horace was on his best behavior. Delighted to have his picture taken, he stood smartly erect and smiled into the camera.

Ida was next. She handed the baby to her mother, climbed into the wagon, and sat down beside the carpet-covered table.

Ida's husband, Alexander, came running up from the North Road to take his turn. He was carrying his doctor's bag because he had been attending the deathbed of the Widow Plankton. It was the widow's fourth deathbed, and doubtless there would be a fifth. As Ida stepped down and took the baby from her mother, Alexander jumped up into the wagon.

In the artistic judgment of the photographer, this client had a n.o.ble profile. "Sir," said Jack, "I recommend you look to the side."

Alexander obeyed, waited for the flash of light, and then jumped down from the wagon. Once again, the man in the bowler hat stuck out his head. "All right, folks, who desires to be next?"

Eudocia had disappeared with Alice to go shopping on the Milldam. "Your turn, Eben," said Alexander. "Go ahead. It doesn't hurt a bit."

Eben had been waiting to take everybody home. "My turn?" he said. "Well, I don't know."

Jack Spratt looked at Eben, his eyebrows high, his face a question mark. "Sir, would you be pleased to have your likeness taken?"

It was easier to do it than not, so Eben's face, too, was recorded for eternity.

A Philosophical Dispute.

The Spratt brothers had come to Concord at a good time, because it was the day of the cattle fair. This huge event occupied acres of ground behind the depot on the other side of the railroad tracks, but Concord center was also teeming with visitors. Carriages bustled up and down the Milldam as interested parties arrived from all the surrounding towns.

Some of them had urgent transactions to conduct at the fair, but most were drawn by the general air of excitement. Alert to the opportunity, shopkeepers along the Milldam had stocked their shelves with fancy goods. Bonnets in one shopwindow were decked with ribbons and flowers, and in front of the greengrocer lay baskets of asparagus. At one corner of the green, the Middles.e.x Hotel was doing a land-office business in West Indian rum, brandy, gin, and cider, and the town was awash in oysters fresh from the train.

There was a new war memorial in the center of the green, an obelisk adorned with bronze tablets. One of the tablets listed the names of the Concord men who had never come back, including the name of Ida's first husband, Seth Morgan. The other tablet was a tribute: THE TOWN OF CONCORD.

BUILDS THIS MONUMENT.

IN HONOR OF.

THE BRAVE MEN.

WHOSE NAMES IT BEARS:.

AND RECORDS WITH GRATEFUL PRIDE.

THAT THEY FOUND HERE.

A BIRTHPLACE, HOME OR GRAVE.

Eben leaned against the pedestal. He was waiting for the rest of his family to be photographed, but it looked to be a long wait. By the time his mother and little sisters came back from the Milldam, a line of other customers had collected in front of the mobile studio of the brothers Spratt.

"Oh, dear," said Eudocia, "we shouldn't have gone shopping." They took their places at the end of the line, Sallie in a new bonnet, Alice in a new pinafore. Through the open windows of the Middles.e.x Hotel came the sound of drunken guffaws, and on the hotel porch a knot of men in top hats stood in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Eben watched the knot dissolve and trickle across the road. They were like iron filings drawn by the magnet of the painted sign advertising the photographic services of Jack and Jacob Spratt.

With baby Gussie whimpering on her shoulder, Eben's sister Ida was trying to keep track of Horace, but he kept darting away, skipping up and down the line, smiling up at the men in stovepipe hats. One of them handed him a sticky black gumdrop. "Here, boy, want a n.i.g.g.e.r baby?"

"No, no, Horace," called Ida, running up to take his hand. But Horace was nearly bursting with the excitement of the crowded green, the men with candy in their pockets, the horses, the carriages, the noise, the fat boy playing a tin whistle. When Ida pulled him away, his excitement boiled over and he began to bawl. Inspired by his example, Gussie bawled, too.

"Here," said Eben, "let me take him." Swiftly, he picked up Horace, tossed him up on his shoulders, and bore him away to the place in front of the courthouse where he had left Mab and the spring wagon. Somehow, the entire family had crowded into the buggy-Eben driving, Sallie with Alice on her lap, Eudocia with Horace, and Ida holding the baby. Now Mab was waiting sleepily with her head down beside the curb, but she perked up when she saw Horace.

"Look, Horace," said Eben, lifting his nephew up on the front seat, "you can see everything better from here."

Uncle Eben was right. Horace bounced on the high seat and looked around happily at the waiting crowd, the green trees, the barking dog, the cat slinking across the street, the photographer poking his head out of his wagon, the baker's cart.

And there was excitement here, too. As Uncle Eben climbed up to sit beside him, they heard an explosion of cursing on the road, a squawking of chickens, a stamping of horses. It was a near collision. A dray loaded with hen coops was blocking the way of a carriage occupied by two gentlemen and three ladies. Chickens screeched and feathers flew, but the driver of the carriage refused to budge. The sulky drayman had to back his team out of the way to permit the two carriage horses to step smartly into the empty s.p.a.ce beside Eben's wagon.

At once, Eben was aware of the presence of Isabelle Shaw. She was wedged in the back of the carriage between her mother and Mrs. Biddle. In front sat Isabelle's father, Josiah Gideon, and the Reverend Horatio Biddle. The two men were in heated argument. Behind them, the women sat shocked and silent. Both disputants were clergymen, but the peace of G.o.d was not in evidence. Eben said a polite good morning and nodded at the ladies, but only Isabelle's mother gave him a wan smile. When the three women began gathering their skirts to descend, he jumped down to help, but Isabelle was too quick for him. Before he could take her hand, she was standing in the road, a.s.sisting Mrs. Biddle. Isabelle's mother took Eben's hand gratefully, but the two men on the forward seats made no move to step down. They were still in hot dispute.

Isabelle looked around as though she had forgotten why they had come. Julia took her arm and together they walked across the green toward the studio of the photographers. Mrs. Biddle followed, tugging off her gloves and popping up her parasol, her lips compressed.

Disappointed, Eben climbed back on the wagon, pretending not to hear the tempest of dialectic beside him, but Horace stared openmouthed. The faces of the two men were red with anger, their voices pa.s.sionate and loud. Yet the content of their disagreement was purely philosophical. It was a cla.s.sic argument, like the debates of Eben's student days. Listening, keeping his eyes on Mab's c.o.c.ked ears, he soon had a t.i.tle for this one-"Query: whether the truths of science and the revelations of religion be not fundamentally opposed."

Debater Josiah had taken the negative: No, they were not opposed, and only at its peril might religion ignore the great new truths of science.

Reverend Horatio argued vehemently for the positive. The so-called truths of the new science were not true at all, but false. They were undermining the faith of the fathers, spreading doubt and confusion in the hearts of Christian believers.

"Sir," said Josiah, "you must have heard of Mr. Darwin's great book?"

"Sir," replied Horatio, "you must have read Professor Aga.s.siz's reply?"

It was a standoff. Eben kept his eyes fixed on the men lounging on the steps of the courthouse, but he listened with all his might. Horace gaped and stared. Even Mab flicked her ears, as if she were listening, too.

"Don't Tell!"

Next?" said the photographer in the bowler hat. This time, it was Jake Spratt, taking over from his exhausted brother, but the customers were not aware of the difference, because Jake was the spitting image of Jack.

There were only a few customers left by the time the party from Nashoba took its place in line. Isabelle found herself just behind Ella Viles.

Ella had frizzed her hair with curlpapers, and she looked fetching in a ribbon bow. At once, she leaned close to Isabelle and murmured, "My likeness is for Eben."

Isabelle was startled. "You mean Eben Flint?"

"Of course," whispered Ella. "We're promised." Slyly, she rolled her eyes sideways to the place where Eben and his small nephew waited beside the wagon in which Isabelle's father and Mr. Biddle were still sitting stiffly upright.

"Promised? You are?" In spite of herself, Isabelle could not hide her dismay. Not for herself, of course, but for Eben-that he should settle for a girl like Ella Viles.

"It's a secret," whispered Ella. "Promise you won't tell."

Isabelle mumbled something, but she was grateful when her old friend Ida came hurrying up to embrace her just as Jake Spratt poked his head out of the curtain and said, "Which of you ladies is next?"

Eudocia Flint was next, then Alice and Sallie. Next in line was Isabelle's mother, Julia Gideon. Julia settled herself dreamily beside the carpeted table, remembering the itinerant photographer who had come to Nashoba in the summer of '64, just before her new son-in-law had left to join his regiment. The new husband and wife had been taken together, James seated and Isabelle standing beside him with her hand on his shoulder. Julia had seen other photographs like it-anxious wives touching, clasping, leaning close to husbands who were about to endure the dangers of the battlefield.

James had endured them and survived, and now he was home again, but the brothers Spratt would not be taking his picture. Not this day, nor any other. Only his wife would be recorded for all future time, for Jack Spratt's "eternity"-Isabelle alone.

"All done, Jack," said Jake, looking out at the empty green.

"Still early, Jake," said Jack.

"Three plates left," said Jake.

"Let's use 'em up," said Jack.

So they sat for each other-Jack looking one way, Jake the other. The last plate recorded a pretty view of the town green, and then, their day's work done, they closed up shop.

NOW.

The First Steeple.

Skeleton in the Closet.

Heads together, Homer and Mary bent over the old photograph of Concord's Monument Square. Rising tall and pale in the foreground stood the Civil War memorial obelisk. In the middle distance, large and foursquare, was the Middles.e.x Hotel with horses and buggies drawn up in front of the porch. They could just make out the steeple of the First Parish Church high over the trees beyond the hotel.

"Picture taken in 1868," murmured Homer.

"Photographs are so haunting," said Mary. "Monument Square must have looked just like this when my great-great-grandmother Ida was alive, and my great-grandfather must have been a small boy in 1868."

"And Ida's brother Eben-remember Eben Flint? He would have been twenty-one in 1868. But her husband Seth was dead by then."

"Oh, poor misunderstood Seth. Was Ida married again by 1868? Yes, I think she was. So her second husband, the doctor, he would have seen it like this. In 1868, Alexander must have been living with Ida in the house on Barrett's Mill Road." Mary stroked the photograph. "If only we could walk into the picture and see what it looked like then, the house I grew up in." Mary sighed with longing. "Oh, if only the picture would open up and let us in."

"I know," said Homer. "It's too bad. But we can still walk into the church." He tapped the dim bell tower in the picture. "It's our first steeple. The photograph won't open up, but maybe the church archivist will. Maybe he'll tell us something scandalous about the history of the First Parish, so that I can satisfy the shameless curiosity of my editor. Luther keeps calling up, demanding skeletons in the closet, vice and corruption, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g in the-"